Octopus Overlords

Holman wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote:Nothing about Paul Ryan saying that he cannot support the presumptive nominee of his own party (at least not at this time yet)?

Ryan knows that Trump will lose and that the party will be re-branding (once again) come 2017. He expects to be the re-brander.

I wish him good luck with that in advance. After seeing the establishment guys fail to do what they told the rest of the party they must do when it was there guy, that line of thinking will never be accepted again.

After this election I think the country may finally be ready for more than 2 viable parties.

The party isn't humpty dumpty and if they choose to shatter it putting it back together will not be an option.

Holman wrote:Ryan knows that Trump will lose and that the party will be re-branding (once again) come 2017. He expects to be the re-brander.

At best, re-branding is putting a band-aid on an axe wound. There needs to be a fundamental change and that change has to embrace personal freedom which is embodied in freedom from religion as an integral part of freedom of religion and it has to realize that while bean counting is at the top of the list, it cannot hold back the need for infrastructure and the growing need for modern basic services for everyone and that some regulation and federal incentives are good things. I suppose one would call that moving to the center. Whatever. Without that shift the implosion will still happen. The wrong demographic has been appeased and the wrong demographic marginalized. I don't think voters memories are that short.


On a related note, this seems interesting enough:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bot ... e-problem/

Like at some point, if this is what your party produces, is it still your party? What kind of principles does Paul Ryan think he shares with the mob that vaulted this fucking clown to the GOP nomination?

RunningMn9 wrote:Like at some point, if this is what your party produces, is it still your party? What kind of principles does Paul Ryan think he shares with the mob that vaulted this fucking clown to the GOP nomination?

There is the rub. For many this hasn't been their party in a long time. It has been run by a bunch of people known for promising one thing and doing another. For a time they were able to fool people and propagandize them into compliance by convincing them all they should hold their noses and vote for whoever is carrying the banner.

Now this year will show that they only believed that as long as the person carrying the banner is their guy. WIll be impossible to pull that one going forward if the party fails to support the nominee.

Big tents are going out of fashion.

Rip wrote:It has been run by a bunch of people known for promising one thing and doing another.

Like what? I assume you are talking about yourself, clearly. So this party you have been pretending to be a member of because of what they have been promising you they would be doing, but aren't. What is it? And are you pretending that Trump is the guy that's gonna do it?

Unagi wrote:

Rip wrote:It has been run by a bunch of people known for promising one thing and doing another.

Like what? I assume you are talking about yourself, clearly. So this party you have been pretending to be a member of because of what they have been promising you they would be doing, but aren't. What is it? And are you pretending that Trump is the guy that's gonna do it?

No he's 100% correct from the perspective of another Republican. They promised to get tough on immigration and they turned around and started amnesty talks. They promised to stop the runaway spending and they didn't. They promised to stand up to Obama and they caved. I could go on. From the perspective of a Republican, they suck.

Is Donald Trump better? Probably not. But the reasons above are why he is where he is right now.

LordMortis wrote:Not fan of Bean

See, that's the problem. I know the principles that Paul Ryan believes in. I know that he does genuinely believe them, but he's also not four years old, so he also understands that there are compromises that have to be made.

Why? Because he shares this country with 320 million other people, and he doesn't get to just rule their lives by fiat.

What core principles do either of you actually share with the "Republican Party" as its been through most of its history? I'm not sure there are many.

You say "from the perspective of a Republican", but I submit that folks like Paul Ryan are much more Republican than you are.

Little Raven wrote:The shift to the center begins, as all great things must, with tacos.

What Trump supporter doesn't love a hard worker? I'd trade about half our population for some hard working Hispanics. I particularly loved one hard working Hispanic lap dancer, but now she's an RN. An actual taxpayer, poor girl now has a $1.1 million share in our national debt. So how much dead weight is there if the debt is $40,000 per man, woman, and child, but $1.1 million per taxpayer?

em2nought wrote:So how much dead weight is there if the debt is $40,000 per man, woman, and child, but $1.1 million per taxpayer?

I take it that math is not your strong suit?

Edit to add:
For the record, the current national debt load per citizen was about $59,562 as of a few minutes ago according to the US Debt and Population clocks. I don't find that to be *too* burdensome considering that my own mortgage debt is almost five times larger than that, and that's not a big deal either.

