I’ve been receiving daily emo emails from a website called “make them accountable,” and today’s version blamed Coakley on… Obama. I finally had enough and unsubscribed and said I can’t take any more of this emo progressive bullshit, and the owner of the list responded that I should be apologizing because I helped Obama get elected.
I swear to God these people have seriously lost their damned minds. Has anyone checked out Hillary is 44?
CJ
Who should we have supported? Mike Gravel?
Chad S
Hill is 44 is comparing Obama to Mary Jo Kopechne. I really wish I was making that up.
Hill is 44 reads like the journal of a serial killer. Srsly.
Kerry Reid
Yes, we should be apologizing for keeping Sarah Palin out of the “one heartbeat away” slot. Whatever were we thinking?
And the challenge as always remains for the Whiny “Idealist” Lefties: name the Great Progressive President of the Past that you think should be the model for Obama. (Hint: FDR and Lincoln do NOT count, not if you care about civil liberties at all.)
Dave C
@CJ:
Secretly, in my heart, i still believe in the Gravelanche.
mellowjohn
well, isn’t everything that ever happened obama’s fault? since clinton, anyway.
i couldn’t agree more, john. makes me want to hurl when people say that just because a guy (who was clearly superior to his opponent) doesn’t accomplish everything a) he talked about, b) somebody else talked about, or c) what they personally had hoped for during the campaign AT ONCE, that guy is a complete failure.
btw, good luck w/ the surgery next week. i shattered my collarbone into 3 large and numerous small pieces in a cycling accident (“you’re not really a cyclist until you bust your collarbone.”) and had a really good doctor, some really good drugs, and a really good physical therapist. other than being slightly lopsided, turned out great.
good luck.
beltane
Luckily I’ve never heard of “Make Them Accountable”. The more you listen to these people, the more you realize they are not liberal and not progressive. Many of them come off as spoiled left-libertarians who are focused exclusively on their own needs.
It does, however, look like GOS has once again returned to Democratic control after its adventure in emopants land.
August J. Pollak
Actually, while Obama has nothing to do with it, there’s a room full of Democrats you can blame for this on multiple steps of the way. We’re in this situation because the state legislature voted twice in five years to tailor-fit the Senate election process to prevent a Republican from being put in the seat. Then Ted Kennedy, already in failing health, ran for re-election instead of letting another Democrat sweep the seat in 2008. Then he was too sick to show up for office and didn’t retire.
There’s no way this can be Republicans’ fault. There weren’t any around to be involved in the process. I wish no ill will on the Kennedy family and don’t mean to piss on Teddy’s grave but the fact that Ted Kennedy was fucking dying wasn’t exactly a final-Cylon-level mystery here and state Democrats fucked this transition up worse than NBC.
A Mom Anon
The people calling themselves Progressive now need to re-read their history more than just a little. They’re not Liberals anymore,notice that shit? Progressive doesn’t mean shit anymore because of this nonsense.
I’d really like to see some financial transparency for these damned groups,from Hamsher’s various fundraising sources on down the line. Enough of this shit already. If you’re gonna switch sides fine,just be honest about it. There’s something more going on here than just a disagreement over policy.
CT
It’s kind of sad to see that Instaputz is going the emo route, but I guess it was inevitable after they joined up with Hamsher and the rest of her show biz kids. For the coup de grâce, they’re poutrageous.
beltane
@Kerry Reid: They’ll tell you LBJ, which means they were not raised by old Democrats heartbroken at his handling of the Vietnam War. The next favorite president is Darcy Burnor.
beltane
And the games are on. Check this out: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/16/825847/-ACTION-ITEM!-RedState-trying-to-jam-Coakley-phone-banks! RedState trying to jam Coakley’s phone banks.
Max
It’s not just Hillary is 44, it’s Open Left, Taylor Marsh, FDL, Talk Left, etc.
These people are fucking crazy.
Like I’ve said before, if those websites are representative of “the base”, then I am tapping out.
CJ
@Dave C:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpg5sgKB7rU
If only he had the energy sword. . .
pattonbt
I dont comment much, but the last week has been so damn weird. I have no problem with people having issues with Obama and his performance in some areas. But this sudden resurgence of PUMA behaviour intertwined with tea-party level thinking from the left has me baffled. I laughed through the primaries as people thought us Obama supporters were mindless sheeple following our messiah. And while there were some like that, most of us just wanted a judicious, middle of the road, intelligent leader. I can not tell you how happy I am he is President. Sure, I have a few unicorns I still want (the detention / war on terror issues, better health care bill) but Obama cant just wish them to be.
What kind of Deomocratic congress did these PUMA Party people think Obama had. When you have one party who is 100% checked out, it gives immense power to the holdouts within the one party who is trying to rule. So thats why you have presidents Nelson and Lieberman and the blue dogs.
But it is just surreal to see Democrats turning on themselves in MA and across the US. Did they not live through the last 30 years? How can any Democrat vote for a Republican after the last 30 years. How is giving more power to a party so utterly irresponsible and demonstrably destructive going to help?
So the PUMA party solution is the old “I’ll cut off my nose to spite my face because governing is hard and all my unicorns havent been delivered in 12 months”.
As much it pains me to say this, permanently living in Australia looks better and better every day (and it has looked and been great the last 7 years) as I am more convinced the US is super screwed for a long time.
dmsilev
You should have just unsubscribed, and not given any reason. Shouting back at people like that is roughly as productive as pissing directly into the wind.
-dms
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@beltane:
You could have stopped there. It seems that none of these people have ever had to do anything hard in their life like compromise.
These people tend to make me wish for Heinlein’s requirement that you have to be in the military to get to vote.
bend
@August J. Pollak
Ted Kennedy last was re-elected in 2006, before he was diagnosed as terminally ill.
John Cole
WHat kills me is the “Obama has scrwed the base” BS- Obama has delivered more in his first year in the way of progressive policies than Clinton did in eight, and yet they are acting like he does everything to screw the left. The only thing I can think is these folks are taking their lead from the professional progressives, who have a vested interest in being let down- it brings in the donations and gets them on tv.
General Winfield Stuck
@August J. Pollak:
As long as we get healthcare done before if a winger wins and takes office, I can spin it to be a silver lining of sorts.
It would be embarrassing as all hell, but would likely wake up a 2008 victorious buy slothly dem party on electoral politics for 2010 and 12.
Fuck the emo progrievers, they are a flash in the crazy pan, unless they get ahold of themselves and clean up the froth and spittle politics of rage.
edit – and now I await the po little ol me you meany neo libtard to progrieve my heartless comment on this fine blog.
Martin
Ok, since we have Hillary in an official federal position, wouldn’t it be comparable to blame Hillary that aid isn’t getting to Haiti fast enough, that China continues to be unwilling to fix their internal political problems enough that even Google has had enough, that Yemen is still fucked up, and so on?
The laundry list of shit that we could drop at Hillary’s feet is extensive, but that would be insane to do.
And the Coakley problem lands in no small part on Reid’s feet. Obama wanted this bill signed long before we ever got to this election because he and every other clear thinking person realized that it would turn into a referendum on health care. It puts pressure on a special election that simply does not deserve to be there. Had this bill gotten sorted out and signed, nobody would give a fuck about MA-Sen except the good people of MA.
And good on Redstate for trying to tie up phone lines. That shit is illegal, especially if the call crosses state lines. Someone needs to call the FCC on their asses.
gwangung
That’s something they share with wingnuts: idealogues tend to think “compromise” is a dirty word. And why purity purges are so popular with idiots.
Ash Can
Or they have no fucking idea how representative government operates. (Hint: they don’t call it “sausage-making” for nothing.) Or both.
John Cole
@dmsilev: It felt good, though.
Robin G.
I’m curious as to why Coakley is doing so badly. Yes, she’s unimpressive, and yeah, things are rough for Dems right now, but this IS still Massachusetts, right?
mr. whipple
Of course. I’ve seen this already in comments at various blogs.
The funny thing is, you’d see all the ‘kill the Health Care’ bill people out there that are now saying we how badly we need this seat. The others, that have hated Obama since day 1, are happy to lose it and blame it on Obama because it’s obvious it will teach the dems a lesson, or make policy more progressive, or something equally nuts.
I just don’t know how on earth Liberal blogs think that every day can be an endless parade of posts about how Obama sucks, how the Democrats suck and Everything sucks and then turn around and adopt the opposite attitude about this race at the last second and expect people to get engaged, give money, get excited. There’s been a lot to crow about since Obama’s election, but concentrating on being all negative does have consequences.
Mnemosyne
@August J. Pollak:
Lots of state-level Democratic Parties are fucked up. I’m dreading the gubernatorial election here in California because it looks like our choices are going to be another incompetent celebrity (what else can you call Carly Fiorina?) or giving Jerry Brown another chance to fuck us all over after he slept through the passage of Prop 13. Literally no other Democrat is willing to run for governor because we are so fucked right now.
But anyone who tells me in November that the California Democratic Party screwed the pooch because Obama made them do it gets punched in the nuts as an ignorant fuck.
Martin
@General Winfield Stuck: The election is Tuesday. Monday is a holiday. The person will be immediately sworn in because the seat is vacant. By my measure, Congress has, from this moment, about 75 hours to get it done. If Coakley should lose, the Dems better pray it’s close enough to prevent the election from getting certified right away.
Why the fuck does Congress, of all people, fail to plan for a variable outside of their control that has the potential to completely kill something they’ve been trying to accomplish for a year. This is the shit that drives me crazy.
Robin G.
@Ash Can:
Most of them don’t, actually. Remember that most of the people were talking about here became involved in the nuts and bolts of politics between 2001-2004; from then and until this last year, there wasn’t much functional sausage-making going on.
pattonbt
@General Winfield Stuck: That to me is the surreal part of this whole thing. I think that current health care reform bill is much weaker than I would want, but I also believe it is an important first step both practically and emotionally. Once the idea if unversality is in place to go backwards will be next to impossible. Robustness will come in later, but you have to start somewhere.
But to think it might be Ted Kennedy’s seat that ultimately derails this bill just is…..unthinkable. And I hate to admit it, but I dont think the bill will get passed before whomever wins the MA special election gets sworn in, so pray its not Brown (I cant believe I even have to write that, again, surreal). Weird.
Martin
@Robin G.:
Special elections are always difficult for the majority party. Turnout rules the day and if the minority is pissed enough to vote, they can make a serious run at a seat just by getting their minority number of votes to the polls while the majority goes to work and forgets all about it.
General Winfield Stuck
@Martin: Well, I recieved different info on that timeline. I think from sly in a previous thread. Their is a process to certify that takes some time, even in a SE. I think. Unless wrong
General Winfield Stuck
@Martin: It is not vacant, there is a guy holding it since Kennedy died. He voted in the 60 vote senate bill.
Paul Kirk
August J. Pollak
Ted Kennedy last was re-elected in 2006, before he was diagnosed as terminally ill.
And he had his seizure in May of 2008. He had to memorize his speech at the Democratic convention because he was physically incapable of reading the teleprompter. If he retired before the 2008 election thanks to the “Kerry law” there would be a stable, permanent Democratic Senator in his seat right now, instead of a year of nightmares because he wasn’t even able to show up for a vote.
Citizen_X
It does indeed seem like the second coming of the PUMAs, of which I remain convinced that fully half were actually part of Operation Chaos (remember that?). There’s probably a fair component of Rethuglican ratfucking going on presently, as well.
