Did I watch a Republican Debate tonight or was it a Roast?

[Ghost]

Lad is right. This crop of asshats does not deserve serious discussion, and should be debated in the Sunday comics. This is probably the worst crop of candidates either party has ever put forward. I don't see much value in serious discussion about them. Anyone who honestly thinks one of these idiots would make a good president is not going to be persuaded by facts.

Mori is right too. For the people out there who do not follow politics and may not be aware of how bottom-barrel this group is, the very contentious topic headings may be a turn off, and even potentially counterproductive.

But weighing one side against the other, I think it is bordering on too diplomatic to say "these republicans suck."

Honestly, there is nothing positive to take away from this debate. And while free speech is great, bad ideas do not deserve consideration. They deserve ridicule. The Republican Circus currently deserves ridicule.

[Ladmo]

Thank you Ghost, you don't know how much I appreciate the rarity that someone might come to my defense on this site. I certainly wasn't looking to get bashed for stating the obvious.

[Mori Chu]

Lad: You post a lot of insightful and interesting political links and information, and I appreciate that. The only part I dislike is the phrasing of most of the topic headlines, like:

• Did I watch a Republican Debate tonight or was it a Roast?
  Benghazi backfire
  Maricopa GOP Chairman Tyler Bowyer OWNED by Brahm Resnik
  Insane in the Ben Brain
  "Pharma Bro'" Martin Shkreli
  Treasurer DeWit calls out Ducey for awful plan

These topic headings are flames, pure and simple. Owned? Insane? Awful? Roast? I almost never bother to click on such threads because I know it'll just be a one-man echo chamber of liberal ejaculation. I lean left on a lot of issues, but I don't want to read something so extreme.

Outside of that, I think all the content and opinions are fine. You don't have to agree with or respect the other side politically; that's your choice and not to be forced on you. You can state your opinion strongly if you want. But the more aggressively you frame the discussion, the less likely you are to actually produce an intelligent conversation on the issue.

[Nodack]

I have that problem too. It's hard to hide my dislike of the GOP the past decade. I watched the first two debates but, didn't bother with this one. CNBC hosting the Republicans? That's like FOX hosting the Democrats. You know they would go after the candidates and you know the candidates would have zero respect for the moderators ignore the questions and talk about whatever they wanted.

I don't need to see any more Republican debates, I'm not going to vote for any of them and I have already heard their platforms. Blow up Obamacare, strip the Federal Government down, especially anything that helps the poor, lower taxes especially on the wealthy, end illegal immigration (BS) and find somebody to go to war with.

I think Jeb is done even though he was supposed to be the guy on the GOP to start. He has been a limp noodle. The GOP has gone 100% anti establishment and that means Trump, Carson or Fiorina. There is a lot of time left and as everybody knows, lots can happen between now and the election. People are already getting tired of Trump and his antics. I actually think Trump would be the most Moderate of the bunch if elected. He is against wars and he was for single payer Universal Health care. I think a lot of his talk is BS pandering to the crazies but, if elected he would blow them off and do whatever he felt. If I have to choose a Republican it would be Trump.

[Ladmo]

I've bookmarked what appears to be over 70 articles over the last 2 days, that I've either read or skimmed through related to this debate and fact-checking. Going to read them all this weekend, cross-reference and compare, and try to figure out the most authenticated and qualified opinions that may convince me of where to stand on all these issues.

I don't know you want me to share them here or not? I could just drop the most relevant links and let you guys run with them yourself. Right now cutting and pasting all that shit seems like a lot of work. Or I could just reference the knowledge I've worked hard to try to accumulate if I ever get into a discussion with anyone who actually cares about the real issues more than hating on the titles of my threads.

[Ladmo]

I'll post this one though, because it's Rolling Stone and it's funny.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... e-20151028

The third Republican debate took place Wednesday evening at the Coors Event Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder. It felt long — so long that our entire lives flashed before our eyes, and by the end of it we were walking with our five grandkids through the charred remains of America with the voice of Mike Huckabee echoing somewhere in the distance. By the end of it, the only thing we needed to hear was that Donald Trump had convinced CNBC to limit it from going any longer, and we were ready to elect him our benevolent dictator for life.

