Even before the president announced the executive order on immigration, Republicans were responding exactly as you’d expect:
Some Republicans expressed frustration that Obama invited only Senate and House Democrats to dinner Wednesday evening to huddle before the announcement.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said the fact that Republicans were not invited signals that Obama is creating “the beginning of a political campaign” that provokes “partisan warfare” and not a bipartisan agreement.
Republicans should have been included in Wednesday’s dinner, said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).
“I think that’s endemic of how the president has run his office,” she said. “He has been unwilling to reach out to Republicans.”
No surprises there; any one of us could have written their talking points for them. But what about the response of people who don’t follow politics closely and others who are paid to pretend it’s irrelevant that one of our two major parties has been hijacked by lunatics? If what I’m hearing in the news is any indication, there’s considerable angst in those quarters that the president’s executive action could torpedo bipartisan cooperation for the rest of his term.
I’ve prepared the following charts to help our fellow citizens gauge the likely effect of the executive order on bipartisan cooperation. First, let’s chart the pre-executive order levels of Congressional comity:
Next, let’s have a look at the projected levels of cooperation in the post-executive order world:
Isn’t it amazing how visual aids can bring the complex interplay between confusing datasets so sharply into focus? No need to thank me; it’s just something I do.
Biscuits
I think of it this way Betty. President Obama inherited, from jr, a bed that had been sh*t in in every way imaginable. Rather than begin the hard work of cleaning it up, the republicans have been giddily smearing it over the rest of us going on 6 years now. That’s my visual aid.
jibeaux
Very clarifying graphics, Betty, thanks.
Baud
As is oft said, no way I’m voting for Obama in 2016.
satby
And straight to FB this went, more to annoy my winger wall readers than to educate them. They adamantly refuse to be educated.
sparrow
sorta OT question —
Our state U that my boyfriend works at just announced an across-the-board hiring freeze due to a budget shortfall. We’re in Maryland, a (corrupt) blue state. I admit to not paying a ton of attention to state politics here (mainly because the status quo seemed so entrenched until very recently), I’m not actually clear on what has caused that shortfall. The email we got blamed medicaid enrollments under ACA specifically, as well as fewer receipts from taxes due to unemployment. I have a hard time believing that medicaid is really bankrupting our state (for one thing, I thought this was federal money??) I feel like this is talking points straight from our new Republican governor.
It just sucks personally because I was hoping to apply for a position at the U that was supposed to open next year. Now I may have to get a job out of town and do the LDR all over again.
Baud
Fixed for accuracy.
Cervantes
Edward Tufte himself could not have done better.
AxelFoley
Those pie charts say everything that need be said.
Baud
@sparrow:
Agreed. That email makes no sense.
ETA: Quick googling led to this WaPo article about budget cuts. Tax revenue is blamed, but not the ACA.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/maryland-panel-cuts-77-million-from-state-budget-in-response-to-omalley-request/2014/07/02/074cdf56-0220-11e4-b8ff-89afd3fad6bd_story.html
Sondra
Bravo. I like it.
RSA
You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland.
Tone In DC
@sparrow:
The email we got blamed medicaid enrollments under ACA specifically, as well as fewer receipts from taxes due to unemployment. I have a hard time believing that medicaid is really bankrupting our state (for one thing, I thought this was federal money??) I feel like this is talking points straight from our new Republican governor
I haven’t read anything about Larry Hogan. Still, I have a bad feeling he’s Bobby Haircut, but worse.
debbie
This is Newt-not-getting-a-seat-at-the-front-of-the-plane all over again.
Thunderbird
A conservative friend posted our Blue Dog Senator Joe Donnelly’s statement expressing his wishes for the President to do something via Congress, and there was the predictable “BOTH SIDES” bullshit from his cronies. 8:45 AM’s not too early to start drinking on a Friday, right? *sigh*
dmsilev
@sparrow: I’ll give you long odds that the stated reason is bullshit, and that the real reason is that the state has decided it doesn’t want to spend as much money on the university system.
Still sucks, though. Hope you manage to pull through and find a good situation.
dmsilev
The “mind” of NewsMax is a strange strange place:
GregB
These fucking pricks don’t take his calls and don’t show up when he does invite them,
Judging by the rage-ometer og my resident Face Book wingnut, they have lost their collective shit.
Valdivia
ahhhh this drives me crazy. They complain he doesn’t invite them but when he does (as he has many times) they just refuse to go. Hate these nihilists.
polyorchnid octopunch
Betty: You should put those two together into one image along with a pithy quote from one of the lunatics and tweet that shit.
