ted cruz is a sociopath

[MakeItRain]

Killing civilians seems like a pretty good way to make others interested in terrorist resistance against ppl killing innocent ppl.

Yes, fighting the terrorists is what the terrorists want! Again, some civilian deaths are inevitable. War, and particularly these types of wars where the enemy deliberately hids among civilians, requires a balancing between inflicting maximum damage on the enemy and keeping civilian casualties as low as possible. In my opinion, Obama has erred much too far towards avoiding civilian casualties, to the point that his air campaign has been relatively ineffective.

You can't have it both ways. Some republicans, and I realize that this is mostly rhetoric and that frustrates me, act as if there are massive complexes of ISIS facilities in suburbs of these places. So if you want to do what the republican candidates say we should be doing you are going to have an overwhelming number of civilian casualties. Even in Iraq, when Saddam did have stand alone military complexes that we targeted, we still killed 4000 people in six months. It's accepted that the ISIS infrastructure is not nearly as organized and much more spread throughout the general populace. So then you're left with this pumpkin headed bitch saying on multiple occasions that he would carpet bomb this region and find out if sand glows in the dark, then when pressed on it backtracks, when that's exactly what his policy proposes. If Cruz is as smart as pubs say he is he has to know that dropping thousands of bombs on Raqqa would result in tens of thousands of civilian casualties and would likely result in an entire region with Russian support galvanizing against us and we certainly would not have the support of anyone else other than Israel. So does Cruz not know this or is he pandering to the majority of his voting base that are too stupid and/or filled with blind hate for brown people to take 10 minutes to read?

Ok. Take a breath. Balance. It's about balance. I don't think Obama's balance is working very well.

It doesn't appear so but my frustration stems from the fact that no one is willing to say what the right thing is and it's that this is a new threat and we don't quite know how to go about dealing with this without alienating some partners in the middle east and potentially creating more enemies. The prudent thing to do is to for now keep hitting targets that we know exists and just give the intelligence time to work before we can do more, but the sad state of American politics does not suffer prudence and patience. Jeb has essentially acknowledged this, so has Lindsey Graham but who cares. I'm fairly sure Marco, Grimace, Carly, Kasich, and Rand all know it too but are too big of cowards to admit it. BTW if this was a republican administration in an election year I'm certain that the republicans and a few democrats would still do the same thing.

[sys]

if you want more bombs, you need more targets.  if you want more targets, you need people on the ground identifying those targets.  you can't see everything from a satellite.  if someone is talking about increasing the bombing without sending ground forces, they're either engaging in political theatre or lying.

[CNS]

How do you fight a religious idea without killing all those that relate to it or are a small step away from relating to it?  Do we want to do that?  I don't think we do.  The best thing we could do is get to the areas that ISIS hasn't gotten to yet, and make the ppl in those places not want ISIS in control.  How we do that?  No idea.  I know mostly nothing about the daily culture, living conditions, etc of those in the middle east.  I don't think we win against ISIS.  The ppl of the Middle East have to do it.  We can help by improving their conditions to live in and thus remove discontent, or we can help in other ways, but bombing a city full of ppl isn't going to work.  The surrounding states that haven't been taken over should have the lead role in this as they have the highest risk as of right now.  We should be supporting those states.

Bombing is such a lazy response and a crutch of stupid pandering fuckface politicians.

[MakeItRain]

if you want more bombs, you need more targets.  if you want more targets, you need people on the ground identifying those targets.  you can't see everything from a satellite.  if someone is talking about increasing the bombing without sending ground forces, they're either engaging in political theatre or lying.

  yep, not politically prudent to say that though, we gotta kill isis without sending our boys over there Obama could do it if he wasn't a total pussy

[_33]

All politics are political theatre.  Nothing is real.  Nothing will change.  Your passion would be put to much better use almost anywhere else.

[Yard Dog]

Prepare yourself, this might be the best thing you see this holiday season:

[bucket]

Prepare yourself, this might be the best thing you see this holiday season:

He's going to great lengths to relate to the American people. This and what he's doing with Samantha Bee (is that right?). It's smart and most of this population is dumb enough to buy into it. Stay tuned!

[DQ12]

Well.  That was delightful.  Odd, but delightful.

[wetwillie]

one of the cubes on the end of a hall i walk by most days at work has a huge Cruz 2016 sticker on it.  He is gaining traction

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

Props to Team Cruz.

