US Election: 2016

[Fishbone Jones]

It appears that we finally have proof to back up the old adage "How can you tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving." Trump appears to do it once every 5 minutes.

Trump’s Week of Errors, Exaggerations and Flat-out Falsehoods
POLITICO Magazine subjected the GOP front-runner to our fact-checking process. This is the result.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/trump-fact-check-errors-exaggerations-falsehoods-213730

It's too bad someone doesn't fact check Clinton the same way.

 

[Kilo_302]

It's too bad someone doesn't fact check Clinton the same way.

We agree for once. But there are SOME media outlets who  who do a good job of it. TruthDig, Salon, Slate (sometimes) and a few others go after her more effectively than FOX or their equivalents on the Right, mainly because they don't focus on Benghazi and instead go after her for the money she receives from big banks, the overall mess she created in Libya, and her support for welfare cuts and the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

We agree for once.  But there are SOME media outlets who  who do a good job of it. TruthDig, Salon, Slate (sometimes) and a few others go after her more effectively than FOX or their equivalents on the Right, mainly because they don't focus on Benghazi and instead go after her for the money she receives from big banks, the overall mess she created in Libya, and her support for welfare cuts and the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

OMG!!! anic: Should I delete my post?  [

 

[cupper]

OMG!!! anic: Should I delete my post?  [

Only of you need to maintain a security clearance.  ;D

 

[Rocky Mountains]

Altair and K2 can have this wonderful trip and you two can hook up and share your thoughts. Let me know.

You mean they are not the same person??  Really?

 

[Altair]

You mean they are not the same person??  Really?

:facepalm:

 

[a_majoor]

An interesting poll on how the US service members are looking to vote. The link leads to a series of graphs which break things down further by service:

http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/election/2016/03/14/military-times-election-survey-donald-trump-bernie-sanders/81767560/

Military Times survey: Troops back Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders for president
Leo Shane III and George R. Altman, Military Times 7:33 p.m. EDT March 14, 2016

In an exclusive survey of American military personnel, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders emerged as active-duty service members' top choices to become the next commander in chief.

The Republican front runner Trump was the most popular candidate in a subscriber poll that closed Sunday, with 27 percent saying they would back the business mogul if the election were held tomorrow. Sanders, the independent Vermont senator, was a close second at 22 percent.

The results — based on responses from 931 active-duty troops, reservists and members of the National Guard — do not offer a scientific status of military voting preferences. However, they do show that the outsider candidates’ messages are resonating with individuals in uniform.

Notes: The survey was conducted March 9-14. About 64 percent of respondents identified as enlisted personnel, and 36 percent identified as officers. (Photo: Military Times subscriber survey)

The data also suggest that military personnel have not been dissuaded by political rivals who contend Trump and Sanders have weak foreign policy credentials and don't have recognized experts as national security advisers.

In the poll, nearly half of the service members surveyed said they were unhappy with the discussion of national security issues in the presidential race so far. Fewer than 5 percent were "very satisfied" with how the topic has been broached.

MILITARYTIMES

The Presidential Candidates on Defense | Military Times

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who has made national security issues one of the centerpieces of his campaign, was nearly last in the Military Times survey, with only about 9 percent of candidates favoring him. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz had almost double that, with 17 percent support.  Those surveyed offered only slightly more support for Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich (8 percent) than potential third-party candidates (6 percent).

Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton received a little more than 11 percent backing.


Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., waves during a campaign stop on Sunday, March 13, 2016, at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo: Matt Rourke/AP)

About half of the respondents in the survey were enlisted soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, in the pay grades of E-4 through E-7. Among officers, Trump still led the field but by a much smaller margin, with his 21 percent slightly outpacing Cruz at 18 percent, Sanders at 16 percent and Clinton at 15 percent.

Almost a third of those surveyed do not affiliate with either the Republican or Democratic parties. Sanders was more popular than Trump among that group, but one in seven of those individuals indicated they plan on backing a third-party candidate.

Trump also appears to be the most polarizing of all the candidates, with several dozen respondents, in a comments section of the poll, calling him dangerous for the military and the country. Three individuals polled said they’d leave the service if he becomes commander-in-chief.