Here are the 21 most notable moments.

1. "If you want someone to grab a beer with, I may not be that guy. But if you want someone to drive you home, I'll get the job done." - Ted Cruz

2. "What is this, a French work week?" - Jeb Bush, attacking Marco Rubio about missing Senate votes

3. "I'll buy you a tequila. Or even some famous Colorado brownies." - Ted Cruz to moderator Carl Quintanilla

4. "Boy, am I good at solving debt problems. No one can solve them like me." - Donald Trump on filing for bankruptcy

5. "Find me a Democrat that is for cutting spending $10, I'll give them a warm kiss." - Jeb Bush

6. "I used it to pay off my student loans — and it's available on paperback if you're interested in buying it." - Marco Rubio on his $1 million book deal

7. "They shouldn't automatically assume that because you believe marriage is between one man and one woman, you're a homophobe." - Ben Carson

8. "I don't know. You people write this stuff." - Donald Trump, feigning ignorance about where moderator Becky Quick found his quote calling Marco Rubio "Mark Zuckerberg's personal senator." (It's on his campaign website.)

9. "The Democrats have the ultimate super PAC — it's called the mainstream media." - Marco Rubio

10. "Drugs is one of the greatest scourges in this country." - John Kasich

11. "I like to be unpredictable." - Donald Trump on carrying a gun, sometimes

12. "I love Donald Trump. He's a good man. I'm wearing a Trump tie tonight." - Mike Huckabee

13. "We have $19 trillion in debt. We have people out of work. We have ISIS and Al Qaeda...And we're talking about fantasy football? Let people play. Who cares?" - Chris Christie

14. "Even in New Jersey, what you're doing is rude." - Chris Christie to moderator John Harwood

15. "It's your grandparents' fault for having too many damn kids." - Rand Paul on paying for Medicare

16. "I'm against anything that's bad for my mother." - Marco Rubio on entitlement reform

17. "I want a government so small I can barely see it." - Rand Paul

18. "When millions of Americans rose up against Obamacare, I was proud to lead that fight. When millions of Americans rose up against amnesty, I was proud to lead that fight. When millions of Americans rose up against Planned Parenthood, I was proud to lead that fight." - Ted Cruz

19. "I can assure you I am Hillary Clinton's worst nightmare." - Carly Fiorina

20. "I negotiated it down to two hours so we can get the hell out of here." - Donald Trump on the debate's length

21. "I do not want to walk my five grandkids through the charred remains of America." - Mike Huckabee

[Mori Chu]

Look at the Politics page and the list of threads. Here is what you'll find: Almost all the threads are created by you. Almost all of them have "Last post: Ladmo". Almost all of them have only 2-3 total posts, usually all by you. Almost all of them have very few clicks/views.

I think what I'm trying to say is that what you're doing here is not generating political discussion or conversation. I think you're actually harming the Politics folder by flooding it with so many messages and threads. We used to generally have interesting discussions on various topics. Though most of the threads were not very high-traffic, the posts in them were insightful and generally moderate and respectful.

I don't like what's become of the Politics folder. It's just become an echo chamber, a place for one person to flood and spam his views up and down the page. I'm not saying your views are right or wrong. I just don't think you are making a good use of this section of the board. I think you are actively harming it with your current form of participation. Anything interesting anybody else might have to say gets buried behind 10 threads of "LOL Republicans are insane, owned."

If you think I'm singling you out or being unfair or mean, go back to the start of my message. Nobody is really reading your threads or replying to you. That's not an indictment of your political views; it's an indictment of how you've chosen to post about them. If you think this is just about me picking on you, well, I am pointing out that pretty much the whole board has chosen not to even bother to click on the things you are posting. That should tell you something.

My suggestion would be to find a more dedicated political forum and post more of this stuff there. I would love to have you post here about politics, and I do think you post some interesting stuff, but maybe give us the top 10% of the existing content or something. Sometimes less is more. And I'd suggest that you try to frame it in a way that invites discussion rather than browbeating the other point of view.

[Ladmo]

I don't think I got the message the first 30 times you said it, maybe you need to flood the politics folder with more messages about how I'm ruining it.

