.
For faithful commentor LAMH and the others who quite rightly brought up today’s confrontation. Listen to the whole thing, let’s talk about what actually got said — and how Bill could improve his next speech.
Reader Interactions
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redshirt
Bill’s next speech should be to the Independent Billionaire’s Club. Not a news source.
Corner Stone
He should probably never use the word “crack” ever again.
Baud
By waiting until Hillary’s inauguration to give it.
Corner Stone
I’ve been saying it for some time now. Put that dude in-house. Rest him, recharge him, tan him, and unleash him against the Republicans in the general.
Get him to tag in off PBO and climb to the top rope and then atomic elbow whatever pathetic fool that is the R nominee.
WarMunchkin
@Baud: Yup. I give him full credit for DNC ’12 though.
dr. bloor
@Corner Stone: This. He gets to be the pit bull in the general election. He’s going to make Biden look like Stuart Smalley.
Baud
@WarMunchkin:
He’s fine when he’s not talking about Hillary. He’s taking this thing more personally than she is.
Maybe he thinks he owes her and is trying too hard. Which he does, in a way.
PhoenixRising
I’ll be the one to say it: I have no idea how to deal with these people.
They are all too young to recall, and haven’t been educated in schools that acknowledge, the chaos and violence facing black neighborhoods in 1991. It was bad. Bill Clinton campaigned on a promise to make it better. And it IS better, in stark terms: murder rate is waaaaay down, a lot of that because habitual criminals who were on the street are getting locked up and the key thrown away.
Again, it’s important to understand that Bill won the Black vote like a native son–he did almost as well with Black voters as Obama, as a % of registered Dems–because he took the scourge of violence in Black areas seriously and promised to get funding to make it happen.
Per his campaign stop in Oakland, May ’92, weeks after the Rodney King riots: The police should come when you call them from East Oakland just like they do up in Piedmont.
And he did it. And East Oakland is now gentrified to the point where I couldn’t afford to raise my kid there.
This context-free attack on HRC, based on her support for the policies that Black folks demanded as the price of their support in ’92, is…anachronistic. And apparently works to get attention. What else these protestors want is beyond me.
raven
@PhoenixRising: They want to fuck with Mr Chuck.
redshirt
@PhoenixRising: Accept it as a statement of America. Everyone’s got a voice.
Mike J
@PhoenixRising: Yeah, people now don’t understand that black people didn’t like drug dealers gunning down people in their neighborhoods. Black people got angry at politicians because they wouldn’t do anything about crime in their neighborhoods, only in white neighborhoods.
Just Some Fuckhead
How many BernieBros does Bill equal?
Aimai
I cant look. As i said below the only thing to do with hecklers from your own side is embrace them, say “there is much in what you say” and add “i look forward to working with you on this important matter.” You can’t win addressing an acephalous, anarchic, protest movement with multiple speakers and multiple goals. As the priest said to my friend at her husband’s funeral. “There are no teachable moments here.” People are going to act out, use this time as a platform, say whatever they want and you just have to ignore it and move on. There is no good rebuttal and there is no engagement that wins the interaction for the speaker. Its all sbout damage control.
Baud
@Aimai:
Learning a new word had made this whole controversy worthwhile for me.
Baud
@Aimai: BTW, I agree with you.
Corner Stone
It has to be surreal to be WJC at this point in time. Everything he has ever said or done, every bill, every argument of his public life has risen to the surface like a zombie walking in off the beach.
And there’s nothing he can do about it. He can’t push back because the times now make no sense against the times back then. And if he tries he just seems like a throwback and damages HRC’s future that much more. No one criticizing him now seems to want to get that we aren’t in the ’90s any longer, and haven’t been for a while. Yeah, he screwed the pooch on some stuff. But what’s he going to say now, 20 years later? “Yeah, but…?”
And no one giving him shit has any desire to hear that. Brutal.
raven
@Aimai: And if they are agents provocateurs?
redshirt
@Just Some Fuckhead: 4.2
Technocrat
@Corner Stone:
Yeah, that’s the bitch of it. If you grow up without the same sense of incipient violence, the solutions seem archaic and overblown. The crime bill is the only political thing my 19-year old and I have argued about. She’s never seen a weapon held in anger. I’ve had a muzzle pressed against my eye. She can’t understand why people would ever have welcomed more police on the streets, and I can’t really expect her to.
Frustrating.
@redshirt:
I was going to say 0.75 Weavers
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone: True. I agree with you he should just lie low until the primaries are over. His decisions on CFTC and a lot of other financial regulation issues don’t seem so hot now.
Just Some Fuckhead
Srslytho, there is no downside here. People of color aren’t going to suddenly abandon HRC for white supremacist Sanders and the NeverTrump Republicans have something to grab on to now.
Call it another Sistah Souljah gambit.
JerryN
Might I suggest that bringing up black-on-black crime is not something anyone campaigning on the Democratic side should do? Or am I being too critical?
different-church-lady
I’m afraid to watch. From the little I’ve read, it’s not a good look even in context. Did Mr. Unflappable get flapped?
I’m guessing he’s taking it very personally. I have read black writers who have said, in effect, “The thing you don’t get about the crime bill is that at the time we wanted it to help crack down on criminals in our own neighborhoods.”
WarMunchkin
@Baud: I had the privilege of seeing Bill Clinton speak at a convention about his presidential legacy. I was amazed by just how intimately he remembered details, decisions and the people involved. Truly delightful to hear. This was not that guy.
dr. bloor
@PhoenixRising:
The protest isn’t anachronistic, it’s Bill. Let me be the guy who says that, to some modest extent, that the message that moved the ball forward in ’92 doesn’t wash anymore. “Crack” doesn’t resonate with anyone but old geezers like us. The folks out there now are just trying to move the ball even a little bit further. In its own way, it’s a sign of (very modest) progress.
P.S.–“These people” is a guaranteed How to Fail and Lose Friends phrase.
M. Bouffant
Enough.
Here is the new Smokey The Bear.
Technocrat
@JerryN:
Nope. If he had to make a point, it should have been about police response time, or something. Not that he’s wrong, but to these kids police are the sole enemy.
Prescott Cactus
There were times that the African American community joked that Bill Clinton was the first black president.
Toni Morrison
Here’s what she said in a 1998 article in :
The New Yorker:
“. . .African-American men seemed to understand it right away. Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas. . .”
redshirt
Let’s just say Hell Yeah!
lowercae steve
The ‘nobody could have predicted the completely obvious result of block granting welfare funds to the states that progressives at the time actually did predict’ line of argument is starting to get on my nerves same as the, ‘oops, I guess a work-based social safety net doesn’t work so hot during recessions and when there are no jobs’ excuse.
PhoenixRising
@Just Some Fuckhead: Interesting. Bill taking a licking from BLM gives Hill credibility with #NeverTrump. I like it.
But Bill should also tour Antarctica until June 8th.
Because kids these days simply don’t know what it is to say to the 911 operator, Well, the screaming has gotten quieter so I guess it’s not an emergency anymore like the first 3 times I called to report a child screaming that she was being raped by her brothers’ dealer. And all his friends. We can’t expect the youngs to understand that, I guess.
It was bad. And the cops never came because the victims were poor and black and they weren’t about to catch a bullet over a crime against a poor, black child.
JMG
Attacking a Democratic President generally associated with an era of peace and prosperity is beyond stupid. There folks don’t care who wins the damn election, and that’s not a path that leads to a happy ending for them.
? Martin
@Corner Stone:
Yep. Spot on. Wondering if maybe he can head over to Turkmenistan to rally the expat vote.
Aqualad08
@different-church-lady:
Yeah, hard not to though when confronted by a poster claiming your wife is a murderer.
lowercae steve
@Technocrat:
Well, the crime bill wasn’t really a solution. The crime level was already dipping by the time it was passed and reductions in lead exposure years prior and contemporary poverty had more to do with this then draconian sentencing laws.
On the other hand, the actual effect of this bill on mass incarceration was fairly modest since that is mostly a state-level phenomenon.
PhoenixRising
@dr. bloor: I’m bitter. These kids today have no idea. I’m not against moving the ball further, I’m befuddled by how heckling the last white President to take Black Lives seriously, about something he did because their grandmas said so, moves the ball.
Like the explanation that this is HRC’s Sister Souljah moment. Love the idea that what she’s being asked to repudiate for credibility with Very Serious White Folks is the last major reform that made the lives of urban black folk in this nation better. That’s ironically delicious.
? Martin
@PhoenixRising:
I hadn’t considered that either. Interesting take from JSF.
Corner Stone
@Prescott Cactus:
That wasn’t a joke and it wasn’t praise, or a positive the way she meant it. IMO and what I believe I have read since. I knew at the time it was an embrace but not something joyful.
dr. bloor
@Baud:
YMMV, but seeing your wife relentlessly linked to your broadly successful administration like it’s a bad thing would quickly start plucking on my last nerve.
As Cornerstone said, keep him in “park” until the general.
Baud
@dr. bloor:
He was president and his wife has withstood relentless attacks for 30 years. He should know how to do better.
kd bart
@redshirt: @redshirt:
They have no idea what life was like in a city like NYC in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. Subway crime was rampant and the number of homicides per year in NYC exceeded 1000 a year, topping out at 2245 in 1990, every year between 1969 and 1995. Last year, there were only 352 homicdes in NYC.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Baud:
Also the name of a really good pitcher some years back. He was kind of a dick though.
dr. bloor
@PhoenixRising: It takes Zen-like powers, but if the next generation is bitching about something you couldn’t have conceived of being an issue twenty-five years ago, it might be a sign of progress.
We should get together for Metamucil martinis some time.
dr. bloor
@Baud: Oh, I’m not excusing it, just spit balling.
Mandalay
@JerryN:
No, you are not. Anyone of either party doing that is (sadly) on a hiding to nothing.
