Mickey pulls the broom aside and tries speaking to it very. slowly.
By Tim F. July 20th, 2011
It dawns on the people who empowered Eric Cantor that his tea party idiots carry their own water now.
A bit too fucking late.
Posted in Teabagger Stupidity
I’ve seen this movie before. The mad scientist creates his monster, and only after it goes lurching off into the night to terrorize the local population does he realize that he forgot to leash-train the thing.
It usually doesn’t end well for the monster, the scientist, or the villagers.
-dms
July 20th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
It’s a new world of Gods and Monsters.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:21 pm
I am become default, destroyer of worlds.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Eric Cantor is dumber than a box of hair.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Remember the end, where the sorcerer walks in, parts the waters, grabs his hat, and swats Mickey in the ass with the last remaining broom?
That’s Obama in my dreams. I don’t know who it’ll be in reality.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Or perhaps:
“And I looked, and behold a pale
horseElephant and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”July 20th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
“Eric Cantor breast fed until he was 23”
Sorry, every time I see his sneering image that is the first thing that comes to mind.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Eric Cantor is like a Platonic Perfect Form of the Asshole President of your local College Republicans.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:31 pm
I’ll give the sanctimonious prick credit for staying on message but doesn’t he realize that pissing off his own rainmakers is probably not in his best interests?
I can only conclude the sanctimonious prick isn’t taking marching orders from any old republican millionaire/billionaire but exclusively allowing the KochBros Freedom Brigade to give him his dancing instructions (like the trained monkey he is). Makes me wonder if we could use this to try to split the ‘non-deranged’ republican millionaires/billionaires from the KochBros Freedom Brigade….Hmm….I wonder.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:33 pm
Kick ass post title.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
I read stories like this, and I can’t help but have an instinctive and overly-emotional “the first against the wall…” reaction.
It is breathtaking watching how quickly a highly motivated and organized radical faction can take over a political party and tear apart the world’s largest economy. From the Reagan presidency to now, all it took was 31 years.
Wow.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:38 pm
This deserves waaay more attention: a Gold Star mom calls wingnut AZ congresscritter to task for turning the national debt issue into some kind of “support the troops” bullshit. Read it here …
July 20th, 2011 at 1:38 pm
@ Cat Lady
A-the fuck-men to that.
I am actually fascinated by how stupid he is. His facial expression is the most vacuous one I have ever seen on a human being. It is that of a man unknowing whether his ass is before or behind him.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:39 pm
@eemom 13: Your description sounds like Paul Ryan, too. Are all these young Rethugs just holographs of some evil Randian entity?
July 20th, 2011 at 1:41 pm
It’s religion. How much of religion is focused on self-interest?
July 20th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
If, as the article suggests, Cantor and the House Republicans are ignoring even their wealthy donors on the debt ceiling/deficit issue, the only conclusion is that Cantor et al. don’t care about lowering taxes, they don’t care about the wealthy, all they care about is crashing the economy on Obama’s watch. And either they don’t even care about their own political fortunes, and/or they have other donors waiting in the wings to bankroll them some way or another if they achieve their objective of forcing Obama out of the White House.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:46 pm
So much for the Masters of the Universe reigning in the GOP.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
@Kathleen
@Redshirt had the answer:
All of these guys remind me of the leadership of the College Republicans when I was in college (early 90s). And they’re about the right age to have been raised up through the College Republican system running at that time and just prior to that time.
The joke at my college was always that the College Republicans seemed like organized crime in training and the College Democrats were incompetent and fought with each other more than the WWF. Ha ha. Funny joke.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:49 pm
In related news, Obama killed the gang of six proposal yesterday bay saying that he would be willing to work with them.
That, by itself is enough to make it unacceptable to the true believers.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:50 pm
@Ash Can: #16
What you are describing could be termed political suicidal agents.
Not that I disagree.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:51 pm
He must be followed around by a security detail that keeps him from walking into walls, or tripping on curbs, otherwise he’d be a bloody mess.
