Danny Bateman

Just thought that exact thought earlier. Ted Cruz finds lots of things interesting.

His followers are a load of mouth breathers. They wouldn't know substance and introspection if it whacked them over the head. It amazes me that people can just hear the stuff he says and lap it up without a second thought. Someone described it aptly earlier today: "They don't care about substance or policies or credentials, they just want someone who will burn Washington to the ground, and they think he'll do it."

Medicaid or Medicare? I thought the consensus on Medicaid was that it didn't reimburse near as well as the rates of other insurers and therefore didn't cover very many things. Regarding Medicare, I shadowed with a PT clinic where the wife handled insurance, and she said Medicare was her favorite program to process because with a supplemental plan, damn near everything was covered and it was relatively straightforward. Medicare might be what I was talking about. I don't know a lot about it. I'm talking about old people government health aid that we already have Gotcha! That's Medicare. Haha. Medicaid is the government insurance for lower income people. What I said above still applies. Medicare does need some cost control measures, and I know for a fact Hillary has a proposal for that. Don't know about anyone else. What the hell is Trump rambling about? "Audit... Very large... polls... Gonna win." He's like a mad lib at this point.

Medicaid or Medicare? I thought the consensus on Medicaid was that it didn't reimburse near as well as the rates of other insurers and therefore didn't cover very many things. Regarding Medicare, I shadowed with a PT clinic where the wife handled insurance, and she said Medicare was her favorite program to process because with a supplemental plan, damn near everything was covered and it was relatively straightforward.

Rubio just made Trump look like a punk. That was fantastic.

Kinda puts a tarnish on that entire platform, doesn't it? Another one of those issues he's rife with waiting to be used against him in the general.

Sandoval saying he's not interested in a spot on the Supreme Court. Interesting gambit on the President's part, but it may have just fizzled out. I think I believe that he wouldn't have actually nominated Sandoval anyway, though, and this was maybe just an attempt to show that the Republican Congress is willing to eschew their own party in an attempt to be obstructive and attempt to wait for a larger gain were they to gain the White House. I'm sure they feel confident that President Trump will appoint "the best people" to fill any SC vacancies. I hope this blows up in their faces.

Would you vote for him if he got the nomination? I think that's the issue here. He clearly is getting a lot of the Christian vote in the primaries. Or at least the "Christian" vote. No. I will not vote for Trump in any circumstance. Same thing goes for Cruz and Hillary and Sanders. I think something to keep in mind here is that we are talking about strictly republican primaries with an extremely poor field. To some extent, primary voters have to pick one of the morons. They could pick no one. But the Republican primaries are having record turnouts. I have no idea what the Christian % of the primary voters is though. I'm also Christian, for the record, and don't understand why so many fellow Christians are staunchly in support of the Republican party except the ones who list abortion as their most important or only cause. Moreover, I think it's rather disgusting the way Falwell and Robertson are going out of their way to be buddy-buddy with Trump when he wants to do an interview with them. I'm going to stop short of questioning the man's faith (taking Jeb!'s lead ), but I wish a significant figure in the faith community would stand up and call him on his deplorable, un-Christian sentiments. Like the Pope? I don't know what the solution is, and I really don't think it matters. I think people have made up their minds about him, and the more they are questioned, the more staunch their support becomes. It's frustrating. Whoa. That's a pretty bad oversight on my part. I hear that guy carries some weight. Anywho, the Pope had to be baited into the subject by a reporter. I'm glad that he came out and said something, because I think he made a salient point. It appears no one is going to just come out and flat out say "Trump is acting like a dick, that's not Christian." Trump is playing with a bit of an advantage because people don't usually like to call someone on hypocrisy if it involves faith. I have no such reservations, however, because I think he's on multiple occasions espoused views that are contrary to my core view of what it means to be a Christian.

Net Worth: Between $3 and $10 billion. Somehow I can't force myself to care. Especially when he's freely using his pulpit to spread bigotry and incite violence. I didn't say you cared I said what you said was false. My point wasn't that it was false. Just that the concept of needing to pat any of the Trumps on the back for "lost wages" is ridiculous.