Murders in Chicago are up 72% for the first three months of this year compared to last year. Over 10 people a week are getting murdered in Chicago, and over 70% of those murdered are black, and no politician wants to say a word about it.
What can anyone say that is helpful?
PatrickG
@Baud:
He got a lot better towards the end, I thought, speaking directly to HRC’s work and accomplishments over the years. There were certainly many facepalm-worthy moments, though…. just less so as it went on. Possibly I got over the shock of “crack” and the water felt fine afterwards.
@Aimai:
Watching that exchange, I’m not sure there was a way to say “let’s work together”. I admit I was rather bemused by the sign saying “Clinton Crime Bill Destroyed Our Communities”. That said, I have no idea how to write “A Decades Long Police Action Against African-American Communities — In Which This Crime Bill Is Highly Relevant — Destroyed Said Communities*” in short form.
I was also pretty amazed that people were able to get close enough to Bill to obscure his face from the camera with upside-down Hillary campaign material. Nobody gets that close to Trump! :)
* To be clear, I’m referring to the specific police actions commencing with the War on (Some People) Who Use (Some Kinds Of) Drugs. Not at all arguing that this represents the be-all and end-all of police actions against AA communities.
Just Some Fuckhead
Don’t be sucking up to us now, Martin. Cracker Pack membership is closed.
El Tiburon
Beyond parody:
WHEN IT’S THE CLINTONS:
Yes, let’s all calmly discuss this incident and try to figure out how to go forward from here.
WHEN IT’S BERNIE:
Stupid old geezer still carries tokens and is a moran. He should quit old senile bastard.
Surprised I am not.
Technocrat
@Corner Stone:
That’s very insightful.
For a time I worked for a large defense contractor. There were a handful of AA employees in the place – dozens out of thousands. All the AAs would nod as we passed each other – even though you might not know the other person. It was a weird sort of recognition of experience – “I know what you’re dealing with, chin up.”.
I think Toni Morrison’s recognition was that Bill Clinton evoked that same sort of sense of shared experience, not as a brother or family member, but as someone you say “here’s a dry spot” to when it’s raining. Or something.
Jim
@kd bart:
Explain how young black adults don’t know what their neighborhoods where like in the past.
I’m sure their parents/grandparents have educated them well beyond what classic American schools would have.
But it’s always nice to whitesplain to them dumb folk eh.
–head shake–
Cacti
Like I said earlier, Bill has no filter when it comes to campaigning for his wife.
Needs to be kept on a shorter leash.
Baud
@El Tiburon:
LOL. Nice how the Clintons are now a single unit.
WE ARE CLINTON. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.
Just Some Fuckhead
HRC was confronted by #BLM twice I think and once she got pretty snippy with them. There’s no way she and Bill hadn’t discussed this.
NotMax
Saxophone-playing Bill becoming as off track and ruinous as, well, this.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I saw a tweet, so FWIW and grain of salt etc, but someone said the person carrying that poster said it referred to Libya.
Baud
@Just Some Fuckhead: All part of the master plan.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Baud: Yup. As much as I understand the phenomenon, he’s a bit too close to history to be effective at the moment.
Corner Stone
@Baud:
You have to type it like Kodos and Kang pronounce it – CLIN-TON.
Technocrat
@lowercae steve:
No one knew either of those things at the time. The crime bill appeared to be the correct solution. Letting kids continue to gun each other down did not appear to be the correct solution. It’s that latter part that people today seem to have no answer for.
BillinGlendaleCA
@dr. bloor: That’s Senator Stuart Smalley, sir.
Rhoda
@PhoenixRising: First of all, these people are paying you no mind. The Clinton Campaign is actively seeking the votes of these people becuase these people are her only god damn path to the fucking White House. These people are angry that the Crime Bill was used to incarcerate a generation of black men and feed the prison industrial complex that has destroyed the fabric of black society. These people are angry that the Crime Bill was not about crime; but about gentrification, a prison pipeline, and Big Prison Money. These people are fucking outraged that what a lot of fucking people said about the crime bill in ’94 was RIGHT and that Bill Clinton is trying to dodge the L he so richly deserves on his legacy on this issue.
So, as one of those people, fuck you. The anger, the pain, and the rage that a lot of people feel as middle class young black men in gated communities are gunned down by white motherfuckers is directly tied to the pain felt at being the black friend Bill Clinton rode his bus over to deal with the Gingrich Republican Revolution.
I’m not even going to try to be coherent because all I really want to say after reading through this is fuck you, fuck you, fuck you ad infinitum.
Excuse my language, I am enraged.
different-church-lady
@El Tiburon: Hey, at least we’re acknowledging it’s actually a blunder. Which is more than you did with Mr. Haven’t-Put-Much-Thought-Into-It.
Prescott Cactus
@Corner Stone:
Words matter. My choice of the word joking was not the best. My interaction with the black community was not extensive, but was close with the guys I worked with. Much better choices available that I didn’t use. Thanks for the learning moment.
Andy
@Baud: Christ…That is the campaign slogan WE needed!
“Resistance is Futile”.
Assimilate…”The Clinton Collective”. Brilliant.
Sooo….Bernie is Picard?
Technocrat
I honestly can’t imagine how someone can say the crime bill wasn’t about crime. Can I ask, what was your experience of crime in the 80’s or 90’s?
Andy
@different-church-lady: You are getting real close to-“Now isn’t that Special?” territory.
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone: Are you sure they are Clintons and not Klingons?
? Martin
@Just Some Fuckhead: Don’t worry, I still can’t stand you guys. But I do think that was an interesting take. Of course if you’re right that means that the Clintons are just backstabbing schemers willing to sell out minorities for their own personal gain.
NotMax
@Andy
If anyone, Commodore Decker.
kd bart
@Jim: my comment was directed toward the 20 something white progressive kid who thinks he knows it all. But thanks anyway. FO!!!
lowercae steve
@Technocrat:
Well yes, and people didn’t understand the devastation that mass incarceration was to inflict on the black community.Which is why Bill’s original tack of, “I am sorry …in retrospect the bill was a mistake and we need to fix this moving forward” was the correct one.
Corner Stone
@Prescott Cactus: Woah, woah, woah. Do not tip any cap my direction about the lived experience and spectrum dealing with people of color, blacks, black folk, and on and on.
Some of my best friends…
JerryN
@different-church-lady: Funny, but “Listen to the whole thing, let’s talk about what actually got said — and how Bill could improve his next speech.” doesn’t sound like admitting it was a blunder to me. Folks like those involved with #BLM are exactly the kind of marginally-connected voters that the Democratic nominee is going to have to be able to motivate and turn out in the general election. Lecturing them about how they need to learn their history and appreciate what their elders did for them is probably not going to be very effective towards that end.
Technocrat
@lowercae steve:
I think it could have been better. But a mistake? You still had to stop the deaths.
Andy
@NotMax: I agree. Commodore Decker was swallowed by the “Doomsday Machine”. Apt name for this primary.
SiubhanDuinne
@M. Bouffant:
Oh, poor little thing. I hope he’s okay.
PhoenixRising
@Rhoda:
Well, that’s easy to say from atop Mt Hindsight. What ZIP code did you live in in 1992? Because in my neighborhood, the big problem was that the police did not come when you called and the dealers ruled the street. Putting those bad guys away was a legitimate agenda item, driven by the community. The assertion that somehow a plot occurred in which money changed hands in exchange for a triangulated ‘solution’ is simply ahistorical, and frankly not very sensible.
Why do you assume that your pain and rage are greater than mine? That the pain and rage of the people who are screaming at Bill Clinton about things he did *because he said he fucking would* are more outraged and injured than I am? They’re not yelling about the welfare bill, or about DOMA, they’re yelling about something he did that was arguably *right*, for the right reasons.
It’s not realistic to demand that politicians respect the black community, then eviscerate them for…doing what they said they would. If you want policy set by Cornel West, get more people to vote the way he says to. I’m not familiar with anyone else who said at the time that they had a better idea to cope with urban crime, that was possible to achieve, and that nothing would be better than the crime bill. Are you?
El Tiburon
@different-church-lady:
Yeah – exactly. That’s the LEAST you did. Bernie was crucified over here – any shank available was used to cut him from scalp to kneecaps.
Also, what you and the rest of the BJ crew accused Bernie was more than just a ‘blunder’. No, for all of you, his TRAINWRECK interview, along with his use of tokens to his accent that won’t go away (like Kissinger HA HA) to his inability to say “ROBOSIGNING” are all prima facie evidence that he is, in the non-words of Hillary Clinton, not qualified.
It is nice to see that all of you can converse like mature adults to discuss Big Bill’s blunder and how to proceed from here. Sure would be nice if you could do that for the other Democrat (oh wait, he’s a democrat come-lately so doesn’t count) in this race.
You’re all a bunch of Harper Valley hypocrites. Bunch of maroons.
Felanius Kootea
@Technocrat: As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20; now, many provisions of the Clinton Crime Bill are seen as overkill and rightly so. It is infuriating to see the difference in the ways in which the heroin epidemic today is being handled when compared to the crack epidemic (the sentencing differences then for the same amount of crack versus powder cocaine make me want to tear my hair out now). A leaderless organization (I love Aimai’s use of the word acephalous up there) is going to have people who question the actions of the past in ways that can seem disrespectful. That’s part of democracy. A fear based response to crime led to a mass incarceration problem that we’re still wrapping our heads around. I’m glad someone is talking about it even if the methods make *me* uncomfortable sometimes.
Andy
@Corner Stone: So it is what? “Whoa, whoa, whoa?”, or “Woah, woah, woah”. I’ve heard some dialections of that phrase meaning…”Blah,blah,blah”. Mostly “Woo, woo,woo.”. Which means B/S speak in the A/A community.
guachi
I was born in Philadelphia in 1974. The city was bad. Really bad in the ’70s and was even worse, crime was, in the early ’90s.
