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    toothpetardHamilton Nolan
    10/29/15 11:20am

    “the Democrat’s Super PAC.”

    Are they trying to admit reality itself is biased against them?

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      Ex dente leonemtoothpetard
      10/29/15 11:24am

      Reporting the facts is partisan.

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      toothpetardEx dente leonem
      10/29/15 11:27am

      The aide said that [people like us] were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” ... “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

      -Note about ‘the reality-based community’ from the previous GOP administration.



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    DolemiteHamilton Nolan
    10/29/15 12:05pm

    What makes more sense: 1. Republicans are full of BS, and lie profusely. 2. There is a worldwide media conspiracy, linking hundreds of millions of people, hundreds of thousands of media companies from world news, to national news down to your local news station, involving everything from national magazines and newspapers to independent web bloggers, all working in perfect harmony and unison on a daily basis, just to sink the GOP.

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      Worthlessjus10Dolemite
      10/29/15 1:17pm

      Care to point me to the political party that isn't full of shit?

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      DolemiteWorthlessjus10
      10/29/15 1:19pm

      While both have always been full of shit, this current GOP is on a level that can’t even be fathomed. It’s one thing to say things like “I didn’t know I had an email about that”, it’s another to just outright say things like “I don’t have anything to do with that health company that I endorsed and worked for”, or “I saw a video of a baby on the table that was being chopped up for parts and sold.”

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    cepalgHamilton Nolan
    10/29/15 11:21am

    My favorite aspect of the debate was that the moderators were so transparently used to kowtowing whenever someone worth more than them starts talking. These are the CNBC crew. Their job has always been to facilitate angry rich people talking angrily about the woes of being rich.

    And so the second anyone showed them the slightest bit of back-talk, they folded with a focus and intensity normally only found in successes.

    End result was not so much a debate as it was a room full of bickering children. Night and goddamn day with the Dem debate- for all its flaws, at least you could believe the people in that room were adults.

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      flamingolingocepalg
      10/29/15 11:26am

      Yeah, CNBC is basically where the Tea Party movement began. Only Fox would have been a more congenial host to Republicans.

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      GeorgeGeoffersonLivescepalg
      10/29/15 11:32am

      This. This debate was an utter dumpster fire. My family that watched said the same thing. The media may have folded, but the entire thing was poorly executed and made EVERYONE look bad. Not that I’m complaining.

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    WammerHamilton Nolan
    10/29/15 11:16am

    The strategy flies in the face of normal debate tactics—receive question, answer different question generated from your own mind, act incredulous when it is stated that you didn’t answer the question.

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      fondue processWammer
      10/29/15 11:21am

      “You’re dumb and you asked a dumb question so I’m going to ignore you and say something dumb but about a different topic”

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      Straight out of PangaeaWammer
      10/29/15 11:26am

      No one within the GOP wants feedback from the masses. They want validation and adoration from their loyal supporters and nothing more.

      See President Bush’s town hall meetings where local security “screened” and removed any potentially disagreeable element.

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    stacyinbeanHamilton Nolan
    10/29/15 11:51am

    I loved Chris Christie’s “Why are we talking about an economic issue when ISIS exists?” Well first, it was a debate about the economy and second, oddly enough, most adults can think about more than one thing a time!

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      Nodulousstacyinbean
      10/29/15 12:07pm

      He was talking about fantasy football. Hate to defend that blowhard but it what it is.

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      stacyinbeanNodulous
      10/29/15 12:08pm

      They were talking about regulating a multi-million dollar industry that is growing exponentially, how is that not economics?

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    Andrew MochulskyHamilton Nolan
    10/29/15 11:45am

    Last night was another example of a horrid truth: for all their appeals to the stupidest voters among us, Republican strategists are fucking brilliant. Seriously, there is not one meta-strategy that Democrats have trotted out in the past 50 years that even remotely compares to the anti-media messaging wielded by literally every single Republican political figure. It is concise, quickly internalized, easily regurgitated, and essentially unfalsifiable. It is the ne plus ultra of bullshit, and you gotta respect that for what it is.

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      Donald PumpAndrew Mochulsky
      10/29/15 6:10pm

      “Republican strategists are fucking brilliant.”

