Politics Unfiltered

[Warlord]

What the fuck does it matter where a candidate announces his presidency? You're such a raging homo man, seriously.

So you get your news from some of the biggest social liberals on the planet? Way to fucking go, ace. Way to be completely objective.

Answer me this, nimrod. How can one be a "fiscal conservative" AND a "social liberal"? You can't have social liberalism without big government and massive government overreach. It just doesn't make any sense.

Just admit you're a fucking liberal and be done with it already.

[salvador]

Warlord,

if you were the kind of character in Game of Thrones who had someone announcing who you were at important meetings would you be comfortable with:

"You are speaking with Warlord - He Who Stands Proudly with Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority and all the Intellectual Giants at Liberty University in the Fundamental Belief that Moses Parted the Red Sea and that a Ted Cruz Presidency Would Be EPIC"

Would that work for you?

Regarding where Cruz announced his presidency: candidates usually announce their candidacy on their home court in front of their most strident backers. Cruz was clearly sending a message to evangelicals. He could have given it at any number of religious universities but he chose Liberty University, which is where Baptists who like to watch church on tv dream of going. It's significant.

Obama, for comparison, announced his candidacy on the steps of the state capital building in Springfield where Lincoln had given a historic speech on slavery.

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(11-09-2015 10:55 AM)Warlord Wrote:  So you get your news from some of the biggest social liberals on the planet? Way to fucking go, ace. Way to be completely objective.

I've never heard the WSJ, Bloomberg, CNBC, or Zerohedge ever called liberal.

It makes me wonder what kind of publications you read that you consider those liberal.

Seriously, what do you read? Or is talk radio your primary source of info - just letting them do all the work of filtering out all the liberal noise for you?

[Warlord]

And you'd be Lord Varys, except that besides the lack of a penis and testicles, you'd be bereft of a brain as well.

As for the liberal media bias, I'd recommend starting with the UCLA study done on the subject, followed up by the one done by Dartmouth College.

So let me get this straight about Ted Cruz. Your sole complaint, from the beginning to now, has been that he announced at Liberty University? You are SUCH a fucking liberal.

Where did you graduate, pray tell? I'll strike whatever university that produced you off the list for any of my future progeny. And what liberal arts major did you pursue? I'll go ahead and rule that out as well.

[salvador]

Ted Cruz has never pretended to aim for the middle ground either in his campaign or in his senate career. He has built his reputation by being loud and filibustering and standing rigidly on tea party/religious right issues like obamacare, abortion and gay marriage. That is an excellent strategy to rile up the base and get 20-30% of the vote, but it makes it impossible to win a general election and he knows it.

The fact that he announced at Liberty University underscores that and gives him more street cred with the bible beaters who think Liberty University is the Harvard of the South.

I'm serious, where do you get your news? If the WSJ, Bloomberg, and CNBC are a part of the left wing media bias, where does your daily info come from?

[Warlord]

I don't have a particular source because news is inherently biased one way or another, regardless of who disseminates it.

When I'm abroad and local American news sources are scarce, I tend to go with the BBC when I'm in Asia, and Al Jazeera when I'm in the Middle East. I don't pretend they aren't without bias, and it does require parsing.

When I'm in the States I'll bounce between CNN and Fox News for live coverage of major incidents. If I want news fast without a lot of Op-Eds, BBC is still the best in the business, in my opinion.

All that said, I don't think any one service is or can be completely reliable. Even the best news organizations should be parsed at all times.

As for the whole Cruz/Liberty University thing, you're pissing in the wind and you know it. Cruz is obviously courting the far-right, as he should. Your raging disdain for social conservatism has you jumping through hoops, but there isn't a political analyst out there that doesn't see Cruz as a major player, no matter what statistic you go by.

If the polling data and contributions don't mean anything to you (and they should), just look at how badly democrats have been fairing politically in this country over the last few years. If Obama wasn't in the White House, we'd be talking about how they were finished as a party.

The country has shifted right, and I don't think it's finished. Some of you turds out there refuse to see what's in front of your eyes, but it's as plain as day. The left is going hard left to shore up support among a constituency that was never going to leave, but they're losing in every other area.

I honestly think it will be easier for the hard-right to go center and pick up the moderate and independent voters when it's time than for the hard-left.

