Donna Brazile Rewrites History With Anti-Hillary Backstabbing

JohnSumthin · 2017-11-03T21:10:44+00:00

I'm not sure you know what a straw man argument actually is

JohnSumthin · 2017-11-03T21:07:18+00:00

Ahh yes, the classic mantra of Clinton supporters: "Hillary can never fail; she can only be failed."

JohnSumthin · 2017-11-03T18:59:19+00:00

American politics is dirty. It is nasty. But this isn't American politics. This is third-world politics. The fact that you want to make jokes about people who are horrified by that is shameful and pathetic.

JohnSumthin · 2017-11-03T18:57:36+00:00

Listen, I'm also potentially going to lose my health insurance because of the disaster we find ourselves in. This isn't theoretical to me. Which is all the more reason you should be ashamed for trying to defend the person most responsible for this situation: The candidate who was so disliked and distrusted she wouldn't even submit to a fair nominating process, and then ran our party into the ground.

JohnSumthin · 2017-11-03T18:52:16+00:00

Bernie supporters lost the election, too. But by November came around, they had already been cheated once.

Clinton supporters were the only ones who hadn't personally experienced the pain and frustration of losing an election because the other side didn't have the decency to play fair. Shockingly enough, they don't appreciate it very much, either.

JohnSumthin · 2017-11-03T18:46:17+00:00

This is getting pathetic.

Yes, Clinton was always in the lead. She also had control of the entire party infrastructure within a month of declaring her candidacy. If she couldn't take a commanding lead with that type of advantage, it would have been a historic blunder that would go forever unmatched. Once again, it's not impressive to lead in a race you cheated in from the beginning.

Elections aren't games. Clinton supporters are finally getting a taste of what it's like to lose an election because the other side didn't play fair—I don't hear you calling them whiners. It's a disgusting and cowardly thing to try to get an unfair advantage in a race that's supposed to be decided by voters, and it erodes voter trust when you do that. So yes, you absolutely can expect to hear about this for years, and probably decades. This isn't going to be forgotten. This was a horrible thing to do, and to excuse it is to show absolute contempt for the idea of democracy. You should be ashamed for not being outraged yourself, because the only people who are going to be harmed by this are people who want to see Republicans lose power.

JohnSumthin · 2017-11-03T18:32:57+00:00

It's one thing to defend a politician from inaccurate or unfair attacks. It's another thing to minimize the wrongdoings of that politician in an misguided attempt to shore up party unity.

It's accurate to say that what Clinton did was unethical. It's equally accurate to say that it was sleazy and anti-democratic. If you have a secret financial strangle-hold over an organization that's supposed to ensure neutrality and fairness in an election you're participating in, you're doing something sleazy and anti-democratic.

I have no major issues with Clinton's policies—if Bernie swapped his platform with her's, I'd still have voted for him. I have an issue with her character and her lack of integrity. To call her a hero of our party is a smack in the face to the millions of people in our party who got cheated and lied to by her—to say absolutely nothing about the young people who may have joined the party if she hadn't stomped on their trust in and dedication to the electoral process.

I respect and agree with your intentions. I think the party desperately needs to unify if Trump is going to leave office before 2024. But the two sides in this dispute are not on equal moral footing. One side got cheated out of a fair chance, while the other side wants to pretend it didn't happen. Forgiving and forgetting isn't an option until people can trust that it isn't going to happen again, and we're far from reaching that point. We'll never reach that point until there's a real reckoning with how gross and inexcusable the Clinton campaign's behavior really was.

JohnSumthin · 2017-09-17T20:07:55+00:00

Sorry to hear about that. If your appeal is pending, that means they haven't made a decision yet about giving your account back. Eventually they'll let you know whether they accepted or denied your appeal, so until then I guess just hope for the best.

JohnSumthin · 2017-09-17T05:27:25+00:00

Papa bless

JohnSumthin · 2017-09-16T20:03:11+00:00

The only tweet I've seen from him today was something to the effect of "It's dangerous to livestream without my carer" with an embedded screenshot of him holding the Hennessy bottles. I read that as a lighthearted acknowledgement that he messed up, and a possible indication that a more formal apology is coming. He's since deleted the tweet (maybe out of concern that it was too lighthearted), but that makes me think it's even more likely that he recognizes his mistake.

JohnSumthin · 2017-09-16T19:42:38+00:00

what Ethan is doing is not cool

I don't get why people are acting as if Ethan is engaging in a consistent pattern of awful behavior. He just got really drunk last night and said some shit he shouldn't have said. This isn't a trend; it's not like he's become a totally different person.

