First, some ground rule suppositions: Yes, the NSA absolutely needs to be reined in to stop metadata collection and privacy abuses. Yes, the Senate NSA reform bill up for a vote yesterday was not perfect, but the bill would have stopped metadata collection in exchange for extending authorization to search existing phone records into 2017.
The bill failed to clear a Republican filibuster by two votes yesterday. 41 Republicans voted no.
One of those votes was a senator from my state, Rand Paul.
Paul said he voted against the bill because it would have extended the Patriot Act provision that allows the NSA to search Americans’ phone records. He has consistently opposed the Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Leahy’s bill extended the provision’s expiration to June 2017 — as a compromise, in order to change the law to stop the NSA from holding onto phone records. Under Leahy’s bill, that duty would have been handed off to phone companies. The companies’ records could only have been searched with a surveillance court’s order.
While Paul said he “felt bad” that the bill failed, because it “probably needed my vote,” he also claimed the country was “one step closer to restoring civil liberties,” because the Patriot Act provision’s expiration date will not be extended.
Paul’s bedfellows on the vote to kill NSA reform made doomsaying predictions on the Senate floor, saying the legislation would allow Islamic State terrorists to perpetrate another 9/11.
The perfect became the enemy of the good here, and considering the vast majority of Republicans voted against this because SECRET TERRORISTS WILL KILL YOUR FAMILY, any bill to stop the NSA has even less of a chance in the next Congress.
The fact remains that Democrats put a bill up to stop the NSA, and it was Republicans who killed it. Whether or not you believe the bill was not robust enough, Republicans have assured zero action will take place to deal with privacy issues and the NSA.
And really it’s all about whether or not you take Rand Paul at his word, and as one of his constituents who has repeatedly seen his voting actions not match his rhetoric, I do not. He’s a liar and whenever possible he’s self-serving (I know, shocking right, a senator doing that.)
But that’s just it, Rand Paul loves to portray himself as a non-typical Republican senator who will see things get done on the issues of civil liberties. When given a perfect opportunity, he instead sided with typical neocon Republicans and spits out a lame excuse as to why, unless you believe that no NSA bill at all is “one step closer to restoring civil liberties” and all.
What he did was defuse a 2016 primary attack that he knows will be leveled at Ted Cruz: “He voted with Obama and the Democrats to weaken national security to help ISIS terrorists”. Paul’s trying to have it both ways and he always has, while the Democrats are the ones pushing for NSA reform.
No, the parties are not the same on civil liberties. And in the end, Rand Paul sided with the GOP because in the end, he’s a typical wingnut Republican. So don’t tell me he’s a “champion of civil liberties” when given the only real political opportunity for advocating for meaningful NSA reform ahead of an incoming GOP Senate that won’t even take a vote on the NSA in the next two years, he instead was a coward and a Glibertarian douchebag.
Period.
SteveM
I’m sure Bill Maher will be along any minute now to explain why Rand’s no vote was actually a triumphant blow for freedom.
Michael Bersin
Is anyone really surprised?
Cervantes
@Michael Bersin: By what?
Roger Moore
Because there’s no chance at all that the Patriot Act’s provisions will be extended by a stand-alone bill enthusiastically supported by Rand’s Republican colleagues.
kindness
What the stage is missing is actual Libertarians calling Paul out on his bullshit. The media won’t do it. They’re in bed with Republican Rule. Where is Sully? Where are all the other ‘Freedom” & Individual Rights folk? Oh, yea….they are on the right’s payroll too.
We’re screwed.
Citizen_X
Obviously, this is Obama’s fault.
Roger Moore
@kindness:
Shorter.
MomSense
@kindness:
I’d like to know where they are, too. They certainly didn’t seem that concerned with the outcome of the midterm elections.
Spinwheel
Incorrect as always.
The only person who is assuring unconstitutional NSA spying on Americans will continue is Obama, who could issue an executive order ending these programs at any time.
But you would know that if your head wasn’t firmly wedged in your gigantic shitstained ass.
max
So don’t tell me he’s a “champion of civil liberties” when given the only real political opportunity for advocating for meaningful NSA reform ahead of an incoming GOP Senate that won’t even take a vote on the NSA in the next two years, he instead was a coward and a Glibertarian douchebag.
