;)
The Commentariat -- Feb. 18, 2016
Afternoon Update:
Jim Yardley of the New York Times: "'A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,' [Pope] Francis said when a reporter asked him about Mr. Trump on the papal airliner as he returned to Rome after his six-day visit to Mexico. The pope ... also waded into the question of whether the Roman Catholic Church should grant an exception to its prohibitions on abortion and birth control in regions where the Zika virus is causing a public health emergency, including in much of Catholic-dominated Latin America."
Understanding Marco. He has a history of flipflopping & shirking. Manuel Roig-Franzia of the Washington Post reports on Marco Rubio's practices in Tallahassee.
*****
Jim Avila & Serena Marshall of ABC News: "President Obama is planning a trip to Cuba some time next month, marking the first time in more than 80 years a sitting U.S. president will visit the country, according to sources with knowledge of the plan. A National Security Council official plans to make the announcement tomorrow at the White House briefing."
Gail Collins assesses the state of Republican leadership. It's morning again in Canada.
NEW. Linda Greenhouse reflects on Justice Scalia's impact on jurisprudence. Well, not the prudence part. Thanks to Victoria D. for the link. ...
... Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Obama 'regrets filibustering the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in 2006, his top spokesman said Wednesday, though he maintains that the Republican opposition to his effort to replace Justice Antonin Scalia is unprecedented. 'That is an approach the president regrets,' White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. Obama and the Democratic senators who joined him in filibustering Alito 'should have been in the position where they were making a public case' against the merits of his nomination to the high court instead, Earnest said. 'They shouldn't have looked for a way to just throw sand in the gears of the process,' he added."...
... Eric Bradner of CNN: "Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor says President Barack Obama should name Antonin Scalia's replacement.... 'I don't agree (with Republicans)," O'Connor [-- a Reagan appointee --] said in an interview with Phoenix-based Fox affiliate KSAZ. 'We need somebody in there to do the job and just get on with it.'" ...
... CW: If President Obama wanted to defang the Republicans -- and there's little reason to think he does since they are chewing themselves up -- he could appoint O'Connor tomorrow. It would be a gamble, of course; there's no telling how she would decide on the important cases before this session of the Court. ...
... Mike DeBonis & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "Senate Republicans clashed Wednesday over how to battle President Obama's expected Supreme Court nomination as the White House left open the remote possibility that the president might sidestep a confirmation fight by making a rare recess appointment.... But Obama's opportunity to make a recess appointment will probably disappear after Monday, when the Senate returns from its weeklong recess. Republicans, who control the Senate, are likely to keep the Senate officially in session continuously for the rest of the Obama's term." ...
... Michael Shear of the New York Times: "... in record time, the liberal and conservative Washington lobbying and advocacy machines are roaring to life, as both sides prepare for a fight on a battlefield that includes the White House, Congress and the campaign trail. Advocacy groups are already vowing to spend millions of dollars." ...
... Frank Rich: President "Obama, a lame duck who will not be on the ballot in November, has nothing to lose by standing on principle and carrying out a president's duty to submit a nominee to the Senate. The GOP, by contrast, has a lot to lose come Election Day -- including control of the Senate." ...
... Mark Kleiman has fairly delightful commentary on the merits of a recess appointment, although, as he notes in an update, the Senate may not in fact be in recess now. Kleiman is a professor of public policy at UCLA. CW: As I read the full adjournment statement, in conjunction with the fact that the House is in adjournment, it looks to me as if the Senate is also. ...
... Dana Milbank: "By attempting to make the election about the Supreme Court, Republicans would turn the discussion to topics on which Democrats have large advantages: climate change, business regulations, abortion, same-sex marriage, voting rights and campaign finance. (Polling on immigration and gun control, two other hot-button issues associated with the High Court, is more mixed.) The refusal to seat a justice would also further the impression, already widely held, that Republicans are more to blame for Washington's dysfunction." P.S. Ron Johnson retains his title as America's Stupidest Senator. But he's great at Twister! ...
... CW: Nobody could use a Supreme set-to better than Hillary Clinton, who was the subject of the Citizens United case. Americans overwhelmingly think Citzens United should be overturned. ...
