From the Twit o’ Drudge to the FSM’s orecchiette:
Speaker Pelosi Part 2: Opening Jan 5. 2015
— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) October 16, 2013
This may be just a cry for help; the wingnuts are undeniably in meltdown mode. But is it possible — dare we dream? — that by acquiring a whopping whiff of loser-stink, Republicans have done what decades spent demonstrating conclusively that they aren’t responsible stewards of a great democracy couldn’t?
We shall see. Meanwhile, there’s a smorgasbord of schadenfreude out there. Bon appétit, and feel free to leave your favorite morsels here (or discuss whatever).
RareSanity
From Drudge’s mouth to FSM’s ears!
Scotty
It will all hinge on how the ACA works out over the next 12 months.
Linda Featheringill
From his keyboard to the FSM’s ears. Would that it were so.
Still, . . . . maybe . . . it might be possible enough to make it worth the battle.
Xecky Gilchrist
Inb4 “a year is forever in politics” – does anyone really think the pubs won’t pull this shit or worse befor 11/14?
Linda Featheringill
RareSanity beat me to it!
liberal
I thought someone (Billmon?) posted some poll showing that in terms of some generic governance question, the Rethugs outpolled the Dems.
As one of my favorite quotes goes, “Against stupidity/The gods themselves/Contend in vain.”
Waysel
Love that headline, Betty Cracker.
RareSanity
@Linda Featheringill:
First!
LOL
dmsilev
Cruz Blasts Senate But Vows Not To Delay Vote On Deal.
Title says it all, really.Such a brave man of principle, our Senator Cruz.
Edit: And Commissar Erickovich agrees
Stabbed in the back! The dolchstoßlegende lives!
Villago Delenda Est
Noisemax headline: Reid, McConnell Reach Deal to End Shutdown Standoff
Like that has anything to do at all with where the actual problem lies: Yohos like Yoho, Bachmann, Stockman, and Gohmert demanding ideological purity and impeachment resolutions.
NotMax
(Repeated for the daytime crowd.)
Several goodies coming up on TCM over the next few days. All times Eastern.
Wed., Oct. 16, 9:45 p,m. – Nightmare Alley – About as noir as noir gets.
Thurs., Oct. 17, 7:15 a.m. – Verboten! – Somewhat off-kilter and ragged around the edges romance/drama revolving around an underground Nazi cell in the rubble of postwar Germany.
Sunday, Oct. 20, 12 midnight – Haxan – Unconventional silent, a feature-length depiction of witchcraft in history through a documentary-type approach. Psychologically dated, yet arresting and exquisitely filmed. Sex, nudity, S&M and sacrilege aplenty. Creepy horror like little else.
C. Isaac
@dmsilev:
He’s a grandstanding coward. Fortunately for us, his cravenness at this very moment helps the nation.
I am really hoping for some cannibalistic, self destructive infighting amongst the Pukes.
Villago Delenda Est
ZOMG, I’ve been put in moderation, and I didn’t mention the gaming with actual money industry or male genitalia.
Well, I did mention some pricks, because I had the names of some teatards in it…
Joel
@liberal: those things don’t really matter. What does is 1) voter intent polls and 2) approval ratings, but only because they can be used as a weak predictor of voter intent when 1 is not available.
NotMax
@dmsilev
Thus finishes the First Cruzade.
Hawes
Given how batshit insane the House has been to this point, I’m going to wait until it actually passes both Houses of Congress before I start digging into the dish of pumpkin spiced schadenfreude with salted caramel glaze.
fuckwit
Keep fucking that chicken.
http://farm1.staticflickr.com/24/58683008_2dc4c01d94_z.jpg
Betty Cracker
@Villago Delenda Est: Liberated. WP is buggier than usual at the moment.
Anoniminous
If I’m reading the deal correctly McConnell gave away the ability of the TeaTards to use the debt ceiling as a hostage.
If so, the reaction in the Wingnut-o-Sphere should be highly amusing.
Hal
Cruz’s statement was amazingly delusional. All about how the American people were actually completely behind him and if the Senate stuck to their guns they would have won. Oh and everyone’s premiums are going up and people are losing their current insurance coverage.
Villago Delenda Est
Boner could have avoided this mess entirely by sending a clean CR with borrowing limit raised two fucking weeks ago. But he refused to do it because the teatards apparently have photos of Boner having sex with underage goats.
Villago Delenda Est
@Betty Cracker:
Thank you kindly, Ms. Cracker.
dmsilev
@NotMax: One of the best headlines during this mess was one that Kevin Drum came up with: “John Boehner has been Cruzified on a cross of tea”
raven
Both Herman Cain and Newt are whining about how mean and divisive the President has been in this. “Get up off your knees and come out with your up hands”!
fuckwit
Also, +1 for orecchiette. Awesome when people know what the italian words for foods actually mean.
Violet
So what’s this about some sort of checking to make sure people who get subsidies actually qualify for the subsidies? It seems like that could be a backdoor way of shutting down the whole ACA. People don’t get subsidies and then it cost a ton of money.
feebog
We are still a year out from the 2014 mid-term elections, plenty of time for this bullshit to slip down the memory hole. I agree that the ACA working out for several million folks the first time around will be a factor. What I’m wondering is whether these assholes will be at it again in January/February when the next deadline rolls around. If so, and if there is another crisis, then Dems have a good chance of taking back the house.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
LeSigh. If only someone would actually, physically stab these two vile assholes in the back so that we’d no longer have to deal with them.
WereBear
@NotMax: Awesome TCM stuff. That Haxan… serious nightmare fuel.
Re: collapse of civilization: Is it safe yet?
raven
@feebog: They aren’t stupid enough to do that. . . :)
Seanly
Not going to get out of the boat by clicking on Newsmax.
Whatever the Senate does, the House still needs to vote on it. The sad drunk (alleged!) Boenher would need to violate the idiotic Hastert Rule to bring it up. And didn’t the rule change on Sept 30, give Cantor the sole ability to bring forth the bill?
Mark S.
Took a gander a NRO, where they want to talk about anything else.
Is calling it O’care some hip new thing for these idiots?
WereBear
Any Democrat who doesn’t use this in their ads next year needs their pulse checked.
shelly
Ted Cruz still declares this as a personal win. So I guess if he feels he got something out of this whole debacle, it’s all good!
Another Holocene Human
Those orecchietti are merciful indeed! Especially with a nice alla vodka sauce.
Villago Delenda Est
@raven:
Oh, I don’t know. I can imagine them getting even stupider than they are now.
Seriously, some of these people make CPSU orthodox types look like dithering undecideds.
Belafon
@Violet: We already have a checking mechanism for the ACA: the IRS. I really doubt the prez or Reid would have gone for it if it had amounted to much more than what is already there.
jon
Meanwhile, things are going down the toilet in that socialist hellgate known as California. If only every state was so craven in its determination to bankrupt our great nation, we could be in the Bachmann End Times Holy Roller Fun Ride.
Bokonon
@dmsilev: I love this claim that breaching the debt ceiling won’t actually put the nation in default – and that it is only “low information voters” and the media that think so.
Right. Yeah – I guess that would include low information voters like Warren Buffett. What a clown that guy is. Total dupe. What does he know? Or that Bernanke guy. Or Jack Lew. Or all of Wall Street. Or the ratings agencies. Or the Chinese government. Idiots! Morons! All of them.
