;)
The Commentariat -- April 13, 2015
Internal links removed.
** Reality Chek. Paul Krugman: Pay no attention to the personalities of the presidential candidates. "The huge, substantive gulf between the parties will be reflected in the policy positions of whomever they nominate, and will almost surely be reflected in the actual policies adopted by whoever wins." CW: Read the whole column, especially the part near the end on how the media will treat the nominees of each party.
Second Most Annoying Campaign Launch Ever
Honestly, this beats Ted Cruz by a long shot & loses only to Ronald Reagan's outreach to racists:
... Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Ending two years of speculation and coy denials, Hillary Rodham Clinton announced on Sunday that she would seek the presidency for a second time, immediately establishing herself as the likely 2016 Democratic nominee. 'I'm running for president,' she said with a smile near the end of a two-minute video released just after 3 p.m." CW: I don't know what Juanito will do, but it couldn't be dumber unless he just held up a sign that read, "Yes, I'm a total phony. Send money." ...
... CW: For the first 30 seconds of the vid, I thought I was watching an ad for an unspecified something -- mortgage loans, home insurance maybe -- & was annoyed there was no Skip Ad arrow. Hillary must be using the same Mad Men as Goldman Sachs or CitiBank. ...
... Maggie Haberman & Patrick Healy of the New York Times discuss the video, making Krugman's point, & a few minor ones of mine.
Jaime Fuller of New York: "Her campaign's Facebook page is live too.... However, the news first broke -- the news of her announcement, not the obvious fact that she was going to run -- via emails that John Podesta, the chair of Clinton's campaign, sent to former Hillary '08 campaigners and potential donors." ... Which inspired James Poniewozik of Time to tweet, "Possibly the most stirring piece of American political rhetoric since Lincoln's Second Inaugural Message to Top Donors Through an Aide." Clinton's Facebook page is here.
Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "While Clinton sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 primarily on her record as a lawmaker, early moves indicate her campaign will work this time to reintroduce her by embracing her earlier history. Clinton's biography posted to her campaign website is written in an unusually personal tone, describing her father, Hugh, as a 'rock-ribbed Republican' and highlighting her own position on a girls softball team."
Gabriel Debenedetti of Politico: "When Hillary Clinton said she was going to hit the road, she meant it. The newly declared presidential candidate is on her way to Iowa, from New York, in a van after announcing her candidacy online Sunday afternoon." ...
... CW: She should have asked me. I would have suggested a used blue GM Silverado pick-up pulling a dented Airstream, with a couple of Hillary-for-America "Hospital This Way" signs slapped on the sides. And she definitely should do the driving. (For folks along the road actually looking for a hospital, Hillary's roadshow could be fatal, what with the sign on the left side of the vehicle facing north & the sign on the right facing left.) ...
(... BTW, the logo wasn't something some over-the-hill staffer knocked out at the last minute on MSPaint. Philip Rucker & Anne Gearan of the Washington Post, February 21, 2015: "In their mission to present voters with a winning picture of the likely candidate, no detail is too big or too small -- from her economic opportunity agenda to the design of the 'H' in her future campaign logo.")
Here's Amy Davidson's take on Hillary's rollout.
** Bill Curry, Salon, writing before the actual "launch": "For months Clinton has run a front-porch campaign -- if by porch you mean Boo Radley's. Getting her outdoors is hard enough; when she does get out it's often to give paid speeches to people who look just like her: educated, prosperous and privileged. Needing desperately to connect with the broader public, she opts for the virtual reality of a pre-taped video delivered via social media." Read the whole post.
Jonathan Chait: "Unless the economy goes into a recession over the next year and a half, Hillary Clinton is probably going to win the presidential election. The United States has polarized into stable voting blocs, and the Democratic bloc is a bit larger and growing at a faster rate."
Nate Silver: "The truth is that a general election win by Clinton -- she's very likely to become the Democratic nominee -- is roughly a 50/50 proposition. And we're not likely to learn a lot over the rest of 2015 to change that."