... Jamiles Lartey of the Guardian: "Republican calls for Barack Obama to refrain from nominating a successor to deceased supreme court justice Antonin Scalia are 'odd' and 'absurd', according to constitutional scholars and experts. 'The arguments that they are making -- that this is a matter of principle – are nonsense,' said Michael Dorf, professor of constitutional law at Cornell Law School. 'It's just that they politically want some different kind of nominee.'" ...
... Greg Sargent does an "on the one hand/on the other hand" for Senate Republicans. ...
... Laura Clawson of Daily Kos: "It took Senate Republicans a couple of days to realize that swearing ahead of time that they'd refuse to even consider any Supreme Court nomination from President Obama didn't look good, so on Tuesday they started walking it back a little -- and the backwards stumble continues. They're not saying they'll be reasonable, mind you -- they're basically saying they'll block any nomination but at a slightly later, more media-friendly point in the process." ...
... AND Clawson notes we need better headline writers. (Another example was one Frank Rich mentioned in the post linked above: "Though a Times front-page headline this morning reads 'Court Path Is Littered With Pitfalls, for Obama and the G.O.P.,' the only potential pitfalls it actually identifies are all for the GOP.") ...
... Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: Some newspaper editorial boards are targeting home-state Republican senators who have spoken out against President Obama's nominating a candidate for Supreme Court justice. ...
... Obama's Butler Did It in the Bedroom with a Pillow. Pema Levy of Mother Jones provides another helpful guide to Scalia assassination theories. ...
... Kate Hudson of CBS "News": "The ranch owner, John Poindexter, tried to clarify his comments, telling 'CBS This Morning' that Scalia 'had a pillow over his head, not over his face as some have been saying. The pillow was against the headboard.'" CW: Yeah, the perps also change their stories.
Trey's October No-Surprise? Elise Viebeck of the Washington Post: "The leader of the House Select Committee on Benghazi promised to release a report 'as soon as possible' as the panel approaches its two-year mark. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) announced the committee has conducted a total of 75 witness interviews since its creation in May 2014 to investigate the Benghazi terrorist attacks, including recent sit-downs with White House national security adviser Susan Rice and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes." Greg Sargent figures that "as soon as possible" means "October."
Timothy Lee of Vox does an explainer on the FBI-Apple battle over unlocking Syed Farook's iPhone. ...
... Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times predicts that, at least in the long run, Apple -- & the tech companies in general -- with emerge victorious: "Apple, Google, Facebook and other companies hold most of the cards in this confrontation. They have our data, and their businesses depend on the global public's collective belief that they will do everything they can to protect that data." ...
... CW: Manjoo has good arguments, but they rely on the assumption that iPhone customers -- or potential customers -- don't care about lawlessness or terrorism. Seems flawed. Manjoo has been writing about technology for a long time. His friends are probably techies. I think if he got out in the real world he'd find that people are more terrified a Mooslim will murder them in their beds than they are worried that Barack Obama is listening in on their amorous phone calls. ...
... Shane Harris of the Daily Beast: "... in a similar case in New York last year, Apple acknowledged that it could extract such data if it wanted to. And according to prosecutors in that case, Apple has unlocked phones for authorities at least 70 times since 2008. (Apple doesn't dispute this figure.) In other words, Apple's stance in the San Bernardino case may not be quite the principled defense that [CEO Tim] Cook claims it is. In fact, it may have as much to do with public relations as it does with warding off what Cook called 'an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers.'" CW: No kidding. ...
... Max Rosenthal of Mother Jones: Some experts say that the difference is that in the older cases, the government was asking Apple to apply means they already had to open the files, while in this case, the government is telling Apple to write new decryption software. CW: A distinction, yes, but not one with much of a difference. If a bank, say, develops a "fail-safe" system to prevent unauthorized access to your safety deposit box, then gets a court order to open the box, they'll have to develop a new protocol to comply with the order.
Joshua Partlow & Gabriela Martinez of the Washington Post: "Overlooking the flood lights and barbed wire that line the U.S. border, Pope Francis on Wednesday quietly prayed for the migrants who have died during their journeys to America, as thousands of people watched on both sides of the Rio Grande's fortified shores. In what amounted to a symbolic rebuke of America's presidential campaign rhetoric -- which has included calls for mass deportations of illegal immigrants and a huge border wall -- the pope prayed atop a platform that overlooked the frontier. The pontiff waved and made the sign of the cross to a crowd cheering across the river in El Paso, Tex., suggesting his concern for those transiting through danger, in Mexico and beyond." ...
