To the fainting couches we go:
I hate the term “war on women”. It’s so hackish and echoes with the kind of liberal screechiness that backfires with everyone else. But the fact that there is a wave of laws in GOP controlled states, making abortion harder and harder and more humiliating to obtain, and what can reasonably be described as a full-bore assault on Planned Parenthood, is simply undeniable.
This one paragraph really says so much about Sullivan, and not in a positive way. He really does just initially fall in line with whatever the authoritarian right belches out, because at least there is a level of machismo there, and he doesn’t have to identify with those pussy Democrats and their screechy liberalism.
Even though they are right.
(via)
*** Update ***
Sullivan in 2008:
Screechy! And shrill! It really only is about things that affect him directly, isn’t it? The broad assault on women doesn’t impact him, so accurately labeling it a war on women (it ain’t just abortion, either, Andrew- they are fighting re-authorization of VAWA and doing things like rolling back equal pay statutes as well as lots of other things) is just whiny hackishness.
(via)
amk
shorter sully – even if you’re right and true, stfu, because I got something to say.
MattF
He’d be an aesthete, if he had any taste.
Culture of Truth
Unlike Fifth Column
gaz
I wonder if he ever grows weary of being wrong all the time. It must be exhausting.
Surreal American
So using “war” is hackish, but “full-bore assault” is fine?
Ok then.
Linda Featheringill
I think he admitted that you’re right about this one, John. You probably aren’t going to get much more out of him.
Alexandra
Once a regular reader (I’m not entirely sure why), I’m really starting to detest him. Besides, all the religious wankery and stale stuff that his elves have pulled from Reddit or Buzzfeed winds me up no end. Tosser.
khead
I have already shot my quota of fish in the barrel today.
SatanicPanic
There’s someone else who is being hackish on this issue and his name is Andrew Sullivan
DonkeyKong
Rather than ideas, Sullivan has crushes. Hey, I just made a Sully Award.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Cole fell off the Sullivan wagon today. It had been a while since that useless sack o’ shit was “featured” here.
I hear there are “Sullivans Anonymous” chapters across the country…
Mike Goetz
He’s not falling in line with the authoritarian right, he just hates how the left sounds sometimes. “Shrill” has become a sort of running gag, but there are times when that is accurate.
I wouldn’t say that in this case, though.
GregB
I am tired of your decadent dispatches from your liberal enclave in West Virginia.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Sullivan’s a fashionable leather overcoat and an armband away from being a card-carrying member of the Gestapo.
Which I think he would quite enjoy. In no uncertain terms, he creeps me out.
EDIT: Also, can’t help but notice that he’s a raging misogynist.
Linda Featheringill
Do the guys [and I do mean males] on the Right understand that for women, everything rests on being able to choose whether and when to have children? Everything.
If they don’t understand, perhaps a little education is in order. It doesn’t have to be harsh in order to be effective.
If they already know this and are still behaving as they do, then fugum.
Felinious Wench
Don’t forget, there’s a War on Christmas, a War on Drugs, a War on Corporations, etc. Seems to me we’re just following a rhetorical pattern from the Right.
All’s fair in love and hyperbole.
beltane
@MattF: That is very Oscar Wildean of you. And also very true.
Bob2
Sullivan’s obvious problems with understanding that which would crush his own worldview abound.
He rarely learns his lesson from his mistakes. He’ll go and do a fantastic feature like asking his audience for feedback on abortions and then be so clueless as to wonder why women have a problem with him another day, or why people have problems with his Charles Murray pimping.
Btw, can’t we thank him for contributing to pimping Douthat, Friedersdorf and McCardle etc. all those years ago? I mean, every upwardly failing Ivy Leaguer pundit needs another Ivy League patron.
Sorry Freddie, I think they kept you around as a token lefty for years because you aren’t threatening since you go off the rails emotionally and have to apologize.
beltane
@Alexandra: Once I realized that all of Sully’s cool links were to Boing Boing, I began to bypass him and head for Boing Boing directly.
Svensker
@Culture of Truth:
Ha ha ha. Perfect.
jl
” the kind of liberal screechiness that backfires with everyone else ”
Does Sullivan mean his ‘everyone else’ independent and conservative compatriots who eat up the wars on Christmas tinsel, Easter Bunny Jesus, big lawns, conservative women pundit floozies, and junk food snacking cakes, pink slime and gloppy fake cheese pizzas for school lunch and other all American institutions?
Fox, Murdoch and company have been warning us about those satanic plots for years.
Hunter Gathers
You think this is bad? You should check out Kathleen Parker‘s latest
Except for that whole Katrina thing.
Turgidson
@Linda Featheringill:
That’s his point, though. Sullivan’s schtick these days, now that even his innumerate ass can’t deny the insanity of the GOP anymore, is to say something along the lines of leading with, “well, Democrats/liberals are total fartknocker poopyfaces”.. and then sheepishly admitting, as a footnote, that they’re 100% right on substance.
And as noted above, this is fucking Mr. Fifth Column. The fact that he thinks he has the moral authority to lecture anyone, ever, on civility and word choice is preposterous.
Bob2
He just went after Zizek today for being “pseudo”.
The irony escapes him.
And to quote him here today:
“Britain is now officially – and unexpectedly – in a double-dip recession. Maybe revised stats will change this. But more worrying is that most of the cuts in spending have yet to really bite. The debt is, however, currently stable, even if growth is lower than anemic”
IT WAS TOTALLY EXPECTED YOU ASSHAT.
Ben Cisco
Knew who it was before I finished the first graf.
Even when he’s on your side (ostensibly), he’s a pain in the ass. Ugh.
jl
@Turgidson:
” then sheepishly admitting, as a footnote, that they’re 100% right on substance ”
What is this ‘substance’ of which you speak? If your side is winning on social opinion engineering, perception management, PR, ie, fibs and misdirection for years, substance is for losers.
