This is an awesome catch by commenter Michael– apparently the WaPo’s Ruth Marcus had a real problem with the recess appointment of Donald Berwick, calling it cynical and boneheaded and an abuse of power.
Ruth Marcus is married to Jon Liebowitz, who was…. wait for it…. wait for it… a recess appointment to the FTC by George Bush.
This time it is totally different, though.
*** Update ***
Apparently, commenter Michael got all this from Jed Lewison at the Great Orange Satan, and did not attribute it, so apologies to Jed. Michael, you jackass.
*** Update #2 ***
Ruth has updated her piece with a rousing defense that states, as predicted, “this time it is totally different.” Hoocoodanode! Pro-tip: It’s always different when you and yours stand to gain.
vtr
Oh. Never mind.
Signed,
Roseanne Rosannadanna
james low
H/T to Jed Lewison on DK maybe?
Zifnab
In all fairness, if Marcus was married to Berrwick, I’m sure she’d feel differently.
General Stuck
Ruth Marcus is a wanker. So is Michael. btw.
Wile E. Quixote
Can we kill everyone at the Washington Post? Seriously, can we just kill them all? They haven’t produced any decent journalism since 1974 and have been completely and utterly incompetent since at least 1980 when they published Janet Cooke’s Jimmy’s World story and have become nothing more than a mouthpiece advocating and defending villager hypocrisy as well as having a standard of journalistic ethics lower than that of a high school newspaper, as witness Marcus’s shitfit about recess appointments or Anne Applebaum’s piece on why Roman Polanski should go free. Let’s just set the place on fire and shoot everyone in the legs when they try to flee the building, except for Krauthammer, go for the tires on his wheelchair.
Punchy
How does she feel about LeBron’s recess appointment of the Miami Heat? Serious question…she’s the only person, apparently, on the face of the Earth who hasnt yet expressed their thoughts to me on this subject.
eemom
Ruth Marcus is a vapid twat. She’s like a female David Brooks, only stupider.
John Cole
@james low: God damnit. I updated it.
Michael, don’t present other people’s work as your own.
Cat Lady
Did she really think that no one would ever sniff this out? In one second? Using teh googley? WTF?
El Cid
Yes, but Ruth Marcus is a Very Important Person, so different standards apply. Like Sally Quinn used to know. [And like Bobbie Dooley.]
james low
@eemom- So that makes Bobo, Chunky Bobo, And Bobette?
Mark S.
Ruth Marcus is married to Jon Stewart?
The WaPo has a problem with this type of thing, see Applebaum, Anne.
ETA: I see Wile mentioned Applebaum first.
Dracula
@John Cole: As all 41.73 “Michael”s on this blog collectively look around and over the shoulder in the classic “Wait..WTF you talkin’ to?” pose.
freelancer
@John Cole:
Time for a blogger ethics panel.
handy
I keep refreshing that page waiting for the WaPo online editor to add the disclaimer to the article that her husband was a recess appointment under a Republican president, but ain’t this the goddongitest thing–I never see one. Way to go liberal media.
Wile E. Quixote
@Cat Lady:
Probably, you have to remember that Ruth Marcus is not only a vapid bimbo, she’s also a vapid bimbo working in an industry that is deathly afraid of teh googley and that intertron that’s all full of toobz and everything.
Dork
@eemom: The t-word from a mom? MILF, I presume?
Arguingwithsignposts - ipod touchs
@Wile E. Quixote: They did produce the Walter reed va hospital story a couple of years ago
Yutsano
@Cat Lady: You seem to imply in your comment that Ruth would have some sense of shame about being caught like this. As the magic 8 ball says, signs point otherwise. Besides, we’ll get a “clarification” from Ruth about how her husband’s situation was completely different because shut up that’s why!
@elmo: That too.
John Cole
@Arguingwithsignposts – ipod touchs: Michael Moore was talking about Walter Reed in a movie five years before the WaPo story.
Bill E Pilgrim
Every time I read “recess appointment” I get this picture of overachieving kids with Blackberries and lunch meetings.
eemom
BUSTED.