I’ve been rewatching Law & Order from the start. It first started airing in 1990. There are many early episodes that reference how awful crime and drugs were in New York. BLM activists are upset about what happens when cops show up. Try a time when cops *didn’t* show up.
Who actually buys the Crime Bill attacks from BLM activists?
That being said, I was thinking earlier today before I heard about this that Bill is too close to Hillary to be an effective advocate.
Joel
@Corner Stone: You think Carter liked being effectively called a p*ssy for 30-aught years with no pushback following his departure from office?
different-church-lady
@JerryN: And who’s denying that?
Technocrat
@PhoenixRising:
Wow. Preach.
Elie
Bill has to stop thinking of himself as Hillary’s prime defender and husband — and as just another ex president. How would he respond in the situation where he was an ex president campaigning for someone else? He has to stop it being about HIM. He has to keep the strategic goal in mind. I definitely think this is much harder for him now not just because its his wife, but his brain is different and its harder to govern his slower cogitation about what is happening and the best approach to deflect or distract — what he was always excellent at while President. He needs more rest, more coaching and a narrower scope. Its a foreshadowing of some of these problems once she is President (Lord willing) — and by then he won’t be any better and probably worse. Its tough. I agree he can be a good attack dog, but with a limited range given his impairment. The best attack dog must be nimble and very quick on his or her feet — situational awareness is critical — and he has lost a bit of that — too much to be effective as he once was IMHO
different-church-lady
@El Tiburon: My, aren’t we a delicate flower.
Just Some Fuckhead
@? Martin:
lol
Corner Stone
@El Tiburon:
I don’t give a darn about subway nomenclature, but that NYDN interview was, in fact, a fucking trainwreck. All the after oversplainin’ aren’t going to make that go away.
El Tiburon
@Baud:
Well, when it’s the GOOD BILL CLINTON, yes, Hillary is blessed by being a part of it.
When it’s the BAD BILL CLINTON – then don’t use your misogyny and sexist attitudes around here mister. Hillary is her own Woman! Or however you BJ folks rationalize it around here.
PhoenixRising
@Felanius Kootea:
It’s one thing to be disrespectful to a politician who is campaigning. That’s part of the game. Being disrespectful to the elders who got you where you are, by disparaging what they demanded as ‘a conspiracy to build more prisons’, and suggesting that the agenda was to destroy the community…that’s something else.
Also, get off my lawn.
Moeiz
Isn’t anyone going to mention the ‘another place black lives matter is Africa’ line? I’m glad the family back home is being thought of, but is there any other demographic where ‘look at how I’m helping your foreign counterparts’ is used?
rikyrah
@Rhoda:
Amen. Only quibble -we are on 3rd generation of young Black men as fodder for the PIC.
West of the Cascades
Hey, does anyone remember which way Vermont’s congressional representative voted on the 1994 crime bill?
AliceBlue
@El Tiburon:
Hey, look at the bright side. Bernie voted for the crime bill but he’s getting a pass on it.
Corner Stone
@Joel: Let me know when Rosaylnn was running for the highest elected office in the land.
Yeah, I’m sure Mr. Georgia Peach was quite blushed at being called history’s greatest monster. Not the same scenario.
Rhoda
@PhoenixRising: You have no right to dismiss the anger people feel at Bill Clinton when you can see the devastation of policies he not only signed into law but campaigned on! And there was a great deal of anger AT THE TIME of people against this; he sold out the black community. You can rationalize it all you want; but crime didn’t drop because of the crime bill. Hell, lower lead levels did more than anything to remedy that! This bill nourished the prison industry and destroyed so many black lives. Those lives matter. And if you have a different opinion, cool, but fuck you for dismissing “those people” who are standing against a man who facing Republican obstruction caved on every level and used black people.
I want Hillary to win. But fuck Bill, especially when he pulls shit like this. He’s screwing it up for her.
Baud
@El Tiburon:
Pretty much. Hillary has a right to her own identity and to pick and choose the aspects of her time with Bill that she wants to adopt. It seems you would prefer to possess that right yourself, but alas it is not to be.
dr. bloor
@El Tiburon:
And yet, here you are, night after night.
Corner Stone
@El Tiburon:
Is that the one with the high school cheerleaders? Asking for a friend.
Elie
@PhoenixRising:
Amen bro — sing it… also too.
Technocrat
@Felanius Kootea:
I actually don’t mind the disrespect. I get that it’s ancient history. What actually makes me angry is the unspoken implication that policing neighborhoods was the wrong thing to do, that they should have let our neighborhoods go to hell. Mothers couldn’t sit on porches with children, but god forbid we get some help from the police. That’s not Progressive enough.
THAT makes me angry.
Baud
@dr. bloor:
What part of RESISTENCE IS FUTILE is unclear?
El Tiburon
@Corner Stone:
Maybe so. But a lot of respected liberal/progressive types disagree.
Regardless, it helps that YOU WANT it to be a trainwreck. You want Bernie to implode. You and the rest of the yokels around here pray for Bernie to wash up and go away. And so you will allow yourself to believe anything that helps foster that.
While I prefer Bernie, I don’t want Hillary to implode. I don’t want Bill to fuck shit up. As much as I disagree with the neoliberal hawk who is BFFs with Mubarak and Kissinger, she is ultimately better than any Republican and I hope she can be guided leftward.
amk
@El Tiburon:
Are you disputing that fact? Ironic bernbots are calling HRC a carpetbagger.
Technocrat
@Rhoda:
Yeah, I don’t know where you lived that there was anger. You call the police and they actually come. GOD DAMN THEM.
El Tiburon
@dr. bloor:
Not true at all. Until the last night or so, I probably haven’t been part of a comment squabble around here in years.
So for you old timers: I’M BACK!!!!
JerryN
@different-church-lady: Ummm, several of the commenter in this thread, perhaps? One of us may have a reading comprehension issue here and it may well be me, but there’s quite a bit of grousing about how the kids today don’t understand and sure, there were unintended consequences but it’s not fair to bring that up now.
gwangung
Snicker. Killin’ me here.
Prescott Cactus
@Corner Stone: Tipping my hat for calling out my using the word “joking”. Wasn’t addressing your relationship or ties with the black community, but only my limited one. I didn’t meet a black man until I was 18 years old.
BillinGlendaleCA
@dr. bloor:
The same thought occurred to me as well.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Prescott Cactus: Thought of you today; and hoped it went as well as it could have. Thanks for the sweet parting good night verse. You’re the kind of poster who makes this such a kind community.
Aleta
Bill’s missing fingers.
Turn off table saw and choose
Cookie recipe.
Elie
@Rhoda:
I respect what you are saying — but is it as you say, Bill exploited and lied to do the crime bill, or that he thought about it differently? No way to do the time machine and check back on all the fine details, but it is interesting that he does not get the benefit of the doubt — even as we know this was at the height of the Republican law and order crap that they beat any progressive over the head for it endlessly. It is also true that layered in here IS the reality that along with the very extreme and real abuses of power by police in black neighborhoods, are people in black neighborhoods in like Chicago, who are afraid for their lives from truly, predators of their own race and class? I pray for my sister in Chicago, who though she lives in a middle class more or less area on the south side, it abuts all kinds of mayhem. Black people know this stuff both ways… please don’t make it sound like its just one way… its more complicated…
Corner Stone
@Prescott Cactus: *Whew*
That was a close one.
Anne Laurie
@Moeiz:
You noticed how hard every candidate is working the “Israel, Our Fifty-First State” schtick in New York right now?
Rhoda
@PhoenixRising: This is the fallout of the crime bill; a bill that was about putting black people into prison. That’s what it was about, that’s what it achieved, that is what destroyed generations of black lives.
Susan K of the tech support
Here’s a full context description along with interview with the protesters who held the signs. http://www.phillymag.com/news/2016/04/07/bill-clinton-hillary-1994-crime-bill-protest/
(I’m screwing up my courage to watch the full video in the post.)
BillinGlendaleCA
@El Tiburon:
As a photographer, filters can dramatically change a photograph. Rose colored glasses have a similar effect.
NotMax
@Andy
Strictly an aside but among the decently produced, fan-inspired homages made by the Phase II folks, is this one in which William Windom reprises his role as Decker.
PhoenixRising
@Technocrat:
Exactly. My. Point.
@Rhoda:
Agreed, but not with the crime bill. No one demanded in return for their support in the primary that he ‘reform’ welfare; and I’m as mad as anybody about that…I’m not dismissing anger, I *feel* anger too! I am furious. But I’m furious with white supremacy, which poisons even the best-intended policy, not with a President who took my concerns seriously and did him damnedest for me.
Elie
@Technocrat:
Agree man — agree. Its not one side or one way — EVEN NOW!!!
Amaranthine RBG
Don’t these people realize that before they were even born Bill Clinton was occupying buildings, and marching for civil rights, and working to register black voters?
Oh, never mind, that was Bernie Sanders.
Bill was avoiding the draft and smoking dope in England at the time.
El Tiburon
@amk:
In context do you think I’m disputing this fact? Or does it appear, again, from context, that I’m using this as yet another example why the pro-HRC crowd shits on Bernie.
You decide.
srv
Perhaps Bill should put a sock in it. He could inventory all the furniture that needs to go back to the White House. That should take a few months at least.
Davebo
@El Tiburon:
I don’t think anyone here wants Bernie to implode, or to go away. I haven’t seen commenters posting that Bernie should drop out of the race, nor talk about waiting for this implosion.
You’ve dreamed all that up. Bernie’s not going to implode. But obviously you have.
guachi
@Rhoda:
What was devastation was the crime, murder, and drugs heavily concentrated in the inner city and affecting primarily young black men. Clinton sold out the black community? Is this the same black community whose elected leaders in Congress supported this bill?
