These guys are just this desperate: Christie, Carson & Paul sign onto for the dumbest gimmick in politics

www.salon.com|Gary Legum

We have reached the stage of the presidential primary season when the group No Labels tries to pretend it is an actual force in Washington, and not just a silly vanity project for a bunch of rich people making a fetish object of the words “centrism” and “bipartisanship.”

On Monday, No Labels announced that six presidential candidates had signed onto its Problem Solver Promise. This is a gimmicky pledge stating that if elected, the candidate will start working with a bipartisan Congressional group on one of four items within 30 days of Inauguration Day next January. The items are defined broadly and generically enough that promising to work on legislation for one of them is a little bit like promising to use the bathroom within a couple of hours of eating dinner. It’s not so much a goal to strive for as it is an inevitability.

CNN falls asleep on the job: The GOP’s blood-soaked war rhetoric & unrepentant Islamophobia went unchallenged (again)

www.salon.com|Jack Mirkinson

Tuesday night’s Republican debate was centered on foreign policy and national security, and it was about as disturbing a time as two hours in the company of nine Republicans talking about foreign policy and national security could be expected to be. All of that extreme intolerance and frenzied war-mongering can coalesce into a dense, bitter fog over the course of two hours, but a few things about both what the candidates said and the way CNN conducted the debate managed to push through that haze and hang over the proceedings in a rather profoundly dispiriting way.

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Justice Antonin Scalia has never been much of a fan of affirmative action. This week, he made comments suggesting he might still be troubled by Brown vs. Board of Education, saying in effect, forget separate but equal—why even have equal?

With views that seem to date back to the Paleolithic age and the complete loss of any kind of filter, Scalia openly opined that affirmative action is hurting African Americans by sending them to more rigorous schools. He conveniently found a jumping-off point for his deeply offensive and wrong-headed views in a friend of the court brief during oral arguments for the Fisher v. University of Texas-Austinaffirmative action case. Some (unnamed) people, he said, would say that “it does not benefit African Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less—a slower-track school where they do well.”

Always dandy to hear what’s on Pat Buchanan’s febrile mind. Thanks to his syndicated column on Friday, now we know. Buchanan is praising the gospel of Trumpism! He thinks Trump’s idea to ban Muslim immigrants is “worth exploring!” because, “Many European nations—Germans, French, Swedes, Brits—appear to regret having thrown open their doors to immigrants and refugees from the Islamic world,” he wrote. Where he is getting his info is not exactly clear.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have been kind of besties so far. This is mostly because Cruz has never criticized Trump about anything, and has pretty much fawningly complimented him, a surefire way to Trump’s heart. “He’s a nice guy,” Trump said about Cruz this week in Iowa. “I mean, everything I say he agrees with me, no matter what I say.” Even Trump seemed a little taken aback at this particularly high level of sycophancy. And that’s saying something.

In a desperate bid, one supposes, to remain relevant, Ben Carson attempted a double Trump at week’s end, and threatened to leave the Republican Party.

The Republican Party wept.

Nay, the nation wept.

The retired neurosurgeon’s recent precipitous tumble in the polls might suggest an outbreak of sanity if only it weren’t accompanied by a Trump and Cruz surge. But Carson will be there for the debate Tuesday, and he is just giving fair warning that he might come out with guns blazing if the Grand Old Party decides to go with a brokered convention.

In case you haven’t been noticing lately (because Jon Stewart is no longer keeping his eye on Fox, and Trevor Noah can’t or won’t hold Fox’s feet to the fire), Sean Hannity is still a complete d-bag. So nice to know that some things never change in this crazy, mixed-up, ever-changing world of ours.

On Thursday, Hannity used his airtime to lambast Michelle Obama for encouraging kids to go to college.

“ISIS is on the rise. The Middle East in complete turmoil. The Western world is under constant threat from Islamic jihadists, but your first lady Michelle Obama is busy making a rap music video about going to college,” Hannity said, later saying the video suggested that the “Obamas are completely out of touch.”