The rest were, and are, simply unhinged. (You “should be apologizing” because you helped Obama get elected? Jesus wept.) And the media are always happy to say, “You and him fight,” so they’re going to encourage as much of it as possible.
Fuck ’em all. “Emo progressives” is a good, dismissive, name for them.
Max
@Martin: I actually read that MA has a law about the counties have to wait 10 days (or close) to formally certify because of absentee ballots, regardless. But, I could have read that wrong.
Back to PUMA’s, these fuckers claim sexism on everything and how poor Hillary was slighted because she’s a women, and Sarah Palin is unfairly targeted because of her looks, etc.
Yet, on these very same sites in the last few weeks, I have seen these same “feminist” women lay into Michelle for a myriad of things, including how she dresses, call Christina Romer too fat to be on tv, and discuss Nancy P’s face.
These PUMA’s are a bunch of bitter, ugly on the inside people and the world would be a better place without them.
Jody
I just went over to Hillaryis44, just to peek around. There are no words for the amount of stupid swirling around over there.
I mean, yeah, I’ve had my gripes with Obama. When he screws up, I will criticize him. But comparing him to MARY JO KOPECHNE while “the Clintons are saving the world”…GAH.
GAHHH!!!!
Martin
@General Winfield Stuck: It’s vacant in the sense that the person in the seat doesn’t have a specific end date to his term. It’s not like a Nov. election where everyone stays put until Jan. As soon as the winner is certified, they start voting. The question is how long will that process take. With only one thing on the ballot, I’d expect it to move very fast.
But the point remains – why even risk it? Why didn’t the party (both House but particularly the Senate) push to get this done by now as hard as the WH did?
gwangung
@Jody: Ugh. As a brown person, I can say…outright racism.
henqiguai
@Belafon (formerly anonevent) (#16):
These people tend to make me wish for Heinlein’s requirement that you have to be in the military to get to vote.
It’s the trivial things. It was “Federal service”, of any kind that earned you full citizenship (i.e. the franchise), not only military service. Sorry for being such a dime-store pedant; I loved that book, even after having to fight off the rest of the senior brothers after recommending “such a right wing book” to read.
Kevin K.
Make Them Accountable? That’s run by former Correntewire front-pager Caro. Hell, she even got too nutty for that asshole Lambert and he banned her. She’s a whackadoodle.
donovong
@John Cole:
Exactly. SSDD.
General Winfield Stuck
@Martin:
I think they are doing this. With late night meetings in the WH and other stuff. Just because they have been out of session doesn’t mean they haven’t been working to iron out the differences with the house, that everyone, or enough can vote to pass shortly after they return to session this Tues./
They have plenty of time, see Max’s comment. At least ten days from election day. And if it’s close, which is likely. prolly longer than that./
edit – although there is always lizard joe to consider
inkadu
While “the base” is whingeing and withholding their contributions, the Tea Party activists are running for precinct captain and taking over the GOP.
I’m starting to think progressives are just lazy.
Quiddity
What is meant by “emo progressive”? Specifically the “emo” part.
Kevin K.
Here’s a Caro classic I did a post about in January. I think MyDD finally banned her after that one.
Hann1bal
@Jody: It’s like a massive cesspit of stupid. And what’s worse is that whoever wrote it went on and on for frakking ever.
I clicked back just now and found that they were apparently happy that Hillary is interested in UFOs. Really. Unidentified Flying Objects. Conspiracy theorists of the world, unite!
Since I can’t vote in MA, I’m just going to ignore this (inasmuch as I can) and do something that has an actual point. Like smashing my left hand with the door.
donovong
@Martin: The seat is not vacant. There is some discussion that, in the event that the Dems lose, it could take up to two weeks to replace the guy who took kenneday’s place and is corrently sitting in his seat. Because the seat is not vacant.
Kerry Reid
As someone who was in Grant Park on Election Night, I distinctly remember Obama saying “We may not get there in one year, or even one term.” How much clearer could it get? Truthfully, it seems like there are some folks on the putative left who just want Obama to be the Benign Leftie Daddy Dictator and do everything through signing statements, executive orders, etc. Which really would make him — wait for it — AS BAD AS BUSH!!!
And really, the fact is that the only major social legislation Bush passed was No Child Left Behind, and that happened because some Dems (including Ted Kennedy) got behind it and gave him the benefit of the doubt. The other major things that Bush got was the war (gee, biggest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, that took armtwisting), and tax cuts (another easy-peasy proposition to pass).
One large reason why Obama is having trouble, aside from the usual obstinate jerks within his own party and the GOP wingnuts, is that the stuff he’s trying to do is actually hard and runs counter to the ingrained anti-government mindset that got set in stone during the Reagan years (despite the fact, of course, that deficit spending exploded under Reagan, Bush, and Bush).
But yeah — I really wish all the “accountability” types would share the hardest thing they’ve ever had to do in their lives. Quit smoking? Get a degree? Open a business? And then let us know if they achieved everything that needed to happen for that goal in less than a year. For fun, let’s add to the mix people on the sidewalk outside screaming hateful and murderous epithets at them as they try to get shit done, and their alleged friends turning on them at the slightest sign of wavering and screaming “sell out!”
Max
@General Winfield Stuck: From Huff Po….
The bill is heading to CBO by this weekend I bet, Monday at the latest.
Obamarahm isn’t stupid. They didn’t beat the Clinton machine by not being strategic. Hence the meetings at the WH until 1am this past week.
gwangung
I think it’s a fair thing to challenge complainers about: are running for precinct officers and taking over the party machinery. If you CAN’T do that, then perhaps your ideas are marginalized for a reason…
Paul
Please tell me that Hillary is 44 is an elaborate parody/satire.
Mark S.
While I haven’t exactly been thrilled with everything Obama’s done, he is still a billion times better than any Republican. The other day, I was thinking what this country would be like if the Supreme Court had a majority of Scalitos. I came up with:
Things that would be illegal in about half of the states:
1. Abortion
2. Gay Sex
3. Affirmative Action
Things that would be legal in about half of the states:
1. Prayers to Jesus every morning in public schools
2. The death penalty for eight-year-olds.
3. Guns, guns, and more guns!
Mnemosyne
@inkadu:
I’ve been saying that since the whining first reached full volume with the Senate bill. We have an opportunity to primary both Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh this year, but have you heard anyone talking about that?
No wonder the conservatives keep drinking our milkshake no matter how many times they fuck up. They’re at least willing to put in the work to get their people in office. “Progressives” throw up their hands after less than a year and declare they have no choice but to stay home.
SGEW
[tl;dr, yadda yadda]
I really think that what we’re seeing is part of a backlash against governance, in general. I believe that there is a great number of people in this country who desire “not reform, but revolution”; and that number is growing.
In many ways, there is a very relevant correlation between the “Tea Party” and the “Hamshers of the Left.” The anti-government (and, yes, anti-corporate[1]) sentiment amongst the grassroots elements of the teabaggers [2] should not be dismissed out of hand, in my opinion. And neither should the growing disaffection of the . . . let’s call them Nader 2012! . . . contingent [3].
Underlying metrics matter. I think that many of us can agree that something is badly wrong with the U.S.A.’s crypto-capitalist financial system. And, perhaps, this is now becoming clear to people who would have derided such “anti-establishment” notions ten years ago[4].
I posit that something important is happening. And both FDL and FreeRepublic are part of it.
Note well! I believe that 1) Revolutionary fervor can be incredibly destructive, and not at all helpful for this country; similarly, I do not think that shit-for-brains anarchist assassins were very fucking helpful back in 1901, Gilded Age or no, 2) There are a tremendous amount of additional factors involved in the mix (I need not list them: it would take forever), and 3) This is probably a vanishingly small proportion of the population that has been blown out of context by our political internet addictions [5].
However, so saying . . . does anyone else sense that something historically interesting is going on here? We’re all stuck in the thick of it, so we can’t really say, but . . . it sure is interesting.
Anyway, I’ve been kind of rolling this over in my head for the past couple of weeks: just dropping a kind of cliff notes of some of the questions I’ve been asking (whilst eliding any “answers” I might contemplate, at this point).
– SGEW + noneofyourbizness
[1] Nascent, naive, and nominal, perhaps; but it is there. “What’s the Matter With Kansas” badly needs an update.
[2] Viz., Not the astroturfing, but the underlying zeitgeist that is rumbling in the backs of the teabaggers minds: yes, there is racism; yes, there is an astounding hypocrisy made of ignorance and doublethink (you still think George W. Bush was a good president, but you’re now complaining about deficit spending?!? etc.); and yes, there is a knee-jerk kick-a-hippy cultural backlash that is highly prevalent – but still, I believe that within the “tea party” “movement” there is, indeed, a notable political constituency of low-income, low-information voters based on a growing awareness that . . . well . . . there is something about “the system” that is very, very wrong for themselves and their families. And there is.
[3] I.e., “Obama is as Bad as Bush!” et. al.
[4] Full disclosure: I voted for Ralph Nader in 1996.
[5] Anyone who has read this is addicted to political navel-gazing, sorry.
Chad S
@Jody: The funniest cognitive dissonance is them saying that “Bill and Hillary are saving the world, while Obama concentrates on politics”. Ummm..Bubba is stumping for Coakley this weekend.
kay
@Max:
Oh, no. I like her. I find her sort of comforting. She looks just like a boss I had once, Ruth. Ruth was a really good manager. Same sort of cheery determination and ability to suffer fools graciously.
JenJen
Well, I just got in a Twitter-argument with “a loyal Dem” who claims Massachusetts hates Obama (because they gave the primary to Hillary). When I pointed out that they hate Obama so much, they gave him 62% of the vote in November 2008, she didn’t respond.
Oh, and Sully says this could be “Obama’s Tora-Bora.” No, I don’t get it either.
gwangung
Because governance, no matter how benign, is HARD. Structures to manage the needs and wants of many people are clumsy and inefficient by nature; trying to align many, many people takes time and effort and it’s just so much more satisfying and quicker to just rule by fiat and get it done.
(Frak. I’m in a 20 person group and it’s HARD–and I run it like a dictatorship).
Toast
“Emo Progressives”. I love that.
El Cid
Maybe there are a lot of people who wish to be as dogmatic and strident as their own internal stereotypes of 60’s college age self-declared revolutionaries without changing the essentially centrist ideology they themselves hold.
Max
@kay: I like her too. However, I’m carrying a few extra inches of cushion, so I could be biased. She’s smart and not bitchy, and as a smart, but very bitchy person, I appreciate her sunny disposition.
@JenJen: Sully is angry that the Dem party, especially the chapter in Mass has put Obama in this position. I can’t disagree with him. My opinion is, jesus christ, can’t anybody else in the party help this man get shit done, or is everyone else a complete fuck up.
Citizen Alan
I think I hate some of you people a little bit for making me go to “Hillary is 44” to find out what on earth “Obama = Mary Jo Kopechne” was all about. My right eye is still twitching as a result of just 30 seconds exposure to that wall of insanity. If Hillary Clinton is even aware of “Hillary is 44,” I can only assume that she is mortified at what these delusional stalkers are saying ostensibly in her name. Telling someone to check out what people are saying on “Hillary is 44” is the political equivalent to getting someone to watch “2 Girls and a Cup.”
Hann1bal
@JenJen: I think that Sully’s trying to say that it could be a serious defeat for Obama. Let’s extend the analogy. If this is Obama’s Tora Bora, then we should expect him to regroup after his defeat due to the failure of his opponents to pursue their advantage properly. And eight years later, he’ll still be around.
