Kasich is terrible. He has appeared fine by acting like a grown up in a room full of spastic children. But in the last debate when everyone toned the insanity he looked like the worst. He's also most in favor of boots on the ground.

Everyone left except BERN is terrible, it's just a matter of trying to choose the least terrible alternative if BERN can't pull it off. I rate them as:

1. Hillary (status quo terrible with an extra chance of war)
2. Kasich (normal conservative levels of terrible)
3. Cruz (ultra conservative levels of terribleness but vampirism probably stops him from pushing too many of his policies through)
4. Rubio (ultra conservative levels of terribleness mixed with enough charisma to be really dangerous)
5. Trump (once in a generation levels of terribleness that could be really hard for us to come back from)

Where does this John Kasich is a war monger thinking come from? I don't think I've ever seen that except itt.

He's a war monger in the sense that standard conservative talking points are very hawkish and interventionalist.

HIS talking points are hawkish and interventionalist? Or he's conservative therefore he's hawkish? Because the latter is a ridiculous position.

He has specifically called for ground troops in Syria and advocated for the establishment of a no-fly zone targeted at Russia. Both are hawkish positions even for a Republican.

He's called for ground troops to support a Middle Eastern led coalition against ISIS. And only for that purpose. He's spoken out against intervening in civil wars and nation-building. That's far less hawkish than the average GOPer

I can't think of any Republicans who are advocating nation building in Syria. And he can say he's "against intervening in civil wars" but I'm not sure how you can send tens of thousands of troops into Syria without intervening in the active civil war. That's just a completely nonsensical position.

And the no-fly zone sounds innocuous but is actually incredibly dangerous. He wants to give Russia an ultimatum that they have to stop their air campaign in Syria, or what? We start a shooting war with Russia? Madness.

The last debate

Trump tweeted today Kasich won't be on the PA ballot. Lollllllll levels of incompetence if so

Lima airport (highest airport markup relative to local prices ever) bathroom is out of hand dry paper. I need to blow my nose. Toilets full. Ask the janitor for paper. He gets roll. Sees empty dispenser. Hands me some paper. Takes the roll and goes away without filling dispenser.

NO NO NO. We're barely over being mired in a $2T criminal boondoggle in Iraq and can see the massive damage that did. But this time it will be different! Yeah **** that.

To be fair, different situation. Now if we simultaneously ousted Assad, sure that is pretty analogous.

Don't want to risk this being an ulterior motive. Even if they aren't saying it. Just leave Syria the **** alone imo. Drone terrorists once in a while and call it a day.

No matter who wins the election, they are basically not going to be able to do ANYTHING of what they said they would do because of congress, right? I mean, it's going to be gridlock no matter what, yes? Or am I being naive again?

How dangerous are Executive Orders?

Dangerous enough. Plus. It's still about SC Justices and veto power or not vs Congress.

The two areas of concern are SC justices and executive military strikes. IANAL but the President could probably order the military to shoot down Iranian planes in a random location without consulting Congress.

The thing about "IANAL" doesn't really apply there. Executive Orders are an expanding bad thing that evades the checks and balances system. Hard to say what arguments can be dreamt up to defend further expansion of executive orders.

To think about this you have to think about it in the context of an INTENT that the "people" have some oversight over executive action, which the Executive Order defeats. As it expands, an erosion of that check / balance on the executive expands with it. Slow erosion is still erosion, and there were voices for years and years saying that expanding this practice will haunt us in the future. I do not look forward to Donald ****ing Trump having the ability to execute orders that evade checks and balances. That is scary.

The issue is complicated by the fact that Congress will do whatever it can to obstruct anything the other party attempts to do (worse in Obama administration than before, but let's not kid ourselves that this only runs one way). In that environment, you have this insoluble tension between the President wanting to enact policy for what he deems to be the best, and that being totally impossible because Congress itself is also operating in a manner totally outside the design / ideals of the Constitutional system. So you can see it from the President's POV as well: wtf am I supposed to do with these idiots preventing everything?

What we're really talking about in this post is another example of a way in which our representative democracy cannot sustain the burden of the two-party system, which is - again - outside the design. This was not foreseen and not designed for. It's breaking our system of governance. The executive order is a symptom of those fractures.

Also, I don't know what you need to see to realize that "we've" been right about how horrible Trump is all along, but if the past few days aren't enough, you're too far gone. You're supporting an intended dictator who wants to do violence to swaths of the country. You're just crazy if Trump seems okay to you. No other take is necessary and you can't intellectualize your way out of it.

"He won't be what he says he is" was an insane enough means of justifying supporting harm, but now you don't even have that.

And finally, freedom of speech - or MAH FREEDOM TO SAY ANYTHING ANYWHERE RHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA - is so fundamentally misunderstood as to make trying to explicate it ITT almost impossible.

Let's start here: it's NUANCED, it is NOT comprehensive, and BOTH sides were "speaking" in Chicago.

Sando, you in particular have been horrendous in this thread. One of the SANCTIFIED precepts of the freedom of speech is the freedom to object to speech. It does not matter if private individuals seek to "violate the principle of freedom of speech" in order to prevent hate speech. That's ALL THEY CAN DO, and that is their CONSTITUTIONAL MEANS of doing so.

And let's not even get started on the question of who has the pulpit, Trump or marginalized black people. The answer is Trump.

And let's not even get started on the very thorny questions about whether conscripting local police and secret service - i.e., government assets - in suppressing protest speech is itself a violation of THEIR right to free speech.

In sum, LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL at that line.

Also, Kasich appears to be a moderate who also happens to want BOOTS ON THE GROUND YO in Libya and Syria, which is a cool thing we're historically really good at doing in ambiguous situations requiring regime installation. We always do a good job there.

Always, works like a charm.

Totally agree. Develop a new branch of the military (Special Forces on steroids) that only deals with terrorists (cyber and traditional) and let them search and destroy. Don't let anyone develop nukes and if they do anything in the US turn their hideouts to glass. Let the crazies in the Iran/Iraq/Syria/etal area fight their 2000 year old wars by them selves. Lets spend the money here.

Let's not get carried away Hoya. Trump just now talking about the 78 year old dude who sucker punched a black protester at one of his rallies:

The man obviously has a generous heart.

I'm aware of that, the response requires longer than I have right now (BASKETBALL yo). Will try to explain later, short of it is the "impact" of the EOs, i.e., the topics of EOs, have expanded. That's sort of obvious even facially when you consider FDR's use of EOs - it's not as if he issued one critical social revolution per day.