Jamelle Bouie sees Clinton as the Democrats' last hope. "The simple fact is that even if everything goes well for Democrats in 2016, even if they hold the presidency and pick up the Senate as well, their long-term prospects are dire. After eight years in the White House, the party has atrophied, and given the partisan and demographic trends that are driving American politics -- in particular, the demographic divergence in midterm and presidential elections -- it's not clear what Democrats can do to fix the problem. Here's where we are: Far more than its competitor, the Democratic Party is at a crossroads. At the moment, it's being held together by its president and his potential successor, Hillary Clinton. But this obscures intraparty conflict and the extent to which the party is in desperate need of rebuilding for the second and third decades of the 21st century."
Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast: The economic issues are monumental now. Hillary should throw caution to the wind & go big, something she is not accustomed to doing.
Elmo! Rebecca Traister of the New Republic: No, Hillary is not a dynastic heir.
Mark Hensch of the Hill: GOP candidates spent Sunday knocking Hillary Clinton.
Marco Rubio will announce something today. Margaret Hartmann of New York: "Hours after Hillary posted her elaborate campaign video, featuring a montage of almost every type of American who could conceivably vote Democrat, Rubio shared [a] ... grainy 9-second video shot on a windswept street behind the Freedom Tower does not scream 'professional campaign operation.' On the other hand, if the backdrop for tomorrow's speech is anything other than 'Miami traffic,' it will look great by comparison." Post includes grainy video with hurricane-like audio. CW: Sorry I couldn't get hold of the actual video, but this one is close enough: ...
(... Remember that Marco, who is not a scientist, man, is not qualified to be a local weatherman. ...)
... Tim Mak of the Daily Beast: Tea partiers "helped propel Marco Rubio into the Senate -- but many say they feel betrayed by him, and they won't support his presidential bid, expected to launch Monday." ...
... Here's one reason Marco doesn't know squat about foreign policy even though he's served on the Senate Foreign Relations & Intelligence Committees. Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "In 2011, just months after joining the Senate, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) missed three hearings called in the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, according to a review of attendance records. Rubio has kept a busy political travel schedule since arriving in Washington -- and his activities off the Hill have made him the most-absent senator, according to a review of records by GovTrack, a nonpartisan group that catalogs government activity."
... AND in Other News
Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "The White House this week will make a messaging push on two key Democratic economic issues, income inequality and equal pay for women, as Hillary Clinton ramps up her presidential campaign. President Obama will travel to Charlotte, N.C. on Wednesday to meet with working women and plug his budget proposal, which would increase taxes on the wealthy while upping tax credits for middle-class and low-income families...."
Seung Min Kim & Burgess Everett of Politico: "Senators return this week to a familiar fight over abortion and Loretta Lynch's long-stalled confirmation to be attorney general -- and the partisan gridlock shows no signs of easing. Both sides are confident they have the upper hand politically, and neither party wants to relent in a fight over abortion ahead of the 2016 election."
Matea Gold of the Washington Post: "A cadre of wealthy liberal donors aims to pour tens of millions of dollars into rebuilding the left's political might in the states, racing to catch up with a decades-old conservative effort that has reshaped statehouses across the country."
Beyond the Beltway
Melissa Chan of the New York Daily News: "It was a mistake. That's the blasé explanation Oklahoma officials gave after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a white deputy who accidentally pulled his gun when he meant to use his Taser. The botched encounter was captured on a disturbing video released by police on Friday -- nine days after the fatal Tulsa shooting." ...
... See also this post by Judd Legum of Think Progress. ...
... "'Pay to Play' Cop. Kate Briquelet of the Daily Beast: "The volunteer cop in Tulsa, Okla., who killed an unarmed black man was forking over thousands in donations and equipment after becoming an unpaid sheriff's deputy. Robert Bates, a 73-year-old insurance executive-turned-deputy, accidentally fired his gun instead of a Taser -- costing Eric Harris, 44, his life and adding to the tally of deadly police shootings against minorities nationwide.... [Bates] also chaired Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz's reelection campaign in 2012."
News Lede
New York Times: "Günter Grass, the German novelist, social critic and Nobel Prize winner whom many called his country's moral conscience but who stunned Europe when he revealed in 2006 that he had been a member of the Waffen-SS during World War II, died on Monday. He was 87."
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Reader Comments (17)
It is amazing to me that campaign strategists are being paid good money to give Hilary such lousy advice. If she can't make a speech explaining why she's running for president and her vision for America, I think we're toast.
The a Republican candidates are universally horrible, but at least they have passion.
