I know we all think Ezra Klein is auditioning for David Broder’s job, but David Broder wouldn’t have blamed one side so bluntly:
The bottom line on American budgetary politics right now is that Republicans won’t agree to further tax increases and so there’s no deal to be had. This is not a controversial perspective in D.C.: It’s what Hill Republicans have told me, it’s what the White House has told me, it what Hill Democrats have told me. The various camps disagree on whether Republicans are right to refuse a deal that includes further tax increases, but they all agree that that’s the key fact holding up a compromise to replace the sequester.
But it’s unpopular for Republicans to simply say they won’t agree to any compromise and there’s no deal to be had — particularly since taxing the wealthy is more popular than cutting entitlements, and so their position is less popular than Obama’s. That’s made it important for Republicans to prove that it’s the president who is somehow holding up a deal.
This had led to a lot of Republicans fanning out to explain what the president should be offering if he was serious about making a deal. Then, when it turns out that the president did offer those items, there’s more furious hand-waving about how no, actually, this is what the president needs to offer to make a deal. Then, when it turns out he’s offered most of that, too, the hand-waving stops and the truth comes out: Republicans won’t make a deal that includes further taxes, they just want to get the White House to implement their agenda in return for nothing. Luckily for them, most of the time, the conversation doesn’t get that far, and the initial comments that the president needs to “get serious” on entitlements is met with sage nods.
The whole Bob Woodward spat might have harmed his reputation since he looked like a pissy little crybaby, but in general it was good news for Republicans because it kept the media talking about the dumbest of dumb questions, namely, who thought up the sequester? If the media starts pointing out that the reason we can’t have a sequester deal is that Republicans don’t want to raise taxes on rich folks, then Boehner will feel some heat. Woodward stopped that conversation this week. I wonder what shiny thing will will come up tomorrow.
Maude
The Repubs aren’t going to get away with this. People are grumbling at the Congress members and the rough stuff hasn’t hit yet.
Violet
Question: Have the sequester cuts hit the airports yet? Older family member is visiting and is catching a flight in a few days. Will she have longer wait times and is her flight in danger of being cancelled. The airports she’s flying from/to are not on the list of closures.
Anyone know if cuts have started yet?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Klein is no Charlie Pierce, he definitely has centrist/compromise instincts, but i would never say the guy who once tweeted “Fuck Tim Russert. Fuck him with a spiky, acid-dipped dick” a wannabe Broder.
Chris
Looking forward to the inevitable onslaught of Facebook bitching from my teabagger college acquaintance who’s now a DOD employee. Of this I am certain: it will ALL be Obama’s fault.
Comrade Jake
Just caught a little of MTP (I know, I’m a glutton for punishment) and Gregory asked one of the guests why the election didn’t change anything. The response was that Republicans can’t agree to tax increases of any sort because it would “tarnish the brand”.
What I don’t understand is that, at least at one point, this notion of generating revenue via tax reform seemed to at least be on the table in principle. It seems to me that’s the only way forward with them, to basically lower rates but close a lot of exemptions. And perhaps this is simply not politically feasible, I don’t know, but it seems that Republicans are against even this approach at this stage.
aimai
If they don’t want to have that conversation that is not the conversation we are going to have, whether Bob Fucking Woodward knocks it off the front page with his pants pissing or they “discover” that the Princess of Wales is having hyperemeisis again, or the Pope is spotted still wearing his red shoes.
And I don’t forgive Ezra for that little take back at the end “I’m not trying to be mean…I think [mark whatever his name is] is doing good work…” Really? Good work within the Republican party? Can’t be done at this point from within the party. It will only come about when the actual good people have finally left and they dip below replacement levels.
Baud
Woodward was not good news for Republicans.
MattF
@Violet: In fact, many of the sequestered programs are coping by banning travel– so air travel will get worse, as it has continued to do for some time, but may not actually hit a tipping point.
c u n d gulag
Jeez, maybe another Kadashian will get a quickie marriage and divorce, or get knocked-up.
Or maybe another of the Jackson’s will die.
Or something “Snooki.”
Maybe they can dig Anna Nicole Smith back up.
The one thing that can be guaranteed, is that no one outside of MSNBC’s evening and weekend AM crews, or Paul Krugman, will blame the Republicans for anything.
Since, you know, “Both sides…”
jeffreyw
@Violet: AP has a roundup. Looks like minimal disruption for the immediate future due to work rules in the FAA about proper layoff notice.
Comrade Jake
Yes, the DOD is dealing with things at least in part by closing down any travel, at least for lab employees. I’m not sure how far-ranging the travel ban is.
Del
@Comrade Jake: Lowering rates while closing exemptions and loopholes counts as a tax increase and is forbidden, per the Book of Norquist. I wish I were completely kidding, but that’s the position they’ve actually taken. Why? Most of those loopholes that would get closed benefit their rich patrons.
Violet
@MattF: Thanks. I didn’t know they were banning travel, but that makes sense as a savings measure. I would think that would help travel if fewer people are flying.
@jeffreyw: Thanks for that. I will have a look as soon as the birthday lunch I’m hosting is done. I made a tart au citron this morning with Meyer lemons we got as a gift. Yum!
Schlemizel
that great blot on humanity Ben Stain was on Sunday Morning today playing the “both sides do it” card. He actually appeared moderate as he said he was in favor of some tax increases but managed to avoid saying that Dems want a combination of spending cuts and tax increases while his dear friends refuse to compromise.
Baud
@Chris:
How do you respond? Do you blame the GOP in no uncertain terms? Make clear that your 100% behind the Democrats on this?
I’m not trying to be judgmental. I avoid those types of people completely, so I’m curious.
Schlemizel
@Del:
Yeah, all these great minds on the pundit gravy train manage to ignore the fact that most of the ‘tax increases’ the goopers refuse to consider are simply closing loopholes and removing unnecessary deductions.
Mister Harvest
Their current Republican position is really not “no new revenue,” and never has been. It’s “the net tax burden for those whose main income streams are interest and capital gains must decline, or, at worst, remain at historically low levels.” I’m sure if Obama came in offering to bump up Social Security taxes “to save the system” while whacking the rates on passive income to 2.5%, they’d give him an interested listen-to.
General Stuck
Taxation and the moral compass of America, is what this shit has been about all along. It really is existential stuff for two very disparate world views that have always existed in this country. But now the republicans are so bereft of sane leadership, they are putting guns to the head of the country and world, and Obama has now responded the only way he could as a viable president.
It is cold warfare, fought by proxy with economics, and people are going to get hurt and some may die. There is no other honorable or presidential way for Obama to respond to this kind of shit. One side of the country has set the rules of engagement to the lowest denominator and you either match them at that, or throw in the towel.
Both sides don’t do it, but democrats won’t roll over either, hopefully, and that is willfully confused with equal culpability for the sake of continuing drama. This is a republican caused crisis, and our press is too busy rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic for the next clown show we call the news cycle, to notice the GOP steering us all toward the nearest ice berg.
Shortstop
@Violet: super yum to that tart description! Feel like sharing the recipe?
Chris
@Baud:
Generally I don’t comment. It’s not like she or most people actually email me to share their rage, I just get to read it in the mini feed.
raven
Wow, the worm is stupider than I thought and I thought he was pretty stupid.
Frankensteinbeck
EDIT – Removed. Too long, even I didn’t read.
Tea Twits in congress don’t give a damn about what the public wants.
Baud
@Chris:
Ah. I misunderstood. I don’t do Facebook, but I can see how that situation is harder to avoid and why you wouldn’t necessarily want to respond.
MattF
I think Dems just have to keep banging away at this. Wingers have persuaded themselves that ‘blame Obama’ is a good answer to every question– but the 2012 election has already demonstrated that it ain’t necessarily so.
raven
Clinton having his dick sucked and “getting away with it”
is the same as prison camps.
Violet
@Shortstop: Sure! I made this one. I made the crust that is linked in that recipe as well. It’s all easy. If you use Meyer lemons, as the recipe says, lower the sugar to 1/3 cup.
I’ve found as it sits, the lemony flavor becomes more intense. If you taste the curd as you’re making it you might think it’s not lemony enough, but it does intensify.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@General Stuck:
I think the media are actively involved in perpetuating this crisis. Drama drives viewership, and the essence of drama is conflict. As long as they can make the latest Washington dispute look like a cliffhanger with an uncertain outcome the audience will tune in for the next chapter. If they went ahead and said the obvious – the GOP is out of their collective minds and will harm you – then popular opinion might demand an end to the issue. And their high ratings.
azlib
Yes, the Republicans are the party of low taxes on rich people. They clearly do not care how much poor or middle class people are taxed. The way the payroll tax cut expiration happened without a whimper of protest from them is a case in point.
jeffreyw
@Violet: Pictures of the tart! Or the kids will cry all morning.
Todd
We really need a new rising of the Weathermen, only this time, to go for the soft targets of weath – their country clubs, their kids, their “charity” events.
Time for fear to be inspired. These fuckers never give back. They’ve been given a pass for thirty years, and trickle down never delivered the gains in salary or employment or working conditions as was promised.
In fact, their big bugaboo (too massive a government) came about due to the failure of movement conservatism to solve any economic or social problem. From segregation to Jim Crow to family planning to environmental catastrophe to financial overreach, movement conservatives have screwed up every time.
Hill Dweller
Greg Sargent, Krugman, Mike Tomasky and Jonathan Chait have been banging on this for a while. It was good to see Klein finally come around.
Boehner has repeatedly walked away from a grand bargain because they want to continue manufacturing crises. They will likely use the upcoming continuing resolution and debt ceiling extension to create more crises.
This fact is willfully ignored in the Village. Hopefully that will slowly change, but I’m not optimistic.
Culture of Truth
This is why it was so important for Republicans that Woodward said Obama moved the goalposts, and for the White House to push back, because that makes it seem like Obama is the one being unreasonable.
Also why it seemed like Woodward was carrying water for the GOP, a judgement borne out by his subsequent behavior.
Citizen_X
@Mister Harvest:
QFT. They’d be happy for Obama to propose jacking taxes on the 99% (i.e. shifting the tax burden even further onto their backs). Which would piss off large numbers of actual voters. Who would blame Obama.
Luckily, Obama ain’t playing that game.
jamick6000
I read the Ezra Klein story. While I enjoy shitting on Republicans and the media as much as everyone else, the more important point is that Obama agrees with a top Republican strategist that we need to cut Social Security and means test Medicare.
We should all be pissed off about that. And not just because substantively those things are horrible ideas. When the villagers finally get that Obama wants to cut social insurance programs through their thick skulls, “Even the liberal President Obama wants to reform entitlements” is going to become a thing; barf.
JP7505A
@General Stuck: The GOP world view is firmly rooted in the 6th century (BC or AD, doesn’t make much difference. Yet they contunue to get elected from red states that are net recipients of federal tax dollors.
Polls, to numerous to count, show that in abstract the public wants the size of government slashed, taxes cut (other than on the rich) and large spending cuts. When the pollster gets into specific programs the picture changes with only cuts to foreign aid getting close to 50% support. Even redstate republicans are opposed to the reality of the massive spending cuts that their elected representatives are pushing.
So maybe it’s time to move from the abstract to the real world. Let the sequester continue to run, let the government shutdown at the end of the month. The abstract has now become real. Maybe then all those tea party types who did not want the government touching their medicare will discover that it IS the government that sends out those checks, and not the tooth fairy.
Once it becomes plan that government at all levels (the GOP doesn’t much like state/local government either) is what keeps our society on track, whither its the cop on the beat, the state highway worker plowing the snow or the air traffic controller making sure that planes don’t fly into one another maybe we can discuss which programs it is important to keep and how to pay for them.
StringOnAStick
Also, just like weather stories, this crap is cheap to cover for the news media. Just set up a camera and let some winger talk to it is basically the same as some guy standing in 2 feet of snow saying “yep, it’s snowing!”.
When you’ve got 24 hours to fill and it has to look dramatic, this is what you end up with, with just a touch of proud harrumphing from the media spokes-heads so we can be sure to understand just how important and impressive they are.
Violet
@jeffreyw: I can’t. Not enough time and I’ve still got a lot to do. The picture on the link for the recipe is pretty close. It’s a thin tart, not overly full, but has great flavor.
eclecticbrotha
I’m just thrilled the Romneys were kind enough to poke their heads out of their mansion long enough to remind us who the GOP is really fighting for.
Del
@Todd: Fuck off. No, really, go to hell, find a pineapple, and fuck yourself South Park-style. You think the solution to this involves public terrorism and going after peoples kids? You’re no better than the paid aggitators at a G8 summit. Your position’s more likely to get us future government straight out of “Watchman” than it is to fix things.
burnspbesq
What you mean “we,” kemosabe?
burnspbesq
@Comrade Jake:
Count your blessings that it’s not. Dave Camp, the chair of House Ways & Means, is a big believer in a territorial system of corporate income taxation. If he had his way, all the hundreds of billions of dollars that US-based multinationals have squirreled away offshore would permanently escape US taxation.
