Republican Presidential Debate

[Oraisteach]

Anyone watch it?  I missed the earlier, children's table affair, but caught the prime time spectacle. So, who was the winner?  I suppose it depends on what you're looking for.  For me, Kasich came across as the most compassionate and reasonable, but then again I'm not the GOP's target audience.  I don't think a lot of Republicans want compassionate and reasonable.  Trump just reinforced how much of a bombastic buffoon he is.  While Carson came across as a super smart ignoramus, Rubio seemed to have a decent grasp of the issues.  Huckabee was a down-home humorous evangelical, but I don't think he did anything to expand his voter count.  Christie was a more appealing Trump--confrontational with the ability to think on his feet.  I don't think Paul, Cruz or Walker did anything to woo new support.  Bush didn't hurt his cause by refusing to get into a mud-slinging match with Trump and so bolstered his chance to be the eventual front-runner.  He, with Kasich, in my view, came across as the most presidential.  None of the candidates screwed up so as to eliminate themselves from the race, but Trump guaranteed that anyone with a brain will not vote for him no matter how much raw meet he throws to the Neanderthals.

[The Iceman]

Anyone watch it?  I missed the earlier, children's table affair, but caught the prime time spectacle. So, who was the winner?  I suppose it depends on what you're looking for.  For me, Kasich came across as the most compassionate and reasonable, but then again I'm not the GOP's target audience.  I don't think a lot of Republicans want compassionate and reasonable.  Trump just reinforced how much of a bombastic buffoon he is.  While Carson came across as a super smart ignoramus, Rubio seemed to have a decent grasp of the issues.  Huckabee was a down-home humorous evangelical, but I don't think he did anything to expand his voter count.  Christie was a more appealing Trump--confrontational with the ability to think on his feet.  I don't think Paul, Cruz or Walker did anything to woo new support.  Bush didn't hurt his cause by refusing to get into a mud-slinging match with Trump and so bolstered his chance to be the eventual front-runner.  He, with Kasich, in my view, came across as the most presidential.  None of the candidates screwed up so as to eliminate themselves from the race, but Trump guaranteed that anyone with a brain will not vote for him no matter how much raw meet he throws to the Neanderthals.

Have you ever seen the film  - Idiocracy? I think America is slowly descending in to it. I believe people will vote for Trump. Stupid people will vote for Trump. They want loud, in your face, over the top and boy does he deliver.

I liked Bush  - as you say he didn't stand out but he didn't hurt himself. Maybe I'm swayed by him and Christie because they're both Catholics! Like you said  - it all depends what you're looking for!

[J70]

Kasich has always seemed reasonable, going back to his time on Fox News and in congress. Christie is too much of a bully and a preening grandstander for me. Its as if he can't abide being held to account by voters to have the temerity to question him.

I was actually impressed by the Fox moderators in the bit I saw (except for the last god question, but I guess that's their audience). Asked some pointed questions, especially of Trump, and he couldn't handle it.

Did the birth cert stuff come up? Given the GOP's and especially  Trumps shameless trolling on the issue when it came to Obama, there's been little word of it WRT Cruz.

[muppet]

As an exercise in observing a group of narcissists try to outdo each other, it was fascinating.

But considering it is supposed to be an exercise to select a US presidential candidate, it was terrifying.

[stew]

Trump is an arrogant w**ker and is dead man walking, he will not get close to running against the Clintonator, you just know she has the dems ticket in the bag.

[stew]

As an exercise in observing a group of narcissists try to outdo each other, it was fascinating.

But considering it is supposed to be an exercise to select a US presidential candidate, it was terrifying.

And the worst is yet to come, we havent even seen those bastard democrats yet.

This administration is one of the scariest administrations of all time!

[muppet]

Trump is an arrogant w**ker and is dead man walking, he will not get close to running against the Clintonator, you just know she has the dems ticket in the bag.

I dunno, money talks:

[muppet]

As an exercise in observing a group of narcissists try to outdo each other, it was fascinating.

But considering it is supposed to be an exercise to select a US presidential candidate, it was terrifying.

And the worst is yet to come, we havent even seen those b**tard democrats yet.

This administration is one of the scariest administrations of all time!

Yes, the bastards killed Bin Laden, crippled Putin and Iran, and drove down US unemployment every year since 2010.