The amazing thing is to see the speed and credulity with which this assertion has gained acceptence on the far right over the last two weeks. And it seems to be on its way to becoming some sort of new right wing orthodoxy that defies all evidence or attempts at refutation (like – “rape can’t result in pregnancy – the woman’s body takes care of that”).
Maybe the secret sauce to this bizarro claim is the idea that even if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling, it is still the President’s obligation to honor the nation’s debts – and that it is a Constitutional violation (and impeachable offense) if the President fails to do that. This was the stuff that Sarah Palin was talking up during this past weekend’s rallies.
So – even if the President doesn’t have the money to pay the nation’s debts because of Congress, there is no “default” until the President deems it that way, or somehow fails to find a way to pay the bills? And then it is an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor if he does?
I mean … people … seriously … that’s insane.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: hence the smiley face
Gex
I’m very interested in watching how the GOP reacts. They had their maximum leverage during this and they started out with a public that knew little about the ACA and thought they knew what Obamacare was. I think the rising support of the ACA is due to the GOP forcing people to actually go find out what it is.
So now what? It’s hard to see them being more reasonable going forward. But their “take the ball and go home unless we get 100% of what we want” move didn’t work when they had the most leverage. The base will be spitting mad at being bested by the Ni-clang! and furious at their representatives for caving.
I’m sure whatever they do will be stupid and odious. I just have no idea what it will be.
Betty Cracker
@feebog: Normally, I’d agree; Bush the Lesser’s 2004 win is proof that even misbegotten trillion-dollar wars can slide down the memory hole. But having “LOSER” stamped on your forehead? That might prove unforgivable, or at least that’s my hope.
Southern Beale
Unrelated, but a North Carolina middle school dressed one of its teachers up with a ski mask and fake gun to teach the kids a lesson about god-knows-what, and ended up terrifying everyone.
Dumb fucks.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WereBear: also, this isn’t the end. Ted Yoho and Louie Goehmert and Marsha Blackburn aren’t going to get smarter or quieter. Ted Cruz seems to love attention, and he’s even brought Sarah Palin back from limbo, and McCain is just going to get madder and madder. Obama announcing a push on immigration reform is a smart move, guaranteed to keep the wounds open.
jon
And if you need a distraction from all that, I offer you Medieval Land Fun-Time World. It’s a beautiful thing.
SpaghettiLee
@shelly:
CruzPac got giant buckets of money. That’s why he’s smiling. I bet he thinks this will catapult him to the GOP nomination in ’16, to which I say: Oh no! Anything but that! (smirk)
raven
@Gex: Like I said above, they are in full throated whine about how mean the President and Democrats were and how they are tearing the country apart.
Bokonon
@shelly: The really sad thing is that for Ted Cruz, this whole debacle probably WAS a win. At least a personal win. Look at the fundraising haul that Cruz’s political action committee just took in over the last several weeks. And look where Cruz is trending with the GOP’s voters in terms of presidential polling.
And that is just revolting.
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: Thanks to everyone who refused to give Yoho’s dem challenger any money, and to the young twits at OFA who refused to talk to UF students about voting a straight Dem ticket (most of them live in Yoho’s district but were confused about the downticket races… I would be too if I were from South Florida and distrusted Dixiecrats, except that none of the Ds on the ticket WERE Dixiecrats, wouldn’t that have been nice if someone would have said something, anything at all–btw, the area I canvassed wasn’t Yoho’s but I did give out straight Dem ticket literature and discussed the million +1 ballot questions) thus giving Yoho a +12 win in a not exactly +12 district. But nooooo, everybody poured money at Patrick Murphy. Who won, btw, more evidence that HAD there been any money and the slightest attempt at GOTV the district could have been competitive. Btw, same county, D’s (NOT DIXIECRATS, LIBERAL DEMOCRATS) swept the County Commission races. And the R who won the recent mayoral race courted Black Democrats and now has to govern as a moderate.
IDK if Yoho had won by +1 or +2 would he pull a GWB or would he be sweating bullets right now? Everybody blames the district lines but that’s just laziness. Insufficient attempts to canvass and insufficient money. We got screwed on a state rep seat by the Florida Democratic Party also, too. The geeniuses downstate thought that lying in a campaign ad would be an awesome, winning idea.
SpaghettiLee
A year is a long time in politics, but: what possible indication have the teanuts given that they’re not going to do this again at the first given opportunity? If Obama gave them the chance to shut down the government a week before election day, they’d eat it up. These guys are terrifyingly crazy, but if we play our cards right, we can use this to our advantage.
And I don’t think the public is going to forget about this right away. It was long, drawn-out, and ugly. And when the teabaggers try to pull it again months from now, they’ll just dredge all those memories back up.
bemused
When the wingnuts who faithfully, regularly write letters to the local papers are suddenly absolutely silent, I take it as a clear sign that their dear leaders have really fucked up. They start up again when their favorite rightwing news sources tell them what the new it’s the Dems’ fault spin is.
Knight of Nothing
@shelly: He got $1.9 million out of it, plus more cred with his “base.”
Roger Moore
@Mark S.:
Now that it looks as if it’s going to go into effect and be popular, they’re trying to take Obama’s name off it.
JenJen
Who among us is not laughing at the reality that in order to break the Hastert Rule, Boehner has to go to NancySMASH with hat in hand? Well played, Rafael Cruz!
Also too, Josh Marshall’s characterization of POTUS as Michael Corleone in Godfather 2: “My offer is this: Nothing.”
What a completely fucking worthless two weeks.
@Roger Moore: Yep.
Another Holocene Human
@Bokonon: Five years for the ex-OFA team to mobilize Hispanic voters in Texass, idk, he thinks he can win Tejas with R voters alone in five years. He might be right.
Napoleon
@WereBear:
Even more so though for the anti-Obamacare votes in that every single one of them should run an add that reads something like “do you know that by law insurance companies can not discriminate against you for pre-existing conditions, yet Rep Ryan voted 42 times to allow insurance companies to do that and kick you off of your health care coverage.”
Violet
@Belafon: I know we’ve already got that mechanism in place. That’s why it seems so weird to put it in. I wondered if it was some new thing that they would require. I hope Obama and Reid have it under control as you said. I hope its not a Trojan horse. maybe it’s a face-saving bone tossed to the Republicans and it does exactly nothing but looks good.
NonyNony
@Anoniminous:
Point me to that because, if that’s true, then McConnell just saved the asses of the non-Tea Party guys in the House. The last thing those guys want is for a reprise of this to come up in January/Feburary when they’ve got a primary election coming up and a Tea Party True Believer breathing down their necks.
Anya
Press Secretary Jay Carney is really great at what he does. He’s million times better than Robert Gibbs.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: Just makes me think of Barry O’Bama, the Irish brawler politician. He’s a friend of construction unions, too! Swilling beer and kicking racist WASP ass! Boom! Boom!
Now, I want to hear you cuss enough to make a nun blush. I know you’ve got it in you, and you’ve earned it!
Gene108
@feebog:
When did people quit losing their shit over integration?
Obamacare seems to have engendered a level of irrational opposition, like integration did.
Also too there are folks who want to gut Social Security and Medicare, so I’d say the opposition is going to keep going after the ACA until hell freezes over.
raven
@NotMax: Check out this hilarious review:
Tired Old Queen at the Movies – TARANTULA
NonyNony
@Napoleon:
“Politifact rates that as a PANTS-ON-FIRE lie. Rep Ryan may have cast votes 42 times to repeal Obamacare, but it wasn’t because he wanted to let insurance companies do that. Rather it was because Obama is black.”