Hill Dweller
@jamick6000: But these proposed changes are in exchange for closing loopholes that are dear to the oligarchs who run the Republican party. Obama knows they’ll never agree to them.
Also, too, Obama rightly frames the changes to Medicare/SS as a middle/working class sacrifice. He repeatedly says he isn’t going to ask the middle/working class people to sacrifice while the wealthy do nothing.
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemizel:
Applause.
Alex S.
@c u n d gulag:
Well, if the Republicans really dig up Anna Nicole Smith that will certainly deserve the attention.
The sequester finally (?) was a risk Obama couldn’t avoid. The consequences will get blamed on someone, either Obama or the congressional GOP. There is a chance for a big political win, or a big loss. I quite like the new, more confrontational Obama, and I think he’ll end up winning, but of course, gloating about this political victory leaves a bitter taste when you look at the economic implications of the sequester.
Roger Moore
@Comrade Jake:
I don’t understand. In the first panel, Lucy was holding the football all ready for Charlie Brown to kick it…
GregB
Remember government doesn’t create jobs.*
*This iron clad belief does not apply to defense jobs.
eclecticbrotha
@Todd: Hell the fuck no.
Bruce S
“I know we all think Ezra Klein is auditioning for David Broder’s job”
First of all, if that’s true it’s totally stupid. Klein has already done more serious reporting and analysis in his short career than Broder accomplished in his entire life. It’s obvious that Klein has toned down his attitude in a fairly major way since joining the WaPo and he has the “problem” of trying to find some rationality in GOP positions if possible – although usually to no avail as is obvious above, but I don’t see that it’s affected his reporting overall and probably makes him a more valuable asset than if he still engaged in overt partisan snark or “F”-word tweets directed at folks who are presently, in effect, his colleagues.
Second, I am one of those folks who get totally exasperated by President Obama’s penchant for proposing crap like chained CPI, allowing a year or so ago the suggestion to come out of the White House that raising the Medicare eligibility age – one of the worst ideas ever – might be under consideration as part of some “Grand Bargain” and – more to the point – his persistent rhetorical deference to the know-nothing deficit hysterics bullshit.
But David Sirota on UP with Chris Hayes – responding to the host’s rational assertion that Obama appears to be the only guy in the Beltway who is serious about long-term deficit reduction – made an interesting suggestion. He said that if Obama really wanted a Grand Bargain that included stuff like chained CPI that Republicans also claim to want, he would actually take a more “left” position and make it look like the GOP is forcing him to adopt some of the “centrist” stuff that he puts out there as his own package in front. Because the GOP can’t allow him to “win” anything that looks like they’ve gone along with his core agenda.
Basically Sirota, who hates this deficit-deference crap as much as I do was arguing – I think un-ironically – some variation of the 11-dimensional chess thing, that were Obama fully aware how toxic his very name is, if he wanted to not have something happen all he has to do is suggest it to the GOP. And they appear to be that crazy. So if he really wants his “Grand Bargain” he’s a shitty negotiator – but not in the way that his left critics usually suggest. I doubt this is actually the conscious – or at least overall internally articulated – White House strategy, because it’s pretty obvious to me that key aides like Gene Sperling actually believe in some of this bullshit, but it was an interesting take. And an interesting variation on the “Obama is a shitty negotiator line” – sort of an inversion. I’m hoping there’s some element of truth to it – because a “sane” GOP could gain a lot from “compromising” with Obama, unfortunately.
James E. Powell
I know we all think Ezra Klein is auditioning for David Broder’s job
I always thought he was auditioning for Richard Cohen’s job, but lately I think he wants to be Michael Kinsley.
GregB
@Todd:
Soft targets? Children?
Please fuck off and join the Klan or Al Qaeda and un-invite yourself from participating here.
Todd
@Del:
Wealthy wingers inflict a lot of pain downward via propaganda, nepotism, corruption and election rigging. “Shared sacrifice” from them is a sneer which means that the untermenschen take a beating again. Outside of installing a Robespierre, there seems to be little that affects them.
Lu’s, it’ll make the next generation of meritorious inheritors more circumspect.
Todd
@GregB:
Why not? They’re going after yours. Hate to tell you, but they’re winning this class war.
max
@Violet:
Question: Have the sequester cuts hit the airports yet? Older family member is visiting and is catching a flight in a few days. Will she have longer wait times and is her flight in danger of being cancelled. The airports she’s flying from/to are not on the list of closures. Anyone know if cuts have started yet?
I went and asked. They’re cutting expenses (by delaying acquisitions and so on) and they instituted a hiring freeze. They haven’t furloughed anybody and they aren’t yet planning on doing so – if they do, as the AP story says, they’re required by law (written by the same sorts that gave us the sequester law) to give thirty days notice.
So only small impacts, mainly in delays, at least until March 27th.
General Stuck: Both sides don’t do it, but democrats won’t roll over either, hopefully, and that is willfully confused with equal culpability for the sake of continuing drama.
Absolutely.
max
[‘Ezra’s OK, he just works at the fishwrap paper, and trying to do actual reporting, which is hard. Particularly when people like say, BOB WOODWARD, operate on very different principles, even if they have the same job description.’]
GregB
Last comment. You are likely a paid douche coming here to sprinkle violent talk/chatter so that you can then repost this shit on a wingnut blog or you are simply an amoral fascist planning on killing children.
Either way, fuck off.
jamick6000
@Hill Dweller:
The sacrifice is pointless, there’s no need to cut SS. And a cut to SS hurts the working class way, way more than eliminating a tax loophole hurts an oligarch. So what Obama’s proposing is a lot of pain for working people in exchange for a tiny bit of sacrifice from the very wealthy, which they won’t even feel.
No thanks.
Comrade Jake
OT, but did anyone catch Dennis Rodman’s appearance on This Week? Just bizarre all around, from Stephanopoulos questioning him seriously to Rodman’s goofy responses.
Del
@Todd: I hate the idea of banning people from discussion but serious FPers, ban this shitstain. Any asshole who advocates going after people’s children doesn’t deserve to be here.
Frankensteinbeck
@jamick6000:
That fiend! Fighting for years while Republicans held a gun to the economy’s head to prevent any reduction in benefits, because his dastardly plan was to wait and gut the safety net NOW! It’s so devious!
@GregB:
Yeah, sign me up on the ‘fuck off’ train. We’ll always be stuck with fringe lunatics who espouse violence, but when they start yapping we should damn well make it clear they’re fringe lunatics and not welcome.
Gex
@Roger Moore: Nicely done, sir.
scav
Well, somebody is wearing his cowboy jammies late on a Sunday morning.
Todd
@GregB:
Actually, I was simply wishing for the rise of a new version of the Weathermen, and was planning nothing.
As for the “children” part, I invite you to check out the receipt posts on “Rich Kids of Instagram”, and look at what is wasted on Moët and Dom. Those aren’t special precious innocents – those are evil spending machines.
Yutsano
@Comrade Jake: The trainwreck thread is one down. :)
Hill Dweller
@jamick6000: I see you left off the first paragraph. Those loopholes(carried interest, tax shelters, etc.) are too important to the oligarchs/hedge fund managers that run the Republican party for them to ever agree to close them.
Obama’s proposed changes are concessions he’ll never have to make.
Gex
Okay, people are calling children evil now. Because it is the children’s fault how their parents raise them. This is an attitude that is very much at home on the right when they don’t give a fuck about the starving children of the poor.
I too wish for the ban hammer.
Rosie Outlook
@Comrade Jake: Does everything have to be a fvcking brand? Govexec.com–a newsletter for government employees, for heaven’s sake–has run articles talking about your “personal brand.”. I am a woman made in the image of God, I am not a fvcking brand of potato chips. When did this turn into the United States of Fvcking Ferengi? I never got to vote on such a change.
jamick6000
All the Ezra Klein fanboys should remember he was key in creating the legend of the Very Serious Paul Ryan and carried a lot of water for the big banks after the financial crisis.
http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/paul-ryan-what-stupid-people-think-a-smart-guy-sounds-like
Del
So as not to completely derail the topic I’d recommend completely ignoring or pie-filtering Todd. They’re either a troll, a paid troll, or type of moron that actually believes the shit they’re spewing. Either way they’re not worth out rime.
Chris
@Del:
Morality notwithstanding, it seems worthwhile to note that neither the anarchist bombings circa 1920 nor the Weathermen in the 1970s got the change they wanted. All it did was give the 1% another stick to beat back reform with.
Chris
@Gex:
I was wishing for it all through Matoko’s time here.
jamick6000
@Hill Dweller: Sorry, wasn’t trying to misrepresent what you were saying, just wanted to keep my comment short.
My problem with what you’re saying is that Obama agreed to SS and Medicare cuts in the original debt ceiling shit show, but Eric Cantor scuttled the deal. He’s been willing to agree to cuts when there was a very realistic chance of them going through.
Ted & Hellen
@jamick6000:
How dare you say that here.
Del
@Chris: Yeah, I mentioned that in #39. People like Todd never seem to get it. We seem to have gotten the answer to mixmaster’s “new shiny” question right here in this very thread. The question is, how do we reinforce the ‘Republicans caused the Sequester because they refused to even consider raising taxes on the rich’ narrative?
Ted & Hellen
@Bruce S:
How dare you point this out here.
Todd
@Gex:
There’s a significant difference between a kid mired in a life marked by an absence of resources, and a life marked by douchey displays of excess.
Ted & Hellen
@Del:
Piss off, hall monitor. Other people are capable of thinking for themselves, even if your delicate mind and fees fees lead you in another direction.
piratedan
@Hill Dweller: and what sucks is that it’s so effective as a strategy… The R’s keep fucking that chicken, the media calls into question whether or not the chicken was dressed provocatively and America gets tired of the ginned up crisis because most of us just want to go home and watch some sports or laugh at the antics of some semi scripted faux reality show and when it comes to actually understanding what is going on, the media falls all over themselves printing what it means AFTER it fucking happens… hey bright guys, how about a bit of that reporting BEFORE it comes to pass.
Del
@Ted & Hellen: Why do I have a feeling that if I had access to the site IP logs I’d see you and Todd coming from the same location? You both show the same derailment MO in practically every thread you’re in.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Go figure:
It almost pains me to have to say: Good on you, David Goodhair.
The Thin Black Duke
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: When you’ve lost David Gregory…
Mnemosyne
@Todd:
Yes, and the biggest success that the Weathermen had?
Getting Ronald Reagan elected president.
Good job there, by the way.
eclecticbrotha
@Todd: Why, of course you’re advocating violent uprising which consists of attacking “soft targets” that include children as long as you wouldn’t have to do it yourself. You, sir, are the perfect 21st Century Derpolutionary.
Todd
@Mnemosyne:
Hiding Barack Obama’s foreign birth, if I’m to believe the wingers. Also, ghost wring his bio.
;)
Mnemosyne
@Ted & Hellen:
Gosh, what a shock — Timmy supporting the murder of children and other innocent people in random bombings by a new Weathermen group. Who else saw that one coming?
Mnemosyne
@Todd:
Since you seem to see the election of Ronald Reagan as a good thing, I’m not surprised you’ve been reading a lot of right-wingers.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
A couple of things:
1) re the Who Suggested the Sequester, DeLong had link to a nice little video (1:29) that gives a good answer to that, if you haven’t seen it.
2) re (roughly) Obummer’s always wanted to gut Social Security and Medicare and is really a secret Republican – too many people on the left seemingly can’t understand him even though he seems to me to be the most transparently straightforward politician in my memory. Obama has been clear for years that his over-arching goal is to get the Congress and the Presidency working properly again. The President following the law and moving the country forward; the Congress doing its job and passing sensible legislation rather than spending months/years on manufactured crises. He’s willing to accept a “grand bargain” of things that he doesn’t like because: a) it’ll finally get the Republicans to break their ‘no taxes, ever’ pledge; b) it’ll get these manufactured crises about the deficit and the debt limit and so forth behind us; c) it’ll let us move on to real issues (climate change; dependence on foreign oil; investments in education and technologies of the future; shrinking the DOD sensibly; controlling health-care costs; etc. d) he knows that a present Congress can’t prevent a future Congress from making changes. Incremental reforms now don’t mean more can’t be done in the future. A Chained CPI can be tweaked in the future as well; benefits can always be expanded – all it takes is people in the House and Senate willing to vote for it.
If Obama had 65 votes in the Senate and Nancy had the gavel in the House, does anyone think that he would be pushing for a chained CPI and frozen discretionary spending for years on end? I don’t. He knows that unemployment is the biggest problem right now, not the deficit. But he knows that he can’t get anything of substance done with the way the House is now unless he gets the leadership and enough Republicans on board so he can get a vote.