The race for the presidency will come down to Rubio and Cruz, because whoever gets Hillary is going to eat her lunch.

[salvador]

(11-09-2015 03:14 PM)Warlord Wrote:  As for the whole Cruz/Liberty University thing, you're pissing in the wind and you know it. Cruz is obviously courting the far-right, as he should. Your raging disdain for social conservatism has you jumping through hoops, but there isn't a political analyst out there that doesn't see Cruz as a major player, no matter what statistic you go by.


The country has shifted right, and I don't think it's finished. Some of you turds out there refuse to see what's in front of your eyes, but it's as plain as day. The left is going hard left to shore up support among a constituency that was never going to leave, but they're losing in every other area.

I honestly think it will be easier for the hard-right to go center and pick up the moderate and independent voters when it's time than for the hard-left.

The race for the presidency will come down to Rubio and Cruz, because whoever gets Hillary is going to eat her lunch.

Who on earth ever said Cruz isn't a major player? He is. He's the smartest player on the republican stage because he's playing the long game. He's just not running for president. He's running for a big seat at the republican table for the next 30 years.

The fact that Cruz and Fiorina and Rubio are so interested in making abortion a key issue will be the republicans' downfall. Very few undecided middle of the road voters want to hear about restricting it and all three of them seem to be determined to keep it front and center. The country might think that Obama's economic policies have failed, but the country is definitely moving left on social issues like gay marriage, legalization of marijuana, and abortion as old white christian voters die off and young minority voters replace them.

I don't give a shit about social issues at this point. The only thing I want out of our next president is meaningful entitlement reform. I'm sincerely terrified of the economic consequences of 4 more years of new retirees (11K a day) getting used to SS and Medicare in their current forms.

Hillary is dying for the next election to be about social issues. It's her best chance.

[Spyder]

(11-09-2015 02:13 PM)salvador Wrote:  Ted Cruz has never pretended to aim for the middle ground either in his campaign or in his senate career. He has built his reputation by being loud and filibustering and standing rigidly on tea party/religious right issues like obamacare, abortion and gay marriage. That is an excellent strategy to rile up the base and get 20-30% of the vote, but it makes it impossible to win a general election and he knows it.

Isn't that the opposite of everything that is wrong with politics?

I mean, we've talked about candidates catering to voters during an election cycle, then catering to the special interest groups that funded their campaign once elected. With Cruz, on the other hand, what you see is what you get.

[salvador]

(11-09-2015 04:21 PM)Spyder Wrote:  Isn't that the opposite of everything that is wrong with politics?

I mean, we've talked about candidates catering to voters during an election cycle, then catering to the special interest groups that funded their campaign once elected. With Cruz, on the other hand, what you see is what you get.

Not if what you see is a guy who wants to focus on social issues rather than entitlement reform. And not if you want to see a republican in the white house.

Jean-Claude Juncker (prime minister of Luxembourg) said it best: "We all know what to do, we just don't know how to get re-elected once we've done it."

Ted Cruz knows the social issues are mickey mouse compared to entitlements and yet he keeps focusing on it because it's a no-lose trick for him. Once any candidate starts talking about cutting Medicare the party is over. If a pol ran on entitlement reform and won that would be the game changer of my lifetime. What we can feel sure of if Cruz is elected is that all his supreme court picks will be acceptable to the good folks at Liberty University.

[Spyder]

(11-09-2015 04:32 PM)salvador Wrote:  Not if what you see is a guy who wants to focus on social issues rather than entitlement reform. And not if you want to see a republican in the white house.

Jean-Claude Juncker (prime minister of Luxembourg) said it best: "We all know what to do, we just don't know how to get re-elected once we've done it."

Ted Cruz knows the social issues are mickey mouse compared to entitlements and yet he keeps focusing on it because it's a no-lose trick for him. Once any candidate starts talking about cutting Medicare the party is over. If a pol ran on entitlement reform and won that would be the game changer of my lifetime. What we can feel sure of if Cruz is elected is that all his supreme court picks will be acceptable to the good folks at Liberty University.

It takes time to get people used to any idea. Look at the homosexual agenda. It wasn't that long ago that "Don't ask, don't tell" was groundbreaking. Now public opinion has shifted so far that overreach in the courts is celebrated.

[salvador]

Let's hope the legalization of marijuana agenda is as fortunate