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US Elections: When Murder isn't Murder


lokisnow

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2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

See that's exactly what I'm getting at. Sending out a top campaign surrogate to say Sanders' tone needs to change if he wants more debates is just a bad look and totally unnecessary. Clinton's lead is large enough to the point where it only looks silly to punch down with those type of attacks.

It doesn't though because he's continuing to attack her and while his chances of winning are small, they aren't zero. He is continuing to attack her and push the idea that he could totally take this and she is responding in kind. It's totally necessary to keep him from eating away at her support and help feed a "Clinton in trouble" media narrative or the like.

She was trying to pivot towards the general and attack Trump but Sanders has been pushing alot of shit lately like what I posted last thread or what he was going on about on Colbert last night and so she's continued to treat him as a threat.

It's still a fight as long as Sanders wants to make it one.

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But when a well-respected public figure who ostensibly supports arriving at more or less the same general destination while disagreeing with the vehicle used to get there begins playing dirty pool with media outlets, I start wondering just how that supports the broader cause.

It probably doesn't. But that's Frank. That's always been Frank. I don't think what he's doing is dirty pool and I don't get why you'd give it that characterization - he was asked about Sanders pretty much point blank and gave a really brutally honest answer - but if you're thinking that Frank is going to be nuanced or nonconfrontational, you've not read many interviews of him. 

I also think that this really pisses him off in general - the Democrats ability to mobilize for the General and utterly suck ass in midterms. 

And it kind of makes sense that the coauthor of the Dodd-Frank bill might be a smidgen pissy at a guy who is misrepresenting what Dodd-Frank actually does and is claiming that they need to do things that Dodd-Frank, ya know, already implements and is doing pretty well. Federal regulation, oversight, review of 'too big to fail' banks, leverage requirements - these all exist right now thanks to Dodd-Frank, but Sanders talks about them as if they haven't even been thought of. 

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Shryke,

There's a difference between her making legitimate policy distinctions and being critical of Sanders' ideas and her and her team making petty attacks. She really does not need to engage in the latter. All she needs to do is win NY and it's a wrap. Her campaign needs to keep in mind that many Sanders supporters are not very happy with her and further annoying them for little to no gain is a stupid idea.

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8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Shryke,

There's a difference between her making legitimate policy distinctions and being critical of Sanders' ideas and her and her team making petty attacks. She really does not need to engage in the latter. All she needs to do is win NY and it's a wrap. Her campaign needs to keep in mind that many Sanders supporters are not very happy with her and further annoying them for little to no gain is a stupid idea.

She's not making petty attacks, she's hitting back at his attacks on her character. You can't let that shit slide.

If Sanders supporters aren't happy with her, Sanders needs to help deal with that when he concedes if he loses the primary. Cause he's been the one reinforcing their views that they shouldn't like her. She's just responding to him doing so.

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5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Shryke,

There's a difference between her making legitimate policy distinctions and being critical of Sanders' ideas and her and her team making petty attacks. She really does not need to engage in the latter. All she needs to do is win NY and it's a wrap. Her campaign needs to keep in mind that many Sanders supporters are not very happy with her and further annoying them for little to no gain is a stupid idea.

The flipside to this is that Clinton gains basically nothing with a debate at this point, and it's hard to justify debates when the Republicans are also not debating. There's just no real value there for her. I do think their campaign is also angry about the somewhat more abrasive tone that the Sanders campaign has taken on in the last few weeks, but really this, the DC thing, the Frank 'hit piece' - at this point Sanders supporters appear to be so incredibly hypersensitive that the only thing Clinton can do is basically say nothing at all. 

Which, as it turns out, she's basically doing. I don't think she's publicly said the word 'Sanders' in 2 weeks now. 

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20 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It probably doesn't. But that's Frank. That's always been Frank. I don't think what he's doing is dirty pool and I don't get why you'd give it that characterization - he was asked about Sanders pretty much point blank and gave a really brutally honest answer - but if you're thinking that Frank is going to be nuanced or nonconfrontational, you've not read many interviews of him.

It's seriously kind of funny at this point. I get the impression some people just don't know who Barney Frank is or what he's like. And seem determined not to learn.

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57 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I don't typically refer to Random Internet Troll #1 as a "purported ally". Some anonymous person posting inflammatory bullshit onto a message board or YouTube comment could just as easily be a Trump supporter getting their jollies by trying to start shit between Clinton and Sanders supporters while getting to spout off some misogynistic bullshit to boot. 