Zoogs, good point about Schumer. I can clearly see the difference between McConnell simply denying any of the Repubs will play ball with any Obama nominee and Schumer attempting to advise that Bush appoint a moderate. Initially, I viewed Schumer and the Dems as attempting to force Bush's hand and dictate the terms of the candidate. But I guess that is the Senate's job... to advise the President on whom they think would be a suitable nominee. That definitely falls under the umbrella of "advice and consent." Regardless. on the surface this seems like it should be a rather cut and dried process, but it certainly seems there's quite a good bit of wiggle room for people to inject their own personal best interpretation of the Constitution and their best vision moving forward.

If you understood that what you believe is actually false, then your confusion would be solved. Christians by and large definitely do not staunchly support the Republican party. Rather they somewhat staunchly anti-support Dems since Dems do more damage to them than Reps do. Christians with some wisdom, so, some but not all, staunchly support almost no one since they understand that all people are sinners, power corrupts, etc. Staunch support typically indicates "faith in man" which is a very bad idea. You should find some smarter Christians to hang out with. Good post, Sargon. Very grounded.

Net Worth: Between $3 and $10 billion. Somehow I can't force myself to care. Especially when he's freely using his pulpit to spread bigotry and incite violence.

Just heard what I previously thought to be a sane analyst laud the Trump family for their sacrifices in "going all in" to help Donald's campaign. My reaction:

Would you vote for him if he got the nomination? I think that's the issue here. He clearly is getting a lot of the Christian vote in the primaries. Or at least the "Christian" vote. No. I will not vote for Trump in any circumstance. Same thing goes for Cruz and Hillary and Sanders. I think something to keep in mind here is that we are talking about strictly republican primaries with an extremely poor field. To some extent, primary voters have to pick one of the morons. They could pick no one. But the Republican primaries are having record turnouts. I have no idea what the Christian % of the primary voters is though. I'm also Christian, for the record, and don't understand why so many fellow Christians are staunchly in support of the Republican party except the ones who list abortion as their most important or only cause. Moreover, I think it's rather disgusting the way Falwell and Robertson are going out of their way to be buddy-buddy with Trump when he wants to do an interview with them. I'm going to stop short of questioning the man's faith (taking Jeb!'s lead ), but I wish a significant figure in the faith community would stand up and call him on his deplorable, un-Christian sentiments.

That one is actually pretty good. I'd give it about 3 out of 4 barks.

Shameless copy from a fellow on Reddit by the name of IUHoosier_KCCO: IMO, the Constitution isn't explicit enough regarding the process whereby the Senate decides to "advise and consent" on a nominee. This allows the Senate to be able to interpret it at their whim in order to tip things in favor of their party. Obviously McConnell seems like a hypocrite. But the Schumer and the Dems did the same thing in 2007, and Obama was a part of it. Amending the Constitution would be the simple fix, but in partisan politics, nothing is so simple.

Cruz has lots of money behind him and I could see him continuing the delusion that he can actually win for quite a while. CNN was saying this morning that apparently he's reached a boiling point and will now aggressively go after Trump instead of "not responding in kind." So, that could be interesting. Screw that, Bernie would try to put the bill on the tab of the 1%.

I think you might be right, and it'd be funny in a schadenfreude kind of way for about 2 seconds, and then it would be tremendously sad. Repubs better be careful here. If they do ignore an Obama nominee and the Dems do manage to win the election, they're going to get an even more liberal judge than he would likely nominate.

I'd like to add that any anecdotal evidence about past successes of ANYONE financially need to be viewed thru the lens of THAT era. The money and company Trump inherited from his father in the late 60's/early 70's were worth a hell of a lot more back then. When he talks about "a small loan of a million dollars," is worth about $7 million today when you adjust for inflation. I have tremendous respect for anyone who has bettered themselves through schooling and/or hard work to earn financial security in life. But to act like everyone has the tools to do so, or whether Donald Trump is some kind of financial savant for how he's grown his wealth, is legitimately absurd. Zoogs is trying to argue that not everyone has the tools and support they need to thrive or even live a decent quality of life. I'm by no means an uneducated or blue collar guy-- I work hard and I'm going back to school in the fall to get my doctorate-- but I definitely think not everyone has the same opportunity to pursue education and are instead thrust into working multiple dead end jobs to try and support themselves and their families. I just think those people deserve a decent life, too.