He’s doing something right, though – he’s already the de facto Speaker of the House. You will notice that no one’s even bothering to talk to Boehner anymore.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:51 pm
“Obama killed the gang of six proposal yesterday”
yippee! this is the flipside of the ‘Obama is offering to cut $4T from medicare’ foofaraw
July 20th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Rich people suddenly realize they might become poor shortly before being strung up and start to panic.
Film at 11.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:59 pm
This seems about right. The right doesn’t want to raise taxes as part of the debt deal simply because if the government isn’t running a deficit it becomes much harded to convince people that the government is incompetant and evil.
If govenrment isn’t incompetant and evil people might actually start to believe that government is capable of solving problems such as regulating markets and other socialist claptrap.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:59 pm
@Linda Featheringill: I mean, look at Scott Walker, for example. I think it’s plausible that he really is stupid enough to believe he’d be greeted as a liberator for doing away with public unions in Wisconsin. However, due to the fact he didn’t say boo about that during the campaign and ran on jobs, jobs, jobs (just like the rest of the teabag mafia across the country), I also think it’s plausible that his actual intention was to do as much for the robber barons as possible in however much time he had before he was voted out, recalled, indicted, whatever. I shouldn’t be shocked or surprised when sociopaths act like sociopaths, but for some reason I am.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Cantor and his followers in the House have convinced themselves that failing to raise the debt ceiling will result in them being greeted as liberators. Cantor is probably humming “Hail to the Chief” (If he can remember the tune) in private moments.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:01 pm
@ Redshirt : Cantor is close, but he doesn’t have the standard-issue Republican haircut. Neither does Ryan. Marco Rubio, on the other hand, absolutely nails it.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:01 pm
@eemom:
definitely B Ark material
July 20th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
@Ash Can #16:
Winner winner chicken dinner!
I’ve been saying for some time that today’s GOP is treating us (if you can call it that) to the spectacle of what would have happened in 1861 if the CSA states had done the smart thing and remained in the Union while using every tool of sedition and sabotage to discredit and destroy the govt from within, on Lincoln’s watch.
We traced the call and it is coming from inside the house!
July 20th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
I don’t think you realize just how easy a 40% reduction in federal expenditures would be to achieve, or how minimal the fallout—if any. In fact, it would usher in a new golden age.
I learned this from Kevin Drum’s commenters. Wonderfully astute bunch.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
@joe527
I thought you were just mildly joking, but that’s exactly what a tip to Mike Allen from a Republican staffer apparently says
I don’t like to give much weight to anonymously sourced staffers, so I take it with a grain of salt. Still – it certainly fits the narrative that if Obama likes it Republicans will hate it.
Somedays I think that Obama should come out and ask Congress for a bill that extols the virtues of Mom, Apple Pie, Baseball and the American Flag and watch the Republicans twist in the wind to come up with something to denounce all of those things as Communist plots.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
He’s even dumber than all the really dumb boxes of hair, the ones the other boxes of hair make fun of for being so dumb.
...I heard someone say that the other day and I wanted to re-use it.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Did anyone really talk to Hastert when Tom Delay was available to take a call?
July 20th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
@eemom 13
@Kathleen 14
Ryan and Cantor are Replicants, and we need a Deckard, fast.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
@NonyNony:
Anonymous Staffer is only half-right. That nonsense would stop the minute Obama said “Hey, I’ve seen the light. Our top marginal rate of income tax is waaaaaaaaay too high.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:06 pm
@8.Redshirt – July 20, 2011 | 1:31 pm · Link
He’s a Winklevoss triplet.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/2.....?hpt=hp_t2
July 20th, 2011 at 2:08 pm
The gop appear hell-bent on destroying Obama through any means necessary. Blowing up the world economy is a small price for them to pay.