Maybe a better analogy to convey a disastrous defeat would be “It will be his [Obama’s] Waterloo”. Oh, wait.
Mnemosyne
@SGEW:
I don’t think it’s new at all. It’s the natural progression from Reagan declaring that the government doesn’t work to deciding that we must not need one at all since it’s so ineffective. Liberals and progressives under about 40 have been raised on the idea that government doesn’t work and only exists to make silly rules and there have been very few counter-examples presented.
I think Obama is trying to give a counter-example by pushing health care reform, and that’s one of the reasons he’s getting so much pushback from the left and the right. There are people on both sides who really do think that government is the problem, not the solution.
El Cid
@JenJen:
Maybe he meant that this could be Obama’s Torah. Or maybe Obama’s Bora Bora. Perhaps Obama’s Torrid Flora. Or Boric Coral. Or maybe Sully’s just flipping out again.
SGEW
@gwangung:
I hear where you’re coming from. Don’t get me started! Yeesh.
As a side note: I still hold that Obama’s experience as a community organizer (importantly: as a successful and efficacious community organizer) is his most relevant qualification.
Notorious P.A.T.
I’ve been quite critical of Obama but I have to admit I’m impressed that he is considering sticking it to the pharma concerns with his little biogenic proposal.
eemom
@Toast:
.
me 2.
Hmmm……..maybe Emogressives?
MBL
@JenJen: Tora Bora is where Bush let bin Laden get away. This election, one presumes, is where Obama is going to let health care reform get away.
Redshift
Yeah, they really have lost their minds, and it’s sad.
After last night’s thread, I wanted to thank everyone here for giving me a new online community to call home. Even though I lurk a lot, this is the kind of place I’ve been looking for ever since my old home, FDL, went round the bend. And just so you know, it didn’t happen suddenly.
I was a regular there from near the beginning, and what made it great was the community, and the commitment to action, not just discussion. Jane was a great organizer, and was able to use connections and skills from her previous career to really enable things to happen — issue advocacy, real candidate support, publicizing important news that professional journalists weren’t bothering with or were afraid to touch in the Bush years. It was an oasis, and a source of empowerment in dark times.
I began to drift away after the big redesign from one thread at a time to the parallel, HuffPo-ized structure. I understand why they did it, but it allowed them to have more front-pagers at the expense of fragmenting and weakening the community, which was the main draw for me.
Then after last year’s election (and I can now see threads of it before), things really began to go sour. The “perfect as the enemy of the good” attitude grew steadily stronger, first among commenters, and later in the main posts. When the “Rethink Afghanistan” project started, I posted a comment about how I agreed with their objectives, but I couldn’t join because the principles stated that you could propose any idea except that you had to agree that military action was wrong. I said I was willing to be convinced of that, but I wasn’t willing to agree that it couldn’t be discussed, and the response I got from someone I thought was a friend was “Oh, I didn’t realize you were one of those.”
The other attitude that became steadily more prevalent was the idea that any failure by politicians to achieve progressive goals they said they supported was automatically a betrayal. This is what really broke it for me — strong advocacy is a very good thing, but not if you can’t accept that sometimes you lose, and sometimes the best efforts of the people you support aren’t enough.
Then this spring, Jane proposed that we had some things in common with the Paulites, and we should see where we could work together where we agreed. (This was really the beginning that has never gotten much publicity, unlike the later team-ups with the “kill the bill” people and Grover Norquist.) A lot of regulars reacted with a kind of “oookay, we’ll see what they have to say…” A Paulite guest-posted, and unsurprisingly, we didn’t seem to me to have a damn thing in common other than tactics, but that didn’t seem to put a damper on the idea. And I think that’s really where things went wrong — starting to use their language like “kill the bill” and “audit the Fed” (while trying to explain that no, we really mean “kill the Senate bill”, not kill health care reform…) It hit home when I saw Ron Paul on Rachel Maddow recently, and was struck by how similar he sounded to what I’ve been hearing from Jane.
I pretty much checked out of FDL after that; I stop by occasionally to read Marcy or see if old friends are around in late night threads. But in thanking you for creating the kind of community here that I used to have there, I did also want to express sadness for what has been lost. It’s easy just to be angry at them or question their motives (and for the record, I don’t think money has anything to do this; if backers needed to keep the site afloat tried to influence Jane’s views, she’d quit and do something else; she’s changed careers before.) But something very good has been lost; a powerful organizer has been seduced by the idea that since the people we have aren’t giving us everything they should, they must not want to and must be torn down to make way for people who do. As annoying as that is, it is also very sad that someone who was just what we needed when things were very bad and we needed a revolution cannot see any other way forward than revolution when things are only not yet as good as we hoped.
SGEW
@Mnemosyne:
I quickly concede that you raise a very valid issue; I, myself, have made these very same points any number of times[1]. However, I still hold that there is something more that is bubbling at the edges of the matter – or, perhaps, even in its very heart; something essential.
[1] Adding, as always: read some god damned history, children!
nepat
This really is pretty simple. Don’t visit FDL, OpenLeft, Huffington Post, etc. I am successful at this every single day! Let them talk amongst themselves. And when they troll in your blogs of choice, don’t feed them. Eventually it needs to be understood that when you do the bidding of the enemy, you are the enemy. So why bother with them? It seems pointless to argue with people who make a federal case of their disappointment day after day.
And none of this is new. Take a ride in the Way Back Machine and revisit how the same crew reacted to Obama’s cabinet appointments, FISA, the bank bail-outs, Caroline Kennedy, Guantanamo, etc. It’s not like healthcare suddenly flipped this group. They’ve been consistently assaholic from the beginning. I’m not a psychologist, but there’s something deeply neurotic about a group of people as unyielding and intemperate as this one. Meds are probably the only real solution.
For the rest of us, there’s plenty of actual work to do – beginning with getting Martha Coakley across the finish line. And this blog has actually been very helpful with that (see, fundraising).
protected static
@Robin G.: Massachusetts is a lot more conservative than many people realize, particularly the further you move outside of the Rte 128 bubble (places like Northampton being exceptions proving the rule). There’re still a lot of old school conservative Catholic Dems in places like Worcester & New Bedford & Springfield who grudgingly tolerate social liberalism (if at all) and who hate the Boston-dominated state party.
Lisa K.
@nepat:
Same here. Since I do not patronize the sites of right wing psychos, why should I do any differently with left wing psychos?
General Winfield Stuck
@Max: Thanks!
I are an O-bot.
Emma Anne
@Quiddity:
Emo is a style (of music at first, but now of teenaged self expression). I like this site:
http://www.luv-emo.com/emo-kid.html
Brick Oven Bill
Coalitions of grievance groups are funny.
meh
I will pass along a bit of anecdotal information – a contractor in our office (we’re a non-profit – he’s a pro fundraiser), who is from MA, passed along this tidbit to me. I asked him WTF was going on in MA with them giving TK’s seat to a piker GOP – he said, yeah it’s pretty fucked. So I ask, what are you gonna do about it man – he says that him, and everyone that he knows, is planning on voting for coakley. They weren’t planning on voting at all since they figured it was going to be a cakewalk, but this past week has them shittin white. So they are all going to polls on Tuesday, holding their noses, and voting for an uninspiring candidate that they will probably help primary in two years. Left leaning Indy’s and moderate Dems up there are waking up to what’s at stake and what’s going on. Turnout will be better than predicted I figure…
JenJen
@MBL: Right, I know what Tora Bora was, but comparing letting the man who was responsible for murdering 3,000 innocents in one goddamned morning go, to a special election in Massachusetts? That seems a wee tad over the top to me. Oh, and dumb, too.
Here’s what I’d like to know: Does Sully think he’s helping with each “Coakley sucks, she’s godawful, how could anyone vote for this horrific, party-machine hack” post?
eemom
@Redshift:
hey Redshift! It’s so great to see you here.
I’ve wondered what you thought of the FDL meltdown, and this is about the most eloquent account I’ve ever seen from a longtime reader.
As folks here know, I’ve been less kind……
Anyway, welcome! You totally have found the bestest blog on the innertubz, and these guys are not gonna go batshit crazy on us.
— she who was once known as oddmommy
SGEW
@Redshift: Welcome! Don’t worry, we’ll abuse you in different ways, such as insulting your cat’s physique.
gwangung
Um…shouldn’t that be the preferred strategy in general? The “better Democrats” part of “More and better Democrats”?
eemom
@meh:
I am SO hoping you’re right, and all this current madness turns out to be just God’s way of getting the good Dems of Massachusetts to wake the fuck up, just in time. Maybe Ted Kennedy had a talk with Him……
General Winfield Stuck
@Redshift: Welcome dude/dudette. We are mean and crazy, but in a nice way.
beltane
@JenJen: There is a pattern of Sullivan becoming histrionic at times like these, and this is a perfect storm of circumstances for him: a president he admires very much; a female candidate he dislikes but feels forced to support; and his long abiding dislike of the Human Rights Campaign (notice he got a dig in at them in the piece).
JenJen
@meh: This is almost to the word what my friends in Massachusetts are saying.
@beltane: I did catch the out-of-context HRC dig, and laughed a bit to myself.
mr. whipple
“However, I still hold that there is something more that is bubbling at the edges of the matter – or, perhaps, even in its very heart; something essential.”
I think there’s just a generalized sense of anger out there, mainly due to the economy being shit, with no signs of serious rebound on the horizon. Half of this crap would be unnoticed/uncared about if the unemployment rate was 5% or people were fooled into thinking their homes had appreciated 50% and they could take a HELOC and spend out the wazoo.
We’ve gone 20 years where a lot of pretty serious problems with our economy has been papered over with bubbles. First tech, and then housing. In the meantime, our manufacturing economy and good paying jobs it provided has been gutted, while education costs have gone insanely high. Now, when we look for a way to rebuild/rebound from a recession, what do we have?
scav
I’m just now re-evaluating the whole Y2K kurtuffle. It may actually have been really about the latest wetware virus. Doesn’t seem to be ergot but by [rand(invisible entity)] it’s spreading.
General Winfield Stuck
@El Cid: or Obama’s Tora Tora Tora — wakeup call, bigtime.
Delia
@Redshift:
You do know that loving puppehs and kittehs is a requirement around, don’t you?
Especially Tunch and Lily.
Karatist Preacher
Sorry John, but if you are for the ‘professional football team from Baltimore’ (Browns) you’re asking for multiple emails from the ‘Make Them Accountable’ crowd.
Oda
A Dem loss in MA may end up being the best thing.
The HCR bill as it now stands mostly sucks. Wanting to pass anything with plans of coming back later to fit it is just unworkable. If it were that easy, where is our NCLB fix, or changes to the Bush tax cuts or the preservation of SS?
Once anything is passed, constituencies are born (cough*bought*cough) that are unassailable.
The impetus for heath reform is real and won’t go away if this bill does not pass. Pressure will continue to build and it will have another day. Passing a suckie bill will release all of that pressure and we’ll never get it changed.
I wish it weren’t true.
jeffreyw
@Redshift: Well said, I mostly lurked tho the sense of community was real for me. The format change killed that.
gwangung
You don’t like history, don’t you, Mr. Troll?
mr. whipple
@Redshift:
Welcome. Like yourself, I’m fairly new here as a regular because some of my favorite places have turned insane and I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Like you, I miss some of the people, but I’m more saddened that so many of them have gone around the bend.
jeffreyw
@Redshift: Remember Gabbly? And the Libby trial? Heady days.