Rise of the GOP bullsh***ers: How the electoral process has been overwhelmed by lies & untruths

www.salon.com|Conor Lynch

In a recent New York Times article, statistics from PolitiFact are conveniently organized to help us visualize two things that are already well known: First, that reality has a liberal bias. And second, that the more bullshit GOP candidates spew, the more successful they become.

The three biggest liars on the list are — surprise — Ben Carson, Donald Trump, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx). A whopping 84 percent of Carson’s fact-checked statements were ruled false (from “mostly false” to“pants on fire”), as were 76 percent of Trump’s and 66 percent of Cruz’s. On the other hand, only 4 percent of Carson’s and 7 percent of Trump’s statements were ruled “mostly true” (none of their statements were ruled “true”). This incredible degree of dishonesty shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been following the campaign season; indeed, by now it is clear that the more deceitful these candidates become, and the more they get called out for this deception, the more enthusiastic their supporters grow.

Ben Carson throws a temper tantrum, threatens to leave the GOP

www.salon.com|Sophia Tesfaye

Ben Carson doesn’t want to be forgotten. Left out of the headlines for weeks and watching his poll numbers plummet, the retired neurosurgeon is out threatening to leave the Republican Party after a new report outlined how party officials are grappling with the unfortunate potential reality of a Donald Trump nomination.

Siding with Christian fanatics like Ben Carson over Noam Chomsky, Sam Harris exposes inherent conservatism of “New Atheism”

www.salon.com|Ben Norton

Anti-religious prophet Sam Harris has, once again, exposed the conservatism at the heart of the so-called “New Atheist” movement.

In the November episode of his “Waking Up” podcast, Sam Harris spoke with seasoned neoconservative pundit Douglas Murray about Islam, liberalism and the refugee crisis. Harris frequently flexes his liberal bona fides, yet the two spent much of the conversation in agreement. The neuroscientist even called the right-wing writer “one of the best people on this topic.”

The title of the episode alone, “On the Maintenance of Civilization,” says a lot. Harris is wont to argue that Muslims threaten the very fabric of Western civilization.

Most striking in the approximately two-hour-long discussion were comments Harris made about renowned left-wing intellectual Noam Chomsky and far-right Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson.

Ben Carson on LGBTQ military service: “Give me a break — deal with the transgender thing somewhere else”

www.salon.com|Scott Eric Kaufman

At a veterans’ town hall in Waterloo, Iowa over the weekend Dr. Ben Carson tried to pump life into his fading campaign by attacking a class of citizen Republicans are united in their hatred of — transgender people.

Presumably taking his cue from Ted Cruz — who last week argued, sans evidence, that the Planned Parenthood shooter was a “transgendered leftist activist” — an Saturday’s meeting of Concerned Veterans for America, Carson complained about the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the lifting of the ban on transgender service.

Robert Reich: The GOP must answer for its hate-mongering

www.salon.com|Robert Reich

Perpetrators of hate crimes often take their cues from what they hear in the media. And the recent inclination of some politicians to use inflammatory rhetoric is contributing to a climate of hate and fear.

Carly Fiorina continues to allege, for example, that Planned Parenthood is selling body parts of fetuses.

Although the claim has been proven baseless, it’s been repeated not only by Fiorina but also by other candidates. Mike Huckabeecalls it “sickening” that “we give these butchers money to harvest human organs.”

Even in the wake of Friday’s Colorado shootings, Donald Trumpreferred to videos “with some of these people from Planned Parenthood talking about it like you’re selling parts to a car.”

Some candidates are also fomenting animus toward Muslims.

Your front-runner is Donald Trump: Why conservatives still don’t understand diversity

www.salon.com|Elias Isquith

Politics, like history, is replete with funny little ironies and paradoxes; moments when stubborn facts refuse to bend in order to better fit into the established narrative. For example, take the issue of swift and substantial demographic in the U.S. and the awkward position into which it’s locked the increasingly monochromatic Republican Party.

On the one hand, the primary has been the staging ground for Donald Trump, who maintains his number one spot in most national and early-voting state polls and is, without question, the most successful demagogue in U.S. politics since Alabama’s Gov. George Wallace secured his place in American history by using a schoolhouse doorway to take a stand against de-segregation.