Punchy
A better title for this post could have been:
“Marcus AreYouReallyUs?”
elmo
@Cat Lady:
I think we can deduce that she didn’t care. Because it’s irrelevant, you see. Of course the situation with her husband is totally, completely different from Berwick. Not even comparable.
Don’t you get it? Her husband was appointed by a
white guyRepublican.Sheesh!
Mary
@Wile E. Quixote: Can we keep the Post Express (free commuter paper) though? I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t do my free crossword during my commute.
David Hunt
@Cat Lady:
Sure, lots of people will figure it out. But she figures that no one who isn’t Little People will say anything about it. If it doesn’t end up in a major newspaper or a network news broadcast, then most of the proles will never here about it and she has great confidence that her Buddies in
The Ministry of Truththe Villagethe So Called Liberal Media will cover her on this and let her get away with it.Arguingwithsignposts - ipod touchs
@John Cole: And nothing got done during those five years, either. Because Michael Moore is fat, also too.
stuckinred
@John Cole: What do you expect from a punk like Michael?
Yutsano
@eemom: It’s my day off and I refuse to help myself.
asiangrrlMN
Oh good lord. I am so very very very tired (yes, three verys) of crap like this piece of shit column by Marcus. Seriously. Anonymous holds. Nine months wait to come up before committee. Rusty pitchfork headed your way, Marcus (and that’s not even mentioning her rank hypocrisy on the subject).
vtr
@Punchy: You had to go and mention King James, didn’t you. The only real enjoyment I’ve had during that entire overinflated story was by listening to Knicks fans call WFAN and commit hara kiri on the air.
daveX99
@John Cole: John — Thx for calling him on it, but I’m more freaked out by his casual use of curb stomping.
I only wish that I could unlearn what that means (I’m sensitive about teeth, maybe). It’s a horrible thing to wish upon a person.
asiangrrlMN
Obligatory FYWAVVVRPFWP
@Yutsano: Hon, you’re messing with my mind by commenting at this time. Quit it.
Aaaaah! Renegade hyphen causing nesting on Google Chrome in aisle three! (Not mine).
Comrade Mary
Hey, is anyone else seeing a chunk of white space above the posts Ten Years Behind and The Mexican Shark? They just showed up in the last 30 minutes or so. (Windows XP, Firefox 3.6).
Wile E. Quixote
@Mary:
Yeah, that’s a good point. OK, let me backtrack. We’ll set the WaPo on fire and shoot everyone except the crossword editor because crossword puzzles are a good thing because they make people smarter. Use the ammo you would have used on the crossword editor on Krauthammer’s wheelchair and David Broder, because the undead are surprisingly hard to kill.
bookcat
Don’t kill everyone at the Post. My husband works in IT. Those guys are cool.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I couldn’t make myself read it, but Kaplan Liberal Ruth Marcus had a column earlier this week explaining that high taxes on the rich are no way to fix the deficit. Once again, I quote Atrios, respectable opinion runs the gamut from The New Republic to Free Republic.
cleek
i vote that we stop suggesting any kind of violence against the WaPo. because, you know who else suggested violence against a newspaper?
Coulter. that’s who.
MikeJ
@Wile E. Quixote: Creators Syndicate does the WaPo xword.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: I do get days off you know. Though they do try to make me a slave. Oh and found out new job is a union gig too. I’m just packing up on teh evil here!
BTW you wanna end anonymous holds it’s actually very easy to do: stop making them anonymous. If you want to hold a nominee you have to put your name and reasoning behind why period or it’s a no go. In a rational legislative body that would be true anyway.
jl
I don’t mean to be rude, but IMHO that column is idiotic. A hysterical over reaction. Makes no mention of the small detail that a major health care reform bill passed, and that the provisions of it for controlling health care costs are vital to the real long run threat to solvency of US federal government: Medicare and Medicaid costs, and CMS is the federal agency in charge of those programs. Oh, but that would be discussing a substantive issue important to real ordinary people in the real ordinary world, which our childish and corrupt national affairs press prefers to avoid.
It is also poorly written. It states, without explanation ‘Berwick’s more incendiary comments on health care’, with not explanation of what those statements are. I am aware of no ‘incendiary statements’ made by Berwick on health care.
