RADICAL BEN CARSON SEEKING TO END DEBATES AS WE KNOW THEM

Ben Carson is seeking to rally Republican candidates to end most actual debating at future Republican debates. Instead, candidates would spend most of their time taking turns delivering speeches.

Carson’s campaign is convening a meeting of various campaigns on Sunday night. The campaigns will discuss Carson’s proposal, which includes “a minimum of five minutes for opening and closing statements with all major declared GOP candidates on stage.” There are currently 14 candidates that have regularly been appearing in debates. Giving them five minutes each for opening and closing statements would take 140 minutes, which is more than the total time for a typical two hour debate.

Carson also would like to reduce the total number of debates, calling them a distraction from campaigning.

Another suggestion from the Carson team is “to strip the cable and broadcast television network sof the rights to carry the debates and instead air them over the Internet, perhaps via Facebook or YouTube.” This could actually create more time for debate by eliminating commercials.

The meeting comes on the heels of the CNBC debate, which was broadly criticized as chaotic. The candidates have subsequently claimed that the questions by CNBC moderators were biased and inaccurate.

CNBC focuses almost exclusively on business concerns and one of the questioners at the debate launched the Tea Party with a rant on the network. The questions challenged by the candidates were actually accurate.

Ted Cruz has subsequently called for all future debate moderators to be registered Republicans. Cruz suggested Sean Hannity or Rush Limabugh.

Under pressure from the campaigns, the Republican Party has “suspended” a debate with NBC News in February. In a letter from RNC chair Reince Priebus wrote, “The CNBC network is one of your media properties, and its handling of the debate was conducted in bad faith… the network is an arm of your organization, and we need to ensure there is not a repeat performance.”

On CNN, Congressman Keith Ellison said it was a standard tactic for Republicans to claim the media outlets are liberal in the hope that they overcompensate.

Some Republican candidates, including John Kasich, have distanced themselves from criticisms about debates, saying challenging questions are simply part of the process.

The next Republican debate is scheduled for November 10 on Fox Business.

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STAFF WRITER

THE GOP DEBATE AND “THE LIBERAL MAINSTREAM MEDIA”

Late last night RNC Chair Reince Priebus was crying about following the CNBC Republican debate. Sen. Ted Cruz decided to use up all of his time whining about the nonexistent, so-called "liberal media' when asked about his desire to shut down the government rather than compromise on a budget deal by moderator Carl Quintanilla.

After he'd filibustered and used the time to grandstand and call the media and Democrats names, he was upset they didn't want to give him more time to finally answer their question.



Here's more from Real Clear Politics: Cruz Rips Press At CNBC Debate: "This Debate Illustrates Why We Can Not Trust The Media":

"Congressional Republicans, Democrats and the White House are about to strike a compromise that would raise the debt limit, prevent a government shutdown, and calm financial markets of the fear that a Washington crisis is on the way. Does your opposition to it show you're not the kind of problem-solver that American voters want?" CNBC anchor Carl Quintanilla asked the presidential candidate. 

"This is not a cage match. And you look at the questions -- Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain? Ben Carson, can you do math? John Kasich, will you insult two people over here? Marco Rubio, why don't you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen? How about talking about the substantive issues," Cruz said to commanding applause from the audience. 

"Do we get credit for this one," Quintanilla asked Cruz? 

"And Carl, I'm not finished yet. The contrast with the Democratic debate, where every thought and question from the media was, which of you is more handsome and why?" Cruz asked and then paused to cough. 

"You have 30 seconds left to answer should you choose to do so," Quintanilla told the candidate. 

"Let me be clear," Cruz said. "The men and women on this stage have more ideas, more experience, more common sense, than ever participant in the Democratic debate. That debate reflected a debate between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks." 

"Nobody believes that the moderators have any intention of voting in a Republican primary," Cruz said. 

"The questions being asked shouldn't be trying to get people to tear into each other, it should be what are your substantive solutions to people at home," Cruz said before getting cut off. 

"I asked you about the debt limit and got no answer," Quintanilla said.
"You want an answer to that question?" Cruz asked. "I'd be happy to answer your question." 

Cruz was interrupted this time by John Harwood who said "we're moving on."
"Senator [Rand] Paul, I've got a question for you," Harwood said in his attempt to move on. 

"So you don't actually want to hear the answer, John?" Cruz called out the anchor. 

"You don't want to hear the answer, you just want to incite insults." 

