a clown car full of millionaires: the 2016 presidential primary thread

the emergency is YOU

my sister told me that o'malley reminded her of will forte with his smile and mannerisms and it was impossible to ignore after that

and having just now googled that i see she was not alone

Good summary.

repeatedly reminded the party faithful of her long record as a fighter for the causes she believes in.

oh good Christ

yeah that seems p accurate

xp

at least we know gabbneb's name is Matthew Yglesias now

"Larry David imitating George Steinbrenner" was a hard one to forget as well.

‏@AriFleischer
Good for Hillary on Snowden.

ew

I can't say I really gaf about Snowden - didn't everybody assume/know that stuff was going on already? What he did seems really inconsequential to me, so it's sad/gross to see everybody leap over themselves to say how much they hate him.

didn't everybody assume/know that stuff was going on already?

so you didn't gaf about Iran-Contra or Watergate either

'stuff is going on' is always handwavingly vague. cynical too

I mean, sure, I've watched JFK, I can imagine our government doing horrible shit, but "everyone knew this stuff was going on" is a helluva way to encourage journalism

no I mean that once the Patriot Act passed I took it as a given that the feds had sweeping powers to conduct surveillance on the American people, and the intelligence apparatus and level of paranoia in the country being what it was, they were going to exploit it. People were talking about servers sweeping up phone records long before Snowden leaked his info. There was plenty of rumbling about the FISA court, warrantless wiretapping etc. before Snowden.

Snowden provided explicit evidence and a huge amount of detail, but I didn't and don't get why there was this sudden outpouring of shock and hand-wringing. what did people think the fucking CIA/FBI/DHS were doing

Abu Ghraib -- hey, we could've guessed that there was stuff happening.

one must never lose one's capacity for justified outrage, i thought you knew this

xp

citing specific incidents like Iran-Contra, Watergate and Abu Ghraib is not relevant - those were not explicitly guided by public legislation. It was like the nation collectively forgot that this had passed overwhelmingly, repeatedly, and what was in it.

the handwringing came from politicians looking at their respective bases

i still want to see WE ARE NOT DENMARK wallpaper, stickers etc

one must never lose one's capacity for justified outrage

it is outrageous! the time to be outraged was when gangs of assholes were passing the legislation! crying about it afterwards - especially when an overwhelming majority of the public was totally a-okay with the Patriot Act - is just sour grapes.

xp

Just as there is a perceptible difference between being suspected of breaking the law and being caught on camera breaking the law, there is a perceptible difference between "everyone assuming stuff was going on" and documenting the exact structure and details so it isn't just imaginary any more.

like OMG apparently Snowden's big crime was attempting to remind the American public about a law they passed when they were acting like traumatized babies

xp

"everyone assuming stuff was going on"

the expanded surveillance stuff is right there in the law

everyone was puttin' on their flag pins, too busy to be outraged at every sen cept Feingold

and where were they going to get the phone/communications records from but the giants that actually have the data - AT&T, Google, etc. How could this be be a surprise to anyone, a 10yo could figure it out

xp

Οὖτις, you were the one who introduced the verbiage of 'assuming stuff'. I was just closely paraphrasing your own post.

yes I know. if the gov't passes a law granting them powers it seems natural to assume the gov't is going to use them - after all, that's why the law was passed.

Donald Trump Asks Twitter Who Is Winning The Democratic Debate And Curt Schilling’s Response Just Won The Internet

so when Hil said Snowden "could have gotten all of the protections of being a whistleblower," was she lying or ignorant?

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/14/what-did-clinton-mean-when-she-said-snowden-files-fell-into-the-wrong-hands/

Before Snowden, it was possible for people to imagine the government was confining itself to whatever level of surveillance they were comfortable with. After Snowden, they had to stop kidding themselves and when confronted with the true facts a lot of those same people got very uncomfortable. You can be cynical and claim Snowden changed nothing of substance, but he did move public opinion very substantially against the Patriot Act, even if he did not change it decisively.

yeah that just seems like a lie

or maybe she meant the reporters were the "wrong hands" lol

xp

citing specific incidents like Iran-Contra, Watergate and Abu Ghraib is not relevant - those were not explicitly guided by public legislation

lol what?

Correct my if I'm wrong but wasn't Bush/Cheney elected into office? Twice?

was confining itself to whatever level of surveillance they were comfortable with

hmm yes what level of surveillance would a gov't in a perpetual state of paranoia with unlimited powers be comfortable with hmm let me think

Correct my if I'm wrong but wasn't Bush/Cheney elected into office? Twice?

um what does that have to do with anything? (also elections /= laws)

There was no law passed that said "CREEP has the right to break into DNC HQ". There was no law passed that said the Army had the authority to abuse prisoners held on foreign soil. There were no laws passed authorizing the sale of arms from the Contras to Iran in exchange for hostage releases.

claim Snowden changed nothing of substance, but he did move public opinion very substantially against the Patriot Act, even if he did not change it decisively.

yes this is p much my position

although idk about "substantially", that's hard to guage

hmm let me think

thinking is hard. gauging the paranoia of the government against the provisions of a particular law and drawing conclusions about its covert actions is a non-starter for the vast majority of citizens, who quickly give up on thinking about anything outside of their immediate personal experience.

http://studio180theatre.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/stuff-happens-2008.jpg

when america passed the patriot act most of it still had its sexting cherry

Correct my if I'm wrong but wasn't Bush/Cheney elected into office? Twice?

um what does that have to do with anything? (also elections /= laws)

I didn't say elections = laws. Elections put people into positions of power. Whether they follow the laws or not doesn't matter (as you point out here). Since the people in power aren't beholden to laws then they are beholden to their own interests. Hence the importance of putting the right people in power.

In his closing statement, O'Malley struck a broad theme of party unity, arguing that in contrast to the GOP debates "nobody on this stage denigrated women, nobody on this stage made racist remarks."

Did he give Clinton the stink-eye when he said this?

It's also a no-win scenario when you say laws do not matter much in these realms then say about Snowden that he did not do anything substantial because no legislation was passed bc of him.

They could have passed the Snowden Fairness Transparency and Anti-Torture Act of 2014 and the same shady shit would be going on. At least now we know about it, and other whistleblowers know they can get away w blowing their own whistles.

you are confused

every sentence in those two posts is wrong.

Nobody was worried until he started sculpting those shrubs into dinosaurs.

i went into this agnostic and came out of it the same. between bernie and hillary, i mean, these other guys just need to pack it in, what a waste of time

i ended up feeling bad (a little) for jim webb. w/o knowing his whole record, it's true that he was focused on poverty in the same way john edwards used to be (but maybe too singularly focused on *rural white* poverty with his appalachian roots?) *and* that he did a lot of work on criminal justice and mass incarceration long before those had become pressing issues for the dem base. so yeah he was the one white southern sorta-conservadem who had interesting things to say on the way america treats its lower classes.

but he had a bad night. he had to try to translate his particular hillbilly-veteran-author persona into something that the current-day dem electorate could see working for them, but he was just defensive about it. weird that in all the gun talk nobody even mentioned the 2nd amendment! i was sort of expecting webb to bring it up, like, let's face it, any attempt at gun control has to be constitutional, this is a core national-identity concern to a huge swath of the country. but he didn't really go there.

have to admit, i thought he was out of the senate a while ago. he seemed like he'd been out of the game a long time.