If we want to calculate debt load per federal taxpayer, we'd first need to know the number of federal taxpayers. Your math yields a grand total of 17 million federal tax payers, which is clearly false. The number is actually closer to 200 million (most likely much higher), but we'll use the conservative figure for illustrative purposes. Even if we restrict things to "per federal taxpayer" (which incidentally is a stupid metric since most of those that currently aren't paying federal taxes will pay federal taxes and will thus enter the set of interest, so it's perfectly reasonable to hang some of the national debt around the necks of my two kids since they benefit from federal spending, even though they don't pay federal tax YET), that yields a debt load of about $96,000 per taxpayer. Worse than ~$60,000? Sure. Anywhere near $1,100,000? Of course not.

RunningMn9 wrote:that yields a debt load of about $96,000 per taxpayer. Worse than ~$60,000? Sure. Anywhere near $1,100,000? Of course not.

I got that figure from Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/ ... h-you-owe/ which wouldn't let me in since I wouldn't turn off my ad blocker. Here's another site that puts it at more like $200,000 with only 81 million something citizens filing in 2009 http://cnsnews.com/news/article/64000-q ... nder-obama

But the national debt doesn't actually cover everything that the gov't owes, and that's not even taking into account state or city governments.

Those figures are overstated and designed to be alarmist, em.

Let's look at the U.S. like any lender. Credit risk is fundamentally based on a number of factors, including payment history and debt load compared to income. Let's start with U.S. GDP per capita and U.S. national debt per capita and use a statistical source.

2015 GDP per capita was approximately $55,904
2015 national debt per capita was approximately $56,375

Even if that might seem scary, the real tool used is debt payments vs. income. Or cash flow. We're not paying all that debt off, just an average 2% interest for April 2015 debt. Those interest rates are historically low, so that the world is effectively paying the U.S. Treasury less than inflation (negative yields) for $7 million in U.S. debt. Why? U.S. payment history is excellent, and the only certain thing in the global economy is that the U.S. dollar is reliable despite everything Trump says to the contrary.

Frankly, our debt is WINNING. You would think people who claim to understand the market and business would know that.

Isgrimnur wrote:

em2nought wrote:Here's another site that puts it at more like $200,000 with only 81 million something citizens filing in 2009.

First, it's not 2009. That was actually a long time ago. Second, that 81 million dollar figure is tax returns filed, not citizens filing. Something like 45% of those returns were married couples filing jointly, and so represent two taxpayers. Third, the decision to restrict the set of "federal tax payers" to federal income taxpayers is always a red flag that the overall point is being fabricated to meet an agenda. At last count (back in 2012 or 2010) there were something like 125 million federal income taxpayers. Federal payroll taxpayers? That's a much larger number that almost certainly exceeds 200 million adults.

em2nought wrote:But the national debt doesn't actually cover everything that the gov't owes, and that's not even taking into account state or city governments.

That's certainly true. But the scare mongering that goes on with debt isn't much more valid there either. The problem with all of it is that it projects debt forward, but not income. You'll see stuff like Medicare "future obligations" are like $70T. Which might be true. They might not be, because what we pay out in Medicare is to some degree under our control. But a statement like that ignores a few things. It ignores that it is accumulating expected spending over many decades. And it does so while ignoring the fact that we are generating income over those same decades. For scale, assuming an annual growth of 0%, the US economy is expected to generate around $700T in the next 40 years.

The lesson to learn here is that managing the US economy is nothing like managing your household finances. Also, big numbers are scary and make for good headlines. But it's all relative. I'd certainly be fine with having less national debt, but our current level of national debt isn't that concerning, unless you don't understand what it means.

msduncan wrote:

I'm stealing this one...

RunningMn9 wrote:I'm sitting here in my car while my daughter is in her dance class and I'm listening to CNN and Wolf Blitzer is grilling some Republican talking head. At one point, the talking head said that they started this process with 17 "supremely qualified" candidates. My question is this.