And the gop knows their policies are unpopular. Thats what being a gooper means-putting forward shit policy that is bad for ordinary Americans.
The gwb admin was soooo hated by 2008, we elected a black guy. The gop do not care about being punished in 2012. They will simply reconstitute more to the right, and in two years or less, be back on top.
The murikan electorate aint too..uh…bright.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:09 pm
It’s been weird over the past decade or so, seeing the Republican party become progressively more and more deranged, to the point now where it’s prepared to bring down the world economy if it doesn’t get its way.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:09 pm
@NonyNony
My version of your quote is for Obama to forcefully come out in favor of taking brisk walks, which will then be followed by Republicans furiously racing each other to reenact Cary Elwes’ infamous scene in Saw.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:16 pm
Ash Can @ 16,
You could be right. But the vital third leg of that strategy is a national Media willing and able to sell the argument that default, and everything bad that flows from it, is all that dastardly Obama’s fault. The Teabaggers are crazy enough to march off the cliff for ideological reasons, but would the corporate owners of the MSM really be willing to instruct their people to give them cover out of Party loyalty?
Me haz ma doots.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
That’s an insult to both boxes and hair
July 20th, 2011 at 2:22 pm
If we go into default, and Obama prioritizes debt payment, which he pretty much has to do, and then cuts spending to receipts on hand, I suspect the the murikan electorate is going to get a crash course in civics.
It would be terribly interesting for him to throw the spending choices over the wall and let the congress decide what bills get paid with what is left. But not interesting in a good way.
When you contemplate that, it becomes crystal clear that the congress simply cannot act and is waiting for Obama to save their asses by invoking the 14th amendment or some such chicanery – for which they will thank him by impeaching him, either literally or at least in the press.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:23 pm
@Tony J:
The MSM wouldn’t have to work very hard to pin the blame on Obama for the negative results of failing to raise the debt ceiling. If the SS checks don’t go out, National Parks close and air traffic grinds to a halt, that will be Obama just trying to make the heroic Republicans look bad. “Everybody knows” that if we just stopped funding Planned Parenthood, stopped paying the welfare queens, and gave up sending foreign aid to Obama’s Muslim buddies, there’d be enough money to pay for everything and cut taxes as well.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:28 pm
42. PreservedKillick:
Why not do it via the proposed “$2T platinum coin” method? AFAICT it’s completely legal, and would show what a farce the whole thing is.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
That’s why it’s critical that congress make those choices.
Just so everybody knows.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
What I find most fascinating about this is that there’s nothing stopping these filthy rich bastards from spending money on media campaigns, attacking the Republicans.
Since they don’t, we seem to be looking at these (possibly overlapping) reasons:
(1) They really care more about taxes being raised (reason to help GOP) than about debt default;
(2) There’s some kind of collective action problem involved in a campaign re debt default that doesn’t exist for taxes. (E.g. for anti-tax agitation, they can just tap into the GOPs own machinery; for this, they’d pretty much have to create it de novo.)
July 20th, 2011 at 2:36 pm
PK @ 42 “for which they will thank him by impeaching him”
Of course, Clinton’s came after 1996, but by 1999 people wanted him to have a third term, so I do not think impeachment over saving SS checks for grandma will achieve the GOP goal of a one term presidency.
Liberal @ 44 How does the $2T platinum coin help? Who would buy it? The FED?
July 20th, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Rick Taylor wrote,
To me the weird (though I guess not entirely unexpected) thing is that the “he said, she said” bullshit from the MSM has no limits, regardless of how crazy the GOP gets.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:39 pm
They are hedged against a default.
They will probably make money off of it.
They are covering their asses by asking the republicans in congress to raise their taxes.
Watch.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:41 pm
ThatLeftTurnInABQ wrote,
Heh. That’s a good one.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
There’s no counter-party big enough. They might be individually hedged, but we saw in 2008-9 how valuable that can be—or not
July 20th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
@49 PreservedKillick:
Actually, that reminds me of a question I had recently. If we assume that fiscal austerity is going to occur (regardless of whether we think it’s prudent, putting aside “who’s to blame,” etc), then what’s a good place to put money?
