New airplane regulations:
The federal government will impose big fines starting this spring on airlines that keep passengers waiting on runways too long without feeding them or letting them off the plane.
Airlines that let a plane sit on the tarmac for more than two hours without giving passengers food or water, or more than three hours without offering them the option of getting off, will face fines of $27,500 a passenger, the secretary of transportation announced on Monday.
“This is President Obama’s Passenger Bill of Rights,” said the secretary, Ray LaHood. Various proposals by that title have been introduced in Congress in recent years, but none has passed.
Sounds good, but I’ve been told if Obama used his bully pulpit and really got in front of the issue, he could have gotten rid of airline delays completely. In other news:
The White House Press Office sent out a statement today announcing that President Obama signed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010 into law on Saturday.
That bill contained Franken’s anti-rape amendment. Funny how that works- the House and Senate send him good bills, and he signs them.
asiangrrlMN
Wow. I’m really glad for both these laws. Thanks for reporting the good news, too, Cole, even if you did it in the most curmudgeonly way possible.
And, Senator Al Franken, bitchez!
Sentient Puddle
Regardless of anything else, I gotta say that it’s a sad state of affairs for our country when the government has push through airline legislation like that. I mean Christ almighty, you’d think that’d be common sense shit.
neill
yeah, and presumably there’ll be lots of republicans on those planes… so he’s still trying to do that stoopid bi-partisan shit, too…
Tim I
Sounds like you’re spending too much time lurking at DKos.
Joe Beese
Next time, John, for the full straw-man effect, make sure to mention either “ponies” or “unicorns”.
donovong
Well, in reality, Obama should have done more to publicly support the Public Airline Option, by drawing a line in the sand over our right to create a government run airline. If we can’t get that, then by god, we are not going to fucking fly anywhere!
Just sayin’.
CT Voter
Actually, had he gotten out in front of the passenger bill of rights legislation, and really done the job, instantaneous time travel would already exist and we wouldn’t need airplanes at all. Slacker. Or in the pocket of Big Air.
And it doesn’t matter that he signed the defense appropriations bill with the Franken amendment in it: the WH opposed it initially and Inouye threatened to gut it. That it turned out ok in the end is irrelevant.
Why oh why
More money to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan, bomb Yemen and Pakistan, and some kind of anti-rape fig leag (what about rapes by US soldiers, often covered up?). Finally a progressive victory!
And Michael Moore is fat.
Legalize
I regret that we did not elect Hillary. Her handwriting would have been much better on the bills she successfully got through Congress.
General Winfield Stuck
And the one that gripes me the most is the ranting over caving with the Stimulus Bill, ughh! that it contained icky winger tax cuts, payroll taxes, that is, and temporary, and to the poorest among us.
And it was 800 billion, instead of 900 billion, to get it passed.
Cave cave cave.
But the biggest numbnuttery is ignoring the historic investment that was larger than any discretionary spending bill ever. Things like moving forward with alternative energy and HC delivery systems and other normally cool stuff progressives support.
The idjitry is truly astounding on my side of the blogger isle.
Splitting Image
I think that if Congress starts passing a lot of these bills as soon as health care is off the table, it will be good news for Republicans as it becomes obvious how many of them have been delayed by G.O.P. obstructionism.
The American people have rejected Obama’s radical airline agenda and they will be grateful to the G.O.P. for protecting them from it.
r€nato
Merry Obamamas, bitches!
Legalize
I love it. That the admin opposed X is more important than the fact that the Pres. signed a bill containing X.
EDIT: Sorry, snark filter not working today …. So-called “progressives” are not impossible to parody, just like the American right.
Just Some Fuckhead
P.O.: Pissed On and Put Out, Pissed Off by President Obama but no Public Option.
Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here until 5 ET. Be sure to tip your Parole Officer.
r€nato
So what would Palin call these new airline regulations?
Airline death panels?
Government depriving you of your choice NOT to have food or water while waiting forever on the tarmac?
Government takeover of airline seat assignments?
Zifnab
@asiangrrlMN:
Word.
Just Some Fuckhead
Didn’t President Obama take care of the airlines in the No Corporation Left Behind bill?
Midnight Marauder
Nice post, John. And I think this falls under the jurisdiction of the latest tag:
Jay B.
Much like Health Care Reform, passenger rights and defense appropriations were two of Obama’s signature issues from his campaign.
Do you really think Jim Webb was wrong when he said that the Administration’s passive approach to health care — which led to 5 separate committees drafting bills in the Senate — led to unnecessary confusion in the debate? Do you really think it’s normal for a candidate to come out with a plan during his campaign only to let others dictate the terms when it comes time to implement it in legislation? You think this was an impressive job by the Administration to outline what they considered important in any reform measure?
Meanwhile the “flawed-but-good-enough” crowd wins and they still sound like douchebags.
Libby
ZOMG. Those bills didn’t have every single thing I wanted. We’re doomed…
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Hanky?
Legalize
Kill the Airline Bill unless I get to fly for free!
John Cole
@Joe Beese: I’m sorry, at this point I am just trolling you all.
r€nato
Jay, with nothing to show for the last several months of wrangling, how do you think the Dems would look next fall?
Ann B. Nonymous
What about the bus, under which we have all been thrown?
The short bus of hope and change has careened into a ditch, crammed with the baggage of failed dreams and burning with the fires of the false god of bipartisanship. That’s why there is no difference between Obama and the Republicans, which is why we must unite with the teabaggers to support whatever it is they support, but from the Left. Palin-Nader 2012!
Zifnab
@r€nato: This will drive up the cost of tickets, if airlines are forced to pay out massive damages just because a bunch of liberal weenies go around wetting themselves!
And why is it the government’s job to tell me how long I’m allowed to wait on an airplane? Nanny state! Nanny state!
MikeJ
She’ll complain that the airlines would run fine if the stupid FAA didn’t tie their hands with “safety” equipment and “safety” inspections and “safety” requirements for fuel and separation. Get rid of the FAA!
gocart mozart
Meh, all I want to say is Prisencolinen Sinainciusol.
http://music.todaysbigthing.com/2009/11/03
r€nato
@MikeJ:
Jeebus is the only seat belt we need, right?
General Winfield Stuck
@John Cole:
It seems more like we are all trolling each other these days.
danimal
I’d like to see more Obama failures passed by Congress, please. Kthxbai.
Zifnab
@r€nato: The health care bill is now slightly more popular than the Tea Party movement. And support took a serious tank right after the public option was removed.
The insurance mandate is intensely unpopular. Once that rolls into effect, I don’t think you realize how much backlash we’re going to see. The public option and Medicare Buy-In were meant to defuse some of that frothing hate. Now we’re all just at the mercy of the insurance companies. :-p This half-assed approach to insurance reform will almost inevitably bite the Democrats in the ass in 2014.
Jay B.
@General Winfield Stuck:
Douchebag case in point:
Progressives overwhelmingly supported this bill. But many, like Krugman and Reich didn’t think it went far enough and had too much emphasis on tax cuts. And that turns out to be absolutely true! There’s very little debate that a more robust stimulus bill would have provided more stimulus! It’s worked, but not as well as it could have! Exactly what the “progressives” said it would do.
Jay B.
@r€nato:
As confused, compromised and shitty as they do now. Why?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Zifnab: The world ends in 2012 anyway. Clap louder!
MikeJ
No, it would not have. A more robust stimulus bill *would not have passed the senate.* It would have done *nothing*.
Tonal Crow
Have you asked your doctor whether you’re healthy enough for hippie-punching activity?
Nethead Jay
I must say, mr. Cole, you’ve really stomped the hell out of that poor hippie strawman, it’s barely holding together anymore.
gocart mozart
Jesus is my insurance adjuster.
donovong
@Zifnab: Funny, but the latest CNN poll indicates that support for HCR among liberals has increased significantly, as has support for Obama. I guess they only polled “pretend liberals,” rather than Card Carrying Kos Liberals.