Demo Woman
@Delia: I was going to say something similar. A while back a new arrival complained because the site had pet photos. Gee!
Scott
@Redshift:
Thanks for the insights. I was never the most regular visitor to FDL, and I had no idea why they started acting this way. It’s nice to know where it all had its genesis (and it gives me one more reason to hate the goddamn Paultards).
henqiguai
@Robin G. (#24):
You mean, aside from her being a crappy candidate ?
I’m not a native, but from what I’ve seen of Massachusetts politics, as others have pointed out, it’s 100% ole boys network, and just as venal as you want it to be.
And a Democratic Senate, House, and overwhelming Democratic State legislation dominance bedamned, Massachusetts is parochially conservative.
But that’s just my perspective, a damned reverse carpet bagger.
henqiguai
@Robin G. (#24):
You mean, aside from her being a crappy candidate ?
I’m not a native, but from what I’ve seen of Massachusetts politics, as others have pointed out, it’s 100% ole boys network, and just as venal as you want it to be.
And a Democratic Senate, House, and overwhelming Democratic State legislation dominance bedamned, Massachusetts is parochially conservative.
But that’s just my perspective, a damned reverse carpet bagger.
SGEW
@mr. whipple:
Yes, this is very close to my exact point. People (i.e, a certain proportion (plurality?) of low-information voters) are starting to realize that things are different. And that the “system” isn’t working to their advantage. But what does this mean?
JenJen
Fun with Twitter! Howard Kurtz is a real treasure:
He writes it as though he were a mere observer. Weird! Also:
And
Well, fuck Biden, huh? And his boss! Howie, you are really a piece of, uhhh…. work. Assknob.
malraux
@henqiguai: It was federal service in the military. Heinlein might have wanted to include the idea of other forms of government service as a route to enfranchisement, but in the book itself, you have to join the military (even if only as a contentious objector) to be a full citizen.
kay
@Max:
Romer didn’t have to take that job. She’s a career academic.
A “New Keynesian”.
She could have comfortably sat it out and bitched incessantly from the sidelines. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate alleged “liberals” attacking the liberal academic who chose to stick her hand up and volunteer during the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes.
The Raven
@Robin G.:
No-one seems to know. There is much speculation, and it seems to focus on the following factors. (1) That the Democratic leadership assumed they had a shoe-in and didn’t pick a strong candidate or campaign hard. The strongest freshman candidate would look small in comparison to Kennedy records, and the party’s leadership may not have considered this. (2) That Mass. Democrats assumed it was going to be a shoe-in, and didn’t plan to turn out (“meh’s” theory.) (3) That the national Democratic leadership may have refused to support a strong progressive, the type of Democratic candidate that is likely to do best in Mass. (4) That progressive activists in Massachusetts are too discouraged to campaign for Coakley. (5) The argument that John has rejected out of hand, I think unfairly: that the Democratic Party has made itself unpopular with Mass. Democrats and they are not turning out. I think all are probably contributing factors, but it’s only going to be sorted out after the election.
My guess is that @meh has the right of it–the progressives will wake up & turn out. Maybe. Croak!
New Yorker
If it wasn’t for the fact that their economies are no better, I’d seriously consider emigrating to Germany or Austria or somewhere else in western Europe. This country has lost its collective mind and I don’t want to be around when things get really bad.
SGEW
@JenJen: That made me go out and look for Biden’s remarks about Haiti. Found it:
“Devastated Beyond Recognition”
There’s a part of me that really, really likes to think that Joe Biden is for real.
burnspbesq
@Paul:
We could tell you that, but we would be lying. It is totally for reals.
mr. whipple
To me, it first means you have to get them back to work. I just don’t know how you do that.
nepat
@JenJen: Be patient with Sullivan. Unlike John, his conversion experience is incomplete. But he’s making progress. I’m not sure how many steps there are in a conversion, but it’s clear that whatever he once was, he no longer is.
ps to all – I’m in MA and let me give you an idea of what the past 48 hours have been like: a call from President Obama, a call from Bill Clinton, a call from Martha Coakley, two calls from the MA Dem party (asking if I knew where my polling station was), a call from an OFA volunteer (from Kentucky!), two quick polls, and a call from a Brown affiliate asking if I understood that voting for Coakley would lead to my tax dollars funding abortions. Coakley herself did an appearance in my small city today, there were people at major intersections holding Coakley signage, Obama will be at Northeastern U. in Boston tomorrow, Vickie Kennedy is on the tube in ads. It’s like nothing I’ve seen before in a Senate race here. The party is fully mobilized. It does indeed suck that it took this long for everyone to wake up but, believe me, everyone’s wide awake now.
pps – the bad news? Coakley didn’t do herself any favors referring to Curt Schilling as a Yankees fan.
Just Some Fuckhead
I can’t be the only one that is sick to fucking death of you whining about progressives. If you can’t tolerate diversity of opinion, being on the left side of the political spectrum might not be the place for you. From where I sit, it’s laughable that a two-time Bush voter would deign to weigh in on what sort of political activism should be tolerated on our side but it’s more easily explained as your authoritarian streak demanding absolute fealty to the man, whoever that man happens to be at the time.
Insofar as you may have what you feel is a good reason for stomping on ants while elephants run by, it creates an unhealthy environment as your sycophantic and toadying commenters seek to emulate or surpass your scorn. In short, you really aren’t helping and you well could be hurting just as much – or more – as you think others are. Physician, heal thyself.
JenJen
@SGEW: Me too. But Howie would prefer to snark at a time of utter human devastation. Kurtz picks out “unimaginable,” but then listen to Biden explain why he uses that word.
@nepat: Do I have to be patient with Sully? :-) And thanks for the reports from the ground! And I still say Curt Schilling’s bloody sock was fake. ;-)
Robin G.
@Just Some Fuckhead:
That reminds me, Master Cole, it’s time for your warm sake and daily tongue bath.
mr. whipple
Wasn’t she picked by primary voters?
Jules
emo progressive bullshit
On the nose John.
What a bunch of fucking whiners…I’m sick of “progressives” and I consider myself a progressive.
Darryl
WRT what SGEW, Mnemosyne, etc, are saying, I’ve been wondering the same sort of stuff, but warn that it’s virtually impossible to tell when you’re about to have a big crisis or overhaul. The senate is utterly wrecked and it’s impossible for the US government to tackle many serious problems anymore, but I don’t know if that necessitates dramatic change. Health Care was in crisis 15 years ago, and when reform failed, we just muddled along, the system getting worse, year after year. In 1994 the ascendant GOP looked as if they might remake government. That basically just petered out. The banking crisis could have initiated another depression. A year later, we can’t even get decent reregulation of those responsible.
While it certainly feels like drastic things are possible, there’s a whole lot of money and interrelationships that keep the miserable status quo in place.
Robin G.
@nepat:
Oh God in heaven please tell me you’re kidding. This is the worst news I’ve heard yet.
burnspbesq
@Redshift:
Welcome, old friend. You will be amazed at how many FDL refugees hang out here. It’s the best neighborhood bar on the Tubez.
Nick
@August J. Pollak: Kennedy ran in 2006, before he had cancer.
Jules
@mr. whipple:
Yes she won the primary.
The gal made some mistakes and just assumed the election against Brown would be a cake walk and got caught un-prepared. If she losses it will be no ones fault but her own.
Joe Beese
Confound that uppity Hamsher woman for de-energizing our base!
Try this experiment. Go around Massachusetts on Tuesday, walk up to people in the street, ask them if they’re going to vote, and then ask them (as you’ll have to at least half the time) why not.
And then count how many times left wing blogs are mentioned.
Hiram Taine
@SGEW:
Among a lot of other things the financial sector bailout has enraged a great many people, left and right, it was lightning-quick and truly egregious.
TARP: Proposed on Sept 19, 2008, enacted Oct 3, 2008, two goddamn weeks.
And we’ve been fighting for a fucking year to get some not even half-assed health insurance reform bill that bails out the insurance industry and puts the IRS in place as their enforcers.
The health care crisis is every bit as important and as pressing as the financial crisis was, people are *dying* because of this shit. The blinding speed with which the financial sector was bailed out combined with the snail-on-
valium xanaxthorazine-swimming-in-molasses pace of health insurance reform has made it very clear to a great many of us that we little people don’t count for shit in the view of our chosen representatives.And now the banksters are back to awarding themselves literally billions of dollars in bonuses for a job well done.. The anger has gotten well past the pitchforks and torches stage and we are now moving into oiling the guillotines territory with that portion of the public paying any attention at all to politics. And that portion is talking to their friends and family that don’t pay attention and the rage is the part getting communicated.
People, both left and right are mightily pissed, and in my view rightfully so. Where this will all end up is anyone’s guess but the next few years should prove interesting indeed.
The Grand Panjandrum
@nepat:
OK, that is a smear on Yankees fans everywhere! For that reason alone Coakley should lose. Now I get it. Go Brownie!
Comrade Luke
Look, I’m not happy with everything Obama’s done, but wtf is removing Congress people you don’t like with no plan as to how to replace them with better Democrats going to accomplish one fucking thing?
I’ve really been biting my tongue on responding to everything that’s been going on lately, because once I start I’ll spend an hour crafting a multi-thousand-word diatribe. Still, seeing the Lyndon LaRouche people manning a table with a picture of Obama with a Hitler mustache at the corner outside my favorite coffee shop this morning was really the last straw.
We used to read an article in the newspaper about how a bill was passed, often not even knowing how our own representatives voted. Now we have Congresspeople tweeting “As soon as I get done with this shit I’m gonna go vote against HCR.” With the 24/7 newscycle and the blogosphere, we’re getting an unfiltered view of the process, and guess what – Democrats are fucktards too! Hoocoodanode?!
It wasn’t so long ago that the mantra was “If you want to improve things you need to do it in the primaries. And all movements start local; if you really want change, contribute to a strong primary challenger, or even better go serve on your local school board.” Now, FDL et al aren’t even looking at the Republicans; they’re more concerned with the number of pelts they get than they are with actually improving things by having good replacements in line.
That’s like crossing the street after only checking one direction of traffic, and it will end just about as well.
And regarding the Mass. Senate race: regardless of whether Coakley is a mediocre or downright shitty candidate, my question is: How in sweet holy fuck did the Democrats not have a kick ass candidate to field in Massafuckingchusetts?
General Winfield Stuck
Ribbit, Ribbit. my scorn Ribbit has always ribbit ribbit surpassed Knee deep knee deep Cole’s.
GET OFFIN MY LILYPAD!!
Kerry Reid
I phone banked for Coakley today — mostly leaving a lot of messages. I definitely got the impression that people in MA are weary of the barrage of calls. Most were pretty polite, even if they were telling me they were voting for Brown (not too many of those). One 80-something gent won me over completely — when I asked “Are you planning on voting for Martha Coakley,” he wryly responded “Oh, at least once!”
As a Chicagoan, I appreciate that strategy.
PeterJ
Obviously the entire Democratic leadership lives in Massachusetts and due to Obama depressing the hell out of democrats, the Dem leadership where the only ones to vote in the primary. All 664,195…
JenJen
@Just Some Fuckhead: Sycophants? Toadies? Come the fuck on now.
I can only speak for myself, but I was making the same arguments, sadly almost verbatim, in 2000, against Naderites. It really does, from my perspective, seem to have come full circle. Bitching about it is one thing. Nobody’s saying “it can’t be tolerated.”