Presidential Race
Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "A group of leading liberal economists who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations have assessed the proposals of Bernie Sanders and concluded that the Vermont senator's rosy economic projections do not add up. In a letter to Mr. Sanders and Gerald Friedman, a University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor who has said that Mr. Sanders's economic policies are would yield surging growth and job gains, they warn that 'no credible economic research' supports those conclusions." ...
... CW: Here's why the economists right: Kevin Drum has it in chart form. With exclamations! "WTF? Per-capita GDP will grow 4.5 percent? And not just in a single year: Friedman is projecting that it will grow by an average of 4.5 percent every year for the next decade. Productivity growth will double compared to CBO projections -- and in case you're curious, there has never been a 10-year period since World War II in which productivity grew 3.18 percent. Not one. And miraculously, the employment-population ratio, which has been declining since 2000 and has never reached 65 percent ever in history, will rise to 65 percent in a mere ten years.... This is insane. If anything, it's worse than the endless magic asterisks that Republicans use to pretend that their tax plans will supercharge the economy and pay for themselves. It's not even remotely in the realm of reality." ...
... Paul Krugman: "Sanders needs to disassociate himself from this kind of fantasy economics right now. If his campaign responds instead by lashing out -- well, a campaign that treats Alan Krueger, Christy Romer, and Laura Tyson as right-wing enemies is well on its way to making Donald Trump president." ...
... CW: It looks as if Krugman doesn't need to worry. Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling: "New Public Policy Polling surveys of the 12 states that will hold Democratic primaries for President between March 1st and 8th ... find Hillary Clinton leading the way in 10 of 12, with double digit leads in 9 of them.... Clinton is benefiting in these states from overwhelming African American support. She leads by anywhere from 40-62 points among black voters in the nine of these states that have more black voters than the national average." ...
... Krugman again: "As Matt O'Brien rightly said recently, even the incremental changes Hillary Clinton is proposing are very unlikely to get through Congress; the radical changes Bernie Sanders is proposing wouldn't happen even if Democrats retook the House. O'Brien says that the Democratic primary is 'like arguing what's more real: a magical unicorn or a regular unicorn. In either case, you're still running on a unicorn platform.' This is, alas, probably true: the platforms of the candidates are better seen as aspirational than as programs at all likely to happen." Here's O'Brien's post, dated Feb. 8. ...
... Facts aside, economist Thomas Piketty -- in a Guardian essay published originally in Le Monde -- sees Sanders as a welcome harbinger of "the end of the politico-ideological cycle opened by the victory of Ronald Reagan at the 1980 elections.... Sanders' success today shows that much of America is tired of rising inequality and these so-called political changes, and intends to revive both a progressive agenda and the American tradition of egalitarianism. Hillary Clinton ... appears today as if she is defending the status quo, just another heiress of the Reagan-Clinton-Obama political regime." CW: Maybe Piketty can help the Sanders campaign come up with some believable numbers. ...
... BUT. I think Hillary has a real winner in this new ad running in Nevada. I'd guess this is something Bernie can't match. Ad via Greg Sargent:
A Pogo Stick in Every Household. Margaret Hartmann of New York gleans some little-known facts from the GOP teevee-town-halls that aired last night.
Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Senator Marco Rubio received the endorsement Wednesday of South Carolina's governor, Nikki R. Haley, a stamp of approval that could prove significant as his campaign tries to break out ahead in the state's primary on Saturday. Mrs. Haley endorsed Mr. Rubio at an early evening rally in Chapin, S.C...." ...
... Marco's One-Way Conversations. Mike Zapler of Politico: "On Tuesday and Wednesday, [Marco Rubio] held four events -- all dubbed ahead of time as 'town halls' -- but the candidate didn't take questions from voters at any of them. He did stick around each time to mingle and take selfies with audience members after delivering his roughly 40-minute stump speech. He also took questions from reporters after an event Wednesday. A campaign spokesman said the events were changed from town halls to rallies. That more controlled setting allows Rubio to limit the possibility of a bad moment...." CW: Even when he tries to stifle the audience, Marco screws up. Tuesday, he laughed along with the crowd when someone shouted,"Waterboard Hillary!" (If you think torturing women is funny, I guess that's not a screw-up. Nikki Haley didn't seem to mind, anyway.) ...