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/health-care/poll-support-for-senate-bill-jumps-among-democrats/
General Winfield Stuck
@Jay B.:
Brilliant. Redstate is accepting Strike Force applications. They’d love to sign up some true progressives.
I doubt100 bill would have done anything more. Any higher than 800 billion would not have passed, and there would have been no bill. I do hope someday you real hippies get a fucking clue, Just a little.
J.W. Hamner
Nonsense! The bills should leap fully formed from his mind, walk over to Capitol Hill, and just start kicking ass. Once Congress has been beaten into submission the bill becomes law. That’s what I learned when I was asleep in civics class.
Jay B.
@MikeJ:
Oh for fuck’s sake. I’m responding to this:
Nobody — no one — made this argument. The progressives who wrote about it warned that it wouldn’t be as effective as it could have been. But they supported it anyway!
licensed to kill time
__
If your hippie-punching activity lasts longer than four hours, please consult your doctor.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
And I’m still waiting for my dead-Grandma Soylent Green crackers, dammit! What does a person have to do to get some service around this lousy joint, anyway!?
Tonal Crow
@licensed to kill time:
…as that could be a sign of a rare sanity-threatening condition.
Jennifer
Health care reform, very important, absolutely. Financial reform? At least, if not more important.
Seems like every day another critical systemic flaw has to be taken on by this administration. Global warming. Health Care. Gay rights. Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan. The markets, banking, and the state of the economy. I can’t find much that’s working in this country right now, but by God, I’ll take the cracks of light where I can find them.
No matter how many people scream turning off the lights and shutting the door is a better alternative.
PeakVT
Quit picking at the scab, man. Sheesh.
Randy P
I’m looking forward to the State of the Union, to hear the whole list of major accomplishments.
And for BoB to tell us afterward that Obama looking left and right at the Members of Congress rather than at the camera was evidence of teleprompters.
jeffreyw
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
These might do ya. Made by grandmas everywhere.
GReynoldsCT00
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
dead Grandma? Did she get run over by a reindeer?
arguingwithsignposts
Can we just have a few more Senator Sheldon Whitehouses? (FFW to minute 114)
Just Some Fuckhead
@Jennifer:
But easy to fix. Simply pass a law that requires everyone to open a bank account and keep in it a minimum balance of 8% of their yearly income.
Fern
@Randy P: Someone posted a whole list of them here a few days ago. I have to say there have been a good number of substantial accomplishments so far.
General Winfield Stuck
@Jay B.:
@Jay B.:
This is too easy. You are flip flopping like a beached John Mccain.
Brien Jackson
Yes. Say whatever you want about whether or not Obama was too hands off, but if you think he could have gotten any committee full of Congresscritters to pass up a crack at the biggest bill Congress has taken up in nearly a half century, then you know pretty much nothing about the vanity of members of Congress.
Jay B.
@General Winfield Stuck:
Seriously, you are being a total douchebag and making a really, really, really stupid argument.
And you’re saying this…because I cited two “progressives” who made the argument that, while imperfect, the stimulus bill wasn’t as robust as it needed to be? And that they supported it anyway? And were pretty much proven right on their warnings?
Thin-skinned and mendacious! Awesome.
“I doubt $100 billion would have done anything more.” That’s just genius. A doctor in economics are you?
Moreover, you’re arguing with shadows and things that happen and are said in your own fucking mind. And then getting pissy and stupid when people respond negatively to the fantasy scenario you’ve knitted together from scraps of paper and things that you imagined happening.
Violet
I kinda like that President Obama is forcing our legislators to legislate instead of just writing the legislation for them. I think during the Eight Years of Horror they forgot how to legislate because they were just told what to do. So they’re a bit rusty on how it works. But they’re getting there.
El Cid
I suggest that whatever your true feelings about the HCR bill, once it’s passed and signed make sure to spend all your time calling your Republican relatives and colleagues and radio shows and telling how Obama defeated all the teabagger freaks and RAMMED HIS MASSIVE [health care reform] PACKAGE DOWN THEIR THROATS.
MikeJ
@Jay B.: I never said what you quoted. But I assume you’re responding to me saying it would not have passed if it were bigger. And I’m right!
I doesn’t fucking matter what the unicorn ranchers supported. I’m in favour of perpetual motion machines. Doesn’t matter one bit what a great thing they would be for the country. They do not exist, and can not exist.
Don’t expect a pat on the back for supporting something that does not and could not exist.
asiangrrlMN
@Zifnab: Be still my beating heart. That would be…sigh. Dare I dream?
@r€nato: Heh heh. You made me giggle.
@Jay B.: I think GWS is referring to comments on various blogs and not actual progressive pundits. And, I have to say, I have seen a lot of that shit here, when I dared to wade into the healthcare threads.
Just Some Fuckhead
Jim Webb is next up on the pyre. Bring me my marshmallows!
ellaesther
@asiangrrlMN: I came here to say this. Precisely this. (Only, as I am in Illinois, I would have said something like “I wish Al Franken were my Senator! Maybe Minnesota would like something in the way of a Roland Burris?”)
But since asiangrrl said it already, I will just say: This.
Violet
@Zifnab:
Yeah! Franken has been awesome in his short time in the Senate. I’d be thrilled to see that happen.
Randy P
@Jay B.:
Well, I think they figured out that this approach would lead to a bill to sign, and the approach taken by Clinton (led by Hilary) did not. The sausage factory is worse than we thought. This bill, sucky as it is, is a major step forward, and every part of it that succeeds is one more nail in the Tea Partiers’ coffins.
The Democrats just successfully combatted $1.4 million per day spent by the insurance industry lobbyists. That’s a major accomplishment.
Just Some Fuckhead
Why are we all yelling!!??
Comrade Kevin
The mocking of the “kill the bill” idiots has become just as tedious as the idiots themselves.
General Winfield Stuck
@Jay B.:
I prefer to call it snark, but whatever. Seems you are being the thin skinned, having monikered moi as a “Douchebag” right out of the shute. We do return fire here, whether it’s from fellow liberals or not.
And when you declare the stimulus a failure this early on, no matter what your reason, you are just parroting RedState, or any number of wingnut blogs. This is how I see it, and will express that view as is my wont/
Morbo
John McCain: concern troll, invokes Kennedy. My response: here (at around 0:51).
General Winfield Stuck
@asiangrrlMN:
Thank you. Being a creature of the blogosphere, all of my fire is towards others in the blogosphere, unless otherwise indicated. This has been a public service announcement.
kay
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Mr. ” only 30% like healthcare”. Take heed:
“But the internals of the new CNN poll contain a striking finding: Support for the Senate bill is up among Democratic voters. What’s more, Obama’s support has increased among liberals.
The poll finds that support overall for the Senate health care bill has jumped six points, to 42%, since early December. That’s a sizable jump, though overall 56% oppose it.
But here’s the interesting part: The poll also found that approval of the Senate bill has jumped 10 points among Dems in the same time period — a time period during which the Medicare buy-in was dropped. That’s a faster rise than overall. What’s more, it has jumped by the same number among young voters — who are presumably more liberal.”
AngusTheGodOfMeat
The only way I care about the airline tarmac thing is if I get the fine that applies to my seat. Pay me the fucking $27k. Why should I sit in a stuffy airplane for hours, get sick, and the government gets paid $27k?
asiangrrlMN
@General Winfield Stuck: New tag? “We Are All B.o.B. Now!”?
@jeffreyw: Want want want want want.
srv
@Nethead Jay:
He needs a lot of straw to build that Wicker Man for Howard Dean.
Maybe Franken should write all of the Defense Appropriations bills.