And about lower lead levels – first, it’s not generally accepted (though I think it’s likely) that lead levels are what lead to the drop in crime and, second, no one on planet Earth in 1994 would have thought crime was going to drop as quickly as it did or had an inkling lead might be a (the?) reason. Really, imagine Clinton (or anyone) campaigning on doing nothing about the rampant amount of murders by saying “I propose to do nothing because lower lead levels will lead to less crime!”
The prison industrial complex destroyed black lives? You know what destroyed black lives more? All the blacks being murdered (largely by other blacks). 1000+ murders (of mostly black people) in New York for 25 straight years. With cops not really caring because the victims were black.
Those lives matter. And the lives of people addicted to drugs that weren’t being removed from the streets. Those lives matter. And the lives of people who lived in neighborhoods cops were ignoring. Those lives matter.
But go ahead. Say “fuck you” to people who didn’t have a time machine to travel into the future and report back about the effects of lower lead levels. Go fuck yourself.
different-church-lady
@El Tiburon: Has it ever occurred to you that real reason the pro-HRC crowd shits on Bernie is just to get your your relentlessly sanctimonious nerves?
Andy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Filters are among the most widely misunderstood photographic accessories. Anything put between the lens and the subject stands as good a chance of degrading the image as it does of improving it. The secret is to use the right one at the right time. Booyah!
lamh36
@Prescott Cactus:
If I hear one more person bring up that damn Toni Morrison line. Yeah, she said it, tongue in cheek, but guess what he wasn’t and to continue to jokingly call him such as some sort of remember when you used to love him, really sticks in my craw.
Oh, and to a younger group of Black folks, who never heard the Morrison quote, he NEVER was…so maybe it’s time for Bill C and the rest of the white folks who like to bring it up as some sort of but wait…didn’t you folks usta love him…to let that Toni Morrison thing go.
Bill Clinton Is Not An “Honorary Black Person.” Bill Clinton Can Go Fuck Off Somewhere
Baud
@Davebo: Come off it. You clealry want Bernie to be eaten by dingos just like that baby. Admit it!
Prescott Cactus
@Corner Stone:
Close indeed.
*Word & Peace Out”
Corner Stone
@El Tiburon: This is so off base as to be incoherent. The interview is what it is.
That Konczal article should fucking embarrass you if you feel like supporting Bernie. Mike puts down a fully rational thought process that Bernie could have very easily bullet pointed in the interview. He didn’t have to shift gears, just be a politician in his responses. He did not do anything of the sort. That was a ridiculous spot. If I were his corner man I would have been tossing the towel in somewhere around paragraph three.
Bernie is imploding all by himself. An honest take on the NYDN interview and then the subsequent petulant, toddler esque response to the WaPo headline where he cast a hundred ads for the Republicans in the general election aren’t on me or anyone but BS.
That has nothing to do with what I may or may not want.
amk
@El Tiburon:
right, the johnny come lately shits on the party he opportunistically ‘joined’ and will go back to being an indie if doesn’t pan out and the party should just stfu and take it.
you are as clueless as you have been since 2006.
Davebo
@Baud:
I want Bernie to go back to the senate and get to work. And not with BS stuff like his “To Big to Fail, To Big to Exist”
billcampaign prop.Because seriously, he could have just bought a ranch in Crawford.
Andy
@Corner Stone: Again, I ask. Is that you Glenn Loury?
El Tiburon
@Davebo:
Really? You don’t see the endless stream of comments on how terrible Bernie is?
Oh, I get it. You actually have to see the actual words: BERNIE MUST IMPLODE or BERNIE MUST DROP OUT. Reading between the lines is just a step above yours and everyone else’s pay grade. That’s why even though Hillary said it in just about every way you can imagine that Bernie wasn’t qualified, she didn’t actually say the words BERNIE IS NOT QUALIFIED. That’s why you all can run around with your fingers in your ears shouting NANANANANANANA!!!!
Here, let Charlie Pierce break it down for you.
First of all, there’s no question that HRC was questioning in that interview whether Sanders was unqualified to be president. She just didn’t want to use the word, because that would have been the day’s headline. (As, indeed, was the case when the Post used it for her.) At the very least, she was trolling with live bait and Sanders gobbled it right down. How monumental a misstep was this? Check out today’s coverage. This is the only issue in the campaign right now, and it’s already morphing into an even more pointless one—namely, who “went negative” first?
It’s a political campaign, dammit. There is no more worthless a topic of debate than that one. And, while we’re on the subject, it was pretty damn creepy for HRC to wave the bloody shirt of the Newtown massacre at Sanders as a way to call him soft on guns. (She’s been draping herself in other people’s grief for a while now, and it’s distasteful as all hell.) And I thought his riposte about her needing to apologize to the families of people killed in Iraq was both tough and well within bounds. (She’s said her vote was a “mistake,” but she won’t own the fact that it was a “mistake” born of pure political calculation regarding the 2008 election.) Punch, then counterpunch. That’s the way these things work.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Andy:
That’s the secret of life.
Rhoda
@PhoenixRising: I have no doubt Bill Clinton did the best he could; it really just wasn’t good enough and he poisoned his own presidency. The Crime Bill, Welfare Reform, Financial Deregulation…a lot of Barack Obama’s presidency has been about cleaning up his well intentioned mistakes; as well as Bush’s and that’s just a fact. The fact of that and the fact this was a subtext of the 2008 campaign; is a great deal of what causes his clear dislike of team Obama. That stupid remark about supporting Hillary to fix the mistakes of the last two terms of Obama is the tip of the iceberg. This dude has deep issues and it’s all stemming from his insecurity IMO.
But what the fuck do I know, I just took a semester of psych in college. I don’t care either; but Bill Clinton isn’t the issue.
The issue is your own words, your own disregard of these people [IE Black Lives Matter protesters] and how they’re screwing everything up. I got my own issues w/BLM – but I would never dismiss them as you just did in such a racist and condescending manner. Beyond all that, you’re fucking wrong about the crime bill too. Just dead wrong.
Prescott Cactus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Thanks !
Today went well, Dad is doing great and I didn’t have granny sans nightmares. This is a wonderful community to stop by after a good day or a bad one. A grand mix of trailer park and gated community where you can drink from a mason jar and not have to put your pinky in the air.
Just Some Fuckhead
You white folks is cray. I don’t have time for a race war. Night.
different-church-lady
@El Tiburon: You sure do put a lot of stock into “things people write about other people”
different-church-lady
@Just Some Fuckhead: WHO ARE YOU CALLING ‘FOLKS’?!?
magurakurin
@Moeiz: I don’t know, I think it is valid. Racism directed against people of African decent doesn’t end at the US borders. It’s pretty fucking terrible in Europe…witness the monkey sounds and banana throwing which happens time to time at football matches. And this international racism has gone a long way in keeping Africa backward and disadvantaged. And that issues important to Americans of Latin American decent also extend outwards towards countries and problems there as well. Similar things can be found in regards to Southeast Asian and South Asian decedents as well. Certainly Korean Americans are very sensitive to US policy as it pertains to events and issues on the Korean Peninsular. I think examples can be found.
MomSense
@guachi:
I was student teaching/training in Boston 88-91 and it was bad – really bad. I was mostly in South Boston and I don’t think people realize what it was like.
Oh and the teachers, parents and administrators supported the metal detectors and locker searches.
Things have changed.
Still, Bill needs to STFU. He cannot advocate for his wife effectively and managed to change the conversation from Sanders’ blunders to his cringeworhy response to BLM activists.
Andy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Politics nowadays ain’t life. No matter what filter you use in the end.
Humanity needs a break.
Davebo
@El Tiburon:
Like I said, someone has imploded, but it’s not Bernie Sanders. Get a grip.
El Tiburon
@amk:
Bernie has been a better democrat (or at least liberal democrat) than most democrats, including Hillary who never met a war she didn’t love or a Wall Street banker she didn’t fawn over. So, if all that matters to you is who has been a so-called ‘loyal democrat’ in name only, then go for it. Personally I could give a fuck about the democratic party. Currently they are the only vehicle between the Republicans and the end of the world as we know it. But as a group, most democrats are worthless and corrupt.
El Tiburon
@amk:
This I can’t argue with.
Miss Bianca
@NotMax:
Oh, dude. Sick bern.
Rhoda
@Technocrat:So the people I knew who were politically engaged; hated that bill. When it went into effect and a lot of people SAW it in action; they were upset. This wasn’t just about the police coming – this was about locking up black people and throwing away the key.
Joel
Not just Portland anymore.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@M. Bouffant:
Thanks for the picture. :-)
Unfortunately, I have to be “that guy” and point out that the original’s name was “Smokey Bear” not “Smokey The Bear”.
Cheers,
Scott.
srv
Were there no lead window sills in Hope, Arkansas?
different-church-lady
@El Tiburon:
You could?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@El Tiburon:
Who? List the “respected” who supported Sanders’s vacuous, laughable, embarrassing, tragic, scary, know-nothing NYDN interview.
Go ahead, list them.
FlipYrWhig
@Davebo:
I want Bernie Sanders to implode, and to go away.
Prescott Cactus
@lamh36:
lamh36,
Well I hope that’s the last time you ever see it. Toni Morrison thing “released”. Maybe using an 18 year old article to reference a black experience isn’t what ol white guys should do.
Understood.
Mike J
Technocrat
@Rhoda:
I think there’s simply a difference in perspectives playing out. One one side you have people who lived through the heartbreaking levels of gang and drug violence during the 90’s, on the other side you have people who have formed rather insultingly academic views on it.
