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Let’s Spend a Day on the Campaign Trail With Our Presidential Candidates

Mother Jones

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Just for the record, here’s what Hillary Clinton was doing today in the wake of the Brussels bombings: talking about combating terrorism at a roundtable in Los Angeles.

And here’s what our Republican presidential hopefuls were doing: in between panicked demands for surveilling Muslim neighborhoods that even the NYPD rolled its collective eyes at, Donald Trump was lobbing juvenile insults at Ted Cruz’s wife and Cruz was calling Trump a “sniveling coward.”

Remind me again: which party is it that takes national security seriously?

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Let’s Spend a Day on the Campaign Trail With Our Presidential Candidates

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Donald Trump’s Greatest Hits With the WaPo Editorial Board

Mother Jones

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I’ve had Donald Trump’s interview with the Washington Post editorial board open in a tab for several days now, and I suppose I should either close it or do something with it. The key takeaway from this exercise in freestyle presidential rapping is just how incoherent Trump was. “It literally makes Sarah Palin seem like an intellectual,” a friend remarked. But that’s hard to capture unless you bite the bullet and read the whole thing. Instead, here are a few greatest hits. And now the tab gets closed. Enjoy.

On how he would have negotiated with the Iranians:

We should have had our prisoners before the negotiations started. We should have doubled up the sanctions. We should have gone in and said, ‘release our prisoners,’ they would have said ‘no,’ and we would have said, ‘double up the sanctions,’ and within a short period of time we would have had our prisoners back.

On whether there are racial disparities in law enforcement:

I’ve read where there are and I’ve read where there aren’t. I mean, I’ve read both. And, you know, I have no opinion on that.

On racial disparities in incarceration:

That would concern me, Ruth. It would concern me.

On how he’d address racial problems:

There’s a racial division that’s incredible actually in the country….And you know there’s a lack of spirit. I actually think I’d be a great cheerleader — beyond other things, the other things that I’d do — I actually think I’d be a great cheerleader for the country.

On South Korea not paying its fair share of defense costs:

You know, South Korea is very rich. Great industrial country. And yet we’re not reimbursed fairly for what we do. We’re constantly, you know, sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games, doing other. We’re reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing.

I think this is on public record, it’s basically 50 percent of the non-personnel cost is paid by South Korea and Japan.

50 percent?

Yeah.

Why isn’t it 100 percent?

On what he means when he says the Ricketts family in Chicago had “better watch out”:

Well, it means that I’ll start spending on them. I’ll start taking ads telling them all what a rotten job they’re doing with the Chicago Cubs. I mean, they are spending on me. I mean, so am I allowed to say that? I’ll start doing ads about their baseball team. That it’s not properly run or that they haven’t done a good job in the brokerage business lately.

On his hands:

This was Rubio that said, “He has small hands and you know what that means.” Okay? So, he started it….I had fifty people … Is that a correct statement? I mean people were writing, “How are Mr. Trump’s hands?” My hands are fine. You know, my hands are normal. Slightly large, actually. In fact, I buy a slightly smaller than large glove, okay? No, but I did this because everybody was saying to me, “Oh, your hands are very nice. They are normal.” So Rubio, in a debate, said, because he had nothing else to say … now I was hitting him pretty hard. He wanted to do his Don Rickles stuff and it didn’t work out. Obviously, it didn’t work too well. But one of the things he said was “He has small hands and therefore, you know what that means, he has small something else.” You can look it up. I didn’t say it.

….I don’t want people to go around thinking that I have a problem. I’m telling you, Ruth, I had so many people. I would say 25, 30 people would tell me … every time I’d shake people’s hand, “Oh, you have nice hands.” Why shouldn’t I? … I even held up my hands, and said, “Look, take a look at that hand.”…And by saying that, I solved the problem. Nobody questions. Everyone held my hand. I said look. Take a look at that hand.

On using nukes against ISIS:

I don’t want to start the process of nuclear. Remember the one thing that everybody has said, I’m a counterpuncher. Rubio hit me. Bush hit me….

This is about ISIS. You would not use a tactical nuclear weapon against ISIS?

I’ll tell you one thing, this is a very good looking group of people here. Could I just go around so I know who the hell I’m talking to?

On intelligence, winning, and the war in Iraq:

Right now, look, you know, I went to a great school, I was a good student and all. I am an intelligent person. My uncle, I would say my uncle was one of the brilliant people. He was at MIT for 35 years. As a great scientist and engineer, actually more than anything else. Dr. John Trump, a great guy.

I’m an intelligent person. I understand what is going on. Right now, I had 17 people who started out. They are almost all gone. If I were going to do that in a different fashion I think I probably wouldn’t be sitting here. You would be interviewing somebody else. But it is hard to act presidential when you are being … I mean, actually I think it is presidential because it is winning. And winning is a pretty good thing for this country because we don’t win any more. And I say it all the time. We do not win any more. This country doesn’t win. We don’t win with trade. We don’t win with … We can’t even beat ISIS.