[armaghniac]

Good government requires good opposition, and that is often in short supply.

As to the candidates, can you imagine an Irish candidate making a video like this?
https://youtu.be/EaZGaJrd3x8

[stew]

As an exercise in observing a group of narcissists try to outdo each other, it was fascinating.

But considering it is supposed to be an exercise to select a US presidential candidate, it was terrifying.

And the worst is yet to come, we havent even seen those b**tard democrats yet.

This administration is one of the scariest administrations of all time!

Yes, the b**tards killed Bin Laden, crippled Putin and Iran, and drove down US unemployment every year since 2010.

Crippled Iran??? You are having a laugh, the ballix has caved to them and opened the door for them to do tremendous damage in the region!

[stew]

As an exercise in observing a group of narcissists try to outdo each other, it was fascinating.

But considering it is supposed to be an exercise to select a US presidential candidate, it was terrifying.

And the worst is yet to come, we havent even seen those b**tard democrats yet.

This administration is one of the scariest administrations of all time!

Yes, the b**tards killed Bin Laden, crippled Putin and Iran, and drove down US unemployment every year since 2010.

Food for thought!

To no one's surprise, the nuclear talks with Iran that were supposed to produce an agreement by tomorrow have been extended. Critics of the nuclear deal sought by President Obama fear that this will be a dangerous deal because of too many one sided U.S. concessions to Iran.

These include allowing Iran to enrich uranium and build advanced enrichment centrifuges while an agreement is in force. Iran will keep all of its nuclear infrastructure, including a plutonium-producing heavy–water reactor. (It is supposed to be re-engineered to produce less plutonium.)

Iran also will be allowed to keep its entire stockpile of the uranium it's already enriched (although it's supposed to dilute it down to a form less-readily usable to make a bomb). Nor does Iran have to come clean about its past nuclear weapons work. And the U.S. reportedly has now pledged to provide Iran technical assistance to further develop its nuclear program.

Israeli news sources over the weekend claimed that the U.S. has caved on inspections of nuclear facilities in a final agreement, a report that is consistent with other reports this month about such a concession.

But this story actually gets worse. In a June 29 Wall Street Journal article, columnist Jay Solomon wrote that the Obama administration has been secretly making concessions to Iran since 2009 to convince it to begin multilateral talks on its nuclear program.

These concessions included the release of four Iranians detained in the United States and the United Kingdom; two convicted arms smugglers, a retired senior diplomat and a scientist convicted of illegal exports to Iran. The U.S. also agreed to increase U.S. visas for Iranian students. According to Solomon, these concessions were arranged in secret by Oman.

Iran also asked the United States to blacklist groups hostile to Iran. The Obama administration reportedly replied to this request by sanctioning a Pakistani military group known as Jundullah which had attacked Shi'ite mosques in eastern Iran, killing hundreds.

According to the Journal article, the Obama administration did not agree to sanction other groups hostile to the Iranian regime such as a pro-monarchy group in Los Angeles. The MEK (Mujahedeen-e Khalq and the National Council of Resistance of Iran or NCRI, the political umbrella group to which it belongs) had already been put on the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list in 1997 and 2003, respectively, at the request of Mohammad Khatami, a previous Iranian president.

The Wall Street Journal noted in a June 14, 2015 editorial, however, that the Obama administration cut funding to a moderate Shi'ite group in Lebanon, Hayya Bina, just after a framework agreement for a nuclear agreement was announced on April 2, 2015. Since Hayya Bina supposedly offered a moderate alternative to Hizballah, Iran's terrorist proxy in Lebanon, the Journal editorial board suggested this was secret concession to Iran.

The editorial also noted that on the day after the announcement of the framework agreement, the U.S. Treasury Department removed Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, a Dubai-based Sri Lankan businessman, from a list of persons sanctioned in 2004 as part of the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network. This network provided secret assistance to the nuclear programs of Iran, Libya and North Korea.

What other concessions did the Obama administration make to get a nuclear deal with Iran? The overall picture that's emerging suggests an even broader understanding: to what extent has the Obama White House agreed to Iranian regional hegemony, perhaps a dominance secured by a nuclear capability? How much worse does this story have to get before Congress puts an end to this dangerous farce?

Clare M. Lopez is the Vice President for Research & Analysis at the Center for Security Policy.