Remember when he said (during the ’04 campaign) he would have chosen a single-payer health care system if he were starting from scratch but that wasn’t going to happen with limitations imposed by our existing system and the politics? He wasn’t lying. It’s the same thing now.
Don’t mistake tactics imposed by circumstances with what he would like to do if circumstances were different.
If you want Obummer to not do a Grand Bargain with a chained CPI, work to give Nancy the gavel and Harry a bigger majority. It’s that simple.
My (probably too long) $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Hill Dweller
@jamick6000:
But you’re making my point for me. The Republicans are never going to say ‘yes’. They’re never going to close the loop holes or cut corporate welfare in exchange for CPI or changing the medicare age.
Read the Klein/Murphy twitter exchange that led to the article excerpted in this post. Murphy claimed CCPI for SS/raising Medicare age were concessions that would lead to a deal ending sequester, because he didn’t think Obama would agree to them. Once Klein pointed out Obama had made those proposals, Murphy called the very demands he had just made “small beans gimmicks”.
The wingnuts will never say “yes” to a grand bargain because they want to keep manufacturing crises.
OzoneR
@jamick6000:
Despite all of the “sky is falling” rhetoric from the professional left over the years, Obama has never cut SS. There’s no proof that he will now except he’s offered it, and made it clear it’s a serious compromise on his part should they agree to it, which we all know they never will.
You know they never will because as Ezra Klein showed us, the Republicans won’t even admit he offered it.
It’s all jockeying for blame and staking out the position of “most reasonable,” which Obama, at least until this point, has won, in part by offering SS cuts.
The Thin Black Duke
Wow.
One sick dirtbag of a troll is fantasizing about killing children while the other sick dirtbag of a troll is fantasizing about fucking them.
Ewwwwwwww.
JustRuss
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That makes two weeks in a row that Dancin’ Dave has committed acts of journalism by pushing back against Republican alternate-reality. Good thing I’m sittin down.
Gex
@Todd: Yes, because the minds of the children of the wealthy are already born in an adult developmental state. Everything we know about how the mind develops only applies to poor children.
I thought we all kind of understood how easy it is for people to not see their own privilege. And we expect adults to have enough knowledge of history and how things operate to question theirs. I didn’t know we expected CHILDREN to be able to do the same things. But only if their parents are rich.
You are really a horrible person. It’s disgusting watching you try to contort your reasoning as a justification for hating and hoping for the deaths of children.
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne:
In fairness to T&H, he/she/it is only a sociopathic idiot on days that end in “y.”
Shawn in ShowMe
@Rosie Outlook:
I think the concentration of scores of media companies into a half dozen conglomerates with a portfolio of “brands” has something to do with it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Hill Dweller: I know Murphy’s a hack– a label I imagine he would proudly embrace– but his twitter gymnastics yesterday really do reflect the total detachment from reality, and actual policy, of today’s Republicans. I saw Michael Steele on TV last week– loyal hack even though they despise him– claiming the “Ryan budget” as the Republicans’ declaration of deep and committed principle. When it was pointed out to him that neither Romney nor Boehner-McConnell are sticking to that budget, he sincerely dismissed that as irrelevant. I wish they would stop hiding the ball and just declare for that budget, but even Dim Bulb Boehner knows it would be electoral suicide.
General Stuck
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
The only things that Obama doesn’t like, are things like the CCPI, which he knows, as well as the republicans, that is something that can be devised in a progressive manner to not hurt, or even help low income seniors. Other dems have voiced a lukewarm support for means testing medicare premiums in a progressive manner as well. And they were never serious about raising the retirement age.
If you have been paying attention the past four years, and really listened to Obama and krew, they do not offer any concessions what so ever, that could possibly harm the poorest among us. And while certain concessions can be seen as a hit on upper middle class, very little they have offered would harm the middle class at large.
Hill Dweller
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Did Dancin’ Dave point out the Senate Dems tried to pass a plan, which enjoyed majority support, but Republicans filibustered it?
FlipYrWhig
@jamick6000: I know this is like my personal hobbyhorse that no one else thinks is interesting or important, but as I recall the “grand” idea involving Social Security was to have all of the following three things: a new cost-of-living formula like chained CPI; an increase in income subject to SS withholding; and a guaranteed minimum benefit. Doing all of those together would, on balance, help the people at the bottom of the scale quite a lot. It might be bad for people at the middle and top of the scale. Their consolation, of course, is having had a lifetime of significantly better income that puts them less in need of a publicly funded retirement benefit.
So if the objective is to rein in the amount of money being spent on Social Security without harming the people who need it most, that’s a pretty solid plan.
If the objective were to bring in more money to keep everyone’s benefits increasing steadily from their current levels, it’s not a good plan at all.
YMMV.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Hill Dweller: Maybe if we printed the facts on a wine label, slapped it on one of them 1.5 liter jugs of merlot and had it delivered to the Speaker’s office….
Shawn in ShowMe
@Todd
The Reign of Terror just led to Napoleon. And that was in an age before imperialists could kill citizens by remote control.
Capitalism will eventually collapse under its own weight because sucking the planet dry isn’t sustainable. Doofus hipsters re-enacting scenes from Red Dawn won’t have anything to do with it.
CaseyL
I remember thinking the 113th Congress couldn’t possibly be as bad as the 112th.
I was correct, but not the way I wanted to be.
The 113th is worse. Fewer Teatards, but more concentrated.
People talk about Chicago-style politics. I wish Obama would do it Chicago-style. Or even, FSM help me, J. Edgar-style. Those pinheads must have some secret misdeeds they don’t want the world to know about. (Then I remember “Diaper” Dave Vitter is still a Senator, so maybe not.)
becca
Simply put…
Which party wants to raise revenue?
Which party wants to cut spending?
The sequester is all cuts. The sequester goes bad, the GOP drives further south.
FlipYrWhig
@General Stuck: my biggest objection with the whole line about how Obama totally definitely this time is cutting entitlements is that, rhetorically, it’s always spun as hurting poor people. But no plan I have ever heard articulated has stood to hurt poor people–there’s always some other kind of protection for them. The people who would be affected are middle class and rich people. If you’re middle class or rich and don’t like the proposal or think it’s politically stupid, fine, fire your slings and arrows about it. But don’t claim the mantle of Champion Of The Downtrodden in the process. That’s not who’s on the chopping block.
lojasmo
@Del:
exactly
General Stuck
@FlipYrWhig:
Very well stated, Mr Wig. Politics is full of back stabbing alternate agendas from all sides. Obama and his advocacy for the poor is the altruistic calm, in the angry sea of push and shove politique.
NR
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: It’s pretty sad how Obama’s defenders have to rely on mind-reading in order to justify his actions. Sure, he proposes all kinds of stuff that will hurt working Americans, but you just know he doesn’t really mean it! Because you can read his mind!
Obama’s defenders need to stop with the mind-reading. It’s ridiculous.
OzoneR
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s easier to spin that way, but in fairness, the left believes entitlement programs like SS should benefit everyone, rich and poor, and it doesn’t matter if changes are made to affect the poor or the rich.
Mnemosyne
@burnspbesq:
The problem with being a knee-jerk contrarian is that when your process is Obots are deploring something, therefore I must defend it, you find yourself cheering on the idea of murdering children in random bombings.
Which is particularly ironic since IIRC Timmy is of the drooonnnneezzzz crowd, so apparently bombing children in the US is A-OK but bombing children overseas is the worst thing evar.
OzoneR
@NR:
Says the douche who is convinced Obama is serious about cutting entitlements even though he’s never actually done it.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@NR: Heh. It’s not mind reading, it’s knowing how to read what he writes and listen with understanding to what he says.
Cheers,
Scott.
sparrow
@Todd: People forget that all the liberal reforms in the U.K. came *after* people lost their heads in France.
No, I don’t advocate violence, but I do advocate showing the strength of our numbers, and if we happen to make the 1%’s very, very afraid, then all the better. I want to see OWS*1000 happen, in every city… I dream, anyway.
NR
@OzoneR: I’m convinced that Obama is serious about cutting entitlements because he has publicly stated that he is willing to cut entitlements. Pretty simple.
You, on the other hand, are convinced that Obama is not serious about cutting entitlements because you believe that you can read his mind, and you just know that he isn’t really serious. Most people would say that that’s not a basis for rational evaluations, but it’s good enough for Obama supporters, I guess.
NR
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: So when Obama says this:
If you “listen with understanding,” that somehow means that he really does not want to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security?
Wow, this “listening with understanding” trick is great! I can use it to make myself believe that Obama means whatever I want him to mean, even when it’s the exact opposite of what he says! This is so cool! I can finally be an Obot! Yay!
OzoneR
@NR:
yeah, I’m convinced my father will never divorce my mother because he publicly stated that at their wedding.
Oh wait, they got divorced.
Also, because he actually has NEVER cut entitlements. On the contrary, he expanded them (Medicaid, UE). You know, actions, they speak louder than words. Unless it comes from a Obama I guess, right NR?
Shawn in ShowMe
@sparrow:
Then to bring about liberal reforms in the U.S., Canadians should send the Harper regime to the guillotine, eh?
Shawn in ShowMe
@NR:
Follow the money. Nothing else in politics matter. Everything else is theater.
Del
@Shawn in ShowMe: Snark aside the actions of other countries do serve as good lessons. The problem is that our media are working hand-in-hand with the GOP to ensure the public never gets those lessons. Case in point? Iceland. I can list on one hand the number of people I know in real life who have a clue what Iceland did to their banks during the collapse.
NR
@OzoneR:
Okay, let’s run with your logic here. Someone pulls out a gun and says he’s going to shoot you, but the police arrest him before he can pull the trigger. By your logic, this means he never wanted to shoot you in the first place.
Sure, we could believe that. Or we could acknowledge the simple fact that if someone says they’re going to do something, but are prevented from doing it by forces outside their control, that doesn’t mean they never wanted to do it in the first place.
One would think that this would be so simple that it wouldn’t need explaining, but Obots are a special breed, I guess….
Peter
@NR: Can you explain, then, why Obama hasn’t done so despite all the opportunities he’s been given? Why he never even suggested it when his party held bot Houses?
80% of politics is posturing. That you don’t understand this reflects poorly on you, not Obama.
Keith G
Among the dumbest things I have read here in a while. Are you joking? Stoned?
A fair reading of Klein’s work show many, many more assessments that are tough on conservatives than on Obama. He does point out when he feels Obama is in the weeds. Is that too much?
When have we become so right-like in our demeanor?
jamick6000
@Hill Dweller:
This is from the email from Obama’s top economic aide Gene Sperling to Boob Woodward:
So the administration is trying to force a deal that includes entitlement cuts. Their goal is cuts to social insurance programs. It’s what they say publicly and privately. What you and others are saying is that Obama has no intention of cutting social insurance programs, he’s just saying that he wants to cut them because he wants to seem reasonable to David Brooks et al. and he knows the Republicans will never agree to a compromise anyways.
First of all, I can’t tell you how monumentally stupid Obama’s advisors are if they think that taking an unpopular position like cutting SS (~80 percent are opposed) to please the Washington Post’s editorial page, which nobody reads, is good politics.
Second, why was he talking about “entitlement reform” in 2009? See this WaPo editorial http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-11-27/opinions/35507980_1_entitlement-reform-hard-decisions-cuts
Repubs were in the minority in 2009, and he was still talking about this crap.
NR
By the way, this discussion is really instructive. Obama’s supporters are so invested in the man that they really do believe that they can read his mind, and they know what he really wants better than anyone else. And nothing, not even Obama’s own words, said publicly, can convince them that they’re wrong.
These are simply not rational people.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@NR: Here’s a hint for you: cuts in a program are not necessarily a cut in benefits provided under that program.
You might want to review what he said less than a week ago:
Emphasis added.
If you see the need for mind-reading, or if you still think that my comment at #85 calls for mind-reading, well there isn’t much to discuss.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Why are you all arguing with the Naderite dining room table?
Chris
@sparrow:
I’ve grown much more understanding of the French Revolution over the years, but I don’t think either the left or the right understand just how far a country’s population has to be pushed before it gets to that point.
The reason revolutions frighten the rich is the same reason that they’re so rare, namely, they consist of enormous blocs of regular people who have finally had enough, drop their day job and their ordinary lives, go out into the streets and start storming shit. Revolutions mean that there are enough people, with enough pissed-off-edness, that the authorities’ regular means of enforcing their will are no longer enough.
That’s not a very common occurrence. Yet for some reason, there are always leftists who believe that if they and a few friends can come together, form a Glorious Leninist Revolutionary Vanguard, and start killing rich people, somehow that’ll be all it takes to inspire the people to rise up.
waynski
Are we all Better Than Ezra?