Does this guy actually believe that statement? The presumptive nominee is grossly unfit to be President. Ted Cruz was unqualified to be President. Marco Rubio was unqualified to be President. Ben Carson was grossly unqualified to be President. Carly was grossly unqualified to be President. I can accept the argument that Christie, Bush, Pataki and Kasich have some qualifications. I cannot accept that anyone would genuinely believe that all 17 of these people were supremely qualified to hold the most powerful political office in the world.

And so if he doesn't believe it, why do we all sit around and tolerate these assholes lying through their teeth constantly? If you are conservative, pretend I'm talking about Paul Begala talking about how awesome all Democrats are.

I dropped by the bar after work on Wednesday. The old guys sit around watching CNN and the local news up until around 6 or so.

I was watching CNN with them and Blitzer was on doing the same thing you mention, talking with a panel of 4 talking heads. As someone who doesn't watch CNN, I was completely distracted by all of the media polish and obvious fluff and bullshit. From the clothes to hair to makeup to the set props, I couldn't believe it. Never mind the vapid platitudes and rote answers they were spewing. It's no wonder we get the slates of shit we do. The whole thing is engineered at every level. Not as a grand conspiracy but as every group and organization out for thier own interests with a heavy dose of quid pro quo. Networks want entertainment dollars. Candidates want airtime. Wonks want to push their agenda. They strategize together to get what they want.

We're living in a parody of reality.

LawBeefaroni wrote:As someone who doesn't watch CNN, I was completely distracted by all of the media polish and obvious fluff and bullshit. From the clothes to hair to makeup to the set props, I couldn't believe it. Never mind the vapid platitudes and rote answers they were spewing. It's no wonder we get the slates of shit we do. The whole thing is engineered at every level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAkxR9T01pw

LordMortis wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote:As someone who doesn't watch CNN, I was completely distracted by all of the media polish and obvious fluff and bullshit. From the clothes to hair to makeup to the set props, I couldn't believe it. Never mind the vapid platitudes and rote answers they were spewing. It's no wonder we get the slates of shit we do. The whole thing is engineered at every level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAkxR9T01pw

Perfect.

T Boone Pickens wire services....

msduncan wrote:They promised to stop the runaway spending and they didn't. They promised to stand up to Obama and they caved.

You still don't get it as a Republican. Spending, by and large is not an issue for the working class that fervently supports Trump. Surverys consistently show this. They like their Social Security and Medicare (which Republicans don't) and they are not opposed to other spending:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/ ... story.html

They just want the spending directed towards them rather than others that they see as having benefited in the past.

You're still not learning from this experience. This group does not want small govt Republicans.

Grifman wrote:

msduncan wrote:They promised to stop the runaway spending and they didn't. They promised to stand up to Obama and they caved.

You still don't get it as a Republican. Spending, by and large is not an issue for the working class that fervently supports Trump. Surverys consistently show this. They like their Social Security and Medicare (which Republicans don't) and they are not opposed to other spending:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/ ... story.html

They just want the spending directed towards them rather than others that they see as having benefited in the past.

You're still not learning from this experience. This group does not want small govt Republicans.

Let me state this another way: The Trump supporters are those who are attracted to sound bites, brash non-politically correct statements, etc.

The people who really haven't energized around any of the other candidates are just plain out pissed at the party. It's lack of enthusiasm to a degree enough to not be able to counter this trump movement. It'a also complete stupidity of the establishment not to get half of these guys to drop out in order to rally people around one person.

At work today I finally figured out the Trump phenomenon.

I have a co-worker who - for lack of a better word - is a complete fuck-up. He basically got the job during a period where we were desperate for staffing, and we needed a warm body. Since that time he repeatedly managed to screw things up - not catastrophically, and not often enough to get fired. Just enough that they slowly started taking responsibility away from him so he wouldn't screw things up. It's to the point now that the company basically pays him to sit around and browse Facebook on his iPad. He has nothing to do because nobody trusts him to do it correctly (or at all).

I had an incident several months ago where - not even due to any fault of my own - we had an application go down briefly. It's a long story but it went down because a certificate expired. The certificate expired because the application vendor never bothered to do it because it was too hard to figure out - even though I had notified them six months prior. Doesn't matter - I got the blame for not following up and ensuring it was done, and just assuming vendors that we are paying for a service complete the service (silly me). I got raked over the coals - I had to go through an entire post-mortem session, write a report to the CIO, create documentation showing how it would be prevented in the future, etc. There was an implication that they may just have to bring someone else in to manage certs since I had let this happen.