"You used your time on something else," a dismissive Harwood said. 

"You're not interested in an answer," Cruz scolded. 

"I'm interested in an answer from Senator Paul," Harwood retorted.

"Let me say something at the outset," the Senator from Texas said. "The questions asked in this debate illustrate why the American people don't trust the media."

Once again Cruz avoids having to answer a tough question, all the while bitching about media bias. A funny thing happened on the way to the forum when Cruz attacked CNBC for their "liberal media," biased questioning.

While the fantasy football question was a bit absurd, most questions were legitimate attempts to get these clowns to clear their extreme ideology on the record, instead they chose to whine about being picked on and not being fair. Yet again, complaining about being America being toPC [politically correct] and then expecting to be treated with PC queries.

The hypocrisy of the right is matched by none!

Related: PRIEBUS CRIES FOUL TO CNBC MODERATORS






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Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

SANDERS SAYS HE WOULD TAX THE RICH AT 90%

In an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, Sen. Bernie Sanders , who is running for the Democratic presidential candidacy, said he could back a 90 percent top marginal tax rate.

Harwood brought up that some have likened efforts to combat income inequality to Nazi Germany. Sanders noted sarcastically, “When radical, socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, I think the highest marginal tax rate was something like 90 percent.”

Harwood followed up by asking, “When you think about something like 90 percent, you don’t think that’s obviously too high?” to which Sanders replied, “No.”

He continued, “What I think is obscene…when you have the top one-tenth of one percent owning almost as much as the bottom 90.”

VIDEO COURTESY OF TYT




Sanders is right that the top marginal tax rate, that paid by the wealthiest Americans, was around 90 percent under Eisenhower — it was actually 92 percent in the 1950s. Today, the top marginal tax rate is 39.6 percent, although the richest 1 percent end up paying less than that on average and the average rate actually fell for many years.

Republicans have consistently claimed that higher tax rates on the wealthy will hold back economic growth, while lowering rates further will spur it forward.

But that’s not likely the case. Last year, economists found that the point at which the top tax rate is high enough to maximize government revenues but not so high that it discourages the rich from trying to earn more is quite high: about 95 percent for the 1 percent. History bears that out. Economists have pointed out that post-war American growth has been higher during periods with much higher top marginal tax rates and lower when tax rates were substantially lower. When the top rate was more than 90 percent in the 50s, economic growth averaged more than 4 percent a year. But recently when the top rate has been closer to 35 percent, growth has been less than 2 percent a year on average.

The point of higher tax rates isn’t just to penalize the rich, of course. They would need to serve a policy function. For Sanders, that’s combating income inequality. “If you have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top tenth of one percent, you’ve got to transfer that back,” he told Harwood.

A 90 percent top tax rate could achieve that goal. The same economists who found that the rich can swallow a 95 percent rate also found that a 90 percent tax rate for the 1 percent could significantly reduce the Gini index, a measure of income inequality. It would also help lower wealth inequality. Meanwhile, everyone’s well-being would improve, rich and poor alike.

So far, many Republican presidential candidates have proposed a radically different approach: a flat tax. Sen. Ted Cruz , Sen. Rand Paul , and Ben Carson have all backed this idea. The details of each proposal differs, but the basic premise is an attempt to simplify the tax code by only having one rate that everyone pays, rather than the current system in which rates increase as income increases. Analysis is of one flat tax plan put forward by Texas Gov. Rick Perry found that it would raise taxes for those at the bottom of the income scale by between $102 and $462, while the tax bill for those making more than $1 million a year would decrease by about a half million dollars.

It would also lower government revenue by between $500 billion and $1 trillion a year. If a candidate wanted to maintain the current level of revenue, it would require taxing everyone, rich or poor, by at least 25 percent.

[h/t thinkproress]

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STAFF WRITER

GOP SCRAPS THE BOTTOM OF THE BARRELL SEEKING OBAMACARE WEBSITE ADVICE

HOUSE GOP SEEKING ADVICE FROM JOHN MCAFEE - YES THAT JOHN MCAFEE

Is this fact or fiction? Is this a Saturday Night Live Skit?

Absolutely not! Seeing that Aaron Hernandez and George Zimmerman were both unavailable, according to emails obtained by CNBC, House Committee on Energy and Commerce reportedly wanted to speak with John McAfee, the technology pioneer who last year fled a murder investigation in Belize, as part of their investigation into the flawed Obamacare website. That's right, GOP logic, why not use a crack-head LSD dropping murder suspect to oversee the national healthcare website system woes.

