I have no idea who wrote this, but I highly recommend it.
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by John Cole| 55 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links, Humorous
I have no idea who wrote this, but I highly recommend it.
Comments are closed.
Zifnab
Does this mean we’re getting a “This is good news for Barack Obama” tag soon?
MikeJ
Now, now John. Very soon people will show up saying it’s not fair for you to be so mean to morons.
burnspbesq
lefty snark FAIL. Not amused.
Mr Furious
Meh…
The “RAAAHHHMMMM!” is funny, the rest? Notsomuch.
The Grand Panjandrum
He/she is probably mocking Cenk Uygur’s diary that just happens to be right below his/her’s on the rec list right now. I generally like Cenk but he isn’t the brightest crayon in the box.
Corner Stone
I don’t think that post means what you think it means.
El Tiburon
I especially like all of the links he (or she) supplies so that we can make an informed decision on what was (or wasn’t) said.
Or better yet, how about a more reasoned look at this situation.
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/21511
ajr22
Im gonna unlurk, because i have a OT question for the tech people. Would you recommend a Plasma or LCD flat screen? glare is a big concern. I’ll go back to lurking until the intrertubes get a grip on themselves, this idiot with a bomb in his underwear has really brought out teh stupid.
bystander
Push back comes in all colors, shapes, sizes and flavors. I’m intrigued that writer feels the need.
“First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then you win.” M. Gandhi.
danimal
All the claims of triple bankshot politics (critics are actually helping Obama by acting like raving loons, etc) are incredibly silly. They all sound like bad Monty Python sketches.
John Cole
@ajr22: I have a 26″ samsung lcd monitor and a 24″ side monitor for my computer and I LOVE THEM.
Corner Stone
@ajr22:
Just my opinion but if it’s a bright location with glare issues then I’d go with LCD.
They seem to manage moderate area brightness better. Plasma seems to reflect background images that light through – for example – facing the plasma you have a window with the blinds closed but on a sunny day you can still catch a lot of reflected images of the blinds on your plasma.
There’s also the question of what will your primary use be but if glare is the biggest concern then IMO LCD should be investigated.
ETA – as should Rahm btw.
Zoogz
There’s strawmen– all the arguments currently blowing everything out of proportion.
There’s tin (-eared) men and women– let’s team up with Grover Norquist!
There’s cowardly liberals by the score…
The Wicked Witch of the South, Darth Cheney, and his many flying monkey-brained minions…
no road out, though. Very disquieting.
Stooleo
This comment had me rolling.
It’s the Underpants Gnome Strategy: (49+ / 0-)
1. Eat our own
2. ????
3. Electoral Victory & Progressive Influence!
T/R/Excellent!
Brian J
Maybe I missed it, since I unfortunately haven’t checked up on this site for the last couple of days, but here’s an interesting piece (via Kevin Drum) by James Surowiecki in The New Yorker about how community rating will make general private health insurance superfluous. To me at least, it’s one of those things that’s so easy to agree to if you’ve been paying attention.
Sorry to hijack the thread, but it’s a nice, short piece that does a lot to put a big silver lining on the current legislation, flawed as it is.
jacy
@ajr22:
My SO is a big gadgets nerd and he says definitely an LCD. Plasmas are not as crisp and subject to something he called “screen burn.” He equates plasmas to Betamax. But says if you have the money get an LED.
I can attest that I have a LCD TV and monitor and have zero glare problems.
And to be OT, I refuse to talk politics anymore because I have come to the conclusion that 98.2% of people are fucking idiots.
beltane
Yes, that was funny as hell, especially as it outraged the humor-challenged Janebots.
Cain
I’d wait till the LED LCD TVs become cheaper and 240Hz is the standard. Less power usage overall. Don’t get a plasma, especially if it is like a 720p or something.
BTW – another OT: Left4Dead at 7.49 on Steam!!! Sounds ilke hte perfect game to start a balloon-juice gang and go kill some zombies!
cain
Interrobang
So…why would this writer assume that people who are genuinely on the left would have any interest whatsoever in actually helping Obama? The whole piece read to me like “LEAVE OBAAAMA ALOOOOONE!!” and, well, no, why should we?
If I may venture a foreigner’s opinion, I don’t like Obama and have never liked him — he’s seriously not mean enough for my liking, he talks like a cheap-ass televangelist, and he hangs around with people like Rick Warren (talk about cheap-ass televangelists!), who skeeves me out on several different grounds at once. Not only that, but Obama is possibly the best Republican president yet, knocking Bill Clinton (whom I also didn’t particularly like) out of the top slot.
Why oh why
I don’t think Hamsher, Dean, Greenwald and others wake up every morning and wonder: “How can I best help Barack Obama today?”