Belafon
@Thunderbird: I realize it’s pointless, but you should ask your friend about his thoughts on the House not even looking at the Senate’s immigration bill that would passed during this term.
Morzer
Can any thinking being blame Obama for leaving Michele Bachmann to sit with her friends at the back of the short bus?
Lee
@GregB:
Yep, they have lost their shit with this and I’m trolling the hell out of them. I haven’t been defriended for this yet but the day is young!
Mustang Bobby
This from someone whose grasp of reality includes being married to a man who sets off more gaydar than the chorus line of “La Cage Aux Folles.”
Morzer
@Mustang Bobby:
Endemic? That’s almost as illiterate a misuse of English as refudiate.
jibeaux
@Thunderbird: how many sides does Boehner have? There’s the orange one and the even oranger one, right?
Patrick
I just want to scream when I hear this type of garbage. When Bush was President, Democrats weren’t exactly welcome to his dinners or townhall meetings. Hell, participants had to sign loyalty oaths.
Morzer
@jibeaux:
Boehner is an onion made up of multiple layers of fake tan. Peel off all the layers and you’ve got a handful of nothing and some biohazardous flakiness.
Patrick
@Thunderbird:
Congress has had I don’t know how many years to fix this. They decided not to do a damned thing about it. In the meantime, people’s lives are town apart. Your conservative friend should be angry at Congress, not our President.
Rob
Poor grasp of the English language is endemic in the Republican Party.
khead
@sparrow:
See playbook of Ehrlich, Robert. When the GOP comes in, the spigot gets turned off, state jobs get whacked or frozen and everything becomes a “user fee”. A “user fee” is not a tax, of course. Because the GOP says so.
Also, tell us more about how you don’t pay attention to MD politics but still know that it’s a (corrupt) blue state.
Thunderbird
@Belafon: Just sent a comment with a link to the Senate bill that passed 68-32. Now we wait…
Morzer
@Rob:
Which is funny, when you consider how many years they’ve spent yowling about how immigrants need to speak English like what proper Americans speaking it are.
Mind you, in the case of Michele Bachmann, I rather think the proper term is endemonic.
Valdivia
I had promised to bring reports from the Spanish language press. This op-ed by Jorge Ramos, the newsanchor and most trusted and seen man in the community, is excellent and sums up perfectly everything I have seen since yesterday
http://fusion.net/story/29003/jorge-ramos-this-is-the-most-important-immigration-move-in-almost-50-years/
Morzer
@Valdivia:
I do find this concise, precise truth-telling really quite refreshing.I wonder if it might catch on in the white media community some day?
MomSense
@Morzer:
Nah. If they did bring it up they would blame Obama for not sufficiently schmoozing the Republicans to make it happen. Apparently being more leadery involves some combination of cocktails and superficial conversation.
jibeaux
@Morzer:
too lazy to phone link, but Vox had a good analysis of how the choice of inaction has often led to worse outcomes for R’s than if they’d just actually helped legislate. It repeats its central argument several times in a nice crisp way, it was well written.
Mustang Bobby
@Morzer: Which is ironic with chocolate sprinkles since she recently complained about Obama helping “illiterate immigrants.”
dance around in your bones
Why the FUCK should he invite Crazy Eyes and Yertle and Orange Julius when they have spurned him at every fucking opportunity???????
Jeebus, the stupid burns.,and burns, and fucking BURNS.
Amir Khalid
@Mustang Bobby:
Michele Bachmann’s like a lawyer or something, isn’t she? How the fu
dgeck did she get through law school with such poor English?rlrr
@Amir Khalid:
Also Dan Quayle…
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Unaccredited law school funded by Tom Coburn’s dad.
It was part of “Oral Roberts University.”
Need I say more?
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: Bachmann’s law degree is from Oral Roberts University. I trust that answers your question.
@Cervantes: Great minds, etc.
Roger Moore
@Morzer:
I thought it was “enderpic”.
Patrick
@dance around in your bones:
Boehner didn’t even bother to return Obama’s call during the debt ceiling debacle in 2011. Bachman is an hypocritical idiot!
Cervantes
@rlrr:
Dan Quayle really was sui generis.
SatanicPanic
Let’s just enjoy this day for what it is- Obama calling out the racist Republicans, luring them out from under their bridges.
Roger Moore
@Patrick:
AKA Republican Congresscritter.
gene108
@dmsilev:
Have family in MD, who work for the state. I think the issue is Maryland, under O’Malley, wanted to deliver the moon and starts to the people, but did not want to raise taxes to pay for it.
O’Malley already spearheaded a reduction of the state employee’s pensions to shore up his budget.