Even if Obama’s move can be interpreted as partly a cynical chickensh*t political move (which it may have been), the column is silly.
licensed to kill time
@Comrade Mary:
I thought it was just me o~O yep, I have big empty spaces on the front page, Firefox 3.6.6 also, too.
edit: 3 empty spaces, to be exact.
terry chay
From their comments section, it appears that the Washington Posts’s goal of becoming the next Washington Times is nearly complete. No sense in trying to prevent the inevitable by linking it here. :-)
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Not touching the slave comment, but yeah, I know today’s your day off. The House is actually trying to vote on ending anonymous holds–which has support on both sides of the aisle (supposedly). Yes. If someone wants to place an indefinite hold on a candidate, that person needs to put his name on the hold, damn it.
@jl: I love that you introduce your statement with the oh-so-polite, “I don’t mean to be rude” before dismantling Marcus. In my mind, Obama is perfectly justified in his recess appointment given how the Republicans are refusing to let so many of his nominees even come to committee.
@Yutsano: I am proud of you. You would make a fabu batshitcrazyrightwinger.
Pangloss
@Wile E. Quixote: “Go for the tires.” Awesome.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Allah forbid Obama use his Constitutionally appointed powers! Yes it’s in there, I wanna say article II (whichever one covers the executive branch) although in the wingnut Constitution that particular passage is suspended if the President is not a white male Republican. See? I do know how this game works!
El Tiburon
@stuckinred:
Where is that punk-ass bitch Michael? I bet Michael is really Jane Hamsher infiltrating over here to start a war between DK and BJ.
I of course, will take a BJ anytime.
El Cid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Remember, in the New Deficit Religion, you ignore the ‘revenue’ side of the budget ledger and only focus on the ‘spendin’ side, and only on the social and equality and employment part of the spendin’. ‘Cause of all the inflation, of course.
jl
The Tan Tax is an unconstitutional racist attack on white people, and denies them the right to obtain wrinkled leathery skin with ugly premature age spots and to die prematurely of melanoma. Rush is outraged, and is a victim, since he now knows what it is like to experience racism.
The WaPol story does a good job of shooting down the nonsense. I hope the reporter does not get fired for bias.
‘Tan tax’ discussions include allegations of reverse racism
Network NewsX Profile
By N.C. Aizenman
WaPo
Thursday, July 8, 2010; 5:18 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/08/AR2010070804488.html?hpid=topnews
james low
This discussion would not be complete without a little Baucus bashing. That POS was one of the first and loudest to shriek.
DougJ
Yes, great catch indeed. I saw that Marcus article but it was so long and annoying I couldn’t process it. She’s very liberal, though, don’t forget.
geg6
@daveX99:
You don’t hang around here much, do you? I only ask because curb stomping is a pretty mild punishment compared to the one we wish on people on a daily basis. I have no problem with the idea of Ruth Marcus getting curb stomped. In fact, I think the entire Village could use a little session of it.
geg6
@DougJ:
Yeah, so liberal. Her and all her PUMA friends.
Yutsano
@geg6: I don’t want them curb stomped. I want them to live on unemployment and food stamps for a year. Let them see how the hoi polloi live for once. That would be infinitely worse than mere physical pain for them.
asiangrrlMN
@jl: Hahahahahahaha, bite me. It’s so amusing that these people don’t like black people, but want their skin as dark as possible, and they don’t want to have to pay for it. They would be amusing if they weren’t so damn infuriating.
@Yutsano: I have been saying this for a long time. Make all these pundits and all the Congresspeople bleating about how lazy unemployed people are live on a real wage for one month. No health insurance, a mortgage, car insurance, working forty-sixty hours a week. One month. I bet none of them would last.
El Cid
@jl: ORANGE POWER!
jl
@asiangrrlMN:
I try to be polite, and since I myself can be mentally slow at times, I try to make allowances.
On other hand, Cole did not step on the giant moth in his bare feet in the middle of the night, so I don’t have to read a post about it, so I do have something to be thankful for.
What is with your historic house guide to Minneapolis in your blog? Were you a real estate agent, part of preservation organization, architecture buff, or something like that?
I couldn’t find pics of Minneapolis ranch houses. I wonder what the eastern US version of a ranch house is. I hope it is not like eastern US versions of Mexican festival food.