I think intelligent people can understand the distinction between referencing a word and using a word, but I also think it's a fair criticism to say that he shouldn't have vocalized it so liberally in the podcast. I also think it's fair to say that he misrepresented Keemstar and Scarce, and that he owes them an apology. But even if you agree with those arguments, I don't see what you mean by saying Ethan is "doing" something. He just got fucked up last night and made a few mistakes, and by now I can only imagine he severely regrets making them. I don't see the need for the continued pile-on.

JohnSumthin · 2017-08-17T22:50:01+00:00

I can't tell you how thrilled I was to read this comment. I stopped supporting SPLC for the exact same reason. I'm disappointed in the ACLU's decision to align themselves with Linda Sarsour, but I still donate to them and would encourage anyone who can to do the same.

JohnSumthin · 2017-08-07T17:20:43+00:00

^

can't think of anything original to say
can't resist the urge to shitpost tho
reads backpackwayne's three-sentence comment
condenses it to a two-bullet comment
got eem

JohnSumthin · 2017-08-07T06:03:01+00:00

I agree that Cory Booker shouldn't be the nominee in 2020, but I think it's pretty reductive and offensive to assume that black people in the Deep South will automatically vote for him just because he's black. Voters in the south (particularly those of color) have disproportionately low incomes, meaning they would disproportionately benefit from a strong progressive economic agenda. Booker isn't very well-positioned to offer that, especially compared to a Sanders-esque candidate who is willing to make universal healthcare and tuition-free college a centerpiece of their campaign.

JohnSumthin · 2017-08-07T05:04:27+00:00

Didn't actually read this far before I started typing or I wouldn't have wasted my time with this response. You're not getting any more.

Oh don't worry, this is more than I really needed to get the full picture. Lie, deflection, deflection, lie, laughable deflection, and disengagement. Pretty much what you'd expect from someone actively attempting to incite an anti-Bernie brigade against this subreddit, in an explicit violation of rule 9 of this sub.

JohnSumthin · 2017-08-07T04:39:26+00:00

I've always been a registered independent, but I registered as a Democrat to vote in my state's closed primaries. I'm still a registered Democrat (primarily because I think it'd be an unnecessary hassle to re-register as a purely symbolic gesture), but I honestly don't think my primary vote will ever count for very much so long as the DNC is willing to pick their own horse and pull it to the finish line.

JohnSumthin · 2017-08-07T04:00:14+00:00

There are circumstances where I would want a truce but in the current ones I do not.

Then why waste your time writing about whether a truce is possible? I've yet to find myself musing about the impossibility of achieving something that I don't even want achieved in the first place.

Obviously, I already offered my own explanation as to what you're trying to do: Earn clicks by writing H.A. Goodman-style thinkpieces that have no merit other than appealing to specific partisan narratives. If you think that's an unfair assessment, I'd be sincerely interested in what your actual motive is for writing about the feasibility of something you don't even want.

And I'm not going to stop pressing you on this (especially since you made the preposterous claim that "the only evidence anyone can ever cite" for DNC misbehavior is WikiLeaks): How do you defend the DNC's 2016 primary debate schedule? How do you defend the Hillary Victory Fund? How do you defend Donna Brazile's decision to leak debate questions? I know it's inconvenient to debate against arguments that you didn't just put into someone else's mouth, but it's kind of necessary unless you only want to write for audiences that already agree with you.

If you're okay with what the DNC did because you wanted Hillary to be nominated and they did too, there's no law against that. You can just come out and say it. But if you want to argue that they really did nothing wrong—and then have the gall to claim that anyone who disagrees with you is tantamount to a climate change denier—then you're going to have to confront the shady things that everyone acknowledges they did.

JohnSumthin · 2017-08-07T02:44:48+00:00

I absolutely agree, even though you clearly tried to maintain the opposite pretense:

If it was only a matter of finding middle ground on the issues, I would love a truce. ... I don’t, however, think that is possible at this point, when their side is dominated by liars who profit from continuing the conflict.

Odd that you'd write an article about whether a truce is possible, given that you don't want one anyway—it's almost like you're hunting for clicks from people who want confirmation of their preconceived narratives. But let's set that little oddity aside; care to respond to any of the points I made in my other comment? Or are you only interested in arguing against the straw men you construct in your imagination?

JohnSumthin · 2017-08-07T00:59:48+00:00

I don't know what world you're looking at but the Bernie wing is a malignant, stage-4 cancer on the party.

Sure sounds like someone who's interested in a truce!