Tonal Crow
Wow, the strawmen sure are a-flamin’ here now.
Just Some Fuckhead
@kay:
Thank you for pointing this out to me, kay. I’m on the phone right now giving my psychic reader a tongue-lashing.
General Winfield Stuck
@asiangrrlMN: LOL
Violet
@jeffreyw:
Yummy! I’ll be making cookies starting tomorrow. Five or six different kinds. I can’t even remember now how many. I make them every year. Tradition!
jibeaux
@Morbo:
What part of “you have to actually be willing to vote for the bill in the end” do they not understand? Will there ever be an end to the whining that Democrats don’t let Republicans water down their bills, drink their whiskey, screw their women, and then vote against ’em anyway? Sheesh, I would’ve rather had a bill with a public option or Medicare buy-in (someone made a good point that it could improve the jobs numbers, as some folks in that 60 to 65 bracket could retire if they didn’t have to worry about health care) combined with medical malpractice reform contributed by Republicans, and Lieberman could go polish his knob, but that wasn’t on offer, wazzitnow?
Betsy
@Ann B. Nonymous:
LOL! I love BJ threads, because sooner or later someone will always make me laugh out loud and confuse my cat.
srv
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
That would be soshulist. Just be happy the FAA feels your pain.
Not that they ever contribute to it.
Max
@Violet: Me too. Forcing them to have some skin in the game is important.
By the end of Obama’s second term, they might actually be capable of doing what they were elected to do.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@GReynoldsCT00:
She was death paneled by a polar cooling soshulist alternative transportation system.
Barry
John Cole: “That bill contained Franken’s anti-rape amendment. Funny how that works- the House and Senate send him good bills, and he signs them.”
I don’t mean to be harsh on you, John, but please shove it where the sun don’t shine. The whole point of the complaints from the left were that Obama and his people were not pushing for stuff, except when they wanted to (like war funding).
Ain’t nobody saying that the president can successfully order Congress to do something, but nobody honest denies that the president has lots of persuasive powers.
If you want to argue honestly about what Obama (& Co.) could have and should have done, I’m all for it.
But frankly, you’re better than this type of snarking f*cking lie – leave those to the pundits, and to the GOP.suited to pundits are
arguingwithsignposts
@asiangrrlMN:
No, that’s a bridge too far. We can flame away about HCR, but never cobble together the requisite racism/sexism to be BoB.
Jay B.
@General Winfield Stuck:
Holy fuck. You. Can’t. Read.
Is that snarky enough for you? And sure, call it as you see it, bravely and unstintingly, against that army of straw by standing up against arguments no one is making.
Jules
@J.W. Hamner:
America! Fuck yeah!
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
How is the Invisible Hand supposed to operate when it’s shackled with anti-rape laws?
Sly
@donovong:
Maybe it is true: They’ll like us when we win.
GReynoldsCT00
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
LOLZ!!
asiangrrlMN
@Violet: This is a good point. Hopefully, now that they are getting some experience under their belts, they will be able to simmah down now and act like adults. Yeah, right.
@ellaesther: Um, no. I will keep my senators, thankyewverymuch. Amy K. is not as progressive as Al, but I am quite satisfied with the two of them.
kay
@Just Some Fuckhead:
“Virtually all the increase in support for the Senate health care bill has come from Democrats, with a 10-point increase since early December,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Support is also up 10 points among younger Americans, compared to only two points among people 50 and older.”
I don’t think it’s the bill. I think people hate process. It was Hillary’s big mistake. There were about 150 people who were interested in the arcane mechanics of Democratic primary rules.
They just want Congress to make a decision, and shut up about it.
Betsy
@El Cid:
This is really making me look forward to Christmas with certain relatives.
GReynoldsCT00
Seems like some commenters here are still more than a little tense…
asiangrrlMN
@Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon): Full-on laugh-out-loud chortle. Fanks!
@arguingwithsignposts: Hm. ‘Tis true. We are all Makalakaweewee Now!?
@GReynoldsCT00: What makes you say that?
Betsy
@asiangrrlMN:
Normally, as a Masshole, I have a fair amount of state pride in our liberal legislators, but I think with Franken (and with Kennedy no longer with us) you have us beat. On the other hand, we don’t have any Michele Bachmanns that I’m aware of, thanks be to FSM.
srv
Has Krugman or any of those, you know, those guys with PhD’s or Nobel Prizes in Economics been sent their Strike Force patches?
jeffreyw
@Violet: We’re about done with the cookies, not that big a thing with us, but asiangrrlMN was complaining about the dearth in my otherwise awesome-ass photostream. I delegated the cookies to Mrs J.
Just Some Fuckhead
@kay:
You can’t believe polls about what Americans want. They’ll want what we give them goddammit, and they’ll be glad we gave it to them, as evidenced by lackluster support for the Senate bill.
Did I hear someone stop clapping??
General Winfield Stuck
@Jay B.:
Wolverines!!
asiangrrlMN
@Betsy: You had to go there, didn’t you? Well, we also have Keith Ellison! He’s gotta count as a two-fer since he was the first Muslim Rep ever elected. How you holding on, girl?
@jeffreyw: They look teh yummmmmy! And, how can you have an awesome food photostream with no cookies????
@srv: Except, Krugman actually supports passing this bill and not killing it.
mr. whipple
Push Push Push Push
Bitch Bitch Bitch Bitch
Push Push Push Push
Whine Whine Whine Whine
Wow, that was exhausting, but through my magnificent blog comment I was able to nudge the Overton window to the left. My activism is awesome. How can I get paid for this?
Meanwhile, Sherrod Brown talking sense on Cspan.
GReynoldsCT00
@Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon):
I read that the GOP was pissed that they did a roll call on that one and now everyone knows who voted against that bill and there was “backlash”. Cretins.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
I don’t.
I believe what I hear on TakeBackMyCountry All Patriot All The Time Talk Radio.
kay
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I think they would have completely despaired and lost interest had it gone on much longer.
They’re young. It’s boring and maddening. I sympathize.
You can’t promote government as a good solution and make them wait a year and watch that horror show and then say “back to the drawing board!”
Tom Hilton
And there are a dozen other issues where the administration has made real, substantive progress (Food safety, for example)–progress that doesn’t get its due in the lefty blogosphere because they aren’t issues about which the lefty blogosphere likes to obsess. And besides, too many of them would rather be disappointed anyway.
asiangrrlMN
@GReynoldsCT00: Yup. The GOP were pissed at Franken because he didn’t defend them for voting the way they did. It was uncivil of him, they said. I think someone here blogged about it. I am too lazy to look.
Jess
@El Cid:
Word.
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck:
Now that’s a powerful argument.
Tim I
@Jay B.:
Bill and Hillary used your approach – draft a bill and slam it through Congress. I don’t think that worked out so well. Just saying…
GReynoldsCT00
@asiangrrlMN:
And that he put up the bill just to make them look bad. Fucking losers.
Just Some Fuckhead
@kay: No doubt President Obama, as an 11 dimensional chess player, recognized this. I predict by the time the bill passes both houses after conference committee, support for it will be up around 110%.
But only if we all continue to clap!
Betsy
@asiangrrlMN:
Mike Capuano, bitchez. He’s my Rep, and he kicks ass.
General Winfield Stuck
@Tonal Crow:
I already made my argument. That was just the cherry on top.
Are you appointing yourself the Debate Police?
asiangrrlMN
@GReynoldsCT00: Because, in the end, it’s all about them. It always is. They didn’t stop to think that all the female GOP members broke rank and voted for the amendment? Of course not.
mr. whipple
Exactly. I think they need one of these: http://despair.com/pessimistsmug.html
arguingwithsignposts
@Tom Hilton:
One issue where they aren’t making headway is the habeus corpus with detainees issue. They keep adopting Bush Admin. arguments on that one. Also, DADT and DOMA.