The former head of U.S. Central Command, Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, received one write-in vote in the poll. Mattis, who retired in 2013, is revered among many rank-and-file troops for his unapologetic frankness with the military's civilian leaders, particularly when it came to debating the harsh realities of waging war.

Mattis was asked about his political aspirations during a speech last summer, and politely put the matter to rest.

 

[Kilo_302]

Interesting piece by Glenn Greenwald on the role "faux objectivity" in media has played in the rise of Trump:


[urlhttps://theintercept.com/2016/03/14/the-rise-of-trump-shows-the-danger-and-sham-of-compelled-journalistic-neutrality/?comments=1#comments][/url]

As Donald Trump’s campaign predictably moves from toxic rhetoric targeting the most marginalized minorities to threats and use of violence, there is a growing sense that American institutions have been too lax about resisting it. Political scientist Brendan Nyhan on Sunday posted a widely cited Twitter essay voicing this concern, arguing that “Trump’s rise represents a failure in American parties, media, and civic institutions — and they’re continuing to fail right now.” He added, “Someone could capture a major party [nomination] who endorses violence [and] few seem alarmed.”

Actually, many people are alarmed, but it is difficult to know that by observing media coverage, where little journalistic alarm over Trump is expressed. That’s because the rules of large media outlets — venerating faux objectivity over truth along with every other civic value — prohibit the sounding of any alarms. Under this framework of corporate journalism, to denounce Trump, or even to sound alarms about the dark forces he’s exploiting and unleashing, would not constitute journalism. To the contrary, such behavior is regarded as a violation of journalism. Such denunciations are scorned as opinion, activism, and bias: all the values that large media-owning corporations have posited as the antithesis of journalism in order to defang and neuter it as an adversarial force.

Just this morning, NPR media reporter David Folkenflik published a story describing the concern and even anger of some NPR executives and journalists over a column by longtime NPR commentator Cokie Roberts — the Beacon of Washington Centrism — that criticizes Trump. “NPR has a policy forbidding its journalists from taking public stances on political affairs,” he wrote. For any NPR reporter, Roberts’s statements — warning of the dangers of a Trump presidency — would be a clear violation of that policy.

An NPR vice president, Michael Oreskes, published an internal memo to NPR staff this morning highlighting Roberts’s non-reporting and non-employee role as a reason she would not be punished, but he pointedly noted, “If Cokie were still a member of NPR’s staff we would not have allowed that.” And in an interview that Oreskes “directed” Roberts to do this morning with Morning Edition host David Greene about the matter, the NPR host chided Roberts for expressing negative views of Trump, telling her:

Objectivity is so fundamental to what we do. Can you blame people like me for being a little disappointed to hear you come out and take a personal position on something like this in a campaign?

Imagine calling yourself a journalist, and then — as you watch an authoritarian politician get closer to power by threatening and unleashing violence and stoking the ugliest impulses — denouncing not that politician, but rather other journalists who warn of the dangers. That is the embodiment of the ethos of corporate journalism in America, and a potent illustration of why its fetishized reverence for “objectivity” is so rotted and even dangerous. Indeed, Roberts herself agreed that it was justified for her to speak out only because she’s in the role of NPR commentator and not reporter: “If I were doing it in your role” as a reporter, Roberts told Greene, “you should be disappointed.”

This abdication of the journalistic duty inevitably engendered by corporate “neutrality” rules is not new. We saw it repeatedly during the Bush years, when most large media outlets suppressed journalistic criticism of things like torture and grotesque war crimes carried out by the U.S. as part of the war on terror, and even changed their language by adopting government euphemisms to obscure what was being done. Outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR refused to use the word “torture” to describe techniques long universally recognized as such — which were always called torture by those same media outlets when used by countries adversarial to the U.S. — because to do so would evince “bias,” lack “neutrality,” and “take sides” in the torture debate.

Contrary to what U.S. media corporations have succeeded in convincing people, these journalistic neutrality rules are not remotely traditional. They are newly invented concepts that coincided with the acquisition of the nation’s most important media outlets by large, controversy-averse corporations for which “media” was just one of many businesses.

