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Comment by jacurtis | Hacker News Reader

The same thing would happen in the USA too. If you were suspected of hacking into the Democrat or Republican party websites, the FBI would come and confiscate your computers and hold onto them until after your trial had finished. This would easily take a year or longer.

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Would it happen the same way though, with a polite knock on the door, a calm chat and orderly evidence collection? In the US they'd probably break the door, pin the guy down on the floor while armed men ransack the house. Call me cynical...

And also throw you in jail and keep you there indefinitely regardless of evidence of you committing a crime.

It's true, the jails are so clogged that pre-trial offenders can be held for months and sometimes years without a conviction in the U.S. Not to mention the indeterminate number of people who just disappear out of the computer system and end up being held for months beyond their release date.

What's worse, you could be thrown in jail if you're a witness, even if you're not even suspected of a crime. Some witnesses have been in jail for years.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39662428

It's the Democratic Party, not the Democrat Party.

Saying "Democrat" instead of "Democratic" has, strangely, morphed into a sort of secret-handshake for Republicans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

An easier-to-pronounce corruption of the name spoken with disdain is hardly a "secret handshake"

More like a dog whistle.

You learn something new every day! I'm going to start using this. Not because I care (unaffiliated), but because I'm astounded that anyone could be seriously offended by this.

That's what jerks do. "To own the libs". I recommend not being a jerk.

I don’t know if anyone gets offended anymore so than they would to a “your mom” joke. Saying it is mostly just funny to one group while being annoying and juvenile to another.

Generally speaking, I avoid name-calling and ad hominem attacks no matter how good they feel. Folks are doing enough trolling. We need more civility.

I'm confused - the Democrats/Democratic party uses "Democrat" extensively in their website. It it a noun vs adjective thing that I'm missing?

https://democrats.org/

> It it a noun vs adjective thing that I'm missing?

Yes, you'll notice they never use the singular "Democrat". They describe democrats, the Democratic party, etc. but only Republicans started using this bizarre "Democrat Party" or the "Democrat nominee" thing.

It's a play on the last syllable resembling "rat", popularized by Rush Limbaugh's radio show.

I do remember hearing "Republican'ts" and "rethuglicans" from dems but in my experience it's extremely rare.

I doubt anybody uses "democrat party" for reasons related to the demon-rat moniker.

It seems to be more about disputing that the party is in fact democratic. Among other things, the superdelegates make this clear. It's also the matter of the party making a name-grab for democracy itself, which is a more valuable trademark than anything associated with the republic.

> It seems to be more about disputing that the party is in fact democratic. Among other things, the superdelegates make this clear. It's also the matter of the party making a name-grab for democracy itself, which is a more valuable trademark than anything associated with the republic.

Yes, I'm sure the pejorative use by Republicans of the term that Democrats use to refer to themselves is rooted in Republicans' sincere concern with the structure of the DNC's primary. That must be it.

> burfog 19 hours ago | parent | flag | favorite | on: Iran attack: US airbases in Iraq hit by ballistic ...

> Democrat voters may oppose war, but the same can not be said for democrat politicians.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21987859

Lol, come on man.

I do believe we hit a nerve... ;)

This confuses me. I've discussed politics for over 10 years online, both in very conservative forums and very liberal forums, and have never once seen a person mention this before. Sometimes I have even been on forums where name calling was quite direct. Yet I've never heard of this before.

A quick google search shows a number of mentions, but it feels so odd that I could've missed this, especially since a person who isn't in the know can easily make the mistake of thinking Democrats belong to the Democrat Party.

Has it historically not been an issue enough to call out? Is this only in some circles and not universally agreed upon? It just seems so odd for me to have missed this being a thing. It is like if one day someone told you 'fish' was a loaded negative term to refer to people who went to college.

It's definitely an intentional thing among prominent Republicans, but especially the "Fox News" set.. like I doubt you'd see Justin Amash saying it, but the Devin Nunes's of the world love it;

Here's a Twitter search for Trump with all the times he said "Democrat" singular, almost every occurrence is designed to be a pejorative: https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=from%3A%40realDonaldTr...

Or for Matt Gaetz:

https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40mattgaetz%20%22democr...