This is probably round two of things that have to be cut, so the legislature does not have to raise taxes and can still try and do things like universal pre-K that get more publicity, even if it never gets off the ground.
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
@Betty Cracker:
Ah, I see.
dance around in your bones
@Patrick: I do not know HOW a sentient person votes for that woman.
I mean, srsly?!
gene108
@Patrick:
Democrats are not good at creating boogey-men/women from the Republican ranks. It takes a certain repetition Limbaugh, et. al. provide to turn Pelosi, Reid and the late Ted Kennedy into caricatures of everything wrong in society.
different-church-lady
Shouldn’t the second chart indicate more than 100% opposition?
Bill Arnold
@different-church-lady:
Oooh. Maybe an extra slice of red pie so that it goes to 11.
sparrow
@khead: Gerrymandering is still shitty, even when Dems do it.
Linda Featheringill
I think that Obama has done the Democratic Party a great favor by going ahead and doing it on his own. And if he gets impeached for it, that would be even better because EVERYBODY would be aware of the reason.
The Hispanic “block” is quite diverse but they all have one thing in common: They never forget.
Bravo!
Felonius Monk
I posted this comment last night and now I’m getting the popcorn ready.
They can shut down the government, but that won’t affect the implementation of the Usurper’s executive action.
Cervantes
@Linda Featheringill:
Nature or nurture?
And how do the other “blocks” rank in terms of propensity to forget?
Starfish
@khead: It really is a corrupt blue state because it is a one party state where everyone politely waits for everyone else to have their turn at a given job. See Sheila Dixon as former mayor of Baltimore. Also, I am not so hot on Martin O’Malley because he took a term as Mayor of Baltimore and then at Governor of Maryland having fixed all of the problems of Baltimore. (haha)
Bobby Thomson
@gene108: Fuckin’ Carcetti.
Kryptik, A Man Without a Country
@Morzer:
Going with needless pedantry, since going into the substance and sausage making just makes me want to punch things (or myself) at this point:
How so? At least endemic is really a word, and at least properly applied grammatically (if not reflecting reality whatsoever).
Starfish
@Bobby Thomson: I don’t trust Petyr Baelish!
Linda Featheringill
@Cervantes:
Dunno. The AA community as a whole seems to have a pretty good memory, too.
Keith G
The crocodile tears in the claim that, “Oh my, a sitting president is waging a political campaign” always fascinates me.
Since 1797, US presidents have functioned as active partisan leaders of the national government. That is why they are elected. And yes, many, if not most of them, have led spirited campaign style efforts to plan for and rally public support to causes that are important to them.
President Obama has been more reticent than most at behaving this way, and that has been a source of irritation to me and many Democrats.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Belafon: Yes, but the Senate didn’t pass any of the 50 ACA repeal bills passed by the House. See Both Sides. /Republican Talking Point
Cervantes
@Linda Featheringill:
And are there “blocks” and “communities” that don’t?
Xboxershorts
@Morzer:
yes, but…irregardless….
Keith G
@Linda Featheringill:
Now if they would just friggen vote.
Tractarian
Win
Cervantes
@Keith G:
Tom Cole is a reasonably intelligent person so you’d think he’d know better than to mouth such inanities — but he’s also a self-proclaimed “moderate” and an ally of Boehner’s, always hoping — or, at least, asking — for bi-partisanship.
SiubhanDuinne
@jibeaux:
You mean this? (I didn’t look for it — it just showed up on my FB page.)
D58826
I suspect that if the House passed the Senate version of the immigration reform bill next week, Obama would have every last Congress critter over for thanksgiving dinner (even if he privately wished he could stuff and carve a few of them).
Patricia Kayden
@debbie: It’s much much worse. At least that time the President wasn’t blah. Or Muslim. Or Kenyan.
BillinGlendaleCA
@D58826: They’d have to come back from vacation first. NOT GONA HAPPEN.
BR
Anyone have a sense of how Pres. Obama’s executive order and speech are playing in Spanish-language media?
Belafon
@Cervantes: Democrats forget how to vote in years not divisible by 4. Not sure if they remember in years divisible by 100 because the last one was also divisible by 400.
Linda Featheringill
@Cervantes:
Did I say that these were exclusive? Did I use the word “only”?
My, you’re confrontational this morning.
Hope your day gets better.
Linda Featheringill
@Keith G:
Amen.
Belafon
@Keith G:
I know he hasn’t claimed credit for everything, but did you miss the part where the major networks refused to interrupt their programming for last nights speech? This has been a problem for Obama. Lot’s of his speeches weren’t aired, not even on news channels.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Morzer: I hear that there are a couple viruses that are emblematic in parts of the world, including the US. Indeed Obama Derangement Syndrome, the current and to date most virulent strain of Democratic President Derangement Syndrome, is among those in the US population.