You know what? It is a little weird that my go-to political site these days is that of a two-time Bush voter. I’ll give you that.
PeterJ
“Are you planning on voting for Martha Coakley,” he wryly responded “Oh, at least once!”
I bet BigGovernment will have a voter fraud in Massachusetts exclusive any minute now based just on that quote.
burnspbesq
One of Andrew’s readers apparently think this is a plausible scenario.
Sure. And when I wake up tomorrow, espn.com will be reporting that Albert Pujols has agreed to terms with the three-time defending World Series champion Mets.
I have no idea how to communicate with people who are this completely delusional.
General Winfield Stuck
@Joe Beese:
No one claims Jane is “de-energizing” our base. That is perfectly natural at this point with a new president of a new party in power. The problem is her wingnut love boating and doing their work for them.
But go ahead, puff up about yer non existent importance. It is amusing and good for troll fun.
General Winfield Stuck
@JenJen:
Come now. Be nice to fuckhead. or you will run him off again and Cole will have to put up another JSF front page photo contribution.
moe99
I dropped out of the FDL community about a year ago. I was mainly a lurker for the past couple years but I saw the shift and took my time and attention elsewhere, ie, here.
A friend of mine commented several weeks ago to me that where there really is only one party in power–at the state level–there’s no real competition for votes, or ideas, and the party in power grows without any real external checks to it power, and abuse results. What he added, is our political system is designed to be a two party system, but it assumes that there are two political parties that are both serious political parties that have the welfare of its citizens as its highest goal. In Washington state I don’t think we have the same problems of unfettered corruption as you see in IL or perhaps in MA, but I worry that it could become that here. And right now with the budget crisis threatening to overwhelm the state, the Democrats as party in power are more concerned with staying in power than they are the welfare of its citizens. I would bet that is the norm across the country.
Redshift
@eemom: Hi, oddmommy! Good to see you again!
PeterJ
The major flaw in that prediction would be that I doubt that Democrats could explain the filibuster to most voters or that the media would care to do it.
The Grand Panjandrum
@burnspbesq:
Palinese.
nepat
@Robin G: re Coakley and Schilling. It’s true. And it’s become an unfit-for-office offense to the teabaggers.
John S.
I am of the opinion that you are complete and total buffoon. And if you can’t tolerate that opinion, then FUCK YOU!
Redshift
@SGEW: Hah! I’m sneaky there — I have rabbits! (But I have accepted Tunch as my personal Lord and savior.)
eemom
@burnspbesq:
see, this is the problem with being a non-sports person — in the unlikely event that I were to hear such report tomorrow morning it would sound like just another boring sports report to me.
Also, I have no idea why it was such a bad thing for Coakley to say some guy was a Yankee fan…….though I do have a vague idea that there’s some issue between the Yankees and the Boston, whatever color socks they are.
SGEW
@The One, the Only, Just Some Fuckhead:
[Oh gawd, let us not have JSF (hi!) and Stuck re-engage in their death-match of snark.]
You have a pretty sharp point there, JSF. Far sharper than I would put it, but still on point (as it were). It is, indeed, important to note that the “left” or “progressive” “coalition” in the Democratic party is far, far, far more heterogeneous than anything seen on the “right” side of the aisle (putting aside the current strangeness of the “tea” movement, for the nonce). And, as our beloved Mr. Cole has himself stated, he has . . . well . . . issues . . . with authority figures (I, myself, have severe psychological/philosophical issues with authority figures, but from the opposite direction, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment).
However, so saying (as I say) . . . I think that you should still engage and critique the bottom line here: John’s (nominally) addressing the issue of tactics, not the question of “ideological purity” qua purity. If anything, the quantum of compromise (as a tactical, pragmatic matter) has become more of a touchstone of late; somewhat contra to any criticism of lockstep regularity you may lay down.
Also, too – you, I, and Stuck can all agree: being an “O-Bot” in fact (and not in jest) is an unadmirable position to take.
[ETA: full disclosure, SGEW + a l’il too much, probably]
Redshift
@jeffreyw: Yeah, those were amazing times.
JenJen
@General Winfield Stuck: I know the two of you have your issues. I think JSF has a point, and I totally see where he’s coming from. But goddammit I am not about to let it pass when any progressive, just like they did in 2000, thinks they can insult people in lieu of constructing an actual argument. If you happen to agree with Cole, or if your opinion about, say, FDL happens to be strong, then you’re a “toadie”?
Fuck that. I know how this movie ends. It’s called “W.”
Grr. I so didn’t want to go through this exercise today.
Robin G.
@nepat: The teabaggers have a point.
Edit: Fixed who this was @. It’s not easy to comment from a mobile.
scudbucket
@moe99: the Democrats as party in power are more concerned with staying in power than they are the welfare of its citizens.
See The Iron Law of Institutions for a nice critique of what you’re talking about.
Karatist Preacher
I could give a flying f*** about what Curt Schilling says about anything.
General Winfield Stuck
@SGEW:
Please don’t speak for me. I really are an O-bot. And I have many times described what that means –to me. And if Clinton were presnit, or Biden, I would be a Hillbot or a Bidenbot. Doesn’t mean I like everything they do, does mean I will continue to support them unless they go way off the reservation, which Obama has not even close done IMO.
Until then, I are an Obot – not in jest, but defined above. and another way to describe it would be Yellow Dog Democrat, or almost anything but a blood sucking neanderthal wingnut or republican.
And you can also call yourself anything you wish.
Ailuridae
@General Winfield Stuck:
Actually the problem with Jane (and others I like somewhat like Keith Olbermann) is that they are using right-wing frames and tactics to argue. Drift around FDL and see their dishonest discussion of the excise tax. Consistently those who want to kill the bill present the excise tax unclearly as being a 40% tax on the entirety of the size of the plan rather than the amount the plan exceeds 24K or 28K. What’s the difference?
As any poster here can see, Progressives are awful with numbers. As a whole, they misunderstand economics, finance and how taxation works. So presenting it as a tax on the whole amount people can run the numbers in their head and go “Wow, if I have a 32K plan via my employer there is going to be a 13K tax on my health plan!” when actually the number is far smaller than that, like 1.6K. Additionally ignoring all rules of economics they then conclude that insurance companies will pass these costs on 100% to consumers. Countdown did the same shit the other night. Bull Fucking Shit. But they are pissy because the public option got pulled so now they are engaging in dishonest scorched earth taxes to attack a bill that’s nearly 50% Medicaid and a huge progressive step forward.
Whatever. I remember the first political writing I read consistently on the internet was the Daily Howler. We are a short jump from needing a comparable site to police the left blogosphere. FDL is a continuous fount of disinformation. Its really no different from the same handful of posters here who keep making dishonest posts despite having the facts pointed out to them many times over. No intellectual integrity.
Comrade Luke
@Ailuridae:
Are Republicans any better?
General Winfield Stuck
@JenJen:
The only issue I have with JSF is described in his comment. Not the first time the dude has called me a toady. His issue with me may be different, I don’t know, but that is mine and that is all it is for me/.
tbogg
Usually at about this time (during the Daily 2 Minute FDL Hate) someone is pointing out that that TBogg guy is still pretty good and it is sad that he is still there. Also, Spencer Ackerman.
Just a reminder.
Carry on….
Just Some Fuckhead
Stuck, do you still have all your teeth? Just curious.
SGEW
@General Winfield Stuck:
Acknowledged. Sorry (sincerely).
After all, under that metric, I, too, am an “O-Bot.” But, as has been mentioned before, I find the whole snarky self-description as a mindless drone a tad unsettling. But that’s me, you know.
Bostondreams
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Yes, and the moran who said Cole should apologize for voting for Obama…what is your response to that? Do you honestly believe the alternative was feasible?
Or do you think we need to destroy the village in order to save it? “Oh, when things get REALLY bad, people will vote Progressive.”
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
All but one. Still have fully brown hair and look ten years younger than I am. and have even lost 20 pounds. I do have a couple of long term health issues, but nobody is perfect.
Any more grandfather jokes?
ds
@Ailuridae:
It really has been amazing to see the left-wing criticism of Obama recycle the exact same (inaccurate) criticisms from the right-wing.
These same progressives used to argue forcefully that there was corporate welfare in Medicare that needs to be cut, that taxation should no longer be a dirty word, as long as taxes are structured properly, that regulations are necessary and effective.
Now you hear a bunch of incoherent shrieks about Obama killing the elderly to funnel funds to private insurance, pushing a massive tax increase on the middle class, and that insurance regulations will never work.
I think left-wing criticism is perfectly fine, as long as the criticism is accurate, and the criticism is actually coming from the left. But we’re hearing a bunch of bullshit you’d expect to see on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, and amazingly the same people who call out Republicans for stupidly believing Palin’s bullshit are accepting the firebagger bullshit as fact.
I’m left to conclude the firebaggers are basically right wing drones. How long until we find out that FreedomWorks is sending money to Jane Hamsher?
scudbucket
@tbogg: ftw
John Cole
Oh, blow it out your ass. I find it laughable that some jackass who calls himself fuckhead has a problem with me telling idiots to stop sending me whinging and unsolicited emails. Additionally, while I did vote for the Bush Republicans, who were disastrous, they were at least competent enough to keep the House for 6 of their eight years and win two terms. Additionally, I’m not trying to stifle opinions, I’m trying to get people to quit doing self-destructive crap that helps no one. You fucking morons are so caught up in voicing your opinions and screaming about anything that does not pass the Feingold/Kucinich test (and in the case of HCR, even things that DO PASS the Feingold test), that you have presented no coherent strategy for anything other than fundraising for your ownselves and getting your silly mugs on cable tv. Our progressive betters are like the fucking underpants gnomes:
1.) Defeat historic opportunity to pass flawed Health care bill.
2.) …….
3.) SINGLE PAYER!
1.) Attack all blue dogs and lose majority
2.) ……
3.) Progressive nirvana
1.) Drive Emanuel out of office
2.) ……
3.) Dennis Kucinich’s agenda
I’m not mocking you and your whimpering cohorts because of your beliefs, I’m mocking you because you are fucking idiots who are doing more harm than good.
SGEW
@tbogg: Sorry TBogg! I know I’m predictable, but I really do like Spencer Ackerman’s reportage and blogging, and I rely on his Washington Independent stuff. And, uh, your stuff is pretty good as well.
Trying to be sensible here.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
this is a most unjustified attack, imo, and also I take issue with being referred to as a “sycophantic and toadying commenter” seeking to “emulate or surpass” anybody’s scorn. I think I do scorn pretty well all by myself, thank you; I am not nor would I ever in this universe be a Bush voter; and if I have any issue with authority figures it is certainly not of the Dear Leader variety.
Jeez, Fuckhead. The first time I commented here you were the only one who was nice to me. : (
Just Some Fuckhead
@Bostondreams: I DON’T CARE. That’s my response. How fucking hard was that?
kay
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I think two-time Bush voters understood the politics better. Obviously. Considering the result. They were wrong about everything else, but they understood the politics better from Reagan to 2006.
I think the politics of left wing critics appearing on television with right wing critics isn’t working. I think the only reason they’re getting invited is because they’re critics, and in that sense they’re getting played, or playing, I don’t know which.
I don’t think they’re advancing anything, Fuckhead. It just sounds like a chorus of critics.
Media happily play along. “Both sides” now means “two critics of Obama and the Democratic Congress, one from the…Left and one from the …Right!”. It’s a constant barrage of negatives, and I think it seeps into the broader dialogue.