Villago Delenda Est
@bemused:
Oh, in my neck of the woods, the usual fucktards are still sending their Faux Noise talking points to the local fishwrap, which is still dutifully publishing them no matter how many outright falsehoods they contain.
On the positive side, though, they’re outnumbered five to one by people writing in who place the blame for this crisis squarely on the GOP. Now, of course, mind you, this is the largest city in Peter DeFazio’s district, home city of the Fighting Fashion Nightmares of the University of Oregon, which has a decidedly center to left of center tilt to it. Still, it’s the usual suspects on the right, and a lot of new names not seen before on the left.
SpaghettiLee
@Mark S.:
Is calling it O’care some hip new thing for these idiots?
They’re trying to exploit America’s deep primal fear of Irish people.
catclub
From Political Animal this morning:
” Josh Barro speaks for a new conventional wisdom in summing up the House GOP’s performance:
The only stunning thing is that anyone still looks at House Republicans and says: “You know what would be great? Giving these people more power over public policy.”
Villago Delenda Est
Hilarity from Media Matters:
I’m assuming that Limbaugh is broadcasting from the Spock-with-a-beard universe here.
Alexandra
Meanwhile, over at Freeperville, an outbreak of confederate flags and a mishmash of despair, bitter betrayal, defiance and threats of revolution.
Which is nice.
? Martin
@Gene108:
Never. They just use different words to express the same outrage.
Gex
@raven: Oh, they do that all the time no matter what’s happening. I’m curious to see how Congress is going to be “functioning” after this.
Now that I say it that way, it will be more of the same. A million bills brought to the floor that will never pass.
Villago Delenda Est
Hilarity from Media Matters:
I’m assuming that Limbaugh is broadcasting from the Spock-with-a-beard universe here
Also, too:
It’s always projection with these sick motherfuckers. Always.
SpaghettiLee
@NonyNony:
The deal says that if the Treasury takes “extraordinary measures” to avoid breaking the debt limit, either house of congress can pass a measure of “disapproval” and if both house and senate pass one, the president can block the treasury. Scary stuff if the GOP ever controls the house, senate, and White House. But for now it’s limiting the teabaggers to writing Jack Lew a very sternly worded letter.
Roger Moore
@Bokonon:
They’re part of the leftist conspiracy to misinform the voters about the real consequences of Cruz’s plan. You’re talking about a leftist sympathizer in Buffet, two Obama appointees, and a foreign Communist government. You can’t accept anything those people say.
Lurking Canadian
@Bokonon: is there any truth to it? I mean, it’s not entirely impossible that there might be enough continuing revenue to cover debt service only, without spending anything else.
To use a household analogy, the household that has enough to cover the mortgage, but nothing for food, rent or utilities is not strictly defaulting on any obligations, but is nonetheless fucked.
patroclus
The Republicans are insane – they will undoubtedly pull this same sort of thing when the short-term extension expires in 3 months, and if another short-term kicking the can extension occurs then, they will undoubtedly do the very same thing then too. This is the actual reality of a Republican-led House and, hopefully, the voters will remember next November. Otherwise, this will be the story of the entire Obama second term – Republican-manufactured crises and stuttering halting economy-damaging negotiations leading to short term extensions with no real policy changes.
I’m hopeful that the Republican brand has been damaged long term but doubtful.
fuckwit
@Bokonon: Epistemic motherfucking closure. If you live in a world in which only the True Believers have any credibility, and anyone outside the True Believers or who even questions whether the True Believers might be wrong is a LIAR! LIAR! LIAR!, then you are living in a fantasy world in which no reality by definition is allowed to intrude. That’s where the teabaggers are right now– roughly where the Weathermen were when they split off from the SDS and decided to start blowing shit up. This is the breaking of the radical right, at last.
This is the Chicago 1968 of the teabaggers. This is where they have lost their grip on reality. This is where their rage and insularity become toxic and destroy them. Right here, right now. We are watching the beginning of the end of the national nightmare of teabaggery.
NonyNony
@Villago Delenda Est:
Amazing isn’t it how Barack “Svengali” Obama managed to hypnotize the GOP caucus into going along with his shutdown the government idea? And got Ted Cruz up there to push it forward when it was looking like they might not go for it? Absolutely brilliant.
Anya
I agree with Kos! Republicans losing today isn’t enough. Let’s punish them at ballot box
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin:
DING DING DING DING DING!
Yup, they’ve never gotten over the 60’s, on multiple levels.
Trollhattan
If the typical voter memory span is best measured in days, the typical red-district voter memory span is better measured in Bud Lite can half-lives. It takes a metric buttload of red-district turnarounds in November ’14 to achieve a Dem House, and this whole mess will be long shoved aside for the latest imbroglio–the next Sandy Hook, hurricane, earthquake, Miley Cirus video…. Plus BENGHAZI.
shelly
I know this is hardly an orignal thought, but was thoroughly sick of cable news today. MSNBC, CNN, when news broke that a deal had been struck the , all the anchors were positively giggly/bubbly. As if it has all been a game or of course, a horse race. And all about the ratings. “Keep tuned for all the details…”
And more about this loathsome ‘horse race’ mentality. Here in NJ we have a special election for the Senate. Gov. Corey Booker vs. Lonagan. Lonagan is basically a tea-party loon. But the media must have it’s drama. So we’ve been told for the past couple weeks that ‘the race has tightened.’ ‘Tight’ to them is 10 points between them. Ten points? That’s a chasm.
TAPX486
@NonyNony: One of the small silver linings in the dark clouds over the past couple weeks is listening to Limpdick spin his conspiracy theories as his head explodes.
Steve M.
No.
Not unless there’s a shutdown/debt ceiling fight within six weeks of the ’14 elections. It’s the monomania gap — the Republican base thinks about politics 24/7, thanks to Fox and talk radio, and bears grudges forever, while the Democratic voter base has a much more balanced life and therefore shrugs this stuff off instead of sustaining outrage.
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: Levin is such a nasal whiner I really have a hard time believing he has a vast audience of shouty, red-faced real conservative man’s men manly men. I thought he was everything they despised? I can’t figure out the homophobic, fem-o-phobic, misogynistic, bully boy culture any more. I thought it was all about “NO WHINERS”. (Limbaugh doesn’t whine–not overtly–he’s smug, smugness incarnate, and he lies a lot.)
raven
@fuckwit: Daley and the fucking pigs lost their grip on reality in Chicago in 68.
flukebucket
Just saw where Drudge tweeted, “Along the way, through the years, there has been so much deception, backstabbing, dishonesty and betrayal in DC. A reflection of the nation?” LOL!!
fuckwit
@NonyNony: PROJECTION ALERT! PROJECTION ALERT!
Nice. The Teabaggers attempt a coup, fail at their coup, then accuse Obama of trying to stage a coup.
Predictable.
schrodinger's cat
MoDo had a totally clueless column comparing Obama to some fictional person and serving the favorite MSM leftovers of Obama should just hang out with the Republicans more. Is she really that clueless or is it just pretense.
Villago Delenda Est
@NonyNony:
(delivered in monotone)
“It was amazing. It was much better than Cats. I’m going to see it again and again”
Karen in GA
@Mark S.:
Easier to spell.
pamelabrown53
@shelly: Oh, definitely a personal win for Cruz: he may now outstrip La Palin in the grifter title.