Pliny_the_Elder
Rahm really is the defining example of the corporatist “New Dem” wing of the party, and if you think pointing this out is counterproductive I’m not sure what to say. It’s becoming strikingly obvious that the latest form of The Shock Doctrine is taking place right now, in front of us, but I guess it’s no big deal since it’s Democrats making it happen?
Cassidy
Honestly, why don’t we just shitcan the farther left. They scream hysterically like women and toddlers when they don’t get what they want. They pass around right wing talking points when they don’t get what they want. Really, the only reason to keep them around is so some retarded third candidate doesn’t pop up and subject us to 4-8 years of GOP morons.
beltane
@The Grand Panjandrum: He is mocking the daily FDL spam diary in which the diarist posts multiple comments to her own diary and then sends out a Twitter alert to Hamsher supporters to put the diary on the rec list and to troll rate anyone who dares dissent with her highness.
Cat
I’m beginning to think most people in America aren’t that interested in participating in a democracy or following the rule of law. They’d much rather engage in political maneuvering to keep their side in power even if that means ignoring lawbreaking if it would be to politically damaging to pursue it or trying to marginalize or silence their parties critics because it may threaten their chances in the next election.
MBunge
“If I may venture a foreigner’s opinion, I don’t like Obama and have never liked him—he’s seriously not mean enough for my liking,”
Vice-President Cheney, I don’t think the fact that you’re technically from Hell actually makes you a foreigner in the legal sense of the word.
Mike
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Interrobang:
You dislike him for not being unlikable enough?
Tom Hilton
@Stooleo: you beat me to it. That comment is an instant sig line.
Tom Hilton
@beltane: isn’t “humor-challenged Janebots” a redundancy? Just wondering.
Tomlinson
@Brian J:
Very nice article. I agree with it as well. With all the noise around public options and mandates, etc, we seem to be forgetting the real battle here is to make health care a right not a privilege. That’s a very, very big deal – and we are frighteningly close to achieving it.
Tom Hilton
@Brian J: Just read that piece, and it really is excellent (and encouraging). Surowiecki is possibly my favorite writer on economics these days; I always feel much smarter after reading one of his columns.
JGabriel
ajr22:
For a computer, LCD. For television, probably Plasma, especially if you don’t have cable. But if power is a concern, then an LCD will probably be more efficient.
.
JGabriel
Tomlinson:
That’s a strange adjective for the context. There shouldn’t be anything frightening about it — except for those who use the fear of losing health care to wield or maintain power over others.
.
Tomlinson
@JGabriel:
You are not a Red Sox fan, are you?
Because if you were, you would understand that the closer you get to a goal that once seemed unachievable, the more frightening it is.
Michael
Shit, Jane Trotsky’s minion slinkerwink has been twittering in her recs, and there are still GOS posters who refuse to call it astroturf.
Interestingly, some of the FDL supporters appear to be openly stating that they are CPUSA members.
Speaking just for me, I’m a liberal who tends toward the progressivist end, but I’m sure as hell no Marxist. I’m not sure that Kos would be that thrilled to realize how the site is being gamed, given that fact.
Malron
@beltane: Would that be the one and only slinkerwink? I’ve heard of this nefarious tactic before. I also wanted to use “nefarious” in a sentence at least once before 2009 ends.
Tomlinson
@Michael:
I thought that that Kos was OK with slinkerwink being a paid public option pusher, or equivalent. I was under the impression that Kos had been paid to wreck list some of this crap. If so, I’m sure there are second thoughts galore.
Am I just out in space?
redactor
How do you move the Overton window to the left without countering the considerable noise machine that keeps moving it to the right? That doesn’t mean indulging in personal attacks, but it should certainly not preclude making the administration aware that not all the disageement with his policies is on the right.
Is Taibbi wrong to point out that the Obama administration’s financial establishment is owned and operated by Goldman Sachs? Is Glennzilla wrong to point out that Obama is continuing many Bush policies on government secrecy and [lack of] due process? Are Hamsher and Dean wrong to say that the healthcare bill is now so compromised as to be worse than nothing? And aren’t these really policy, not personal, questions?
If the point is that the Congress, principally the Senate, makes further progress impossible and that Obama is only doing what he can do, there is a case to be made there. I am happy to support candidates who will primary Democrats who insist on undermining their president’s most important policy initiatives. And I would really advocate major leadership changes if that is what it takes to discipline the Conservadems. But if Obama really wants, say, a more progressive healthcare bill, why does his staff spend all their time protecting the people who are undermining him and telling his progressive supporters to STFU?
Making personal attacks against Obama is crazy. But if the only challenges to his policies come from the right, what direction do you think future policies are likely to take?
eemom
I’ve never been a Kosser (yeah, I know technically it’s kossack), so I don’t really understand how all the diary and “rec” stuff works……..but it is amusing to watch the Janebots vilify Kos as the burning capital of Obamadom while simultaneously hurling themselves into the flames to do battle for Dear Jane.