I seriously question whether anyone who supports Trump is capable of that level of misinformation. I've read enough commentary to believe there is a fringe of Sanders supporters who are gleefully reveling in the chance to display their sexism. (ETA: to be fair, it is a significant minority--and not condoned at all by the candidate himself)

Quote

But when a well-respected public figure who ostensibly supports arriving at more or less the same general destination while disagreeing with the vehicle used to get there begins playing dirty pool with media outlets, I start wondering just how that supports the broader cause. That goes double when those kind of cheap shots also happen to reinforce a pre-existing narrative that supporters of the candidate you're raking over the coals have discussed from the moment their preferred candidate entered the race.

C'mon, dirty pool? It's a critique from Barney Frank. Coming from him, that's a softball pitch. (though a fairly insightful one) You may not like it, and you're certainly entitled to disagree with the comparison made, but there's nothing dirty or out of bounds about it. He says that the Sanders' commercials which implied Clinton was bought by Wall Street are McCarthyite. Compared to some of the purported "think pieces" I scan on RCP, that's actually pretty tame. 

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Actually...what are the specifics of Sanders' wall street and banking reform plans? Clinton has had some for about 5 months at least now, and are almost too specific - talking about specific reformation of certain parts of Dodd-Frank, increasing penalties and going after individuals, details on shadow banking, etc. Is Sanders' stated plan so far to reenact Glass-Steagall and do TFTs on the high-frequency transactions? 

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53 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

So apparently Trump said he wants to give more countries nuclear weapons...?

Trump Nukes! Available only at Best Buy!

I personally think NPT is a joke. It basically creates a powerful group of countries who have nukes, while other countries have to tolerate the aggression of the nuclear armed countries in fear of reprisals. 

I guess since you are from a nuclear armed country, you don't want other countries to get nukes, so you can stay powerful and bully non-nuclear countries into submission.

I agree with my government stance, that no country should have nukes. Nuclear armed countries have no right to call whether which country should or should not get nukes.

http://www.defence.gov.au/foi/docs/disclosures/421_1213_Documents.pdf

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14 minutes ago, Stan the Man Baratheon said:

I personally think NPT is a joke. It basically creates a powerful group of countries who have nukes, while other countries have to tolerate the aggression of the nuclear armed countries in fear of reprisals. 

I guess since you are from a nuclear armed country, you don't want other countries to get nukes, so you can stay powerful and bully non-nuclear countries into submission.

I agree with my government stance, that no country should have nukes. Nuclear armed countries have no right to call whether which country should or should not get nukes.

http://www.defence.gov.au/foi/docs/disclosures/421_1213_Documents.pdf

Nukes are terrible, terrible, things and I cheer every time a disarmament deal is reached with Russia. That said, 'give them to everyone' is not the answer.

For the record if it's unclear, I've never threatened to nuke someone if they didn't capitulate to my demands. That said, most of my interaction with foreigners who weren't Mexican (which basically didn't even count where I used to live) came from an Indian dude I went to school/got high with during the early Bush years.

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41 minutes ago, Stan the Man Baratheon said:

Nuclear armed countries have no right to call whether which country should or should not get nukes.

a counterfactual thesis, considering the existence of NPT.  

agreed that nukes should be abolished.

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7 hours ago, Kalbear said:

It probably doesn't. But that's Frank. That's always been Frank. I don't think what he's doing is dirty pool and I don't get why you'd give it that characterization - he was asked about Sanders pretty much point blank and gave a really brutally honest answer - but if you're thinking that Frank is going to be nuanced or nonconfrontational, you've not read many interviews of him. 

I also think that this really pisses him off in general - the Democrats ability to mobilize for the General and utterly suck ass in midterms. 

And it kind of makes sense that the coauthor of the Dodd-Frank bill might be a smidgen pissy at a guy who is misrepresenting what Dodd-Frank actually does and is claiming that they need to do things that Dodd-Frank, ya know, already implements and is doing pretty well. Federal regulation, oversight, review of 'too big to fail' banks, leverage requirements - these all exist right now thanks to Dodd-Frank, but Sanders talks about them as if they haven't even been thought of. 

Actually I heard the Mpls Federal reserve president on NPR today say Dodd Frank actually made banks bigger by creating more regulatory costs that were disproportionately burdensome to smaller banks. This forced many of them to merge or be absorbed by larger banks. This is the same guy that headed up the bank bailout and a self proclaimed republican. He is putting together recommendations for lawmakers because he believes Dodd Frank did not do close to enough to prevent future crises. His biggest recommendation he was looking at? Break up the big banks.

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19 minutes ago, Kay Fury said:

Actually I heard the Mpls Federal reserve president on NPR today say Dodd Frank actually made banks bigger by creating more regulatory costs that were disproportionately burdensome to smaller banks. This forced many of them to merge or be absorbed by larger banks. This is the same guy that headed up the bank bailout and a self proclaimed republican. He is putting together recommendations for lawmakers because he believes Dodd Frank did not do close to enough to prevent future crises. His biggest recommendation he was looking at? Break up the big banks.

