DirkGently
DirkGently's JournalAnd the substitution of authority for substance.
The argument being made is that everyone should shut up, stop thinking, and accept the opinions of a network of powerful people endorsing each other.
It's the classic Republican vs. Democratic argument -- that a chosen few representatives should decide, and the general population's job is simply to elect them and meekly follow -- except for the fact it's being deployed by Dems against other Dems.
Notice none of these endorsements come with any articulation of substantive judgments in favor of Hillary Clinton. These are political allies doing what political allies do -- backing each other. They say nothing, or when they do, immediately go splat and have to be walked back, whether it's women going to hell or false memories of Bill and Hillary magically fighting for civil rights. It's a tactic from the 90's, before everything was recorded and a facile lie could be caught in a matter of minutes.
I keep wondering if the person handing out all these doomed, toxic talking points to progressive icons still has a job. It was an outdated, losing strategy in 2008, and it hasn't gotten any fresher or more effective since then.
Nothing strict about "strict constructionism."
No one ever gets to the precise original meaning of a text, nor are most of the people claiming to do so even trying, really. They're "strict" when it suits; more interpretive when that doesn't point in the direction they want.
Scalia, rest in peace, never seemed to me to be at all interested in getting to any kind of true, original meaning of the Constitution. He wanted it to say what he wanted it to say, and worked backwards accordingly.
To me whenever anyone claims to be adhering to some super-disciplined approach to the truth, it's a dead giveaway their intention is just the opposite.
Case in point: Ayn Rand's "Objectivism," which actually espouses a determinedly ultra-narrow subjective view of the world.
Where might the world be right now
If the U.S. hadn't pursued "regime change" in Iran, Iraq, and Libya? Would there have been an Islamic Revolution at all? Would Al Quaeda have ever gotten any traction? ISIS?
This is the problem with people like Kissinger, Bush, and Clinton. They think they have the ability to micromanage the world, but they in fact have no idea what they're doing. They are clever, but not nearly intelligent enough to pull off what they try to do, even if they had the authority, moral or otherwise to attempt it.
These are the people who run things. Arrogant people who think they deserve to wield enormous power, to inflict death and destruction for some supposed end they don't even clearly understand themselves.
Then they come back to us, waving the flag, roaring about how we need more and more and more of the same insanity to protect ourselves from the disasters they themselves created in the first place.
At what point will Americans stop falling for this? Enabling it? Excusing it? Setting people's lives and fortunes on fire for goals that never made any goddamn sense in the first place?
When?
Good on her! Nationwide though, not the case.
After the Republicans de-coupled the tipped minimum from the actual minimum wage at the behest of the restaurant industry, it's fallen (like wages overall) in terms of its effective value. That's probably part of why tipped workers are more likely to be in poverty and using social services to survive at a much higher rate.
?5
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/17/abolish-tipping_n_5991796.html
Beyond that, though, philosophically it just seems like garbage. Why in the world should random restaurant customers get to decide how much or how little (down to the egregiously low tipped minimum) a server should make?
We already know there is no shortage of horror stories of food service customers abusing servers, and using tipping practices to enact various kinds of petty revenge or simple skin-flintiness, after all.
http://kitchenette.jezebel.com/more-of-the-worlds-worst-restaurant-customers-part-2-1738471431
^THIS is the core of Capehart's dishonesty here.
He spins his disingenuous bullshit with the same airy certainty that no one will catch on as Ted Cruz does.
The whole premise was a massive self-contradicting sleight-of-hand in the first place. Sanders was at the event. There are photos of Sanders at the event. Sanders was at other events. Capehart says there is no doubt of that, and then turns around and says it's somehow misleading because just that one photo tried to
"imply that he was in the trenches fighting for the rights of African Americans when rival Hillary Clinton was a Republican-supporting “Goldwater Girl.”
But Sanders WAS in the trenches fighting when Clinton was a Goldwater Girl. Or at least the president of the Wellesley College Republicans. However much it matters, it is the truth. So it was really the truth of THAT Capehart was trying to undermine so smugly and gleefully.
It never mattered whether the particular photo was Sanders or not. There is nothing there to discuss in the first place. The fact that Capehart was factually wrong and won't even admit that in a straightforward way just further confirms that he's just carrying water.
Watch for his fascinating attempts at Jew baiting as well. He started down the road of "Sanders doesn't discuss his Jewish heritage enough" with Chris Matthews before Chris -- his own sleaze-o-meter clearly blaring -- shut him down.
Smirking jackass should resign from WaPo's editorial board.
Not only did he roll out the disingenuous hit piece, which had no substance regardless of who was in the particular photo he was bleating about anyway, but he jumped up and down on it, going to town with Chris Matthews on MSNBC and tweeting about it 30+ times.
His "retraction" amounts to more dishonest garbage, pretending there was some great mystery that has only recently been solved, when the fact is he was screeching about nothing to begin with, given there was never any dispute Sanders was at the event in question. Yet he smarmily demanded that people "Stop sending around this photo of 'Bernie Sanders' " which he said was being done to
"imply that he was in the trenches fighting for the rights of African Americans when rival Hillary Clinton was a Republican-supporting “Goldwater Girl.”
Sanders WAS in the trenches fighting when Clinton was a Goldwater Girl. However much it matters, it is the truth. So it was really the truth of THAT Capehart was trying to undermine so smugly and gleefully.
