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they would have voted again later that day or the next and it would have passed.
Ah, so until the no actually happens and it sticks, it's just grandstanding.
So, right now, what we have, is normal grandstanding, not hostage-taking.
Isn't the issue with this argument that the D caucus in the Senate could easily have filibustered the vote but chose not to?
In other words, they actually had the ability to hold the vote hostage but chose not to. That makes things a bit different. As other people have stated, there was no real intent to negotiate or bargain for concessions in exchange for a vote on the debt ceiling. It was just silly posturing for people back home.
Or in other words:
But Szymborski is totally not a Republican and is completely above partisan politics.
1. Dan is not a Republican.
2. Dan is not being disingenuous.
3. Dan honestly believes that there's no difference between the Dem Senate caucus of 2006 and the Tea Party wing of the GOP caucus today.
This is not intellectual dishonesty or misrepresentation. It's just poor analysis of the facts.
What makes it insufferable is how ####### smug he is about it.
Now, Sam, you keep being such a charitable soul, and your well-earned reputation for wickedness will be all kaput. Then what?!?
The Dems in 2006 never took us close enough to the brink that we were downgraded by S&P. The Dems in 2006 never took us close enough to the brink that the uncertainty had a tangible effect on the market.
Pretending there is no difference doesn't make it so.
It might if you just keep reaching, reaching, reaching, reaching ...
Well, there's always his former role of Mr. Sophistication to fall back on.
David will come back around and a day later all will be as it was.
The Dems in 2006 had secret future knowledge that it wouldn't? They simply lucked out that one of their bullets didn't kill a hostage. Why do you defend hostage takers?
But yeah, the S&P was all the Republicans fault. Just look at the S&P's *actual justification*.
OK, they don't *say* Republicans, but with Republicans in Congress on 4/18/11 and President McCain being in the 3rd year of his first term as president, clearly it's all the Republicans fault.
I know it can be tricky without the (D) and the (R) clearly put in front of names so you know just how to think! Maybe there should be a law.
It wasn't secret future knowledge. It was simple whip counting of their caucus before it went to the floor. You do know what whip counting is, right? You do realize that party leadership knows how every member is going to vote on any given bill (in both Houses) prior to it ever going to the floor, right?
I have no dog in the "who to blame for S&P's downgrade" fight. I'll only point out that S&P are to blame for their downgrade, and they took that action due to their own fiscal priorities as a money making venture, and that I have no idea why anyone with a functional frontal cortex is giving two shits of a damn about what S&P thinks given their ratings of CDO's and pay-for-play behavior during the housing bubble.
i believe the word to describe that kind of thing is 'deranged'.
also, that's a really rich thing to say considering what you're defending.
good weed is not that hard to produce. 1k watt bulbs on all the time til budding 12 on off and your good.
edited to add you need a good strain to start with, ditch weed gets you ditch weed no matter what you do. But a seed or clone of a quality strain will turn out pretty good
The following was spoken by a United States senator in 2006 during the debate to increase the debt limit:
Who was it?
John Lott's latest predictable piece
My recreation of his data adding the USA
http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff59/RollingWave/ChartUSA_zpse63da042.jpg
most unsurprising result ever
In other words "It's OK when the guys I like do it, but when the guys I don't do, I'll compare political disagreements to kidnappings and child murder."
also, that's a really rich thing to say considering what you're defending.
Why are you murdering children?
Regressives sure don't like it when their tactics are used against them, do they?
I love how Obama being called a "socialist" is the worst thing since the Holocaust, because it isn't technically true from a pure definition standpoint (and it isn't), but then calling a threat not to raise the debt limit as "hostage-taking" which isn't remotely the definition is OK.
I'm not a fan of big government, but I would still get a thrill if everyone who used the term "hostage-taker" to describe a political disagreement over a government's legal borrowing authority had to write a letter to the families of the killed Algerian families, describing who the death of their loved on was just like having to argue with people making political points.
So your point of disagreement is basically pedantic, over the use of the metaphor "hostage taking?"