I’ll stick with what I said before. Sometimes he talks a good game, and if he actually showed up, it would be great, other terrible positions notwithstanding.
But of course, when push came to shove he didn’t show up.
max
[‘That said, it hasn’t immunized him against attacks by Ted Cruz or other hawks – it just means he blew off any remaining credibility on the subject he had.’]
Howard Beale IV
Like I said yesterday-all hat, no cattle.
Tommy
Well at least ISIS won’t come kill alll of us in our sleep tonight. I guess we got that going for us.
Seanly
Paul is full of shit. Any libertarian impulses are disguise for an Ayn Rand authoritarian oligarchy where power lies with our corporate masters. Civil liberties are fine as long as they don’t get in the way of the holy profit margin. The government won’t be able to tax you, but the corporation can pay you in script and charge you for breathing their air while at work.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Rand Paul: Fake doctor, real Republican.
Alex
Zandar, you, Bob Cesca, tbogg, and a large number of the commentariat here have spent a few years now minimizing – when not entirely dismissing – the threat of mass, undifferentiated metadata collection by the NSA. It’s a bit much for you now to turn around on this issue to score a tactical political point against Rand Paul, even where he very much deserves it.
I have very little doubt that Paul would crumble on this issue if he were President. But, you overlook, as you have always overlooked, the many ways the current administration has embraced the National Security State in all of its various, unconstitutional excesses. And does anyone here doubt Hillary Clinton, a creature of the neoconservative establishment if there ever were one, will be any better on this issue?
Jesus Christ, get your priorities straight.
SatanicPanic
@Alex: “Jesus Christ, get your priorities straight.”
Yeaaaaaah, the problem is that many of us don’t think of the NSA as a priority. I know I don’t.
Frankensteinbeck
You can stop there. Seriously. You’re a Kentuckian. You know that he says whatever the Hell he thinks his audience wants to hear at that particular moment. His lies are not consistent. He’s not faking being anti-Patriot Act, he’s faking every position under the sun, without putting an even Romney level of effort into pretending consistency. He’s like the friggin’ Bible. If you’re willing to look at one individual statement, you can say Rand Paul supports anything you care to name.
SteveM
@kindness: Even the libertarians who aren’t on the right’s payroll hate Democrats far more than they hate Republicans, largely for the same reason that the Judean People’s Front hated the People’s Front of Judean more than the Romans.
WiscoJoe
Last year, Glenn Greenwald was arguing that Democrats in Congress deserved to be “punished” for not doing enough to reform the NSA. His implicit method for punishing Democrats was to allow Republicans to be elected.
Now that Republicans have been elected by wide margins in Congress, Greenwald is suddenly arguing that Congress is “irrelevant” when it comes to reforming the NSA.
Can we all agree that Glenn Greenwald is no ally to progressive/liberal causes, and perhaps even admit that he may be actually working against them?
Joey Maloney
@WiscoJoe: Nader/Greenwald 2016!
Spinwheel
@Alex:
You mean that Zandar is as much of a liar who sacrifices his “principles” for political expediency as he accused opponents of Obama of being?
Who knew?
Oh wait, everyone did.
Anything to say in your defense or are you going to vanish for another 15 months and hope everyone around here conveniently forgets what a slimy load of weasel shit you are?
TG Chicago
@max:
Excellent point. At this point, it’s pretty much guaranteed that Cruz is going to call Paul an isolationist terrorist-appeaser, worse than the dreaded Obama. Cruz will have no problem lying about Paul’s record, and most of the echo chamber (surely more in line with kill-em-all Cruz on foreign policy) will be happy to to repeat the lies until they become ‘facts’ enshrined on stone tablets at conservapedia. It’s hard to see what Paul will gain from this cowardice.
Kristin
@Alex: it is possible to be critical of more than one person at a time. Just because Obama screws up, it doesn’t mean everyone else is off the hook forever.
TG Chicago
@WiscoJoe: I haven’t been reading Greenwald lately. Do you have the links where he said such things?
Goblue72
@SatanicPanic: me neither. NSA, Snowden, global warming, gay marriage, and even immigration – most voters don’t give a shit.