Ewww...I smell Mark Penn in the Hillary announcement. Gag me with a spoon! He is such a dork, and he thinks he shits ice cream. This kind of nutsy, sentimental bullshit is what he loves second best. First best is slandering the opposition--usta be talking about Obama doing cocaine. Now--who knows? He likely will hint broadly that the GOP nominee fucked his wife's' best friend. I will be tuning out, for sure!
Whew! I'm getting weary reading all the many opinions surrounding the Hillary outing. Some balloons and confetti are called for. After Jamelle Bouie's dire prognosis for the Democratic party I wanted to keep in mind Krugman's clear outline of what both parties stand for and if, as we are led to believe, the minority in this country will become the majority in time, why on earth would the Democratic party shrivel up and die––just the opposite, I would think. Then I read Chait who says the Democratic voting bloc is a bit larger and GROWING at a faster rate (good Pew stats to accompany his article), but he cites Judis who says voters are moving toward the Republican Party. At this point I took a breather and made the bed. My own take on this leans toward Chait's take and his last paragraph kind of sums it up:
"The argument for Clinton in 2016 is that she is the candidate of the only major American political party not run by lunatics. There is only one choice for voters who want a president who accepts climate science and rejects voodoo economics, and whose domestic platform would not engineer the largest upward redistribution of resources in American history. Even if the relatively sober Jeb Bush wins the nomination, he will have to accommodate himself to his party's barking-mad consensus. She is non-crazy America’s choice by default. And it is not necessarily an exciting choice, but it is an easy one, and a proposition behind which she will probably command a majority."
@PD Pepe: Thanks for your analysis. Pretty much the same as my feelings.
The trouble with Chait's conclusion is that it is based on the assumption that voters have some vague idea of what the parties stand for & how their elected representatives really vote. They don't.
If their bridge is falling down, they blame the president. Never mind that Congress won't vote funds to repair it. If the economy is bad, they blame the president. Never mind that the Congress won't vote for measures to improve the economy. If the weather is bad, they blame the president (Really!) Never mind that Congress won't vote for sensible climate change-mitigating legislation & is in fact trying to limit what is already encoded.
Partly because of the media & partly because they're human, voters tend to go with personalities rather than policies. The other day a guy who is working for me -- and who can barely afford to care for his family -- told me his favorite president was Bush II. I tried to gently explain that Dubya was a flaming asshole whose policies hurt working families, but I'll bet my worker still likes Dubya a bunch.
It's true that Mitt lost because he was a plutocrat, & his 47% remark resonated, but that again was essentially a personality thing. People who aren't overt racists recognized Obama -- who knows what economic struggle is -- as "more like us" than Mitt is. Overt racists -- they couldn't see it.
I think it's quite possible that people will see someone like Scott Walker as "more like us" than Hillary is. It won't matter to them that he is planning to ruin their lives. He says just the opposite, & people will trust him more than a "Washington insider," as Hillary is portrayed. Face it, Scott Walker IS more like the average American: not overly bright, not well-informed, self-interested -- AND more presidential-looking on accounta all of our previous presidents have looked more like Scottie than like Hillary.
That's the word from the Hinterlands.
Marie
Hillary Clinton decides not to preposition us.
How long has Hillary and her people had to think about this announcement? If you said years, you might think you're right, but if they spent years fine tuning that video (oh god, I hope not--someone got bilked if so), they didn't spend much time on proofreading her online spiel. Li'l Randy's isn't the only campaign with editing issues.
According to boston.com, the original blurb released online to accompany Hills' announcement declared that she has "...fought children and families all her career."
Cue klaxon noise, full stop.
Certainly they meant to add an elusive preposition, "for". It's absence does not fill me with glee, as with the "Buy a Rand Paul flip-flop" mishegas.
One would think (hope) that at this point, Hillary and her campaign insiders would have a complete list of what she stands for, her goals, and how she intends (or hopes) to achieve those goals. And one would think (hope again) that she and her chess masters would be moving all those little red pawns around the board carefully considering offensive as well as defensive strategies. So the fact that on one of the biggest days of her political life an announcement goes out that hasn't been proofread by everyone and their mother makes me wonder if she's done the rest of her homework.