I’m giving them props for where they have made headway, but it’s not all sweetness and light.
srv
@asiangrrlMN: Someone else here was trolling about the bailout and Redstate.
Davis X. Machina
Maybe it’s naivety or 11-dimensional thinking but I have thought from time to time that a President who once taught con law might do a little from time to time to encourage Congress to do what it was actually created to do (good), and be a bit prickly about executive prerogatives in law enforcement and foreign policy (decidedly un-good, so far). Teaching changes the teacher as much as the student.
asiangrrlMN
@Betsy: I looked him up. Me likey. Mine is Betty McCollum. She’s really good except when she tried to call Franken sexist for his writings in Playboy. She supported someone else. That really disappointed me, but she’s a very solid rep.
@arguingwithsignposts: I agree with you. That’s what is so frustrating to me. I have my issues with Obama, but I am not going to just dismiss him as a corporate sellout or whatever.
@srv: If you mean GWS, he was talking about the blogosphere and not the pundits.
gwangung
I think that’s true; certainly, the acrimony that followed the debate in the blogosphere and elsewhere is wearing for ANYBODY. (Also…this hits my button on polls; they have limited utility. Sometimes they say what they say; sometimes they have a deeper meaning. But there’s no guide as to which instance is which).
General Winfield Stuck
@asiangrrlMN:
Thanks for having me back!
Zifnab
@arguingwithsignposts:
If only more people thought this way, rather than “You’re either with Obama or Sarah Palin 2012.” :-p
Heaven forbid we just stand around admiring the President’s codpiece. And actually kick up a fit when we’re disappointed. The bill is flawed. Liberals understand that.
But when primary season rolls around next year, you might want to get ready for open season on Blue Dog Congressmen and vulnerable Dem Senators. I know there’s already been a lot of talk about primary defeat for Blanche Lincoln. And I know more than a few Kossacks who are chomping at the bit for a Lieberman / Lamont rematch in 2012.
asiangrrlMN
@General Winfield Stuck: Well, if people are gonna get pissed at you, they should do so because they didn’t like what you actually said, not what they thought you said.
Jay B.
@Tim I:
I’d counter there’s a whole lot of ground between a top-down approach and a completely passive one. And if Obama hasn’t been totally passive then his presence and preference has completely eluded Jim Webb and Feingold.
Mari
Loophole #1:
Loophole #2:
Loophole #1 is large enough to fly an A380 through. Major hub airports (Chicago, Atlanta, New York, etc) are so busy that returning to the gate will interfere with airport operations. During busy periods, returning to a gate will mean moving a plane from a gate and parking it on the tarmac; this will be extremely disruptive to schedule keeping for the airlines and the airport.
Still, unlike Lieberman-Stupak, this rule is unlikely to make things worse than they already are.
The proper way to deal with passenger imprisonment would be to remove the airlines’ effective exemption from criminal laws against kidnapping, forcible confinement and false imprisonment.
arguingwithsignposts
@Zifnab:
I’m all for that! Where do I apply for the permit?
Davis X. Machina
Cum granō salis
Webb’s a recovering Republican and Feingold’s just a kvetch.
mk3872
Arianna will pen a piece for HuffPo tonight that Obama let us all down by not taking over airlines and ending all airline delays forever.
itsbenj
all you folks trying to shield Obama from any and all criticism are not doing him a favor by doing so. just sayin’…
A Mom Anon
OT,but hopefully good news:
My husband was just offered a job making 16K more a year than he is now. The only possible deal breaker is whether their health insurance is decent and if it will cost us alot more(thus eating the extra income). He’s had two angioplasties(the bad one in August and a second one at the end of Oct) this year,so we have to really think about insurance issues. Sooo,keep your fingers and toes crossed,say a little prayer or send us some happy,happy,joy,joy vibes. My little family has been through so much shit the past two years,we really could use some good news for a change.
Chuck Butcher
Looks to me as though people are going to wear out the “o” and “a” keys talking about the Senate. I do find it a bit odd that the timeline of criticism of how much of a role the President played has now constricted to the last couple weeks rather than that it was going on from the time the thing was put forward.
I am no fan of Imperial Presidencies and I think getting an Admin completely bogged down in fine details of Congressional legislation is a mistake (see Hillarycare). That scarcely is the same thing as backing away.
There is political methodology in keeping a person (or president) from being too tightly connected to outcomes they cannot control (short of veto). If you make it too clear where you stand, people will hold you to it. It certainly is being asserted here that Obama has that distance. I don’t really disagree.
Other than political difficulties, what I see wrong with this bill is long term outcomes. Impacts I’m really worried about won’t kick in this Presidential term.
asiangrrlMN
@A Mom Anon: YAY! Happy for you. Doing a little dance. Sending vibes that it will work out. By the way, I looked up the Garden Weasel. It’s perfect for a back-up implement of prodding.
@itsbenj: Which is exactly NOT what most people are doing.
Jay B.
@asiangrrlMN:
OK
Who, anywhere, made this argument? Many of us in the blogosphere took our cues from Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong and Robert Reich, you know, economists of note, who supported the bill but said it could be more effective if it was better. It was a big bill. Lots of good things in there. And if it was the only thing they could pass (which sounds depressingly familiar), great! But it’s still not perfect — and now, they are going to have to pass a job bill this year (good luck!) to do the job the stimulus bill should have done last year when it could have helped candidates far in advance of the 2010 election. This is the basic, real world argument.
And it looks nothing at all like the triumphant victory of the truth-telling “pragmatist” Democrats over straw hippies.
kay
@A Mom Anon:
I’m so glad for you. Good luck.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@asiangrrlMN:
There’s yer problem right there.
donovong
@asiangrrlMN: Look. Would you two PLEASE stop with your CongressCritter adoration committee? My Senatorial representatives are DeMint and Lindsey Graham. I can’t take the level of envy I’m feeling right now.
Mari
@mk3872:
Given how many airline delays are caused by the FAA’s antediluvian air traffic control system, she might have a point…. :p
donovong
@A Mom Anon:
Boy, am I with you on that score. I could not be more happy that the 2000’s are on the way out.
This is me, thinking happy thoughts for you and yours.
General Winfield Stuck
@General Winfield Stuck:
Though I already clarified what I meant on this as directed to the blogosphere. I don’t think either Krugman or Reich has made any such declaration that it is true that the stimulus has not been enough and therefore failed. They have said they would have liked a bigger stimulus, but that is different than Jay B putting his words in their mouths implying that it won’t end up being enough. “And that turns out to be absolutely true!
Everyone wanted a bigger stimulus, but it is too early to say it wasn’t enough. But, though it seems to me this is what Jay b was saying, there is enough ambiguity present that I could have interpreted it wrong.
Betsy
@A Mom Anon:
Oh, (tentative) yay!! Fingers and toes crossed, and good thoughts going your way.
Betsy
@donovong:
I’m from Texas, originally. I sympathize.
Sentient Puddle
@Betsy: I was about to point out Cornyn and Hutchinson too, but then I got to thinking…it’s hard to trump DeMint, isn’t it?
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
I’m reading Ross Douthat, and he seems to be making some excellent points and offering some real insight.
Reading…..
Reading….
Still reading….
Never mind: he’s a fucking idiot.
mr. whipple
Even if you disregard that the tax cuts for the middle class were part of Obama’s campaign promise, and even if through some magic that the size would have been doubled and the Senate would have passed it, what would that have done for the unemployment rate? Drooped it from 10% to 9% points or so, which according to Krugman himself is still unacceptably high.
The fact is that Obama inherited a world of suck, and so long as the methods employed to get us out of suck didn’t include reinflating some bubble, it was always going to take us a long time to get back from. Even when we do, things may not be the same in terms of consumer spending.