Not having had a raise in 5 years, layoffs, unaffordable child care, college tuition through the roof, housing costs out of reach, eviscerated retirement funds – that’s what voters care about.
Democratic Party is at its weakest in decades when you look at the totality between Federal & state levels. You’d think the ass-kicking would engender some soul searching.
Frankensteinbeck
@TG Chicago:
Not only is Paul a compulsive liar, he’s not even all that good at it. You can also find quotes to say he opposes anything you want to attack him with. The man makes Romney look politically sophisticated, and he barely got elected in a wave anti-Obama election in one of the most racist Hellholes in the US.
Belafon
@Goblue72:
What does ass-kicking do in most relationships?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@SteveM: Assumes facts truly nowhere in evidence.
MomSense
@TG Chicago:
Could be today’s intercept article called something like “Congress Is Irrelevant on Mass Surveillance…”
I’m not linking to it but he does on his twitter feed.
Spinwheel
It’s not like we have to go back too far to know Zandar’s actual opinion on the NSA either.
I know, let’s dwell on Rand Paul’s vote when the issue has always been Obama allowing these unconstitutional abuses to happen. That way we will forget what a colossal assnugget and piece of shit liar Zandar is, right?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Belafon: You have a point. I’ve had my ass kicked. I was not thinking “hhmmm, I wonder what I did to deserve that?”
patrick II
It should be observed that “the perfect being the enemy of the good” is not the same as it is by democrats and should not be thought of that way. Unlike the democratic party with healthcare, where the left complained that the new healthcare plan was not single payer and were sincere if impractical in holding out their approval, the perfect/good dichotomy is a tactic used by republicans to do nothing. The 1% want undocumented immigrants to drive down labor costs, while the bottom of the republican barrel hates immigrants in part because they feel they are competition for work. The 1% makes sure their other, more expensive, paid help — the U.S. congress never can find or write a bill that perfectly guards against and reject all immigrants — and leaves us with a large, cheap illegal workforce. Perfect/good is a tactic to keep illegals here for cheap labor for the 1%, not a reality.
The same is true for healthcare. Obamacare should be rejected entirely because it is not perfect. And the same is true for NSA regulations where republicans, not just Rand Paul, have campaigned against government spying but can’t bring themselves to vote for any regulation.
The perfect is not pitted against the good here. That is a chimera used as a tactic. The perfect and the good are both against the status quo where the current elite get to keep their money, power, and freedom to do as they please.
BR
You know, I’m still surprised that even on Balloon Juice there’s not awareness of how we really need two political axes to describe political positions accurately — a left-right axis and a libertarian-authoritarian axis. Paul is far right but slightly more libertarian than the average Democrat or Republican, but that’s not saying much. He’s far more of a centrist on the latter axis, not nearly as libertarian as some think.
What we need to put that in full perspective is to have some authentic left-libertarian, or even center-libertarian candidates on the national stage. (Bernie Sanders is fairly close to left-libertarian, from what I can tell.)
If you’re wondering where you stand, check out Political Compass or similar tests.
Tommy
@MomSense: The article you noted was kind of all over the place, and I generally agree with Greenwald the vast majority of the time. I had a hard time trying to figure out what he was saying.
SatanicPanic
@Goblue72: I mostly agree except that immigration is a huge issue to Latinos and that’s the group where Democrats have the best prospects for growth. I don’t think we’re at our weakest at all. We went through a similar thing in California, where the angriest, dumbest people in the 90s were highly energized because they saw their period of dominance was ending. Now look at em.
geg6
Oh joy. My hope that the dudebros who hate Zandar would not notice that he’s back has gone up in smoke.
Love how they hate everything Obama while their heroes go completely off the rails to the sound of complete and utter silence from their pieholes. Has Gamergate exhaustion finally hit them?
El Caganer
@Roger Moore: Actual libertarians? I think they’re over in the same aisle as the unicorns. Or are we talking about Republicans who like weed?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@BR: That’s because in this fine nation we really only have two: left/authoritarian and right/authoritarian. The libertarian-minded have been a single-digit minority my entire life, and I see no sign of that changing save for the worse.
Spinwheel
@geg6:
Yes, the problem is “Dudebros” and not Zandar’s repeated lying.
Keep telling yourself that.