Or Jim Jordan:

https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40Jim_Jordan%20%22democ...

Edit:

Apparently it made it to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

Donald Trump speaks about Democrats in a pejorative manner. Sometimes it's even using "Democrat" as a noun in the grammatically correct way. Film at 11?

Nitpick: The singular “Democrat” is still standard if used as a noun, as in “Nancy Pelosi is a Democrat.” It’s only using it as an adjective that’s nonstandard.

I could see this being very confusing if you were a non-native English speaker. "Democratic" = OK. "He's a Democrat" = OK. "The Democrat party" = NOT OK.

Hmmm...

Nouns can't modify nouns like adjectives can, but they can be modified to be adjectives.

Friend = OK

Friendly = OK

He's a friendly person = OK

He's a friend person = NOT OK

He's a friend = OK

This should be something most speakers learn early, though, maybe they won't know all the rules for modification and will make up an incorrect adjective. I.e., He's a democratly person.

But if the phrase "friend person" caught on (similar to, I don't know, the phrase "my bad"), we wouldn't consider it a "secret handshake" or "dog whistle". Especially since "members of the Democratic party" generally consider Republicans to be less well educated on average. Ascribing this to some kind of intentional, coordinated malice in all cases seems ludicrous to me.

It's obviously intentional coordinated malice.. this isn't new, it's been written about for decades:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/08/07/the-ic-factor

Someone like US Senator Josh Hawley went to Stanford, then to Yale Law, he clerked on the US Appeals Court and then for the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He was then elected as the Attorney General of Missouri and won the race for US Senator in 2018.

Do you honestly think he doesn't know the proper name of one of the two major parties in the USA, or the body that organizes their elections? It's not subtle. Just super juvenile 'own the libs' silliness.

> Today on Fox & Friends Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said the Democrat National Committee ...

> “Essentially the Democrat Party bought themselves ...

https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sen-hawley-democrats-bought-fe...

He's a friendly = OK?

And it's not remotely unheard-of for the FBI to execute that in the form of an escalated no-knock raid. Paul Manafort is one example that immediately comes to mind, and his was in the middle of the night IIRC.

I have a mischievous fantasy for situations where police use illegally excessive force for no-knock warrants.

It involves some combination of:

- A highly reinforced front door, and bulletproof windows.

- Just inside the front door, a floor that's in the middle of being mopped with very slippery soap.

- Copious amounts of glitter and shaving cream. (I'm still working out the details.)

Note: I recognize that most police perform dangerous and necessary work. My fantasy only applies to police committing criminal acts.

I could picture this being used to tack on several more charges...

Note: policing isn’t that dangerous, and the way it used in practice in the US, it’s only necessary for enforcing property law and protecting people who own/run things. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-dangerous-is-police-w_b_6...

> I could picture this being used to tack on several more charges...

For sure. There are lots of reason to keep this in the realm of "mischievous fantasy".

Everyday household tripping hazards will do.

Maybe the inhabitant only weighs 80 pounds, and that is all the floor is capable of supporting. The basement holds a large collection of glass containers holding venomous animals.

Your house would be condemned and you would be civilly and criminally liable for any injuries the officers may have. The joists need to support 40 pounds of pressure per square foot in habitable rooms, 10 in non-habitable rooms (e.g. an attic)

Boobytraps are illegal. Have fun with that in court.

> Paul Manafort is one example that immediately comes to mind, and his was in the middle of the night IIRC.

Nah, that story was just propaganda to make people feel sorry for a dude who evaded like $20M in taxes by offering political services to corrupt governments and oligarchs. You need special permission from a judge to do a 'no-knock' raid or a night one. (First page here clearly shows it was a daytime search warrant: https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/180626...)

The FBI knocked repeatedly, and then used a previously provided key to access Manafort's condo sometime after 6am, which is early but still after dawn in Virginia in August so even the "pre-dawn raid" people were wrong.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/manafort-trial/h_dfb6...

Hopefully not trial. Hopefully it would happen the same here as it did there—no charges and computer equipment returned.

What do you think would have happened if you stumbled upon [political party website] open directory and reported it?

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