Anoniminous
@NonyNony:
Found a link. From Business Insider:
Need to find how “extraordinary measures” is defined – if it is.
While it’s early, most people are still assimilating the news, I predict a sharp rise of successful TeaParty primary challengers, unseating “RINOS.” TeaBaggers comprise 49% (nationally) of the GOP primary electorate. They were already mad at the “sell outs in DC” and this is going to get them even frothier. As we saw in the last Missouri Senate Race the TB-ers have a pronounced ability to throw elections to the Democrat by nominating nutburgers. What we see as a sane response they perceive as a sell-out. They won’t forget.
At least, that’s how I see it.
Trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
“Literally Paralyzed.” Well, so long as that includes breathing we’ll have a party purge a lot sooner than I imagined.
SpaghettiLee
As far as taking back the house goes, someone on TPM counted 36 districts that are occupied by Republicans but are ranked R+3 or lower. Obama won 19 of them in 2012. We only need 17. No, this is not impossible.
jibeaux
I don’t think we’ll take the house and I think Drudge is trollin’, but it certainly puts us into a better position both in terms of the house and the senate next year. I do hate that it cost innocent people as much as it did to get there. I agree that the healthcare.gov website needs to be fucking fixed already, though. If that shit keeps dragging out, it’s going to do damage. The open enrollment to go on my husband’s plan ends Oct. 31, and I want to be able to compare the costs with self-insuring. It’s pretty frustrating not being able to do that and not knowing when I might be able to.
Tokyokie
@NotMax: And, I might add, Verboten! is directed by the great American maverick director Sam Fuller, and most everything he ever did is at least worth a look.
Villago Delenda Est
@Trollhattan:
I think he’s excluding the lizard brain part.
JustRuss
@Villago Delenda Est:
As a Beaver fan, I am so going to use that!
Another Holocene Human
@fuckwit: eh, I don’t think that’s really what drove the Weathermen. They knew the truth and they thought they were self-righteous warriors against evil, that the whole system was going down–in other words, a lot of cognitive bias and motivated reasoning. They also demonized the other side.
The Tea Party is all of that PLUS being plugged into a full-time propaganda stream that provides them with an altered reality. It’s as if the Weathermen thought they would be greeted by bank patrons as heroes and that no jury would convict when they killed the police.
Anoniminous
@SpaghettiLee:
IANAL but on the face of it the “extraordinary measures” clause is a shift of power from the Legislative Branch to the Executive.
Accurate?
Another Holocene Human
@NonyNony: Blahs are simultaneously weak, puppets, fakers, while also hyperintelligent Svengalis with physical superpowers who “intimidate” all their foes.
Yatsuno
@schrodinger’s cat: Luvs kitteh, but not getting out of the boat. Thank you for not linking directly to her though.
Bill Arnold
@Bokonon:
No. Ted Cruz self-destructed. He just doesn’t realize it yet because he surrounded himself with multiple layers of “bubble-wrap” insulation from general reality.
At least that’s what I keep telling myself…
geg6
@fuckwit: @fuckwit:
Agreed. That caught my eye, too.
dollared
@liberal: They are white men. And when England ran India, the trains ran on time. QED.
raven
@Another Holocene Human: Demonized the other side? You mean the other side that was prosecuting genocide in Vietnam. How dare they?
Sly
@dmsilev:
Primary the
NovemberOctober Criminals!dollared
@dmsilev: I appreciate a person who takes the trouble of adding the german pack to his keyboard, just to go Godwin. (not that I don’t agree…..)
Patricia Kayden
@feebog: Of course Repubs will be back at it in a few months. Why should they change? They have no regard for polls and they only care about pushing their agenda.
John O
I’m from IL, and I still think the Ducks have the best uniform thing going in college sports right now. Otherwise I care not for them.
I’ll believe D’s have won the House when I see it, and I don’t expect to. This is all too far out, and I have to believe the R’s are going to think twice before they start THIS argument again.
Get ready for a granny-starving “Grand Bargain” is my best guess at what comes next. But that’s another thing Obama should man up on: Not negotiating until revenue is on the table. Full stop.
Has anyone seen this yet? It’s a pretty nice graphical representation of wealth distribution in this country. I’ve found it very useful to respond with when some wingnut yells, “Socialism!”
TheWatcher
@Villago Delenda Est: I thought she was eighteen! And didn’t you see how she was dressed?!?!? I couldn’t help myself!
EconWatcher
I would not want to be John Boehner’s liver right now….
Patricia Kayden
@Villago Delenda Est: Why would President Obama have to initiate a coup when he’s the president and has a Democratic Senate? Levin and his ilk are truly deranged.
bemused
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh, I don’t expect the locals here to stay quiet for long but any lapse in the daily deluge is telling.
The liberal writers just don’t participate as much as the rightwingers but when they do weigh in, it’s beautiful.
fuckwit
Why are humans such assholes?
I’m looking at this whole thing, and it’s lizard-brain stupidity all over the place. It’s completely tribal. It’s emotional. It’s xenophobic. It’s the howl of toddlers who are the center of the universe being told it’s time to go to bed now BUT I DON’T WANNAA! It’s the dog pressed against the window barking furiously at the other dogs walking outside, just because HOW DARE THEY!
The US government has been shut down for 2 weeks, and the economy nearly destroyed, out of pure territorial idiocy.
Maybe we’re done now for a while. But we really do need to take back the House in 2014, and it’s going to involve a lot of psychology. And a lot of volunteer work. And a lot of money.
Bill Arnold
@NonyNony:
It wasn’t hard. All he had to do was convince Republicans that he was against shutting down the government (*). Once they were convinced of that, their minds were completely fettered, and they had no choice at all in the matter, no more choice than a salmon has to return to its birth place. (See “Cleek’s Law”)
(*) Including not raising the debt ceiling when deficits are significantly > 0 due to lousy economy, in part due to damage by Republicans.
schrodinger's cat
@Yatsuno: Oh you is welcome! I appreciates your comments on my blog as well. When do you go back to work?
Michael
It almost hurts to imagine Dems with some modicum of ability to pass legislation for the last 2 years of Obama’s presidency.
gogol's wife
@John O:
“But that’s another thing Obama should man up on”
I assume you are implying that Obama is lacking in the virtues of courage and steadfastness.
You are full of it.
NickT
Let that interesting sentence percolate in your minds for a while.
chopper
@jon:
oh jesus, i’m crying. i didn’t think they could beat newt’s “you can’t bluff mule drivers”.
David Hunt
@Villago Delenda Est: Worse it’s a picture with both him and a Democrat in it where he’s not trying to stab the Democrat in the neck.
geg6
@Belafon:
Not to mention that I expect it to work pretty much the same way verification for student aid works at the federal level. In a nutshell, we are required to verify a random certain percentage of all the FAFSAs we receive or we must verify when a FAFSA has errors that don’t match with other federal data bases or seem senseless (like an 18yo that has $75,000 in earnings from work). It can be a pain if you’ve screwed up something in your application, but most verifications, the random ones, are relatively painless and quick. And now that they’ve linked the IRS to the FAFSA online, it is even more painless and easy.
The Red Pen
Typical Freeper response to this:
#winning
dmsilev
@dollared: You can thank Google for that. I just copy/pasted it.
John O
@gogol’s wife:
No, that’s a misread (or bad writing). He played the debt ceiling strong, and it worked. He should do the same with the budget negotiations. No revenues, no deal.