And by the way, just to answer the rest of that question, I would knock the hell out of ISIS in some form. I would rather not do it with our troops, you understand that. Very important. Because I think saying that is very important because I was against the war in Iraq, although they found a clip talking to Howard Stern, I said, “Well…” It was very unenthusiastic. Before they want in, I was totally against the war. I was against it for years. I actually had a delegation sent from the White House to talk to me because I guess I get a disproportionate amount of publicity. I was just against the war. I thought it would destabilize the Middle East, and it did. But we have to knock out ISIS. We are living like in medieval times. Who ever heard of the heads chopped off?

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Donald Trump’s Greatest Hits With the WaPo Editorial Board

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Paul Ryan Says He Regrets Calling the Poor “Takers.” That Isn’t Enough.

Mother Jones

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Here is Speaker Paul Ryan today in an address to a group of House interns:

Instead of playing to your anxieties, we can appeal to your aspirations….We don’t resort to scaring you, we dare to inspire you….We question each other’s ideas—vigorously—but we don’t question each other’s motives….People with different ideas are not traitors. They are not our enemies. They are our neighbors, our coworkers, our fellow citizens.

….I’m certainly not going to stand here and tell you I have always met this standard. There was a time when I would talk about a difference between “makers” and “takers” in our country, referring to people who accepted government benefits. But as I spent more time listening, and really learning the root causes of poverty, I realized I was wrong….So I stopped thinking about it that way—and talking about it that way.

The obvious pushback is that while Ryan may have stopped talking about “makers and takers,” his policies are exactly the same as they’ve always been. After all that time spent listening, he changed his rhetoric but apparently none of his substantive views.

Which is true enough. If all Ryan is doing is telling a bunch of interns that they can get more done if they watch their language and hide their true intentions, then there’s nothing much to applaud here. At the same time, it’s still good to say this stuff out loud, regardless of how sincere it is. Not many people do anymore. Now, how about doing it again in front of a more important audience and with a few explicit references to Donald Trump thrown in?

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Paul Ryan Says He Regrets Calling the Poor “Takers.” That Isn’t Enough.

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Republican Frontrunners All Favor Treating Muslims Like Drug Gangs

Mother Jones

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Ted Cruz took a lot of flak yesterday for his proposal to “patrol and secure” Muslim neighborhoods, so he decided to explain it further last night:

“It is standard law enforcement — it is good law enforcement to focus on where threats are emanating from, and anywhere where there is a locus of radicalization, where there is an expanding presence of radical Islamic terrorism,” Cruz told reporters on Tuesday evening in Manhattan. “We need law enforcement resources directed there, national security resources directed there.”

….Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), compared Cruz’s proposition to “the dark days of the 1930s” in Europe and “the interment of Japanese-Americans” in the 1940s, calling it “a very frightening image.”

Cruz repudiated the comparison at the press conference, saying: “I understand that there are those who seek political advantage and try to raise a scary specter.” He instead compared it to ridding neighborhoods of gang activity and law enforcement’s efforts “to take them off the street.”

And what did Donald Trump think of all this? He supports Cruz’s plan “100 percent.” Naturally.

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Republican Frontrunners All Favor Treating Muslims Like Drug Gangs

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Ted Cruz Calls For Massive Police Presence in Muslim Neighborhoods

Mother Jones

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One of the odd Republican obsessions of the moment is their outrage over liberal refusal to “call radical Islam by its name.” In the wake of today’s Brussels bombing, Ted Cruz naturally says this kind of namby-pamby political correctness is at an end. But that’s not all:

We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. “We need to secure the southern border to prevent terrorist infiltration.

“Patrol and secure.” That has an ominous sound to it, especially the “secure” part. Apparently Cruz is trying to out-Trump Trump before Trump even has a chance to say something stupid. This is some campaign these guys are running.

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Ted Cruz Calls For Massive Police Presence in Muslim Neighborhoods

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It’s Old People Who Have More Debt, Not the Young

Mother Jones

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Ylan Mui points today to a February note from the New York Fed called “The Graying of American Debt.” Here’s the basic picture:

The student debt story is about what you’d expect: young consumers have more of it, but their total debt load is lower than it was in 2003 because they have lower mortgage debt. Basically, they’re trading student debt for mortgage debt.

But older age groups make up for it with higher debt than they had in 2003. This is especially true at age 65, where total debt is up by about a third over the past decade. So what does it all mean?

