GOP Nominee

[Don Corleone]

They have to happen concurrently or they won't happen at all.

I am getting a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that Republicans and Democrats care more about election politics than the debt, and that we are going to wind up defaulting. God help us all when that happens.

[Centurion1]

They have to happen concurrently or they won't happen at all.

I am getting a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that Republicans and Democrats care more about election politics than the debt, and that we are going to wind up defaulting. God help us all when that happens.

whys the reason that politicians are afraid of reforming social security? because seniors are a sizable voting bloc and aarp is the most powerful special interest group in the nation. Its not a feeling in your gut its cold hard facts.

and it disgusts me.

[Strike For The South]

No way we end up defaulting

The Sicilian pessimism is coming out worse than usual today Don

[Ironside]

Bachmann signs pledge to anti-gay organization - promises to ban all pornography.

ya done ****** up lady....you just became unelectable.

It's a quite odd pledge. It's against gays, anti-women's rights and it's authorian (mostly indirectly). Yet it opposes Sharia laws specifically on the same basis.

It implies that slavery had lesser effect than single parenting.

I wonder how long it will take until we get the first wife cheater that signed it.

[Strike For The South]

It's a quite odd pledge. It's against gays, anti-women's rights and it's authorian (mostly indirectly). Yet it opposes Sharia laws specifically on the same basis.

It implies that slavery had lesser effect than single parenting.

I wonder how long it will take until we get the first wife cheater that signed it.

It opposes Shairia b/c thats the wrong God

To brown for there taste

[Ironside]

It opposes Shairia b/c thats the wrong God

To brown for there taste

True, but usually you don't leave behind the stuff were you and them think simular. It leaves bad connections.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Gary Johnson, an actual small government republican who doesn't want to get all up in your business;

July 9, 2011, Las Vegas, Nevada – Presidential candidate and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson charged today in a formal statement through his campaign that the Family Leader “pledge” Republican candidates for President are being asked to sign is “offensive to the principles of liberty and freedom on which this country was founded”. Governor Johnson also plans to further state his position against the Family Leader pledge this afternoon in Las Vegas, NV at a speech he will deliver at the Conservative Leadership Conference.

Johnson went on to state that “the so-called ‘Marriage Vow” pledge that FAMILY LEADER is asking Republican candidates for President to sign attacks minority segments of our population and attempts to prevent and eliminate personal freedom. This type of rhetoric is what gives Republicans a bad name.

“Government should not be involved in the bedrooms of consenting adults. I have always been a strong advocate of liberty and freedom from unnecessary government intervention into our lives. The freedoms that our forefathers fought for in this country are sacred and must be preserved. The Republican Party cannot be sidetracked into discussing these morally judgmental issues — such a discussion is simply wrongheaded. We need to maintain our position as the party of efficient government management and the watchdogs of the “public’s pocket book”.

“This ‘pledge’ is nothing short of a promise to discriminate against everyone who makes a personal choice that doesn’t fit into a particular definition of ‘virtue’.

While the Family Leader pledge covers just about every other so-called virtue they can think of, the one that is conspicuously missing is tolerance. In one concise document, they manage to condemn gays, single parents, single individuals, divorcees, Muslims, gays in the military, unmarried couples, women who choose to have abortions, and everyone else who doesn’t fit in a Norman Rockwell painting.

[Ronin]

I was just about to come post that.
wow..a republican with an actual balanced non religious based position on social matters.

sounds like a good candidate to me....meaning he's screwed in the GOP primaries.

[Kralizec]

Gary Johnson seems like a decent pick to me.
Especially because his name reminds me of Team America: World Police

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Well I'm gonna march on Washington
Lead the fight and charge the brigades
There's a hero inside of all of us
I'll make them see everyone has AIDS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6szE_qmzavQ

[Xiahou]

Gary Johnson, an actual small government republican who doesn't want to get all up in your business;

It's a shame that most people don't know he's running or who he even is.