... Update. Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "An audience member at a rally for Senator Marco Rubio called Hillary Clinton 'a traitor,' prompting an objection from the candidate. 'I wouldn't go that far, sir,' Mr. Rubio said from the stage where he was campaigning with Gov. Nikki Haley...." According to Barbaro's reporting, this was the same guy who then said, "Let's waterboard Hillary," which Marco treated as a joke.
Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times: "After receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Donald Trump for running an ad that characterized Trump as pro-choice, Ted Cruz effective said, "So sue me." "Mr. Cruz held forth in a hotel conference room [in Seneca, S.C.], laying papers across a table and gesturing toward his visual aids: a video screen, on which he played the ad, and a poster detailing Mr. Trump's past contributions to Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid. 'You have been threatening frivolous lawsuits for your entire adult life,' Mr. Cruz said of Mr. Trump.... 'I may well not use outside counsel,' Mr. Cruz said. 'I may take the deposition myself." ...
... CW: Yes, we know you're a crackerjack lawyer, Ted might remember the adage "A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client." ...
... Alan Rappeport: "Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has erased Donald J. Trump's lead in a new national poll that could signal a significant shift in the race for the Republican nomination with primary election season in full swing." ...
... Mark Murray of NBC News: "Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has fallen behind Ted Cruz in the national GOP horserace, according to a brand-new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. In the poll, Cruz is the first choice of 28 percent of Republican primary voters, while Trump gets 26 percent. They're followed by Marco Rubio at 17 percent, John Kasich at 11 percent, Ben Carson at 10 percent and Jeb Bush at 4 percent." ...
... Oh Yeah? Anthony Salvanto, et al., of CBS "News": "Donald Trump (35 percent) continues to hold a commanding lead over the rest of the field, with a 17 point lead over his closest rival, Texas Senator Ted Cruz (18 percent). John Kasich (11 percent) has now risen to a virtual third-place tie with Marco Rubio (12 percent). Trump leads among nearly every demographic group. More than half of Republican voters say they may still change their minds about who to support, but two thirds of Trump voters say their minds are made up." CW: I assume this is also a national poll. ...
... Isaac Chotiner of Slate: Joe "Scarborough and [Mika] Brzezinski [of MSNBC] hosted what appeared to be a rehearsed and 'safe' town hall [with Donald Trump Wednesday night], in which American voters asked the candidate such hard-hitting questions as 'Why did you decide to run for president?' and 'how will you set yourself apart' from other Republicans? It was completely worthless television, except in one sense: The program highlighted the many ways in which the media's coverage of Trump has been soft, insufficient, and without substance.... The media's relationship with Trump should worry Hillary Clinton, assuming each of them vanquishes their primary opponents."
... Oliver Laughland of the Guardian: "Nearly three decades before ... [Donald Trump] began his run for president ... he ... called for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York following a horrific rape case in which five [black] teenagers were wrongly convicted."
Beyond the Beltway
Phil Helsel of NBC News: "A federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, his two sons and two other men in connection with a 2014 armed standoff, nearly two years after the confrontation that thrust them into the national spotlight. The indictment of Bundy, 69, his sons Ammon and Ryan and two other men, Ryan Payne and Peter Santilli, in the Nevada standoff comes three weeks after the collapse of another armed protest over federal land management in Oregon led by the Bundy sons." ...
... They Left Their Shit Behind. Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "Nearly a week after the Oregon wildlife refuge occupation ended, federal authorities poring over the site say they have found firearms and explosives as well as 'significant amounts of human feces' around an area that's home to cultural artifacts."
Michael Shepherd of the Bangor Daily News: At a town-hall meeting in Freeport, Maine, Gov. Paul "LePage called asylum seekers 'the biggest problem in our state.' That drew harsh reactions from some in the crowd who yelled, 'Shame on you,' some of whom walked out of the overflowing room at the town's library. He elaborated, saying that Maine often doesn't receive federal aid to help secondary migrants. Then he doubled down on a past, baseless argument that asylum seekers pose a public health threat, saying they're bringing hepatitis C, tuberculosis, AIDS, HIV and 'the ziki fly,' an apparent malaprop reference to the mosquito-transmitted Zika virus." CW: Or maybe he meant "tsetse fly" which is almost a homonym. Or maybe he meant frat boys; Zeta Beta Tau men used to be called "Zekes." I myself would worry about an influx of frat boys.