Hunter Gatherers @ 22 is another example. What is more important, going to an important state to talk about policy, or cancelling the trip because some washed up politician and a minor party functionary are generating squalid news that most people in NC, certainly most in the US, do not care about? What is really important is that Parker found an angle to type up 750 words and do some conservative opinioneering.
Tractarian
From now on, can we stop acting surprised when Sullivan says something in a lame attempt to re-affirm his identity as a “Conservative”?
The guy has written entire books striving, in vain, to somehow reconcile his center-left views with the word “Conservative.”
If he were to ever admit that he is not a “Conservative”, he’d probably shrivel up and disappear – *poof* – leaving only a cloud of Burkean resolve where he once stood.
Fwiffo
“War” is a screech, but “full-bore assault” is completely civil and reasonable.
Svensker
@Bob2:
I noticed both of those myself this morning. Was going to send him a quick e-mail but then I remembered he doesn’t read my e-mails anymore. And most of the time I’m not even very rude!
MattF
@beltane: It’s easy and irresistible to be snarky about Sullivan. He does post links to Garry Wills, though:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/apr/24/bullying-nuns/
and it’s fair to say that goes to the plus side of the ledger.
Ben Cisco
@Hunter Gathers: OMG you’re right – that IS worse!
khead
@Hunter Gathers:
The first comment is about making the trains run on time….
Bostondreams
OT, but has anyone else noted a sudden surge in a story about the Obama labor department looking to ban ‘farm chores’? It’s all over my Facebook, and Ive simply been pasting a paragraph from the proposal that demonstrates the lie. This proposal is months old.
Coordinated attack?
Paul in KY
@Forum Transmitted Disease: He’s a smarmy piece of shit.
schrodinger's cat
I found John Cole through Sullivan’s links but these days whenever I venture over there I am either disappointed or get mad at his clueless entries like the one above. Is it me or has the Daily Dish, become a dish rag?
ETA: If he wants to show how macho he is why not open up the blogs for comments?
Ben Cisco
@Tractarian: Lulz.
Carnacki
A good friend of mine who lived in DC worked out at the same gym as Sullivan and often shared a locker next to him. I beg, pleaded, cajoled, belabored and asked politely for him to place some Icy Hot creme in Sullivan’s jockstrap. Alas, my friend was a much more decent person than myself, as so often is the case in my life.
Calouste
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
He is a right-wing gay male. I have yet to see one who isn’t a raging misogynist. Romney’s new spox on foreign affairs is another fine example. Not to say that most right-wing straight males are woman-friendly, but at least they occassionally have to keep up appearances if they want to get laid.
Paul in KY
@Hunter Gathers: That doesn’t count. She’s talking about the only thing that matters: Optics!
Lit3Bolt
Even if the Pope was revealed to be an Elder Demon from the Time Before Time, even if Republicans rounded up homosexuals for a “Final Solution,” even if smoking pot was linked to mesotheliomas, and even if rich 1% turtlenecked white supremacist Oxford grads started machine gunning poor African-Americans in the streets, Andrew Sullivan would still be a Gay Catholic Tory who smokes pot, loves Reagan and Thatcher, and thinks black people are inferior.
It’s useful to read him to get a pulse on the current centrist dilettante bullshit in America, but that’s about all.
Turgidson
@jl:
This is one of those seemingly rare moments where Democrats are right on substance (that’s not uncommon) and also have the better talking points. So that’s good.
Sullivan would like to think of himself as caring about substance (although that’s debatable at best) – that’s where my comment came from.
Bob2
@Svensker:
I’ve sent him a couple of pretty rude e-mails in the last year over Paul Ryan among other things. He doesn’t respond very often at this point, but he does read his e-mail and sometimes you’ll see a question or post that seems to mirror the exact e-mail sent.
The last time I seriously e-mailed him over an off-the-cuff comment he made about the mortgage bubble, he actually went and did a post the next day crowdsourcing and asking if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were responsible. He got the right answer for once, but then he never did that again. Instead, he just posts Jennifer Rubin or Tyler Cowen videos. ugh.
ksmiami
Except for the easy jump to balloon juice, why would anyone read Sully? the guy’s blog is like a jar full of Flintstone’s vitamins; pretty soon you’re manhandling all the orange bits just to find the last decent grape Fred. He makes some good points, but is totally clueless on the big picture; namely that women’s rights, equality etc. actually do affect him because without them, gay rights go out the window as well.
He aggravates me to no end!
PeakVT
@Hunter Gathers: Or that post-invasion thing over there somewhere. But “the surge worked” so never mind three years of fucking things up.
Carnacki
@Felinious Wench: Also a War on Democrats using the phrase War on Women.
chopper
@Hunter Gathers:
that’s why after 9/11 he disappeared for like 2 days. he needed to be really, really precise.
Captain Howdy
I don’t understand why Sullivan thinks the term is “hackish,” specifically. Dull? Unimaginative? Banal?
Have other Sullivan readers noticed how Andy regularly recycles certain words — pivot, preens, unpack, e.g. — until they no longer mean what they actually mean? You know what that is? Kinda hackish.
Southwest of Heaven
What I will never understand about Sullivan, is why he wants to continue to be part of the conservative club when he knows they hate his guts and that he is not welcome in their ‘big tent’ It’s as bad as being a black conservative. They live in denial or something. They think they once they are not in the room, no one makes f@g or ni__er jokes about them.
Froley
Oakeshottian Eagles do not like…screeeecccchhhhh!
Captain Howdy
@beltane:
I’m starting to do that with Pierce, from here …
j/k
(kinda)
Bob2
@Hunter Gathers:
Haha, the comments on that post are killing her.
These comments are as good as the time James Joyner wondered why people didn’t like McMegan after she went on book hiatus.
schrodinger's cat
John Cole @top
Thanks for the hat tip. Now would it be too much to ask for some Tunch pics? We has not see the floofeh one for a long time.