[muppet]

As an exercise in observing a group of narcissists try to outdo each other, it was fascinating.

But considering it is supposed to be an exercise to select a US presidential candidate, it was terrifying.

And the worst is yet to come, we havent even seen those b**tard democrats yet.

This administration is one of the scariest administrations of all time!

Yes, the b**tards killed Bin Laden, crippled Putin and Iran, and drove down US unemployment every year since 2010.

Crippled Iran??? You are having a laugh, the ballix has caved to them and opened the door for them to do tremendous damage in the region!

The Iranian economy is crippled. That is why Iran came to the table.

[stew]

The Democrats future President? The mind boggles!

The FBI investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's unsecured email account is not just a fact-finding venture — it's a criminal probe, sources told The Post on Wednesday.
The feds are investigating to what extent Clinton relied on her home server and other private devices to send and store classified documents, according to a federal source with knowledge of the inquiry.
"It's definitely a criminal probe," said the source. "I'm not sure why they're not calling it a criminal probe.
"The DOJ [Department of Justice] and FBI can conduct civil investigations in very limited circumstances," but that's not what this is, the source stressed. "In this case, a security violation would lead to criminal charges. Maybe DOJ is trying to protect her campaign."
Clinton's camp has downplayed the inquiry as civil and fact-finding in nature. Clinton herself has said she is "confident" that she never knowingly sent or received anything that was classified via her private email account.
But the inspector general for the intelligence community has told Congress that of 40 Clinton emails randomly reviewed as a sample of her correspondence as secretary of state, four contained classified information.
If it is proved that Clinton knowingly sent, received or stored classified information in an unauthorized location, she risks prosecution under the same misdemeanor federal security statute used to prosecute former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus, said former federal prosecutor Bradley Simon.
The statute — which was also used to prosecute Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, in 2005 — is rarely used and would be subject to the discretion of the attorney general.
Still, "They didn't hesitate to charge Gen. Petraeus with doing the same thing, downloading documents that are classified," Simon said. "The threshold under the statute is not high — they only need to prove there was an unauthorized removal and retention" of classified material, he said.
Clinton's lawyer in the email probe is longtime Bill Clinton attorney David Kendall, who also repped Petraeus, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to providing classified documents to his mistress biographer.
"My guess is they're looking to see if there's been either any breach of that data that's gone into the wrong hands [in Clinton's case], through their counter-intelligence group, or they are looking to see if a crime has been committed," said Makin Delrahim, former chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, who served as a deputy assistant secretary in the Bush DOJ.
"They're not in the business of providing advisory security services," Delrahim said of the FBI. "This is real."
The Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[stew]

As an exercise in observing a group of narcissists try to outdo each other, it was fascinating.

But considering it is supposed to be an exercise to select a US presidential candidate, it was terrifying.

And the worst is yet to come, we havent even seen those b**tard democrats yet.

This administration is one of the scariest administrations of all time!

Yes, the b**tards killed Bin Laden, crippled Putin and Iran, and drove down US unemployment every year since 2010.

Crippled Iran??? You are having a laugh, the ballix has caved to them and opened the door for them to do tremendous damage in the region!

The Iranian economy is crippled. That is why Iran came to the table.

Yes, thanks to sanctions imposed upon them, not just by the USA, cant be giving the Prez too much credit.

So since they had to come to the table, why did he concede ground time after time after time to the point that they are still able to become a major threat once more in the region?

The man is soft and in my opinion he canot be gone soon enough, I wish to God there was a viable third option because both parties suck and are devoid of any true leaders who can take the place forward it seems.

[muppet]

As an exercise in observing a group of narcissists try to outdo each other, it was fascinating.

But considering it is supposed to be an exercise to select a US presidential candidate, it was terrifying.

And the worst is yet to come, we havent even seen those b**tard democrats yet.

This administration is one of the scariest administrations of all time!

Yes, the b**tards killed Bin Laden, crippled Putin and Iran, and drove down US unemployment every year since 2010.

Crippled Iran??? You are having a laugh, the ballix has caved to them and opened the door for them to do tremendous damage in the region!

The Iranian economy is crippled. That is why Iran came to the table.

Yes, thanks to sanctions imposed upon them,

Is that serious?

There is no smilie and I don't normally associate you with satire.