That piece is amazing for its lack of honesty or rigor. Estonia is a developed country? Chile is too? But I see that Russia is not, despite being very similar in PPP.
What a bad joke.
for a generally smart person, you're really bringing the retard here.
Threatening to not raise the debt ceiling is a valid scare tactic. So is labeling it as "hostage taking".
I mean, only a bizarre fetishist or dupe would actually listen to what a politician says, rather than watch what they DO.
NOT actually raising the debt ceiling, on the other hand would be grounds for censure. Well, unless it's part of a coordinated default policy.
Oh Dan, it's doesn't become you to play "shocked on the behalf of the real victims" card. Or do you seriously get the vapors when politicians or their supporters exaggerate?
I think standard etiquette would be "yes, as long as it's not the NFL/NHL/NBA/Soccer/College Football/College Basketball." If it's an OT post about a topic that it's own dedicated OT thread, go there. Otherwise, drop the tangent here. Gods above and below know we could use a diversion from next week's episode of "what will Joe say about gun control next?"
Nonsense. If that was the definition of hostage-taking, you would have called the police.
By your definition, the grocery store just held my food hostage until I paid $100. And the electric company is holding my future electricity hostage for $180! OH NOES! CALL THE FBI!
You may think that choosing not to increase the government's borrowing authority is a bad idea. I do too -- I feel the budgetary process is the more practical place to have these arguments -- but there's no inherent right to have legislation you desire be enacted in Congress.
Fact is, progressives love to seize on hyperbole, declare it the worst thing in the world, demand public penance from the speaker, demand disavowals from everyone remotely associated with the speaker, in a whole, theatrical auto-da-fé. And then they turn around and use the exact same hyperbole non-stop.
Oh Dan, it's doesn't become you to play "shocked on the behalf of the real victims" card. Or do you seriously get the vapors when politicians or their supporters exaggerate?
Oh, I'm not actually shocked on the behalf of the real victims (I clearly don't have any moral right to). But I love hypocrisy and the circle-jerk crowd here essentially baked me a bourbon pecan pie with freshly whipped vanilla cream on top. I love watching stuffed shirts who have invested so much time into making sure they know they're smarter people and better people than the hoi polloi demonstrate just as much intellectual coherence as some right-wing ######### blaming Obama for evolution in schools on facebook.
Calling Democrats against the Patriot Act unpatriotic and unAmerican was wrong then and of the same type and degree as calling Republicans that wish to make long-term spending reform in return for the approval of increase governmental borrowing limit hostage-takers now. If you want to engage in hyperbole about others, that's fine, but let's spare the crocodile tears when those others use hyperbole about you.
Dan, assuming you're not in one of you "block Sam" phases, you're inching of the Rationality res at this point.
This is a weird analogy for a power-of-markets point-of-a-gunner.
It's his stupid definition of hostage-taking, not mine.
This is the definition of hostage-taking:
He said what the Republicans did "fit the definition" of hostage-taking. I assume he called the police to notify them that there was an ongoing crime.
I assume the response is "oh, it's hyperbole" which it is. But the progressoscists here constantly disavow the use of hyperbole and colorful language by anyone but them.
It's also Mitch McConnell's and the political right's definition as well. Do we need to link to the plethora of comments from Red State or other Tea Party friendly sites calling on the GOP House to "shoot the hostage?" I understand where you might argue "this is a stupid metaphor and everyone's an idiot for using it," but it's a bit of a long stretch to assign the usage to one side of the aisle. For better or worse, "hostage taking" is the currently vogue metaphor for the attempt by the House caucus to hold the debt ceiling authorization back in hopes of beneficial changes to other policies that they prefer.
You're approaching a David-esque level of pedantry on the definition of a simple political metaphor.
hos·tage (hstj)
n.
1. A person held by one party in a conflict as security that specified terms will be met by the opposing party.
2. One that serves as security against an implied threat: superpowers held hostage to each other by their nuclear arsenals.