The people at the top are doing better than everyone else. Yes. We know that. But how does she propose to change this state of affairs? Already the wingnuts and the press (especially the Confederate press and the Confederate candidates and candidates in waiting) are all demanding details. Even Little Randy who, when asked for details runs away screaming. Just as a sidebar, I think it's more than a little hie-larious that Aqua Buddha is complaining about all the years Hillary and her family have been in Washington, when the Paul family has been running for president since the announcement of the Marshall Plan.
But this doesn't exempt Hillary from letting us in on what her plans are. If she hopes to simply throw that $2 billion she's promised to raise at this campaign and think that will buy her the White House, she is very much mistaken. I realize that she, better than almost anyone (except Obama), understands the depths to which her enemies are willing to descend to defeat her, and perhaps it's that knowledge that has increased her secretive nature, but as the president has shown (finally), calling these people out is a much better strategy than pretending they don't exist or that they will see reason and act in the best interest of the country if you can just convince them.
They won't.
In a way, the even bigger question, for me, than how does she intend to win, is this:
Can we trust her?
She and Bill have been hob-nobbing with the world's billionaires for years now and that has to affect one's views.
And to address one other issue, the problem of a president who looks and acts and talks just like an average American, I sure as shit don't want that. I don't want an out of touch Martian either (Poppy Bush) who doesn't know the price of a gallon of milk, but I don't want Joe the Plumber. I want someone who graduated at the top of her class from a place like Wellesley. I want a smart, sharp, savvy person who can get things done. Not someone who pretends to be a governor but hides under his desk when his constituents come calling.
So anyway, I guess I'm on board.
But if I seem wishy washy about another Clinton presidential run, I only have to remind myself of what Kate is always saying: "Remember the Supremes!"
So it's GO HILLARY (or maybe Marty).
@Akhilleus. Great! She's hoping to collect $2.5 billion to tell voters she's fought children & families all her career.
As for the logo, some sports fan saw it as a diagram where the red team plows to the right through two lines of not-too-effective blue defense.
If you're contributing to Hillary -- and good for you if you are -- you're not getting much for your money.
Marie
Loretta Lynch? Is she still alive?
So here's what's happened since Ms. Lynch was first nominated on November 8th of last year:
Marriage in SC approved by Supreme Court.
Immigration reform announced by president
Ebola epidemic still in full swing
After leaving the mother ship Rosetta, a probe named Philae lands on Comet 67P, located 310 million miles from Earth.
Eric Garner decision protests grow
Two NYC cops shot. Cops turn their backs on mayor.
AirAsia Flight QZ8501, disappears in Indonesian airspace with 162 people onboard.
Jury selection in the Boston Marathon bombing trial begins
Ohio State beats Oregon in the first ever College Football Championship game
Measles outbreak in CA
New England Patriots win the Super Bowl. When Lynch was nominated, the Pats were 7-2 and would have to play another 9 games (plus two bye weeks) before the Super Bowl, and THAT was 2 1/2 months ago.
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber resigns due to a pending criminal investigation.
Ashton Carter approved as Sec'y of State. Carter was nominated a month after Lynch but was approved roughly two months later, which doesn't even take into consideration Congress' nearly month long holiday recess.
Wingnut judge issues preliminary injunction trying to stop president's executive action on immigration.
FCC votes for net neutrality
Boston Marathon Bombing trial begins
Ferguson report released showing systemic racism and discrimination
Secret Service fucks up.
Secret Service fucks up a few more times.
Secret Service.....a thing happens. More fuck ups.
Indiana tells gays and lesbians no cake for you. Changes its mind and but tells them they're still not wanted.
Hillary Clinton e-mail problem erupts.
UVA Rolling Stone rape case story unravels.
Germanwings Flight 9525 crashes into the French Alps
Island nation of Vanuatu ripped by cat 5 cyclone. Island still missing.
Unemployment drops from 5.8 (when Lynch was first nominated back in 2014) to 5.5 in February. Lynch still cooling her heels, but a lot of other people go back to work.
NCAA basketball championships now over, Duke (men) and UCONN (women) are champs after month long tournament.
US-Cuba hold first high level meetings in five decades.
Boston marathon bombing trial over.
Iran agrees to outline of historic nuclear deal.
President Obama meets with Raul Castro.