[Ladmo]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... ?tid=sm_fb

The best ideas and worst ideas of the Republican debate

Wednesday's Republican debate was a policy debate — which meant there are a lot of ideas from all the candidates. Some seemed more intriguing, more backed by evidence, than others. Here are a couple of the best ideas, and a couple where the evidence seemed to fall pretty short of the concept.

Pretty good ideas

Student debt relief and addressing inequality. Ohio Gov. John Kasich suggested public service in exchange for student debt relief. He was the only candidate on the stage to articulate the case for also investing in children’s education. The one line where he did this was a bit of a rollercoaster, but it ended up in the pretty smart place: “Income inequality,” he said, “is driven by a lack of skills when kids don’t get the education they need to compete and win in this country.” In fact, it should be noted, income inequality is driven by a whole lot of other things, which schools and job training programs alone can’t fix (like the changing nature of American jobs). But Kasich discussed the topic of income inequality more substantially than anyone else.

Climate change. Moderators asked Chris Christie what he would do about climate change -- given that he's one of the few Republican candidates to even acknowledge that it exists and is a problem. Treading carefully, Christie said that he wouldn't do what President Obama and Hillary Clinton have supported: More taxes and regulation. While They have not actually proposed a carbon tax, more and more conservative economists have supported the idea of using a tax to price in the environmental cost of fossil fuels, allowing the market to decide which alternatives work best. Instead of sending more money to Washington, Christie said he would support "all kinds of energy," from oil to wind and solar. "That is the way we deal with global warming, climate change, or any of those problems, not through government intervention, not through government taxes, and for God's sake, don't send Washington another dime until they stop wasting the money they're already sending there," he said. At the moment, Christie may diverge from most Republicans in pushing any ideas for curbing climate change, even if he's not following what some in his party have said would be the best way to do it.

War on disease. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee proposed a war on cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer's. Who could disagree? Even Joe Biden said he would have wanted to be the president who would cure cancer. Huckabee argued that one way to slash health care costs would be to eliminate these four costly diseases by curing them. Any candidate that promises cures may well disappoint in the end, but it's important to note than an all-out war against these profoundly complex diseases would require at least one part of the government to get much bigger: the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is the engine of new biomedical insights in the U.S., and its budget has been flat for years. While the private sector usually brings drugs to market, the underlying insights behind drugs often come from the risky basic science that the government funds. Big federal investments, like the ones that helped turn HIV from a death sentence into a chronic disease, will likely be necessary. Oh, and one more thing -- we already have a war on cancer. Nixon declared it in 1971.

Pretty bad ideas

The gold standard. “The Fed should get out of the business of trying to juice our economy and simply be focused on sound money and monetary stability, ideally tied to gold,” Ted Cruz said at the end of his answer on monetary policy. Guess how many economists, conservative or liberal, agreed with that in a survey a few years back? Zero. It’s an idea that went out of fashion in the 1970s, and many economists blame for helping cause the Great Depression.

Using the debt limit as a political football. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) argued that Republicans should refuse to raise the debt limit unless Democrats agree to reduce spending, effectively using the threat of a global crisis to force Democrats to concede. If that threat is to be credible in negotiations in Congress, Paul has to be prepared to actually follow through on it. Most economists say this is very dangerous. If the national debt exceeds that limit, it's not as though the government will owe any less -- it will just be unable to borrow to pay its bills, causing an international financial catastrophe. People everywhere use Treasury bonds to save money and to conduct all kinds of business. If those valuable pieces of paper suddenly became worthless, the economy could stop functioning worldwide.

A tax plan that costs only $1 trillion. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) discussed his tax plan on CNBC's stage, saying it would impose a 10 percent flat tax on all income and replace corporate tax with a corporate tax at 16 percent. As a result of these changes, the federal government would collect far less in taxes, implying either drastic cuts to basic public services or even more borrowing. Cruz said the tax cuts would cost "with dynamic scoring, less than a trillion dollars." That is a big if. Estimates of the budgetary effects of tax cuts are often unreliable -- particularly when they rely on projections that economic growth stimulated by the cuts will make up some of the losses. That's what President George W. Bush's advisers predicted when he cut taxes sharply at the beginning of his administration. The growth didn't materialize, and a federal surplus turned into a deficit. And Cruz was assuming the same thing Wednesday night. If past experience is any guide, his tax plan could cost more than $1 trillion.