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Reader Comments (11)
It seems notable that there has been very little press attention to the Cliven Bundy arrest and detention, or maybe it is happening in Right Wing media and I don't see it. His sagebrush philosophizing used to be clickbait, and the Malheur drama of his sons was covered fairly intensively, but the talking heads don't seem to have much to say about his current situation. That prosecutor's justification to deny bail (Marie linked yesterday) was a great prose story, not a legalese proforma, and if there were rational defenders of CB's case you would expect to hear them rebutting it ... the facts and assertions are not new, his supporters should be able to get their side out quickly. But you hear crickets. Where is Sean Hannity when Cliven really needs him?
Is it too much to think that even the truest of true believers realize that CB is just a mooching grifter and troublemaker? Or are they gathering their mighty arguments and waiting for the trial to let their freak flags fly high again?
@Patrick: Thanks. I myself forgot about Bundy, et al. I just posted a link to a story that he & the boys, et al., got busted for the Nevada standoff yesterday, but the coverage was slim. When I Googled Sean Hannity & Cliven Bundy I found a Jan. 14 Washington Examiner story that reported Hannity was "distancing" himself from the Bundy clan.
This surely isn't because Hannity is a "principled conservative"; it's because only a teeny percentage of people -- even Fox "News" people -- think armed insurrection is a good thing. If that weren't true, Hannity & Co. would be all over it. Ratings!
I would guess that much of the talk of secession (Rick Perry) is hyperbole, much of it based on racism that isn't consuming enough to get most Fox "News" potatoes off their couches. It's more their style to sit back & nod their heads while Trump complains about Mexicans & Marco claims the blackety-black president is purposely making America small again.
Marie
So it looks like the Republicans are in fact down to three real possibilities:
A seriously mentally ill moron who thinks the job of POTUS is a form of reality TV.
A fake Christian who lies like no other and is the most hated person in Washington.
A 44 year old pretending to be a 14 years old or maybe a 14 year old pretending to be 44. Hard to tell.
And when will the media get serious?
Jeb% is criticizing Obama for going to Cuba because–––take a breath––he's sending the wrong signal which is–––wait for it–––approving of that country's very bad politics. Yup, Presidents just go to countries that we like and approve of.
Bernie's economic plan was bound to be found pie in the sky, but oh, my, how we loved the idea of it.
Watched a bit of Morning Joe and his lovely side kick who manages to get a word in every once in awhile host what they called "A Trump Town Hall." Put the guy in the chair and sock it to him, I imagine was their plan? I could only take about twenty minutes––there simply is no there there and what is left is so much hot air that even the audience looked a little frazzled. I've been waiting for something to happen––I want a Toto to finally move the curtain to reveal the joke––but so far we got nothin––and HE's gotten farther than we ever thought.
Update: Yesterday's Bundy indictments are now getting more national coverage than they were when Patrick & I discussed this earlier.
Marie
I was happy to notice that inaccurate--to the point of being completely wrong and totally misleading--headlines and ledes referencing the collective GOP brain embolism caused by the US Constitution, that document they all claim to have tattooed on their asses, have been rankling others besides myself.
Yesterday (I think it was yesterday), walking through a large grocery store in my area, I spotted a single copy of the Times with a front page headline screaming: "Court Path Is Littered With Pitfalls, for Obama and the G.O.P."
W in The F'ing F!
Really? Pitfalls for Obama? This both-siderism balderdash is truly pandemic. So, like Frank Rich, I picked it up and read it. The only potential problems, as he points out, are all on the Republican side. But if you just scanned the headlines like "Obama Picks Fight with GOP!!!!" you'd be inclined to believe what the Fox screamers and the Confederate droolers are all up in arms about (a true description of which should read: "President Fulfills Constitutional Duty. Republicans Livid!")
I know flogging the long dead horse of journalistic irresponsibility is a doomed and futile action but that doesn't make the problem any less troubling.