Andy
@El Tiburon: “Yes,…Right you are Sir!” As Ed would have said.
guachi
Everyone who meets the bare minimum qualifications in the Constitution is “qualified” to be President so I disagree with Pierce (whom I generally don’t like to read anyway) that “there’s no question”. She was, rightly in my view, stating that his obvious lack of knowledge makes him unready and unable to enact the his agenda.
I will agree, though, that Clinton was trolling (or rope-a-doping as other commenters called it) Sanders. Sanders gave himself enough rope to hang himself that Clinton didn’t need to do more than remind people of what he said.
FlipYrWhig
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: See, the people who already liked Bernie Sanders thought that Bernie Sanders did a helluva job. That’s a kind of praise!
amk
@El Tiburon:
got a mirror? catch a clue ?
Rhoda
@guachi: So, the reason I told @PhoenixRising to fuck off is because she was not only wrong but clearly upset at these uppity Negroes with no sense of history and community and all that the Clinton’s have done for them. I don’t give a fuck about her; and the Clinton’s KNOW which side their bread is buttered which is why they’re furiously trying to clean up Bill’s fuckups. Those people have a vote, they have a voice, and they’re the only reliable constituency of the democratic party. They matter and when they say black lives matter; you don’t react as he did or @PhoenixRising did.
Meanwhile, I’ll refer back to this post I did with the link that summarizes my thoughts: @Rhoda
Thanks.
Elie
@MomSense:
Amen:
He needs a minder and to have his assignments pretty restricted. Too bad but those are the facts… Whatever the reason, the Big Dawg aint what he used to be. Time to get over that and get with reality, Hilz…
Technocrat
@Rhoda:
How’d those people get locked up in 1994, Rhoda? I assume they weren’t pulling triggers and jacking cars. How did they end up in jail?
Andy
@Miss Bianca: No.no. Swing and a miss.
El Tiburon
@different-church-lady:
Yes, I do. Is this a problem?
To be truthful, if there wasn’t such a butt-hurt about this “she’s not qualified” comment, I would not have thought it a big deal. So, you now have two camps saying it’s a big deal and the other saying it isn’t. I found Charlie Pierce’s take on this as the one that best matched my thoughts. He is a professional writer so he can state it with much more clarity than I ever could. Also, I assume Charlie is one of those pundit types who is somewhat beyond reproach. His take on this was right on the mark. All just a bunch of bullshit and both sides need to just stop it.
But no chance the side over here is going to simmer down.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah, I thought Davebo was going a little bit much, there.
Rhoda
@Technocrat: The Crime Bill was a failure. It destroyed lives. Tell me different, dude. Go.
different-church-lady
@El Tiburon:
There is no such thing.
magurakurin
@Prescott Cactus:
Curious where you choose to cut that paragraph. The rest reads:
And then what follows to the conclusion of the whole essay:
Kind of important, the whole thing. Not a lot of jokes in that essay, actually.
MomSense
@MomSense:
My best friend worked at Boston City Hospital. She saw some things.
JerryN
Here’s another thing. Where’s the official campaign on this? As near as I can tell, no one has issued any kind of statement or reached out to get on any of the evening talking head shows. The longer they let this just sit out there, the worse it’s going to look.
(Sorry to interrupt, please go on piling on @El Tiburon since everyone seems to enjoy it, including El T.)
different-church-lady
Still ain’t no Swiss picnic in that part of town.
Rhoda
@Technocrat: So, why don’t you listen to Bill Clinton when he admits he fucked up? This is settled, dude.
Miss Bianca
@dr. bloor: @Corner Stone:
What do you suppose happened after Mama socked it to the Harper Valley PTA? Do you suppose she hung around afterwards? Do you suppose she harangued them all night long? I would have figured she’d make a magnificent exit in high dudgeon, not stick around with a bunch of hypocrites.
different-church-lady
@JerryN:
“Not exactly here for the hunting.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I do like Pierce, but like a few other people, he has a head/heart fight going on in his own self over Clinton and Sanders, and like a few other people, he tends to indulge Bernie in the soft bigotry of lower standards. I heard this on MSNBC today, the host haranguing Karen Finney about why can’t Secretary Clinton just put an end to all this, all this being Bernie’s tantrum, but it’s Clinton’s job to clean up the mess. It interested me mostly because it parallels the way most of the Beltway treats Obama and the R’s: why doesn’t he reach out more to the people who vowed to make him a one term president and to block everything he proposed no matter what.
Miss Bianca
@Andy: Sez you.
ETA: Actually, you hit the nail on the head. Bernie Sanders *is* like Commodore Decker going into the Doomsday Machine – he’s out of his mind, got a Messiah complex, and his blow against the Empire leads the way to a more measured and effective response by a better captain.
Mike J
Andy
@Miss Bianca: You’re thinking of “Carrie”.
Adam L Silverman
@West of the Cascades: Here’s the House vote:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/103-1994/h416
Here’s the Senate:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=103&session=1&vote=00384
Then Congressman Sanders voted Aye (in favor).
Kropadope
@AliceBlue:
Well, it was a very comprehensive bill and if he hadn’t voted for it, he would be being shat on right now for having voted against, among other things, the Violence Against Women Act and the Assault Weapons Ban.
That said, look at Bernie’s and Hillary’s statements on the bill. Bernie, despite voting for it, spent nearly the entirety of his speech warning about the danger of mass incarceration. Yeah, he voted for the bill, but he identified the big glaring problem with it even beforehand and I suspect if it were up to him Congress could conceivably have addressed the problem within a month or two, not a decade or two. (ETA: That’s a decade or two before noticing it. They still obviously haven’t addressed it.
Hillary, on the other hand, focused on the inhuman monsters that we needed to lock up prior to throwing away the key.
Gin & Tonic
Why are some blockquotes in a larger font than others?
Omnes Omnibus
@Rhoda: Hindsight is 20/20.
Aqualad08
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I read that, too… not exactly good planning on their parts. Protester #1: I’m going to carry a poster accusing the Clintons of destroying welfare and letting poor blacks die! Protester #2: I’m going to carry a poster accusing the Clintons of destroying black families by supporting the 1994 crime bill! Protester #3: I’m going to carry a poster accusing Hillary of being a murderer for letting Muammar Gaddafi die, but I’m not going to write “Muammar Gaddafi” or “Libya” on the poster! Protester #1: Great! I’m sure that won’t cause any confusion about each of our messages!
lamh36
PsiFighter37
12 days until NY votes. Hope I can do my part in ending this insanity by voting for Hillary.
Fuck Bernie at this point, though. To avoid this crap there needs to be some kind of rule preventing independents from hijacking a party nomination process.
prob50
The crime bill was what it was. Clinton let it get loaded with that ugly, overly harsh sentencing crap in it because he knew the public wanted action on the crime situation. In many areas, particularly in the inner-city violent crime, complete with senseless drive-by killings, were something every man, woman and child recognized and was aware of. This was not some theoretical partisan issue, and it was critically important that our leader’s address it.
Yes, some of what was done was wrong, sometimes terribly so, and many things that could or should have been done were not. In the immediacy of the situation many of the festering wrongs, injustices, institutional racial bias/prejudices and plain ignorant wrong-headedness did not receive the earnest and serious attention they deserved, and sadly many of them still don’t.
But I think where Bill Clinton gets it wrong today is in aggressively over-explaining his actions. They were done in their time and there was good and there was harm, and it really serves no present-day purpose to trot out 20+ year-old statistics to support (or indict) them. People whose lives were basically nullified by draconian sentencing will take little comfort and those whose communities became safer and less threatening (regardless of whether due to the law or just a cyclical progression) may wish it could have happened in a more humane manner. We can’t change things that happened, only try to learn and do better now.
Sorry for all the long wind. whether you agree or think I’m completely off-base and a total dope (the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive), I just wanted to try and put some perspective on it
Prescott Cactus
@magurakurin: Again, words matter.
I was not referring to the jokes in the essay. I was referring to my own experience (very limited) with blacks about WJC. They spoke with me about this with me in a joking manner. I used the article as a point of reference.
Elie
@Rhoda:
@guachi:
@Technocrat:
Lets settle down. This is a bad place for a complex set of facts and feelings in which we are all right about the part of the thing we see. This is painful beyond words and we have all seen our people destroyed and used — but also sometimes just plain make the wrong decision on what to support. The background on this was and still is also how our folks suffer in our neighborhoods where we are victimized by animals (yes, there are reasons for their state, but in Chicago right now, lots of innocents are dying for no good reason in horrible ways). We have to own the reason to resolve this and figure out a path that doesn’t involve this kind of blame game. This is not going to work. Bill Clinton made his mistakes, but WE ALL HAVE. I hope he more or less gives it a rest for a while, but this issue is not going to go away or give us rest. We have to find a way to deal with it with each other that doesn’t dissolve into this shit.
Rhoda
@Kropadope: Hillary was supporting her husband’s administration and by all means call her on it; but it’s not the same thing. She didn’t get a vote; he did. So did Joe Biden; but they’re all three not justifying it. Hell, even Bill Clinton did a mea culpa on the bill which is one of the reasons I think his irrational anger at anything coming at him from protesters got the better of the correct political reaction.
prob50
@Omnes Omnibus:
Geez, wish I said that.
Why didn’t I??
MomSense
@Rhoda:
Has Sanders explained or apologized for his vote in favor of the ’94 crime bill?
Andy
@efgoldman: Soylent Green Premium.
Davebo
@FlipYrWhig:
Well I can’t understand why you would want that.
Bergman
If you could say something to someone on BC’s personal staff who has lurked here for years, what would it be?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
As anyone noted St Bernard Sanders voted for the Crime Bill?
No sexism among the DudeBros.