In general, I have NOT been happy with his negotiating style, but I think he is a great POTUS. Christ, just maintaining his composure dealing with these assholes should get him on Rushmore, IMO.
schrodinger's cat
Teabaggers and Firebaggers should start a party. I wonder what will happen, they are like the matter and antimatter of politics.
Davis X. Machina
@John O:
Before the invasion of Syria, or after the invasion of Syria?
Frankensteinbeck
@Patricia Kayden:
I know the answer to this one! See, Obama has already cheated his way into the presidency. Massive voter fraud, bribing shiftless, uh… inner city poor people with an easy life of welfare, and he’s probably not even American anyway. Obamacare is nothing but an unconstitutional power grab itself, a gigantic bribe that will keep those inner city poor people (whose votes shouldn’t count because they can’t be responsible with them) voting for Democrats forever. Once you start from this base, the next step would be an actual coup, eliminating free elections and making himself dictator for life. He’s already proven he doesn’t respect the rule of law or democracy, so what’s stopping him?
@The Red Pen:
I’m not sure anyone will remember Cruz’s name in six months. Tea Party darlings don’t last long, because none of them deliver on their promise to stop Obama.
Davis X. Machina
@geg6: Filling out a FAFSA is now down to about 15 minutes chez Machina, if you do it after filing, or at least roughing out, the 1040.
burnspbesq
@jon:
If you don’t like what’s happening in CA, the border is thataway, and we won’t do anything to prevent you from leaving.
JPL
The Senate votes around 8 pm and sends the bill to the House supposedly for passage but……..
Boehner meets with has caucus at three and it wouldn’t surprise me, if they tried to pass another bill before the Senate does.
MCA1
@patroclus: That’s the beauty of it, though. The establishment types and not completely insane Republicans, especially those in the Senate, have now, finally, confronted the Teatard caucus after they saw the complete beating their party was taking in the polls. And if and when the TP’ers start making noise about pulling this kind of shit yet again, we’ll get to have open warfare within the Republican Party during an election year. Every one of the 20 or so Reps who vote for Boehner will get a TP primary challenger thrown at them; but meanwhile the money folks have now been threatening to throw “responsible” Republicans at the firebombers, so the hardcore gerrymandered crazies are still going to be under pressure from both directions. And the Republican brand is, for the moment, trash. Either they start to get out of the way, or they will continue to damage their reputation to the point where they lose the House next Fall. Either way, Dems win. And if the President starts talking next week about getting back to business and passing immigration reform, the backstabbing will continue. There are plenty more wedges to place out there in the next year, and total warfare going on within the GOP.
MikeJ
@dollared: I just use the standard “international” keyboard that gives you access to most yurpian languages, not just German. AltGr+s ßßßß
Comrade Mary
So if anyone was wondering where Steve Benen was, he’s alive and blogging over at the new Maddow site.
Lee
@Steve M.: I say let’s do it.
Raise the debt ceiling and continue funding until Mid Oct. Then let’s see what happens.
John O
@Davis X. Machina:
I’ve been unable to find a single MSM person question a GOP deficit hawk about new revenue. It’s almost enough to make me think nobody cares about that part of the deficit equation.
The GOP is winning on that issue. It’s CW that entitlements MUST be, not will be cut. A new tax rate for multimillionaires? Not so much.
MCA1
@burnspbesq: Check the snarkmeter, Burnsie. Read to me as a positive article about 100,000 in the registration process in California and the program/website/etc. going pretty well there, all things considered.
Frankensteinbeck
@John O:
Strangely, TV talking heads do not reflect the opinion of the American public itself, even though they tell you they do.
Gex
@schrodinger’s cat: The resulting toxic output would make the entire country a Super Fund site.
John O
@Frankensteinbeck:
Right. In this case because they’re largely very well off, financially. They don’t want to pay higher taxes personally.
Amazing that this doesn’t sink in to your average LIV.
LanceThruster
Wish in one hat, and crap in the other, and see which piles up quicker.
NonyNony
@Anoniminous:
Ah. “Extraordinary measures” is what the House was angry about last week when it was determined that the Treasury could keep plates spinning for a while to keep us out of default even after the deadline had passed and the House had done nothing.
Here’s a link where what the House GOPers were up in arms about last week. A selected quote:
So basically – once the Tea Partiers in the House found out that, in fact, their Doomsday Legislation didn’t put the timing of an actual default into their control but rather into Obama’s Treasury, they went into a tizzy panic and screamed that they wanted this to go away.
I’m assuming that what @SpaghettiLee describes above is accurate (Treasury takes extraordinary measures, House and Senate both “disapprove” and then the President can tell the Treasury not to do it rather than must tell the Treasury not to do it) this “deal” would be a giant nothingburger.
(I’m a ratbastard so I wouldn’t even give THAT figleaf to the Republicans who have been screaming about this. Because it’s stupid – the Treasury is supposed to do its damn job, the Congress is supposed to do its damn job, and these extraordinary measures are ONLY a problem if Congress wants to manufacture a crisis on a particular timetable. Since Congress is not supposed to be manufacturing crises, the bookkeeping done by the Treasury to stave off a crisis for one or two extra days is not something that Congress should be concerned with.)
LarryB
@NotMax:
Notification of intent to steal this line.
geg6
@Davis X. Machina:
Yup. Now that you have that IRS download (only available if you’ve filed your taxes already), it takes no time at all. I never have repeat customers for my FAFSA completion workshops any more because of that. Once people do it once and see how easy it is, they realize they can do it themselves in ten or fifteen minutes.
The Red Pen
@Frankensteinbeck:
I was going to argue that point because I scrolled past a Freeper musing about whether Allen West or Sarah Palin would be a better replacement Speaker for John Boehner. Obviously, their stars still shine — but then I realized, that they aren’t actually in office.
Those are the perfect Tea Party representatives: they offer fantasy solutions and deliver on them in the hypothetical world that the baggers inhabit. Perhaps Cruz will resign halfway through his term and join them.
eric
@Davis X. Machina: golf clap
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
Is there another part of the wingnut brain?
SpaghettiLee
@John O:
61% of Americans think that taxes on the rich are too low. 66% think that taxes on corporations are too low. http://www.gallup.com/poll/1714/taxes.aspx
The numbers on social security are even better for us: http://ourfuture.org/report/american-majority-project-polling
I admit this is a personal pet peeve of mine, but if we’re going to be successful in 2014, we have to get over this contempt for the “average voter”. The average voter is on our side on these sorts of issues. Why do some people insist on holding onto this belief that everyone in the country is a WSJ editorialist who wants to cut social security on principle? A huge majority of people in this country love social security, and a majority would raise taxes to keep it solvent. We are on the winning side on this issue, whatever the media says.
Frankensteinbeck
@John O:
Your average LIV either is not listening to them at all, or is inundated with scams and advertizements all the time, and has already identified TV news as one of those. They do get extremely distorted and limited information, but they screen out the absurd pundit biases and insert their own automatically. It’s a basic survival skill of the modern world. The people who don’t know how to do that are the GOP’s base and target audience, and they buy a lot of gold.
Geoduck
@The Red Pen:
There is no requirement in the Constitution that the Speaker be a current member of the House. If the GOP went crazy enough, they could, right now, put Sarah Palin third in line to the Presidency.
Roger Moore
@EconWatcher:
I can’t imagine anyone ever wanting to be his liver. I certainly wouldn’t want to be his hepatologist right now.
John O
@SpaghettiLee:
I hear ya. It isn’t much different than the polling on the ACA; take the “Obama” out of it and list the individual provisions and it polls just fine.