Large corporations hate controversy (it alienates consumers) and really hate offending those who wield political power (bad for business). Imposing objectivity rules on the journalists who work for their media divisions was a means to avoid offending anyone by forcing journalists to conceal their perspectives, assumptions, and viewpoints, and, worse, forcing them to dishonestly pretend that they had none, that they float above all that. This framework neutered journalism and drained it of all its vitality and passion, reducing journalists to stenography drones permitted to do little more than summarize what each equally valid side asserts. Worse, it ensures that people who wield great influence and power — such as Donald Trump — can engage in all sorts of toxic, dishonest, and destructive behavior without having to worry about any check from journalists, who are literally barred by their employers from speaking out (even as their employers profit greatly through endless coverage).

This corporate, neutrality-über-alles framework is literally the exact antithesis of how journalism was practiced, and why it was so valued, when the U.S. Constitution was enacted and for decades after. As Jack Shafer documented in 2013, those who claim that journalism has always been grounded in neutrality demonstrate “a painful lack of historical understanding of American journalism.” Indeed, “American journalism began in earnest as a rebellion against the state”: citizens using journalism to denounce in no uncertain terms the evils of the British Crown and to agitate for resistance against it. He cites Judith and William Serrin’s anthology, Muckraking: The Journalism That Changed America, which “establishes the primacy of partisan, activist journalism from the revolutionary period through the modern era.” That is the noble journalistic tradition that has been deliberately suppressed — outright barred — by our nation’s largest corporate media outlets, justifying their meek and impotent codes under the banner of an objectivity and neutrality that are as illusory and deceitful as they are amoral.

As a result, nobody should be looking to our nation’s largest media outlets to serve as a bulwark against Trumpism or any other serious menace. The rules they have imposed on themselves, by design, ensure their own neutrality even in the face of the most extreme evils.

* * *

The debate over “objectivity” and “neutrality” in journalism has been, as I noted, quite relevant and pressing since long before the emergence of Donald Trump. I had a long exchange with former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller about this in 2013 in the context of the founding of The Intercept, where the arguments are laid out in full, and, as Folkenflik noted this morning, I spoke with him about this issue on CNN after that exchange with Keller:




Update: March 14, 2016
Regarding whether “neutrality” and “objectivity” are new journalistic concoctions, note that the two most revered figures in American broadcast journalism history — Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite — would have been fired from NPR and multiple other contemporary media outlets for their most notable moments: Murrow when he used his nightly news broadcast to repeatedly denounce Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and Cronkite when he did the same about the Vietnam War.

 

[cupper]

Rubio has finally seen the writing on the wall, and defies the pundits wisdom and suspends his campaign after getting his butt handed to him yet again, and in his home state no less.

Marco Rubio Ends His Presidential Campaign

http://www.npr.org/2016/03/15/470438649/marco-rubio-ends-his-presidential-campaign?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160315

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio announced Tuesday night that he was suspending his campaign for president after losing his home state in a landslide to Donald Trump.

"After tonight it is clear that while we are on the right side, we will not be on the winning side," Rubio told supporters in Miami.

Rubio congratulated Donald Trump at the outset of his speech, but later appeared to criticize the real estate mogul's tactics.

Rubio said that Americans are anxious and frustrated about their jobs, immigration and many other issues, and the easiest path to victory would have been to play on those anxieties.

"I chose a different route, an I'm proud of that," he said. "In a year like this, that would have been the easiest way to win, but that is not what's best for America."

The end of Rubio's candidacy is something that has been sensed for weeks by political watchers. The senator won only three total contests: the Minnesota caucuses on Super Tuesday and later the District of Columbia caucuses and the Puerto Rico primary. His campaign kept arguing that once the race moved into the winner-take-all portion of the campaign, particularly in his native Florida, the momentum would shift his way. Instead, his home state would write his political obituary.

Ultimately, it was a disappointing finish for one of the most promising GOP candidates in the race. After a surprisingly strong third place finish in Iowa, it looked like Rubio could be on the rise in the presidential race at just the right time. As other establishment favorites, including his onetime mentor former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, seemed to be fading, many in the GOP hoped Rubio could become the consensus pick. And many Republicans believed Rubio would be the party's strongest candidate against the Democratic nominee in the fall, too.

But then just days later came a disastrous performance in the New Hampshire GOP debate, where he was repeatedly attacked by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Rattled, he repeated a standard stump speech line multiple times, something he was mercilessly mocked for by his rivals and in the press. He ended up finishing a disappointing fifth place.