So let's see. Since Lynch was nominated, a world wide Ebola panic has been largely curtailed, historic immigration reform was announced, then stopped. NCAA seasons of football AND basketball have been completed, an historic and surprising vote for net neutrality has been taken, one of the biggest trials in US history has been started and completed, the Secret Service found ever more ways to embarrass itself, religious freedom has been restructured to take freedom away from other Americans, the US has gone a long way toward ending antagonistic relationships with former bêtes noires Iran and Cuba, and unemployment has dropped .3%.
And we're all half a year older.
Oh yeah, and about a couple hundred more unarmed black men shot by police who either feared for their lives or didn't know the difference between or a pistol and a taser, or because it was "an accident" or all of the above. But good thing race isn't an issue in this country anymore. That's why Ashton Carter (white guy) was approved in heartbeat but Loretta Lynch (black lady) is in limbo.
Those senate Confederates, they said they'd get things moving again in Washington. They just didn't say what year they'd get things moving again.
Ooops....Ashton Carter is Sec'y of Defense.
I guess that means I had no Defense for that comment.
Apologies to John Kerry (who has been doing a smash job of late).
@PD. I share your analysis as well, as well as the doomsday exaggeration of Blouie's article:
"the Democratic Party is at a crossroads. At the moment, it’s being held together by its president and his potential successor, Hillary Clinton. But this obscures intraparty conflict and the extent to which the party is in desperate need of rebuilding for the second and third decades of the 21st century."
While that may be true, foreseeing almost anything in American politics in 2 or 3 decades is wishful thinking at best. And going into a deep "what if?" if Hillary wasn't there and the Democrats would entirely implode is not a serious exercise IMHO. Surely without Hillary waiting her turn in the wings then the Democratic political machine would have been busy churning up lesser-knowns and throwing them into various spotlights. To my mind, it seems more a timing anomaly than a catastrophic organizing failure that Hillary is so far ahead (solo?) in the starting blocks for the Democratic nominee.
And while many hypotheticals are thrown about in Blouie's piece, he doesn't even mention the GOP red meat Civil War that their party is going through at the moment. What about hypothetically imagining the GOP in 2 or 3 decades (scary thought!)? Are the invisible 'moderates' going to forever sit on the side lines and content themselves with gaining temporary power despite the fact their cannibalizing the country? Will the entire GOP machine, voters and votees, continue their interminable slide to the right for 2 decades? Is that possibly sustainable?
While the Democratic party is surely in need of a revitalization campaign to come back to Earth and solidify its base (they should hire the RC crew and see magic happen), all the while learning how to speak to the public about its many accomplishments affecting each and every American today, I fail to see a cataclysm arriving post-Hillary. If the GOP gains power (Jeezus forbid) and tries to scold the public back to the 1800s, their time in power will be short. Nonetheless, looking at the speed that the neo-GOP has turned states upside down at the state level is a shocking reminder about what's at stake here. They couldn't have their way so easily on a national scale but they'll try their darndest without a doubt.
That being said, Hillary just threw her hat into perhaps the most carnivorous political sideshow this country has ever seen, and she's fighting for our side. Given the alternatives, the vote is a no-brainer, and she's gonna need all the support she can get going against the first presidency rooted in a Citizens United "democracy".
And speaking of a Citizens United future...
The GOP clown car just got a little more crowded. Marco Rubio announced this morning. And for a guy seen by Erick Erickson as "grassroots" (that's okay, Erickson thinks Jim Demint, 13 years in congress, a longstanding right-wing hack now darkening the towels at the Heritage Foundation is "grassroots" too--if that's grass roots, earth science must have changed since I was a kid) Rubio kicked off his campaign the Citizens United Way.
Not with an announcement to his faithful supporters, not even with a lame-ass video. No, this guy kicks off his run for the White House with a "members only" event just for the one percenters, a private conference call with the monied class and a meeting with his big-moolah bundlers.
Cause that's how a they do grassroots in the Confederate Party.
Interestingly, to show just how far out of touch these people are, Erickson believes Rubio can win, because wingnuttery is the only language he speaks.
Kids, we really are very lucky there is no serious candidate sitting in the GOP clown car yet. Even though Juanito Arbusto has name recognition and could command plenty of his own Citizens United doggie bags, as the Erickson drivel reveals, plenty of Confederates think Juanito is a traitor to the cause. He might be trouble in the general, but the faithful (idiots) may not want a repeat of the establishment Romney Mechanism Breakdown of 2012.