But to some degree (and the reasons don’t matter), what is important in this country is what the MSM says is important. I don’t have “contempt” for the LIV’s, in fact know they’re largely on our/my side, but the reality of it is that most of them get their news, if they get any at all, from the Great Tube of Learnin’.
For the record, I’m also convinced that a “Grand Bargain” that hacks away at the olds will do nothing but benefit the D’s over time.
SpaghettiLee
@Geoduck:
Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, who’s one of those Republicans who’s noticeably crazy even among dozens of other crazies, was quoted today as saying there aren’t enough Republican votes to depose Boehner, and boy was he bitter about it. He wished his peers had as much guts as the Republicans in the 90’s did when they tried to depose Gingrich.
So maybe no crazy nominate-Palin-for-speaker, Pelosi-slips-in-instead moments. Too bad. But the current situation-Boehner having to take orders from Pelosi to get anything passed, because a solid third of his own caucus hates his guts-is pretty delicious. That’s why I thought any Republican surrender, even if they get a few small things on their wish list, was a victory for us. If the caucus has cracked once, if Boehner has sought out Dem votes once, if the GOP’s bluff has been called once-it can happen again. It’s like hitting a home run off of Justin Verlander to break up a no-hitter: the aura of invincibility is gone, and that’s just as important as the policy details.
gelfling545
@Villago Delenda Est: That’s the only excuse I’ve heard for Boehner’s actions that seems plausible.
MomSense
@Violet:
They already do income verification so I think this was a pretend concession.
Oops, Belafon beat me to it.
The Red Pen
@Geoduck:
What makes you think the GOP could ever be crazy enough to put Palin in line for the Presidency?
Oh.
Oh. Dear. God.
SpaghettiLee
@John O:
See, I’m one of the people who thinks that “the Village” is mostly just talking to itself, and most people wouldn’t be able to match names to faces if you asked them who’s who in the Beltway media.
Now the problem is that a lot of people in the Beltway itself listen to the Beltway media. The WSJ and WaPo editorial board have too much influence on Washington for sure. But your average voter? They don’t care. I have never once heard anyone I talk politics with in daily life bring up the good point that David Brooks or Chris Cilizza or Jake Tapper or Mark Halperin or any of the other monsters under DougJ’s bed made. They’re courtiers, not national tastemakers.
Anoniminous
@NonyNony:
Thank you for the insights.
In a spirit of bipartisanship I’d be willing to offer the GOP a fig leaf for their private parts.
If it’s covered with fire ants.
boatboy_srq
@Hal: When your worldview only contains American People west of Beaumont, east of El Paso and south of Wichita Falls, it’s hardly surprising that you think the other 49 states are as crazy as your own constituents. As a Senator, Cruz makes a perfect Secretary of State of the New [re]Independent Lone Star Republic.
gelfling545
@fuckwit: And sometimes more that 1 meaning:
https://findery.com/johnfox/notes/barillas-competitors-strike-back
John O
@SpaghettiLee:
I agree, but that doesn’t mean the overall memes don’t eventually soak through to those who get their news from the TV, whose numbers I know are legion. Repetition matters.
schrodinger's cat
@SpaghettiLee: Mostly true with one exception, MoU, he is well known and universally hated, I haven’t met a single person, who likes him. He is just too self satisfied.
gbear
My god, this NYT piece is an absolute treasure trove of quotes that the democrats can use against the teaparty next year. Just beautiful.
http://www.nytimes.com/news/fiscal-crisis/2013/10/16/house-conservatives-blame-moderates-not-boehner/?_r=0
TAPX486
@John O: I wonder if the low information voters are really that ‘low information’ or they just have figured out that life is to short to obsess over what happens in Washington 24X7. After all there are weddings, births, tee ball, daughter’s weddings to dance at and all those dog/cat videos to watch. In other words they have a real life
Seanly
@SpaghettiLee:
Ahh, but if the GOP controls all 3 then raising the debt limit wouldn’t get any attention. The budget issues, the debt limit crisis, every single thing they do against Obama is much more about the color of Obama’s skin and him being a Democrat than anything else. If Romney had won, the debt limit would be chucked out the window to cover the deficit from removing all taxes for people making over a million dollars a year. Chucked until a Democrat was President again.
boatboy_srq
@Mark S.: dunno about the O’care – but “no care” would be a fair way to describe the GOTea opposition to the ACA – and “O’care or no care” is catchier than “stay healthy or die quickly” a la Grayson.
TriassicSands
I expect the House will return to business as usual (the new business as usual = total dysfunction). I can’t see any significant number of Republicans ever voting for Pelosi for Speaker and the GOP leadership is a bunch of clowns and lunatics (usually both) who, as we’ve witnessed over the past few weeks, have no idea what they’re doing. They have no agenda, their ideology is bankrupt, and they are personally repugnant.
John O
@TAPX486:
There isn’t much question that my friends and family with actual lives don’t have as much time (and it’s a time-suck) to inhale this stuff as I do.
Too busy to care, for sure, and sometimes I envy them.
Roger Moore
@SpaghettiLee:
I don’t think the problem is so much that the Tea Party hates his guts as it is that they’re completely out of touch with reality. The problems the House Republicans are facing right now are actual policy disagreements. The Teabagger Caucus wants to blow shit up and cut off funding to anything they can think of, and there are enough less radical members who aren’t willing to vote for complete nihilism that they can’t get 217 votes within the Republican caucus. If the Teabaggers were willing to bend at all and cut a deal with the less radical wing of their party, they could cut the Democrats out of things- at least until the Senate has its say- but they are so unwilling to compromise that it’s easier for Boehner to cut a deal with Pelosi than with his own extreme right wing.
Tone in DC
I am at work, and cannot pull in my usual station (WPFW, 89.3) for news. So I tuned to CSPAN at 90.1, thinking they’d at least attempt to be evenhanded about today’s news.
They’ve been reading tweets and taking phone calls from listeners. Every call but one was anti-democrat; most were anti-Obama. From all three phone lines: Democrats, Republicans and Independents.
There was a “press conference” a little while ago. They let Rafael Cruz go on about 15 minutes! His grandstanding and bullshit were enough to make me ill.
How the hell is C-SPAN no better than CNN?
End rant.
jl
Me, I’m postponing schadenfreude until all of the fed government opens up, and Congress decides to pay the damn bills it’s rung up. I;m monitoring the news,waiting eagerly for schadenfreude time.
srv
@gbear:
Loser-RINO’s, not men enough to do the right thing for America.
I think the test for any candidates next year is if they can sing three verses of Amazing Grace.
Roger Moore
@Anoniminous:
How about a poison oak leaf?
some guy
@Another Holocene Human:
one hundred thousand percent accurate. all the OFA people I canvassed with were from out of state, and had zero idea who Yoho was, much less that he was on the ballot.
patroclus
@MCA1: I agree with you that things have taken a positive turn politically given the Republican infighting. And, although I’m doubtful, it might work out well next November. But, policy-wise, the CR merely funds the government at near Ryan-budget levels and there is virtually no prospect for increased appropriations in the Grand Bargain talks and good prospects for some tinkering/cuts to SS and Medicare, more sequestration and tax increases (none of which the economy really needs right now). So, effectively, the Republicans are winning on the policy questions and aren’t paying a political price for it – they are instead paying a short-term political cost for their insane strategy rather than a long-term political cost for their destructive policies.