OzoneR
@NR:
Are you serious with this? This is, by far, the dumbest analogy ever.
You don’t know if he would have pulled the trigger or not. There are a lot of examples of people pulling a gun out and threatening to shoot you and never do.
If I was a prosecutor (and I am a lawyer), I would not bring attempted murder or attempted manslaughter charges unless there was proof the guy had pulled a trigger before. If he hadn’t, there is no way I could prove he would have. My case would even be more in peril if he had threatened people with a gun before and then never pulled a trigger.
Obama has never pulled a trigger before, despite multiple threats to do so, therefore its reasonable to suspect he never will.
No one is saying he hasn’t threatened to cut entitlements, we’re saying he’s never actually followed through. And that makes it reasonable to believe he never will, and you so thoughtfully pointed out a while back with Obama and the Bush tax cuts.
Shawn in ShowMe
@NR:
So who’s arresting Obama before he can pull the trigger? The Republicans? LOL x Infinity!
MattR
@OzoneR:
Is that really the standard you want to adopt – that if Obama proposed something but it never got passed, then that means he was never serious about it in the first place? I guess that means Obama was never serious about closing Gitmo, reeling in too big to fail banks or any number of other good ideas that were killed by Republican obstructionism.
@OzoneR:
NR never says that the person would have pulled the trigger. He just says that it is ridiculous to assume that the person was never serious about pulling it. You seem to agree since you say that you don’t know for sure either way.
Bradley
@NR: Dude, let it go, really. The only person here reading his mind is you.
As if a politician never said and believed two different things.
WereBear
I know, call me an Obot now and get it over with :)
But the chances of a happy Left Solution getting through our last few legislatures are between slim and none, and Slim is stranded at the airport because he had a nosehair clipper in his luggage.
So when President Obama co-opts an idea they had, back there were such creatures as sane Republicans, it looks good to the brainwashed masses because it doesn’t have the taint of Democrats on it.
The Tea Party squeals and repudiates their own party.
Progress is made. Come up with a better plan and then tell me I’m stupid. I’m okay with that.
OzoneR
@MattR:
Is there anyone who really thinks he was serious about reeling in big banks?
Ted & Hellen
@Mnemosyne:
Menmospleen being a dishonest, lying sack of shit, citing projection as fact. What a surprise.
You have have discernment of a slug.
Fuck yourself.
OzoneR
@MattR:
Not necessarily. If the person has never pulled it before, especially if there have been a number of similar situations in which he has threatened to pull it and didn’t, it’s completely reasonable to assume he never will, as is the case with Obama.
It’s where to term “gun shy” comes from.
Ted & Hellen
@Del:
…because you’re a dumb ass?
Keith G
@NR: Save you
breathfingers.We will know soon enough what entitlement hill Obama will choose to die on. Why bother arguing now? My own interpretation is that Obama is too much of a center pragmatist to die on any hill. He will cut the deal he needs to keep things moving in the big picture.
Recall, he is willing to “learn” just as his vision on what should be done on healthcare and government transparency changed as he learned more about the requirements of the real world.
MattR
@OzoneR: I don’t think that is actually where gun shy comes from.
But you go ahead and confront the person pointing a gun at you because you think they won’t use it. That’s not a long term winning strategy.
(EDIt: All of this has moved away from the main point that I agree with NR on. That even if this was just a negotiating position and Obama was never serious, the media will still use his statements as proof that even Democrats realize that SS needs reform along the lines that Obama proposed. And that is something that I disagree with and think is harmful. SS does need some tweaks but those should not be part of any deficit reduction package since it has nothing to do with the deficit)
OzoneR
@MattR:
Except no one in the media is saying that. Not one person. Rather, anyone who is saying SS needs those reforms (i.e. David Brooks) is saying what we’re saying. That he’s not serious. Or going the Fox News route of “he’s not proposing any SS changes” and being willfully ignorant of his proposals, as Ezra Klein has pointed out.
that would make the Democrats look reasonable, and the media will never allow that.
Another reason why SS cuts will NEVER HAPPEN
Mnemosyne
@Ted & Hellen:
No? You called Del a “hall monitor” for saying this was wrong to say:
You defended Todd for calling for the children of the rich to be murdered. I guess proposing the murder of children is just one of those things that you think should be up for general discussion since you complained about Del and others shutting off that line of conversation.
Shawn in ShowMe
@MattR:
If Obama wanted cuts to entitlement benefits he would propose cuts to entitlement benefits and the Republicans and Blue Dogs would have signed off on it. It’s not that complicated.
Instead he proposes entitlement cuts to providers and raising taxes on the rich that the Republicans will never agree to. During the negotiations that produced the sequester, Democrats successfully pushed to exempt most forms of politically sensitive entitlement spending from the automatic cuts (Social Security, Medicare beneficiaries, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, unemployment insurance, and food stamps).
NR
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Social Security and Medicare already run extremely efficiently. There is nothing to cut but benefits. Especially Social Security–it’s a direct payout to seniors. When you say you’re going to cut Social Security, that means you’re going to cut Social Security benefits. Period.
I’m looking at Obama’s public statements saying that he’s willing to cut Social Security and Medicare.
You’re looking at what you think Obama believes, based on the idea that you can read his mind and see what he really believes, even when it contradicts his public statements.
I’m dealing with reality and you’re dealing with a fantasy. So you’re right, there isn’t much to discuss.
MattR
@OzoneR: Of course the media is currently making arguments that reinforce the current Republican POV. Do you think that will stop them from making the complete opposite arguments in the future? Social Security will need to be dealt with at some point in the next few years and I have little doubt that Obama’s current proposals will be used against Democrats.
@Shawn in ShowMe: I don’t think Obama wants to cut entitlements. But I do think its possible that he is willing to do so as part of a compromise. I really don’t know what is in his mind which is why I find pronouncements of certainty to be ridiculous when they come from either side of the argument.
OzoneR
@NR:
Nope, we’re looking at his actions, which show he’s never cut a damn thing. Actions, not what he’s said. No one knows what he believes.
I know I’m not going to convince you of anything, I’m not just doing this because it’s fun to make you look like an idiot, and I have another 45 minutes to kill before I head out to dinner.
OzoneR
@MattR:
That would first mean the media would have to admit Obama is proposing what he is proposing and they’ve shown no interest in doing so.
They are much better off pretending Obama isn’t proposing anything because he’s afraid of you, then they can say he isn’t “leading,” which seems to be the more interesting meme to them.
Shawn in ShowMe
@NR:
So this is your argument? That only cuts to beneficiaries can be made because Social Security and Medicare are already operating at 100% efficiency? C’mon man.
Del
@Mnemosyne: Unless they’re foreign and we use drones. Don’t forget, then it’s the worst thing ever.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
I think you may need to catch up on current events if you think Medicare has no problems that need to be solved.
MomSense
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
This!!
I was watching David Goodhair get tough on Boehner in the MTP interview today and by tough I mean ask a couple of challenging questions. But it pretty quickly devolved into talk of serious offers and whether it was the President who had the idea for sequester or not. But the context for this whole fiasco was completely missing. The fact is that the only reason the President or Sperling suggested Sequester and Boehner and McConnell snatched it up (it waas 96% of what Agent Orange wanted after all) was because the House was seriously considering defaulting on the debt–the money that Congress had already spent! They were threatening the financial markets, the entire economy–they did harm our credit rating in service of their ideology. I don’t care who suggested it–the House Republicans were willing to blow up the nation to serve their goals.
Ted & Hellen
@Mnemosyne:
Idiot.
I called out whats its face for playing hall monitor. Fuck off.
Elie
It is also true that the sequestration cuts are only good for this fiscal year which ends in 7- 8 months (September 30). That limits the damage somewhat and Obama has some other options to restrict or direct the cuts as well. Lets see how this plays out, but there is NO win here for Republicans… the rope and ice axes dug into the mountain aint gonna make no difference and in fact, they continue to hurt themselves with whinny, stupid teevee performances and interview comments. All these “crises” are hitting them before they have fixed their party and all that will happen is more damage. Their party policy is out of date and destructive to both fiscal and social health. They will have to figure out how to rip their party out of control of the teahadists and other crazies. It will not be easy or pretty and importantly, can have a fair amount of collateral damage as they ignore governance to execute their wars. Just my thoughts…
MomSense
@Todd:
You are insane.
FlipYrWhig
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I have attempted to explain to NR that not all cuts are benefit cuts, and that not all benefit cuts in monetary terms are cuts that jeopardize anyone’s health or well-being (e.g., swapping generics for brand-name drugs would allow less money to be spent, creating _savings_ that are not “cuts” in any meaningful way). NR refuses to comprehend something that basic to human logic and the everyday functioning of the English language because NR is a dipshit.
Hill Dweller
@jamick6000: Obama followed through on that promise and made reforms to medicare, which saved money and increased benefits.
None of the CCPI and increasing the Medicare age(which he publicly called dumb policy) nonsense came up until Republicans took over the House and started demanding ransom.
Furthermore, Obama hammered Ryan’s plan for gutting medicare on the campaign trail.
You and others are trying to convince people that Obama wants to gut the safety net, when in reality he has expanded it. The medicaid expansion is the biggest boon for low income families in a generation.
Todd
@Gex:
Y’know, I get having a good time and having nice things, but standing around and wringing hands about how to politely adjust the polity just isn’t cutting it, not with Shelly Adelson dumping a couple hundred mill into races and the Kochs dumping hundreds of millions into propaganda mills. All we proles have is the democratic organs of the state to act as a counterweight, and these boys are working very hard to take even that.
And as for the kids, scroll around RKOI just so you can watch them mistreat jeroboams of Dom and Moët in service of “fun”, realize that these meritorious inheritors are enjoying frivolous waste as a result of cutting back on infrastructure, Pell Grants, Head Start, etc., and then realize that this will be the next generation to snatch up the falling wallet in order to enhance their already great privilege.
http://richkidsofinstagram.tumblr.com/post/29351797304/100k-receipt#_=_
Todd
PS – to all the greatly concerned. The actual small children of Newtown died in order to preserve and enhance the profits of your betters who own firearms companies.
Discuss….
Ted & Hellen
@Todd:
But Todd…you’re so…uncivil, dear.
Please don’t speak unpleasant truths out loud. You’ll rattle the china here in the BJ library as we await tea.
JP7505A
Well according to Mittens it breaks his heart that he isn’t in the White House fixing the country’s problems. And Mrs. Mittens thinks that it is terrible that after campaigning for 6 years, 20+ debates and one billion dollars, the liberal biased news media didn’t let the country see the REAL Mitt. She apparently wasn’t talking about the 47% who Mitt agreed did get the wrong impression from that video. His friends, the 1%, know what a standup guy he really is. I think we all should take up a collection and buy this grieving couple a large bottle of industrial stength hemlock (snark, in case any one misses that). No one should be forced to suffer the pain that they have now have to endure since the roller coaster ride has endend. sob. sob sob. Please, FSM, make them go away. FOREVER
Ted & Hellen
@Todd:
Oh my. Now grand mama Menmospleen may have a slight aneurysm.
Quick, man the fainting couches!
Pinkamena Panic
@Turd: Die in obscurity, ghoul.
Elie
@Todd:
No. They died at the hands of a young man with 1) severe mental illness and 2) unchecked access to guns provided by his family and 3) he was isolated and no one knew how sick he was.
Could you be equally ill? If so, please get help. No lie. I not ill, you must be one of the saddest people walking around… no cure for that unfortunately.
Ted & Hellen
@JP7505A:
OMG. SOMEONE BAN THIS PERSON FORTHWITH! THEY HAVE THREATENED TO MURDER THE ROMNEYS!
THE HUMANITY!
Mnemosyne
@Ted & Hellen:
Yes, calling for innocent people to be bombed in a class war is just one of those “unpleasant truths” that we need to discuss doing. Anyone who thinks it might be a bad idea is just a mindless Obot who doesn’t understand that the blood of the rich needs to water the tree of liberty.
You’re really not helping yourself here, you know. I’m not defending Todd saying we need to kill rich people, I’m just saying we should seriously discuss killing rich people! Why are you Obots always distorting what I say to make me look bad?
FlipYrWhig
@Hill Dweller: Saving public money that now gets spent on bullshit is and always will be a good thing. I don’t know why anyone makes it more complicated than that. Less money being spent on redundant medical tests is good for the treasury, good for the patient, and bad only for hospital administrators, who are, perhaps ironically, a disease. Cut that and redirect the money into smarter medicine. It’s fucking obvious. And yet people are so wrapped up in their holier than thou fantasies that they’d prefer to play into the hands of hospital administrators, MRI machine makers, and other greedheads and parasites than admit the possibility of positive change. It’s nuts on every level. And the same critics rarely apply the same standard to, say, farm subsidies. Smug and obnoxious and all too prevalent.