It doesn't look, at this point, that Hillary will have serious competition, but don't forget all those who voted, not for John McCain, but for Princess Dumbass.
Christ, I need a drink.
It's like a virus erasing our future!
Right-wing ideology seeps into everything. It ruins all kinds of things. Why? Hate, mostly. And envy. And immaturity. And did I mention hate?
I know from past comments that there are a few fans of science fiction out here, but for those who are not, I'll make the intro brief. Like many other fields, there are awards for excellence in science fiction. The big daddy is the Hugo Award. The list of Hugo winners covers almost all the biggies in Sci-fi over the last half century, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. LeGuin, Poul Anderson, Marian Zimmer Bradley, Arthur Clarke, Larry Niven, and Philip K. Dick.
Much of the best Sci-fi has been forward looking and even progressive, with a few notable exceptions like Robert Heinlein who could go back and forth between the excellent "Stranger in a Strange Land" and militaristic authoritarianism with stuff like "Starship Troopers".
Even Sci-fi that posits a dysfunctional future does so with characters who, as outsiders, often find ways to preserve their own humanity. Over the decades, science fiction writers have become more diverse as have their stories. Women, minorities, even gays populate a variety of fictional futures.
And this has the wingnuts up in arms. Stories about white supremacy and killing evil monsters who wish to impose a socialist future are all the rage (remember those books Timothy McVeigh was reading?). And as with many Confederate cultural meltdowns, they understand that if that they can't win on their own terms, they'll steal the recognition and respect they crave. If their stuff doesn't stand on its own and doesn't win the big awards, they'll just stuff the ballot box.
It turns out that the Hugo Awards are ridiculously easy to game and a group of very organized Confederate trolls called the Sad Puppies (seriously, that's the name), led by writer Larry Correia whose series of monster hunter books have been popular among the secessionist and faux libertarian crowd, have found the cracks in the system and for the last three years, they have made sure that mostly far-right sci-fi and fantasy offerings are the only ones nominated for the Hugo. And they're encouraging like minded 12 year olds to make sure that happens. Really, they do sound like pimply adolescents with rants like this:
"So for $60 you can stick it to the man, and the next time one of your coworkers looks over your shoulder to see what you’re reading, and they’re all like “I’m a douchebag that only reads what English professors or Oprah’s book club say is profound. That’s stupid and has guns and is stupid in your stupid face.” And then you can say, 'But it got nominated for a Hugo.' And then they will EXPLODE!"
Whatever.
It's not like the Hugo awards were perfect (fans who sign up and pay a small fee get to vote) but it's really become as if the Academy Awards were taken over and the only movies considered were the Left Behind movies, movies about Jesus, and Dinesh D'Souza "documentaries" about how Obama is out to murder us in our beds.
Of course, their rallying cry, as always is that of the put upon victims who are standing up for freedom and justice because liberals suck.
So suddenly, a genre of writing that has made much of the resilience of humanity while reconciling technological elements of a possible future with worlds open and accessible to all races and species (although that has changed with the injection of right-wing ideology, which tends to be far more militaristic and antipathetic to inclusion), has now become yet another battle ground for right-wing hatred and animosity.
I realize this might not be a big deal for many people given all the other terrible things right-wing ideology has done to the world, but it's yet another example of how it spreads hatred like a virus.
No aspect of civilization is free from these people. They ruin everything they come into contact with.
Ian Banks received a Hugo ('05), so it can't be all bad.
Whyte,
The wing-nut assault has only gathered steam in the last two or three years. They are apparently shooting for an all-right-wing slate this year. Just to show who's boss, I guess.
So explain to me again how a 73 year old insurance salesman gets to be play dress up as a cop and ride around in a police car, armed to the teeth, chasing down people and shooting them in the back??? Because HE GAVE THEM MONEY?
Shit, is that all it takes? What could go wrong with that plan? Most cops I know retire way before that age. Does this guy even have to pass a physical? What about the city's insurance? Does it cover wannabes who shoot people because it's so much fun to play cop, and well, why bother playing if you don't get a chance to kill someone now and then?
And what about the citizens, bad guys or not, who pay for his "mistake"?
And kneeling on the guy's head while he's down on the ground is not enough? You still have to tase (or shoot) an unarmed guy? With half a dozen real cops (in addition to the play cop) around?
What the hell.
