CNN has the article First on CNN: Clinton, Democratic presidential opponents to debate six times.

First the good news:

Democrats will announce Tuesday six presidential primary debates, giving long shots a potential opportunity to share the debate stage with frontrunner Hillary Clinton, CNN has learned.

Then the bad news that could be enough to drive me out of the Democratic Party:

The DNC will set the criteria for debate inclusion and any candidate who participates in a separate debate outside of the sanctioning process will be barred from future DNC debates, a Democratic official told CNN.

It is this kind of attitude and the desire to lose at all costs, that has me wondering if the days of the Democratic Party are numbered in pretty small numbers.

The nerve of them to try to prevent more debates. I had a feeling that the DNC has bot been looking out for my interests for a long time. That’s why I have cut off all donations to committees of national Democrats. I will only make contributions to individual candidates.

If they think that I will vote for Hillary if she is the nominee, then they have another think coming.

To start the conversation, watch this video from Larry Wilmore.

You don’t have to go so far as to even think about hate speech. All you have to do is to remember the phrase “fighting words” as explained by WikiPedia.

In 1942, the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine by a 9–0 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire. It held that “insulting or ‘fighting words,’ those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” are among the “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech the prevention and punishment of [which] … have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem.”
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There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or “fighting words” those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.

— Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 1942

So, was Pamela Geller protecting free speech or was she guilty of the crime of inciting disorder by using fighting words?

May 6, 2015

Reader RichardH has pointed out to me, that I should have read about the Post-Chaplinsky decisions in that Wikipedia article Fighting Words. You would have to be a lawyer to figure out what is prohibited, and what is not.

After I wrote the original post, I started to wonder how the American Nazi Party was allowed to hold a march in Skokie, Illinois where there was a large population of WWII Nazi Holocaust survivors. Conveniently, Wikipedia has the article National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie.

Thanks to RichardH for keeping me honest.

Naked Capitalism has the article At INET Conference, Warren Adds Two Pieces to Her Financial Reform Framework.  The article and the speech have important things to say about a number of politico/economic topics.  I’ll select a minute few to comment on here.

From the article comes the following excerpt:

Could a President use a trade deal to override financial rules? Well, it’s been a part of trade agreements since the late 1980s, including the WTO. In fact, WTO rules prevent firewalls like Glass-Steagall: when the U.S. negotiated it in 1997, they added an intent to repeal it, which of course happened two years later, in time for the WTO’s implementation. (Size caps on financial institutions are actually also banned by WTO rules.)

Financial services deregulation is more of an issue for the TTIP, the proposed U.S.-European agreement. European negotiators, if anything more embedded with their banks, have insisted on including a financial regulation chapter, which the U.S. has thus far rejected. By the time TTIP gets locked in, another President could be in office who wouldn’t be so rigid on that point.

Here is the YouTube video. Elizabeth Warren’s remarks start at the 12:00 minute mark.

I found one comment on YouTube particularly uninformed.

youdodat2

If you’re not talking about taking the power of money creation away from these private bankers psychopaths, then you’re just talking bullshit. Debt based money has to end.

In my response, I think I have finally figured just what is so wrong about this comment and almost everything that Ron and Rand Paul have to say about the subject.

Steve Greenberg

+youdodat2, You’ve been listening to the idiotic Paul family for too long. You are fooling yourselves if you think that it is only the banks that create private money. The stock market itself creates money with far less regulation than the banks. Anytime you have an asset that the accounting rules say you must put a value on, the frequently used technique of mark-to-market has the effect of creating money.

The Paul family is far too naive in their understanding of money. You might even go so far as to say that they haven’t a clue about what they claim to be expert in.

It is about time to stop equating what knowledgeable people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have to say about banks, banking, and money with what ignorant people like Ron and Rand Paul have to say. If you are going to listen to “experts”, you need to make sure that the person you are listening to really is an expert.