Goblue72
@SatanicPanic: we can’t wait for demographics. The rest of the country is NOT California. Heck, Texas has a large Latino population and its a red as ever. There’s also the fact that the majority of Latinos are here legally and an increasing number are native born. Taking a hardine xenophobic stance against immigration will cost you votes, but as a positive motivating factor to the polls, immigration REFORM is low on the list.
We lowered the voting age to 18 decades ago and yet our electoral prospects have gotten WORSE since then. Those demographics never helped us. The promised land of the brown wave won’t either as we are bleeding white votes faster than we are gaining brown ones.
Something needs fixing and its the economy, stupid.
SatanicPanic
@geg6: yeah, Zandar’s got some weird, obsessive trolls following him around. At least one anyway.
BR
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Sure, but a) I’m tired of capital L Libertarians like the Pauls owning the label and ideology when they are poor examples of it and b) I think there’d be an appetite for a truly centrist candidate — someone who’s centrist left-right (which puts them to the left of most Dems) and centrist authoritarian-libertarian (which puts them to the libertarian end of the spectrum).
The closest I’ve seen to this is various Western Democrats (Merkley, maybe). Sanders is further to the left and that probably makes him unviable nationally.
FlipYrWhig
Shorter Spinwheel: Actually, it’s about ethics in
gamingZandar journalism.FlipYrWhig
@Tommy:
Glenn Greenwald was long-winded, self-indulgent, and unclear? That’s a shocker, said no one.
SatanicPanic
@Goblue72: Most of the rest of the country will look like California and it’s never too late to lock down the Latino vote. Or more broadly, the non-racist vote. Democrats have been chasing after white male votes to no avail for decades now. We just have to accept that a non-trivial number of white people are just racist and move on. I mean, sure, fix the economy, but lots of white voters aren’t actually voting with their pocketbooks.
Villago Delenda Est
Rand Paul is a worthless fucktard.
But everyone knows that, and I’m being redundant.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Goblue72: From where I sit – in California – the state’s political change has not been from immigration so much as the cities finally getting large enough to nullify the existence of the OC/Central Valley/North of SF Axis Of Retardation.
Counting on Hispanic immigrants to fix the party’s fortunes is utterly insane. They won’t. They can’t. And, as you so adroitly point out, if brown folks really made the difference Texas would be blue.
Liberalism starts with labor. The Democratic party forgot that after Truman and walked away from labor, figuring there was no way labor could ever leave. And here we are, with unions running the same percentage of Republican voters as the country at large, and the electoral results to prove it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Spinwheel: I’m sure there’s a fire someplace that needs your active participation in. Please do try to find it.
Thanks, and have a nice day!
samiam
Of course you still have gullible idiots like “Rand Paul has some good ideas” Cole who will buy into Paul’s snake oil salesmanship given half a chance.
Griftwald is a huge Rand Paul fan and Cole still thinks Griftwald is totally awesome. So don’t believe Coles bs when he claims he knows better now. He’s still the same gullible idiot he was when he voted for G Dubya the Texas dummy twice. You can’t fix that kind of stupid. You can only repackage it.
SatanicPanic
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I don’t buy that. Labor is still largely on the side of the Democratic Party, but the blue collar left when Democrats embraced Civil Rights.
And it’s not “Hispanic Immigrants” that I’m counting on. It’s Latino people who already live here, and other groups that will not want to be associated with racist, right-wing ideology, like people who live in the city.
Gin & Tonic
@samiam: Two trolls, one thread.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic: derf and derfer?
Cacti
Oh noes, who will be GG and Ralph Nader’s new brogressive dreamboat candidate?
SatanicPanic
@Cacti: Lyndon LaRouche?
gene108
@Alex:
What planet do you live on?
The Project for a New American Century, created by those who would later be called neo-cons, arose in the 1990’s because they did not think President Bill Clinton was being aggressive enough with America’s use of military power in a post-Cold War world.
Hillary Clinton, and any other Democrat, who wins the White House will use military force somewhere in the world, but there’s a big fucking difference between getting involved to support NATO allies – like in Libya or Serbia – and invading and occupying another country on a pack of lies.