BR
@Belafon:
Does anyone know why that is? Is it that they’ve aired the same fraction of speeches of Obama’s as they did of previous presidents, and we just happen to care now? Or are they actually showing fewer speeches of his?
Cervantes
@Linda Featheringill:
My days are usually fine, thanks. It must be the “block” I’m in.
Keith G
@Belafon: Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Yes certain avenues of communication are more difficult. And then again, this is a man who has been able to fill football stadiums full of people. I think there are many ways that he can sidestep and move around even the most stubborn press. The man is smart and he has at his disposal the ability to hire even smarter people. They can figure this stuff out.
That’s what I expect.
Gin & Tonic
@BR: The reduction in the proportion of Presidential addresses and press conferences aired by the major networks has been ongoing since Reagan. I’m not sure about the slope of the decline, but it’s nothing new.
low-tech cyclist
Shorter GOP: “Just because we’ve repeatedly told him to get fucked, he snubs us. How rude of him!”
Cervantes
@Belafon:
Do the “excess” Democrats who turn out only for divisible-by-four years (AD) see themselves as Democrats? I do wonder.
I wonder, too, whether they actually do the math before deciding whether to go out and vote. If so, I guess I can take some comfort in how rarely they get the math wrong.
Belafon
@Keith G: And how do you propose he make a major speech on television, like other presidents have done, when the major networks don’t give him the space.
danielx
Why? So Obama and the other attendees could watch the Republicans line up to pee in the soup?
dance around in your bones
@Cervantes: I turn out every election, and I vote straight Democratic each time.
I was saying that to some dude who said “Why? Can’t you decide who to vote for?”
And I said “Yeah, no fucking insane Republicans”.
I DO delve into the Measures and Props though.
Linda Featheringill
@Cervantes:
:-)
SatanicPanic
@Felonius Monk: Oh that’s good. That’s very good. Oh man I am going to love the next couple months’ freakout
geg6
Thanks, Betty. This is going directly to my FB page. The wingnuts among my “friends” are, I’m sure, frothing today. I don’t plan to read anything there, just post this.
Keith G
@Belafon: Anyone depending on a single televised event that’s not related to groups of eleven men moving a ball around are actually barking up a tree that is very, very wrong.
The paradigm, it has shifted.
Valdivia
@Morzer:
Sorry for the late reply–there was an interview of Ramos in Time yesterday. The journalist was shocked that he so clearly tells people who is to blame. So satisfying.
shelley
A few posts down, Annie Laurie concluded with “what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the week?”
Myself, avoiding all reports and quotes of Republican poutrage over the President’s speech. (And don’t you just know that some of them are incensed that he dared quote the Bible.)
Skipping my usual news station and sticking with QXR’s Bach-a-thon.
Valdivia
@BR: I left a link upthread about it. Really a must read article. Also people went wild during the Latin grammys. The speech was the lead in to the show and they broadcast it in the hall. Many artists thanked Obama and called it a historic night. (nice summary of that at Time magazine)
@Keith G: I agree about voting. Completely. But I must say that listening to a lot of the community yesterday the sense of disappointment after 6 years of waiting was very real. It’s self defeating not to vote but many felt betrayed when Obama delayed the action before the elections. He should have done it in spite of the yells from the Senators who asked.
Violet
Visual aids are so helpful in clarifying situations like that. Thanks, Betty!
Liberty60
This just made me laugh-
“Some in G.O.P. Fear That Their Hard-Liners Will Alienate Latino Voters”
That why its called the Paper of Record- for that deep insightful perception.
Cervantes
@shelley:
Quoting scripture is a mug’s game, really.
In the speech last night, the president gave us Exodus 23:9:
And that’s great, but it’s not all there is even in Exodus 23 alone.
For example, he missed the opportunity to say the following to Republicans and the Tea Party (23:1-2):
And to Republicans again in the age of Citizens United (23:8):
And to himself (23:10-11):
And to himself again (23:7):
JimV
Best post ever!
On a personal note, you know how “neither rain nor snow nor sleet shall stay the Post Office in the swift completion of its appointed rounds”? Well, here in Orchard Park, NY, I haven’t gotten a mail delivery since last Saturday. (Coincidentally, there has been a snow-emergency driving ban all week.) I can hear the Republicans now: “Obama lied to us again.”
Violet
@Valdivia: Thanks for linking that editorial by Jorge Ramos. I love how he’s calling out the Republicans for their intransigence. Is that the same thing being said in the Latino community in general?
shelley
To give the poor Post Office a break, that never was their motto. It’s an inscription on the James Farley Post Office in New York.