[Ladmo]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

The Republicans are right. We in the media do suck.

The Republican presidential candidates are right. The media do suck.

But not for the reasons the candidates complained about Wednesday night.

We in the media suck because we have rewarded their rampant dishonesty and buffoonery with nonstop news coverage. Which, of course, has encouraged more dishonesty and buffoonery.

Hence the aggravating behaviors that candidates doubled down on during the debate, based on lessons that we in the media taught them. To wit:

Lesson No. 1: Lie, but lie confidently.

Look straight into the camera, and with complete conviction, say something that is not true. Maybe your lies will get fact-checked later, but if your certainty can sufficiently excite pundits in the interim, no one will care (or notice) that you lied.

We saw this strategy successfully executed in the second Republican debate, when Carly Fiorina confidently described a horrifying undercover Planned Parenthood video.

The footage in question turned out not to exist. (At best, she was describing a reenactment.) But by the time her statements were checked, Fiorina had been anointed the winner of the debate, thanks largely to that riveting, shocking sound bite. Since then, any time someone has called her out on this missing footage, she has just claimed media bias (see Lesson No. 3).

No surprise, then, that on Wednesday the candidates lied boldly, and repeatedly, even when their statements were easily disprovable.

Donald Trump denied ever taking a dig at Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, even though the dig in question was on Trump’s Web site.

Ben Carson denied having any “involvement” with a sketchy maker of nutritional supplements, even though evidence of this involvement (including a video testimonial) is easily findable online.

Chris Christie claimed Social Security money was “stolen” and that the system will be “insolvent” in seven to eight years, even though both claims are wrong. Fiorina recycled a statistic about women’s job losses that Mitt Romney used in 2012 and subsequently abandoned when it, too, was proved wrong.

And so on.

Fact checkers had lots of material to mine, but the candidates’ dramatic delivery — and the immediate plaudits they earned from talking heads — made post-debate truth-squadding seem pedantic and tone-deaf.

Lesson No. 2: Invent your own math.

This is related to Lesson No. 1, but more quantitative. Or less, depending on how you look at it.

In recent weeks, Trump has suggested that he can simultaneously cut tax revenue by trillions of dollars, protect entitlements from cuts and balance the budget. He’s also pledged to raise taxes on the rich while simultaneously cutting taxes for the rich.

This legerdemath, as a friend of mine put it, has proved successful; despite disobeying all laws of arithmetic, Trump’s policies have been characterized as coherent, fiscally conservative, even populist. Maybe this has something to do with America’s declining math scores.

In any case, the other candidates lived and learned. When Marco Rubio was asked why his tax plan gave the average rich person a bigger tax cut than the average middle-class person in percentage terms, Rubio decided he would just redefine how percentages work.

“Five percent of a million is a lot more than 5 percent of a thousand,” he countered triumphantly.

Likewise, after CNBC’s Becky Quick informed Carson that his flat tax would blow a $1.1 trillion hole in the budget and require spending cuts of 40 percent, their exchange went like this:

CARSON: That’s not true.

QUICK: That is true, I looked at the numbers.

CARSON: When — when we put all the facts down, you’ll be able to see that it’s not true, it works out very well.

So, you know, Q.E.D.

Lesson No. 3: If you can’t think of something better to say, just bash the media. (This is good advice for the media, too, as this column illustrates.)

At first it seemed risky when Trump attacked conservative darling and Fox News host Megyn Kelly for asking tough questions during the first debate. But his attacks paid off, earning him several news cycles’ worth of free advertising.

Accordingly, by Wednesday, the candidates had all learned to dodge difficult questions by accusing the moderators of bias. Usually, the charge was that they were too liberal. (Yes, CNBC, the channel that launched the tea party and employs the United States’ most famous supply-sider, is apparently a commie paradise.) Or they accused the media of not asking substantive questions, right in the middle of ducking substantive questions.

In the end, the biggest applause lines were all media insults. They came from Rubio, Ted Cruz and Christie.

Guess whom CNBC then crowned the winners of the debate? Rubio, Cruz and Christie.

Well done, gents. We’ve trained you well.