On the other hand, and as the Washington Post noted in a Monday report, the candidate list for the GOP’s next presidential nomination is the most diverse the party has ever seen. There’s the African-American and retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson, of course. But there’s also Cuban-American Sen. Ted Cruz, Cuban-American Sen. Marco Rubio, businesswoman Carly Fiorina, and, before he dropped out, Indian-American Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Robert Reich: America might really elect a crackpot

www.salon.com|Robert Reich

The next president of the United States will confront a virulent jihadist threat, mounting effects of climate change, and an economy becoming ever more unequal.

We’re going to need an especially wise and able leader.

Yet our process for choosing that person is a circus, and several leading candidates are clowns.

How have we come to this?

First, anyone with enough ego and money can now run for president.

This wasn’t always the case. Political parties used to sift through possible candidates and winnow the field.

Ben Carson shocker: Even his own advisers admit he’s dumbfounded on foreign policy

www.salon.com|Sophia Tesfaye

By most accounts, Ben Carson’s first post-Paris attack interview did little to quell growing concerns that the political neophyte had failed to grasp a firm handle on major policy issues like national security, especially in light of a damning comedic SNL takedown of his embellished reformed bad boy shtick that’s propelled him this far,

Carson struggled to articulate specifics for his plan to defeat ISIL during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” Host Chris Wallace asked the retired neurosurgeon three times to name one specific country or leader he would call to assemble an international coalition to no avail.

This is why Ben Carson lies: The dark, disturbing reality of race, religion and today’s right-wing

www.salon.com|Paul Rosenberg

For months now, Ben Carson has been rising in the polls, but as long as the far more flamboyant Donald Trump was ahead of him, the chaos engendered by Trump focused almost all attention around him. Last week, all that changed as Carson clearly emerged to top Trump, and finally started getting a level of attention and scrutiny he’s warranted for some time. It has not been pretty.

No one doubts the core truth of Carson’s Horatio Alger narrative—a child of the underclass who became a world-renowned neurosurgeon. But that only makes the surrounding, objectively unnecessary lies all the more puzzling to many. Why lie about having been a violent youth—even stabbing someone—when no one else remembers him that way? Why lie about being offered a full West Point scholarship, when no such thing exists, and he went to Yale anyway? And when such questions are raised, why complain that “I do not remember this level of scrutiny for one President Barack Obama,” when, as Bill Moyers noted on April 25, 2008, “More than 3,000 news stories have been penned since early April about Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama.”

Donald Trump is playing with fire: How his ugly new bout of race-baiting could be the GOP’s undoing

www.salon.com|Elias Isquith

Ever since his presidential campaign began in earnest, predicting  the end of this whole Donald Trump… thing — phenomenon, bubble, disaster; take your pick — has been a mug’s game. At this point, in fact, the best way to know Trump’s next move may be to find out whatever it is most pundits are expecting; because the complete opposite will probably happen instead.

So I’m not going to join the New Republic’s Jeet Heer in prophesying doom for Trump 2016, not just yet. But I think he’s right to wonder if Trump hasn’t crossed a Rubicon of sorts with his recent attack on Dr. Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon and peerless grifter who may snatch the Iowa caucuses from Trump’s hands — and who Trump likened to a “child molester” on Thursday.

Ben Carson wants a safe space: The Republicans are coddled and politically correct

www.salon.com|Aaron R. Hanlon

Disgruntled because of things debate moderators said, Republican presidential candidates convened earlier this month to construct a list of regulations for future debates, while the RNC publicly decried moderators’ “gotcha” questions and called for replacement moderators.

Let me reframe this scenario to make it more palatable for the present media climate: imagine the Republican presidential candidates are a group of college students petitioning to a regulatory authority because they were angered by oppositional speech and not mature enough to respond with poise and civility. So they sought to fire or replace oppositional voices with friendly voices that flattered their ideas and policies. The outcome they sought, then, was one in which their positions would go unchallenged and they could have nice feelings about themselves (unfortunately this is not a hypothetical; the next debate actually turned out that way).