Are there many old time farmhouses around there? I mean the big two story jobbers with wrap around porches and big staircases? I love those, and was lucky enough to live in one for awhile, but the maintenance is high.
During the building boom in Central Valley, they built lots of pretentious homes with lots of wasted space and that were unlivable during the summer unless you wanted to sit inside with the air conditioner on high all day.
I don’t know why the did not use those wonderful old farmhouses as models. They have some of the same prestige features (high staircases, open two story entries) but are much more functional for hot summers than the stuff I saw built.
eemom
Ruth Marcus epitomizes the phrase “simpering idiot.” Also too.
To be fair though, she did say something smart once — though I forget what it was.
stuckinred
@geg6: Make em spend a day with Michael!
cat48
I’m just a “small people”, but I sent her an email [email protected] and told her she was a HYPOCRITE along with a list showing her husband’s RECESS appt.
geg6
@jl:
This whole tan tax thing makes me so, so happy.
First, Boehner is hit and hit hard by this. Who wouldn’t do a happy dance for that?
Second, my idiot sister has now stopped paying for my niece to tan because the prices have risen so much. I never could understand why in the world she would be financing my niece’s tanning. Just insane, IMHO. As I told the niece, if you need a tan that badly, you have a pool. Use it.
Third, my ex’s sister owns a huge tanning salon. She is a bitch and a Tea Bagger. I hope she chokes with rage over this.
Comrade Mary
@licensed to kill time: Yeah, it’s showing up on the previous page, too.
The lesson? CSS will break your fucking heart, babies.
asiangrrlMN
@jl: My brother is a real estate agent who has a special interest in character homes. I wrote most of the copy for that website. It’s still a work in progress, so we don’t have pics of all the different styles. Ranches here are called ramblers, and we have plenty of them. We don’t have many farm houses in the cities, but perhaps in the more rural area. My favorite style is the Spanish Mission.
I, too, was glad that my Cole did not step on a giant moth last night (or in any dog effluvia).
demo woman
Dana Millbank writes an online opinion piece on the Arizona law because the journalists and reporters refuse to.
Marcus a liberal slams Obama because he used his recess appointment and that appointment is reserved for only white presidents.
The Orange man tax is racist and that proves that the President is racist.
What else did I miss today?
eemom
@Wile E. Quixote:
This in particular. Normally I do not advocate violence against the disabled, but considering how tirelessly Krautie has fought to increase their number through his endless bloodthirst for warmongering, I think he deserves an exception.
Mark S.
@El Tiburon:
If he’s this Michael, he’s probably over at the VA hospital spitting on amputees.
If he’s a different one, my apologies sir.
eemom
@demo woman:
I think I heard that some basketball player is moving to Miami.
demo woman
The repubs not only think that the Orange Man Tax is racist, they thought the cigarette tax was an attack on the poor people. The WSJ said so.
geg6
@demo woman:
Ruth Marcus is NOT a liberal. She may say she’s a liberal. Other Villagers may call her a liberal. The WaPo may claim she is a liberal.
But she is not. She’s a member of the WaPo editorial board. She is a PUMA. She is not a liberal. Her biography on the WaPo website goes out of its way to say that, though she may seem like she might lean left, she is in no way a liberal or a Democrat.
She met her recess-appointed FCC Chair husband in the time honored Sally Quinn way (without the affair with a married man thing, I assume). She was reporting on the Clarence Thomas hearings, he was a Senate Judiciary Committee aide. This general biographical outline does not scream “liberal” to me. Screams “Village Idiot,” is what it screams.
Roger Moore
@asiangrrlMN:
Am I correct that this is supposed to be “Fuck You With A Very Very Very Rusty Pitch Fork Word Press”? Can we give you the Unitarian Jihad name “Sister Rusty Pitchfork of Common Decency”?
Wile E. Quixote
@eemom:
Misery loves company, Strangehammer wants to create more folks with disabilities so he won’t feel so alone any more. Sure, he’s got plenty of moral cripples to hang around with, but he’d like some physical ones as well.
cat48
@demo woman:
A lot of “poor looking” people smoke in SC & have been hit twice in the last yr for $1 a pack. Unfortunately, I’m one of the poor ones.
demo woman
@geg6: Village Idiot is a good term for her.