[a completely inoffensive name]

In this day and age, the US is too big to fail. Chinese still need us to buy stuff, so they won't be unleashing the debt hammer on us if we don't raise the limit.

[Lemur]

I think I finally understand why Rep. Bachmann is so obsessed with gays and gayness. Apparently her husband runs a "gay cure" program, and we all know what that means.

[Strike For The South]

ahem

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...eason-For-Hope

[Centurion1]

I think I finally understand why Rep. Bachmann is so obsessed with gays and gayness. Apparently her husband runs a "gay cure" program, and we all know what that means.

Late to the party there my dear lemur.


Edit: Also ACIN that is flawed thinking. Simply because one is too big too fail doesn't mean it cannot fail or will not in the future. I am sure the British Empire thought it was too big too fail as well. Along with the Romans, Ming, and basically any large social grouping of people in history.

[Kralizec]

I think I finally understand why Rep. Bachmann is so obsessed with gays and gayness. Apparently her husband runs a "gay cure" program, and we all know what that means.

That doesn't really explain the obsession - it's merely another illustration of the Bachmann's obsession.

I didn't know that The Stranger had his own site.

EDIT: only just read the article, I see what you mean now.

[Strike For The South]

Late to the party there my dear lemur.


Edit: Also ACIN that is flawed thinking. Simply because one is too big too fail doesn't mean it cannot fail or will not in the future. I am sure the British Empire thought it was too big too fail as well. Along with the Romans, Ming, and basically any large social grouping of people in history.

And to try and make any claim btwn a post industrial USA and the Romans or the Mings is equally as futile.

[Centurion1]

please spell out between it took me like 5 minutes to understand that little gem.

Yeah I know the comparison fails on different levels. But the simple point is simply because you do not think that something can fail doesn't mean that it won't or cannot. A fact everyone knows but refuses to acknowledge

[Strike For The South]

Your lack of abbreviation comprehension is not my problem

Yeah I know the comparison fails on different levels. But the simple point is simply because you do not think that something can fail doesn't mean that it won't or cannot. A fact everyone knows but refuses to acknowledge

But you still trotted out the Roman empire line. That was your #1 defense

[Ronin]

That doesn't really explain the obsession - it's merely another illustration of the Bachmann's obsession.

that guy is so deep in the closet he's in narnia.

[Centurion1]

Your lack of abbreviation comprehension is not my problem



But you still trotted out the Roman empire line. That was your #1 defense

i dnt knw y u insist tht it was a defnse it was smply an anecdote of people in positions of glbal pwr nt being able to comprehend tht they to could fall. tht is a fair comparison.

every single time that a reference between america and the roman empire is trotted out doesn't mean it is used in the same way. there is more than one line to that reference. In my case, the statement that simply because you are arrogant to believe your group is too powerful to be vanquished does not preclude you from being overtaken is perfectly applicable.

[Centurion1]

that guy is so deep in the closet he's in narnia.

this deserves recognition as a great line.

[drone]

that guy is so deep in the closet he's in narnia.

So "turkish delight" was just a slightly veiled euphemism? Lewis was more risque than I thought.

[Subotan]

Given that all this homophobia will look mighty awkward in 15 years or so, is it too soon to start printing "Meghan McCain 2024" stickers?

[a completely inoffensive name]

Edit: Also ACIN that is flawed thinking. Simply because one is too big too fail doesn't mean it cannot fail or will not in the future. I am sure the British Empire thought it was too big too fail as well. Along with the Romans, Ming, and basically any large social grouping of people in history.

It's why I said, "In this day and age". If circumstances were different you would be right in bringing up that point. But the fact is that your point you make is for all intents and purposes moot due to the economic reliance that the world, especially China, has on the US economy. Which makes it almost guaranteed that world leaders from the West and East will pull every trick in the book to prevent the US from tanking.