Goblue72
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I’d agree with that. Including the role of urbanization in California playing a role. California is highly urbanized compared to many states, with multiple major metropolitan regions. It’s the 7 county Bay Area plus L.A. that has typically carried the Democratic Party in state elections. Anytime a liberal proposition is on the ballot, it’s those two regions that are critical for success.
Alex
@gene108: Your historical memory is a bit too selective. First and foremost – it can’t be repeated enough – Hillary Clinton voted as a Senator to invade and occupy Iraq. I repeat, Hillary Clinton voted to invade and occupy Iraq. One last time: Hillary Clinton voted in favor of George Bush’s plan to invade and occupy Iraq.
She very much bears responsibility for the murderous travesty that adventure turned out to be. Anybody who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 based on his just opposition to this fiasco and somehow manages to overcome the cognitive dissonance needed to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 shouldn’t be able to sleep at night.
Since that time, and as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has urged intervention and escalation in every military episode occurring under Obama: Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc. Each and every one of these decisions has been a failure and a devastation for the countries involved. Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya has ushered in a state of mass murder, anarchy, and destruction in that country far greater than any supposed calamity that it was intended to prevent. These facts are no longer debatable.
And this is putting aside her unwavering and unconditional support for whatever aggression the Israeli government has executed in the last twenty years.
You can pretend that she is somehow different from the neoconservatives. On domestic policy, she certainly would be. But you have to face the fact she has aligned herself with every last foreign policy adventure sponsored by the Bolton and Cheney cabal.
Calouste
@MomSense: What do you mean? The Libertarians got exactly what they wanted during the midterms, the GOP won. Libertarians are not about civil liberties, they are about their civil liberties. And, considering that Libertarians are mostly straight white guys, they are perfectly happy with a victory by the straight white guy party.
Roger Moore
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
An important point to make is that trying to court labor and minorities are not really separate tasks. Hispanics lean Democratic in large part because they skew young and poor. Republican xenophobia may turn them off, but not necessarily any more than Republican hatred of the working class. If the Democrats do a good job of appealing to young and working class people, they’ll win a big share of the Hispanic vote on policy, even if the Republicans manage to tone down the racism.
That said, I think you’re at least somewhat wrong about Texas. Texas would probably be purple if the Democrats could get Hispanic voters to turn out at the same rate as whites, and if they had a fair election map. It’s a good example of just how far the Republicans can get with a concerted program of voter suppression and gerrymandering.
Roger Moore
@Cacti:
They won’t need one. They’ll be perfectly willing to buy Paul’s lame excuses. Dedication to purity is far more important than actual results, after all.
Mnemosyne
@Spinwheel:
So what’s the point of having a Congress at all if we don’t need to pass any laws? Just have the president do everything by Executive Order.
Of course, the next Republican president would immediately reverse that EO and we would be back to all surveillance, all the time, but you’re not real good with long-term thinking, are you?
gene108
@SatanicPanic:
But apparently the non-racist, non-white vote cannot be bothered to vote once in every two years, and good chunk of them do not vote once in every four years, as Presidential elections rarely top out over 60% voter participation.
Who’d you rather have? Racists, who vote every election or non-racists who do not vote?
Citizen_X
@Goblue72:
So is Texas (the population is 85% urban). Ah, but the districting? That’s another matter.
Texas–and much of America–is anti-democratic (small d) by design.
chopper
Well, Zandar has a stalker now.
gene108
@SatanicPanic:
Or environmentalism. Labor wants the Keystone XL pipeline built.
Labor got pissed that women, in the 1980’s, were upset about girly pictures on the workplace and how that created an unfriendly work environment for women.
If you follow Labor as your standard, there are other elements of the Democratic coalition that will take a back seat.
Mnemosyne
@Alex:
You know who’s supposed to rein in those excesses?
Congress. It’s their fucking job, written right into the Constitution. But Republicans don’t want to take a chance of actually reducing their power to spy on Americans whenever they want, so they won’t do their fucking jobs and rein in the executive branch.
I know libertarians luuuurrrrvve the idea of “self-regulation,” but self-regulation doesn’t actually fucking work. No organization or institution is capable of it, including the US government. You need actual regulations — laws — to do it.