Meaning, a moderate amount of deflation, and not bad enough to answer “guns and ammo.”
The uncreative answer would be “cash,” but I’m wondering if there’s not a class of bonds with relatively low credit risk.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:46 pm
@liberal: True deflation, but not guns-and-ammo bad, cash is an appreciating asset.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
catclub wrote,
Exactly. Not my idea, just something floating around the blogs. AFAICT it’s completely legal. Treasury mints a $2T (or more!!) platinum coin—-the statute allowing it to mint such coins in arbitrary denomination is on the books. It takes the coin over to the Fed, and buys back that much debt.
Debt limit is the same, but now the debt is down by $2T or whatever.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Dennis SGMM @ 43,
That was kind of my point. They could do that, but would the corporations that own the US Media (who would be – badly – hurt by a default) be willing to do it for a Teahaddist mob that just blew up the economy and clearly don’t give a shit what they want? They’re not true believers like the 27%ers, they just want to game the system in the most profitable way possible. Default doesn’t do that for them.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
@53 Davis X. Machina:
Yeah, I know. But I was thinking greedy and was wondering why not get something like super-duper highly rated corporates (short term etc), or (shudder) Treasuries.
Though I’ll probably stay in cash, which is fine as long as the Fed/Treasury/whatever backstops money market funds in a disaster, like they did before.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:51 pm
@liberal #48:
I suspect that the MSM does have a limit but it appears that we haven’t reached that limit yet. And the MSM has been appeasing (when not actively aiding) the Right for so long and in such a blatant and unapologetic fashion that at this point the burden of proof is on the media to show that they do have a limit to what sort of right-wing nonsense they will parrot and that we are in fact approaching that limit, which is my answer to the point Tony J makes in comment #40.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:52 pm
catclub wrote,
Difference is that by 1999 the economy was really doing well (whether or not Clinton coudl really take credit), and right now the economy is really doing badly (whether or not Obama should really take the blame).
July 20th, 2011 at 2:53 pm
@liberal
The problem with the trillion dollar coin trick is that it’s too clever by half. It’s hard to explain and we already have a bit of Gold Bug fever in this country. When you pull something like that that relies so heavily on the fact that money is only as real as we all allow it to be it runs the risk of upsetting things even more than they are.
On the other hand Bill Clinton’s solution – which is to say “Congress allocated $X in spending and $Y in revenue so they’ve already set a default debt limit by not keeping Y less than X” and then just doing what you need to do to spend the $X that Congress has already has allocated is an attractive solution. It has the benefit of being simple whether you believe that money is dug out of the ground or just bits to keep score. And it’s very easily Constitutionally defensible – Congress passed a debt limit law. Congress passed a budget law. Obama is responsible for enforcing the laws Congress passes. When those laws contradict – well he can enforce the law he wants and then wait for either Congress or the SCOTUS to clear up the contradiction.
The 14th amendment solution is the worst possible solution in my mind because it does the most harm to the hardest hit group of people. I hope Clinton’s take is being seriously considered and the 14th amendment solution is being kept in reserve if they really do decide that clinton’s take is, for some reason, not constitutional.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:54 pm
RalfW@34
The other day a commenter here said every time he/she sees Cantor or Ryan, he/she thinks they must have gotten beat up a lot as kids. Very funny. When I told my spouse that, he said, “Well, they should have been beat up a lot”.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Assuming we don’t default on the debt but just cut the hell out of spending everywhere else, wall street likely dives (because the economy just went in the shitter) and the screams of the populace get loud, but finding a decent hedge should be possible, since the entire financial system should not go blooey. South, yes, but blooey, no.