So, in the world of magic we’d still be at 9% unemployment and a world of pain.
SiubhanDuinne
Passengers schmassengers. What about… the laughing… HELICOPTERZ?
Betsy
@Sentient Puddle:
Very true. Tom DeLay would have, but thank god he’s not in Congress anymore.
Xenos
@arguingwithsignposts:
The habeus issues are guaranteed losers in court. So instead of playing procedural games the Holder DOJ is taking the Bush arguments to court expecting to have them be proven losers. This does a better job of closing the door on future abuses than just withdrawing the arguments.
That is my fantasy, at least, and for now I am sticking to it.
Joe Lisboa
Question: is it honestly a strawman when living embodiments of it pop up routinely to bitch about it being a strawman? I’m with Cole on this one.
asiangrrlMN
@Jay B.: But see, what you just said here is reasonable and not antagonistic (until the end). However, from the threads I’ve read, there have been a lot of people in the blogosphere using the tactics that GWS was decrying. I never say Krugman do that, so I knew that GWS was not referring to him. So while you and others may have taken your points from him, many times, the argument quickly devolves into telling anyone to the right of you that we have sold out or are just clapping our hands or whatever. Which is why I stayed out of the debate for the most part because I felt like much of the screaming (in fairness, on both sides of the great lefty debate) was useless.
General Winfield Stuck
But some more thoughts on the stimulus bill. You see, even though it was called A Stimulus Bill, I don’t think it was primarily intended as such.. This goes to me first comment on this topic in this thread.
Yes, there was some short term stimulus in it, but the bill itself, that goes unmentioned, was a massive investment in progressive causes such as in alternative energy and health care among others. This was at least a third, and maybe more of the bill, that true progressives leave out of their criticism of it.
And it is amusing that wingnuts so hate it, because they know what it was, a futuristic investment that makes their blue blood old money plutocrat masters nervous, especially the alt. energy research. But the real progressives don’t seem to get that, while focusing on the mirage that the bill was purposed primarily as short term stimulus. It was not, in my humble opinion.
nepat
I’m digging posts like these, wherein you craftily and mercilessly mock the Obama Sucks “progressives.” Recommended term for them – to be added to the lexicon: Mash Notes to Jane Hamsher.
Have a Merry War-on-Christmas!
donovong
@Sentient Puddle: True enough. However, I am (somewhat) grateful that I do not live in Oklahoma.
SiubhanDuinne
@A Mom Anon: You totally have my good vibes, you and your DH both. It’s about time things started going well for you. Let’s try to meet up after the new year if we can work out the logistics — see if we can get a little Lanna Juicers group going here (I think there are quite a few of us along the top-end perimeter).
srv
@General Winfield Stuck:
Krugman has repeatedly used terms like calling the bailout a “down payment” and his blog (he’s a blogger too) has had various comments/snark/formulae along the lines of “see, I told you so.”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/02/02-1
I know you’ll focus on the “probably” there, but if you read him every week, I don’t think Jay B is mischaracterizing him.
Sentient Puddle
@donovong: Oof, completely forgot about Oklahoma. I think that state takes the cake. In my mind, Lindsay Graham is at least bearable some of the time. Coburn and Inhofe are just irredeemable asshats.
Jay B.
@General Winfield Stuck:
11.30.09
Paul Krugman
How is a jobs program different from a second stimulus? It’s a matter of priorities. The 2009 Obama stimulus bill was focused on restoring economic growth. It was, in effect, based on the belief that if you build G.D.P., the jobs will come. That strategy might have worked if the stimulus had been big enough — but it wasn’t. And as a matter of political reality, it’s hard to see how the administration could pass a second stimulus big enough to make up for the original shortfall.
Burn him!
He’s saying exactly what I was saying — or rather what I was taking from him — not that the stimulus was wrong, but now they have to pass a jobs bill that’s really just the second stimulus bill in disguise.
Emma
isbenj: I’ve promised myself to stay out of the mess, but there are no Obama worshippers here. At least, if your definition is “people who are trying to protect Obama from ALL criticism.”
Plenty of us have been unhappy about plenty of things, including the slow process of closing down Gitmo, and the nothing doing on DOMA and DADT. But watching people burning down the house over a bill THAT HASN’T EVEN BEEN PUT THROUGH RECONCILIATION YET has been…. instructive.
Also, John does snark. Even when he was a humorless GOPer he did snark.
Betsy
@donovong:
Or, as I seem to recall we used to say,”Thank God for Mississippi.” Things were always worse there.
srv
I meant stimulus, not bailout. Another early example:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/17/paul-krugman-stimulus-too_n_167721.html
He’s not changed his tune from the blog posts and the more recent videos I’ve seen.
That would imply he was wrong. I feel confident he won’t do that.
Zifnab
@Xenos:
That’s more or less what I suspected too. Holder is going to walk these cases through the legal system and let the SCOTUS or the appellate courts put a nail in them for good.
We’ve got the White House for the next 4 years, so there’s not a huge rush on this stuff. I’ve also got some lingering hopes that Obama does, in fact, plan to press charges on the Bush Era war criminals. He just didn’t want partisan politics gumming up his legislative agenda (a gamble that was something of a loser).
gwangung
@Emma: Meh, I think there’s more than a touch of worship in a lot of the defenses around here, though I do think not everyone who defends him on one issue will defend him on another.
And there are still others who think that quick, massive changes are not possible (and potentially not desirable) in our society. That’s more of a temperment and preference issue, but I would prefer not to be thought of as a sell out for finding acceptable to make changes more gradually and slowly.
Fern
@Chuck Butcher: If Obama had backed away, they wouldn’t have gotten those 60 votes in the Senate.
Mike P
I got stuck on the tarmac at JFK this past weekend for six hours on a Virgin flight. They didn’t let us off, they barely told us what was going on, and they didn’t do a food/drink service…and then they cancelled the flight. I had to get another for tomorrow on a different airline.
That said, I’m glad they enacted the new travel law. The airlines could just get away with whatever before, but $27,500 a head ain’t nothing to sniff at.
Mnemosyne
@Zifnab:
Where? Last I looked, Blanche Lincoln’s opponent on ActBlue had exactly one (1) dollar to his name. Evan Bayh’s prospective opponent did a little better — she had a whole $25 dollars.
I would be a whole lot less pissed off at the screamers if they were screaming, “We’re going to primary the whole lot of you motherfuckers this fall!” instead of “I’m taking my ball and going home!” which is all I’ve been hearing for the past 2 weeks.
Ruemara
@MikeJ:
This.
Squared.
No, it would not have. A more robust stimulus bill would not have passed the senate. It would have done nothing.
GuyFromOhio
@General Winfield Stuck:
General Winfield Stuck
@Jay B.:
Well, now Obama is doing just that. Proposing a second jobs bill. He never said he wouldn’t and maybe just maybe he planned to all along. But the first one was for long term progressive stuff, but you and Krugman apparently thought the game was over and brought out the fainting couches at first blush, or the first stimulus. Ohnoes he’s just like the GOP with the tax cuts, temporary and focused on the poor. It was for wingnut troll protection, that apparently true progressives thought it was piss in their Wheaties.
It has happened time and again the outrage from the true progressives, that when you don’t get all you want, you pull out the crying towels and declare the game is over, Obama screwed us, again, Oh me oh my. Then walla, Obama submits a second jobs bill and gets it passed, and you pull out the pom poms and preen that it was all because of our shrieking activism.
And I do believe this is what Cole has been fuming about while all you tunnel vision blogo pundits call him a Liebercrat,, or whatever.
Grow up and realize that this president is a whole lot smarter and better than you are in the game of politics. He just is.
This a long game, not a short one.