SatanicPanic
@Goblue72: Imperial county is bluer than San Diego, and much bluer than Riverside. I wonder why. You guys are missing some important points. One of them is assuming that people vote with their pocketbooks. Most don’t. What economic plan do Republicans run on? Who knows? At this point, even if Democrats could magically fix the economy, they’d no more likely get credit for it than white Kentuckians give them credit for getting them health care.
The other thing is that I don’t think there is much evidence to support the claim that moving to the city makes anyone more likely to support liberal economic programs. People don’t go, “hey, I like urban amenities, therefore I support school lunch programs”. That makes no sense. OTOH, being in proximity to different groups of people makes them less racist seems more supported by evidence. We’ll get a lot more mileage by painting Republicans as kooks than we will by saying our economic policies will fix the economy, because hardly anyone understands that stuff anyway.
A Humble Lurker
@chopper:
It’s the same one he’s always had, who simply won’t go away for some reason.
Mnemosyne
@Citizen_X:
The big difference between California and Texas right now is probably non-partisan redistricting. We have it in California; Texas doesn’t.
SatanicPanic
@gene108: “Who’d you rather have? Racists, who vote every election or non-racists who do not vote?”
Uh, neither?
Citizen_X
@Mnemosyne: I know, I know. Thank you, Tom Fucking DeLay.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
Sort of the way things were under Stalin.
Villago Delenda Est
@chopper: Same stalker he’s always had. Ever since he landed on the front page here, the stalker has been right behind him, commenting in his threads and his threads alone.
Zandar’s stalker is a pathetic little creature. You know, like Gollum.
kindness
C’mon now. This is a decent thread. Let us not devolve into a Kevin Drum thread/thingy where the entire communication becomes a back and forth about the most recent trollish statement by someone acting just like a troll and others for calling them out.
Makes reading the thread very unappealing. In my world, say it once and let it go. But what do I know? Emily Post I ain’t.
Michael Bersin
@Cervantes:
By this:
“…When given a perfect opportunity, he instead sided with typical neocon Republicans…”
brantl
That sentence doesn’t need the dependant clauses. He is first and foremost a coward, and secondly a Glibertarian douchebag. All the rest is icing on the Glibertarian douchebag cake.
brantl
@Spinwheel: You are so full of shit.
Cervantes
@Michael Bersin:
Did you notice that Ted Cruz voted in favor of the bill? I. e., that Paul and Cruz were on opposite sides?
Tree With Water
“So don’t tell me [Paul’s] a “champion of civil liberties”..
OK. I won’t tell you the Koch brothers volunteer at a soup kitchens, either.
TG Chicago
@TG Chicago: Whoops, I take back what I said about Cruz. Oddly enough, he was a co-sponsor of the USA Freedom Act.
That’s enough to make me wonder if Paul did the right thing…
ETA: ninja’d by Cervantes
ET
I wonder why Rand thinks the expiring Patriot Act provisions aren’t getting renewed. I suspect they will.
LAC
@Spinwheel: how did you manage to get yours removed? Or is still stuck in?
There’s our idiot “left” in its full glory. Executive order everything because… SHUT UP! that ‘s why.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne:
The two important Constitutional doctrines of checks and balances and separation of powers means that it is both the President’s and Congress’ ( as well as the court’s) job to tame the incorrect impulses of governmental action, even if that action is technically inaction.
This is why so many of Obama’s supporters are in favor of him taking executive action to solve some of the issues caused by the behavior of Congress on immigration.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: Do you think Cruz was trying to steal a march on Paul with the so-called libertarians?
Villago Delenda Est
@ET: Because he’s a fuckhead?
Oh, wait. I’m being redundant.
AGAIN.
geg6
@Spinwheel:
Yeah. And Gamergate was all about ethics in gaming journalism.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
I’m not seeing why using the powers of his branch of government to rein in one of the other branches of government means that Obama should be using the power of his own branch to rein in his own branch’s power. Can you explain?
chopper
@Villago Delenda Est:
Ah, I’m starting to remember now. Been a while.
FromTheBackOfTheRoom
Balloon Juice jumps the shark. This post & comment thread is fargin perfect!
“Rand Paul is a coward & unprincipled douche for not helping to thwart the depredations of a cowardly & unprincipled Executive Branch that is led by President (name redacted).”