JGabriel
Tractarian:
No, no, no, no. It was Oakeshotte who had resolve, not Burke. Burke had humility. And bells. Or was it Hayek who had resolve while Oakeshotte had gravitas?
Damn, I’m getting my conservative attributes all mixed up again.
.
Chris
Here’s an OT about conservatives and family values: the National Review is convinced that the real problem with Evangelical Social Conservatives is that they’re too accomodating to mainstream culture.
Cannot fail. Can only be failed. Etc.
Citizen Alan
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Bingo! I am completely unsurprised to hear that Sully doesn’t care about the War on Women considering that the only two women for whom Sully has EVER expressed anything other than snide contempt were (a) Thatcher and (b) Neda Agha-Soltan, whose femininity Sully excuses because she was martyred in the service of one of his pet causes and so he is allowed to completely determine for his readers what she actually believed and stood for.
Bullsmith
@Hunter Gathers:
No she means message management. Perception is all that matters, the Bushies were pretty clear about that. Actual management is for suckers who think government can work.
slag
@Surreal American: It’s not hackish if it requires at least 3 syllables to say, per Smug and White.
beltane
@Chris: Is the National Review proposing that marriage only be discussed in terms of eternal bondage and sexual servitude, because it sure sounds that way.
Southern Beale
Let me add, I always see the word “screechy” as applying to women. We’re the screeching harpies, after all, demanding attention for our lady business.
Fuck him.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I hate to pull the “both sides do it” card, but I once wrote on DK that we were at war, and some people had a fit. How do I compare our fight against the Republicans to fighting in a “real” war.
Personally, I cannot see the difference. One side is willing to cause deaths to further its cause.
ETA: Don’t go after DK, it was just a couple of people. Others on there couldn’t believe this line of reasoning either.
Punchy
OT:
Per TPM:
Come on eemom, Burnsie….still gunna predict that 9-0 or 8-1 slam dunk? Still think this SC is anything but a political bullshit machine, where law and precedent dont matter one bit?
cokane
Also reveals his rampant sexism. Contrast the post you cited with how he talks about about the open war on homosexuality. It’s pretty astonishing how willing he is to stand up for “identity politics” when it’s his group on the short end.
Lit3Bolt
@Turgidson:
Sullivan has no substance, cares for no substance. He’s a privateer under a flag of his own colors, and he wants as much pleasure and enjoyment and influence and power out of this life as he can grasp.
Past mistakes? Ignored. Self-reflection? I do it while reading poetry! Meandering thoughts about God and drugs? Man, I’m deep.
Here’s another picture of a window! Boy I’m tired. Time for another vacation!
Oh no! Someone said mean things about conservatives! MOORE AWARD!! MOORE AWARD!! In the meantime, I will direct all thoughts about racial issues to Ta-Neishi and say he nails it, because frankly, hanging around him makes me nervous.
Chris
@beltane:
They’d tell you that they see marriage as a contract in which the woman submits to the husband and the man, in exchange, is supposed to be willing to lay down his life for his wife. “People don’t realize HE’s actually got the HARDEST part!” I’ve heard earnestly from men and women alike.
(And yes, that purposefully ignores the fact that most men, even in Biblical days, would go their entire lives without ever having an opportunity to die for their wives, whereas “submitting to your husband” is a 24/7/365 thing. The Bible is essentially a pre-nup that reads “the wife will do it when the husband wants, where the husband wants and how the husband wants, in exchange for which the husband will protect her from alien abductions.”)
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Chris: Well, it’s harder to keep women home if they get an edumacation. Better to get them pregnant early.
schrodinger's cat
Sully among other things is a sexist bastard. He only cares about things that affect him personally. I think he would have been to the right of Ross Douthat on gay issues if he was not gay himself.
Rights for me but not for thee.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
sullivan is just mad that he didn’t think of it, or more precisely, copywrite it.
Bokonon
Oooh! The TONE! The TONE! Ohhhhh, those antagonistic word choices! How uncivil of the Democrats! How damaging to reasoned discourse with the Republicans! OOOOOOHHHHH!
It is the classic rule of weaseling: when you can’t criticize the actual substance of something, but still want to be a critic for reasons of your own political positioning, you criticize the “tone” and the atmospherics.
And then you claim to be above the fray, and somehow uninvolved with the issue … while you are actually siding with the aggressors, and the people who are in the wrong.
schrodinger's cat
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Doesn’t always work, my mother went back to school when I was in high school and then went worked as a math teacher. My grandmother worked all throughout her life, as an official for the state government and she had four children.
Alex S.
Sullivan would have been the perfect Nazi collaborator… ‘I don’t like what they’re doing, but your rebellion doesn’t help either…’
schrodinger's cat
Also why do all these punditubbies care so much about the tone? What are they, Miss Manners? Also where is all their concern when Limbaugh, Coulter and the assorted Foxbots are spewing their bile.
Hill Dweller
@Punchy: Kagan has recused herself. The best we can hope for is 4-4.
As an aside, Scalia accusing the Obama administration, who has set records for deportations and dedicated a significant amount of resources to border security, of not wanting to enforce immigration laws rigorously is ridiculous. As is comparing illegal immigrants to bank robbers.
Perhaps Scalia is just doing it for show, but it is no less embarrassing.
Rob in Buffalo
Andrew Sullivan, 2008: The Mormon War on Gay People”.
So screechy.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Punchy: When you make your nice living chained to a machine, it’s hard to see that machine as doing anything but providing people a nice living.
The Supreme Court has never been some impartial, above-it-all body that dispenses wisdom based on the law of the land and the Constitution. And any claim they ever had to such a status, or the respect that would go along with it, they shit away for good in 2000.
Bob2
I wonder about his tone on Sarah Palin. Choosing to hammer her on the pregnancy under the guise of “just asking questions” and choosing not to understand why people found this distasteful given the number of other things he could have gone after her for.