Emma
gwangung: I guess that after watching eight years of near literal worship of an utter moron I see variations in degree. I don’t think that saying “thank God he’s president” is worshipful as much as “thank God because the alternative would have megasucked.”
And I would prefer not to be thought of as a sell out for finding acceptable to make changes more gradually and slowly. For me, it’s more than “I’ll take what I can get now and I’ll keep on pushing for more.” All or nothings are big bets and in politics big bets are often bad deals. Sometimes you have to make them and take your lumps (civil rights legislation is my big example) because it is morally right and necessary to do so. But in these matters, incremental will do me as long as I see progress every year.
Now can we regroup and storm the campaign finance ramparts? Please?
Something Fabulous
@A Mom Anon: Oh that is just fantastic! Even an offer you decide for good reason to turn down is an OFFER, which I’m here to tell you/validate with you, is huge itself, these days! What a boost! Fingers crossed from me too.
Mari
@Xenos:
Cough.
The USSC has just ruled that the executive can unilaterally declare any non-citizen an ‘enemy combatant’ who has no constitutional protections whatsoever.
Habeus is already dead. It just hasn’t quite been buried yet.
Zifnab
@Mnemosyne: The primary seasons are relatively far off and the candidates are still prospective. You’re not going to see a lot of fund raising for a candidate that hasn’t even officially declared.
Keep your pants on.
srv
@Mari:
It’s entered the 11th Dimension.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Requiring airlines to do what they’re paid to do and punishing companies because some slut insisted on working around men a terrible threat to the Holy Free Markets. Only lieberul elitists fly in airplanes anyway and women should stay in the kitchen. And how come Obama flies on Air Force 1 instead of taking a commercial flight, aaargh that whore Michelle is showing her arms!
Mnemosyne
@Zifnab:
Dude, I’m not the one running around screaming that Obama has totally lost my vote for 2012 and I’m never voting for a Democrat ever again.
Excuse me for thinking that maybe having an actual plan to get rid of the Democrats you don’t like is a better strategy than throwing a ginormous hissy fit threatening to take your ball and go home if you don’t get a cookie right fucking now.
gwangung
You’re talking to someone who’s worked in civil rights and issues of minority representation. Regroup and restorm is SOP (which makes the victories sweeter)(and any numbskull who thinks civil rights battles have already been won is just askin’ for it).
Chuck Butcher
It seems the “Liebercrat” stings a bit. Would Nelsoncrat feel a bit better?
Stuck, you along with others have conflated the left with the teabaggery bunch. The funny part of it is that when the problems are pointed out, you call it too much to get, not stupidity (I exempt some of Hamsher’s stupidity). ‘Pass this thing’ means you’re ok with it being law, you support what it is, Lieberman and all. That pragmatism is certainly your business and at least understandable. Pragmatism means associating yourself with the results – that includes Lieberman.
I’d really like somebody to explain to me how the country’s drift right isn’t due to tolerance of it? I suppose the left should shut up, it should be obvious it doesn’t matter that they yell. You’re mad at me because I’ve decided to agree with you…
Jude
John Cole at 9:22pm Sunday
John Cole at 2:27pm Monday:
Awesome.
Maude
@Mari: The enemy combatant declarations that were in effect were any citizen as well as non citizen. Obama got rid of the enemy combatant status when he first came into office.
To put it simply, Bush walked a lot outside of the law. What Holder is doing is walking thing back into the law.
To have courts nullify what Bush did is important. It prevents the same abuses from happening agian. Without a court ruling, it could start all over with corrupt president.
Habeas Corpus is in effect. Bush tried to remove it and was struck down by the Supremes.
General Winfield Stuck
@Chuck Butcher:
You know me Chuck, the one who gives as good as gets. I didn’t start returning fire until after the comparison that we who are supporting this imperfect bill with those who supported the Iraq war.
And no,. you shouldn’t shut up,, in general, though there are few who I’d personally wish would. But the free speech thing runs both way, that is all I am saying.
aimai
I hate to come over here and say “can’t we just all get along” but can’t we just all GET THE FUCK ALONG? I get that JC has some bile he needs to keep working out in re “some people on the internet” who are saying stuff he doesn’t like. And I get that a bunch of his commenters agree. But everyone who thinks that Obama could have done more than he did, could have bargained or bribed more than he did, could have gotten a better bill than he did IS NOT JANE HAMSHER or some nut over at dkos who once said something angry about the bill. Here’s a clue: even the people who are angry about, variously: civil rights, gay rights, financial regulation, the underselling of the stimulus, bipartisanship, Joe Lieberman’s blow jobs, the health care strip out of the public option are not bad democrats, they aren’t stupid people, they don’t “know nothing” about the legislative process, they aren’t “wasting their time” (necessarily). They are often just politically active people who thought that with a little tinkering and a lot more passion or determination Obama and his team could have done a better job around the edges of this and other bills.
I can’t speak for Hamsher, I agree that she seems to have gone right round the bend. But I think she’ll come back. Because she’s a liberal and a progressive. In fact, its Obama’s job, and Axelrod’s, and all the rest of that team to try to win her back. John Emerson just wrote a pretty good essay over at Open Left talking about the three kinds of “stupid voters” that Democrats dismiss, at their peril. Interestingly enough he did not include the biggest class of voters that Democrats in power routinely dismiss–and who I see people here cavalierly dismissing–that is, activist, progressive, voters who are engaged and who want to see progress on Democratic party initiatives.
Those are people who should be very happy with this bill–as I said before (but was misunderstood) they should have been happy and would have been happy if Obama and his team had spent half the time assuaging their worries and massaging their feelings as they did with the right side of the aisle. That’s not because political activity is mental therapy or Obama is our psychiatrist in chief but because that part of speaking to the people and letting them feel that you represent them is just part of the job description. Every time a former Obama supporter tells you that they feel betrayed the right thing to do is to be concerned and to try to bring them back to the fold. Not lecture them on what helpless losers they all are. There were a few, simple, merely theatrical things that Obama and his team could have done to make the “hippies” and the “single payer” people feel like they had been listened to and respected. It would have cost Obama literally nothing by some politeness, some face time, a show of concern and support. Because of this tedious attitude that the left of the party can be taken for granted this simply wasn’t done, or wasn’t done effectively.
I don’t think its going to matter. People will come around. But given that the next big push is going to be just in 2010 the Dems could have saved us all a lot of angst by just trying to pretend a little harder that they cared about the left side of the party and understood people’s real fears of the mandate without the public option. That’s not irrational. But even if it were treating it seriously goes a long way to defusing the issue.
Again, most people who are not perfectly happy with this bill are not wild eyed utopians, they do understand how to count to 60, they have a damned good idea of how negotiations and deals get made–they just think we could have gotten a better one. We’ll take the one we got–like the stimulus–but its clear we think we could have done better. Part of trying to get a better deal, btw, is not settling for the first offer you get and continually pushing to better things. That’s a very simple point but it seems to be lost here. Obama and the Democrats need every ounce of push from the left they can get not to lapse into business as usual.
aimai
Jay B.
@General Winfield Stuck:
I can only assume now you are willfully obtuse and terminally dishonest. The tax cuts added to the cost, but weren’t designed to do anything to “stimulate” the economy. They were a political measure. Fine. Got it. Still supported the measure. Still came up short. And why do I think that? The Administration is thinking about another one!
For such a hard-headed realist (love the “Grow up and realize that this president is a whole lot smarter and better than you are in the game of politics. He just is.This a long game, not a short one.” — remind me of that one when we start talking about 11-dimensional chess again), you might consider that a second job bill, far from being a long-range political maneuver, is actually proof that Krugman was right.