Projection = Check
Minimization = Check
Obfuscation = Check
Authoritarian Obot goat ropers = Check
Keith G
@Mnemosyne: President of the United States Barack Obama has a moral obligation in this case to do whatever is right (which has the additional bonus of being something that he said that he would do during the campaign)……..not to do whatever he can get away with until some other branch of government counters him. That was not the change I was hoping for. In fact, it is no change at all.
The latter is the type of behavior I would expect from President of the United States George W Bush ….someone I did not vote for. What frustrates me, is that when the next Republican president is elected (and there will be a next Republican president), that president might behave in a way similar to Obama and many here will complain bitterly about such behavior.
Spinwheel
@FromTheBackOfTheRoom:
Oh that’s classic Zandar, fatass master of passive-aggressive click bait.
It’s never Obama’s fault you see. He’s been in office for six years and could have ended all these unconstitutional programs at any time, but that’s all Rand Paul’s fault, right?
Gravenstone
@Shitheel: I do believe you misspelled your name again, punkin’. Are you going to have to ask mommy to help you with your letters again?
Gravenstone
@WiscoJoe: Glenn Greenwald is and has ever been working for one thing, the further aggrandizement of Glenn Greenwald.
Mandalay
@Spinwheel:
You have something of a point. There’s Randmania here, yet nobody says a word about my senator, Bill Nelson, being the only Democrat to vote against this, or Obama talking a lot about the issue, but doing nothing himself.
In any case, Rand’s vote was all about positioning himself for 2016. He’s just waiting for some bad shit to go down so he can stab his finger at Cruz in the Republican presidential primaries and call him a gutless wimp on terrorism. And even if nothing happens he can still accuse Cruz of trying to enable terrorists, and say the country was lucky that he had the courage to thwart ISIS enablers like Cruz.
In the long term Rand’s vote was a win for himself.
Gravenstone
@FromTheBackOfTheRoom: You got a moron to English decoder ring we can borrow? Or maybe you’re just another of Shitheel’s sock puppets? A mighty chorus of one (aside from the voices in its head).
Spinwheel
@Mandalay:
Correct. Paul’s vote is irrelevant because Obama can end spying on Americans at any time and has refused to do so. The ultimate failure is on his shoulders.
But you will never read Zandar admitting that…
That would mean admission that there is no functional difference between Obama, McCain, Romney, and Hillary Clinton.
They are all corporate shitstains who deserve to burn.
Rand Paul would make a better President than any of them.
Mandalay
@max:
Certainly, but that cuts both ways. And it was Rand, not Cruz, who took the hawkish position. Sure, Cruz can accuse Rand of not being a true libertarian, but Rand can now accuse Cruz of being soft on terror, and therefore unfit to lead the country.
I know which of those views will get more attention in the Republican primaries.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
You feel that ending all surveillance is the right thing to do. The president obviously disagrees. By all accounts, he has pulled back from the clearly illegal surveillance that was going on during the Bush years and the NSA is now sticking with the letter of the law that was passed by Congress that allows actions like collecting metadata.
So, again, if Congress doesn’t like that Obama is obeying the law that they themselves passed, it’s up to them to change the law. If Obama agrees with the law that Congress passed, why is it up to him to take action?
NonyNony
@Spinwheel:
Right up until your last sentence you sounded coherent, if a little bit stupid (while Obama, McCain, Romney and Clinton may not be different in terms of security state politics it is stupid to say that there is no functional difference between them – health care and economic policies separate them, and McCain and Romney are far more aggressive on wanting to start a shooting war with Iran than Obama or Clinton).
That last sentence marks you as a nutcase though – Rand Paul would be a terrible president. For starters, he’d probably be even worse than any of the above about National Security stuff because he doesn’t actually give a crap about anything – he just uses it to position himself to get loudmouths on the internet to think he’s great. The only thing Rand Paul actually stands for is lower taxes on people who make as much money as he does, creating fake associations to give himself accreditations he can’t earn from real ones, and saying whatever he can to get idiots on the internet to work for his campaign for free. Beyond that he stands for nothing – and you’re a bigger chump than any “Obamabot” if you think otherwise.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: FWIW Obama indicated support for this bill and would have signed it.
Mnemosyne
@Spinwheel:
You know who could make Obama do so?
Congress.
You know who’s a member of Congress?
Rand Paul.