Meanwhile, asks no questions about Paul Ryan and seems to go gaga over his blue eyes.
You know…because you have to take a position
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/85661/do-you-need-take-position
in the rear apparently.
Bonus mention of John Cole at the end of that piece.
edit: Kagan recuses herself and you know Scalia and Thomas never have despite clearer conflicts of interest.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Hill Dweller: Which means a win for us. A tie means the lower court decision is upheld. The lower court told AZ to go fuck themselves.
Punchy
@Hill Dweller: Yup, my bad. Shoulda said “8-0” or “7-1” instead. Just cant believe how Scalia can just make shit up so blatantly
MildGyrate
@Lit3Bolt: Deadly accurate.
Chris
@Alex S.:
It’s funny: very few of the conservatives I know are the kind of people I could see actually being Nazis back in the day, but almost all of them are the kind of people I could see being collaborators (“fellow travelers” if you will), who would’ve found some reason to excuse, ignore, tolerate or acquiesce to each and every individual part of the Nazi program. (And then, after the war, indignantly bawled about how unfair it was that they were being lumped in with the Nazis and that the people who did that were just like the Nazis).
Adding Sully to that distinguished list…
jim filyaw
i cringed through the early dubya years while sullivan was desperately trying to find an administration orifice he could slide his tongue into. a couple of years ago, during the early debate on health reform, he made the throwaway comment that he was fine with unequal access to health care. the only thing i’ve checked his column for since has been interesting (and better written) links. i daresay that had sullivan been born straight, he’d be just another fred barnes or tucker carlson.
trollhattan
@ksmiami:
I was growing increasingly weary of him at “Teh Atlantic” and after his next move, the first time he “Heh-indeedied” McMegan, all my rationalization and projection was swept away and I stopped.
Does anybody remember when he got moved to the “Blogs We Monitor and Mock” list here? It’s been awhile, and I don’t think that’s a list you can ever leave, unless you have a Road to Damascus moment, like Charles Johnson.
danielx
Ooooh, more pearl clutching by a quintessential Villager. How…nice. What would suit Brother Sullivan, I wonder? Perhaps this? “The degrading and contemptuous yet totally civilized Republican affronts to women’s rights and sexual health and choices”, perhaps?
As with Politico, if a leading light of the Village criticizes your tone you’re doing something right. More of this, please, unless you’re a Villager, i.e.; one who believes that Democrats are supposed to wear gasoline overcoats while Republicans are playing with flamethrowers. In which case, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
Hill Dweller
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Yeah, that’s what I was implying. Should have been more clear.
Villago Delenda Est
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
I have long held that Sullivan’s secret wish is to be a Kapo in Pat Robertson’s Vernichtungslager for fags.
Clime Acts
Cant’ stand Sully, haven’t been to that site in two years at least, but I agree with him that the WAR ON WOMEN meme is transparently hackish and moronic.
UNFORTUNATELY, transparently hackish and moronic slogans, memes, and messaging in general are what it takes to get thru to the special needs American public.
Hill Dweller
Scalia is just spouting teahadist rhetoric from the bench:
Roger Moore
@Chris:
Not at all. The bible is very clear that they’re not supposed to do it during the woman’s period, shortly after childbirth, or when the man is about to go out on a military campaign. Of course it also says that the correct response to stubborn mold on your wall is to tear your house down, so sensible people might be suspicious of its advice on day-to-day subjects.
Bob2
@jim filyaw:
Well you forgot that Sullivan needs to have heroes. Thatcher, Reagan, early Dubya, early Obama.
His fifth dimensional chess meep meep nonsense with Obama was aggravating as hell, especially when it was clear that Obama spent the first 2 years making mistakes that he didn’t have to…oh and running away from some aspects of civil liberties and keeping Bush Jr Exec powers permanent.
Instead he had to rewrite his mental narrative as Obama playing some secret double jinx reversal jiu-jitsu.
Just like he had to rewrite Reagan and Thatcher into beings that were actually more than they were when the factual record indicates that Thatcher was a disaster in many areas…even without the Falklands.
edit: actually the important part is to slag his idols before they become idols. Paul Ryan nearly was. And Ron Paul still is one of his despite massive evidence of incompetence and hackishness.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
It gives them an excuse to keep bashing the Democrats even when they’re obviously right on the substance. SATSQ.
beltane
@Chris: Sully has always reminded me of the dumbass, Nazi-sympathizing aristocrat in “Remains of the Day”. Silly people attracted to the aesthetic trappings of a fundamentally evil political philosophy.
beltane
@Hill Dweller: Somewhere in Italy, a whole village is breathing a sigh of relief that their idiot is now someone else’s problem.
shortstop
@Hill Dweller: It’s embarrassing because it undeniably takes away from the dignity and professionalism of the court to have one of its justices regularly making schoolyard taunts and analogies that would earn him an F in an undergraduate logic course. Nor does the recurring refusal of the conservative wing to recuse itself when appropriate inspire confidence in its judgment and probity.
Justices may do these things and still opine with integrity, of course, but it’s silly to pretend these actions don’t reflect badly on the court’s reputation.
Face
@Hill Dweller: Good fuckin lord, he really said that? So all immigration policy is Mexy-centric?
I’d love to hear what Cubans think of this.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Southwest of Heaven:
After following the link over there I found this little gem under the title “The ad I waited years to see” It is a marriage equality ad, which is very nicely done,
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/04/the-ad-i-waited-years-to-see.html
If you wait until the end of the ad it gives you a link to this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=11DxILiHakk#!
David Cameron on gay marriage (paraphrasing) “I don’t support gay marriage in spite of being conservative, I support gay marriage because I am conservative”
Perhaps that is where Sully’s head is.