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

Why Trump - and I think to maybe an even greater extent, Cruz - can probably beat Hillary: they'll bring a ton of angry folks to the polls who either don't usually vote or have voted Democrat in the past. If Hillary loses even a couple rust belt states like PA, OH, and MI, she's toast. Cruz might be better situated than Trump to both bring these folks into the fold and hold onto the "establishment" vote.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/upshot/donald-trumps-strongest-supporters-a-certain-kind-of-democrat.html

[Kat Kid]

Why Trump - and I think to maybe an even greater extent, Cruz - can probably beat Hillary: they'll bring a ton of angry folks to the polls who either don't usually vote or have voted Democrat in the past. If Hillary loses even a couple rust belt states like PA, OH, and MI, she's toast. Cruz might be better situated than Trump to both bring these folks into the fold and hold onto the "establishment" vote.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/upshot/donald-trumps-strongest-supporters-a-certain-kind-of-democrat.html

That is a lot of hopeful thinking.  We don't even know yet if Trump can turn out primary voters.  The demographics for anyone in the Republican field beating Hillary are redic bad.

Let's say Hillary loses mean -15 is there any doubt that she outperforms any Republican candidate in the field by at least 15-20 points?  This election is not interesting in the least.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/158588/gender-gap-2012-vote-largest-gallup-history.aspx

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

I'm not talking about the primaries. I agree that Trump's support may not materialize at the primaries, which is what the article suggests.

As for the general, I think Hillary will perform worse than the other Democrats in the rust belt states, and I believe a hard-liner on immigration enforcement will perform better than recent Republicans in this states. Combine this factors and a Trump or Cruz could very well win OH, PA, and perhaps Michigan, which could very well decide the election.

[star seed 7]

That's a lot of hoping for a pessimist

[wetwillie]

I didn't know Nate silver posted on this blog, this is all starting to make sense now.

[sys]

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21679176-ted-cruz-firebrand-republican-peddles-self-serving-myth-about-presidential

[8manpick]

If Cruz wasn't a religious extremist he would be a far more attractive candidate

[wetwillie]

Lol wut?

[CNS]

No he wouldn't

[star seed 7]

If Cruz wasn't a religious extremist he would be a far more attractive candidate

How I feel about rubio

[MakeItRain]

I'm not talking about the primaries. I agree that Trump's support may not materialize at the primaries, which is what the article suggests.

As for the general, I think Hillary will perform worse than the other Democrats in the rust belt states, and I believe a hard-liner on immigration enforcement will perform better than recent Republicans in this states. Combine this factors and a Trump or Cruz could very well win OH, PA, and perhaps Michigan, which could very well decide the election.

Who in the hell in those states do you think would vote for Obama but not Hillary?

[MakeItRain]

If Cruz wasn't a religious extremist he would be a far more attractive candidate

But that's what he is, that and being a complete bad person. It's like saying that if Bernie Sanders looked like Marco Rubio he'd be up 20%.

[Fake Sugar Dick (WARNING, NOT THE REAL SUGAR DICK!)]

If Cruz wasn't a religious extremist he would be a far more attractive candidate

Agree

[Fake Sugar Dick (WARNING, NOT THE REAL SUGAR DICK!)]

If libtards think Cruz is a sociopath, that probably means he's really honest. Which means I may consider getting over the religious stuff.

[Fake Sugar Dick (WARNING, NOT THE REAL SUGAR DICK!)]

Why Trump - and I think to maybe an even greater extent, Cruz - can probably beat Hillary: they'll bring a ton of angry folks to the polls who either don't usually vote or have voted Democrat in the past. If Hillary loses even a couple rust belt states like PA, OH, and MI, she's toast. Cruz might be better situated than Trump to both bring these folks into the fold and hold onto the "establishment" vote.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/upshot/donald-trumps-strongest-supporters-a-certain-kind-of-democrat.html

That is a lot of hopeful thinking.  We don't even know yet if Trump can turn out primary voters.  The demographics for anyone in the Republican field beating Hillary are redic bad.

Let's say Hillary loses mean -15 is there any doubt that she outperforms any Republican candidate in the field by at least 15-20 points?  This election is not interesting in the least.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/158588/gender-gap-2012-vote-largest-gallup-history.aspx

Rubio and Cruz are both polling ahead of clinton, which is saying something at this juncture