The Democrat Thread

[StrangeSox]

lol that face is the definition of "smug"

[mr_genius]

Once again, Sean Penn is a total asshole.

 

haha. sean penn saves the day AGAIN

[Texsox]

Nor that there are serious racial disparities in the justice system.

 

Not really OJ was found not guilty.

[Texsox]

Which is why the death penalty, IMO, is being used far too liberally. It needs to be reserved not only for the most heinous of crimes, but also the cases where evidence is solid as a rock.

 

Texas leads the nation in executing killers, and that has made Texas the safest state in the nation.

[StrangeSox]

Not really OJ was found not guilty.

 

owned

[Texsox]

owned

 

I wish I could find the study on-line, there is a nifty correlation between the rate and experience of the defendant's lawyer and the likelihood that the defendant will receive the death penalty.

[StrangeSox]

I wish I could find the study on-line, there is a nifty correlation between the rate and experience of the defendant's lawyer and the likelihood that the defendant will receive the death penalty.

Oh absolutely.that's one reason theresa a racial disparity-minorities are more likely to end up with overworked public defenders.

[Texsox]

Oh absolutely.that's one reason theresa a racial disparity-minorities are more likely to end up with overworked public defenders.

 

Actually, at least in Texas, there are laws to keep the over worked part from happening. The lead attorney must have had experience as a second in a capital trial. They also are not allowed to be working other cases. Usually the work is contracted to private attorneys at the state's rate of pay. In reality the top private attorneys are never forced into taking the work, it is usually the bottom scrapers. Your point is correct in results, just not exact in who is working these cases. (at least in Texas)

[Balta1701]

Usually, the talking heads on the TV take exceptional care to cover their words, and that trickles all the way down to internet message boards. They say and type things like "Obama needs to stop being mean to job creators" or "Obama shouldn't call out the job creators, that just creates uncertainty!".

Then occasionally...one of them lets slip the truth.

MR. GREGORY: Can you explain how that impacts businesses? Because we hear it, it’s a conventional wisdom that a lack of leadership, uncertainty, means that businesses aren’t hiring. They’re making money, they’re doing more with less, and yet they’re not hiring.

 

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Well, nobody has any confidence. If you’re a bank and you have money, would you make a loan when people are talking about putting you in jail for what happened in the mortgage crisis three, four years ago? You hunker down. If you’re a business, would you go take a loan and expand and hire more people when every day there’s talk about different regulation, different tax policy? Business has to know what it’s going to be in the future to plan because hiring people is a long-term commitment. If you’re an individual, would you go take that extra vacation, buy a new house and that sort of thing when you’re not sure whether Washington is going to do what’s right to keep job creation going in America? That’s the–in the end, it is confidence, confidence, confidence.

Yes that's right...the problem isn't that Obama was mean to them...it's that they broke a ****ton of laws for 10 years. But threatening to punish the "Job creators" for a decade of systematic lying and lawbreaking, why that's terrible for the economy, it creates the uncertainty over whether they might have to go to jail for a decade of systematic lawbreaking. If we want the economy to grow, we can't obsess with which laws were broken and which weren't. And I'm sure next time, they'll have learned their lesson.

[Balta1701]

I almost want to put this in the GOP 2012 thread...because this is absolutely a primary gift to Rick Perry. And I bet whoever wrote the line knew that.

Mr. Obama took aim at Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry at a California fund-raiser, without naming the Texas governor, and he criticized the behavior of the audience during the party’s recent debates.

 

“I mean, has anybody been watching the debates lately? You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change,” Mr. Obama said in a reference to Mr. Perry that drew applause from the 350 donors at a fund-raiser in Woodside, Calif.

 

“You’ve got audiences cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don’t have health care and booing a service member in Iraq because they’re gay,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not reflective of who we are.”

 

Perry spokesman Mark Miner called it “outrageous” that the president “would use the burning of 1,500 homes, the worst fires in state history as a political attack.

[NorthSideSox72]

Usually, the talking heads on the TV take exceptional care to cover their words, and that trickles all the way down to internet message boards. They say and type things like "Obama needs to stop being mean to job creators" or "Obama shouldn't call out the job creators, that just creates uncertainty!".

Then occasionally...one of them lets slip the truth.

Yes that's right...the problem isn't that Obama was mean to them...it's that they broke a ****ton of laws for 10 years. But threatening to punish the "Job creators" for a decade of systematic lying and lawbreaking, why that's terrible for the economy, it creates the uncertainty over whether they might have to go to jail for a decade of systematic lawbreaking. If we want the economy to grow, we can't obsess with which laws were broken and which weren't. And I'm sure next time, they'll have learned their lesson.

You've jumped the shark. You are now saying that all businesses in any field with significant regulation are obviously criminals. Seriously? When some people break the law, and the governmental response is that the rules will change in a big way but we won't tell you how yet... then ALL the people in that sector are now waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Not just the criminal few. How do you not get that?

 

[southsider2k5]

You've jumped the shark. You are now saying that all businesses in any field with significant regulation are obviously criminals. Seriously? When some people break the law, and the governmental response is that the rules will change in a big way but we won't tell you how yet... then ALL the people in that sector are now waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Not just the criminal few. How do you not get that?