Rhoda
@Elie: I appreciate what you’re saying. But you’re conflating several issues. First of all, the crime bill was bad policy and destroyed lives. I think this is a settled fact. Like the Iraq war, it’s done and we have to look at what politicians learned from it. Hillary and Bill and Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and all Democrats have expressed this. What I got angry was at the condescending and frankly racist tone about the protesters. So, policy wise the democratic party is where I am. Rhetoric wise – there is a lot of fucking privilege and ignorance on display (part of Bill’s problems IMO) and I’m 35 and have entered the fuck it stage of my life and feel that I’ll try settling down when I’m in my grave.
But, excuse me if my tone upset you. It probably did a lot of people; I recommend scrolling past my name.
PhoenixRising
@Rhoda:
Condescending, okay. What the fuck is the racist part of saying that today’s hecklers are yelling about the wrong damn things? If those kids want to call attention to something that is a real crisis, I’ll hold their bail money because I’m old and don’t do well on cement floors all night anymore.
But this bullshit that ‘everyone knew’ the crime bill–which, again, caused Oakland’s police to start coming to my neighborhood, along with all the problems it is clearly associated with, in retrospect–was an intentional disaster, that it was racist, and that the goal was to destroy the black community?
Nope. Not what happened. And it’s nice that we can all look at that article, in which someone who was for the crime bill 22 years ago and now believes based on the results that it didn’t work, and see such different things. I see someone who agreed with me then and agrees with me now, and I’m convinced we were right both times. You see…something quite different. (Vindication for your belief that only you feel the pain of today’s incarceration epidemic targeting black youth? Please.)
Also, I never suggested they were screwing anything up, let alone everything. I just don’t understand WTF they want…in the absence of a time machine….and you don’t seem to either.
Weaselone
@Kropadope:
So Bernie’s excuse for voting for this bill is that he wanted to avoid being attacked for voting against items in it if he ran for President 2 decades later?
Corner Stone
Katrina Vanden Heuvel should never be allowed to do a TV interview. She simply can’t speak quickly in a coherent manner, useful for a TV platform.
JerryN
@MomSense: Yeah, right here.
“U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager on Thursday reiterated the senator’s reasoning for voting in favor of the Clinton administration’s 1994 Crime Bill despite serious reservations. The House version of the bill included a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons. Sanders had supported the ban since 1988. The conference committee version included not only the assault weapons ban but also the Violence Against Women Act provisions. Sanders supported these efforts to protect women.”
Andy
@Miss Bianca: NO. Doomsday Machine=Hillary. Quelle Surprise.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@PsiFighter37: Meh.
UR vote will be cancelled out by Trump’s equestrian neighbor Susan Sarandon.
Rhoda
@PhoenixRising: So, when you say those people and those people are black people saying black lives matter and calling out a man responsible for destroying millions of black lives…well you will either see where I’m coming from or not. I really don’t give a fuck.
Technocrat
@Rhoda:
I asked you that for a reason. I wanted to know if you lamented the incarceration of people who have killed or harmed, while completely eliding the experiences of the ACTUAL VICTIMS. You ask if the bill destroyed lives, but you’re not talking about lives. You’re making academic arguments about +1s on the Prison Industrial Spreadsheet.
Let’s talk about lives. How did these young men get into prison? That’s important. A nickle bag bust turned into a life sentence? Yes, that’s a travesty. A gangbanger who shoots into a crowd on a playground? You really want to count his life as “destroyed” and just ignore the effects of his actions? What about the lives he destroyed?
Who speaks for the victims? Not you. You’re counting men in prison. So who speaks for them?
You want to talk about the lives destroyed by incarceration. Let’s talk about the nonviolent offenders, and let’s see how many of them were put away by the crime bill. I’ll agree that’s injustice. Carrying the flag for violent criminals is just offensive, and inconsiderate of the people who society actually needed to protect.
redshirt
@MomSense: What years?
Kropadope
@Technocrat:
So now it’s just an academic problem that the U.S. locks up more people than any other nation? And as far as it mainly being at the state level, the federal government has plenty of ways to influence state policy plus it influences the national culture.
Does no one believe that the incredible volume of people locked up for non-violent drug “crimes,” even by the states, might have something to do with our decades-long “War on Drugs?” Hell, I’m pretty sure we’re pushing South American nation-states to crack down on their citizenry. Also, the politically correct requirement for “tough on crime” posturing was a major factor in passing and refusing to review these laws. That it caught on at the national level means it had literally the widest possible audience.
And just like there were things the federal government did to influence the states to imprison more people, it can influence them to free more people too.
smith
@Rhoda:
This is the real problem. Clinton has acknowledged the terrible consequences of the crime bill. He should be able to respond to this kind of criticism in a more measured and understanding way instead of letting it rile him up to the point that his defensiveness becomes the story. Reform of the criminal justice system is important. Bill’s rationale for what he did more than 20 years ago isn’t.
Andy
@Corner Stone: Glenn is that you?
Rhoda
@PhoenixRising: Also, I see someone who didn’t see that this was aimed at the black community but now does comprehend that fact; as you do apparently. At the time, a lot of people understood that locking up criminals without mercy meant locking up black people without mercy and a lot of people had a lot of problems with that. I was 14 years old; I fucking saw it. So, I’m glad we apparently share the same perspective now. But as someone who fucking hated it then and now and at all times; you understand my anger at your comments. Or not.
glory b
@Rhoda: Take it from an African American who was there:Black people WANTED THIS. We complained that our communities were dying, we said this was the thing they needed to do to get our vote. THAT’S why we are open to the Clintons, They took our requests seriously. They apologized for their mistakes, and we knew they were our mistakes too.
And he’s right, there were enough republicans to crash what WE were asking for, unless the enhanced sentencing was included. Hindsight is 20-20, the bill had the assault weapons ban, lots of neighborhood outreach (remember midnight basketball?) and the provisions for violence against women.
And then, for whatever reason, the crime rates DID go down.And the economy exploded and the jobless rate went to almost zero, and the income gap between whites and blacks was the smallest in history. We look back on those days fondly. Those younger people who were alive at the time are probably too young to remember. But you’re not old enough to know the folly of demanding that any of us should have foreseen the future.
And don’t forget, this only applied to FEDERAL LAWS, federal prisoners represent less than 10% of the US prison population. If the president waved his hand and closed every federal prison, it would barely put a dent in this.
If you want to effectuate the kind of change that would matter, you’d better look at your governors and state legislators.How could you not see the state prosecutors in the Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, etc., etc. cases and not realize where the problem lies? Learn the difference between federal and state powers and don’t go off half cocked.
I blame the lack of civics in our schools.
Andy
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Douche!
Adam L Silverman
@Bergman: I would like a job working on defense and foreign policy please. I have excellent credentials and references and have extensive work from the tactical to the national strategic level.
Technocrat
@Kropadope:
If you’re talking about nonviolent offenders, then I agree with you. But the over-the-top drug offense bullshit was introduced with the Reagan crime bill. The Clinton bill was about violent offenders, and police presence.
I’m tired of people advocating for murderers. Sorry, I really am. It’s insulting to act like black people can’t help hunting each other, like if you tune “the system”, then we’ll have empty prisons. People have agency. Focus the argument on nonviolent offenders, and I’m with you.
Rhoda
@Technocrat: So, I’ll carry the flag for whomever and whenever and where ever I want, when I want, how I want, and you can come at me but don’t fucking tell me to put down my flag. That’s the first thing.
Second: Let’s talk about this.
Crime is crime and justice is about the flexibility to deal with those crimes while maintaining law and order; the bill actively sought to take that flexibility away, to ignore programs like Midnight basketball as giving crack dealers space to play instead of the intervention it was, and it was catastrophic. It made a lot of people a lot of fucking money; through. No one is saying violent criminals should not be tried, convicted, and sentenced. What we’re saying is this bill was about locking people up and throwing away the key and that was wrong and in no way justice and did nothing to stop crime; it did make the prison industrial complex a hell of a lot of money and was a great dog whistle for a long time.
Prescott Cactus
@Bergman: I want a pony ! Take care of Adam first though. Must buy shovel and hay…
guachi
Another big problem is that until crime was brought under control it was impossible to talk about underlying causes. A person murdered every four hours in NYC, for example, will do that.
Also, we can only attempt to deal with the underlying causes on a national level when we have a Democrat in office. Twelve years of Republican presidents meant Clinton had a lot of catching up to do. The Crime Bill we got is vastly better than what would have happened (if at all) under a Republican. VAWA? not a chance! Assault weapons ban? Hell, no! Protection from abortion protestors? Not on your life!
And it took, what, six years of a Democratic president before the issue of police abuse came to the fore under Obama? Collapsing economy and health insurance issues will do that.
Kropadope
@amk:
Hillary moved to NY to run for office, she is the literal definition of a carpetbagger. Bernie is supposedly a carpetbagger for running for the nomination of the party he has caucused with for, I believe, his entire Congressional career so that he wouldn’t have to run third party and split votes. Yet, despite his choosing the loyal partisan route for his presidential campaign, some particularly hardcore partisan Democrats are acting like he’s the comically obvious double agent in a kids’ spy movie. Aren’t Ds supposed to be the big tent? Don’t have room for independents, no matter how reliably they fight on your behalf?
Mandalay
@MomSense:
See post 185. Or even better, learn what Sanders would have been voting against before playing gotcha.
Bergman
@Adam L Silverman: Well, that job is filled by someone who’s got to see his name in every email release from State. Not a fun job these days.
PhoenixRising
@Rhoda: You’re clear about your DGAF. That much you made obvious, What’s less clear is what assumptions you’re bringing to the table to decide that ‘those people’ means what Ross Perot meant, vs ‘those 3 people who did this specific thing’.
Oh, sorry, you’re too young to remember that reference. I’ll close to this: Things happened when you were a 5th grader that bear on our differences in perspective on this issue. I suspect that you weren’t part of my Girl Scout troop who all had a relative in Chowchilla. All of them. This is not an academic debate to me, and I won’t apologize for that.