Incidentally, I reject the idea that I’m John Cole’s toady. I agree with him on the political efficacy of this approach. I don’t think it’s working.
JenJen
@General Winfield Stuck: I know, which is why I wanted to clarify, perhaps clumsily, that my defense of my opinion was my own, and not that of some toady. :-)
Yutsano
@eemom: I promise to be nice to you if you agree to disclose the secret to your agvolemono soup. Otherwise all bets are off.
(BTW I make a pretty decent spanakopita.)
JenJen
@John Cole:
You were so clearly not present during the inter-ideology Nader Wars of 2000, but yet, you sound exactly like me, then. Fucking sycophant.
Bostondreams
@eemom:
As someone who has a shrine to both 2004 and 2007 in my office and about two dozen autographs from various players from the 48, 67, 75, 86, 04, and 07 World Series’, I will simply link you to this wonderful video that explains the passion that a comment like this can engender among my people when it is aimed at the man who helped destroy the Empire, at least briefly:
Dennis Leary Makes a Promise
eemom
@Yutsano:
ouch. Dude, that’s a sore spot. I LOVE avgolemono soup, but I have NEVER been able to make it taste like my mother’s. : ( : (
willf
Look, the easy way a lot of us can write off other blogs without any idea of what those Blogs are saying, or what their top authors are saying, that’s just daft.
I don’t think anyone at FDL or Open Left* is dishonest, I think they have strong opinions with which you can disagree, but let’s keep the focus on the politicans and the media.
Talk about a circular firing squad.
“… when actually the number is far smaller than that, like 1.6K.”
Could you show me a source for that?
*diarists and commenters not included, same as KOS or any other blog similarly structured.
donovong
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Back at ya, dickhead. If you don’t like this place, then why don’t you hang out your own blog shingle, and see just how many syncophants you can dredge up? I suspect you would be right up there with your buddy at FDL. Of course, you would have to divvy up the lunatic fringe amongst yourselves.
Now, you’ll have to excuse me, It’s time for my lord and savior JC’s spongebath.
Laura W
@General Winfield Stuck: They fight like cats in heat, don’t they?
But the make-up sex is HOT HOT HOT.
Redshift
@tbogg: Yeah, you guys are all right. ;-)
FWIW, I don’t think it’s sad that you guys are still there, or Marcy. I don’t care for the direction Jane has taken, but I don’t think the site is a lost cause.
gwangung
That’s pretty much simple math; the only relevant thing is if the tax is marginal or not. (Um, you’re not trying to prove the point that progressive critics aren’t good at math, are you?)
(Well, actually cheap shot. I KNOW people are bad at marginal rates)
Bostondreams
@Just Some Fuckhead:
So, if you don’t care, then why are you even here?
Ailuridae
@Comrade Luke:
Are Republicans any better?
Hrmmm. I think there is a huge grouping of progressives who are very bright, write well and understand policy who are essentially economically illiterate. My experience with Republicans is limited to my immediate family (my dad is kind of an Appalachian version of Hank Hill) and the traders and poker players I know. From that second group of people I can’t think of many that don’t understand marginal tax rates and the like. Some of this is left-brain/right-brain stuff of course. I struggle to write clearly and am very quantitatively oriented; I imagine most of my Republican/libertarian friends are similar.
I don’t mean to launch a broadside against progressives but rather than to indicate how easily they are mislead in matters of finance and tax policy. My issue is with progressive sites like FDL; FDL is simultaneously arguing that HCR reform as currently constructed is a huge corporate give away to insurance companies while arguing against the first and best attempt to stop the currently existing health care structure which is a “giveaway” an order of magnitude as large to private health care companies. These positions are incompatible. Jon Walker isn’t dumb so he knows this and continues along this path anyway.
SGEW
@Laura W: O! The throw rug.
I love this place.
Yutsano
@eemom: The Wyoming cowboy (the one who shocked the shit out of my by engaging in heterosexual reproduction) absolutely adores avgolemono. His ex taught him how to make it, and I can sometimes get him going for days eating it. I guess his ex taught his mom. You should tie down your mom and watch every single step she does. Of course that didn’t work for me and my mom’s Spanish rice, so I feel your pain right there.
Emma
Is there a word worse than ignorant for the people who believe that if the health care bill is defeated Congress will just march right into the fray next summer and start all over again? Do they have any sense of the history of health care in this country? Both Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton refused to compromise and lived to regret it. If we don’t pass this one… give it up for another twenty years.
According to a recent study, 45,000 people a year die in America from issues relating to lack of health care. Even if we only manage to cut that figure down by 60% isn’t that a worthy goal? Or are those deaths acceptable as “collateral” of the battle?
Dorothy Sayers was right. “The first thing a principle does is kill somebody.”
JenJen
@tbogg: Also, I like Marci Wheeler’s twitter feed. And also too, when she says “blowjob” on teevee.
@Laura W: I love you. Don’t worry, not in “that” way. I mean, The Cars?
willf
No, just ignorant on this point.
So the only part of the plan which would be taxed is that above the threshold? Is that correct?
Just Some Fuckhead
@eemom:
In a sane world, that would be some sort of hint. Throw me on the pyre with the rest of ’em.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Laura W: Thank you! I was looking for that comment and couldn’t find it. (I guess we are witnessing the foreplay?)
SGEW
@John Cole: I would just like to say: calm down a tad. Insults aren’t really helping here.
But then, I’m a measly mouthed moderate. So fuck me, right?
Carrie
@Laura W: Lol.
So glad you saved that. Classic!
Yutsano
@Laura W: If that is not in the lexicon, IT SHOULD BE!
John Cole
@SGEW: That is JSF- that is how we chat. We are exchanging pleasantries via google chat right now.
moe99
@ scudbucket:
Thanks! That’s a keeper.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Just Some Fuckhead:
In short, God Damn Liberal America! Goddammit!
Hey, I feel your pain. I mean, “a” pain.
Just kidding.
Or am I? Bwahahahahaha.
Heh.
Don’t mind me, I’m just pissed about the Cardinals game.
General Winfield Stuck
@Laura W: It is all a puzzle to me. I guess they are doing the I’m sorry”s live chat right now.
Scratches head, reaches for plastic Unicorn.
SGEW
@John Cole: Duly noted: But every broadside you fire at JSF has collateral damage with the lurkers who may agree with his underlying points (not to mention, oh, say, TBogg). You are a public figure, Mr. Cole, whether you like it or not.
Yutsano
@John Cole: So it’s a love-hate relationship and we only get to see half of it. Gotcha.
Ailuridae
@willf:
“… when actually the number is far smaller than that, like 1.6K.”
I can even do the math for you. Threshold is 28K. Total value of plan is 32K. Taxable amount of plan is 4K. Tax rate is 40%. Total value is …. drum roll please …. yep. 1.6 Fucking K.
What was that I wrote upthread about progressives not understanding the basics of finance and taxation and being easily misled? Oh, yeah, that.
willf
My issue is with progressive sites like FDL; FDL is simultaneously arguing that HCR reform as currently constructed is a huge corporate give away to insurance companies while arguing against the first and best attempt to stop the currently existing health care structure which is a “giveaway” an order of magnitude as large to private health care companies
I believe you have misread their posts.
They believe that HCR is a giant giveaway to insurance companies which will make the status quo worse. The positive things in the bill, like the medicaid expansion, are not worth the cost of making already entrenched interests like AHIP and PHARMA even stronger.
So, no real contradiction there.
Ailuridae
@willf:
Yeah that’s the point. Do you read FDL regularly? If you do and you didn’t already know that, why is that the case?
The answer is painfully obvious.
pablo
hahahaha! I liked that site for years, (Caro was one of the first to publish my ‘toons) but she became a major PUMA, and then she lost me, I unsubscribed before the election. I think the site tried to become non-political for a while, but it appears the seething rage came back in spades, (NPI)
Talk Left was a millimeter behind, but redeemed themselves after the election.
willf
But Ailuridae, I read dozens of blogs a day, including this one. Which ones should I be reading?
gwangung
@willf: Yes, that’s been that way from the beginning. See for example here. Not sure it would make any sense if it didn’t work like that.
Comrade Luke
@Ailuridae:
Well, imo most people don’t know how to make change, so I don’t know how they could know much about finance and/or economics.
I’m well educated and I still have to go over to wikipedia or someplace like that to get the definitions of some of this stuff. I never took those classes in school and never had to know it in my day-to-day life, so I need to teach myself. I don’t think most people want to do that, or have the time.
John S.
Just make sure to throw him on the correct pyre.
JSF seems to think the pyre is where all the outspoken lefties/progressives get thrown. Little does he realize that the pyre I threw him on was the one inhabited by people that repeatedly scream how naive everyone is for not accepting that HCR could have passed the Senate with a simple majority.
I have little use for such foolishness.
JenJen
Sigh. So everyone spouts off here, gets all upset (yes, I am upset), and then the principals run off to Google Chat set to a Cars soundtrack. How poignant.
I like the nightlife baby!
ETA: Best Ric Ocasek lyric ever: “Chicken counters fill your bowls.” (A Dream Away)
willf
Taxable amount of plan is 4K.
Apologies for not being clear, I was asking you where you read that the taxable part of the plan was only that above the income threshold.
Do you have a link?
It’s not that I don’t believe you, I’d like the info for myself.
Just Some Fuckhead
LOL!
Anyway, gotta get ready for the football game so I’m not gonna be able to reply to everyone personally. Rest assured I’ve given your thoughtful remarks the consideration they merit. (*rolls eyes*)
John, we can fight it out offline. I’m actually not one of that cohort so I can’t really speak to all that opiate-fueled nonsense.
kay
@JenJen:
Meanwhile…
Survey by the liberal FDL has @SteveChabot winning 56-39% over Democrat Rep. Driehaus. http://is.gd/6ogI2 about 6 hours ago from TweetDeck
johnboehner
John Boehner
Ailuridae
@willf:
They have made an explicit point of being opposed to the excise tax. The excise tax finally puts a cap on untaxed income flowing from employers to for profit private insurers which is horrible tax policy (its insanely regressive) and more importantly is more than 10X as large as the money from the increased pool of people that will be “forced to buy” private insurance which was their caterwauling about the individual mandate.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You have a good idea.
JenJen
@kay: Yup! Saw that poll yesterday and honestly laughed my ass off. Being right here near the district (sadly, I’m a Jean Schmidt constituent in the OH-02), I’d recommend taking that poll with an entire shaker of salt.
MelodyMaker
@Redshift:
Yeah. What Redshift wrote. I used to love that site. The redesign is what pushed me away more than anything else. I hate clicking. Also, registering. hate that too.
SGEW
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I think I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating:
Fuck you, guy.
;)
General Winfield Stuck
Just received Public Enemies from netflix. Talk about spot on Karma.
Ailuridae
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I don’t know if I take you or Corner Stone’s eye rolls as a higher compliment. Its tough to decide which one of you is more of the quintessentially ignorant internet tough guy. It doesn’t matter though. You’re both painfully fucking stupid and don’t even try to enter the deep end on anything of substance.
kay
@willf:
Nah. The biggest expansion of a single-payer program in a generation isn’t “worth the cost”. I would have checked with the proposed beneficiaries of the Medicaid expansion, first, before the cost/benefit analysis, personally, but why ask them? You know what’s best.
kay
@JenJen:
Thanks. I wondered what you thought.