The close relationship between credit score and age…reflects an average credit history that is considerably stronger among older borrowers….Further, older borrowers’ income streams are comparatively stable, and they have greater experience with credit. Survey of Consumer Finances data show that net worth levels for households with heads who are age 65 and older in 2013 are quite similar to their 2004-07 levels. This holds despite the evidence, seen in the second chart in this post, that consumers are holding substantially more per capita debt at age 65 and beyond. If history is any guide, then, we expect older borrowers to make more reliable payments. Indeed, our data show no clear trend toward higher delinquency at older ages as average balances at older ages have increased.

Hence the aging of the American borrower bodes well for the stability of outstanding consumer loans. At the same time, the likely combination of muted credit access and lower demand for credit that we observe among our younger borrowers may well have consequences for growth. The graying of American debt that we observe between 2003 and 2015, then, might be interpreted as a shift toward greater balance sheet stability, and away from credit-fueled consumption growth.

More stability, less growth. Just what old people want. But is it good for the country?

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It’s Old People Who Have More Debt, Not the Young

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Three Cheers For a Contested Convention

Mother Jones

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I guess a contested Republican convention has now made a full circle1 from “Spare me” to “I always said that”:

In multiple television interviews Sunday, Reince Priebus, chairman of the RNC, raised the prospect of a protracted convention fight with multiple rounds of voting needed to determine the winner. “We’re preparing for that possibility,” Mr. Priebus said on ABC. That marks a shift from earlier this month, when Mr. Priebus told a gathering of conservatives that a contested convention was “highly, highly unlikely.”

Sounds like fun. Seriously. Just think of all the free publicity this gives the Republican Party.

1Half circle?

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Three Cheers For a Contested Convention

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Hillary Clinton’s Email Scandal Continues to Dribble Away

Mother Jones

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Here’s the latest on classified information being sent via email at the State Department:

The State Department has removed from its unclassified electronic archives a dozen sensitive emails sent to the personal accounts of former secretary of state Colin L. Powell and the staff of his successor, Condoleezza Rice, according to a memo released Friday by the agency’s watchdog….None of the messages was marked as classified or secret at the time it was sent, but the department’s inspector general, Steve Linick wrote the emails may have contained “potentially sensitive material” because of the subject matter.

Powell has said he has reviewed the messages and disagrees with a State Department decision to retroactively classify them. “I do not see what makes them classified,” he said.

Hillary Clinton probably sent a lot more emails the Powell, so she ended up with more emails retroactively being classified. Plus the CIA is apparently obsessed with pretending that the US drone program is a deep, dark secret. As usual with Clinton “scandals,” this one is dribbling away to nothing in the light of day, and would undoubtedly dribble a lot faster if any of us could actually see the emails. It’s an election season, so none of this will convince Republicans that there’s nothing of any consequence here, but there’s nothing of any consequence here. It’s just another boneheaded excrescence of the Benghazi pet rock.

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Hillary Clinton’s Email Scandal Continues to Dribble Away

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Explaining Donald Trump’s Dick

Mother Jones

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Why did Donald Trump inexplicably defend the size of his penis in Thursday’s debate? Because he’s unnaturally sensitive about it? Because, as Jeet Heer suggests, it’s part of a venerable history of monarchs and presidents? Because Hillary Clinton would be the first penis-free president, so it’s a good way of contrasting himself?

Yes to all of the above, I suppose. Plus the fact that Trump is a self-centered boor. But this is all background noise. The real reason, which Trump understands instinctively, is simpler.

Trump’s supporters love him not so much for his policies but for his promise of toughness. Without that, he’s nothing. And to his supporters, toughness is deeply tied up with virility and manliness. This includes all the affairs, the succession of young wives, the supermodels, and the fact that he brags endlessly about it. Most of his supporters don’t precisely approve of all this stuff, but they nonetheless admire it when it comes from someone so successful. If that’s what it takes to save the country, then that’s what it takes.

So Trump made it clear that his manliness is quite intact, thank you very much. This is, if you’ll pardon the pun, all part of the package. It’s true that Marco Rubio fired the first shot a few days earlier, but that never came up in the debate. Trump brought it up out of the blue. He wanted to bring it up.

Everyone in the press mocks him for this nationally televised display of crudeness, but Trump brought it up because he wanted to assure his supporters he was a tough guy. And I’ll bet it worked.

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Explaining Donald Trump’s Dick

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Live Coverage of the Democratic Presidential Debate in Iowa

Mother Jones

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The Democratic debate is on CBS tonight at 9 pm Eastern. I had a great football-program-related excuse not to liveblog it, but it turned out that USC played on Friday this week. So now I have no excuse, and I’ll be here with bells on my toes.

Because of the terrorist attacks in Paris, CBS has promised lots of questions about foreign policy. At the risk of being crass, this is probably good for Hillary and not so great for Bernie Sanders. Even among Democrats, there’s likely to be more taste than usual for a hawkish, Hillary-esque foreign policy tonight. We’ll see.

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Live Coverage of the Democratic Presidential Debate in Iowa

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