FDL itself gets more self-parodying each day. The latest offering, “Why Jane Can’t Be Wrong” by that Cenk whoever.
liberal
@redactor:
Not generally, but it apparently is in the comment sections on this blog, sadly enough.
Of course, “owned and operated by GS” is a bit hyperbolic, but “owned and operated by the financial sector” isn’t.
liberal
@Pliny_the_Elder:
Agreed. Of course, we’re only talking about something on the order of the high hundreds of billions, or perhaps even trillions, of dollars being looted, so why care? /snark
Morgan
@redactor: I think the point and the problem is the FDL asshats are essentially attacking from the right.
The focus on the individual mandate, in particular and as an example, is entirely unhelpful. The mandate is essential to any universal health coverage plan short of single payer (where it just doesn’t apply). If you’re upset that the public option was removed, ranting that we either need to remove the mandate or kill the bill entirely is reinforcing right wing framing and doing nothing to advance progressive causes.
I like Taibbi and, to a lesser extent, Greenwald, and while I may disagree with them sometimes, I think their criticisms of Obama are fundamentally different from what we’ve been seeing from Hamsher and her crew.
Michael
Oh fuck me.
This already drew an HR from an FDL Trotskyite.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/30/820493/-Stop-Telling-Me-Im-Not-Progressive
Malron
@eemom: I do find it deliciously ironic at times to be called “Obamabots” and “Obamapologists” by people who feel it is their duty to bestow adoration and blind defense of everything Jane Hamster does. Projection much?
CalD
B-b-but, where is the OUTRAGE!?!?
Cain
@Michael:
What is an HR?
cain
Tom Hilton
@redactor:
Thing One: nobody is saying don’t criticize the President from the left–and that includes the Kos diarist, who included this (sarcastic) PS:
And that’s the key: criticism from the left should be genuinely substantive and informed, and should “presume that he’s acting in good faith but making the wrong strategic decisions”. That’s the kind of criticism that might help progressive causes, and doesn’t help Republicans.
Thing Two: more specifically, attacks on the President that mesh with right-wing memes are spectacularly unhelpful. Take the griping about the ‘individual mandate’, for example: it’s an essential element of healthcare reform, it’s easily mischaracterized by Republicans (and will be the number one point of attack next year), and yet some so-called ‘progressives’ are attacking it in the very same terms as the Dick Armey are. Not helpful.
Thing Three: IMO (and here I probably part company with a lot of people who may have agreed up to this point) criticizing the President (and other Democrats) from the left doesn’t actually counter the right-wing criticism. What counters right-wing criticism is responding directly to that criticism. Now, that response can also include disagreement with Democrats (“I don’t think the President has done enough of a, b, and c, but your criticism is bullshit because of x, y, and z”), but at least such a response recognizes that the right and its memes are more of a problem than moderate Democrats.
Tom Hilton
@Michael: your link goes to the dKos main page, not the specific diary.
Jenn
@Michael:
Thanks for the link!
Sarcastro
So The Left is now Jane Hamsher and her ragged band of slightly-less-centrist-than-most rebels? Seriously?
And THEY’RE the ones running with right-wing memes?
Good fucking gods.
Will
@Cassidy:
Sadly, that’s a pretty damn good reason for keeping them around.
Hob
@Pliny_the_Elder: Personally I don’t think it’s “counterproductive” to describe Rahm Emanuel as a corporatist New Dem. That’s accurate. I’m not sure anyone is saying otherwise.
The context you may be missing though, when talking about Daily Kos and Firedoglake, is that a lot of people in those places are saying all kinds of other stuff about Emanuel — making him out to be Karl Rove and Dick Cheney all in one: he controls Obama’s policy decisions, he’s involved in all kinds of criminal conspiracies, etc. Every time I’ve looked into the basis of one of these rants, it seems to come down to the kind of corporatist New Dem stuff that is unfortunately true of hundreds of politicians, but somehow they give this crazy spin to it because (I guess) they’re used to the extra deep creepiness of Rove et al. So “Rahm was in a patronage position at Freddie Mac and got paid to sit on his ass” becomes “Rahm was behind the mortgage crisis” or whatever. He could be the worst crook since Spiro Agnew for all I know, but these guys show so little understanding of what they’re writing about that I think they would be the last ones to know, if so. And yeah, I think *that* is counterproductive.
CalD
Did we ever find out what an “HR” is?
Steeplejack
@CalD:
I was guessing “heated response” from the context. IMO. FWIW. (LOL.)
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Interesting that WordPress took it upon itself to make “IMO” small caps but left the other acronyms alone. Let’s see what it does with this one: FYWP.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Ah. Small caps. Of course. [head/desk]