TOP123
OT, Connecticut just abolished the death penalty.
rikryah
it’s a GOP WAR ON WOMEN.
WAR ON WOMEN
WAR ON WOMEN.
they’ve passed upteen laws trying to get into a woman’s uterus
and would force me to have the child of my RAPIST
but, there’s no war on women
GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE.
shortstop
@TOP123: Fantastic!
PeakVT
@Punchy: “What’s wrong about the states enforcing federal law?” Scalia said during his aggressive questioning of U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.
Yay for non-sequiturs.
khead
Hey! Congrats!
Welcome to last decade!
PeakVT
@TOP123: Hopefully Cali will be next. I think there’s a referendum on the issue in the works.
Paul in KY
@Chris: He would have wanted Goebbels to present him with some cool medal ‘The Order of the Golden Asshat’ or something like that.
Goebbels and company would have been laughing at him once he was out of earshot.
Nylund
@Surreal American:
Actually, “the full-bore assault on women” doesn’t sound half bad to me.
In fact, I think you can judge just how BS a “war” is by making that substitution. “Full-bore assault on women” sounds way less silly and inaccurate than the “Full-bore assault on Christmas” does.
Substituting “full-bore assault” for “war” is kinda fun, especially when applied to statements that refer to real, actual war:
“Full-bore assault, what is good for? Absolutely nothing.”
“All’s fair in love and full-bore assault.”
“Make love, not full-bore assault.”
“The full-bore assault of 1812” actually sounds kind of bad ass.
On the other hand, “World Full-Bore Assault II” sounds like a bad XBox game that was translated from English to Japanese and back to English again (much like the super karate monkey death car)
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Clime Acts: Of course you do, but then, you’re a moron.
Martin
@PeakVT: It qualified for the ballot sometime in the last week. It should pass. And the revenue initiative should pass as well.
I think post-election, we might get a serious run at single-payer.
Roger Moore
@PeakVT:
It’s qualified for the November ballot. Hopefully it will help Democratic turnout. And technically, it’s an initiative (an attempt to implement a new law) rather than a referendum (an attempt to overturn a law enacted by the legislature).
MikeJ
Doesn’t he realise that as a gay man Republicans view him as a woman?
Valdivia
totally OT but this totally made me lol
on topic: since I do believe there is a war on women I will be marching on saturday.
dedc79
What’s especially infuriating is the way much of the news media reverts to “Democrats try to paint republicans as pushing war on women.” The Republicans haven’t been shy about what they’re doing. Democrats don’t need to “try to paint” them that way.
PeakVT
@Martin: The first two are good news. SP in Cali would be fantastic, but I’m not sure how wise it is to tackle that issue with the current state constitution in place. Any state trying implement something like that needs budgetary flexibility, and Cali has none AFAICT. And Prop 13 means another revenue stovepipe would have to be built.
ETA: @Roger Moore: thanks for the clarification.
Yutsano
@Martin: I am also cautiously optimistic on the single payer bill. After all it did pass the legislature but got spiked by Arnie. Plus that will start the domino effect for other states once there’s a demonstrated positive effect.
Some Loser
@Nylund:
The Hundred Years Full-Bore Assault?
Shit is getting intense.
eemom
@Hill Dweller: @shortstop:
Charles Lane had an utterly moronic piece in the WaPo the other day about how the Court retains popular respect no matter how badly it fucks up.
That guy is like the Platonic form of a Village idiot. I’ll never get how he came off as a hero in that film about Stephen Glass.
Captain Howdy
Wait a minute, a tincture of opium ?
Wouldn’t that be contraindicated if you’re all hopped up on smelling salts?
gaz
@Captain Howdy: nonsense! mixing uppers and downers is fucking awe-* drops dead *
trollhattan
@TOP123:
It looks as though an anti-death penalty measure is going to be on the California November ballot so naturally, yesterday there was a pro-death penalty rally at the capitol.
Sigh.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@PeakVT: There is, I think they just got word yesterday that it will be on the ballot. It’s going to be close one way or another, and ugly as hell. Going to be VERY interesting to see who is funding the pro-death penalty side.
There’s some quite interesting, very low-profile corrections-related stuff coming up recently. The state Dept. of Corrections – which gets more funding than the entire state college system, UC, CSU and community colleges combined – has put all new construction on hold, is under orders to downsize their populations by at least 20%, and is exploring how to gt the almost 10,000 prisoners currently in PRIVATE prisons out of them and back in the state system, with the explicit goal of removing private prisons from California entirely.
All of which smacks of Jerry’s work, but his fingerprints are nowhere to be found on any of this. He’s a crafty motherfucker, Jerry Brown is. One of the few votes in my life that I’m truly proud of.
Valdivia
@eemom:
I really despise that guy.
Rob in Buffalo
What Valdivia said.
Chuck Butcher
edit: oops
Mouse Tolliver
The father and son that held their new black neighbor at gunpoint for entering his own home just got arrested…
http://www.ajc.com/news/newton-county-neighbors-charged-1424231.html
Second amendment remedies for black neighbors.
Citizen_X
When has anyone here ever heard an alarm that wasn’t screechy and shrill? That’s what they’re supposed to be.
What repels people is an alarm that’s false. This, for example:
Banning farm chores? What the fucking fuck? How does that even make sense?
Bob2
Hey no wonder Obama’s been so disappointing:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/04/what-potus-reads.html
He reads Sully regularly
“Do you read Paul Krugman?
I read all of the New York Times columnists. Krugman’s obviously one of the smartest economic reporters out there, but I also read some of the conservative columnists, just to get a sense of where those arguments are going. There are a handful of blogs, Andrew Sullivan’s on the Daily Beast being an example, that combine thoughtful analysis with a sampling of lots of essays that are out there. The New Yorker and The Atlantic still do terrific work. Every once in a while, I sneak in a novel or a nonfiction book.”
Obama’s campaign season has officially started if he threw that in there.