Did it make them more unstable though. The size of a bank isn't an issue if they aren't high risk.

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I'm not an expert in economics, but that guy was, pretty inarguably and he seemed to think the size IS a problem because having fewer and larger banks makes them more likely to be heavily invested in the same shit which makes instability in one almost contagious to the others. And if none of the banks are too big to fail, it won't be a blow if they do fail. Another problem with big banks is that their size gives them a huge share of the financial market and in packaging financial products. They get to decide to a large degree how trustworthy we consider an exotic financial product (think sub prime mortgages and whatever the next big idea could be) by how much of it they buy and how they package those things and use them to back other securities. Small banks have more people making those decisions for the buying power they have, and that is good for stability. Again, economics is not my thing, but what he was saying really made a lot of sense and his position also is pretty convincing that he knows what he's on about, particularly since it contained a lot of unpopular opinions for a republican to hold. But we didn't think before the financial crisis that these huge banks were unstable. That's the thing about financial crises. It all looks pretty solid until it's not.

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I know this would never fly in the US (or in most other places, for that matter), but I believe all banks should be state-owned on principle. Instability is one aspect (even one small bank failing has ripple effects, and bailing them out creates moral hazard). The other reason is that I really don't like the idea that money creation* - one of the cornerstones of economic management - is mostly in the hands of the private sector.

*Achieved not by the printing of actual notes and coins, but the inevitable consequence of fractional reserve banking. If you're going to create money out of thin air, it ought to be the government doing it.

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16 hours ago, Myshkin said:

What really astounds me is that Paul Ryan in now considered a squishy moderate. Paul fucking Ryan. The guy who makes all his staffers read Atlas Shrugged. The guy who wants to give fertilized eggs constitutional rights. The guy who thinks global warming was made up by scientists. The guy who thinks our culture is in a tailspin because men in inner cities refuse to get jobs. That Paul Ryan. It seems that the conservative purity test now boils down to one question: are you willing to govern? If you are then you're a dirty pinko RINO.

Yup. I find Ryan more comical than I used to, ever since he agreed to become House speaker "only under certain conditions" and then the Freedom Caucus ignored him. He's their property and they know it.

14 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The flipside to this is that Clinton gains basically nothing with a debate at this point, and it's hard to justify debates when the Republicans are also not debating. There's just no real value there for her. I do think their campaign is also angry about the somewhat more abrasive tone that the Sanders campaign has taken on in the last few weeks, but really this, the DC thing, the Frank 'hit piece' - at this point Sanders supporters appear to be so incredibly hypersensitive that the only thing Clinton can do is basically say nothing at all. 

Clinton's reluctance to engage in more debates feeds the sense of grievance many Sanders supporters indulge, but then they are already convinced that the primary process is rigged against Bernie anyway, so does it matter if they have just one more reason to think so? There have been many debates, and anyone who doesn't know the difference between Sanders and Clinton isn't paying attention. 

On the Republican side, Josh Marshall nails it about primaries and legitimacy:

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An RNC national committeeman recently complained that the press had given people the wrong impression that voters decided who the nominee was rather than the party. By the rules, he may be right. But good luck sailing that ship across any body of water.

I totally agree. If party elites think they can shift the nomination to someone who came in third or didn't even run, November's going to teach them a lesson in the importance of legitimacy.

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1 hour ago, TrackerNeil said:

I totally agree. If party elites think they can shift the nomination to someone who came in third or didn't even run, November's going to teach them a lesson in the importance of legitimacy.

The absolute best case for the elites is that Trump (courtesy of the abortion screw-up) comes up slightly short of a majority. You'll then see some frantic arguing that since Trump didn't get 50%+1 delegates, drafting someone else is legitimate, since a majority opposed Trump.

This would give us the fun of a brokered convention AND a re-run of 1912, as Trump (not without reason) insists he was robbed, and runs third party.

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14 hours ago, sologdin said:

a counterfactual thesis, considering the existence of NPT.  

agreed that nukes should be abolished.

Sologdin,

Nuclear weapons are terrifying.  If they are abolished how do we, as a species, forget how to build them.  If the concept exists can't other just reverse enginner the process already completed at a later date?

The other thing I wonder about is if Nation-States wouldn't feel less reserved about wars of conquest if the possiblity of a nuclear response were no longer in the picture.  Prior to WWI there were many political philosophers who claimed Europe was too closely tied by trade and other political connctions for anothet big war to take place.  Take away the worry of a single weapon taking out a city and would Nation-States with territorial disputes feel more comfortable about engaging in the continuation of politics by "other means"?

Nuclear weapons still terrify me but perhaps that fear isn't always a bad thing to have?

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