 

Especially in the financial sector the burden of proof has gone from needing to prove that you are breaking the law to needing to prove that you aren't breaking the law. You are assumed guilty, and fined as such, if you can't prove that you are not breaking the law.

 

[Balta1701]

You've jumped the shark. You are now saying that all businesses in any field with significant regulation are obviously criminals. Seriously? When some people break the law, and the governmental response is that the rules will change in a big way but we won't tell you how yet... then ALL the people in that sector are now waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Not just the criminal few. How do you not get that?

Can't I play it a little silly sometimes?

 

And anyway...he's not wrong. Take a look at what he's saying and how it is expressing where "Moral Hazard" has gone. A lot of the big financial firms broke the law wholesale. They are now sitting there worried about indictments. This is entirely true for Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and probably a host of others.

 

Think about what this says for moral hazard. Charging these people with a crime that they committed quite literally creates uncertainty. He's right. If we investigate actual financial criminality, we increase uncertainty and hurt the economy. Ergo, we must ignore previous criminality for the good of the economy. And if Goldman Sachs or Bank of America are actually charged for what they did...we get another series on how Obama is so mean to wall street and its increasing uncertainty.

 

You cannot say that this is a sustainable situation, even if I poke fun at the "Obama was mean to Wall Street" crowd with it.

[BigSqwert]

Why I Was Maced at the Wall Street Protests

[StrangeSox]

[StrangeSox]

I wonder how this ever sounded like a good idea:

 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/25/us/californi...sale/index.html

 

Campus Republicans at the University of California Berkeley have cooked up a storm of controversy with their plans for a bake sale.

But it's not your everyday collegiate fundraiser they've got in mind. They've developed a sliding scale where the price of the cookie or brownie depends on your gender and the color of your skin.

During the sale, scheduled for Tuesday, baked goods will be sold to white men for $2.00, Asian men for $1.50, Latino men for $1.00, black men for $0.75 and Native American men for $0.25. All women will get $0.25 off those prices.

"The pricing structure is there to bring attention, to cause people to get a little upset," Campus Republican President Shawn Lewis, who planned the event, told CNN-affiliate KGO. "But it's really there to cause people to think more critically about what this kind of policy would do in university admissions."

[Balta1701]

I wonder how this ever sounded like a good idea:

 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/25/us/californi...sale/index.html

Haven't Campus Republicans been doing those for about 2-3 decades now?

[BigSqwert]

[BigSqwert]

This is hilarious:

In her latest "interview" with her public relations aide, Greta Van Susteren, Palin accuses the media of not vetting the 2008 candidates properly and of turning politics into a reality show. I kid you not.

 

via

[StrangeSox]

"Perry’s close alliances with pro-Islamic Republican activists like Grover Norquist give additional cause for concern. Norquist supports open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens and is well known in Washington, D.C. circles for his tireless efforts to build Republican bridges to pro-amnesty groups and to slander advocates of immigration enforcement as “racists.” Norquist also has close ties to the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), whose Houston chapter bragged in a recent newsletter that “Rick Perry’s relationship with Muslims may set him apart.” ... Does Perry think he can talk tough in defending the Texas death penalty and then waffle on border security and taxpayer support for illegal alien children? Why does he think he can claim to be the “tea party candidate” while endorsing a whitewash of Islamic extremism in Texas schools?" - Former Congressman Tom Tancredo.

[Texsox]

By the end of the nomination process, Dems will love Perry more than the GOP faithful. In the general he will pull more Dem voters away than Obama will pull Rep voters away.

 

 

[Texsox]

The just crossed my screen and I wanted to share . . .

 

 

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense .. human rights invented America.

 

The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself — always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.

 

Penalties against drug use should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against the possession of marijuana in private for personal use.

 

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

 

We have the heaviest concentration of lawyers on Earth — one for every five-hundred Americans; three times as many as are in England, four times as many as are in West Germany, twenty-one times as many as there are in Japan. We have more litigation, but I am not sure that we have more justice.

 

I can't deny I'm a better ex-president than I was a president.

All from Jimmy Carter

 

[Balta1701]

Bloomberg has a piece alleging that top Republican contributors Koch industries have used subsidiaries and such to sell equipment to Iran, circumventing U.S. sanctions against that country. They also throw in descriptions of bribes for good measure.

[StrangeSox]

Bachmann blames Obama for the Arab Spring

 

At a fundraiser here, Bachmann was asked for her views on the cause of the uprisings, and said she thinks the president “laid the table for the Arab Spring by demonstrating weakness,” and particularly noted his call for Israel to return to its borders prior to the 1967 war with Egypt.

 

I didn't know some people considered the Arab Spring a bad thing?

[NorthSideSox72]

Bachmann blames Obama for the Arab Spring

 

 

 

I didn't know some people considered the Arab Spring a bad thing?

 

This is the type of thing I was referring to, about certain members of the GOP field not being sane. It's not that she's right-wing, or that she supports Israel more than I might, or that she dislikes the job Obama is doing (right with her there)... it's that shes CRAZY. Crazy as in, not dealing in reality.