Oh god, I need to stop going there again today:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/04/religions-new-violence-ctd.html
Roger Moore
@PeakVT:
I think a realistic single payer system in CA would require a constitutional amendment to exempt it from Prop 13 requirements. Something like that might be the most reasonable way of undoing Prop 13 anyway. Rather than trying to repeal Prop 13 as a whole, cut away little pieces of it one at a time. Giving single payer a special exemption would be a good start. Then we could go after the 2/3 requirement for the legislature to raise taxes and restrict the property value freeze to primary residences and farms. Those are all things that are reasonable enough they’d have a decent chance of passing, and they’d undo a lot of the worst aspects of Prop 13.
PeakVT
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Good news, too. The prison-industrial complex needs to be beat down.
Maus
@gaz: He would if we’d stop reposting his blather and giving pagehits, I guess.
@dedc79:
That’s how they revert to EVERY discussion. Conservatives have “facts”, Liberals have “opinions”.
trollhattan
@Mouse Tolliver:
Oh man, there’s a “Take the Canoles, leave the guns.” joke in there somewhere.
MUST CREDIT
DRUDGETROLLHATTAN!Steve in DC
I’m with Sully on this to an extent. Liberals do whine and sound shrill. Especially certain groups of them over certain issues. It’s in the phrasing of the arguments and their tone. It’s also in their refusal to really fight. It’s like that ugly, skinny, huge classes, acne all over his face, biggest loser you ever knew, kid trying to make an argument in school. He might be right, but he was so obnoxious and pathetic, and whined and cried, you just wanted to beat the shit out of him.
And this is something the left never got. You can be dead on correct about something but you still have to sell it to other people. And losers and pussies can’t sell ideas, all they are good for is getting the shit kicked out of them, so stop trotting them out.
This isn’t to say all liberals are like that. But you have to give conservatives credit, they fight, they don’t trot out losers, and this enables them to sell a ton of bullshit.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Martin: Of the two, the revenue initiative HAS to pass. Must. Far more people die every year from our state not being able to fund simple, no-brainer shit than ever have in our death chamber. California Republican obstructionism makes what’s going on in the House look like a church sermon on civility.
That being the case, they’re going to have to figure out how to pull it off without revoking Prop 13 outright. Do that and you’ll have millions of homeless folks, and lose trillions in property value. There are a lot of revenue-raising proposals that can and should be done now. Getting rid of Prop 13 is going to take a lot of time and will have to be done gradually so as not to break either California’s or the nation’s economy. That being said, it does need to go, I knew that since it passed and I got to see, as a student, what it did to our schools.
rikryah
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
interesting info about the prisons.
MikeJ
OT, but a new poll says that Hillary Clinton is popular with everyone. Well, everyone but a small percentage.
(via GOS midday open thread)
Roger Moore
@Captain Howdy:
Hopped up on smelling salts? They’re just ammonia, which achieves its stimulating effect purely by giving your olfactory system a jolt. It’s like waking somebody up by giving them an electrical shock, but less likely to do permanent damage.
Steve in DC
@MikeJ
Shes popular because she’s not running for office. As soon as she tries to run for office she’ll be toxic again.
The Other Chuck
@Punchy:
6-2. Clarence Thomas makes Antonin Scalia look like Oliver Wendell Holmes. Thomas is one of the few people I honestly believe is malevolently evil, who actually sets his mind to making decisions that maximize the suffering of the powerless.
kay
The piece is either deliberately misleading or he has no idea what he’s talking about, again.
Title X has nothing whatsoever to with abortion, and the Tea Party House not only threatened to defund it, they did defund it.
Sullivan uses the word “abortion” again and again because he’s lazy. He’s lazier than the moderators of the GOP debates, where this was discussed.
I have a request. Andrew Sullivan should stop writing about health care, because he’s widely read, and I think it’s reached the point where he’s actively harming poor people by his insistence on talking out of his ass.
Why write about it? He clearly has zero interest in it, or he’d learn something.
Mike E
@Hunter Gathers:
FTFY
Chyron HR
@Steve in DC:
Ha ha, that’s funny. Does Sarah Palin not exist on your planet, or do you just think she’s one of those whiny, bitchy liberal feminazis?
Forum Transmitted Disease
@The Other Chuck: All you ever needed to know about Thomas was contained in his speech about his “hi-tech lynching”. I knew that we had a monster on our hands at that point.
That fucker dedicated his life that day to destroying everything he could, because America wouldn’t realize his utter and total awesomeness.
I find it quite likely Alito is operating under the same mindset.
beergoggles
I think it has been established that people read Sullivan to expose themselves to new ways of being wrong.
If Sullivan had to run a correction for every time he tasted his own feet, there really wouldn’t be anything new to read on his site.
gogol's wife
@TOP123:
Wow, I went on the Hartford Courant website to thank Gov. Malloy. What a swamp of spittle-flecked, bloodthirsty “commenters.”
salvage
Sullivan is an awful idiot, always has been always will be.
PeakVT
@Forum Transmitted Disease: It shouldn’t be hard to write a rule for phasing out the RE tax limitations. Something like: let the valuation basis go to market immediately, but absolute tax amounts for existing, unsold, unmodified properties can’t increase by more than inflation+3% for the next 20 years.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’m starting to think British people aren’t as smart as everyone else. Wonder if there’s any science on this.
burnspbesq
OT, and I don’t say this lightly, but I think we need a new Solicitor General. Verrilli was ineffective in the health-care oral argument, and he was ineffective today in the Arizona oral argument.
He should be blowing through these cases like Justin Verlander pitching to a high school team, and he looks more like a high school pitcher trying to blow away Albert Pujols with his 82 mph fastball.
schrodinger's cat
@Just Some Fuckhead: I think they keep their smart ones and send their idiots to write political commentary over here.
