~snip~

In other words, Paul wants his “libertarianism” to be a cipher. He wants you to believe he’s a freedom-loving freedom freedomer, but doesn’t want you to actually know what he means by that, but instead to just assume that whatever his views are, they must align exactly with yours. As a strategy, it’s actually pretty smart. Paul wants younger, more independent voters to think he’s a different kind of Republican but he also wants older, more religious voters to think he’s the same kind of gay-hating, woman-suppressing Republican they prefer to vote for. Since “libertarian” is a meaningless garbage word, he’s hoping that both camps just assume that his definition of it aligns with their views. But to keep that strategy going, he needs a conspiracy of silence: No questions on abortion/gay rights, since that might rob younger voters of the illusion that Paul’s “libertarianism” means he believes the government should butt out of people’s sex lives. No questions on foreign policy, because he’s trying to convince Team Youth that he’s anti-interventionist while simultaneously trying to convince Team Christian Right that he cannot wait to start killing Muslims. No questions on drug policy, anti-discrimination legislation, immigration, anything where a genuinely libertarian view would turn off older voters, but where admitting he’s actually a conservative would turn off younger voters.


Looking at it from that perspective, it’s arguable that Paul’s tendency to fly off the handle, quit interviews, or demand imperiously that reporters act like stenographers instead of like, you know, reporters is all about trying to train the press to join his conspiracy of silence around all these issues. I mean, he may also just be a jackass, but the fact that this is targeted jackassery makes me wonder if this isn’t just a deliberate strategy, with the hope that once reporters key into the fact that certain kinds of issues reliably cause a blow-up, that they will stop pressing those buttons for fear of inciting conflict.


If so, he’s not just a jackass, but also a dumb ass. Nothing gets views and page clicks more than a candidate losing his temper. If anything, teaching the press that you can reliably get a tantrum by prodding him about hypocrisy or libertarian weirdness will encourage them to do it more. Of course, like Chris Christie, he may be banking on conservative enthusiasm for the idea that they are victimized by the meanie press refusing to be Republican propaganda corps. That might help him for a time, but at the end of the day, Republicans aren’t so nuts that they’ll try to win a national election on the false victimhood tip. They always end nominating someone who at least can act like a grown-up in public and Paul just ain’t it.




cont'

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/04/is-there-a-method-to-rand-pauls-temper-tantrums/

"...Do you think that if I used a sweeter tone with the banks, that if I said very nicely, 'We should have broken you into pieces,' that everything would be fine?" she asked audience members at the Know Your Value Conference in Philadelphia.

"Do you think that if I smiled more at banking committee hearings, that Wall Street would put me on their Christmas card lists?" she continued. "Give me a break." […]

"They didn't stop the train wreck happening right in front of them," Warren argued of the mortgage market's disintegration in 2008.

"What happened in the mortgage market wasn't like a hurricane or a tornado," she added. "What happened in the mortgage market was a deliberate decision by the financial institutions to improve their profits by selling mortgages that were like grenades with the pins pulled out...."



http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/238532-warren-on-softening-wall-street-tone-give-me-a-break

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NORAH O'DONNELL, CBS THIS MORNING: In the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton could announce any day now that she is going to seek the presidential nomination for and presidency in 2016. Do you think she's the future of the Democratic Party?

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: Well, I think we have to see, first of all, if she declares, and what she says she wants to run on. I think that’s really the interesting question at this point.

CHARLIE ROSE, CO-HOST: You know her. I mean, you know her and you know her positions on most issues. Does she represent the Democratic Party that you believe the Democratic Party ought to be?

WARREN: I don’t think the Democratic Party is a static thing. The Democratic Party grows. The Democratic Party is full of energy right now. The Democratic Party is very much about drawing contrasts, frankly, with the Republican Party.

“Diplomacy has taken us to a framework agreement founded on vigilance and enforcement, and these negotiations must be allowed to proceed unencumbered,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Senator Corker’s legislation undermines these international negotiations and represents an unnecessary hurdle to achieving a strong, final agreement.”

“The big question is what will Corker do,” one Democratic aide said. “If Democrats agree on amendments and Corker won’t go with them, it could be problematic in terms of getting broader Democratic support in committee."

You were quoted as Officer Slager's attorney in the aftermath of this high-profile shooting but before the video came out. Now you're not his attorney anymore. What happened?

I can't specifically state what is the reason why or what isn't the reason why I'm no longer his lawyer. All I can say is that the same day of the discovery of the video that was disclosed publicly, I withdrew as counsel immediately. Whatever factors people want to take from that and conclusions they want to make, they have the right to do that. But I can't confirm from an attorney-client standpoint what the reason is.


When you were representing Slager, you said, “I believe once the community hears all the facts of this shooting, they’ll have a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding this investigation.”

That was my belief at the time, that's why I made that statement.


Now that the video is out, it seems the community has a much better understanding about what actually happened, and not necessarily in the officer's favor. What's your take on that new information?

I think that there's been a release of information that was not public information at the time, or not discovered at the time at least to any knowledge of mine or anyone else publicly— at least the video. I can't comment on the specifics of what I think the video says. I'm not going to analyze the video, but again ... the video came out and within the hours of the video coming out, I withdrew my representation of the client.


How did you come across the video?

I can't say where I saw it first. I first became aware of it via the media. In fact, a reporter sent it to me via e-mail.


These days, more and more people are carrying video recording devices on their phones and it's hard to not know if everything we do isn't being captured somehow. How do you, as an attorney, know to trust what you're saying about a client is true—and what do you do if you find out information that seems to refute it after you've made a statement?

I'm not going to speak specifically to this case, but generally speaking as an attorney, when you're looking at a case you have to look at a number of different factors. One part is when you have a high-profile case, on behalf of your client and at the time due to their encouragement or what they're directing you to do, you make public statements based on the information you have. It's common in any type of case when you're a defense attorney that any kind of information that you're provided is limited throughout as far as what information you're given from your client compared to when you actually get to discovery or the evidence, moving all the way to the point of more additional evidence or witnesses coming out as the case progresses. So I think with any case it's always a changing situation, or it can be.



cont'

Just before the U.S. invaded Iraq, Cheney was asked on NBC's Meet the Press how long a U.S. invasion would take. He responded, "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators... I think it will go relatively quickly... weeks rather than months." The U.S. was not greeted as liberators, and the invasion proved to be poorly planned by the Pentagon and Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"Even if military action were required -- and we certainly should have kept the credible threat of military force on the table throughout which always improves diplomacy -- the president is trying to make you think it would be 150,000 heavy mechanized troops on the ground in the Middle East again as we saw in Iraq. That's simply not the case," Cotton told Tony Perkins on the Family Research Council's Washington Watch program, according to CNN.

"It would be something more along the lines of what President Clinton did in December 1998 during Operation Desert Fox," he added. "Several days of air and naval bombing against Iraq's weapons of mass destruction facilities for exactly the same kind of behavior -- for interfering with weapons inspectors and for disobeying Security Council resolutions. All we're asking is that the president simply be as tough as in the protection of America's national security interest as Bill Clinton was."

"The United States would obviously be blamed and we could possibly be the target of retaliation from Iran, striking our ships, striking our military bases," former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in 2011, adding that "severe economic consequences ... could impact a very fragile economy in Europe and a fragile economy here in the United States."