I was once very hopeful for an immigration bill; now, not so much. If the Republicans retain House control next November, we won’t get much good policy change for at least 3 1/2 years and we will instead see a rolling series of manufactured mini-crises which Obama and the Dems might “win” on the politics but not on the substance.
TAPX486
@Roger Moore: Let’s not be pikers here, how about both!!
dww44
@Anya: I’ve long agreed with this. Gibbs never impressed me and frequently irritated me.. He was barely a Democrat, IMO. Mr. right of center personified. Is he even more centrist at his new gig, whatever that is?
Rorgg
@Seanly: Nah, the Sep 20 rule change was more specific: it limited the ability of house members to bring deadlocked Senate bills to a vote in the House to just the majority leader. New legislation is still deathgripped by the speaker, as always.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Red Pen:
The delusional idiocy. It BURNS!
leinie
@gbear: Gah, I’m starting to hate that Raul Labrador more than I do Lieberfuck, and I didn’t think THAT was possible. “President Obama refusing to negotiate in good faith.” Lighting strike BOOM is the only possible response if god existed.
Elie
I’m late to the thread but had to say “told you so”.. told you that this would be over today and that there was no win possible for the REpubs. Just had to be a little bit smug
Elie
@jl:
I think that you are probably right to do that.. I take back my smugness…
feebog
@Patricia Kayden:
If they are, then I think Dem chances of taking back the house rise dramatically. The timeframe is certainly there, the CR expires on Jan. 15, the debt limit authorization on Feb. 7, just a few days more than the current timeframe. But if they do it again, then we are looking at only a three or four months before the primary season and nine months to the general election. As that great speaker George W. Bush once said, “fool me twice, you won’t get fooled again.”
Roger Moore
@patroclus:
Bullshit. It isn’t the “Grand Bargain talks”; it’s the budgetary conference committee, which is supposed to resolve the differences between the House and Senate budgets. You know, the committee that the Republicans have refused to appoint members to because they prefer sequestration to what they expect to get from conference. Assuming it can agree on anything, that committee will probably wind up with something that restores at least part of the sequestration cuts and certainly allows any cuts that are in the budget to be applied with slightly more subtlety than the mindless across the board cuts from sequestration.
Joel
Doesn’t “from your mouth to God’s ears” mean that you’re going to keep a secret until you die?
Joel
FYWP duplicate.
feebog
@burnspbesq:
Get over yourself, that was obvious snark.
Mark B.
@Joel: That would make sense, but I have always heard it as a fervent wish that what you just said comes to pass. Which also makes sense, and I believe that is the way most people use it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
Let’s be sure, and give them a poison oak leaf covered in red fire ants.
On edit. Missed TAPX486’s 177. Credit applied as it’s due!
Hal
@schrodinger’s cat:
Ahhh, Modo at it again. I love looking at the reader’s picks comments in which everyone disagrees with her, and every letter lambasting her gets 100’s of recs. Modo is becoming a joke.
fidelio
@Trollhattan: Not even a metric buttload. The Republicans have 232 seats, the Democrats 200. (There are three vacant seats, with a total of 435) If you split that 32 seat difference in half, it’s sixteen seats to a tied house*. Winning 20 more seats than the 200 they hold would give the Democrats an eight-seat majority. Not a lot to work with, but it’s a lot more doable than despair sometimes suggests. The more seats you get over that twenty, the bigger the majority they’d have. But twenty is a viable target. I can’t believe that there aren’t twenty seats out of those 232 (plus the three vacancies) that can’t be peeled away, with a little good planning and well-targeted work and money.
*That’s why people keep saying that with 17 Republican votes, Nancy could fix this thing.
NonyNony
@feebog:
The problem is that in fact this is the perfect timing to make Republicans who are afraid of Tea Party challengers react poorly. If you wanted to have the Republicans not do something idiotic, you would try to push this all out to June or so after their primaries were finished and they were either lame ducks thinking about private sector opportunities or worried about a general election (depending on how their primary went).
xian
@fuckwit: @jon: can’t wait till republicans in red states start having to run on how they will implement obamacare better than their opponent, as they fall further behind California and New York and Kentucky.
Belafon
@jl: I’m gonna treat this just like Syria: Obama’s got this. He may not get it right the first time, but he will learn, and his enemies will pay.
dmsilev
John Boehner announces that his side is surrendering:
Whoops, sorry, wrong broadcast. Let me retune…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jesus, did she hit “submit” on a draft from three months ago? Even Ron Fournier has given up on the “Obama needs to reach out” shit.
jl
The fig leaf of deafeat (TFLOD, pronounced tee-flawd)
‘ The debt limit will be raised through Feb. 7, with Treasury permitted to use extraordinary measures to borrow after that date, if necessary. The plan includes a “motion of disapproval” wherein Congress can vote to disapprove of this particular increase within 15 days of the president’s announcement. If the motion gets a majority in both chambers, he can veto it.
A bipartisan House-Senate conference committee will be initiated and tasked with submitting formal budget recommendations by Dec. 13, should it reach an agreement.
Individuals seeking subsidies to buy insurance under Obamacare will be required to prove that their income level makes them eligible for such financial assistance under the law.’
Crisis Averted? Senate Reaches Last-Minute Debt Limit Deal
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/senate-reaches-a-deal-to-avert-default-read-the-details
As one who has tended fig trees, and if that is all there is to the deal, I think that is a small fig leaf. The front page title on TPM was “Everything You Need to Know About Deal to Avert Crisis”, so I hope that is it.
I still want gear printed up and sent to the House GOP “I threatened to destroy the world economy, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt and a bag of dung I blew up all over myself.”
Edit; I like this one better “I threatened to destroy the world economy, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt and an exploding cigar.”
Belafon
@xian: They wouldn’t be Republicans if they acted like that. A Republican will talk about how California and New York are taking money from hard working, retired, medicare-scooter-riding folks and how they must be stopped.
Democrats try to lift everyone up.
Republicans try to force the bottom 99% down.
PaulW
There’s a chart out there on a poll that shows anger towards incumbents at an all-time high (compared to other midterms like 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010). While it may be a threat to Democratic incumbents, I’d like to think a lot of that anger is directed at a House GOP and GOP leadership that are going to find a LOT of angry district/state voters pissed at them.
And they’ve rigged the game to play this brinkmanship/hostage taking again in early 2014, right around primary season for the midterms. Not a smart move for the incumbents.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
John Boehner should personally be taxed into penury.
Also, too, I like the pre-Baghdad Bobness of this:
PaulW
@fidelio:
The Democrats need to get off their asses this midterms. They fidgeted too much in 2010 and failed to get the vote out (and even failed to place candidates in weaker gerrymandered districts).
They need to go back to Howard Dean’s 50-State strategy. Challenge every seat. Challenge every level of office, especially in the Deep Red states. There’s a lot of anger at the GOP right now and the Democrats gotta move on that.
Anya
@schrodinger’s cat: Is she using the New York Times to write another fan fiction about one of her favorite characters? Who is it this time, Morgan Freeman, Michael Douglas or Daniel Day Lewis playing Lincoln?
scav
♬ ♫
Dixie Doodle went to the House
A-riding on a teabag
He took a poopoo in his hat
and called it quite the gladrag
Dixie Doodle, keep it up,
Dixie Doodle dandy
Ignore the polls and all the stats
and steal the kiddies candy!