Some Loser
@Chyron HR:
To him, every
feministdemocrat is a single issue voter who only cares about the rights of upper class white women. He based this on some observations. I am a little fuzzy on the details; after a while of his hippie punching, I started to ignore him.He has a dismissal view of feminists in particular, though.
In other words, do not engage.
MikeJ
@schrodinger’s cat: You would think differently if you read their papers.
burnspbesq
@gaz:
It might, if he were wrong all the time. He’s right far more often than folks around here give him credit for, but when he’s wrong, it’s typically pretty egregious, so the things about which he’s right tend to fade by comparison.
Nobody is wrong all the time. Not Sullivan. Not Greenwald. Not Hamsher. Not even Corner Stone.
burnspbesq
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Wrong. Indifference is not the same thing as hatred.
schrodinger's cat
@burnspbesq: He is not indifferent to women’s issues he is dismissive.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
How about Thomas Friedman?
Svensker
@burnspbesq:
He’s indifferent to women most of the time. When he thinks about us, he gets all skeeved out. Speaking as a woman, I read him as a total misogynist.
Some Loser
I get the feeling that people think America has a monopoly on regressive right-wing bullshitters. Don’t know why. It seems pretty obvious to me that our conservative movement is multinational. Hope our progressive allies remain vigilant.
kay
Sullivan and the rest of the libertarian-conservative choir have a dilemma coming up, because PP are challenging the Texas law defunding PP on 1st Amendment grounds and they have a damned good argument.
The claim is that conservatives are defunding PP based on their advocacy for abortion rights, because it turns out the dumbasses down in Texas fund plenty of health care providers that will, and do provide either abortions or a referral for abortions, ie: all hospitals that are not Catholic hospitals.
They’re denying funding based on speech they don’t like.
Should be fun to watch them defend that.
Tonybrown74
@Svensker:
I’m a man, and I still read him as a misogynist. The man has a problem with women. It’s so obvious, it can be seen from space.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@PeakVT: Your recipe would leave my wife and I homeless within five years. We’re on the edge as it is.
Chuck Butcher
Hmmm, NEWSFLASH!!! Andrew Sullivan is once again FOS…
Ah hell, and once again the sun rises in the east and water is wet.
Citizen_X
@Steve in DC:
Oh, pardon me, sir. I’m selling magazine subscriptions in the neighborhood, but I can see you already have plenty of issues.
TOP123
@Roger Moore: Bill Kristol?
Catsy
@Linda Featheringill:
Yes. Which is why
Mrs. Grundysocial conservatives in the GOP fight so hard to eliminate that choice.Speaking as the owner of a Y chromosome, I wholeheartedly agree. I suggest a good start would be for women everywhere to not fuck Republicans.
Turgidson
Jesus, he has a post about the UK’s completely foreseeable double dip recession thanks to austerity, and he says that Krugman “preens.” What a fucking wanker. I think Krugman is getting a little bit tired of being Cassandra on the economy over and over and fucking over again. So when he has the temerity to point out that he was right (as is , it’s “preening?” Go bathe in sulfuric acid, Sully.
Turgidson
@Roger Moore:
He’s just a dipshit all the time. Not always wrong.
Mnemosyne
@Steve in DC:
Huh? Gingrich, who was forced out of the House by his own caucus, is a “winner”? Santorum, who lost his election by 20+ points, is a “winner”?
The problem here seems to be that you look at Republicans like Gingrich and Santorum and see “winner” written all over them despite their humiliating professional losses. Sounds like a personal problem to me.
PIGL
@Citizen_X: and todays internet winner is Citizen X. Steve in DC is a champion douche in a city full of same, but this was a particularly egregious bit of trollage. “I’d pretend to agree with Democats except they’re all spineless dorky wimps with a face full o’zits”. News flash, pal, we’re supposed to grow out of the adolescent and jejune criteria we used in High School.
Catsy
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, that made me LOL too. There are a lot of factors that contribute to the ability of the right wing to sell so much bullshit, starting with their absolute lack of shame in doing so, but putting forth “winners” as major candidates ain’t one of them. Most of their candidates who win do so in spite of their worthlessness as candidates and human beings.
Gex
@MikeJ: Sure. The way Cantor knows the GOP caucus is anti-Semitic. But when you must be at constant war with the other and you must align yourself with your alpha daddy figures, then you just go with the “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” philosophy.
Lit3Bolt
@Steve in DC:
Yay, contrary bullshit for the sake of contrary bullshit. You really do live in DC, don’t you.
Roger Moore
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
That depends on your current valuation. Remember that he was suggesting making the process revenue neutral, so the tax rate would be going down at the same time the valuations were going up. It’s not as if you’d be paying 1% on the full, current value of your house.
Gex
@kay: You explained it in your own post. Why write about it? His writing is harming poor people. That doesn’t happen in a vacuum. That enriches the alpha dogs he is trying to suck up to. And punditry is about the only place where trickle down economics actually works.
PeakVT
@Forum Transmitted Disease: I don’t want to see anyone homeless, but it’s not like there isn’t pain from the current arrangement. It’s just shifted away from existing homeowners and onto recent buyers, or onto state residents who can’t get services they need. Fixing the distortions of Prop 13 would help some people and hurt others. There’s no way around that, though stretching out the adjustment period would allow most people time to adjust.
@Roger Moore: I wasn’t suggesting that, but it certainly could be the case. Municipalities could change the rate so that many or most wouldn’t see any increase. For instance if average valuations went from $100k to $200K, the rate could be dropped from $1 per $100 to $0.50 per $100. However if someone had been there for decades and their valuation went from $50K to $200K, then their bill would double in 12 years or so.
gaz
@Steve in DC:
For a minute, I could have sworn you were talking about Jim Hoft
or Glenn Beck.
(except maybe for the “might be right” bit)
Is that tired, cliche 30’year old done-to-death meme stale yet? Apparently not, since you still like the taste, but it’s lookin’ pretty fetid from where I’m stand.
