Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

Neutral Corner nailed it. As bad as a Trump presidency would be, a Cruz presidency would be an absolute flustercluck. OTOH, it could bring both parties together just to defeat whatever he proposes.

 

I've been a huge fan of Cruz ever since he led the all-night filibuster, with assistance from Mike Lee and nearly no one else in the entire GOP. I'm tired of Republicans who do the wrong thing for what they think are the right reasons. In the end, they still can't escape the fact they did the wrong things.

 

And yet none of those things happened. Or can you show me all the heavy GOP losses in 2014?

 

I could vote for Cruz without a problem. Never Trump. Certainly never Clinton or Larry David.

 

You have this exactly backwards. Not surprising, you have this strange obsession with trying to pretend you "get"the right, but are consistently getting it wrong.

 

Never Trump. I'll hold my nose and vote for Cruz.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/fir...unborn-as-a-person/?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

 

What makes anyone think the most hated guy in Congress will be able to work work with Congress?

 

I appreciated when he cleared up my wife's abortion position for me.

 

Bernie keeps getting clobbered for his unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky, everyone-gets-free-everything proposals, but here's a review of the economic policies offered up by the GOP front runners -- Donald Trump and Paul Ryan:

Donald Trump is just Paul Ryan on steroids

Trump wants to cut taxes by $7 trillion the next eight years, doesn't want to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Defense one penny, and still wants to pay off the $19 trillion national debt by the end of his hypothetical second term. About the only thing he hasn't promised is that he'll try to top Oprah by giving everyone a car and a pony.

There's just no possible reality where these numbers could even come close to adding up. Consider this: the Congressional Budget Office expects that the federal government will take in $32 trillion in taxes between 2017 and 2024, but the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that Trump's tax plan would reduce that by $7.2 trillion over that time. So that leaves $25 trillion to pay for all the government and the $19 trillion national debt. Or, with a little subtraction, just $6 trillion for the government during an full two-term Trump presidency. That's not even enough for Medicare. Indeed, the CBO tells us that Social Security, Medicare, and Defense—which, remember, Trump has promised not to cut—will cost $21 trillion by themselves those 8 years.

Then there's the guy that can't get his own party to agree on a budget but wants to be president:

But it's the kind of joke that Republicans have been telling themselves for awhile now. Especially House Speaker Paul Ryan. He wants to slash the top tax rate to 25 percent, doesn't want to cut Social Security or Medicare for today's seniors, actually wants to increase defense spending, and still wants to get rid of the deficit (though not the debt) in the next 10 years. If that sounds familiar, that's because it is: Trump has just taken this and turned it up to 11.

Let's back up a minute, though. How does Ryan think he could pull off his own slightly less unrealistic plan? Easy: with magic. Ryan's first trick is to assume that his tax cuts wouldn't cost a thing instead of the $5.7 trillion that the Tax Policy Center says they would, since he would supposedly close enough tax loopholes to pay for them all. Of course, he doesn't actually say which ones he'd get rid of. All he says is that he wouldn't touch the charitable tax deduction. The only problem, as the Tax Policy Center's Howard Gleckman puts it, is that it's "hard to imagine" that this is even possible. You'd have to go sacred cow hunting, with the mortgage interest deduction among the likely casualties. Not only that, but this kind of cut-tax-loopholes-to-pay-for-tax-cuts plan couldn't help but lower taxes on the rich at the same time that it'd raise them on everybody else. No wonder Ryan doesn't want to spell this out.

Then there is Ryan's spending trick. That isn't turning Medicare into a less generous voucher system for future retirees or even turning Medicaid into amuch less generous block grant. No, it's assuming that he could get the government to all-but-stop spending money on the government's most basic functions. Without saying where or how he would cut, Ryan simply asserts that he could bring the government's non-Social Security and non-Medicare spending down from 12 percent of GDP today to 3.75 percent of GDP in 2050. Does it sound plausible that the government could spend three times less on—here we go again—roads, bridges, schools, scientific research, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and defense than it does right now as a share of the economy? It shouldn't. Not unless you think voters wouldn't care if the government stopped doing the things they want it to do.

 

More fun from the GOP brownshirts ...

"Women were created for one thing and one thing alone. We are insulting the Lord by allowing women to act like men. Women are beautiful creatures, no doubt about that. We marry them, we look after them, we provide for them and we love them, but that does not mean they are the same as us. It is the job of a woman to stay at home, to maintain the household, to bear children and look after them after they’re born. Nowhere in the scriptures does it say that women should be chasing after fancy titles and knowledge. The only knowledge they need is the one we men allow them to have."

Republican Demands Women Stay At Home, Opposes Bill For Funding Girls' Education