3. One that is manipulated by the demands of another: "National policies cannot be made hostage to another country" (Alan D. Romberg).
[Middle English, from Old French, probably from host, guest, host; see host1.]
Ah, so arguing policies is manipulation by demands, eh?
I plan to call you all hostage-takers at every opportunity.
By your argument, you also fit the definition of having committed murder as I find your defense of one-way hyperbole to be "outrageous and blameworthy" (merriam-webster, 2b). Would you not think it hyperbole if I called you a murderer in every post for now on?
Sorry, but the use of "hostage-takers" is obvious hyperbole of the same type that the people using it throw a fit about when they're the target.
You do realize you're comparing a metaphorical claim to literal ones, yeah? And, as others have pointed out, the Teaper crowd has embraced, rather than disavowed, the "hostage-taking" metaphor. The claim that Obama's a socialist does not belong in the same conversation.
Should I ever hold back something you have a reasonable right to assume I would not hold back, in lieu of your giving in to my demands for something else, feel free. Please note however that I do not believe that you have a particularly reasonable right to assume I will give you "agreement on all of your positions and arguments" during an academic debate on the internet, especially not to the extent that I believe the Congress of the United States should be assumed to not hold back the full faith and credit of the United States government over ideological aims.
If I hold my opinion about a debate topic "hostage" in this thread, the global economy doesn't collapse.
It was a while back but this is really odd. Do you know what a dictatorship is?
My favorite part:
Aside: Complaining about the metaphor "hostage taking" is just as useful as complaining about the term "fiscal cliff". Just because a term is wrong doesn't mean it isn't being used.
Truth time. I've never actually blocked you. People like Treder or Shipman or dp who ape your rhetoric, but don't have your wit or joie de vivre, I will happily go to my grave never having interacted with them for the rest of my life. But as frustrating as you are generally, you're too damn good a writer to not read. If I ran the Washington Post, I'd fire Greg Sargent and give you his job.
If I hold my opinion about a debate topic "hostage" in this thread, the global economy doesn't collapse.
So then, Obama's holding the global economy hostage. The Republicans have expressed a desire to come to a middle ground in a debate over legislation. Obama has not. Obama's the hostage-taker.
I'll fire up the resume!
A position with which I disagree, but which is constructively rational under the current terms of debate.
Sadly, if I end up running the Washington Post, we've gone down some crazy timeline in which hamburgers eat people.
I wish you wrote in your blog more often!
I'd better get whatshername's job reviewing classical music.
Heretofore I have every intention of referencing Lassus as "whatshername" in these threads.
I'd better get whatshername's job reviewing classical music.
Just let me fire Gene Weingarten and the morons who write their headlines.
I hope this catches on an replaces the rather tired and played out "zombie apocalypse" trope.
And as others have noted, there's a bit of a difference between a metaphor used to describe an action and a direct questioning of someone's patriotism. The "socialist" and "collectivist" labels may be clownish and ahistorical, but at least they're not personal attacks on the same level as "anti-American" or "traitor".
It's already happened in Rand McNally.
I can only assume that it's some form of bizarre performance art.
If you are in the political minority and lose the vote, aren't you governed without consent?
No, you're governed by a party you did not vote for. You consent to that possibility by being part of a democracy.
If I'm reading the signs right, the new talking point in the guns-for-penises crowd is that we need to have gun safety and live fire proficiency training in public schools, as the gun equivalent to driver's ed.
These people are insane.
Consent to that possibility as opposed to what? Actively revolting? I don't see "accepting an unpleasant situation because resistance is impractical" as consent.
I'm not saying democracy is precisely the same as a dictatorship, but I didn't consent to a number of government policies. I tolerate them, and that's not really very different than having to tolerate unpleasant policies in a relatively benevolent dictatorship. The main difference, as I see it, is that if I can convince enough people of something in a democracy, I have a reasonable chance of changing policy (although, to be fair, if I could do the same in a dictatorship, the movement might represent a credible enough threat of overthrow to change policy too).