Emma Anne
@Redshift:
Damn, there’s a lot of former FDL folks here.
The thing I still miss, to this day, was the underlying assumption of feminism there. Every time Anne Laurie posts anything but a pet picture, she gets scolded for her embarrassing feminist leanings. Sigh. But I am here and not there, nonetheless.
Davis X. Machina
We’re seeing — take your pick — the modern equivalent of the Corn Laws, or Irish Home Rule.
I expect the Party to split. The only questions are who leads the fragments, and in what direction.
SGEW
@General Winfield Stuck: Oh great, now I have to redo my whole Public Enemies critique again.
Worst. Camera. Operation. Ever.
Get a professional, Mann!
Ailuridae
@willf:
I don’t read blogs much for information so I don’t know. And that’s not my point. FDL is clearly avoiding stating how the tax works on a pretty regular basis or any regular reader of their site would know how it works as they would explain it every time they wrote about it to make sure their readership was clear, right? You know, if they weren’t openly trying to misrepresent what it contained
I imagine Ezra Klein has a good piece on it as he is an excise tax advocate but here is a long Center for Budget and Policy Priorities piece on the excise tax:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2957#_ftn8
PeterJ
I think it’s nice that now when the republicans are having problem raising money that the nice people over at FDL are helping them out by paying for their polls.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
well, ok — if you are going to INSIST on being a condescending asshole.
It is about the tone, not the substance.
And if you and John are secretly giggling together over at google chat and making fools out of the rest of us……well, whatevah.
willf
Thanks gwangung. I appreciate it.
So, if the excise tax is so tiny, why is the Senate so dead set on having one?
I remember – waaay back when – all reasonable bloggers* were being excoriated by the media for stubbornly sticking with a purely symbolic public option*¹
But if the excise tax is so tiny as to be almost symbolic, why go through the fight over one? Aren’t they then being as extremist as others who want to fight over the losses in reproductive rights, or the mandate?
*(not too pure, not too much of a sell out, I was one at the time, apparently)
*¹ (even though it did provide the basic structure to add onto later)
Ailuridae
@Comrade Luke:
That’s largely my point. And FDL is using that fact to misinform its readers who likely fall into the same category as you. I fail to see how that’s ok or why other people on the left need to pretend they aren’t shitting in the sandbox.
JenJen
@kay: It’s hilarious. I’m not kidding. The OH-01 is the “progressive” part of Cincinnati, and yeah, it took them awhile to oust “Combover Steve” Chabot. But it’s laughable to think it’s that kind of blowout. It’s tight, it will always be tight. But 17 points! Is that what FDL is wasting their contributions on? Oh, so funny. Not in a good way.
ETA: I had no idea that was an FDL-commissioned poll until you told me. Seriously? Gawd.
kay
@PeterJ:
Exactly.
General Winfield Stuck
@SGEW: Yea, I read that in some review. The hand held camera shit. If it is, I can’t watch it. Blair Witch Project gave me the dizzy vapors.
Couldn’t watch that monster movie in NYC. Transformers, I think, oh well.
John Cole
@eemom: not making fun of you at all. Actually talking about hernias atm. Exciting stuff, hunh?
Ailuridae
@willf:
Who said the excise tax was tiny?
The excise tax will raise a lot of money either by taxing the free flow of money from employers to insurers or by encouraging insurers to offer less costly plans.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
John, you just keep blogging the same fucking thing over and over and over. Disaffection from the left has always been around and it isn’t going anywhere. They aren’t going to magically start hanging up Obama Hope posters in response to your incessant bitching. They are in your head and I wish you would let them out.
SGEW
@General Winfield Stuck: No no, I have a great esteem for experimental hand-held camera operation, when the narrative calls for it. Rather, even tho’ I have a great respect for an auteur’s desire for their own framing, Mann himself was the camera op for Public Enemies, and I found it to be self-indulgent, unnecessary, and remarkably distracting (ok, great, throw a 50 mil on there and get right up in your actors’ faces; it does not help their performances! You are not Cassavetes! You’re making a crime thriller, not a psychologically resonant character study! Lame!).
/end amateur cinema critic
kay
@JenJen:
I have Bob Latta. Who was elected in a special election and ran as a moderate Republican, on his father’s record. He ran against a Grover Norquist-backed candidate in the primary, by portraying Norquist as “out of state operative”. It was clever and it worked. People here were like “those DC operatives won’t tell us what to do! We know the Lattas!”
I had Republicans here telling me he was a moderate and an old school Republican, back when they were all apologetic for foisting lunatics on me. I was not fooled, JenJen! I no longer trust them as far as I can throw them. “yeah, sure he is”.
Except. Sadly. As it turned out. It was all a lie. He’s a lock-step wingnut, in all but name. Sort of a wimpy, back-benching, apologetic wingnut, to boot.
willf
kay,
I wish the medicaid expansion was better, I do. I wish it would make sure that more people got the care they need, and that those who were still going to go bankrupt under this monumental fuck up of a parody of reform were thereby not allowed to slip through the safety net.
But.
Medicaid doesn’t work that way.
It’s not federally funded, it’s regulated on a state by state basis, and some of those states are just fucking pathetic about it.
Because of the way it works in my state, I can pay for gas, food, rent and the occasional night out, but if I want real healthcare, I have to go on foodstamps. That’s not going to change under this fucked up thing we’re going to get, and I’m trying to figure out why it matters to you whether I’m coldhearted about my own fucking healthcare or not.
I’m ignorant, I admit that.
Now fucking show me what is in this bill that’s so fucking historic, because the only thing I see which could be called historic is the opportunity that’s being pissed away, here.
gbear
Welcome FDL refugees, but please don’t do the FDL bit of posting comments just to shout ‘Hi!’ to each other. That was one of the most annoying things about comments at FDL (along with having Jane come along and call you a stupid fucking asshole everytime you disagreed with her on one of her threads).
And ‘Hi!’ TBogg. I miss your old blog.
-gcrab
clonecone
@Just Some Fuckhead: Do you have some free time later? I was thinking that you should take a moment and go fuck yourself.
JenJen
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): Since when is Cole, or anyone here, saying FDL should hang Unity Pony posters in their collective garage? What is up with this kind of strawman horseshit?
Christ. Are we even allowed to use the internets for bitching anymore?
@kay: Yeeks. That’s a cautionary tale if ever I’ve heard one.
willf
Less costly plans means lower quality plans. That’s the way insurance companies work. Won’t that result in employees getting crappier policies?
General Winfield Stuck
@gbear: We can set the low bar at Hi motherfucker! and see how she goes.
Chuck Butcher
While it is entirely mockable for any left personage to make common cause with someone like Norquist who is entirely opposed to anything left it is just as mockable to watch this “I’m a good Democrat and you’re not – no I am and you ain’t” shit.
Calling me a progressive or liberal would leave me feeling somewhat insulted – I am a fuckng lefty, period. I may support liberal stuff as the possible versus the impossible, but that doesn’t change shit about who I am. There is a whole lot about this “Reform” bill to be upset about. I happen to believe the President could have used his office and abilities to better effect but that doesn’t make this thing his fault.
You can talk about fixing this thing a-la Civil Rights, but you do seem to neglect the lack of massive subsidization of the KKK in that bill. I’m pretty sure this mess will drive a stake in the heart of actual reform for a generation, but you all win and all I can do is try to avoid the nasty fall out.
As a multiple office holder in the Democratic Party my job (free) was to elect Democrats and not throw rocks at them. I resigned all those posts for that reason. I may select candidates I have enough enthusiasm to work for but I’m done with the general committment stuff and sitting Senators can kiss my ass. I have a (D)emocrat after my name not a (L)iebercrat.
If you can’t get that without being pissed, then tell me how much money and effort you’re ready to put into Ho Lieberman’s re-election to keep the (D) thing going. I wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire – YMMV.
Anne Laurie
@beltane:
This is approximately the point where those of us in the Northern Hemisphere unconsciously start to notice that the days are getting longer. The role of Seasonal Affective Disorder in grassroots sociopolitical movements is sorely underexamined.
kay
@JenJen:
The whole thing was tragic. Our candidate was horrible. A very nice person, but a horrible candidate. She is married to a (much older) retired cop and they spent his retirement savings when the national party stopped funding her.
By the end, I couldn’t look her in the eye, I felt so bad. I knew she was going to get killed. The district is geographically huge and there was just no way she could compete.
The only saving grace was that they didn’t have children. If she had been spending college funds or shoe money or something I would have intervened.
WereBear
@John Cole: Aaaurgh. I think you’re right.
And these people are going to ruin the rep…
Part of it, too, was all that time just building pie in the sky, because there was no way we would get anything sensible and humane.
Mayken
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Not sure what that requirement would accomplish. Some of the whiniest of the Tea Party wingers are former military.
Darryl
Thinking that by taking down moderate Dems you’ll create liberal Dem success, is just the mirror-image of tea-bagging.
I guess stupidity is not entirely limited to the Right.
Ailuridae
@willf:
Less costly plans means lower quality plans. That’s the way insurance companies work. Won’t that result in employees getting crappier policies?
Actually, no. Expense of care and quality of care, while positively correlated it isn’t a one for one exchange. There’s a ton of research done that shows quality of care within specific geographies varies greatly independent of price. Again, you’re an FDL reader apparently and you do not know any of this. Why, exactly, is that?
A decrease in dollars spent on health care benefits will result in an increase in wages. This isn’t rocket science.
Also, while I enjoy these exchanges on these threads this has been going on for months now with a new poster each thread trying to exhaust people’s patience by explaining piece by piece how the HCR bill works. That can’t be a coincidence.
JenJen
@kay: Shoe money?!? I’d have stepped in and stopped the bleeding. :-)
Thanks for the insight, kay.
Ailuridae
@Chuck Butcher:
You have consistently misrepresented basic facts at every turn in every thread about HCR. Its good to see that you are consistent.
clonecone
@willf: “Less costly plans means lower quality plans.” That’s not true. I’ve seen the descriptions of the these Cadillac plans. My plan costs $12,000 less than the excise tax threshold and it provides much more coverage with very low deductibles and co-pays. The excise tax works in conjunction with the medical loss ratio to slow the rate of growth. Those two items will be the check on insurance companies raising rates for covering pre-existing conditions.
kay
@Ailuridae:
To me, you’re the Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Ballon Juice-health care debate, and I so appreciate you plugging away.
That’s an absolute compliment.
Firm, resolute, but fair :)
scudbucket
@Ailuridae: You’re both painfully fucking stupid and don’t even try to enter the deep end on anything of substance.
I think this warrants some discussion. People disagree about various things. On that we both (I hope) can agree. Whether people ‘enter the deep end’ on certain issues or disagree merely due to ignorance is an important distinction. The excise tax is, I think, one such example. Some people oppose it because of misinformation (which you correctly call them out on). Other people oppose it because it taxes the middle class as opposed to the wealthy. Still others oppose it because the tax itself is unsustainable: it causes employers/employees to scale back the scope of their plans to sneak in under the tax floor. And this is becoming the prevailing view: the tax is now justified by its advocates because it will bend the cost curve, or it will ultimately increase the wages of employees because employers will pass on the savings. One important point here is that both of these justification, if true, undercut the putative reason for the existence of the tax: that it will fund the subsidized expansion of medicaid.
An additional, and more recent, justification for the tax is that it will end the corporate tax-break on health care costs:
The excise tax finally puts a cap on untaxed income flowing from employers to for profit private insurers which is horrible tax policy.