On top of all of that, when he was sputtering about with Chris Matthews, he frantically worked to squeeze in the idea that there is a new "meme" that Sanders doesn't talk about his Jewish heritage enough. More disingenuous slime, trying to make an issue of Sanders' religious background one way or the other.
This is the kind of garbage that made our household's decision to drop Hillary and support Obama in 2008. Then it was the attempt to count the Michigan primary after Clinton pledged not to campaign there, and Ferraro's racist comments to the effect that Obama was only succeeding as he was because of his skin color.
This is smaller issue, but the savagery and dishonesty and win-by-any-means necessary attitude is the same. We may never know if someone in the campaign explicitly asked Capehart and Time to run with it, but it sure smells familiar.
It smells like 2008.
How tasteful of the Republicans
to wait literal minutes after news of the passing of one of their legal heroes to begin lying about history to try to subvert the legal process itself in order to try to snatch an advantage to which they are not entitled.
Grassley's quite a piece of work. I recall him jumping on the "death panels" bandwagon regarding the ACA, actually laughing as he talked about "killing grandma" because he knew what crazed nonsense it was, and also knowing his smirk wouldn't translate into print.
He is also the father of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, a destructive piling on of bureaucracy to the bankruptcy laws widely viewed as a straight-up gift to credit card lenders. Thanks to him, people facing bankruptcy must now go through a farcical "credit counseling" process " then jump through a series of means testing hoops to prove they cannot pay 20% of their unsecured debt before filing for Ch. 7, or else must file a repayment plan bankruptcy under Ch. 13
And he's considered one of the fairly normal, pre-Tea Party Republicans.
Rest in peace, Scalia. You are better off not seeing the circus your greatest admirers have planned at your parting.
Thought so. Policy vs personal allegiance is one of the
issues in this primary, I think. It carries very little weight with me whose official support our candidates have managed to negotiate for (or extort). I don't care if Obama sees Hillary as more of a political ally, or if John Lewis has agreed to be on her side.
What I'd like to hear about is WHY people support on candidate or another. I think we're being asked to substitute the blessings of authority -- whether it's "super delegates" or union leadership or members of Congress -- for any actual substantive arguments in favor of one or the other.
It's a facet of the establishment vs. the populace argument we're having this year. It's nice that a powerful person can go out and get other powerful people to align with them, but unless they're making a cogent argument that they are choosing based on substance rather than personal allegiance or horse-trading, it doesn't count for much.
And it's actually kind of insulting to suggest that any of us need to accept the unexplained say-so of leaders as a substitute for our own judgment. Which I think is a large part of what's going on with the claim that Hillary has Obama's tacit blessing and should get some kind of credit for that.
And Hillary is re-running that 2008 campaign now.
Hillary Clinton is not Obama's logical successor.
Not for progressives, anyway. And frankly it doesn't matter which candidate Obama personally prefers. She ran to Obama's right in 2008, and is to his right today.
Neither Sanders or Clinton is Obama, or will govern like Obama. Sanders would be a move to Obama's left; Hillary to the right.
I get that Hillary would like to frame the discussion so that the things Obama has done that progressives like should accrue to her, but that doesn't hold together logically. She ran in 2008 the same way she's running now -- accusing the more progressive candidate of being a naive pipe dreamer who couldn't "get things done."
The reason is that polls show most Dems would like a President either more progressive than Obama, or about the same. I think it was 13% who wanted a more conservative Dem in the White House. But that is what Hillary represents.
So this is her core problem. She's once again the more conservative choice, which once again is not what Dems say they want. And she's once again arguing that her more conservative approach is more practical -- which in itself is not a terrible argument.
But she is also again arguing that the more progressive approach is hopelessly naive pipe dreaming, like her "magic wand" speech directed at Obama in 2008.
And on top of that, she would like to argue she represents the best continuation of Obama's most progressive policies?
It's an odd way to go about things, and highly questionable given how it worked out last time.
Hillary is not Obama's logical successor.
Here's what I see
1. To the extent the argument is that Hillary has been more civil and respectful toward Obama, that is untrue. The 2008 campaign is relevant because
a) Hillary took an extremely sharp line against Obama, which many found distasteful, and
b) She made the same arguments against a left-of-her opponent she is now making against Sanders, which calls into question both the accuracy of the "doers vs. dreamers" dichotomy her campaign is pushing, and whether she can win with such a tactic. Last time around neither turned out to be true.
2. To the extent Hillary is arguing to those who most support Obama now that she is the natural choice to replace him and carry on his policies, the fact is she has neither been the "nicest" to him of the two candidates on a personal level, nor is she necessarily closer to Obama politically. She is more conservative than Obama, who is more conservative than Sanders. The candidates are effectively on either side of Obama politically.
Sanders and Clinton represent two directions the Democratic Party can go after Obama. More conservative with Clinton, or more progressive with Sanders.
It's not that Hillary is like Obama and Sanders is not. They are alike and different in different ways. Sanders and Obama agree on Iraq, for example, where Hillary is more hawkish. Sanders and Obama both thought a single-payer or public option healthcare system would be best, but Hillary seems to be saying the ACA is as far as we need to go for now.
And there is this: We picked a left-of-Hillary candidate last time. So the question now is, given the option of Hillary Clinton again, and another left-of-Hillary candidate, which way we go now. Even more to the left than the last time we chose someone else over Clinton, or with her?
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Member since: Wed Jan 27, 2010, 04:59 PM
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