You just can't make this up!

The Hill reports:

Sean Hayes, who serves as counsel for the committee, apparently reached out to Francois Garcia, an attorney for McAfee last week. 

“Given the failures of Healthcare.gov, and Mr. McAfee’s expertise, I was hoping he might be able to discuss his views with staff on the hill,” Hayes wrote, according to the CNBC emails. “It would be an informal discussion: we would take notes but these would not be for attribution, it would mainly guide our oversight and review of the program.” 

Hayes said the panel would ask McAfee about potential vulnerabilities in the website that could lead to the compromise of personal information or identity theft.
The committee aide later wrote McAfee to say that an in-person meeting was too logistically difficult, although he left open the possibility of a phone consultation.
Soliciting McAfee to testify could raise eyebrows after the tech pioneer — who made millions off his eponymous anti-virus software

McAfee was wanted by Belize police as a person of interest in the slaying of fellow American Gregory Viant Faull. 52 year-old Faull was on the Caribbean island where both men lived. McAfee went on the run. After a bizarre turn of events, he fled his Belize compound, crossing into Guatemala illegally and then sought refuge in the United States.

When I saw Rachel Maddow starting her show last night, I was wondering why McAffee was the 'keynote" speaker if you will for the show, how does this paranoid schizophrenic tie into current news. Well, as masterful as she is, Maddow tells the story on how low the GOP will go, right wing fringe meets paranoid schizophrenic.

Video courtesy of MSNBC

McAfee told CNBC that he did not think it was at all odd that lawmakers would ask him for help with the website.

"I promise you this cannot be fixed without at least scrapping the front-end processing, which is more than half of the systems," he insisted. "Seriously, if it were me and I were running this and I had been asleep in a hospital for two years and woke up to this mess, I would say OK, throw it out and start over. But start over in the right way."

MCAFFE TELLS ALL [Caution Language]




Quoting Fox News, reported at the time when McAfee was wanted by police:

John McAfee, the estranged founder of the antivirus firm that bears his name, is wanted by the Belize police in connection with a murder, FoxNews.com has confirmed. 

McAfee, whose very name is synonymous with security, is a prime suspect in the murder of American expatriate Gregory Faull, a well-liked builder from Florida who was shot Saturday night at his home in San Pedro Town on the island of Ambergris Caye, according to a series of exposes on tech blog Gizmodo. Vienne Robinson, assistant superintendent of the San Pedro police department in Belize, told FoxNews.com that police are actively searching for McAfee. 

McAfee’s life has turned in recent years from cyber security to drugs, guns, prostitution and violence, explained Jeff Wise, a freelance reporter who broke the story for Gizmodo.

“He will tell you he moved to Belize for the good life, for the country, to rescue the Belizean people from poverty,” Wise told FoxNews.com. In reality, McAfee became embroiled in bath salts and the quest for the ultimate high, he said. 

Wise visited McAfee in the Western Caribbean nation twice, once in 2010 and again this past April. 

“It really scared the hell out of me,” Wise said. He wasn’t alone. A woman who went to visit McAfee to co-develop an herbal medicine ended up running from the country in terror, “fleeing for her life,” Wise said. 

Although a one-time drug user, the computer expert had cleaned up his act. …
“McAfee had been a hard-core drug addict in his 30s and 40s. He had a heart attack right around the time he sold his company for $100 million,” Wise told FoxNews.com. He moved to Belize and apparently pursued several lines of business, from creating a new form of herbal medicine to helping save the country from poverty. 

He also became deeply involved with bath salts, Wise said, a dangerous drug notorious for its psychotic effects. 

“Around the time his herbal drug plan collapsed, he started to get really heavily into this kind of synthetic, hallucinogenic hyper-aphrodisiac,” Wise told FoxNews.com. “Everyone was scared of McAfee. He was walking around the beach carrying a gun.”

Why post Fox's McAfee story you ask, because I want my readers to see how Fox puts the lipstick on this pig.

Is this the "family values that the GOP is always speaking of? Maybe the GOP could see if they could resurrect Jeffery Dahmer from the dead to oversee the USDA. Hey, Sarah Palin, any comments about House Republicans "palling around" with murder suspects?

Ethics, who the hell needs ethics?

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West