DougJ
@geg6:
I don’t love PUMAs but they’re not as bad as Ruth Marcus, in general. I’ll allow that Larry Johnson is, but he’s an outlier.
Ruth Marcus is an NPR/TNR style Vichy liberal.
daveNYC
WTF? Family subsidized tanning? And the person tanning has a pool and freaking is going to a coffin with UV lights instead?
Look, it sounds like that pool is being neglected. Send it my way and I’ll give it a good home.
Corner Stone
Does anyone know if Ruth Marcus and her husband know the Morrells?
jl
@asiangrrlMN: thanks. I forgot to look at the Spanish Mission pics to compare to what we have out here. Next time you are out west you should check out the old adobe houses, if you have not done so already.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: I could soooo see you in the Winchester mansion in California. Except for the warmth. Just sayin’.
licensed to kill time
@Comrade Mary:
I guess it’s too much to hope for that Señor Cole can fix it somehow, so here’s a hearty FYWP! and your CSS too.
jl
@geg6:
“This whole tan tax thing makes me so, so happy.
First, Boehner is hit and hit hard by this. Who wouldn’t do a happy dance for that?”
I am convinced Boehner uses shoe polish for his mantan, and I think I have ID’d the color (Kiwi ocher). If the GOP wins the House in November, I think he should step and class it up to Meltonian Beige.
I’ve mentioned this in comments twice, and have been waiting for the Johnny Bones shoe polish tan scandal to explode. But so far, nothing’s come of my mad detective skilzz.
jl
@Yutsano: That monstrosity is built like an old farmhouse, except metastasized. Too roomy for my taste.
Jason In the Peg
@daveX99: Most horrifying scene in American History X. Still can’t wash the image from my brain.
asiangrrlMN
@jl: We have more Spanish colonials here, which is not my fave. I love the true Spanish missions, but we have very few of them here. No pics on the site. This is one of the cooler ones in South Minneapolis (from another of my brother’s sites!). P.S. I hope you expose the great Boehner shoe polish scandal. The world needs to know.
@Yutsano: That’s freaking awesome. Except the whole guns thing. But, that would be utterly cool to live there.
asiangrrlMN
FYFWPWAVVVRPF!
Roger Moore:
Yes. That’s exactly what it is. I like the title you have bestowed upon me except take out the word common. Ain’t nothing common about my decency!
@jl: But, but, but, the mystery! I love the supernatural and such. Still, for living, it wouldn’t be my cuppa. So, on second thought, I would like to live there for a week.
geg6
@DougJ:
As I said, she is not a liberal.
Catsy
@John Cole:
This is really over the line, especially with publicly calling out and insulting Michael on the front page. It’s unreasonable to expect commenters to cite the original location of every single link or concept they find on the internet, and I didn’t see anything in his comment where he claimed the discovery as his own or lifted any verbiage from the original diary. He saw something somewhere else, he posted the links in a blog comment. Many of us do the same thing every single day here without this kind of unnecessary assholishness.
james low
@Catsy: Except when you copy a blogger’s post nearly word for word. He was clearly smart enough to post links to Jed’s source material, but not smart enough to link to Jed? That is total bullshit, and if you do it you should get your ass whipped for it.
Seanly
@eemom:
That would be pretty f’ing stupid.
The hypocrisy in conservative circles know no bounds.
Slightly different topic – I do love how any candidate who may have an affiliation to the Tea Party is a “Tea Party star”. They’re just Republicans who’re letting their freak flag fly. Case in point – yahoo headline for story about fruitcake Angle – “Tea party star on hot seat over comments”.
General Stuck
@Catsy:
I might agree with you, but he sequentially listed the exact same links and used them for quotes. I have at times come across a story from a source where I then went about doing my own googling and used different sources and constructed the story in my own way without crediting my original introduction to the story. That isn’t all that cool on my part, and have mostly quit doing it, but how Michael did it was virtually copy the DK story and links and added a few words of his own. That made it look like he had done original work.