      Were. Were brilliant. The last 30-40 years the GOP has been on point and they have done an *amazing* job at shaping public discourse on all kinds of things like taxes and social programs.

      They are behind the times though and they know it. The GOP that exists today is loudly flailing to maintain it’s relevancy and hold onto voters.

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      Andrew MochulskyDonald Pump
      10/29/15 6:33pm

      Yeah, they sure are flailing with their paltry amount of governorships, the lower chamber of Congress, state senates, state assemblies...

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    OMG!PONIES!Hamilton Nolan
    10/29/15 11:17am

    No politician ever went broke betting on the stupidity of the American voting public.

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      reasonmethisOMG!PONIES!
      10/29/15 11:34am

      “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” - Winston Churchill

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    Orlandu7Hamilton Nolan
    10/29/15 11:24am

    All they had to do was just have a button to mute the mics. You ask a question and someone immediately goes off-topic? Mute them and repeat the question and ask them to restart their answer. Repeat as necessary. Makes them look like idiots if they try to keep giving generic stump speech answers and keeps the moderators in control.

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      Michael ZaiteOrlandu7
      10/29/15 12:11pm

      You assume this was an event designed to NOT encourage this kind of behavior. None of these monsters would ever agree to be on a properly moderated panel.

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    SoapBoxcarWillieHamilton Nolan
    10/29/15 11:58am

    On the bright side, there seems to be broad agreement that the middle class has suffered wage stagnation. However, they didn’t really go into the fact that there has been an economic recovery (even if anemic) but that the gains have overwhelmingly gone to the top 1% of earners. Instead, they blamed Obamacare for raising taxes on the middle class, rather than for not raising taxes on the highest earners or raising the minimum wage (which would lift all other wages and salaries).

    I get that there you can take 2 families each earning $500k/yr and they can have drastically different standards of living based on where they live. The cost of living for a family with kids in Manhattan vs. Atlanta, for example—in NYC you can live well but may end up living at the edge of your means (and the state and city taxes are pretty high), whereas in Atlanta you can live like a King and still retire with some savings. Raising taxes on people at the $500k level might have some negative consequences (in some places more than others) like having to take their kids out of private school, or might force middle income people to leave the city (more than they’re already being forced to by rising real estate prices). I know those sound like some Rich People Problems, but my point is that there has to be some level of earnings above which a 50% tax rate is uncontroversial: $5 Million, $9.4 Million (the threshold for being in the top 0.1%), where a tax rate of 50% on all income would still produce over $100 Billion in additional revenue per year.

    We have one of the world’s highest per-capita GDP of any non-petroleum country (like Norway, Qatar, etc) and yet we have failing schools and crumbling infrastructure. Something’s gotta give, but all the Republican candidates want to do is gut entitlements and lower taxes for everyone just like St. Reagan would have done.

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      ElChupinazoSoapBoxcarWillie
      10/29/15 1:21pm

      This. I do not understand why someone’s tax plan hasn’t been “bla bla bla simplify, oh and add another fucking tax bracket or two.” It is so plainly obvious. I don’t know when our current tax system was written, but I’d be willing to bet that they couldn’t conceive of so many people making the astronomical incomes they are now. Why the hell do we stop at 39.6%? Hell, let’s go 43%, 47% and 50%! I guess we could stop at 50% if the idea of the government taking over half of every dollar someone earns over 1 bazillion or whatever is just too much to bear.

      I guess it’ll never happen, because a) there are very rich people who would not like that, and b) the not-rich republican voter base opposes the government anyway and are boot-lickers of the highest order when it comes to “hard working” rich people.

      A guy can dream, though.

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      SoapBoxcarWillieElChupinazo
      10/29/15 4:13pm

      Yes, and as much as any of the guys on stage apparently hate the federal government that they want to be the leader of, how many of them have, as governors, senators and congressmen, tried to get as much federal money as possible for their state or district?

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    Redmanprime7Hamilton Nolan
    10/29/15 11:17am

    It’s pretty selfish of the media to ask questions that would require answers that people above a third grade intellect could understand.

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      fondue processRedmanprime7
      10/29/15 11:22am

      I propose that the next debate be a three-hour high-stakes episode of Are You Smarter than a Fifth Third Grader?

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