I definitely agree with the idea that a democracy is less prone to abuse of power than a dictatorship because the power isn't as individualized, but I don't think it is a system of consent. If 50.1% of the population were to believe that the correct policy for the country would be the systematic rounding up and execution of <insert hated minority group here>, it would most certainly not be something I consented to.
Actually, if you're going to have guns in the public sphere, I think this is a pretty good idea. It's a dangerous technology if you're not knowledgeable about the dangers. I'd also support teaching basic fire safety and basic swimming techniques as part of public education.
I think those kinds of classes fit a lot better as part of obtaining a gun license. That's how they do it in other countries and it works well.
Glad they weren't killed, but as long as they weren't I have to admit I love stories like this. "Gun Appreciation Day" has got to be one of the creepiest concepts of all time, even if it does lend itself to some delicious lampooning.
Eh, its not anything weirder than some of other big convention shows out there for various interests. Although, its pretty damn clear that a Darwin award should be given to the organizers of this event if only because they apparently need to specify that any and all guns SHOULD BE UNLOADED.
LOL
Eh, its not anything weirder than some of other big convention shows out there for various interests. Although, its pretty damn clear that a Darwin award should be given to the organizers of this event if only because they apparently need to specify that any and all guns SHOULD BE UNLOADED.
Hmmmm, in some states those gun show organizers might have a lawsuit on their hands. I guess it's okay to carry a loaded gun into a church or a school or a restaurant, but at a gun show, heaven forbid.
And I suppose with "Gun Appreciation Day" under their belts, it was inevitable that the gun nuts would think up a series of rallies called "Guns Across America". They should get Mel Gibson to sing "We Are The World" or something.
Not sure you can do that with creationists.
Is there any point of trolling a church's voluntary buyback program?
He didn't actually publish the work done by others. Also, JSTOR didn't want criminal charges brought, they just wanted the content secured, which it was.
All that leaves is Swartz being very clever about using an internet network he wasn't authorized to use. He wasn't using it to send military secrets to Al-Qaeda or arranging to have sex with 12-year-olds. Charge him with a misdemeanor and let him do a couple hundred hours of community service. There was no justification for the federal government treating the Swartz case as if he was Aldrich Ames.
I'm not going to justify suicide. I'm also not going to say that Aaron Swartz did nothing wrong, because that isn't true. He was an activist, and his intentions were based on a belief in free exchange of information (a cause that I believe is very noble), but he did break the law.
That said, the punishment he was facing was not legitimate (at least in a moral sense). His crimes carried a potential sentence of up to 35 years, and up to $1M in fines. But don't take my word for it; here's a quote from Rep. Zoe Lofgren:
It's not reasonable to say that the government killed Aaron Swartz, a young man that suffered from depression and chose to end his own life. It is reasonable to say that the government acted poorly, and that the threat of an outrageous punishment contributed to the emotional state that led to Swartz's decision.
Let me know when we have a rational dialogue about guns in this country. The country has gone over the bend on the objective plusses and minuses of guns.
Legal or not, I think a gun that's kept in the house for personal protection makes the household less safe. Guns in households tend to be used in ill-thought-out suicides and family arguments far more often than defending the household from intruders. Same goes for concealed carry. Legal or not, if I'm in the same place as Joe Schmo who's carrying, I'm probably less safe.
But we can't talk about such issues, can we? Could we have talked about DWI if a significant portion of the population either felt that alcohol was some sort of magic potion that cured all ills, or sided with those that did believe it?
There is an astonishing amount of people, who think they drive better after a few drinks.
No.
How far along were they in proceeding to trial?
Swartz had been indicted and released on $100,000 bail.
Many defendants are overcharged, then there's negotiation down from there. This guy wasn't a person without resources. Was he really going to go to jail at all?
I think you've already identified a major problem with our criminal justice system. Defendants shouldn't be overcharged as a negotiation tactic; they should be charged properly. Our system encourages plea bargains through excessive charges and maximum sentencing. Because of the threat of an outrageous penalty, overbroad laws are often not tested and remain on the books. The system doesn't really work.