Pinkamena Panic
So can we get some cleanup in aisle Here from the FPs? The trolls have shat the floor. Get them out of here.
FlipYrWhig
KILL EVERYONE I AM SO BRAVE TO SAY IT
JP7505A
@Ted & Hellen: Maybe if I had typed the word ‘snark’ in 32 point text and had it flashing in red white and blue ? Nah some folks would still miss the sarcasim.
Mnemosyne
@Todd:
And your solution is to kill the head of the NRA and/or heads of firearms companies?
Yeah, random violence will totally solve the problem of fearful people buying guns in a terrified frenzy because they think societal breakdown is right around the corner. Because nothing makes people feel safer or more secure than random political killings.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: The problems of society are always solved by more guns and death. That’s why liberals love the NRA and warfare so much!
Todd
@Mnemosyne:
I wouldn’t shed any tears were such a thing to occur, not that I’d be doing it. Too old, inadequately trained.
Anyway, you have to admit the world would be a better place without them inhabiting it.
Del
@Mnemosyne: Especially when the people being targeted are the ones who write the laws, or at least friends with those that do. I mean it’s not like there’s anything else politicians could do in the face of such events besides enact positive sociopolitical change.Civil rights crackdown? Blanket communications monitoring? Kangaroo court arrests? Nah, never here…
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@NR: You’re still apparently not understanding what happened. Let’s review the documents (according to Woodward) from the summer of 2011 – http://www.taylormarsh.com/blog/2012/11/obamas-2011-grand-bargain-detailed-in-documents-obtained-by-bob-woodward/
The proposed Social Security “cuts” were the chained CPI beginning in 2015, coupled with a “balanced package of tax and benefit changes” and increased benefits for the oldest beneficiaries with low to moderate incomes.
The proposed Medicare “cuts” were to reduce total Medicare spending from the baseline by $200B over the period 2012 – 2021, and $800B from 2022 – 2031 by changes in 5 areas “and others”:
– alteration in the Medicare retirement age
– adjustment to premiums and benefits in Parts B and D
– reforming co-insurance
– limitations in supplemental insurance
– changes in payments to hospitals, post-acute care, and prescription drugs
All of this was coupled with changes in the tax code to close loopholes and raise more revenue.
He has said from the beginning that he wants a “balanced approach”. None of this was going to happen unless substantially all of it happened. Boehner and Cantor walked away because they thought they could defeat Obama in the 2012 election and get what they wanted without giving up anything when Rmoney won.
You portray yourself as being well informed on these issues. If you are, then reducing this proposal and what Obama has been trying to do to a sound bite that “Obama wants to cut Social Security” is disingenuous.
If you really think Obama is wanting to gut Social Security and Medicare, the answer is to give Nancy the gavel in January 2015 so that he doesn’t have to work with Boehner and Cantor any more. Not to whine about Obama – he’s going to be in the White House until January 2017. You may as well get used to it.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
@NR:
“Social Security and Medicare already run extremely efficiently. There is nothing to cut but benefits. Especially Social Security–it’s a direct payout to seniors. When you say you’re going to cut Social Security, that means you’re going to cut Social Security benefits. Period.”
In the case of Medicare, that is absolutely not true. There are big changes coming to Medicare reimbursement that will lower costs (expense) and improve patient outcomes. I suppose you could say that fewer services are a loss in benefits–but the services are unnecessary. Places like Mayo Clinic get better patient outcomes for less money. Medicare will start paying per condition and expecting hospitals and providers to implement these best practices.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: Y U HATE FREEDUMB??
FlipYrWhig
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: NR is not well informed. He is stubborn and dogmatic and locked in to the worst possible interpretation of all things. You’re doing a better and more thorough job than I have when I have tried to have the same conversation in good faith for multiple years here. But it’s not going to “take” this time either.
And, FWIW, I think raising the eligibility age for Medicare is a bad idea until, at a bare minimum, we have seen what the effects of so-called Obamacare are on people 55-65 or so.
Adam Jonas Waldorf
I don’t get Klein’s bad rap. I’ve never seen him write anything that Broder would have.
FlipYrWhig
@MomSense: MEDICARE PAYING PER CONDITION IS A CUT CATFOOD ICE FLOE ARGLEBARGLE OBAMA BAD
A Humble Lurker
@Todd:
You missed this part of her reply, dude. Also, if you ever had any decency, I believe you’ve misplaced it.
Mnemosyne
@Todd:
Yes, right up to the point where the states the victims lived in impose martial law. But, hey, who cares about the consequences that other people will have to deal with since you don’t have the balls to do it anyway?
FlipYrWhig
@Adam Jonas Waldorf: it’s mostly a complaint about tone. Klein likes to be polite and reasonable. He likes to listen when people he disagrees with speak. He’s been being ripped for that habit at least since Jesse Taylor invited him to join Pandagon in around 2003, before Amanda Marcotte came into that fold. Blog animus against Klein is of long standing, and grudges die hard.
Nina-the-first
@Todd: @Ted & Hellen:
Just who is trolling the trollers?
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
No, no, no, no, no. That, at least, would make some sort of elementary sense, in that the people whose murder we’d be committing actually would have a share of responsibility in tragedies like this. No, that’s too mainstream, maaann. What we need to do is kill their children.
Why? Well, because they kill other people’s children.
It’s so simple. In the same way, the Red Scares were totally justified, because hey, you know what the COMMUNISTS are doing to political enemies over in RUSSIA? The forced internment of Japanese Americans was totally justified, because hey, you know what the JAPS and KRAUTS – sorry, I meant, Nazis and Imperial Japanese – are doing to the racially inferior in THEIR territories? And also too, the fact that some Muslims are intolerant and oppressive proves that we should be treating all of our Muslims as enemy combatants.
“In order to win, we must adopt the other guys’ practices in all particulars, even when it serves absolutely no purpose.”
And even when, as in this case, the “unpleasant truth” is that left-wing terrorists in this country have never, EVER achieved ANYTHING in their entire misspent lives except to strengthen the security state. (Fuck, J. Edgar Hoover’s fifty year career as America’s secret police chief was born out of the 1920s anarchist bombings. You’d think THAT would’ve taught these people some “unpleasant truths” about the efficiency of their tactics, but apparently not).
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@FlipYrWhig:
I agree. I believe a strong case can be (and has been) made that lowering the Medicare eligibility age will actually lower costs. I think (but don’t know) that that was part of the package to try to make it more palatable to Republicans. I think that Obama’s experience with his mother’s and Michelle’s father’s medical conditions would make him acutely aware of the hardship that delayed Medicare eligibility can cause.
Cheers,
Scott.
Todd
@Chris:
You do understand how well the plutocracy is guarded at the decision making level, right? You’d never get close enough to do things in an oh-so-sporting way.
There was a reason why Begin’s group targeted the King David Hotel, why the Palestinians target pizza parlors, buses and malls, and why groups like the Shining Path do kidnappings of tangential figures. When direct action can’t be taken, you go asymmetric.
But hey, what do I know. Twenty years from now, we’ll be kvetching about the pernicious influence of Tagg Romney and the heirs of Randolph and Mortimer Koch over our polity, and worrying about our insurance policies pricing well beyond reach while we wait for our 75th birthday to kick in before we’re eligible for Medicare vouchers (good for half off our next surgical procedure).
A Humble Lurker
@Todd:
Over what you’re suggesting? Sure.
Chris
@Todd:
Again with feeling:
How well has this worked in America?
Chris
Oh, and while I’m at it:
How close do you think the Palestinians are to having a homeland?
How close do you think Shining Path is to imposing their enlightened Marxist utopia in Peru?
And how close do you think the Irgun would’ve gotten to establishing the State of Israel had the Holocaust not caused a huge shift in the policies of the Western powers and in world opinion?
Evolving Deep Southerner
@Todd: I think someone nailed it up top when they pegged you as a right winger here to post some shit that you can point to from elsewhere and say “Look at the crazy shit they talk about OPENLY over in Left Blogistan!” Either that, or some rich kids have really pissed on you in some way and you’re not processing it in a healthy way.
Mnemosyne
@Todd:
And actions like those are why we now have an independent Palestinian state and Peru is run by a Marxist government led by the Shining Path — because terrorist tactics totally work to change public opinion rather than entrenching the existing government and giving it even more power.
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
There’s also the fact that there’s a difference between a civil war (which, let’s face it, is basically what the Israel/Palestine conflict is) and a war to drive out an occupying power, which is what Begin was involved in.
It’s a helluva lot easier to get the British to give up and leave the Middle East than it is to get Israelis or Palestinians to leave land that they both think belongs to them when neither of them has anywhere else to go.
Davis X. Machina
@Chris: Within weeks of SNCC’s dropping the Edmund Pettus Bridge into the Alabama river with strategically placed blocks of C4, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed.
Sometimes you have to go asymmetric.
jamick6000
@Adam Jonas Waldorf:
This is Klein in 2010 defending Paul Ryan from Paul Krugman:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/08/on_paul_ryan.html
David Broder +a pulse + the ability to make graphs in Excel = Ezra Klein
Todd
@Chris:
Not really been tried outside of the battles of Bloody Harlan. We seem to be acculturated differently than in other places, something which the plutocracy relies on.
Very. The disproportionate crackdowns and misbehavior have seriously degraded the moral authority of the Israeli government in the eyes of the world, and Uncle Sugar is slowly stepping away since this relationship has caused endless nightmares. Of course, the demographic bomb has its own inevitability.
They’re still kicking despite irrelevance, that is a win all by itself.
The UK was broke and sick of administering former Ottoman holdings. This was just the final push, Shoah notwithstanding.
Baud
Jeez. I leave Balloon Juice for a few hours and the place goes to pot.
Todd
@Davis X. Machina:
I often thought that the South really deserved to burn. Every courthouse and school named for a traitor, every confederate monument, every church where mewling white Christians gathered to pat themselves on the back about their superiority while making business connections and excluding their black neighbors from their own communities.
Mnemosyne
@Todd:
Wow. Your total ignorance of American history is frightening.
Todd
@Baud:
I’m cranky. Had some bad sushi Friday and my gut is twisted in knots. Thing is, it’s my second bad experience in a row from a place I’ve gone to for a couple of years. Thought the first was a one-off.
I won’t be returning.
cat48
Mollie Ball at the Atlantic says the Super Committee made up the Sequester. I did not know that. Six Senators.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/heres-who-is-really-to-blame-for-sequestration/273587/
lojasmo
Here’s hoping you die.
Chris
@Todd:
Then your crack dealer must have better product than I thought. A geographically sustainable Palestinian state in the West Bank is already impossible without the Israelis agreeing to dismantle colonies that they’ll never agree to dismantle. East Jerusalem’s gone. The only thing they’ll get is Gaza – the Israelis don’t care enough about that city and the strip of desert around it.
Yeah, I guess they will have a homeland. Sort of. (One that’ll still be subject to Israel invasions every two or three years, but what the hell).
Tee hee! Yes, they’re “still kicking.” So are the FLNC, ETA and some IRA splinters over in Europe, but if you think an independent Corsica, an independent Basque nation or a non-British Northern Ireland are anywhere within a hundred miles of the horizon, you’re on drugs. Fuck, we still have our own white supremacist losers here who honestly think they’ll be able to turn Idaho and Montana into an independent Aryan homeland.
(Course, not all of them are that dumb. Groups like that often are only “still kicking” because they’ve morphed into organized crime networks and traded their dreams of remaking society for the dream of getting rich via drug trafficking, but that’s another story).
Okay. Let’s say the Shoah had nothing at all to do with it, and your interpretation is correct. In that case, Begin and his asymmetric shit STILL had nothing to do with it. Being broke and sick of administering former Ottoman holdings isn’t exactly the same as having brave terrorists teach you a lesson and force you to concede to their point of view.
dance around in your bones
@Baud:
Don’t bogart that joint, my friend – pass it over to me.
eemom
@Baud:
It is at least a new variant on the standard clusterfuck, far as I can tell. Don’t think I’ve seen an ersatz Weatherman start a flame war before.
Maude
@Baud:
Wow. I thought I was on the wrong blog. Been gone since late morning.
Bruce S
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s really idiotic to rationalize chained CPI – unless you actually believe such a crap idea is a good one and the best way to “save Social Security” – because grassroots Democrats aren’t “The White House” or “POTUS” and shouldn’t let executive branch politics drive our political messages. The reason the right often wins the wars of rhetoric and “paradigm” – which frankly the Tea Party has done given that Obama is yammering about deficit reduction at a time when he can’t get his jobs bill or more stimulus passed and 99% of “deficit hawks” are nothing but class-war-from-above phonies – is because they don’t try to sound reasonable and compromising.