Rhoda
@Technocrat: Who is saying this?
The latent racism in that comment is striking; what it brings to mind is the reaction to the heroin epidemic now that it’s hitting white people. Like saying those people, like saying the violent criminals are the black criminals, like saying this was the only way to stop those savages.
guachi
@Rhoda:
Certainly stopped that person form committing a FOURTH violent crime. The problem I had with three strikes were the often BS reasons someone could get locked up under it, not the basic principle.
Rhoda
@PhoenixRising: I’m reading your words and coming to my conclusions. I’m not seeking your apology. I was reacting to your words and your thoughts and your opinions and while profane and rude; I hope it didn’t come across as trying to silence you. When I say fuck you; I mean fuck what you’re saying. But by all means, keep saying it. Who the hell am I for fucks sake to say stop; or anyone?
Adam L Silverman
@Prescott Cactus: How did everything go? I’m still fuzzy on the details of what was up, but was keeping good thoughts.
Adam L Silverman
@Bergman: This is true. Unfortunately it all too often comes with the territory.
Rhoda
@guachi: When you make sentencing mandatory; you take away the insight, the experience, and the historic role the judge is supposed to play in the court room which leads to people getting three strikes for BS reasons.
mike in dc
Neoliberals should be called out on the legacy of the policies they supported. Not seeing a problem here. Those who fail to learn etc.
Omnes Omnibus
@Rhoda: You are aware that you are primarily arguing with African-Americans, aren’t you?
glory b
@JerryN: Bringing it as in “Have we learned something so we have fewer screwups in the future?” or “You people are murderers for doing what the people in our community asked you to do?”
Bergman
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, for sure. But I will say the territory since last May is…unique. Dog years.
Prescott Cactus
@Adam L Silverman: All is fine.
Fuzzy details was exactly what I was trying to avoid. Lunch w/ Dad & 100’s of seniors and Baud was talking about his next band’s name “Grannies Sans Panties”.
cbear
@Just Some Fuckhead: Oh gawd, I was just thinking about that last night. That was some funny shit.
Andy
@Kropadope: You So Crazy!!…I want to have your baby!
Kropadope
@Technocrat:
Who did what now?
Adam L Silverman
@Bergman: Without a doubt. As I’ve written here many times before this is largely a combination of shot across the bow by the IC of a (the?) potential next president and the executive branch agency she formally headed as to who is really the boss and will continue to be combined with clearly partisan BS. There’s really no there there. And as Secretary Powell stated a month or so ago when he and Secretary Rice and there closest advisors got sucked into this meshugas, this is just silly. But it puts eyeballs on advertising, which is all that seems to matter.
And for the record: I’m not necessarily asking for a/the top position. Just one where I can be of use.
Weaselone
@Mandalay:
Just of curiosity, were those items only in the version of the bill Sanders voted for? Because, if they justify Sander’s vote on the crime Bill logically they should justify everyone else who supported the bill, even a first lady with a history of supporting women.
Adam L Silverman
@Prescott Cactus: Well the last part of that is going to guarantee nightmares.
Glad to hear everything else went/is well.
Technocrat
Get a grip. “You can come at me”? Jesus.
You seem to think that the bill was about locking people up for money. All the agency is on the government’s side in your view, the fact that black people were hollering for relief has no bearing. It’s irrelevant to you. But frankly, until you can form some sort of opinion of the worldview of people who asked for legislation like this, your theories are incomplete.
Nor can you say something like “it did nothing to stop crime” without souding like a huge jackass. I have some idea of the difficulty involved in collected the data to make such a statement. It’s ludicrous on it’s face, and yet you parrot it uncritically.
Aaaand..I’m done, actually. This is a bit too close for me.
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: I like the (sort of proposed) new marketing slogan: “3% larger at low tide.”
Rhoda
@Omnes Omnibus: MY PEOPLE! lol, I really don’t care. I’m still offended, like really offended by what I read. Thanks for the heads up; I don’t lurk that closely to know who is whom.
Felanius Kootea
@Omnes Omnibus: African-Americans can internalize and make the same racist arguments that the general population does. There is something about white supremacy in America that turns a seemingly reasonable Democratic approach to addressing a problem into a booby trapped mess that has little grenades going off for years on end when that problem has something to do with African Americans. Having to compromise with Republicans to pass laws is part of it. Not completely being able to relate to the target population is also another small part of it. I guarantee that we won’t see white New Englanders spending 30 years in jail for a problem with heroin. And that there will be more police officers and judges who say, “Whoa, that could be my child,” today than there were in the 90s.
Omnes Omnibus
@Rhoda: I just wanted to make you aware. Do keep calling them racist and dismissing their experiences. I’ll stay out – I’m white..
Kropadope
@Weaselone:
No, it had to do with supporting those awesome facets of the bill. My point is, there is an easily defined negative interpretation no matter how one voted on this particular piece of legislation. I hear that’s why it’s so hard getting elected President from the Senate, you take so many votes and some for procedural reasons or due to small nuances. Basically, you’re guaranteed something that makes for an easy soundbite attack.
Kropadope
@Rhoda:
She lobbied for the bill and I’m not going to stop blaming lobbyists, even informal ones, for bad legislation just because one was Hillary Clinton.
Bergman
@Adam L Silverman: Which is what I tell my Bernie-supporting son.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s a refreshing change. My God, you were insufferable when BLM bigfooted immigrants at Netroots.
Adam L Silverman
@Bergman: Give him this:
http://prospect.org/article/why-hillary-wont-be-indicted-and-shouldnt-be-objective-legal-analysis
Its written by the guy who wrote the classification rules for DHS.
Rhoda
@Technocrat: First of all, when I say come at me I meant argue with me not tell me not to make my arguments which is what you were essentially doing and I took offense to in your post. Second, cops on the beat were there to lock people up IMO not make neighborhoods safer.
States got a lot of money to build prisons with federal money that were privatized and then get clients for those jails and then keep them in those jails. But you are right the ’94 bill didn’t create that; it just funded it anew. This was something that started earlier as @rikyrah points out; the prison pipeline existed before Clinton.
Corner Stone
@Kropadope:
What were you, four?
JerryN
@Weaselone: He’s on the record at the time of objecting to and voting against the mandatory minimum and death penalty enhancement provisions. There’s no indication that HRC shared those views at that time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
More than the people, or at least one person, who voted for it. And that’s why you are a clown.
Corner Stone
@efgoldman:
My son and I were doing Geography homework tonight…enough said.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: Excuse me? Link?
dogwood
Bill shouldn’t be on the stump for his wife. He was a problem in 08 and he’s probably rustier now. Bill is a very needy politician. He needs to be loved and adored by everyone in the room. As an ex POTUS, he’s been an aging rock star on the world stage for decades. But the campaign stage is a different gig.
Weaselone
@Kropadope:
If these facets of the bill provide sufficient justification for Bernie to support the crime bill despite it’s flaws, they should justify the votes and support of others as well. It’s hypocritical to give Bernie a pass on his vote and then hit Clinton for her support of the same bill, particularly given her record of championing women’s issues and the presence of the VAWA and assault weapons ban in the bill.
PhoenixRising
@JerryN:
The issue isn’t ‘unfair’ or fair. Politicians have to be able to take unfair. My issue, aside from the kids today on my lawn, is that it’s not useful. If you’re going to disrupt, raise one of the many many many issues on which the actual candidate, who is eligible to be POTUS, is actually wrong or dubious.
I’ll be painfully specific: 2 police officers who were hired and kept on, despite clear deficits in their capacities to patrol the streets, executed Tamir Rice in his own schoolyard. A clear statement from the campaigns that they believe DOJ must investigate police shootings of children would be most welcome, and might have as much effect as the new Cuyahoga County prosecutor, if not more.
Why in the actual fuck are will still talking about a 25 year old campaign promise that became a law 22 years ago that everyone involved agrees ought to be reformed now that we know its effects?
If that makes me condescending…I can live with it.
Rhoda
@Omnes Omnibus: So, when I say that your comments are racist[and I mean not your comments but the comments I called out as racist] I am making a judgement on your comments because I don’t know who the fuck you are; and the fact is people internalize racism to a large degree. I know I have and have had to unlearn and change a lot of my own perceptions despite having always thought of myself as a woke individual. You can’t separate a person’s thoughts from themselves; I don’t feel any of these commentators are bigots in any way and honestly who the fuck am I to make that judgement – but I found a lot of what has been said in this thread racist as fuck.So, I said it’s racist. That’s how people change how they speak and how they think and how they internalize thoughts; by being called out on it. If you’re white and they’re black and they’re saying those fucking people don’t know jack shit and these people need to shut up I have no problem in you saying that is racist as fuck because you’re grouping them by race and delegitimizing their right to protest.
Dog Dawg
@Kropadope:
Improper use of the term “lobbyist”.
A lobbyist isn’t simply someone who “lobbies” for a bill.
Big difference. (Hint: it has to do with whether you “lobby” for a bill because you believe in it, or you do it because you’re paid to.)
Keith G
Loud protests during political events are certainly an OK thing. I do wish there was a way to get the protesters to accept the victory that they have the spotlight and then nobly relinquish it and let the goals of the political meeting be achieved.
Bill Clinton is not evil. Bill Clinton is not the enemy. I am very glad he was President for 8 years and I am hopeful that he will be hale and hearty in order to be an outspoken surrogate for Hillary Clinton. He speaks off the cuff, so there will be some miss statements. Oh well. The massive amount of good he will be able to do over shadows the hurt feelings some people will feel when just not the right exact terminology for reference points are used.
Some of the things that DLC Democrats did in the 90s were abominable. The problem was, aside from a rather underdeveloped notion of how societies really could best be optimised, the political realization that the Democratic party had to crawl back into relevancy after a series of continued thumpings. And for a while, that crawling back meant crawling a bit to the right.