♬ ♩
dmsilev
@Villago Delenda Est: A mild excise tax on bourbon and whiskey sold within the borders of the District ought to do the job nicely.
Matt McIrvin
@PaulW: One of the election statistics guys (either Nate Silver or Sam Wang; I think it was Silver) has argued that “anti-incumbent” elections basically don’t exist; people whose allegiances are gettable usually shift from supporting one party to another, and there aren’t waves when both Democratic and Republican incumbents lose big. So if people are anti-incumbent, the next question is what that means in a partisan sense.
SpaghettiLee
@PaulW:
The thing about gerrymandering is that you shove your opponents into fewer districts, but they’re safer districts. With a few exceptions (John Barrow, Jim Mathison, Patrick Murphy) there just aren’t many seats that Dems can reasonably lose.
Another thing about gerrymandering is that chopping up the GOP vote across a larger number of districts means that they’re only kinda Republican instead of very Republican. All well and good, unless there’s some sort of public anger-fueled wave election that blows all those R+5 district reps out of the water…
If the Dems do succeed in making 2014 all about the GOP having to apologize for the shutdown, look out. I think the big question is whether they can get a unified multi-state campaign that stays on message started. But if they do…
jl
The main problem is getting reasonable candidates past the GOP primaries in districts with crazy Republicans. The teabagger candidates have not produced big wins, indeed may be the reason Dems still hold Senate.
So, looking on the bright side, problem is making the teabagger GOP House smaller.
If the extremists had any political future they would have used different tactics (like, maybe winning some elections and changing the ACA over next few election cycles, hehhh.. how about trying that?)
They know they have no bigger brighter future to get anything done, all they can do is use outlandish and noxious tactics to obstruct. And now I see in the news, they decided that the news media, which has treated them with ten times the respect they deserve, ‘betrayed’ them. So, now the teabaggers are reaching up out of the bowl and puling the handle to see if they themselves can finish off the flush.
Patricia Kayden
@dmsilev: LOL!
A Humble Lurker
@John O:
I believe you are vastly overestimating them.
FormerSwingVoter
Heh. The Chamber of Commerce is key-voting “Yes” on this plan. Lots of well-funded primaries coming against lunatic teabaggers.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/chamber-supports-will-key-vote-senate-plan
jl
@A Humble Lurker: ‘misunderestimating’, I think Dub provided that useful work.
Villago Delenda Est
@A Humble Lurker:
Agreed. These idiot assholes think the solution is to break the control knob and take it to twelve.
geg6
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes, there are political scientists who say the same thing. Just like there are few real independents, most anti-incumbent anger, if any, is usually aimed at one party or another, not both.
boatboy_srq
@Tone in DC: There are days I think CSPAN was intended from inception as a GOTea tool to deliberately make governing look horrible, so the US would decide Gubmint (big OR small) was a bad idea and demand a return of the Confederacy.
It doesn’t help that the only folks who pay attention to CSPAN are professional pol-watchers and unemployed Teahadists.
jonas
@SpaghettiLee: 61% of Americans think that taxes on the rich are too low. 66% think that taxes on corporations are too low.
Polling is one thing — voting is another. Solid majorities of American’s also support sensible gun control according to numerous polls. The problem is that crazy people are also the most motivated voters, so here we are.
TAPX486
from Mother Jones :
That is what my mother used to say is sh**ing on you and then rubbing it in
catclub
btw, the nearly 2% gain today on the stock markets is part of the reason you don’t pull all
your assets into cash because you are ‘worried about the uncertainty’.
Actual default was still on the unlikely side.
liberal
@jl:
Let’s be clear on one thing—none of these people are “reasonable.” They’re still far-right. The distinction here is between unreasonable, far-right, and bat$hit crazy, let’s-shake-the-temple-to-its-foundations-NOW far-far-far-right.
catclub
Krugman piling on. The GOP mismanagement tax.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/the-gop-tax/?_r=0
liberal
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The NPR segment I heard twice a couple of days ago went through exactly this same crap—“it’s partly Obama’s fault for not reaching out more…he’s only visited SC once since 2008…blah blah blah”
Steeplejack
@jibeaux:
A couple of helpful links:
HealthCare.gov has put up a page that allows you to get plan information without creating an account. I have been unsuccessful in setting up an account so far, but I was able to access this information easily.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has a site that helps you calculate what subsidy you might be eligible for. (The HealthCare.gov link above does not do that.)
Corner Stone
@TAPX486:
Your mom used to actually say this out loud? Where you could hear it?
tybee
@catclub:
i liked the markets today. :)
Corner Stone
@Belafon:
This is a fascinating type of disorder. Ever thought about voluntarily enrolling in a psych study?
TAPX486
@Corner Stone: yep. she was a bit ahead of her time in being ‘liberated’
Corner Stone
@TAPX486: I think you and commenter “muddy” may have a beautiful time together. Her family also has many sayings that makes one go, “what?”
Maeve
@Frankensteinbeck:
Wrong, the purpose of Obamacare is to put RFID chips in everybody’s ass.
And therefore bring about the end times.
Because Obama is the AntiChrist.
catclub
@tybee: Me too.
I did think about ‘pulling everything out till this is over’, but the problem with that is that then you have to decide what event will make you go back in.
fidelio
@PaulW: Yes. And the national people need to talk with and especially listen to the local people, and not go nuts over less viable candidates who look good from a national perspective but are less so at ground level.
catclub
@jl: “House GOP threatened to destroy the world economy,
but I got this cheap T-shirt.
They got nothing.”
A Humble Lurker
@Maeve:
FTFY.
schrodinger's cat
@Anya: Kerry Washington’s Olivia Pope from ABC’s Scandal. I have not seen the show, so it makes no sense to me.
jon
@burnspbesq: Sometimes “irony” is a description of steel to someone who never encountered it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Alexandra: You can’t spell despair without diapers. this is good news for David Vitter.
cckids
@Roger Moore:
Yep. I’ve noticed a trend over the last week, they’re calling it the “Unaffordable Care Act”.
They are so predictable. DIAF, fuckers.
feebog
There is much weeping, gnashing of teeth and garment rendering going on at Red State right now. Bill S., one of the moderators is banning commenters left and right. Good stuff.
JR in WV
@Corner Stone:
Many years ago, my folks got a new fridge, with the new-fangled “Ice Maker” in it. My Grandma would come over and they would play cards, Hearts and Spades and such.
The first time the new fridge started filling its trays, there was a hissing sound of water squirting. And Grandma said:
“Listen, listen, the cat’s a pissin’
Where, Where, Under the chair!
Run, run, get the gun!
Too late, she’s done.”
Now this was a church-going lady who played the piano and went to college in the very early 1900s. Grew up in a small river-boat town in pre-railroad Kentucky. The first time I heard this little ditty I almost hurt – wait, I DID hurt myself laughing.
And now, her little country ditty is Immortal on the Innertubes!
ruemara
@John O: then why is every one of your ‘compliments’ full of slaps to his face? You haven’t said one thing nice about him without being challenged on a statement that paints him as weak, stupid or lacking based on your opinion.
debbie
Ooh, ooh, I bet Glenn Beck will cry on air tomorrow!
Todd Dugdale
@Bokonon: Yeah. And when Obama is forced to choose between making interest payments and Medicare funding, it will be his “fault”. Oh, and this also perfectly feeds into the “Obama is a dictator” narrative. He would be making all of the spending decisions, without Congress having a “say” in the matter. And no one on the Right would even connect the dots to realise that the Republicans made this happen.