As for Swartz's jail time, it depends how much of an example the government wanted to make of him, and of course, on the judge's discretion in sentencing. Shortly before his death, if wikipedia and one of Swartz's attorneys is to be believed, the only way to avoid trial was to plead guilty to all 13 charges and to spend six months in jail. If that was the government's best offer, odds are pretty low than a guilty verdict would have resulted in less jail time.
In the fume and froth to always blame the government, from popular media representations, we maybe should assume a more becoming modesty. The prosecutor says they would have probably recommended six months.
That's what the prosecutor is saying now that Aaron Swartz is dead, and there's a bipartisan concern about prosecutorial overreach that includes a potential investigation by Congress, and a petition to remove her from office. Six months ago, she was saying things like "stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar" and "if convicted of these charges, Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million." After Swartz killed himself, the tone of her public statements changed a bit: "this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct – a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting."
I don't really blame Ortiz too much, though. (It does appear that a six-month plea bargain was on the table, so it's not like she was making monstrous demands.) While discretion in charging certainly is part of her job, it's not really her place to re-write the law. The CFAA is really the culprit here.
Also, wikileaks has confirmed Swartz was a source. A lot of this we'll never know definitively from a legal standpoint, since the dead aren't prosecuted.
Why does it matter if Swartz was a source for wikileaks? He was very heavily involved in the open information movement; I'd imagine that practically every major contributor to internet freedom was a potential wikileaks source.
It would have been good for the people to see this issue tried, to bring public attention to the issue, rather than disposed of via plea bargain silently. Certainly, it's getting a lot of attention now, but at what cost?
He was working on a fellowship at Harvard. So he had access to the archive. Have you ever been on JSTOR? When I was using it, they never put limits on what or how many articles I could download, or how many times I could it. Its pretty clear that JSTOR never considered that somebody would just try to download the entire archive. But somebody did, and they didn't need to 'hack' it. Really, its JSTOR's own shoddy infrastructure that made it possible in the first place.
You call it luck, I call it a reasonable assessment of risk that everyone else understood and made at the time.
But yeah, the S&P was all the Republicans fault. Just look at the S&P's *actual justification*.
Dan, since I've actually read that S&P report, I know you left out the S&P's quotes about the "political brinksmanship" that made them conclude that U.S. policymaking was less stable than in the past.
Yes, because Democrats didn't engage in political brinksmanship as well at all. Nope, not our young handsome heroes!
Preach on, Roland F.
?
Let me rephrase. Morty's post is an example of why I'm having more trouble finding common ground to vote for Democrats in the last 5 years or so, a sad command government leanings among a percentage of leftists, as seen in such things as articles characterizing the First Amendment as free speech fetishism, suddenly finding drone strikes a-ok, and stuff like this. The idea that it's OK for the government to overcharge a defendant because he has resources and that we should be concerned about being more modest about government prosecutions really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. No, the government didn't hang Swartz with piano wire, but the way the entire case was run and the arguments of the people defending the government have a disturbing tinge of Volksgerichtshof running through it.
Retardo and I have a great deal of mutual dislike, but at least his (I believe erroneous) concept of rights is concerned about individuals.
From what I've read, Swarz actually snuck around to different libraries specifically because he had had limitations put on his downloading activities, after he began. There's a ton of prosecutorial overreach and there's a lot of criticisms to be levied against prosecutors and DA offices run amok in our criminal "justice" system, but let's not pretend that Swarz didn't realize what he was doing was frowned upon and illegal, to the extent that he took extensive action in the world (going to libraries at other campuses than Harvard) to avoid systemic rules.