Glad you're interested, Landlord. There's a "Goldwater rule" that ordinarily prohibits mental health professionals from making such speculations without personally examining the patient and getting a real read on the state of the mental health. After all, Trump could just be acting. But he's so over the top that said rule hasn't stopped a variety of mental health professionals from speculating anyway.

I don't know if anyone cares, but I have my bachelor's in neuroscience, a great deal of which involved psychology coursework. I've a very, very strong inkling that Trump is has an undiagnosed case of narcissistic personality disorder. Here's the list of symptoms from the latest DSM, if anyone's interested. I can't ascertain how much of this is just an act, but they're literally all there. Right down to the intimacy ones with his multiple wives.

What the hell is Ted Cruz trying to accomplish? He must surround himself with people just as greasy as he is.

Here's my issue with issues like gay marriage. I am perfectly fine with people changing their minds on issues. Heck, I have changed my mind on many issues throughout my life. Other politicians have changed their minds on issues. So.....it is clear that at some point, Hillary changed her mind on gay marriage. That isn't that big of a deal. BUT....when she now comes out and says...."I have supported gay marriage all my life"....That is absolute total BS and is just an example of a politician saying whatever it takes to get votes even if it clearly can be seen as a total lie. And...no, she is not the only one that does that. I just wish a politician would come out and say "hey, at one point in my life I was against gay marriage. However, since then, I have listened and learned more about the issue and have changed my mind." That would garner one heck of a lot more respect from me than the crap she (and others) spew. Do you have a source for the bolded? I'm a big Hillary supporter this go around, I follow her campaign pretty closely, and I'm not familiar with her ever having represented the situation that way. On the Issues seems to tell a different story: Then you're either incapable of trying to understand perspectives other than your own, or you're unwilling. I can easily understand and grasp why someone would honestly vote for any candidate running on either side. It's not that at all. The reason I can't understand is because she's a lying, manipulative criminal who should be locked up in a penitentiary but somehow isn't because of political favor. With pretty much every other candidate, I can understand why they'd potentially vote for them. For example: Bernie - If they don't understand finance and don't believe in free enterprise. If they believe in taking money away from people who have earned it and giving it to people who haven't. People who vote for Sanders view him as a Robin Hood-type figure. Trump - If they believe that he will get the wall built, bring back thousands of jobs, leverage China to order North Korea to stand down, shut down Obamacare, etc. Someone who will be firm on issues both at home and abroad and won't back down. Cruz - Another one that I'm really not sure about, honestly. He comes across to me as a liar and will say whatever he thinks will get him votes. Rubio - Lots of people - If they're impressed with his stances on Christianity and religion in general. If they like the smooth talking, intelligent sounding spokesperson that he could potentially be. Jeb - If they're not appalled by the idea of the Bush family being back in the office, and if they agree with his stances on issues that differ with Trump. Carson - If they want a person who will be (in my opinion) the best person at delegating responsibility. I think he's in over his head and would get pushed around a lot, but I think his intelligence and being very level-headed are a great strength of his. Kasich - I'll honestly defer on him and say that I honestly don't know much about him. So as you can see, I can absolutely see why people would vote for a majority of candidates. Just not Hillary (and Cruz). I'm going to assume that when you talk about Hillary being a criminal that your complaint is about the ongoing email server thing. We can't make people care about her sending classified data from unsecured email servers and plenty of people simply don't understand what the big deal is. There are also a lot of people that simply see it as a smear campaign and after hearing about Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi for the last 18 months it's hard to not fault them. Hey...it has to be a "Vast right wing conspiracy" right? I'm curious why nobody seems to be sending the wolves after Colin Powell or Condi Rice, because they were guilty of the exact same thing as Clinton. The majority of Dems do not care about the email issue. Obviously the vast majority of the GOP does. Independents seem to as well at about a 50% clip. We'll see how that plays out in the general. Email stats from poll (p.7) I swear, I'm not going after you today, BRB. Just a couple thoughts.

Keep on dreamin', boys.

I seriously don't get what anyone could possibly see in Hillary Clinton to think she'd ever be a quality president. Other than some idiot rooting for history being made with the first female president, I have no idea why anyone would vote for this slimy piece of trash... It's all relative. This is how most on the left view Trump, so it goes both ways.