And why do I think that? Obama hasn’t yet done anything on a second jobs bill. The Senate, which, by definition, seems to control everything, hasn’t yet finalized their version — which Byron Dorgan is writing. All of which will probably be too late to do shit about unemployment come 2010. Maybe the appearance of doing something in an election year will make people overlook the unemployment numbers
And maybe Rep. Capuano hadn’t yet considered the long range strategy of not passing a bigger jobs bill when it could have had an impact when he told his caucus “You’re Screwed” because of the lack of doing shit about jobs.
I’m not saying, you illiterate jackoff, that Obama screwed us or threw us under the bus or all that other shit you pretend that I’m saying. Here’s what I’m saying, the political reality you seem to find inviolate and locked in stone isn’t always good politics. The people didn’t want what Joe Lieberman wanted, but they got it nonetheless. The people don’t care why there won’t a jobs bill until 2010, they just want jobs. There might be a reality to votes, but, guess what? That means exactly jack shit to people who want good health care and jobs.
You can pretend that’s “purity” or wingnut projection or whatever it is you can’t comprehend about it, but that’s the reality you think you Lord over.
Emma
gwangung: And all honor to you. It must be exhilarating and heartbreaking all at the same time.
And I didn’t mean I thought it was over. I was referring to the great LBJ statement “and we’ve lost the South for a generation” comment. Yes, we did. Maybe for more. It was both moral and necessary to do it.
Mike in NC
Obama has thrown us all under the jumbo jet! Without even a bag of pretzels!
les
@donovong:
Well, if you’d like a little company in the slough of despair, I’ll offer my senate combo of Roberts and Brownback; the latter is presently praying for Dems to die before the final HCR vote, and god is his constituency, so…
donovong
@les: The old saying that “Misery loves company” has been re-affirmed today.
But, I still have DeMint on my conscience, just the same.
les
@donovong:
Yeah, hard to get rid of the guilt; you sound a little ex-catholic, but maybe I’m projecting…however, in a massive case of self-abuse for the greater good, it looks like my fellow Kansans are encouraging Brownback to dump the senate in 2010 and run for governor. We gave you Sebelius (at least a kinda-good thing nationally, I would argue) and are taking senator godbot off the national stage. I may have to undergo a self-inflicted lobotomy, but the senate would have to improve.
Chuck Butcher
@General Winfield Stuck:
I don’t expect you, Cole, or anybody else to play patty-cake. I don’t do it. I never thought the left would be anymore than a thumb on the wheel. I was and still am waiting to see what gets signed. That has nothing to do with having hopes, it has everything to do with having hung on for a long time up to now.
Justin
A bill to fine airlines for keeping people on the runway for too long, that is what you are citing as an Obama Win? Are you kidding me? What a joke.
Mnemosyne
@Chuck Butcher:
Lieberman had about as much to do with this bill passing as Kanye West did with Taylor Swift’s MTV award. Jumping up in front of the cameras to denounce something doesn’t mean you get to claim ownership of it.
General Winfield Stuck
@Jay B.: Moron
The Moar You Know
That’s all I needed from Obama to cement his reputation with me as a good president. I’m a reasonably frequent traveler who is claustrophobic. Strand me for an hour and you might end up having to call the cops.
My father was a big-carrier pilot, who occasionally had to deal with these forced runway strandings; he always said there was no feeling quite like, after a 12-hour trip that should have taken two, of having passenger after passenger tell you on the way out of the cabin that he/she was going to find out where you lived and kill you and your entire family.
Jay B.
@General Winfield Stuck:
Touche!
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
aimai, I do respect you, but you really seem to have missed what is driving people crazy. It’s not fighting for the bill you want that’s bugging people. It’s the people who are declaring that if they don’t get the bill they want, they are going to give up on the electoral process and not vote/not work for better Democrats. There were plenty of people right here at Balloon Juice — IOW, not just Jane Hamsher — saying that they were going to take their ball and go home. And, yes, I’ve already heard it several times this year from different people on different issues, especially people fighting for gay rights, so it’s not just this specific battle where I’ve heard people making that “argument.”
My point through this whole thing has been that that strategy has never worked in politics. Ever. Not once. If you remove yourself from electoral politics, the politicians move on and find the votes somewhere else. They never, ever come crawling back begging for your vote, and yet we maintain this myth that this time they’re totally going to say they were wrong and ask us to come back.
Lefties have threatened to stay home for so long that the threat no longer has any currency. If we actually wanted power and not bragging rights, people would be working right now to find our own Doug Hoffmans and primary the crap out of the corporate candidates who are up for re-election next year. But, no, we’d rather stand around and carp about how much Democrats suck.
As I’ve said multiple times, if the reaction coming across had been “We’re going to primary every one of you motherfuckers,” I would have totally been on the complainers’ side. But it wasn’t. It was the same damn “Republicrats” shit I’ve been hearing for years that got us into this mess in the first place and I’m sick and tired of whining that replaces action.
Sleeper
@itsbenj:
I’d say most of the Opologists here don’t see themselves as such, rather they feel they’re offering constructive criticism about how the left can pursue its goals in a practical way. It does happen to conveniently overlap with protecting Barack Obama from being held up to any real scrutiny, but still…it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s ALL they are trying to do…maybe…
It’s too easy to attribute their behavior to hero worship, but some of them are sure doing their best to make it look like that.
I am hoping we don’t repeat this cycle when it comes to climate change of the EFCA, assuming we ever get to those.
Mnemosyne
@Sleeper:
Yes, because the best way to get Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh out of office next year is to hold Obama up to scrutiny.
/eyeroll
Sleeper
@General Winfield Stuck:
It may be true that collective anger from the blogosphere didn’t move the administration one centimeter towards what we want, policy-wise. Maybe the pundits peruse the ‘sphere and something one of them reads will inspire a column, and in that way our disdain for this or that decision will drift upwards and be filtered through the framers of the debate in the media, and so in that sense it does affect the debate, on a microscopic scale, maybe. But what do you suggest we do, suck on our thumbs and not make a peep when we don’t get all we want? That’s the surest way to make sure that next time we get even less. Or nothing at all. Raising hell might not accomplish anything, but not raising hell DEFINITELY won’t accomplish anything.
This has been our problem with Obama’s strategy, he seems to us too eager to settle for less. Could he have gotten single-payer? Who knows. Yes it seems very unlikely. But dismissing it from the get-go as impossible looks to some of us like self-fulfilling prophecy. Bring it up as a bargaining chip if nothing else, see how far you can get with it. If we’d started with single-payer maybe we could have settled on the Medicare expansion or public option. But he’s too quick to reach for a breadknife, and we got way less than we should have out of this bill.
Your comments seem less like constructive criticism and more like “These people annoy me and therefore they need to shut the fuck up.” Honestly, a lot of Mr. Cole’s bellyaching these days about Obama’s critics has the same ring to it.
Sleeper
@Mnemosyne:
Of course a good way to woo these people back is to call them whiny losers, conflate their concerns into ridiculous strawmen and suggest they go join Redstate. That’ll work.
Sleeper
@Mnemosyne:
Right, and the best way to get Obama to stop offering up “centrist” policies is to rally around him whenever he does so. Maybe if we use a slightly sarcastic tone as we agree with whatever he does, he’ll get the message.
General Winfield Stuck
@Sleeper:
You know whats really annoying to me. People on your side of this going apeshit banana over this HC bill and about everything else, calling us every conceivable canard name, and then playing the victim card ala Malkin.
I was truly shocked at the vehement reaction of the “real hippies” and took a lot of shit until I was likened to an Iraq war supporter, and that was the limit. Now you type out comment after comment telling us that we are being mean to you, when it was started by you.
I tried to make peace yesterday, and got shit on for that. So I will repeat what I have said previously. I DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU AND YOUR CHILDISH THREATS AND YOU INCESSANT WHINING.
If you want to take your ball and play elsewhere, then just do it, and stop the victim shit that is embarrassing to no end.