Yutsano
@General Stuck: The whole mess could have been easily avoided with a h/t Jed for GOS. Then it wouldn’t even be an issue. But Michael played it like he came up with all the source material on his own. Yeah, definitely in the not cool category.
daveX99
@geg6: You say:
…& I have to confess: you are correct. I don’t hang out here much. I read the Original Posts, but rarely wade into the comments.
I admit the image of curb stomping is just particularly nasty for me (thx for the others reminding me it’s from American History X – I think I blocked that).
I gotta point out that you are also correct in that there is quite a load of violent rhetoric in here – in this very thread, in fact. I must be getting old or something, but it feels creepy. I know I’ve said stuff like that myself occassionally, so I’m a bit hypocritical perhaps.
Catsy
@james low:
If you had actually read the original diary, you’d know that he did nothing of the sort. He posted the links and a few lines in his own words to explain the context. That’s all.
Oh, horseshit. Pick just about any BJ post, and I guarantee you I can find comments posted by a number of respected regulars where they comment on an article they found on one blog or another and link to the original article rather than the blog that linked to it. It happens every day as we randomly find things on the internet and link them, and it is entirely unremarkable.
It’s one thing to lift someone else’s blog post verbatim for your own blog or editorial. It’s another thing entirely to post a comment with links you found elsewhere without listing exactly where you found them. It’s insane to hold a discussion thread to the same strict editorial standards that you would a newspaper or blog.
What’s really going on here is that John saw Michael’s comment in another thread, liked it enough to blog it with a h/t to his commenter, and is now embarrassed because he’s been put in the position of appearing like he lifted a DK diary. So to alleviate his embarrassment and make it clear he wasn’t trying to rip off a DK diarist, he’s gone off on Michael in a completely inappropriate way that publicly calls him out as a plagiarist who’s trying to pass someone’s work off as his own without a shred of evidence that that was actually his intent.
It’s a dick move and John owes Michael an apology–it was John’s decision to blog the comment, not Michael’s.
He posted the links. He added a few words of his own because the relationship between the links would be meaningless without the explanation.
Would it have been better if he’d linked to the diary? Sure. But you guys are treating him as if he’d put up his own blog and done a deliberate copypasta plagiarism job from the diary, and there’s a hell of a lot of real estate between that and the more likely explanation that he thought it was a useful thing to point out and didn’t think of linking the diary rather than the source material, and it’s absurd to treat blog comments the same way you would an blog post or news article.
stuckinred
@Catsy: He’s a fucking punk and he deserves everything he gets. How you like that?
Catsy
@stuckinred:
I would like it better if you’d add “neener neener” to it, as that would put your response in the appropriate age group.
stuckinred
@Catsy: Who the fuck are you? You need to check this shithead out before you start jumping to his defense.
james low
@Catsy: Do you happen to be a close personal friend of Jayson Blair?
stuckinred
@Catsy: This is the gem you are protecting
General Stuck
@Catsy: As one who has felt the sting of getting called out on the front page of BJ by it’s owner, I am a little sympathetic to your charge.
But I don’t think he deserves an apology from the blog owner. There is a fine line between being inspired by someone elses work and stealing it for your own. I think it’s close enough to the theft side to be called that, no matter if in comments or not. Cole’s sin was trusting us dipshits enough to accept the story as original work when it wasn”t.
As for the general flaming in the comment threads, such as my first comment that was posted before Cole’s update, I think that has to do more with past commentary by Michael. When someone suggests soldiers need to be spit on, then i give them no quarter ever again, on anything. And I fully expect the same in return.
El Tiburon
@Catsy:
Shorty Catsy: LEAVE MICHAEL ALOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE!!
stuckinred
@El Tiburon: I notice his featherweight ass is nowhere to be found.
El Tiburon
@John Cole:
Must be time for a “people who post in the comment section of blogs” Ethics panel.
Question: am I a journalist, and if so, do I have the right to own a gun?
Maude
@Catsy:
You keep contradicting yourself. Learn how to argue a point.
kay
Don’t bother reading past that first paragraph.
She’s just lazy. She never bothered to learn a single thing about health care, which is pretty amazing, considering she works for The Washington Post, and they just “covered” the drafting of a massive health care bill.