Obama has to sound reasonable and compromising – even when it doesn’t make any objective sense, presumably – but for grassroots Dems to try to find ways to rationalize crap like chained CPI – which is a benefit cut that hurts those on SS the longest, and who have likely exhausted other assets, the most – is disgraceful. Let Obama do what he thinks he needs to do – but keep the public pressure on NOT to fall into this phony “deficits!” trap, especially when the other side is totally intransigent on their core Crazy Town issues (not raising govt. revenues and blocking rational reform of a broken health care system that, structurally, really could eat into % of GDP in coming decades in ways that hurt our overall priorities.)
I really don’t understand this impulse to always defend Obama’s political strategies from the perspective of the Oval Office as though it should become “conventional wisdom” for everyone who broadly supports President Obama – that is just terrible fucking politics for grassroots Dems. It’s also a bit of mind-reading that, while I actually suspect a lot of the same assumptions, isn’t verifiable. That there is no objective rationale for cutting SSI – even if only tinkering with cost-of-living increases – should be recognized as a fact and treated as a core issue by anyone who doesn’t share the contempt for Social Security of con-artists like Alan Simpson and Pete Peterson, much less the unbridled GOPer crazies. Why give ground on an utterly sociopathic assault on the New Deal.
When the amount of national income covered by SS tax is at least what Ronald Reagan agreed to, get back to me with this mish-mash of “what-ifs” and speculative assertions. Democrats should focus on that piece of the issue, not defend crap like chained CPI.
Odie Hugh Manatee
A friend of mine works for a DOD contractor (making ‘things’ that the military uses to move ‘things’ safely from one place to another) and six weeks ago the company eliminated all overtime. Four weeks ago they cut hours to 20 a week. I haven’t heard from him since last weekend so I have no idea what is happening now.
NR
@OzoneR:
He hasn’t cut anything because the Republicans haven’t agreed to his proposals. You’re the one who looks like an idiot for failing to see that simple fact.
NR
@Shawn in ShowMe: Social Security operates with less than 1% overhead. It’s a right-wing talking point that it’s an inefficient program with a lot of “fat” to cut. Though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see Obots spouting right-wing talking points in defense of their leader at this point….
Bruce S
@OzoneR:
Actually, Obama HAS cut Medicare – in a way that made sense – and we need to focus even more – fairly radically, actually – on structural changes in the health care delivery system. The problem with even Obama’s Medicare “cuts” is that he’s going to get slammed by the GOP stirring hysteria among their elderly base if the entire focus of rationalizing health care costs is on Medicare, which is currently the most cost-effective health insurance program we have (short of the fully-socialized VA hospitals.) I think there’s a danger in putting Medicare in front when dealing with structural, systemic health care costs. Both because the GOPers will exploit it (since most of them don’t believe in anything other than protecting the wealthy from taxes, lifting regulations on corporations and slamming the President.) It also confuses the fundamental issue of what is driving health care costs inflation – leaving for “low-information” voters leaving on the table the issue of “government Medicare” as the big problem, when it isn’t at all – not in the sense of driving the excessive costs.
I know Obama can’t completely transform the national conversation from his “bully pulpit” but too often it doesn’t seem like he’s trying very hard. At the very least, he would be better equipped to approach these issues of the grassroots Dems held fast on their core issues, rather than try to ‘splain POTUS. He’s an adult and doesn’t need rationalizations from the base so much as pressure that shifts the spectrum of discourse and gives him more room to navigate leftward, even if only a little bit. That’s how GOPers play the game – and they’re not as stupid as they look and sound.
OzoneR
@NR:
No they haven’t, even while they say they would if he would propose it.
You see, both sides have said they’d cut entitlements, yet they haven’t agreed to do it. Wonder why that is?
Nied
@jamick6000:
This is an interesting defense of Paul Ryan:
So in his opening paragraph he links back to his own takedown of the Ryan budget, and points out how there’s still no evidence he’s telling the truth about wanting higher revenues. High Broderism indeed.
FlipYrWhig
@Bruce S: Dude, unlike NR you’re better than this, so let me just get back to basics. I think it’s madness to focus on chained CPI outside of the entire “grand” plan for things to do with Social Security. If you weigh all of those factors and still don’t like it, fine. I don’t know if I like it myself — although I could be persuaded to reduce middle-class and upper-class Social Security benefits IF AND ONLY IF the money that was allocated for those was redirected into something that was better for the overall economy. For argument’s sake, and all other things being equal, I’d rather see $500 billion that was to be spent on Social Security get spent on infrastructure or green tech or combating climate change. Which is not on the table and has never been on the table.
But my more immediate issue is this. Yes, chained CPI in isolation sucks. Higher taxes in isolation suck too. But we don’t take “higher taxes suck” to a Norquistian degree by which anyone who ever contemplates higher taxes is a heretic and no true believer in the cause. We’re smarter than that. We weigh whether higher taxes are necessary to do other things with public funds. Cutting farm subsidies might hurt farmers. But we don’t say that no farmer must ever be hurt, so every good progressive must stand behind all farm subsidies.
Accordingly, we should weigh whether chained CPI for Social Security benefits, _as part of a broader re-thinking of how to structure the social welfare state_, is a tradeoff that _under some circumstances_ might be worth making, as for example if it meant being able to spend that money on other things.
I’m not in love with chained CPI. I’m in love with arguing fairly. Isolating chained CPI from a larger Social Security proposal, and then summoning up images of desperate poor old people to clobber the larger proposal, is just bullshit argumentation. It’s as bullshit as isolating the individual mandate from health care reform, or as isolating late-term abortions from funding for women’s health, etc.
OzoneR
@Bruce S:
Why would he waste energy on something he can’t do, when he can focus it on something that he can? Namely, convincing a national public with no core principals that he’s being reasonable. That would be incredibly stupid.
They can do both. But grassroots Dems have absolutely zero voice in the national conversation except only to be LOL at. They might as well be yelling at a wall. When was the last time Occupy Wall Street got any national attention?
Also, I never said I was a grassroots Dem, no one ever said this blog was part of that. If you want to hold fast on your ideas, that’s fine, go right ahead. If you want to push the idea that we need to advance the possibility of no entitlement cuts. That’s fine, go right ahead.
But Obama isn’t a grassroots Dem. He wins popular support by appearing willing to forego some of this principals for what appears to be “the public good.” Similarly, Republicans do so as well on their side. (see Christie, Kasich) Thats how it is. The American public has no principals they wouldn’t give up if they deem it necessary (i.e. security)
A Humble Lurker
@NR:
Uh…could it be that’s WHY he’s proposed them? Is that a simple fact you can’t see?
FlipYrWhig
@NR: You’re pulling blatant sleight of hand there — you just went from “Medicare and Social Security,” which Shawn called you on, and now you’re on just Social Security and “overhead,” which is not a point anyone made. Social Security is an efficiently administered program whose funding stream needs to be fixed to stay operating the way it does now. Or you can consider making it operate differently, perhaps better, than the way it does now, for instance by increasing the benefits the poorest beneficiaries receive. You’d think that’d be something liberals would like. But, apparently, you’d be wrong, because it’s more important to declare yourself superior in virtue to politicians you choose to distrust than to actually take two fucking seconds to think about the merits of a proposal.
OzoneR
@FlipYrWhig:
Or, let’s say we decide we want it all. No cuts or changes to SS or Medicare and more spending, then we need to argue how we’ll pay for it.
Perhaps the answer is more taxes. Perhaps we could sell the idea to the American public that it is worth paying half their income in taxes and get healthcare, education, and other social needs taken care of.
“What you spend in premiums and tuition, you’d just be spending on taxes”
I’ve used that argument before with mixed results and usually those who oppose the idea are individualistic about it “No one else is MY problem, everyone should be responsible for their own shit”
The core progressive idea is that we are a society responsible for each other like a big family. For the libertarian/conservative end it’s “everyone should be on their own and take on their own responsibilities”
All the rest of this shit, Chained CPI, Medicare cuts, is bullshit. As long as the left is busy trying to decide which sacred cows to protect, we’re going to lose, because the other side has done a really bang up job of making it less about sacred crows and more about the general idea, which is “they want to steal your money to take care of the irresponsible and lazy”
JP7505A
@Nied:Since I can’t read Ezra’s mind,I wonder if at least in the early days of the 112th congress he was hoping for a sorts ‘Nixon goes to China’ moment from Ryan ??
David Brooks
I’m glad Klein is working to ensure a reasonable “grand-bargain” is struck. We need to destroy the entitlements, and Republican obstructionism may have stopped that!
FlipYrWhig
@Bruce S: Or, to back up again…
If the conversation were not “How do we fix Social Security, because it’s broke?” — for which the answer is, “It’s not broke, you dumbass, stop lying” — and were, instead, “How can we use public funds to improve the lives of retirees?” or “Is Social Security as currently designed the best way to use public funds to care for retirees?”… I think we’d get some interesting answers out of that. And hair-trigger resistance to having that conversation aggravates me.
Nied
@JP7505A: Obviously I’m no mind reader either, but the gist of at least that post (and Klein’s other work on Paul Ryan for that matter) is that he finds it refreshing that Ryan is at least honest about the terrible policies Republicans want. And if they were all that honest it would be a lot easier for the american people to chose between their awful policies and the much better ones on offer from Democrats.
FlipYrWhig
@JP7505A: I think Klein is trying to say, as many pundits did and have continued to do, that What We Need is an out-in-the-open discussion of what we want the government to spend money on. Thus, to the degree that Paul Ryan has anything to add to that debate, he’s useful… as a foil.
ETA: Another problem with that, though, is that Paul Ryan isn’t honest, either. He believes in a certain vision of the government and its responsibilities, but fudges the numbers in the process, making him both a bastard _and_ a liar.
MomSense
@Baud
Edited because I inadvertently replied to the insane, violent anarchotrollutionary.
I just read an article about fish substitutions which is really common at sushi restaurants. You think you are eating tuna but you are actually eating something else that causes some nasty side effects. They call the tuna substitute the “ex-lax fish”.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/20/fish-seafood-fraud-common-oceana-report/1927065/
FlipYrWhig
@Todd:
A sushi-loving wannabe revolutionary? Did your character creation for today consist of replaying old anti-Howard Dean ads?
SOURCE: Language Log, 2006.
MomSense
@MomSense:
Sheesh I guess I was trying to be helpful to the anarcotrollutionary aka insane Todd.
slightly_peeved
@A Humble Lurker:
I’d love to play poker against firebaggers. Apparently the concept of bluffing is some sort of sorcery beyond the ken of mortals.
Ecks
It’s called a “neg-oh-she-ay-shun”. You offer to do stuff that you don’t want to do (like giving a car dealer money, or getting a chained rate of inflation) in return for stuff that you do want (like receiving a car, or raising taxes).
How on earth is anyone even a little bit confused about this?
General Stuck
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s almost as if our non progressive progressive friends see a zillion ponies in the sky that rains down the cash to keep medicare and the rest solvent. But mostly just medicare as the immediate problem. And what this is all about, is keeping it afloat into the boomer retirement, and also paring back inflated health care costs into the future, to deal with debt and deficit. And a political willingness to compromise in a democracy, the Ma and Pa Kettle adore, even if they don’t understand. It is the only way to checkmate the nutters for getting more tax revenue that the system is starved for.
The republicans have acted somewhat smartly, by focusing their want on cuts that are by nature progressive, if done that way. They do it for the reason some of our left wing betters will go ballistic and cause Obama or any dem president trouble from parts of his base. The reactionary, and idiotic thing to do is to bow up with no changes what so ever to our sacred cow entitlements, and throw the unreasonable flag squarely toward the dem side of things.
It looks like Obama has not done that, and has, at least with the CCPI, said far out man. We can maybe do this and help poorer seniors out, and god forbid, act like fucking progressives embracing a progressive idea.
Some folks conflate the means of funding for entitlements with the benefits they provide, and tinkering with either is heresy and the same thing. Not so, paying for something is an act in and of itself, and not necessarily ideological by nature. You lose the thing, when you say the word mine. Or some kind of hokey shit like that.
FlipYrWhig
@General Stuck: When you get right down to it, I just plain detest wasting money. At any level. If we the people are giving the government our money little by little to pay for public services, I want to feel like that money is being used in something approximating the best way possible. If you told me that we could, politically, fix Medicare funding by cranking up taxes on millionaires and billionaires alone, while doing nothing to fix the inefficiencies and waste along the way, I wouldn’t want to do that. I would want to use Medicare’s money smartly. I would also want to crank up those taxes, and then use that tax money for other good things. Sometimes the rhetoric of “waste, fraud, and abuse” is used to bash government programs in hopes of killing them off or shaming liberals and Big Gummint. But that doesn’t mean there’s so such thing as waste, fraud and abuse, or that we shouldn’t work to curtail them.