The other thing that I find really weird here is that Swarz identified himself as an internet activist and he behaved as such. He quite clearly put himself in the upper tier of a group of activists who intentionally commit acts of civil disobedience to call attention to what they believe to be unjust laws. The assumed result of civil disobedience is arrest, detention and jail time. MLK didn't protest in Birmingham and then expect to avoid time in a Birmingham jail. That's what I find really disconnecting here. It's like the guy was out playing the role of anarchist internet activist going against the man, but then completely freaked his #### when it turned out that the man was actually powerful and intent on maintaining the status quo of his power and authority in the world. It seems Swarz was approaching his "activism" as a bit of trust fund dillitente role playing rather than real action in the world, and the world came up to brutally burst his bubble.
I would like to refrain from making too many assumptions about guilt and reciprocal responsibility since matters in the Swartz case were some distance from a conclusion. We simply don't know, and now will never know, what would have eventuated. But, we do know how things are with legal proceedings. We know prosecutors overcharge--because they can and because it is effective. And we know they negotiate down. There's not much reason to believe Swartz was going to get anything like 30 years. You might as well believe everyone who is caught smoking a joint for the first time is given ten years hard time.
People's ideology infects almost everything they say on this thread. They need to step back and get a grip; give the life and death Armageddon mindset a rest sometimes. I know we all think we have the answers to all the problems, and don't need to consider untoward possibilities, but, really, it can get awfully tiresome.
It's not the fact that he was charged that I find disturbing -- he appears to have been guilty of something -- it's the zealousness and overcharging of the prosecution in this case that's the problem. Even racist Alabama, upon finding King guilty, limited the punishment to $500 or a year in jail, not up to a million dollars or decades in the slammer if convicted. If Jim Crow justice actually looks merciful by comparison, something's gone horribly wrong.
Swartz's attorney actually said that right before Swartz's suicide, he'd negotiated a plea bargain that would have resulted in no jail time at all, but that MIT had vetoed it.
But if he's publishing the material, ya, they will get after him.
Yes, because Democrats didn't engage in political brinksmanship as well at all. Nope, not our young handsome heroes!
You seem to have me confused with someone else, Dan. Rather than rise to the bait (although come on, how could you not find this guy handsome), I'll just say I think you're misleading yourself if you think that (a) the 2006 vote on the debt ceiling bore any resemblance to the 2011-and-after votes on the debt ceiling, or that (b) the Democrats engaged in similar brinksmanship to the Republicans in either case.
Threatening not to permit the increase the debt ceiling and thus run the risk of default and tanking the economy if you don't get your way, even when your own party leader's debt reduction plan (Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity) didn't balance the budget for ~20 years, and that was with (IMO) optimistic revenue assumptions...that is not a good faith negotiation.
Bad form.
First of all, Dan's completely forgetting the 'Hastert Rule' -- previous debt ceiling hikes had, indeed, always passed under split Congress/Pres scenarios, but with the minority (President's) party supplying almost all the votes.
The Hastert Rule mucked that up -- because it meant Boehner wouldn't bring a bill to floor that could pass with majority Dem support.
The Dems don't have a 'Hastert rule' -- Pelosi brought a number of bills to the floor during her speakership that got less than majority Dem support...
In fact - if you want a difference between this GOP caucus and similar Dem caucuses in reverse circumstances, look at the 2008 bailout...
You had a GOP President more reviled than any President on his way out the door since probably Hoover... You had a Democrat running against "him" as a proxy, even as John McCain was actually on the ballot.
Suddenly, Lehman collapses, Bush's treasury secretary is asking for blank checks or the world dies, etc... Did the Democrats extract anything from the GOP President? Universal health care? An immediate end to Iraq? Expansion of Medicare?
Nope - Pelosi got Bush the votes... Dems didn't like it, they got beat up for it, but this monstrosity that everyone seemed to be saying was absolutely necessary got passed with Democratic votes for a proposal from a Republican President everyone hated.
Saw an interview with Alan Dershowitz on this subject and I found it fascinating. (And yes, YMMV on Dershowitz)
That's a filthy lie, but no more than I'd expect from a Communist and a sodomite.
He sometimes has interesting things to say, my problem with Dershowitz is that he's such a loathsome scumbag it pretty overrides anything worthwhile he may have to say.
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