LawTalkers - I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

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- - I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused. (http://www.lawtalkers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=879)

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 504846)

Any source arguing 3 was screwed by 1 will be recognized, but fought by you on the grounds that 3 was unelectable and unrealistic.

No, it will be fought on the grounds that it's bullshit, that Bernie was given as good a chance as anyone else (which one could argue he didn't deserve as a non-Democrat) and that the "screwing" amounted to being given far more debate opportunities than is typical.

Otherwise, what you've got is that individual party staffers preferred the Democrat in the race and expected her to prevail. Shocking.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 504870)

Jesus, you've just given up on reasoning, haven't you?

If you were to compare the stupidity of the statement you are responding to above to the statements in the second paragraph of Post 3097, how would it rank? Equally stupid? Even more dumb? Has he possibly surpassed himself yet again?

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 504851)

So which of your little camps do most Republicans fall in these days?

In case you haven't noticed, Hillary isn't running for anything these days, and Bernie's not likely to be either, once he gets whatever committee seats he's jockeying for. Expect Obama to be a force in the party long after both those suns have set.

I've always seen eye to eye with a lot of Republicans on things like TPP, which Hill went soft on. And I've always been with the progressive wing of the party on things like minimum wage and civil rights (note: not a Bernie issue). And the foreign policy world rarely fits these neat little categories. But I will say this, I don't care if shallow is the Intercept or Breitbart or you, shallow is shallow.

Shallow is Clapper's testimony this morning. "We have stuff, but we can't give it to you until next week. We're still compiling it."

Let me get this straight. The intelligence community was sure Russia was behind most of the hacking before the election. Obama went and told this to the media, numerous times. But now, a month after the Administration started fingering Russia as the main culprit behind the hacking, and stated it had ironclad proof, the guy in charge of providing that proof still hasn't compiled it adequately enough to present to Congress. Not even a little taste, Gen. Clapper? (And let's not forget, this is the same Clapper who lied to Congress regarding the NSA's Prism program during hearings following the Snowden revelations.)

Look. I'm sure Russia was up to serious shenanigans here. But this is an argument of degree. How much hacking did they do, and what was the impact? We should investigate it fully and take action top prevent it in the future. But the Administration and the Democratic Party are trying to make this an argument of absolutes, and they look pretty stupid for the effort.

Screaming over and over, "Look at the hacking! Look at Russia's hacking!", isn't going to move any serious person's eye off the real issue: How much did the hacking impact the campaign? The answer to that will be, not enough to have changed the outcome. It probably caused a bunch of Bernie Bros. to feel a lot better about staying home or voting for Stein or Johnson. But not enough to have made a difference in enough of the "blue wall" states in which Trump beat Hillary. And again, all this hacking did was expose the truth about collusion between a bent DNC and the Clinton Machine. The most one can charge Putin with exposing is, well -- facts. Ugly facts.

She ran a shitty campaign without a message, and Bernie hobbled her badly before she even reached the Convention. The Democratic Establishment would do well to stop crying about Putin and admit its own failures here. Hillary was weak and without a message when a strong candidate with a change platform was needed. 2008 was her one and only chance. Unfortunately, it also happened to be Obama's year, and he had a message.

Re: The 70s was an ugly, ugly place

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower (Post 504855)

I guess I knew The Message and a few other songs. But in fairness, I graduated high school BEFORE there were any albums by Public Enemy, Ice-T, KRS-One, Beastie Boys, NWA, Cypress Hill, De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers, etc., etc. And suburban Boston kids were not all that plugged into what was happening on NYC radio. In the years between when I graduated HS and when you did, things changed a lot in the rap world.

Yo Bum Rush the Show is old as dirt, which makes you...

No Slick Rick, Too Short, Schooly D? That's some ancient stuff right there.

And if you want to go way, way back, the Last Poets? That's some truly old school rap. Pre-dating Rapper's Delight. I recall my folks thinking I was on drugs (perhaps correctly) when I was listening to the Poets. "'Cause the white man's got a God complex!" Look them up on Youtube. They're a sort of MC5 of rap. Arguably created the genre, as the MC5 and Stooges did punk, but rarely credited for much.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 504869)

WashPo, CNN and the Times brought you continuous breathless coverage of the emails non-issue, and CNN aired hours upon hours of Trump rallies without commentary. Heck, they actually cut from a Hillary speech to wait for Trump to take the podium.

(I have no opinion on the Globe, which I generally do not read)

WaPo, at Bezo's request, staffed something like 20 people on the task of digging up any and every thing it could on Trump. It then embarked on an amazing campaign of opinion articles smearing the shit out of the guy every day. This even bled over to its news division, which became largely indistinguishable from its opinion pages.

WaPo made the Times look quite even-handed this election.

CNN did give Trump loads of airtime, but as Fox did regarding Hillary, every report on Trump was tinged with subtle negative commentary. And CNN's morning guy, Cuomo, beat Trump like a gong every chance he got.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 504871)

If you have to defend what was done to Bernie on the grounds that wasn't a real Democrat, wouldn't it be wiser to refrain from replying? Really. That's not a strong angle.

Bernie was a legitimate candidate running on a platform more traditionally Democratic (read: Pre-Clinton triangulation) than Hillary. Staffers didn't prefer a Democrat over an independent. They were in the bag for the Clintons, and they preferred the success of the Clinton machine to a truly fair nomination process.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 504876)

If you have to defend what was done to Bernie on the grounds that wasn't a real Democrat, wouldn't it be wiser to refrain from replying?

I suppose if I did that, yeah.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 504877)

I suppose if I did that, yeah.

You did.

Bernie and Trump were quite similar. Both were unique candidates loathed by the establishment arms of their (adopted?) parties. The only difference I see is Trump beat the Establishment, and Bernie did not.

I understand the wisdom of the Establishment in both instances. I thought both were unelectable. But Trump clearly proved a lot of us wrong there, and given Bernie's populist message was similar in many ways to Trump's, the question of whether he would've beaten Trump can be argued yes or no with equal credibility.

Re: Sand, Ass, no dif

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 504873)

You are working very hard to stick your head in the sand. Why not just stick it in? Is there some way in which you're trying to convince yourself you're not stick it in while you do stick it in?

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 504878)

You did.

Read it again.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 504876)

You are almost as informative here as Tucker Carlson.

Re: Sand, Ass, no dif

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 504879)

You are working very hard to stick your head in the sand. Why not just stick it in? Is there some way in which you're trying to convince yourself you're not stick it in while you do stick it in?

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/14/...ts-not-enough/

Now go on and claim this is biased because it's Greenwald affiliated.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 504880)

Read it again.

If staffers preferred the Democrat in the nomination race, who was the non-Democrat in that race?

Re: The 70s was an ugly, ugly place

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 504874)

Of those, only Too Short had an album out while I was in HS. I don't know when I first became aware of the Last Poets.

Re: The 70s was an ugly, ugly place

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 504874)

Detroit invented punk?