Bruce S
@FlipYrWhig:
“Isolating chained CPI from a larger Social Security proposal…is just bullshit argumentation.”
And it’s sitting out there isolated from any larger proposal. The only proposal that should be coming from Democrats at this juncture – at least the only one that’s politically defensible – is increasing the pool of total income that is taxed. Anything else at this stage of the game is the “bullshit argumentation.”
I am increasingly thinking that David Sirota might be right and Obama doesn’t want any of the stuff he’s putting on the table, but feels certain that his embracing it is the best way to kill it with GOPers. He doesn’t seem that cynical – my take on him has generally been that his “reasonableness” is in earnest, but I’m beginning to have second thoughts. But whatever his motives, Dems should not bend to the hysteria-du-jour. And if we do not, as you assert, have any impact on the national conversation, it’s because we’re fucking lazy and too cool to do what people who actually DO impact the national conversation have done historically. Why the hell has Obama bent in the direction of the Dreamers and marriage equality? This is politics 101.
Ted & Hellen
@Mnemosyne:
You don’t need to comment on or discuss anything you don’t want to, you freak.
This option of ignoring speech which you don’t agree with is one you are unfamiliar with, I take it?
Oh, and OH MY GOD SOMEONE ON THE INTERNET SAID SOMETHING KIND OF CRAZY.
Bill Arnold
@jamick6000:
Agreed, this is a monumentally bad move if it is anything other than a negotiation tactic.
Cutting Social Security/raising retirement age (even chained CPI) is just crazy. It is far too hard for people to find work in their 60s.
Means testing means turning Medicare into essentially Medicaid++, with intrusive government monitoring, cheating, resentment by the well off, etc. It’s a long step towards destruction of the program, and an unforced error, and probably completely unnecessary.
I would have a very hard time forgiving Obama and the Democrats if these changes came to pass. They need to stand firm. This is not a situation where it is even arguably appropriate to use vociferous progressive (liberal) complaints about a proposal to sell it to Conservatives who use the tears of liberals as a Conservativeness quality metric.
Bruce S
@FlipYrWhig:
My “hair trigger resistance” is based on the fact that there is a concerted effort to promote Big Lies about Social Security. I only have so much energy and I fully intend to focus it on the Big Liars like Simpson, Peterson, et. al. You cannot have a “reasonable conversation” outside of that rhetorical paradigm, given how pervasive it is among the media and Beltway elites.
Also, yes, Social Security has such a proven track record that I’m willing to assert that in the real world it’s the best way to provide a decent life for the majority of seniors. I’m not interested in the kind of speculative discussions that prevail in dorm rooms. There is an actual political terrain out there that frames these issues and it has to be confronted. Given that a significant majority of the GOP base itself doesn’t want to fuck with Social Security, I don’t think it’s outlandish or “LOL” to suggest that perhaps the Democratic grassroots, which did a pretty damned good job of impacting our politics this past November, might – with maybe some help from the President, although I am fully cognizant that it’s absolutely not his job to lead his “base” so much as balance their interests – might be able to re-claim a more coherent and fact-based narrative by pushing back on the prevailing bullshit.
FlipYrWhig
@Bruce S:
Primarily because the media, both pro and am, are unbelievably lazy and keep asking about it in isolation.
I have no problem with this.
For that matter, I don’t think futzing around with “entitlements” has anything remotely to do with boosting the economy. It doesn’t, and we only got onto this because of fake-ass fearmongering about The Deficit that people swallow because the media doesn’t do a good job of explaining the difference between “The Deficit” and “The Economy.”
But, again, I’m not trying to sell anything as good _politics_. It’s just that I think we could probably come up with better _policy_ on publicly-funded retirement benefits, and it’s in that spirit that I’m open to something in the general realm of an adjustment formula that is more accurate at measuring the cost of living. And if chained CPI doesn’t do that, fuck it, too.
Or we could make everyone’s retirement much better! As long as there’s a smart and sustainable way to fund it, hell, make it so. Grind down the fortunes of rich bastards and give it our best shot.
Yutsano
Summing up entire thread.
And putting this in the right place this time. Dammit.
General Stuck
I agree, they made for the perfect foil for Obama to show to those on the fence that he doesn’t listen to those stupid motherfuckers of the firebagging/pro left. I figure he’ll do the same in -14/
And is it true that Sirota saves his own turds for later?
FlipYrWhig
@Bruce S:
True, but I don’t think the way to confront it is to say that chained CPI is the enemy and anyone willing to contemplate it for any reason is a heretic ripe for the burning. I think the right way to confront it is to say that (1) reducing the deficit, addressing entitlement spending, and boosting the economy are three separate things; (1a) there are other ways to address entitlement spending besides cutting benefits, because those benefits as currently structured are certainly not overly generous.
IMHO the real fiscal “grand bargain” ought to be between further short-term economic stimulus and long-term deficit reduction including the structure of health care financing. If the grand bargain is only ever between kinds of deficit reduction, we’re missing the crisis right in front of us in hopes of averting a crisis that’s still decades away.
Bruce S
@FlipYrWhig:
“Primarily because the media, both pro and am, are unbelievably lazy and keep asking about it in isolation.”
Both sides do it? I don’t know – I think that you get intelligent discussion of the context for this stuff on some of the MSNBC shows, most notably Maddow and Hayes.
My critique isn’t so much of Obama, because I honestly don’t expect a hell of a lot more from a Democratic President in the current political environment, but of the assumption that Obama is the one who will determine for the rest of us “the best of all possible worlds.” Obama is the best President in my lifetime and I’m really old. But the big difference, when people make nonsensical comparisons to FDR and LBJ (who was a very mixed bag of terrific domestically and totally awful on foreign policy), is that both FDR and LBJ were operating not only with significant Dem majorities but also with major social movements that were dramatically shifting the debate over what was possible and what “should be.” If we write off that potential avenue of political activity, we’re truly screwing our kids and grand-kids. We haven’t even mentioned climate change, which is undoubtedly a much bigger and more urgent deal than any of the fiscal issues.
General Stuck
Ha! IOW’s Obama just doing the right thing under the lash of white liberal progressives making him heel.
jamick6000
@Nied:
I think the problem you’re having here isn’t reading comprehension, it’s willful ignorance. The part of my post you deleted reads:
The problem, according to Klein, is that the two sides won’t engage with each other! The two sides won’t sit down and have a serious conversation. That is the highest of high broderism. The real problem is that the Republicans won’t engage with reality, not that the two sides won’t engage with each other.
Bruce S
@FlipYrWhig:
I refuse to rationalize chained CPI – certainly as long as the revenue situation for SS is less progressive than the scheme hatched by Reagan and O’Neill. But your broader second point in no way “jerks my knee.” It’s a version of Krugman’s relentless arm-waving.
Bruce S
@General Stuck:
You’re an idiot, as usual. Childish and irrelevant to any politics other than “saving your own turds.”
Bruce S
@General Stuck:
Incidentally, all your comment does is show contempt for the political coalition that worked hard to elect the President. That is called “the Democratic grassroots.” Among other things, you’re just a dumb motherfucker.
General Stuck
@Bruce S:
Maybe Sirota gives them to you. Flip is a nice guy, me, not so much, and I can smell a privileged white liberal racist a mile away after the last four years of their puffered bullshit.
FlipYrWhig
@jamick6000:
I don’t get that from that quote at all. I see Klein saying that Ryan is putting forth conservative “substance” for everyone both left and right to see. His praise, such as it is, is that Ryan is putting out there something detailed for both sides to discuss. I feel like his use of the phrase “seriously engage with the other side” is not the call for collegiality and Knocking Off The Bullshit that it invariably is in Broderian terms. Klein means, instead, “take seriously as an audience something more than people already on your same side,” i.e., let your ideas be subject to a more robust and challenging review. I’m not sure Ryan really was doing that either, but I don’t think Klein means to give him credit for much more than assembling a detailed proposal (not a good one!) rather than kvetching about what the other side wants.
Chris
@Bruce S:
Related, and I pointed this out a few days ago – right now, liberals have quite a bit of support in the public, but it seems like we don’t have a hell of a lot of institutions supporting us other than unions (which have been in retreat for decades and only really turn out the vote in Northeastern and Rust Belt states). Which is bad, because these kinds of institutions are how you translate popular support – or financial support – into real political results.
E.G. for movement conservatives – there may have been a lot of people out there with culturally conservative views who were favorably disposed towards the GOP message, but fundiegelical church networks are how you reach out to them and translate their feelings into voter turnout. There may have been a lot of rich people and big corporations out there who were favorably disposed towards the GOP message, but the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable is how you take all that money and translate it into political action. (And then of course there’s the media). More things like that on the liberal side, please.
(I’d add that the Obama For America machine’s done a great job of getting him elected in 2008 and 2012 – amazing what a community organizer background will do for you. Question is, will it survive him? I’d like to see the same emphasis on local networks too, since that’s where the GOP is still strongest).
Bruce S
@General Stuck:
Go fuck yourself. You’re smelling your own shit, white boy. I could school you but you’re not worth it. You don’t even qualify as an asshole. And, FWIW, President Obama isn’t interested in blowjobs from your ilk. He’s a serious man. You’re a fucking joke.
General Stuck
Nice job, You managed to work in a little homophobia with your arrogance and coded racist drek.
FlipYrWhig
@Bruce S: IMHO, with the caveat that I’m not a volunteering, joining sort of person, what the Democratic grassroots should be doing is agitating for brave and bold economic recovery measures. That way Obama would be in the position of being able to say that what he’d like to do is take the best of those stimulus ideas and the best of the deficit-reduction ideas and merge them.
The really damaging thing that has happened since 2010 is that the conventional wisdom set in, actively abetted by longstanding deficit/debt fearmongers in both parties in and out of government, that we spent too much and now need to worry about paying it off before it gets out of hand. IMHO, it’s to Obama’s credit that he wants to make a progressive case for deficit reduction that involves something other than “austerity.” But the missing piece is a progressive case for smart spending. Obama talks about that somewhat often, but it’s just not in the Beltway conversation or conventional wisdom, not at all. And if he could “triangulate” with liberal-Democratic populism, he could be more effective.
Bruce S
@Chris:
Great points. But I do think that the liberal left has been doing some good work in building infrastructure over the past decade – Center for American Progress, Demos, Campaign for America’s Future and the like. OFA is problematic – brilliant electoral vehicle, bu I don’t think it makes sense to try build a movement directly around the President’s agenda. Not sure that fits into the “community organizer” model that Obama learned from his Alinsky mentors. OFA should integrate more local initiative – actually they should have done this back in ’09, but decided to fold into the DNC.
The decline of unions is major – people probably don’t remember this but the more liberal unions like UAW were a significant source of funding for some major civil rights intiatives, as were the mainstream churches which still had large memberships. Believe it or not, the UAW was also a source of funding for SDS in the early days.
Bruce S
@FlipYrWhig:
This is essentially what I’ve been trying to say – perhaps not as coherently as one would hope. We’re not in major disagreement – more of emphasis. And I am a product of the ’60s – Congress of Racial Equality, SDS (organizing the first major national anti-Vietnam war demonstration) and while I dropped away for quite awhile after the “movement” in all of it’s manifestations pretty much just went crazy and, in truth, contributed to the backlash – now that I’ve got grandkids I’m much more into trying to promote grassroots activism. One has to suffer some folks that I don’t agree with about a lot of stuff, but that’s sort of always been true with the “activist” types. Lots of them are a pain in the ass or more than a bit nuts. But no worse or more bizarre of a coalition than the Democratic Party has been for as long as I can remember. You can’t just rely on “electoral” or “activists.” Whenever real shit has gotten done, you’ve had both.
Also, if you want to really read something that one might attach the “Fire(brand)” adjective to, google Cong. John Lewis speech to the March on Washington in 1963 – which the “mainstream” civil rights leaders forced him to significantly tone down. Sometimes the “radical” and the “reasonable” can cohabit in one human, in different times and as called for by the moment. It so happens that this man is one of the President’s favorite political figures – but as a young man in the thick of the civil rights struggle, he didn’t mince words or assume that “the President” or “the Democrats in DC” would take care of shit. Thankfully the Democratic Party isn’t as fraught as it was in 1963 with Dixiecrats, but it’s still a very mixed bag coalition – which is a testament to most of it’s successes as well as many of its failures. There are no saviors in politics.
Bruce S
@General Stuck:
Lame.
General Stuck
@Bruce S:
agree. But that’s just who you are. You and David fucking Sirota.
General Stuck
I ain’t that smart, but am with Karoli 100 percent.