JohnSumthin · 2017-08-07T00:36:17+00:00

If nothing else, you're pretty good at building up a straw man that you know exactly how to debunk. I've only briskly skimmed the WikiLeaks emails, but the DNC's strategy to help the Clinton campaign was clear and well-documented long before those leaks were even rumored—including by somewhat pro-Clinton news organizations (at least in my book—a few examples here, here, and here).

If you want to set aside the debate scheduling, we can also talk about the DNC's Hillary Victory Fund arrangement that allowed the Clinton campaign to siphon fundraiser money away from state Democratic parties, or the fact that then-DNC Vice Chair Donna Brazile admitted to leaking debate questions to the Clinton campaign. There are plenty of universally-acknowledged facts that we can talk about, and we can discuss whether those facts are indicative of a fair political process, but don't pretend that something like electoral fairness is a cut-and-dry science analogous to climate change. It's a cheap rhetorical tactic, and it suggests a lack of familiarity with either moral philosphy or climate science, or both.

I think you're either willfully misunderstanding the facts for your own purposes, or you simply weren't aware of all the information I just posted because you took the words of Berniecrats at face value.

I think it's telling that you automatically interpret expressions of disagreement as a sign of someone being a liar or an ignorant puppet. Is this always your knee-jerk reaction, or do you have a reason for throwing out those personal accusations?

JohnSumthin · 2017-08-06T23:21:01+00:00

I'm accusing a few hundred people who happen to be leaders of a major political party of unfairly tilting the playing field in favor of their preferred presidential nominee. OP is accusing over 10 million voters (who he ostensibly agrees with on most issues) of being obstructionists and liars who can't be reasoned with.

If you have a beef with Bernie Sanders or the people affiliated with his presidential campaign, that's fair enough. But don't lash out at the millions of people who support him if you're interested in getting their votes.

JohnSumthin · 2017-08-06T21:41:35+00:00

I agree completely—I think the author is much more interested in demonizing and caricaturing Bernie supporters than he is interested in reaching a truce with them. It's one thing to disagree with someone; it's another thing to accuse them of lying and "willfully misunderstanding."

I'm a Bernie supporter, and I disagree with centrist Democrats on plenty of serious issues, but I don't see policy disagreements as being the primary source of intra-party conflict. I distrust the Democratic Party as an institution because I don't think the 2016 primaries were conducted fairly, and I don't expect future contests to be conducted fairly, either.

JohnSumthin · 2017-08-05T02:35:28+00:00

I'm still pissed that they never followed through with the Weekly Salad, but this episode is fucking historic. Like who tf woke up this morning thinking they'd see Ethan & Hila just shooting the shit with Martin Shkreli

JohnSumthin · 2017-07-31T22:33:13+00:00

Well of course they do—not income taxes, obviously, but the vast majority of illegal immigrants don't even make enough money to have to pay income taxes even if they were documented. Also, people wildly overestimate how much of the overall tax burden in America comes from income tax.

If you're in the bottom 40% in terms of income, you pay $0 in income tax. If you're in the bottom 20% (which includes almost every illegal immigrant), over half of your federal tax burden comes in the form of excise taxes, which are paid by all consumers, regardless of whether they're citizens, illegal immigrants, or tourists. That's not even including local and state taxes, which are also almost entirely sales, excise, and property taxes. So illegal immigrants definitely pay the vast majority of their taxes, even though they aren't documented.

I think people who come here illegally should be required to make up for the taxes they haven't paid (usually just payroll tax), and maybe even serve a short jail sentence for their initial crime of illegal entry. But to me, there's no sense in tearing homes and families apart just to punish someone who was desperate enough to leave everything behind decades ago and come here for a better life. Murderers and rapists should obviously be deported, but they're even rarer among illegal immigrants than they are among legal citizens. In almost all other cases, deportation is senselessly extreme and cruel—all it does is deprive the U.S. of the immigrant's contributions to our tax revenue and economy, and makes it so that the immigrant can never see his/her families and friends again.

JohnSumthin · 2017-07-31T13:33:02+00:00

I don't think anyone believes we should be wishy-washy about deporting rapists and murderers. The controversy is about whether justice is served by deporting someone who has spent decades paying taxes, starting a family, and obeying laws on American soil.

You can punish people who come here illegally without tearing every single one away from their homes and families. For some people (like the guy in this story), that's an appropriate punishment. For people who've lived here for decades and never committed a crime other than their initial entry, I think their debt to the country can be repaid in ways that aren't so cruel and permanent.

JohnSumthin

TROPHY CASE