You are not dissenting, you are shitting in the living room and crying that nobody cares and will do anything about your problem. Get over your self important selves.
Mnemosyne
@Sleeper:
Why bother wooing them back when they’re just going to throw yet another hissy fit and demand that we coax them off their fainting couch again and again? Better to go out and find voters who will actually vote.
Psst. Obama’s not a senator anymore. I know it’s very confusing to you that he’s not actually voting on legislation, but that’s because he’s moved on to another job and doesn’t actually legislate anymore. If you want to fix the legislative process, you need to concentrate on the people who write and vote on legislation, not the guy who signs it at the very end.
I realize this is all very complex and suggest you consult this primer about how our system works.
Jay B.
@General Winfield Stuck:
Yeah, Sleeper’s mildly critical comment had that coming. What a disgrace. You do realize that everything — literally every “point” you accuse “us” of making toward you, you evince in your own post, right?
Victimhood?
Check.
Check. Try and read your post out loud. See if that qualifies as “apeshit bananas”.
Screamed like a real adult. Let’s see, what did Sleeper say? “Your comments seem less like constructive criticism and more like “These people annoy me and therefore they need to shut the fuck up.” Honestly, a lot of Mr. Cole’s bellyaching these days about Obama’s critics has the same ring to it.
Check.
Now you type out comment after comment telling us that we are being mean to you, when it was started by you.
No backsies! You’re not being mean, you are being a fucking douchebag, true, but worse, a douchebag without a point.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. He asked some rhetorical questions about the actual bill in a tone that real adults use and you respond like a whiny shit. Hilarious.
For the record, I don’t care that you yell and scream and “tell it like you see it”. But, dude, you are embarrassing yourself.
General Winfield Stuck
@Jay B.:
Somebody give Jay B his shot.
Just Some Fuckhead
President Obama: “Make me do it.”
Obots: Leave Barack alone!
sparky
y’all forgot another Obama success last week: blowing up lots of brown people. who cares if they aren’t the right brown people anyway?
what, don’t like that one? what about this, then?
well, ok, so maybe a decision that says non-American humans aren’t people doesn’t compare to having to sit on a runway in an airplane. glad to see Obama continuing his series of wins!
Mnemosyne
@sparky:
Wait, you mean that the government of Yemen requested help from the US to attack what they claimed were al-Qaeda sites and the US agreed to help? How dare Obama help governments that request our help! That monster!
And I really need to see something other than commentary about the SCC’s decision before I get outraged about it. No one can seem to point me to, you know, the actual decision, possibly because the SCC didn’t make one and allowed the lower court’s ruling to stand.
sparky
@Mnemosyne: that’s your answer?
the US should ALWAYS bomb whoever a dictator wants bombed in the dictator’s country. oookay.
and who cares if they even hit the right target. america don’t apologize for nuffin!
you are correct that they allowed the DC circuit decision to stand. guess what–the Obama administration asked them to do just that. so does that make Obama Yemen in this scenario?
skepticscott
Well, at least in the health care bill we’re going to get (whatever it looks like), the government preserved the right to bargain for lower drug prices, and to save the American taxpayer tens of billions of dollars that can be put to good use.
Oh, wait…you mean we didn’t? You mean Congress (damn them) gave that right away in a surrender (can’t dignify it by calling it a deal) to Big Pharma?
Oh, wait…you mean it WASN’T Congress who did that? Well, at least all of that business was conducted out in the open with full transparency, so that we know everything that was said and done and who’s responsible, right? Oh, wait….
Sleeper
@General Winfield Stuck:
When the hell did I bring up Iraq? That was somebody else, fella.
uh.
Yeah. Again, not me. You’re mistaking me for someone else. And if you’re going to say that you don’t care about what someone thinks, screaming rants at them in all caps mode is not a very persuasive means of doing that. If you don’t care about what I say then ignore me. How hard is that? Is there a need to throw a shit fit like this? It’s extremely strange behavior.
Honestly, I think perhaps you need a few days’ vacation from commenting. I think YOU need to get over YOURself. You are internalizing political disagreement as personal insult. I have every right to be pissed off about the way our politicians are conducting themselves, just as others have the right to be pleased by the same conduct. I am sorry if you take my political opinions to be personal attacks on you, but that’s your problem. Get a fucking life man.
Sleeper
@Mnemosyne:
Ah, so you subscribe to the “Obama as the Powerless President” defense. I guess if you’re predisposed to like whatever he does that’s a very comforting concept. When bad law gets enacted, he really didn’t have much of a choice; when good decisions are made, he gets the lion’s share of credit.
Taking responsibility is part of his job. The modern presidency plays a major role in writing legislation and shepherding it through Congress. That wasn’t the role assigned it by the Constitution but that’s what it has become. And presidents take the blame for bad legislation that goes through on their watch, and rightly so.
Mnemosyne
@sparky:
No, my answer is that there’s a difference between the US conquering a sovereign country and the US responding to a request for assistance from a sovereign country. Is your answer that there’s no difference between invading Iraq and assisting Yemen at their request?
Mnemosyne
@Sleeper:
No, I subscribe to the “three co-equal branches of government” defense. It’s fascinating to see sparky complain on one hand that we’re helping the “dictator” of Yemen and then have you whine on the other that Obama is not acting as a dictator in the US and forcing Congress to rubber-stamp legislation.
So your complaint about Obama is that he’s not enough like Nixon, Reagan and Bush and actually wants Congress to do their jobs? Nice.
Sleeper
@Mnemosyne:
Unfortunately, the three branches of our government are no longer co-equal, and it’s not very practical to behave as if they are. The legislative is a distant third in terms of power, to my way of thinking. I’m sure others disagree.
That’s right, that’s an exact quote. That’s precisely what I said. I want a rubber-stamp Congress. sheesh.
It’s either-or with you guys sometimes. The fact is, whether or not it was meant to be, whether or not I like it, the office of the president has a huge role in shaping legislation. That’s what the job is now. A person cannot become president and then just wash their hands of the legislative process. For one thing, Congress is not used to it anymore and won’t function without strong input from the executive branch. They need the political cover necessary to enact “unpopular” (to their thinking) legislation. Reid was practically begging for public signals from the White House at various times this year, on health care and other subjects. Absent that, the process drifted and came to be dominated by the usual gang of idiots.
Some people want to excuse this by saying this is a deliberate strategy to restore the Constitution, which seems over-the-top to me. This veneration for the Constitution doesn’t seem to apply to Bush’s legacy programs that routinely violate our civil rights. But whatever, everyone sees what they want to see, even if they don’t enjoy seeing it. I could be just as guilty of this.
General Winfield Stuck
@Sleeper:
@Sleeper:
Ha! Like others here Sleeper, you seem to think you have the right to speak freely without pushback in the same manner. And when you speak in generalities complaining with a more passive voice than others with your viewpoint who use stronger language, that we can’t also speak in generalities about your side in this spat, it becomes a good cop bad cop thing. My comment was not hyperbolic, but it was blunt and largely in similar generalities about you side, and that is inbounds. You can’t make charges speaking for others without those charges being answered.
And there nothing personal about saying I don’t care for your petty complaints. It is not hyperbolic, nor personal. In fact it is precisely the opposite. As impersonal as one can get when they state they don’t care anymore what you think. And I never said you couldn’t speak your mind, but did say I have the right also to speak mine.
This is one of the few level headed and also pragmatic of center left blogs. And it just that center left, not one of Hamsher’s “movement” like blogs. This is the tone and tenor set by it’s owner, not by me. If you want to make arguments about Obama has failed which is allowed, then here, you should expect a vigorous comeback, when another believes your arguments don’t reflect the totality of things, or are inaccurate, or false.
And it is always the refuge of those who have nothing, to argue that those you disagree with should “take a few days vacation from commenting”.
It’s just more whining in a different way.