So don’t try to feed us this line of bullshit that Congress is somehow helpless in the evil clutches of Obama. They could change the law on the books at any time to rein in the NSA, and they refuse to do it. Why is Obama supposed to do their job for them? What’s next, he needs to stand in the bathroom and wipe the asses of every Senator and Congressman who takes a shit because they can’t be bothered to do it themselves so he has to do that job for them, too?
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Right — he would have done his job. But I’m really goddamned tired of Congress deciding they can sit around all day with their thumbs up their asses and let Obama fix everything for them so they can bitch and moan about how he’s not doing it right. Fuck that. Do your fucking jobs or STFU.
Clearly, immigration is a bigger priority for Obama than surveillance. I don’t have a problem with that. If Republicans don’t like it, they’re not helpless like some people seem to think. They can do their fucking jobs and pass the bill they all claim to want.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m sure that some leftier-than-thou types will see this as proof that it didn’t go far enough.
FromTheBackOfTheRoom
Begging, I’m tellin’ ya, Begging! Obama is practically beseechin’ Congress to step up & stop him from subverting the Constitution! He even double pinkie swears to obey this shiny new law (although we’ll never know if he does because terrorists!) Anyway, his spokesperson above tells us Obama has other priorities… Walk or chew gum, which shall it be?
Carolinus
@Alex:
It would be nice if this strawman argument could be retired. Most of Greenwald and Snowden’s detractors, on the left side of the spectrum, are in favor of serious reform and more more oversight. They just don’t agree with you on how praiseworthy bulk-leaking foreign intelligence operations & defecting to Russia is or on the value of serial exaggerating, intellectually dishonest bloggers turned “advocacy journalist” (simply by virtue of hundreds of thousands of classified documents falling into their laps).
FromTheBackOfTheRoom
@Carolinus: Yes! If only Snowden had kept his pie-hole shut then all would be peachy in Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land.
Cervantes
@Spinwheel:
Well, here’s a list:
Club for Growth
Mason Capital Management
Alliance Resource Partners
Senate Conservatives Fund
National Right to Work Committee
Murray Energy
Corriente Advisors
Wexford Capital
Impala Asset Management
Bluegrass Committee
As far as I can tell, these are the ten entities whose owners/families, employees/families, members/families, and PACs contributed the most to Rand Paul’s political operation in 2013-2014.
Carolinus
@FromTheBackOfTheRoom:
Sorry. I’m not a believer in the ends justifying the means. Particularly in this case where the ends will likely be nothing on the domestic reform front (or perhaps even a backsliding if all the both-sides-are-the-same ratFing this fueled contributed to more Republicans in power). That’s also ignoring all pointless international drama that inevitably occurs when a country’s foreign intelligence operations are leaked.
Suffern ACE
Personally, I like the National Security State more than I like its critics and I probably always will.
But then when I think about my career options, I’m always sad that “Stasi Agent” is no longer a possibility.
Someguy
You’re upset about this because the bill kinda nearly almost succeeded, oh it was so close, huh?
You probably also think that the Keystone XL vote was a very near run thing.
There wasn’t a chance from the outset that the vote limiting surveillance power would get 60 votes, any more than there was a chance that Keystone XL was going to pass.
Not in a million years. The whip process makes sure that the outcome of a vote is never a mystery to the leadership. The results are known before the leadership lets a measure get to the floor.
What, you didn’t think that any of these goons were examining their conscience, studying the issues, discussing things with the experts and coming to an opinion on a bill independently, did you?
Bwwwwwaaaah haaaaa haaaa haaa ha.
As if. .
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
The funniest part of your comment is that one of said types posted directly under it only 5 minutes later.
Turgidson
@Spinwheel: “Rand Paul would make a better President than any of them”
I just….I can’t even…what the fu….is (s)he on dru…
Sure, let’s abolish the Fed, the EPA, the FDA, the Dept. of Education, and the Dept. of Commerce, the NLRB… (did I miss any that Liberty Boy would shitcan if he had the chance?)
Let’s also return to the gold standard, pass a balanced budget amendment, default on the national debt, outlaw abortion, and get that pesky Civil Rights Act tossed as unconstitutional.
Yep. Liberty Boy would be some kind of president, believe you me.