FlipYrWhig
@Bruce S: I don’t think I haven’t been getting you. On the very micro level of chained CPI, the wonk in me doesn’t want to dismiss it just because it would cost beneficiaries money compared to the status quo, because BEFORE ANYONE SNAPS AT ME hypothetically that money could be used in other, smarter ways; and because chaining CPI WAIT DON’T GET PISSED YET as a deal-sweetener that also helps build a floor under SS beneficiaries with lower lifetime earnings would be, IMHO, a great improvement in SS. Right now SS is based on lifetime earnings, which means that if you were poor your whole life, you’ll be poor in retirement too. And that’s very hard to reconcile with liberal principles. Yes, I know, building the program that way keeps it from being considered “welfare,” and keeps it popular. But SS as presently structured is not perfect from either an actuarial or, more importantly, an egalitarian or communitarian perspective.
But, yes, in a larger sense, nothing that anyone wants to do with SS has anything to do with the federal budget deficit or the sluggish economy. It ought to be still a kind of dueling white-papers phenomenon, not anything pressing that we must do soon to avert a disaster. We have other shit to worry about first. Lots of other shit.
Bruce S
@General Stuck:
Good to see you outsourcing your incoherent anger, because you haven’t had shit to say here that has made any sense. Just hysterics. Incidentally, the point I made about the POTUS’ possible strategy in dealing with the GOP that referenced David Sirota was EXACTLY the same point that I’ve seen you make about his “11 dimensional chess” here. Think about it…if you have any mental chops other than truly insane name-calling and projection. I’m assuming you can read and digest comments – other than pick names out of a post and go ballistic if you see one you don’t like. Maybe not. There’s no sign of intelligent life in your crap hysterics.
You’ve proven yourself to be incapable of anything other than childish reactive BS. I don’t know much about David Sirota – I was quoting something speculative he said about the President on Chris Hayes show this morning. It actually didn’t reflect badly on the President at all – sort of made him seem like some incredibly canny guy, or else just too fucking earnest if his intent wasn’t actually just to take the GOP opposition to the cleaners. If David Sirota is a monster, send an email to Chris Hayes. That’s whose show I was watching. Sirota happened to be on. So go fuck yourself, you little whiteboy shit. You’ve got some serious problems. Not to imply that much of anything about you is to be taken seriously.
Baud
This thread reminds me of this Star Trek episode.
General Stuck
@Bruce S:
You been pushing so many ass covering lies on this blog, its a wonder you can keep track of them all. Just be the pig ignorant firebagger you are, and stuff the mendacious noodling trying to appear as something else. I was here when you first came to this blog, and know you for the duplicitous sonafabitch you are.
I don’t care what Sirota says or does, or how you use it. Or even if he agrees or disagrees with my position on anything. He is a self preening racist piece of shit and you use him as a source. You need something other than blog time, maybe it’s dementia setting in, or you have always been a completely un self aware constipated shithead.
General Stuck
@Baud:
Parallel universes? Yup. Wingnuts and firebaggers, then there are the rest of us. 3 D, at a minimum
Bruce S
@FlipYrWhig:
“SS is not perfect” – which is precisely why it’s been such a successful program structured essentially as is. I don’t have any problem with proposals to actually strengthen SS over the years, but the chained CPI thing is getting traction among the moronic and monotonous Beltway elites precisely because it’s perceived as a cut.
I understand where you’re coming from as well, and I’m not attacking your broad proposals so much as asserting my own “line in the sand” given how I perceive the politics on the ground. I am primarily interested at this point in full-throated defense of Social Security and Medicare, along with an honest discussion of how the country is being screwed 12 ways to Tuesday by our health care system. Among other things, making the most currently cost-effective insurance program we’ve got – that even a majority of Republicans don’t want to fuck with – the focus of our “problem”, as opposed to attacking systemic problems that plague the system as a whole and that Medicare goes to greater lengths than any other insurance program to contain, just doesn’t make any sense to me. If screwing with Medicare and Social Security is unpopular even with GOPers, why take that approach? Why not point to the broader issues – even invoke Reagan in pushing for widening the income net for SS taxes? If we don’t make these arguments, who will?
Bruce S
@General Stuck:
More of the same. Now I’m a liar! Oh, and “I was here first!” You and your little white ass really aren’t capable of anything better are you? If you want to call me a liar, ante up, Great White Wonder. Or do you play by Teabagger rules – insane invective backed by extreme narcissism and random resentments. I do owe one apology – calling you full of shit is demeaning to the biological utility of shit.
General Stuck
Now THAT is lame
FlipYrWhig
@Bruce S: Part of why SS is a successful and popular program is that we’ve essentially bought rich people’s support for it by giving them a healthy share of the total benefits. If that’s the cost of establishing a program that helps millions of people, so be it. But it could be a lot more _progressive_ pretty easily. The downside is that making it more progressive would almost certainly make it less popular, and that’s probably not a good risk to take.
Bruce S
@FlipYrWhig:
Totally agree. And, frankly, the best President Obama can expect from the GOP in trying to focus his health care system reforms through Medicare is going to be the same insane attacks geared to low-information seniors that Crap Merchants like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan slimed him with. Which is why my preference would be focusing on the system as a whole via ACA and talking about how broader reforms will also be a net positive on Medicare. Frankly, it makes me crazy when Medicare gets single out as “the problem.” I’m not smarter than Obama but I am smart enough to know that his job and the set of problems he wakes up to each day aren’t the same as mine. Thank God for all of us. Which also means those of us “outside” have a lot more latitude, which I’m inclined to use. I actually don’t believe the President has all that much power – that the Oval Office is very constraining and not the most transparent window on the world – i.e. a lot of the information you are dealt is colored by politics and institutional constraints. I don’t for a minute envy the man his job.
Pinkamena Panic
Do I have to separate you kids?
White Trash Liberal
Let’s get sushi……
And not pay!
dance around in your bones
So, is this thread finally dead? Thank Gawd.
@White Trash Liberal: Dine and dash!
Evolving Deep Southerner
Jesus Christ. What an ugly fucking thread. The thing I worry about is that the original gangster in this thread probably didn’t get the “Dude, if you’re thinking such violent thoughts, you ought to go talk to somebody” message. Even though I think he got called out straight off as a plant starting a discussion about shit that deserves no discussion here or anywhere.
A Humble Lurker
@Ted & Hellen:
The reverse applies to you, you know. If you don’t like what she says, you’re free to ignore it. Why not take your own advice?
Bruce S
Incidentally, this – “When David Sirota compares supporters of the President to the KKK” – is if not a lie, a deliberate misrepresentation. Notice there’s no link to Sirota’s actual quote in the link that Stuck provides. What there IS is a link to an Andrew Sullivan column. Yeah – fucking Andrew Sullivan, the totally credible guy who called people like me a “fifth column” because we opposed the Iraq war. There never is one when Sirota is attacked over this. Craziest thing about this is that Sirota made a (stupid) comparison in response to a stupid column by Melissa Harris Perry that turned out to be wrong by electoral turnout statistics in 2012, and had zero empirical evidence when it was first tossed out there (“white liberals are abandoning Obama” — which was proven in practice to be utter bullshit.)
In fact, Harris-Perry herself “abandoned” Obama when he really needed support – before he was obviously winning the Democratic nomination in 2008. I was working as a precinct captain for the Obama campaign in my neighborhood of West Oakland – among other things trying to convince old black ladies who supported Hillary Clinton to shift their support to Obama (had one such actually scream at me about Obama needing to “go back to Africa” which is ironically the worst confrontation over Obama I’ve ever experienced personally) – when this elite academic’s public position was that Obama couldn’t win because he was black. I remember seeing her push this crap on TV and being furious with her. Then with Obama as President – no thanks to Harris-Perry – in a “spat” column that got a response from Sirota in his own dumb column – Perry was apparently predicting that white liberals were abandoning the President. Her column used a remarkably sloppy analytic frame comparing the Clinton and Obama administrations which should have been embarrassing to a person with a political science Phd (given the radical difference in unemployment and economic growth stats under the two administrations in question, which even a high school graduate as myself knows drives, subliminally or not, a President’s core approval ratings. Perry also seemed to forget that Bill Clinton came under at least as extreme criticism by “white liberals” and didn’t mention the fact that the internet totally changed political discourse and stirred for the first time during the “late-Clinton” impeachment brouhaha and liberal bloggers were, rightly, obsessed with defending Clinton against (1)himself and (2) the Gingrich congress (she’s actually talking about “left liberals” and totally ignores high-profile black assholes like Tavis Smiley and Cornell West who are the biggest celebrities and most publicly noisesome among the President’s self-styled “Leftwing” critics.) Also, re the Clinton/Obama comparison, remember that Nader challenge to the Clinton administration’s successor, in 2000 that drew a lot of celebrity and “political” assholes and actually helped Bush win – or the brouhaha over “welfare reform” that resulted in the high-profile departure of Peter Edelman and break with his wife, the terrific Marian Wright Edeleman? More to the point, the conclusion of Harris-Perry’s piece turned out to be totally wrong. Of course, Sirota made a stupid analogy of her attack on “white liberals” as a “racialization” of thought as mirror image of the KKK. This was a pretty specific – albeit utterly stupid – response to one alleged “Obama supporter’s” hysterics (unlike Stuck’s wholesale slander of “grassroots Democrats” above.) There was virtually no more decline of support for Obama among “white liberals” than there was among African-Americans in 2012.
Harris-Perry also forgets in her column that when Obama really was struggling for support among both whites and African-Americans, she was on the sidelines predicting his failure. (Perry has an unfortunate tendency to focus on trivial bullshit in her obviously sincere effort to promote greater social justice and racial equity – like spending three segments, a full half hour, of her MSNBC show this last Sunday on a very bad-taste tweet by the Onion a week prior during the Oscars. My guess as a person with common sense and several grandkids is that if one asked the mother of the little girl who was used as fodder for a failed attempt at extreme “humor” if she wanted a half-hour of national television to help blow up the Onion tweet that targeted her daughter (in a dubious attempt at extreme irony the likely answer of any person with common sense and who actually gave a shit about the kid – as opposed to elite topical-talk celebrities – would be, “No – time to let it the-fuck-go rather than continuing to elevate it.” Just a guess. But then I don’t have a Phd, so what the fuck do I know?
Because I don’t think people here are stupid and deserve some evidence to back up blanket and misleading assertions, here’s the Sirota quote about Harris-Perry’s column, characterized by the idiot Stuck simply as “comparing Obama supporters to the KKK”: Furthermore, unless you’re black, you can’t possibly understand. Yada, yada, yada. This (his characterization of Harris-Perry’s column) unfortunate obsession increasingly resembles a photo negative of KKK racial thought. It’s useful for intimidating tenure committees staffed by Ph.D.s trained to find racist symbols in the passing clouds. That’s a lazy, inappropriate response to a lazy, fact-free accusation by Harris-Perry, but it doesn’t pass the smell test of Stuck’s intended implication that Sirota actually sees “Obama supporters” as an analog to the KKK. In fact, something much closer to that broad-brush implication can actually be found in his own response to my reference to “grassroots Democrats” that he immediately twisted into some version of “lefty bloggers I don’t like because they’re too critical of Obama.”
I resent the fact that I spent valuable minutes of my life googling this shit, because I know virtually zilch about Sirota other than that he was a guest on Chris Hayes and try not to follow the panties-twist crowd on the internet – but I wanted to clarify just what a piece of ridiculous and rancid shit, totally incapable of rational argument when his little white panties are twisted by crazy internalized knee-jerk reactions that he somehow believes gives him credibility with imaginary black friends on the internet or, even more ridiculous, a President who doesn’t even remotely need his inevitably vulgar and embarrassing fan-boy spew. You’re a stupid fuck, Stuck, without the intellect or the balls to make an argument or an accusation – even if a crap argument – by providing anything resembling evidence to support your hysterics. Unfortunately, because you’re so chickenshit and analytically challenged, you’ve forced me to actually elevate you (by bringing forward the alleged “facts” driving those drooling hysterics) to even make you worth bringing down with evidence and argument. You should fucking thank me for that.
General Stuck
@Bruce S:
Wow, I can’t believe you took the time to pen such a lengthy stream of argle bargle unhinged bullshit, and just for me. I am honored, though embarrassed at apparently aggravating your chronic mental illness.
Your comment could be the prototype for smarmy privileged white liberals of all stripes. Well done, you are a credit to your race. It’s those other folks that are the bringing Obama down, amirite? You and mclaren could have a life together.
Bruce S
More of the same – I’d invite you over to have a beer and discuss this further, but little white twits such as yourself have tendency to shit their pants if they venture into my neighborhood. Oh…wait a minute. You’ve already shit your pants…ON THE INTERNET!
You’re a fucking clown, white boy. You’ve had your shit shoved back up your ass. Enjoy.
General Stuck
@Bruce S:
LOL, internet tough guy. And insane to boot. I know how you need the last word, so that will be my gift to you.