Meanwhile, fuck-up over there, who has screwed up numerous things, gets a free pass.

It comes down to the fact I don't mess up very often. That's not bragging - I don't mess up because I have a lot of responsibility and I have to follow very rigorous processes and fail-safes to make sure I don't mess up. So when something does go down on my watch, it's a circus around here.

But fuck-up messes things up all the time. It's expected. So when he screws something up, people shrug their shoulders and say "Well, that's par for the course. Blame's on us for giving him that responsibility."

Trump has maneuvered himself into the fuck-up role. He's made his brashness, his gaffes, and his outrageousness the new normal. So that he has free reign to say stuff like "I love Hispanics" while eating a taco bowl and people just laugh it off. Can you imagine Romney doing that? He'd have been absolutely crucified in the media.

It's extremely frustrating, and it's unfortunate that many times in our society we reward those who bring everyone down to their level and punish the people playing by the rules.

You summed up my assessment of the taco pic perfectly YK. It's also why this is going to be very interesting and fun to watch against Hillary. I can't wait to see what he says.

YellowKing wrote: It's a long story but it went down because a certificate expired. The certificate expired because the application vendor never bothered to do it because it was too hard to figure out

Was it a Comodo code signing certificate at fault? One of their intermediate certificate authorities went offline for good and the dumb asses failed to tell anyone, leaving a ton of people flailing around trying to figure out what the hell was up.

YellowKing wrote: Trump has maneuvered himself into the fuck-up role. He's made his brashness, his gaffes, and his outrageousness the new normal. So that he has free reign to say stuff like "I love Hispanics" while eating a taco bowl and people just laugh it off. Can you imagine Romney doing that? He'd have been absolutely crucified in the media.

It's extremely frustrating, and it's unfortunate that many times in our society we reward those who bring everyone down to their level and punish the people playing by the rules.

He's America's Prodigal Son. And a Fortunate Son.
We can't wait to slaughter the fatted calf for a silver spoon born fuck up. Worst parable ever.

msduncan wrote:Let me state this another way: The Trump supporters are those who are attracted to sound bites, brash non-politically correct statements, etc.

I can agree to that. And that's part of my point. If the Republican Party primary process can produce an outcome like this - clearly it is being driven by people that aren't actually Republicans, because they don't believe in any of the things that Republicans believe in. They're just a collection of angry people that are voting in the Republican primary, for someone who is also not a Republican. At what point are there enough of those people, who are running a candidate like this, where "traditional" Republicans are forced to conclude that this is no longer their party?

msduncan wrote:The people who really haven't energized around any of the other candidates are just plain out pissed at the party.

And in addition to the previous point, I submit that many of these people (of which you are one) aren't actually Republicans either (at least as compared to actual traditional Republican values, which have nothing to do with conservative principles). In other words, you are experiencing what I experienced when I realized that people like you radically changed the Republican party that I would have identified with into something completely different.

Now you're a RINO too.

hepcat wrote:Was it a Comodo code signing certificate at fault? One of their intermediate certificate authorities went offline for good and the dumb asses failed to tell anyone, leaving a ton of people flailing around trying to figure out what the hell was up.

No, it was an internal root certificate. Instead of updating it with the new one like I asked, the vendor couldn't figure out the best way to do it so he decided to just leave the old one in place. So when our DC refreshed its root certificates and started using the new one for authentication, app stopped trusting it and down she went.

P.S. Ordinarily even that wouldn't have caused app logins to fail, because they have an LDAP caching mechanism which is supposed to prevent this exact scenario. Unfortunately, the vendor never figured out how to get that working either, so they never bothered to configure it.

RunningMn9 wrote:See, that's the problem. I know the principles that Paul Ryan believes in. I know that he does genuinely believe them, but he's also not four years old, so he also understands that there are compromises that have to be made.

Why? Because he shares this country with 320 million other people, and he doesn't get to just rule their lives by fiat.

What core principles do either of you actually share with the "Republican Party" as its been through most of its history? I'm not sure there are many.

You say "from the perspective of a Republican", but I submit that folks like Paul Ryan are much more Republican than you are.