MomSense
@Prescott Cactus:
I’m afraid that imagery is my fault as my granny didn’t believe in panties and discouraged the practice of wearing them. She was commando before it was cool. Now you have experienced one of my childhood fears – that all the grandmas were sans.
Weaselone
@Kropadope:
That’s sort of a mixed bag. On the one hand he had the foresight to recognize that these facets of the bill were bad news. On the other hand, recognizing these issues, he voted for the crime bill anyway because he felt the assault weapons ban, VAWA and other aspects outweighed these negatives.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: Ask and you shall receive.
Kropadope
@Weaselone:
Also @Jim, Foolish Illiterate:
Problem being that both Bernie and Hillary have statements on the record about the flawed part of the bill specifically. Bernie pointed out the potential horror of mass incarceration. Hillary monsterized human criminals.
CarolDuhart2
@Rhoda: It got the worst off the streets, along with his community policing that added more police to the streets. Remember “Dark Victory” where millions of dollars began flowing to poor gangs in the late 80’s? All of a sudden, you had teenagers with more money than their parents due to the drug trade, and the bitter rivalries that led to bloodshed for both members and innocent bystanders who just wanted to live. Such a phenomenon led to a near-total breakdown in whatever tranquility there was back then. I remember living upstairs from a brazen drug dealer who had clients coming in and out all day long and wondering what would happen when I came home after an evening at work. I remember open drug markets. And this was in relatively peaceful Cincinnati. DC and New York and Chicago were horror shows.
About gentrification: Bills’ economic boom got a lot of AA’s into the middle class and homeownership-Black America wasn’t obligated to stay in war zones when they could afford better housing. Yes, people were already moving from the brownstones, but the violence accellerrated the moves away. Now people complain about gentrification, and there needs to be a policy that addresses displacement, but let’s not pretend that the previous tenants want to come back either.
Nerull
It’s amazing how quickly BLM, heros for sticking it to Bernie, turned into young black people too stupid to know what life was like the moment they criticized Hillary.
amk
@Kropadope:
If you are allowed inside the tent, then don’t fucking pee on those who are already inside the tent. Is it too difficult for ya and your ilk to comprehend it?
bin Lurkin'
Holy Crap! The conversation here has changed dramatically since the Ferguson protests, it’s like they never happened.
Police as good, kind and benevolent protectors of the black community, that’s one hell of a swerve from just a few months ago.
I wonder what could have prompted such a sea change in opinion?
Kropadope
@amk: It was return fire.
Nerull
It’s almost like a bunch of white progressives only pretended to care about the concerns of African Americans so long as they supported the right candidate.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
aw, you’re proud of that one, aren’t you, Littlefinger?
Kropadope
@Jim, Fool…: Well, I had to keep it simple and keep using it so you might come around to understanding it.
Socraticsilence
@Corner Stone:
Honestly, more than a little of it his own fault- he was an amazing Politican but for better or worse most of Obama’s time has been spent repairing the mistakes and shortcomings of his two immediate predecessors.
Honestly, Bill’s legacy is hurt by how much better a President Obama has been than Clinton ever really came close to being- if Obama had been a Carter level President, WJC administration looks like the Golden years, instead he was Democratic Reagan and is basically being looked at as the best Democratic President (cumulatively adding together both Domestic and Foreign Policy) since WW2, whereas Bill is essentially a popular guy without any truly substantive legacy (at least in comparison).
Socraticsilence
@Just Some Fuckhead: “white supremacist Sanders” what the Fuck?
Plantsmantx
@PhoenixRising:
I hear you. I don’t agree with everything Bill Clinton said there or how he said it, but…the idea some people have that black people didn’t (or wouldn’t now) want something do be done about the situation angers me, and I mean really angers me. It seems to reveal that some of our supposed allies have opinions of us that are as low as those of rightists.
PatrickG
@El Tiburon:
Just for the record, noting that El Tiburon hates Democrats almost as much as he hates the end of the world as we know it. Alternately, he’d really, really like everyone to be nuked from orbit. It’s the only way to prevent corruption.
Kropadope
@Socraticsilence: We’re pretty far down the rabbit hole these days.
Plantsmantx
@Prescott Cactus:
Actual, everyday black people did not go around joking that Bill Clinton was the first black President.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Socraticsilence: He’s a Sanders supporter.
When Blacks voted against Clinton in 2008, Fuckhead thought they were savvy. Now that Blacks are voting against Sanders, he dismisses and mocks them. A sure fire way to win over voters.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kropadope: I don’t know if you remember your GBCW tantrum from the other night, but now that you’ve sobered up (assuming a lot, I know), you do know what the GB stands for, don’t you?
Amir Khalid
My foreigner’s take: It seems to me that Bill handled that as well as he could have. It’s awkward that he had to stop in the middle of surrogating for Hillary and start defending his own record as President. But I thought he did that reasonably well under the circumstances. And even in a moment of some anger, he didn’t say anything that struck me as egregious.
Calouste
@bin Lurkin’: Ah no. If you had read the thread, you would have noticed that the discussion was about the situation 20 years ago.
CarolDuhart2
@Nerull: It’s not stupidity, but ignorance. How many of their parents or older siblings wanted to really talk about those bad times in the hood? It’s like war: a lot of people simply wanted to forget. Plus, many people had moved out to the suburbs in the 90’s and beyond, they weren’t about to talk about the hood very much.
Bill did the best he could, with a Republican Congress who would have doubtless passed draconian measures if they could, or neglected the suffering until it finally reached out to the lily white suburbs. And as for mass incarceration, it didn’t start with Bill. States were already reacting to a broken penal system by passing their own version of harsh laws and most drug law is local, not federal. Broken? Folks who were clearly predatory were getting out over and over again. Three strikes was supposed to cure that along with longer sentences. But in the effort to get rid of truly dangerous criminals, we failed to reform the laws to reflect that no all felonies were for dangerous reasons. So low-level dealers and users got swept up in the frenzy.
And police reform was stymied by the call of “being soft on crime” that no Democratic politician-the only ones who cared about inner city crime-or city crime for that matter could withstand, and the grandstanding of Republicans who used the massive suffering to scare white suburbanites into voting for them.
Now? it seems awfully convenient for Sanders living up in bucolic Vermont away from the carnage to talk about “mass incarceration” and such. He never cared before as long as minorities stayed away from his pristine retreat, and would do nothing if he was elected.
Adrian Lesher
Let’s not forget that this is the same Bill Clinton who got into a beef with the then barely-known rap artist Sistah Souljah just to prove to racist whites that he could keep black people in line. Or that it’s the same Bill Clinton who rushed back to Arkansas to preside over the execution of the brain-damaged Ricky Ray Rector. There are good things to say about Bill Clinton, but that he is above cynical racial politicking is not one of them.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Adrian Lesher: You’ve convinced me not to vote for Bill Clinton.
Maybe Saint Bernard Sanders wouldn’t be losing by 2,500,000 votes if his weren’t focusing on someone who isn’t running.
Darkrose
@Rhoda: I was about to post what Omnes did, because I’m pretty sure that Technocrat and Phoenix Rising are definitely not complaining about “those people being uppity” here. Not saying you can’t be offended, or that we can’t disagree, just an FYI.
Aimai
@JerryN: an unintended cinsequence is, by definition, unintended.
Daniel O'Neil
He wasn’t talking to the protesters. He was talking to the people listening to Bill Clinton talk to the protesters. In that way he was deeply, deeply successful.
Loviatar
Why isn’t Bernie Sanders doing well with black voters?
.
kc
So now it’s cool to criticize the tactics of blm protestors. Heh.
Also, shorter (many) BJ commenters: “Superpredators!”
kc
@Omnes Omnibus:
LOL. “Now that I’ve whitesplained that to you, and thrown in a patronizing dis, I’ll stay out. I am one of the good ones, after all.”
Just Some Fuckhead
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Where did I do that?
CONGRATULATIONS!
Bill’s suffering from something I’ve unfortunately gotten to see far too much of here in California; a cognitive decline caused by a vegan diet. Not a joke. The brain needs protein. Most vegans don’t get nearly enough for the brain. They get enough to stay alive and not suffer from clinical deficiencies, but that’s a whole different level of functionality than “thriving”.
Sadder with him because he used to be on the ball. The lifers just start out unable to process the world and stay that way.
NunjaBidness
@PhoenixRising: @PhoenixRising:
You could not be more right. I was a kid growing up in those neighborhoods, and the crime was unbelievable. 2 people I know were shot, 1 fatally. In 1989, there were 400 murders in Washington DC, which had a population of 500,000. There were open air drug markets all over the city. Gunshots were common occurrences. That’s the environment of the crime bill President Clinton signed.
Today, murder is DC is down 75%. 105 murders in 2014. Not all of that decline is attributable to Clinton of course, but to imagine that making a concerted effort to take habitual criminal out of the community didn’t have an impact is simply stupid.
He response was fantastic. I would vote for Bill again in an instant.
Just Some Fuckhead
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Where do you get that? I’m on record multiple times as a Clinton supporter. Because I don’t sit in here and smear our fellow travelers with lies, that makes me a Sanders supporter? Because I point out that many of the same tactics being deployed against Sanders were deployed against Obama in 2008, that makes me a Sanders supporter? Because I recognize neither of our candidates is perfect, that makes me a Sanders supporter? Because I point out that douchebags like you are no help to our side, that makes me a Sanders supporter?
Fuck you.
Michael Brown
Fuck the Clintons and all you “liberal” piss stains in this thread whom feel compelled to white-splain how “Our first Black President” was actually doing all of negros a favor by fucking us over during his non-stop triangulating during the 90’s…..and as such we should always prostrate ourselves when in their presence.