But going into South Carolina the following week, he finally seemed to find his stride. He picked up the endorsement of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, along with South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the lone African-American Republican in the Senate, and narrowly edged out Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

But his rising stature made him the target of Trump, who hit him on immigration and his failure to show up for many Senate votes. Then, in an uncharacteristic move from the positive campaign he had been running, Rubio hit back, mocking Trump after a bad debate by insinuating he had sweat so much he looked like he had wet his pants and also implying that because the real estate mogul has small hands, another part of his anatomy might be small, too. The attacks backfired though, and Rubio later said he regretted using the slurs, which had embarrassed his children. He never seemed to fully recover.

Nonetheless, his exit is an abrupt political end for the once rising star. The former Florida House speaker came to Washington in the 2010 Tea Party wave, forcing a sitting governor, Charlie Crist, out of the GOP race before defeating him as an independent.

The young, telegenic son of Cuban immigrants was the kind of new face the GOP wanted to promote, hoping to reach out to a growing Hispanic population. He became a leading voice on immigration reform in the Senate, and was part of a bipartisan group pushing a bill in the Senate in 2013. He later backed off his support for the bill, but its pathway to citizenship would end up being a frequent attack point for his White House rivals.

Just running for president this year was a political gamble for Rubio. He was up for re-election to the Senate, but opted to run for the White House instead. So while even his colleague Cruz will be headed back to Washington if he doesn't win, for Rubio the future is more uncertain. And while there has been speculation he could run for the open Florida governor's race in 2018, a crushing loss in the state tonight makes that a more daunting prospect.

 

[cupper]

Returns so far show Trump with a landslide in Florida, Kasich takes Ohio, and Trump leads everywhere else.

Clinton leads or takes all of the Dem states, so Saunders has some decisions to make.

This about sums it up:  (warning NSFW)

https://youtu.be/QKuKeeKMi_I

 

[cupper]

I know that his campaign was crappy, but this is a little much.

Hazmat Crew Dispatched to Marco Rubio's DC Office

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Hazmat-Crew-Dispatched-to-Marco-Rubios-DC-Office-372159122.html?_osource=SocialFlowFB_DCBrand

A hazardous materials crew was investigating at the presidential campaign headquarters of Sen. Marco Rubio Tuesday evening after a staffer opened an envelope with white powder inside, officials and a Rubio spokesman said.

The D.C. fire department was called Tuesday afternoon to Rubio's campaign office on the 200 block of E Street SW, near the Federal Center SW Metro station.

A suspicious white powder was found in an envelope a staffer opened, Rubio's communications director, Alex Conant, told NBC News.
The powder was found not to be hazardous, and the all-clear had been given by 6:10 p.m. Tuesday, a D.C. Fire and EMS Department representative said.

Additional information was not immediately available.

 

[CougarKing]

More on cupper's update above...Rubio is out; Trump seems unstoppable.

Associated Press

Trump wins Florida, loses Ohio; Rubio drops out

The Associated Press
The Canadian Press
March 15, 2016

WASHINGTON - Donald Trump scored a decisive win Tuesday in Florida, but lost Ohio to the state's governor, John Kasich, as the billionaire's rivals desperately tried to stop his march to the party's presidential nomination. Hillary Clinton padded her lead over Bernie Sanders with victories in Florida, Ohio and North Carolina.

Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who staked his once-promising campaign on winning in his home state, dropped out of the presidential race shortly after the polls closed. That leaves Kasich as the last true establishment candidate running against Trump and arch-conservative Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

Trump looked for wins in Tuesday's five primaries to help build an insurmountable lead in the all-important delegate count. Florida was the biggest prize — the first winner-take-all contest decided — with all 99 delegates going to Trump.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[a_majoor]

And people wonder why candidates who are running against the establishment are doing so well:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/229277

BRENDAN O’NEILL ON FACEBOOK: “Unless you think Trump is an insanely powerful political maestro who in the space of six months has utterly altered the character of America, then you have to conclude that the current ugliness and division everyone is complaining about has been brewing over the past eight years of Obamaism and ‘politics of hope’. For liberals now to throw their hands in the air over the state of America, when they’ve been running America for nearly a decade, strikes me as a bit rich. How the so-called politics of hope nurtured what we have today — that’s the question we should be asking.”