@Akhilleus: Yeah, it's a dead horse. The problem is that headline writers, even more than reporters, get paid to generate sales & clicks. Ergo, headlines that include words like "fight," "clash" & "battle" are going to win out over bland factual headlines like "President will do his job."
Marie
Linda Greenhouse answers the question, Is it too soon to give a brutally honest critique of Scalia's tenure on the Court? (The answer is no.)
Another reason, as Kate is wont to remind us, to remember the Supremes is the calendar.
Scalia at 79, is gone. Breyer is 78, Notorious RBG, 83, and Tony (I din' see no bribes...) Kennedy, 80.
My guess is that a Democratic victory for the White House will allow Ginsburg to retire in peace. I'm not apprised on the state of Breyer's health but he may decide to git while the gittin' is good. Kennedy may want to tempt fate and try to hang on for another four years to see whether a second term might not be in the cards for the Democratic president. If so, and if a Confederate came into office in 2020, he'd be 84. If he tried waiting out another four years, he'd be close to the age of the oldest justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, who retired from the court at age 90.
The point here is that, should a Democrat win the White House and hold it for eight years, four seats may need filling, including Scalia's, between now and then.
Elections really do matter. Just imagine what the place would look like should Crump get to appoint four new justices to go along with the current crop of Confederate ratfuckers: Roberts, Thomas, Alito, and four new thugs who may or may not have ever read the Constitution and who owe their ascendancy to either a dangerous, bigoted clown or a sleazeball liar, neither of whom give a rat's ass for precedent or rule of law.
Lying liars and the Lovers of the Lies They Tell.
I won't belabor the obvious self-imposed conundrum transfixing the Big Brains of Right Wing World, the Karl Roves and the moneyed puppeteers who have been priming the idiocy pump for years, but here's where things get sticky for them.
Trump has gotten immense traction by just ouvrez-ing la bouche and giving out with the crazy. None of his supporters seem to care whether or not he tells the truth or adheres to facts. Cruz too. Also Rubio. Carson.....well...never mind.
But why? Why should they? Since the halcyon days of St. Ronnie, Confederate voters have been greedily ingesting lies like they were free slabs of Boston Creme Pie. They've been bred on lies, become inured to and hate both truth and facts. So when the Confederate Elite tries to point out that the Trumperor has no clothes, when it is pointed out to the groundlings, that the orange headed orangutan loping about the national stage has far more failures as a business genius than successes, is no kind of deal master, and doesn't even make it to the level of rank political amateur, they get the raspberries. No one cares, no one wants to listen.
And Cruz, the next least favorite, is given the same pass by the We Hate Facts crowd. He now talks about, on one hand, being fiscally responsible while on the other raving about building the biggest, baddest, most outrageously expensive military machine in the galaxy, all paid for by.....well, he doesn't say. I guess he'll pay for it by taking candy from the mouths of immigrant babies. A couple of tootsie rolls should pay for the next five or six multi-billion dollar weapon system boondoggles. Donuts for everyone!
All any Confederate candidate has to do is come up with a negation of any Obama position or statement. Obama says we need to reduce the size of the military, Crump says "Hell no! Triple it!" Philosophical investigators of truth values use operators to depict a statement or position such as "A" as set against position "~A", referred to as Not A. Every single one of these people has dispensed with facts. Their entire campaign platforms rely on on an unquestioned belief on the part of their supporters in the statement ~Obama. That's it. And most of those aching to vote for them agree. It's not even necessary for ~Obama to be true! ~Obama is all they need.
Facts won't dissuade any of these voters. They couldn't find a single fact if they each had a complete series of Encyclopedia Britannicas with all factual statements highlighted in neon yellow and an electric shock mechanism sending 1000 volts up their asses whenever they run across one.
But how will this profligacy with truth and facts play out in the general? The president, optimistic as always, believes the American people will awaken from their dogmatic slumber (apologies to Kant) in time to see the light.
I sure as shit hope so. Otherwise we'll find ourselves in ~America.
As I and many other commenters on the Pope's statement that Trump
“is not Christian” , this is seriously unfair to Adolf because none of the Republican candidates are Christians. What I didn't say is that most of their followers are not Christians either.