You see what I mean about Confederates creating so many terrible problems in the world?
Also, just once, I wanna see the videos we never see. The ones where the suspect is a white guy, Joe Bob, good buddy of the officers who let him off with a warning without either beating or shooting him.
I had the misfortune of being forced to listed to Fox "News" Gretchen Carlson talking about HRC candidacy announcement. It was very interesting, as it turns out, since an AP story said, "Around Christmas, Hillary Rodham Clinton set off on her annual holiday vacation at Oscar de la Renta's beachfront estate in the Dominican Republic. It was a somber and serious time for Clinton. De la Renta, whose relationship with the former first lady had blossomed from dress designer to close friend, had recently died and Clinton wanted to be there to support his widow. She was also wrestling with a final decision on whether to run for president."
What did Carlson have to say... comments about Clinton's "swank" vacation in the Dominican Republic, demonstrating how out of touch she was with her supposed base. There was a pass-by mention of de la Renta's widow, but no acknowledgement of what is fairly common knowledge about HRC, she is always among the first to reach out to her friends when they are in pain. I never watch Fox, so it was in a very small news story an interesting example of the classic Fox "news" spin. Just had to share this, even though among all the outright lies and misrepresentations Fox is known for, I saw that no story, however inconsequential, can be turned to fit the Fox narrative of "evil Hillary".
Here's another take on Hillary's announcement; one that is already proving its premise about GOP reaction.
"Hillary Clinton’s announcement video that kicked off her 2016 presidential campaign will go down as one of the great works of political advertising and strategy in modern history. Decades from now Poli-Sci majors will be writing papers about that piece and what it meant to the 2016 election.
The candidate doesn’t even appear in the ad for the first 90 seconds. The visuals are a snapshot of very likable people, your fellow Americans, going about their daily lives. The mix of people is diverse, middle class and represent broad archetypes that will resonate with the average viewer. The characters depicted are real, approachable and totally believable. These people are your friends and your neighbors and they slip Hillary Clinton, someone who is most definitely not middle class, into this river of average Americana. Yet, for all its technical perfection, that’s not the real brilliance of the piece.
The real brilliance of this piece is that it’s inviting Republicans to stick their head in a noose. It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that Republicans will respond with attack ads. By being so consistent, the GOP has made themselves predictable and this ad is calculated to capitalize on the contrast." ...
"The ad is also overwhelmingly positive so the contrast between Clinton’s positive message and the Republican response will be immediate and glaring. Part of the handicap Republicans are faced with is they have no positions to run on. Gutting Social Security and Medicare isn’t much of a platform and the public is finally catching on, after only 40 years, that supply side economics is a sham and tax breaks for billionaires don’t buy us anything. Bombing Iran is not going to play well next to that ad...."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/12/1377290/-Hillary-Clinton-Laid-a-Clever-Trap-For-Republicans?detail=email
Trish,
Interesting.
Hillary Clinton is "out of touch" because she spent a few days with Oscar de la Renta's widow after he died. The idea!
Oscar de la Renta's net worth was pretty substantial, $100 million, according to the site therichest.com. So, my question is, does the fact of all that money make Hillary "out of touch"?
Okay then, how 'bout this:
Mere weeks ago, a number of Confederate hopefuls, all supported by Gretchen and her Confederate network, showed up to gently kiss and caress the Koch Brothers' testicles:
"The summit, held at a luxury resort near Palm Springs sealed off to outsiders, drew Republican Senators Marco Rubio from Florida, Rand Paul from Kentucky and Ted Cruz from Texas."
So the only Confederates to declare, so far, Li'l Randy, the Tailgunner, and the guy who's not sure how old the Earth is but is pretty sure it's not more than 5,000 years, were groveling in front of the Kochs (combined net worth over $100 billion--one thousand times more than Oscar de la Renta).
But not all Confederates were there, offering to use their tongues as a ball cleaning apparatus for the Kochs, at least not yet. No, not at all. First, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, and Juanito Arbusto were all bowing down before Sheldon Adelson's (net worth a mere $30 billion) throne begging for mercy.
But has Gretchen Fucking Carlson, or any of the Fox Fucking Assholes mentioned those events with such a breathless sense of outrage, questioned how out of touch you need to be to blow billionaires for campaign money?
Don't even bother. Douchebags. All of them.