Corbyn doesn’t like the EU, but a lot of his younger supporters (as in those under 50) do.
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Here’s why the reaction to a conservative’s use of “liberal” differs from the reaction to his use of “Democrat Party”: when Rush Limbaugh uses the former as an insult I can counter with it by embracing it, because we both agree the term describes something that exists; the same can’t be said of the latter term, and accepting it cedes ground in that one is allowing Rush Limbaugh to use a made-up term that doesn’t describe the thing being discussed or add any commentary about it.
This is a symptom of his fatal flaw: he’s more focused on re-creating the UK’s pre-neoliberal/globalist past than he is on envisioning a social democracy for the future (which involves participation in a borderless EU that does allow for mobility of labour along with goods and capital). I’m hoping that his younger supporters will continue to bring him around to the place where Sanders in the U.S. already is.
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This is Plan A, second time around.
Bear with the windedness of the explanation and you’re not going to beat it for thoroughness:
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Roxanne, you don’t have to turn on the gas light.
@brainspore said
the onus is on YOU to stop acting like a dick.
Victim Blaming! /s
Worth pointing out the DNC suit against Wikileaks is also a very serious attack on press freedom:
No media outlet can function, indeed journalism cannot function, if it becomes illegal to publish secret materials taken by a source without authorization or even illegally. The Obama DOJ – which was not exactly a bastion of press freedom protection, and which despised Assange as much as anyone – wisely recognized this fact, when it decided that it could not prosecute WikiLeaks for publishing stolen materials without severely endangering press freedoms.
The DNC, unfortunately, is not nearly as wise, nor nearly as worried about destroying press freedom in the U.S. The theory it embraced today to sue WikiLeaks for publishing documents is a far more serious menace than any of Donald Trump’s insulting tweets about Chuck Todd. It deserves condemnation and scorn by anyone who actually cares about press freedom.
Also, I just have to point out that my use of the term “Democrat Party” in protest of their undemocratic nature, triggered a number of folks who felt it to be a terrible slur. But that argument frames the Democratic Party (happy?) as some kind of oppressed minority rather than one of the most powerful political entities on earth (along with the Repugnicans…happy?). Calling them the “Democrat” Party is NOT in any way comparable to, say, deliberately misgendering trans people. It’s more akin to calling .001% billionaires “robber barons.”
As far as I’m concerned, both establishment parties deserve nothing but contempt and we should do everything possible to delegitimize them both as quickly as possible so we can move ahead as a nation…and world.
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Less a “terrible slur” than “a form of name-calling that signals you are not interested in engaging in serious discussion with members of said party.” Just as I wouldn’t call a member of the Tea Party a “Teabagger” if I was actually trying to engage them in meaningful debate.
You have already made it clear that you don’t think the Democratic Party is worth engaging in meaningful debate, so your use of the pejorative makes sense. However, in doing so you have also guaranteed that no one who identifies as a Democrat will take you seriously either.
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That’s fair.
Just to be clear, the democratic party is a private entity that can run whomever they choose and the election of Trump isn’t what’s being discussed. The subject is Russian meddling in our election. Nothing the democratic party did excuses their actions and your parroting the whataboutism is little more than a cheap diversion.
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I’m waiting for the indictments.
There have been 22 as of March
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"Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has either indicted or gotten guilty pleas from 19 people and three companies so far — with most of those being announced just in the past few weeks.
That group is composed of four former Trump advisers, 13 Russian nationals, three Russian companies, one California man, and one London-based lawyer. Five of these people have already pleaded guilty — the latest being former Trump campaign staffer Rick Gates, who signed a plea deal and committed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation Friday.
None of the charges against Americans or Trump advisers so far have directly alleged that they worked with Russia to interfere with the campaign.
Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos have pleaded guilty to making false statements about their contacts with Russians to investigators. Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were hit with tax, money laundering and other charges that relate to their work for the government of Ukraine and a Russia-affiliated Ukrainian political party."
As long as it’s legal for the cops to lie to me, it should be legal for me to lie to the cops.
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- The indictments against the Russians do explicitly charge them with election meddling.
- This kind of investigation typically takes many months or even years before the biggest charges are brought out. If you want to build a racketeering case against a mob figure you don’t lead with “racketeering,” you gradually build a case by squeezing lower-level guys with the crimes you can already prove until they give you the information you need to go after the bosses.
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Unfortunately, it would be a bit like say, “You know, I was under undue influence from my friend Steve for the last year, so I’d like to call off the divorce.” Leaving the EU was a decision that the UK could take on their own. Choosing not to leave now that they’ve triggered the leaving process is a decision that the EU would have to get on board with.
I think the “lying to the FBI” charge is absurd and should be regarded as unconstitutional.
But as an argument, “If the cops can lie to me I should be able to lie to the cops” doesn’t make much sense. Police are actually granted a variety of special powers in their role as police that are not shared by non-police. “If the cops can pull me over when they suspect a traffic violation then I should be able to pull the cops over when I suspect a traffic violation,” doesn’t hold a lot of water. Lying to other people has nothing to do with the law, but apparently someone thought that a right to not-be-lied-to was a special power the FBI needed. I think that power seems ripe for abuse, but going from “this could be abused” to “this is being abused” automatically doesn’t work.
I think the FBI use the no-lying law an investigative shortcut. You lie and say you didn’t meet with any Russians, they can prove you met with the Russians. For any non-FBI police, that would mean they need to follow up and start gathering more evidence. Knowing you lied is a strong lead in the investigation. For the FBI they can jump past all that and just threaten to charge you with lying. I don’t think giving police shortcuts to charge people is a good thing. But as a person in the public making up my own mind about whether I think Mike Flynn did something criminal, the fact that he plead guilty to lying to the FBI is evidence he did do something criminal.
Also, it’s something you can plead to. If you cooperate with the investigation and plead guilty to lying to the FBI then they may drop other charges against you that would have been harder for them to prove but that are also more serious and more damning. Mike Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI but he didn’t plead guilty to conspiracy to kidnap-for-hire for the Turkish government.
The problem with the “lying to the feds” charge is that it is easy for the FBI to catch someone up in a lie and then use that as leverage against them in a parallel of a perjury trap. This is much less of a threat for wealthy, connected people who have good access to lawyers. As Jeff Sessions showed us, all you have to do is idiotically repeat, “I do not recall” over and over and somehow no one can say you are lying (even though it’s plain as day you are lying about not recalling things). People who plead guilty to lying to the FBI when they could have had excellent legal representation arguing in court that they merely have fallible memories suggests to me there is something else they are not pleading guilty to.
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The point is that a prosecutor should have to prove the substantive charges, or let you go.
So you don’t believe plea bargains should be a thing at all?
I think you are making some assumptions about what happened that are unwarranted. For those who plead guilty to lying, they may well have done so because they didn’t want the prosecutor to take them to court on the more substantive charges.
I said I agree it shouldn’t be a law. But the fact that it is a law might be benefiting Mike Flynn and George Papadopoulos at the moment.
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I’m pretty sure this is exactly what has happened, at least with Flynn.
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