[PanzerJaeger]

Somewhat NSFW:

[Ronin]

Somewhat NSFW:

last week's episode was great....that's a good panel right there....Marc Maron always can improve a discussion :P
and watching Fox News going into a frenzy over this was double the fun.

and btw...I came up with another doubt.....if..and it's a big IF..Bachmann could get elected.....wouldn´t that mean there would be a Queen in the white house?
is that ok from the perspective of the constitution?? :P

[Ronin]

Also from the same show episode...

to quote an older joke by Maher "it's not sexist just to say something negative about a woman....and we're gonna do that now"


and btw I think the phrase "A bully who sells patriotism like a pimp" is a very apt description for the posture some sectors of the American right wing seem to have taken as a strategy in the last decade or so.......the speed with which one goes from simply disagreeing on a policy issue to being labeled "un-american" in your guys political discourse is impressive and scary.

[Lemur]

your guys political discourse is impressive and scary.

I am aware that our Republicans look unhinged overseas. I've heard it over and over again from people I know in other countries. But here's the thing — it is unfair and unhelpful to write them off as insane. Republicans have evolved the strategies and methods that they use now over decades. They use them because they work, for the most part, not because an entire political party has fallen ill with paranoid schizophrenia.

A lot of it is gamesmanship. Do leading republicans really think that every American who disagrees with their policies is disloyal, deluded and a potential traitor? No, of course not, but eliding and hinting at that sort of eliminationist rhetoric works. Did leading republicans really think Bill Clinton was a murderer and an illegitimate president? Nope, but it whipped the base up nicely. Do leading republicans really think Obama is a foreign-born Kenyan muslin? Nope. But hinting at it stirred things up. Do they really think he's a socialist? Of course not. But hurling the "s" word around has done wonders to re-frame arguments in their favor.

The problem, which republican leadership is now confronting with the debt ceiling crisis, is that their base is not in on the joke. A measurable percentage of their supporters really believe all of those things, and don't get that it's posturing and gamesmanship. And some of the new "tea party" congresscritters don't get the joke either, and don't understand that after calling your opponent the Spawn of Satan you need to put that aside and negotiate. (Exemplum gratum: The relentless gay-baiting and gay-bashing of the early 2000s. And yet, while this was going on, many of the top staffers on the red side of the hill were homosexuals, and gays were welcomed and employed by the White House. So clearly the top republicans were tolerant, intelligent people who felt it necessary to wave the red flag of gay-baiting to win elections. President Bush and his cabinet were almost entirely closeted tolerants.)

Anyway. I just get worried when Europeans and Asians make comments or ask questions about republicans being insane. They are not, and never have been. Rather, they have been employing eliminationist and deligitimist rhetoric for decades, and it appears to be biting them on their posterior — Bachmann, for example, does not get the joke. She appears to honestly believe in a gay conspiracy to undermine America. She appears to truly believe that Obama is a socialist who wants us all to live in labor camps. All of that nutty has lodged in her brain, and her irony filter was set to "off." Panzer is quite right, she will be a disaster of epic proportions if she gains the nomination.

[Strike For The South]

This just keeps getting better

“When she gets ‘em, frankly, she can’t function at all. It’s not like a little thing with a couple Advils. It’s bad,” the adviser says. “The migraines are so bad and so intense, she carries and takes all sorts of pills. Prevention pills. Pills during the migraine. Pills after the migraine, to keep them under control. She has to take these pills wherever she goes.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/18/st...#ixzz1Sep7bKos

http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/18/st...l-use-alleged/

[Tellos Athenaios]

@Lemur sounds all plausible, even reasonable. However I think there is more to the question of Asians/Europeans/Anyone of “are you guys insane?” than a serious worry about the sanity of the American electorate. It is pure and simple disgust.

It doesn't do you any favours if the leading political figures are not merely dishonest or incompetent but also employ rhetoric so toxic that the English and German waste left in Belgium in the early 20th century seems good for your health by comparison.