Yet his move is likely to see him losing his own election. That would seem to indicate the opposite.

Rip wrote: Yet his move is likely to see him losing his own election. That would seem to indicate the opposite.

How so? Trump absconded with their party banner. He is not, however, "their" candidate in that he would do nothing to promote the party platform nor improve the brand. Trump is a usurper and at this point the best they can do is damage control to prevent even more wreckage. Not participating at the presidential level of this election would at this point be a logical course of action.

As another sign of how weird this campaign is going to be (and I'm pretty sure one of the signs of the apocalypse), Erick Erickson is calling on Republicans to apologize for impeaching Bill Clinton.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/e ... nton-trump

“On the campaign trail, Trump was more a pathological liar than Bill Clinton ever was,” he wrote, noting the billionaire “smeared” his opponents’ wives and families, pushed 9/11 conspiracy theories, and “peddled malignant, false stories” about rival Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) father.

“Republicans owe Bill Clinton an apology for impeaching him over lies and affairs while now embracing a pathological liar and womanizer,” Erickson wrote. “That apology will not be forthcoming.”

I'd like to see the RNC open with Ryan walking up to the podium, announcing, "Ladies and Gentleman, Donald Trump" then dropping the mic on the stage followed the entire audience exiting the convention center and not coming back.

Already some prominent Republicans have said they will not attend the convention (not on that list is the Illinois governor who announced yesterday that he will not attend either).

Paul Ryan is going to lose his bid for re-election Rip?

In any case, while listening to the continued absurdity on the way home, Jake Tapper was interviewing Rep. Peter King. He played clip after clip after clip of Peter King talking about how unfit Donald Trump is to be President.

Do you still believe that? Yes. Why are you on this show? To endorse Donald Trump for President. You will vote for someone who you believe is unfit to serve, who doesn't agree with you on any important policy position? Why? Because he doesn't want to be left out of the game.

What a coward.

Republicans who remained silent on Trump are caving now. Most of them are hedging it with weaselly language about him being "the choice of the party" (which implicitly leaves them "no choice" but to support him), but they're bowing to the inevitable. TPM is tracking the progress of the varieties of support, semi-support, and resistance.

This is a historical moment for the Republican Party. Trump might be a lightweight disguised as a colossus, but that doesn't change the fact that he ran and won by appealing to nativism, racism, jingoism, and bullying. He's going to lose the election, but history will mark this as the moment when the GOP either surrendered or pushed back against that appeal.

I think we know how it's mostly going to go.

Jeff V wrote:

Rip wrote: Yet his move is likely to see him losing his own election. That would seem to indicate the opposite.

How so? Trump absconded with their party banner. He is not, however, "their" candidate in that he would do nothing to promote the party platform nor improve the brand. Trump is a usurper and at this point the best they can do is damage control to prevent even more wreckage. Not participating at the presidential level of this election would at this point be a logical course of action.

If you have more support than anyone else in the party you are not a usurper. The party isn't defined by the people running it but by the position of the majority of the members. The majority by far has spoken.

RunningMn9 wrote:Paul Ryan is going to lose his bid for re-election Rip?

In any case, while listening to the continued absurdity on the way home, Jake Tapper was interviewing Rep. Peter King. He played clip after clip after clip of Peter King talking about how unfit Donald Trump is to be President.

Do you still believe that? Yes. Why are you on this show? To endorse Donald Trump for President. You will vote for someone who you believe is unfit to serve, who doesn't agree with you on any important policy position? Why? Because he doesn't want to be left out of the game.

What a coward.

Yes, Ryan will lose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcVsuCg ... e=youtu.be

Rip wrote:The majority by far has spoken.

Worst spelling of "plurality" I've seen all day.

Rip wrote:If you have more support than anyone else in the party you are not a usurper. The party isn't defined by the people running it but by the position of the majority of the members. The majority by far has spoken.

I think that it's a fair charge (usurper). Trump isn't a Republican. The people voting for him aren't Republicans (in practice or ideology). They may be in the process of changing the Republican party into this new, monstrous thing - but that's the concept behind Trump usurping the Republican party.

Max Peck wrote:

Rip wrote:The majority by far has spoken.

Worst spelling of "plurality" I've seen all day.

Another math wizard.