Indeed

 

[Kilo_302]

And people wonder why candidates who are running against the establishment are doing so well:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/229277

Indeed

This is selective BS. Yes, Obama's Hope and Change was also BS, but it was in that it continued the neo-liberal market priorities of Bush, and Clinton and then Bush before him. Sanders is more a reaction to the failure of Obama to pursue truly progressive change than Trump is.

Trump on the other hand, is the natural progression of a party whose candidates have been in a competition to see who can be the most conservative for the last 20 years. Facts and reality? They don't matter. Just be obstructionist, stick to free-market gospel and give them a line about Jesus and you're fine with the Republican establishment. You can pass policies that hurt blue collar whites the most and no one will even notice as long you feed them the above platitudes and focus on the evil liberals as the source of everyone's problems. That is, until now.

Trump just took the overall tone that Republicans have had towards Obama and turned it up a notch, and then included the Republican establishment in his sights. The Republicans have been so bitterly partisan they have given themselves zero room to manoeuvre. They've been spent years ginning up racism, fear of immigration and a hatred of the Washington establishment (which they're a central part of) and now the chickens are coming home to roost. By necessity the Republican narrative about Trump's rise ignores their own role in it.

 

[Journeyman]

By necessity the Republican narrative about Trump's rise ignores their own role in it.

Much like the narrative routinely trotted out (often without understanding or contemplation) by the adherents of Marx, Foucault, Rocker, Chomsky, et al  blithely ignoring the reality that someone has to pick up the check at the end of the meal?

It sure is easy to understand complex interactions if one sees only black & white (or 'oppressive system' vs 'woe is me' if you prefer).    :boring:

 

[Kilo_302]

Much like the narrative routinely trotted out (often without understanding or contemplation) by the adherents of Marx, Foucault, Rocker, Chomsky, et al  blithely ignoring the reality that someone has to pick up the check at the end of the meal?

It sure is easy to understand complex interactions if one sees only black & white (or 'oppressive system' vs 'woe is me' if you prefer).    :boring:

First off, the intellectuals you have listed have very divergent views on a wide range of issues. Second, I don't understand how this is relevant to the rise of Trump.

Are you blaming it on Marxist policies? Or policies that Chomsky as advocated? I assure you nothing that resembles their ideas is in practice in Washington.

What factors do YOU attribute to the Trump's success?

 

[MARS]

What factors do YOU attribute to the Trump's success?

Simply put, he is a much, much better salesman than the other mental midgets who are running - on both sides of the political spectrum.  He has a slicker sales pitch, he is far better at manipulating the media, and he is a better public speaker.  In an election campaign, THOSE are the things that matter, and in my opinion, the ONLY things that matter, not....hahahahahah... policy....hahahahahahaha.  Policy is a bore.  It is complicated and someone, somewhere will be negatively affected by it. Definitely not something to be discussed during an election campaign.  No, a campaign is the time to SELL YOU A NEW CAR!!  "YOU get a car, and YOU get a car, and YOU get a car" (to paraphrase Oprah Winfrey).  THAT is what successful campaigning is all about.  And the sheeple, both here and back in Canada, eat that shit up!  We are lazy.  Intellectually and productively so.  We want more things provided to us without the hardship of making tough choices about paying for it.  A campaign is like buying a new car without having to speak to finance guy before driving off the lot. Plenty of time for that later once you are locked into the payment plan for the next 4 years. He or she who best promises that wins.  And Mr. Trump is winning at that game right now.

I don't see it being any more complicated as that.  Why does anyone?

 

[a_majoor]

How true.

And how incredibly frustrating for the few of us who keep asking "How much? What are the terms? What will be owing at the end of the term?" (Remember "fully costed" from our own past election? How long did that last?)

No wonder Frédéric Bastiat is rapidly displacing F.A.Hayek as my favorite economist....(although I'm sure the next credit bubble will balance things out again).

 

[Fishbone Jones]

I get a kick out of how everyone is concerned about Trump and his rhetoric. I know it, you know it and they know that if he wins there are enough checks and balances within the government machinations that he can't be the tyrant that his detractors fear.

 

[PuckChaser]

Especially with the Republican party elite not fully supporting him. They'll work to block any craziness. I believe with a super majority in the Senate they can skip his veto power?