Liberals are dirty commie hippie peaceniks! also, too.
Catsy
@gaz: You forgot nerds. NERRRRRRRRRRDS!
IMO one of the greatest arguments for the existence of karma is the ascendancy of geeks and nerds in the 21st century.
gaz
@Catsy: I always think of this when I hear people talk that kind of shit
http://maddox.xmission.com/hatemail.cgi?p=1
(sorry, middle of the page, search for “I USED TO LOVE KICKING THE SHIT”)
Funny as hell, because it’s the goddamned truth.
PeakVT
I can’t believe liberal hasn’t popped in to mention Georgism yet. I’ll fill in for him.
kay
@Gex:
Every six months or so, I’m going to write a post about same sex marriage. I’ll make sure I never read anything at all about same sex marriage, not even widely-available news stories, and I’ll make sure I studiously ignore anything factual on that issue that sneaks into my sphere, say, through a series of national Presidential debates.
If I get it all wrong, well, who gives a shit?
I’m married.
See how he likes it.
Steve in DC
Cliches don’t come out of thin air. The Democrats got slapped with the pussified yuppies cliche because that’s a good portion of their base. Just as Republicans being southern assholes is a cliche because it’s true as well.
People like liberal positions and legislation, they just hate liberals. The GOP didn’t brainwash them, go out and talk to the type of people that read daily kos, are vegans, are against any and all wars, feminists, you’ll end up hating liberals as well.
Hell I’d always rather hit the bar with the conservatives around here. More fun, less bitchy, tip better.
gaz
@Steve in DC:
Resisting the urge to headdesk at the utter stupidity of that comment…
okay then,
Steve in DC, you are a cliche, which we lovingly refer to as “Concern Troll”.
Are you getting how this works yet? I didn’t think so.
Run along now.
gaz
Read daily kos: rarely
are vegans: can’t stand the sanctimonious jagoffs, but I’ll take their vote, smile nicely and say THANK YOU.
are against any and all wars: Pretty much. It goes with the territory of being a Jesus fan
feminists: Not sure if I’d qualify (depends which rubber ruler you use), but even then, issues that interest my wife interest me as well.
You have a problem with labels Steve in DC, you may want to have that looked in to.
Some Loser
@gaz:
He’s right you know.
That is why all black people have tails. Or something like that. It must have some basis in truth. It is not like you can make up some bullshit about someone or something, keep bullshitting about it for years, and have the public pick up about it.
Anyway, like I said above, do not engage.
gaz
@Some Loser: @178 comments and hardly a whisper, this thread’s dead – and creeping down the page. I know how trolling works. Let me have my ball of yarn, would ya? =)
cheers
gaz
@kay: Isn’t that assuming he’s got a little bit of self-awareness? My experience with Sully seems to indicate otherwise.
liberal
@PeakVT:
Heh.
Yes, the transition to land value taxes would be pretty painful in the short run. That doesn’t mean that the current arrangement (landowners get something for nothing) isn’t evil.
burnspbesq
@Roger Moore:
I’m sure I can find something about which he was right. Give me a month, okay?
the fugitive uterus
Fuck that. Sullivan doesn’t have to worry about getting knocked up and vice versa, so I guess he, of all people, has a right to complain about terminology.
Emperor of Ice Cream
@Lit3Bolt: at comment #63 – you so NAILED Sully – he’s a raging narcissist in love with his own reflection.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
There is one person who IS wrong all the time.
William Kristol
Catsy
@burnspbesq: Prepositions don’t count.
gaz
@Villago Delenda Est: I distinctly remember that William Kristol was right about something once. I forget what, but I remember the general event because it caught me so off guard.
I propose George Will. That man has never been right about anything. I doubt that’s even his name.
Lit3Bolt
@Emperor of Ice Cream:
Andrew Sullivan is the perfect example of the Un-Friend. He is the opportunist in the shadows, the sybarite of the masses, and the ready intellectual ready to say at a moment’s demand “ME! ME! I AM WILLING TO SELL ALL MY SPIRITUAL AND INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY FOR SALE!! ME!! ME!!! YOU NEED MEEEEEEE!!!!!”
That’s why he’s a child of the Styx. He wants you to forget…depends on you to forget…needs you to forget how horrendously, tragically wrong he has been about the most momentous events in our lifetimes. He needs you to consider him important even though he considers you a traitor (ie liberal). He wants you to think like him even though he thinks you are worthless (ie black). He needs you to hate women because they’re icky even though even conservative women have the right to exist, bear children, and run for office, despite the maelstrom of misogyny one Elder Gay Tory can summon.
He’s a self-loathing, woman-hating, intern-dependent, liberal-averse, self-petting sybarite who dreams that he is the sole precious unique Gay Tory Flower of the Universe. His pretentiousness is limited to his blog, and so can be excused. His airs are limited to his enemies (everyone), and thus, he hates us all, for which we should be thankful. His interns slavishly copy the best of the internet for him so has to deflect his constant stench. He exists to grant benedictions upon other self loathing gay Catholic acolytes who buy his complete book collection of Oakesshottian drama.
He’s the voice who eagerly affirms Kristol, McArdle, Reynolds, Petraeus, Will, Buckley, Murray, Rubin, Goldberg, and others and will soon gladly declare all, “THE TRUE SAVIORS OF JEWRY AND AMERICA FOR ALL TIME.” Just you wait. He just needs to reconcile his hatred of Islam with his moral conflict with self loathing homosexuality, and then he’ll be able to take his anointed holy place among the Pope’s Chosen.
wetcasements
@Culture of Truth: bingo
wetcasements
Sandra Fluke is a slutty mc-slut slut.
Michael Moore is fat.
See, both sides do it.
Fuck Sullivan. If Romney was polling better he’d have jumped off the Obama bandwagon a while ago.