Assuming we actually default on the debt, no counter party possible. That’s it, kids.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
ThatLeftTurnInABQ wrote,
Unfortunately true, AFAICT. I get the deadtree WashPost, and while the house editorials mildly imply the Republicans are out of bounds with their hostage taking, they keep up with this “OTOH this really is a good time to start trimming entitlements” bullshit, and go nowhere near the needed conclusion (to wit, the Republican party is a threat to the nation).
July 20th, 2011 at 2:56 pm
@59 NonyNony,
I like the coin solution, because as far as I can tell it’s entirely legal on its face—-no need to engage in legal reasoning like you do in “Bill C” solution. Though I understand your reasoning—-I assume you mean it’s politically untenable.
July 20th, 2011 at 2:59 pm
Heh. I’d like to see the tiny bump in inflation that gambit would create.
Not kidding. I really would. We could use it.
July 20th, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Well, if you are going that route, why not inflate big time.
Mint about $500T in coins. Take what you need to the Fed and hold the rest in reserve, just to freak people out.
Let’s have some inflation, we really could use it.
July 20th, 2011 at 3:06 pm
Tim F. wrote,
Actually, I don’t think it would create any at all, for better (would make it easier to get accepted) or for worse (we need inflation right now).
You’d just be exchanging Treasuries sitting at the Fed for a coin sitting at the Fed. It wouldn’t circulate.
Further rely to NonyNony: I guess you’re not just alluding to politics, but the (necessary) public faith in money as a store of value. I don’t think anything untoward would happen, though I see what you mean now.
Motto of the platinum coin campaign ought to be: Seigniorage, bitchez!
July 20th, 2011 at 3:09 pm
@NonyNony: I’d like to see Obama make a public statement against swigging Clorox bleach straight out of the bottle. I hate to think of how many of our nation’s problems that would solve right there.
July 20th, 2011 at 3:42 pm
And here’s the rank hypocrisy of the Tea Party crowd. Note that there are whiners in the comment section saying “Democrats do it too.” Maybe, but they don’t go around condemning earmarks and accusing others of fiscal irresponsibility.
July 20th, 2011 at 4:02 pm
@liberal
Exactly. When it comes to the politics of the trillion dollar coin vs. the 14th amendment solution vs. Bill Clinton’s “hey you’ve already allocated the money suckers, deal with the consequences” I honestly have no idea which one wins out. I don’t even know enough to know if it matters politically to be honest – Republicans will scream no matter which path is taken, Obama will be threatened with impeachment, the idiots in the House will pose and posture, the idiots in the Senate will write some kind of non-binding angry letter, and life will go on.
I’m worried about the overall faith in money overall. The goldbuggers are already out there trying to convince people that US currency is worthless. The trillion dollar coin gambit is something that is outright predicated on the fact that money is tied up in the value of the US as a country, not anything physical. Which might bring people who normally don’t question the value of their money over to the goldbuggers side of the fence. That makes it a questionable tactic in my mind.
July 20th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
Hasn’t anyone pointed out that if the US defaults, FEMA gets shut down, and it’s hurricane season?
On that note, anyone else betting that Perry will get the rain he prayed for-in the form of a Cat 5 hurricane hitting Galveston?
July 20th, 2011 at 4:19 pm
Davis X. Machina
You weren’t kidding about Kevin Drum’s commenters. They must have come over from McCardle’s site because I’ve never seen a gathering of crazy like that. Kevin’s usual commenters decided to skip.
July 20th, 2011 at 4:53 pm
@Canuckstani Tom… we can only hope!
July 20th, 2011 at 8:21 pm
Ash can:
Because then they can implement “disaster capitalism,” as Naomi Klein pointed in her book The Shock Doctrine.
Once the economy crashes due to the default, it’ll be used as an excuse to justify eliminating the minimum wage, making unions illegal, selling off the highways and airports and prisons to private enterprise.
After all, “it’s a crisis,” they’ll say. “We have no choice.”
July 21st, 2011 at 1:23 am