She has picked up from reading headlines that this guy is a legit health care policy heavy-weight, in the area of cost and quality (which is the real health care issue, and the debate the moronic media never allowed us to have) and she doesn’t know shit, so has to level a protest based on nothing.
I imagine they’re terrified of him. He tells the truth. We pay too much for health care, and it doesn’t have to be that way.
I anticipate massive media freak-outs, weekly, once he starts his new job. I’m looking forward to reams of uninformed commentary.
handy
@stuckinred:
I’m assuming the @Linda and what comes after is a quote, yes?
El Tiburon
@stuckinred:
Probably preparing for his new job as Editor at the Washington Post.
Michael
Sorry about that and apologies to all. In the future, please avoid handing me kudos. I don’t do original reportage, and because I put things up in frequently unpleasant waters so as to educate, I’m not in the habit of attributing GOS articles as a source because that will cause immediate attitude hardening.
Michael
@John Cole:
Again, sorry. The fault is entirely mine, andI claim no original attribution for anything. Frankly, I was horrified when I first saw the kudos.
kay
Our incredibly conventional, fairy-tale-seeking media are going to be frightened by simple, true statements like that, so prepare for a complete melt-down. They never acknowledged that we ration care, because it never affected them.
They’re going to require a LOT of hand-holding.
Obama better cue up the President-as-Daddy speeches, pronto. I think Berwick should wear a lab coat at the press conference, so they know he’s a doctor.
Jules
Looks like Ruth did an update explaining why her hubby’s recess appointment is not the same thing as Berwick’s….I hate these people.
kay
@Jules:
I feel as if it’s going to be really hard for them to accept that what we (well, ordinary people who read….information) debated during the horrendous health care process was actually intended to happen.
They didn’t follow it.
I don’t know what the hell they thought Obama was doing at all those meetings and trips to hospitals and health care systems in Minnesota and Wisconsin and Ohio, but he was actually learning something, and he fully intends to apply what he learned.
I don’t know that he plans on bringing them up to speed. I’m not sure he has time.
It’s too bad, really. They chose to concentrate on Sarah Palin Tweets and Tea Party protests. They missed the whole story. Again.
General Stuck
From the Marcus story.
So Marcus concedes that senate wingnuts have been “implacable” which of course means filibustering or otherwise obstructing anything Obama wants to do. Setting records on filibusters that dwarf any other senate minority in our history, and largely focuses it’s obstruction of a large number Obama appointments. Some of which in the national security area for leaders in key departments, while at the same time clamoring that Obama is slacking on national security and not keeping the country safe.
But she’s all a flutter that Obama pre empts the “recalcitrant” wingnuts in one case by a recess appointment. It’s like someone complaining about changing train shedules during the London Blitz.
Jules
@kay:
You are right of course.
It never fails…some talking head idiot will say “Obama should be doing this” or a Villager writes “if Obama was doing this” then all would work out EXCEPT in most cases what they are whining he should do are things he had done but they are not. paying.any.attention.
Like I said.
I hate them.
Blue Neponset
Mrs. Jon Liebowitz updated her post to tell us all how she isn’t a hypcrite:
El Tiburon
@Michael:
Michael, don’t worry about these d-bags around here. I supported you the entire time. I had your back.
gil mann
@daveX99:
No, you’re right, it’s creepy. And it’s a shame, because Wile E.’s pretty witty when he’s not issuing death-threats, which is, like, never.
But then, you’d have problems with violent ideation too if you spent that much time in the phone with Acme tech support.
Mark S.
@Jules:
Shorter Ruth Marcus update:
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal
Fuck it. Every nomination Obama makes should come with a declaration that, if there hasn’t been an up-or-down vote in 90 days, he’s going to make a recess appointment.
stuckinred
@El Tiburon: El Tiburon
Where is that punk-ass bitch Michael? I bet Michael is really Jane Hamsher infiltrating over here to start a war between DK and BJ.
I of course, will take a BJ anytime.
Sir Charles
Just for the record, Leibowitz is a Democrat. The FTC, like many of the commissions in the federal government has to have a bi-partisan make up, hence his appointment by Bush.
Having said that, I hated that fucking column. An amzing thing to get outraged about in the current environment.