According to Wiki:This phrase was a translation by Prof. George Herbert Palmer, Harvard University, from an ancient Greek work of Herodotus describing the Persian system of mounted postal carriers c. 500 B.C.E. The inscription was added to the building by William Mitchell Kendall of the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, the building’s architects. It derives from a quote from Herodotus’ Histories, referring to the courier service of the ancient Persian Empire:
History lesson over.
Valdivia
Here you go: Obama at Latin Grammys
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-latin-grammy-awards-start-political-an-immigration-speech-then-go-pop-20141120-column.html
Valdivia
@Violet:
he truly is *the* voice of the community: respected and looked up and trusted. I think he does reflect the general feeling, I like that he reminds everyone who is to blame.
Keith G
@Valdivia: I certainly agree with your statement. That said, the under participation of Hispanic voters has a a decades-long challenge here in Texas.
boatboy_srq
@Valdivia:
Especially since the voters impacted represent the margin by which (at least) some lost.
Cervantes
@shelley:
One appreciates the historical note, as will you appreciate this small correction — neither Professor Palmer’s translation of Herodotus nor the inscription on the Farley Building — neither of them mentions sleet:
The sleet we’ll have to blame on someone else.
sparrow
@Starfish: Thank you. I didn’t say I paid *no* attention, but I’m new here and it’s actually really hard to find good non-BS, “recent history” to get you up to speed (it doesn’t help that the Baltimore paper is a total rag which front-pages stupid sports pretty much every day rather than tackling some of the city/state corruption like they should be doing). I voted in the primaries for Heather Mizeur. Oh well.
Violet
@Valdivia: Yeah, I think he should have done it before the election too. Oh well. Better late than never, I guess.
Thanks for the follow ups on how it’s playing in the Latino community. Glad it’s getting a lot of play and so glad Ramos called out the Republicans.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
Texas is pretty much the only state where Latinos were subjected to Jim Crow-like segregation. Why are you surprised that Latinos in Texas have had the same problems overcoming the legacy of segregation that African-Americans have had in other parts of the South?
Ruckus
@Patrick:
Just ask them why hasn’t congress passed any laws about the issue one way or the other for the president to sign or veto. No one is stopping them doing that.
Of course the answer is that because he is such an ineffective president he controls exactly what congress does with it’s time. Thereby proving that the concepts of logic and reason have
escapedbeen thrown out of what passes for conservative thought.bobbo
What the rightwing whackos fail to mention is that if POTUS had invited them to dinner, they would have declined the invitation and bragged to their Teahadist supporters about how they don’t recognize his legitimacy as President.
AxelFoley
@Cervantes:
Well, we know white folks rank #1 in forgetfulness, which got us the 2010 and 2014 GOP takeover.
Bill Arnold
@AxelFoley:
If you have Fox News, you don’t actual long-term memory. They give you the memories you need, fresh, every day.
sparrow
@Bill Arnold: We’ve always been at war with Eurasia.
WereBear
FOX: No thinking required… or wanted!
Valdivia
@Keith G: Absolutely.
@boatboy_srq: yes, specially in Colorado where it was much closer than reported on election day (it’s down to maybe 2-3 points).
@Violet: for me it’s both a better late than never but also an incredible feeling that Obama validated the community. I think/guess its a combination like that for all of us. The anger will now pass, specially if this is a first step to more in the future (thinking after 2016, no illusion about the band of arsonists in Congress)
Keith G
@Mnemosyne: And yet, if Hispanics used that as a motivation for voting turnout the way African Americans have, politics in Texas would be changed even now.
BTW. ..I was noting that reality without any surprise whatsoever.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
African-Americans in Confederate states haven’t had much luck improving turnout either, though, with Virginia being the big exception. We have very good Latino (and AA) turnout in California, but we never had Jim Crow laws here, plus we have a nonpartisan commission that draws up our districts, unlike Texas.
What I’m saying is, it’s more complicated than Why don’t Latinos show up to vote?
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Not just voting….
How difficult is it to register to vote when you are a low paid worker who can not afford to take time off for it? It’s not just the voter ID bullshit, it starts even before that. In many rural areas don’t you have to go to the county seat to register? And have documents that not everyone has the time or the money to get from the government, if they are even available. Being lower on the socioeconomic scale makes everything that needs/should be accomplished in a society harder.
Starfish
@sparrow: The Baltimore Sun has done some good investigative reports like the one they did a few years back on people using ground rents to essentially steal houses and the one about the really screwed up water billing system. I liked reading the Baltimore Brew and a couple of the local blogs.