I don’t think you will get any arguments that the loophole ought to be closed: but the tax was not intended to do such a thing. It was intended to fund the HCR reform bill, and it will fail to do that. What it will do is eliminate high-end healthcare plans, and that reduction will show up as income tax revenue to the IRS. But the two things – a general tax vs. a cadillac, bill specific, tax, are entirely distinct. The justifications for the tax keeps changing, and disagreements about it’s efficacy/desireablility persist. Simply pointing out that FDL gets that basics wrong doesn’t do justice the levels of disagreement here, even though it certainly helps clarify why someone’s opposition is misguided.
Michelle
Mona/Hypatia warned against this early on. She called progressives for what they are. Go back and search Glenn Greenwald’s old site and FDL. I have never visited Kos, but I guess it’s the same. She called it straight up. She was an ass about it back when she did it (if you can find her first sparrings with Greenwald you will see what I mean) but she was correct. Greenwald and FDL are all fucked up. And Mona/Hypatia called it.
It’s not surprising. We’ve got a good president, who happens to be “half black” and the negatives have had a year of being negative and then the stealth Libertarians come in and shoot it all to hell.
Who would have guessed that Republicans would come back so quickly?
Hiram Taine
All of that last is supposed to be blockquoted..
Panicked Healthcare Lobbyists Descend On Massachusetts To Save The 60th Democratic Vote For Reform
Ailuridae
@kay:
Only on the anonymous world of the internet could someone who is a dead ringer for Derek Vinyard (American History X) be compared favorably to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. Marketplace of ideas, indeed.
willf
Okay, so, you’re saying that lower cost plans won’t mean lower quality plans, but lower cost plans will mean higher wages.
Not rocket science, indeed.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
What the hell kind of horseshit strawman is this? Who in the hell is trying to censor anyone’s bitching?
By all means, keep bitching about the disaffected left, because we all know that bitching about the disaffected left is constructive in the larger scheme of things, as opposed to the bitching the disaffected ones are doing.
Was that Colesque enough?
Chuck Butcher
@Ailuridae:
You are consistently an asshole as well and I’m considerably less than impressed. No, I have not misinterpreted – I don’t do wishful thinking based on nothing more than wishes. You are welcome to do so. You also are welcome to fuck yourself.
After nearly half a century of these fights I’ve learned to look for the unintended consequences and the hidden by design ones.
Dennis-SGMM
@willf:
It will be interesting, as health care costs continue to inflate at close to 9% per annum, to see what the insurers do as the majority of their plans reach the excise tax threshold. It’s certain that whatever they do will in no way decrease their profits by actually lowering health care costs. My guess is that deductibles will become stratospheric with co-pays close behind. Another possibility is that the insurers will cry poor (We hadda’ insure all those people we didn’t’ want to insure so it’s the government’s fault that we can’t buy our CEO a platinum bidet!) and we’ll hear a variation of Too Big to Fail along with a healthy dollop of cash to make certain that the affected institutions remain too big to fail.
kay
@Ailuridae:
Hah! I have to Google him. I don’t know who he is. I love how Debbie Wasserman-Schultz argues.
I love when she takes a deep breath, rattles off fifty facts, waits for a response, and then leans in for the kill, smiling.
willf
Seriously, if you think employers saving money on healthcare will mean more money for workers, I can see why you’d think the excise tax is a good idea.
I don’t think that you’re stupid, or dishonest, for maintaining that position, but it does seem optimistic.
Molly
@Redshift: Welcome! And just remember, make sure your default assumption on any whacked out posts here is sarcasm…and never feed Brick Oven Bill or Makewi, they’re pets.
mr. whipple
No. They are just being dishonest. Some are ignorant, but they aren’t above lying either, so there’s no need for such a charitable description.
General Winfield Stuck
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
ain’t it a bitch?
Ailuridae
@Chuck Butcher:
I’m an asshole to people who willingly misrepresent relevant facts because they aren’t getting what they want.
I’ve explained to you at great detail where you are simply undeniably wrong in your posts on health care. You continue to make the same factually incorrect arguments in every thread that this comes up in. If my pointing this out makes me an ass hole what does your disingenuous bull shit make you? I mean, besides some combination of ignorant and dishonest?
Ailuridae
@willf:
What? Why wouldn’t it mean an increase in wages for workers? And why wouldn’t that be a good thing?
Hiram Taine
@Dennis-SGMM:
Ding, ding, ding,.. This is already happening and will only accelerate.
A subsidy for premiums does nothing to help with astronomical co-pays and deductibles, I really can’t fathom why so many people seem to be unable to grasp that point.
Chuck Butcher
@Ailuridae:
So you propose that the Ins Cos are not being subsidized by the Fed and by private individuals? Fine. You are a liar.
Hiram Taine
@Ailuridae:
Because it’s an employer’s market and will be for the foreseeable future?
JenJen
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): I’m just guessing here, but is “Colesque” intended as an insult?
As a progressive, should I be persuaded by that, somehow?
willf
@Ailuridae:
Why would they pass that money on? They have no incentive to do anything but stash it away or use it to pay current debts.
Morbo
@CJ: Capuano.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
That’s the way it’s supposed to work. Will it? Here is Paul Krugman’s ringing endorsement:
“there’s the argument that any reductions in premiums won’t be passed through into wages. I just don’t buy that. It’s true that the importance of changing premiums in past wage changes has been exaggerated by many people. But I’m enough of a card-carrying economist to believe that there’s a real tradeoff between benefits and wages.”
He goes on:
“Even with the excise tax, premiums are likely to rise over time — just more slowly than they would have otherwise. So what we’re really asking is whether slowing the growth of premiums would reduce the squeeze rising health costs would otherwise have placed on wages. Surely the answer is yes.”
So basically, what this says is not that wages will go up, but that they won’t go down in real dollars as fast. I guess that’s something.
The “Cadillac Tax” is not a terrible thing, but even its proponents have a hard time arguing that it’s more than a half-assed solution to a big problem.
mr. whipple
“A decrease in dollars spent on health care benefits will result in an increase in wages. This isn’t rocket science.”
I’m not so sure. On the other hand, if insurance was so ‘shitty’ I don’t know why unions would forego wage increases for better health care coverage.
I had an interesting conversation with my wingnut PhD psychologist brother at Xmas. It turns out he’s pissed at HCR, but his reasoning was that without a PO there was no way to control costs. Yet, he’s adamently opposed to the gvt running health care.
Turns out he hates insurance companies, because his reimbursements don’t rise every year. So in his mind, he’s not getting his fair share of the pie that he’s entitled to.
In my view, the problem is everybody. Everyone wants everything, and doesn’t think it should cost anything. Patients think they should get the absolute best care in the best environment possible. They don’t want to have to drive across town for an MRI.
Drs. want to be generously rewarded for years of schooling, and the resultant debt of same. They are ‘special’, dontcha know?
Institutions like hospitals, want to have the best tech and services for the communities they represent.
Insurance companies want to make the most profit to satisfy their shareholders and Wall Street.
It’s an incredibly difficult problem, which is why it’s not easy to get anything accomplished and any solution will be inadaquate and imperfect.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
What did the original post persuade you of?
willf
Bruce,
and what he leaves unsaid is that the “cost squeeze” is lessened by a corresponding reduction in the quality of the plans, as insurers and employers cut their own worker’s policies in order to avoid hitting that threshold.
Hiram Taine
@mr. whipple:
And yet all of these problems seem to be if not *uniquely* American certainly remarkably concentrated here..
I wonder why that is so?
malraux
@willf: Then why wouldn’t they slash wages right now? Total compensation is total compensation.
malraux
@willf: Again, there’s little correlation between amount spent on insurance and health outcomes. Reducing the quality of health insurance does not necessarily mean reducing the quality of health care. The two are pretty unrelated.
willf
@malraux,
for one thing the bill hasn’t been passed yet.
willf
But you’re assuming that insurance companies won’t make it harder to get good healthcare, because they don’t have to provide good healthcare, right now.
Yutsano
@malraux: One part that seems to get lost in all of this is we are only changing how health care gets PAID for in this country. Nothing is changing when it comes to what providers themselves can or cannot do. Plus if I recall correctly, in order to be sold on the exchanges health insurers have to meet a minimum standard of care coverage. If unions renegotiate to get on the exchanges, you can bet that minimum standard will affect everyone.
Darryl
Lots of places got their public healthcare in the wake of WWII devastation, when the government simply had to step in, IIRC.
No, that doesn’t explain everyone (canada for instance) but I think it offers part of the explanation for several european countries.
malraux
@willf:
But if an employer can eat the reduction in the price of health insurance without passing that on to employees, as you say they can, then why can’t they do other things that affect the total cost of compensation?
Of course, in reality what this means is not that employers will up their payments, but when it comes time for raises instead of giving raises in the form of increased insurance payments, they will instead give it in cash. IE, right now every year employees are getting 8% raises. They just don’t ever see that because its all going to health insurance premiums.
Ailuridae
@Chuck Butcher:
The current insurance market provides a flow of money tax-free from employers to largely for-profit insurance companies. That is untaxed income.
The excise tax puts a cap on the absolute size of that flow of money for the first time ever.
malraux
@Yutsano:
Agreed, medical care provider culture in america needs an adjustment. Unfortunately, individual insurance companies can’t do it. Long and short, we’ll need to get almost everyone into something controlled by the government to have enough weight to move the way doctors do thing. There’s fair evidence that Medicare is doing a better job of it than the private system, as medicare does hold down costs better.
mr. whipple
“And yet all of these problems seem to be if not uniquely American certainly remarkably concentrated here..”
Yes and no. Various countries deal with this in a myriad of ways, from full socialism to full capitalism. None, tho, are problem-free, as far as I can tell. And none are ‘free’.
I had a Canadian retiree student a few years ago, whose son was a hospital administrator in Canada. He told me the main problem they had was that people overused their system, because they felt like they paid dearly for it anyway, so there were abuses. Because he flew into my class, one evening I drove him to a pharmacy to get a drug he could get cheaper or couldn’t get at all in Canada. No shit. And I can’t count the number of times people who buy stuff from me in Canada ask me to lie about the value of the products to avoid taxation on the same.
Overall, I’d prefer to have their system. OTOH, theirs was started in like 1946, when the influence of all the various actors was much less than it is now. IIRC, Drs were virulently opposed to the change.
My wife spent over 20 years in health care, and she’d only be happy if the gvt. nationalized the entire system.
Ailuridae
@Hiram Taine:
What you wrote doesn’t mean anything.
Ron
@Max: FDL has just become batshit crazy. I think the people at Taylor Marsh and Talk Left still haven’t gotten over the primary battle and are gleeful at a chance to bash Obama.
mr. whipple
Does anyone know why certain comments get stuck in moderation, and others don’t?
malraux
@mr. whipple: Filter words. Some words related to pharmaceuticals or the plural of shoe will drop a post into moderation.
mr. whipple
@malraux:
The plural of shoe? Ok, now I’m really lost.
Chuck Butcher
@Ailuridae:
Goody, and replaces it with direct Fed payments. ok.
This is entirely pointless, what is essentially the Senate plan is what will pass if 60 exist. I will try to avoid the personal fallout and the LIEbercrats can go hang. We can take this up in ten years because it will take that long to tell which of us is FOS for sure.
As for wages, point to a modern example.
Ailuridae
@malraux:
This. Also there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of how supply of labor works. If two competitiors in the same industry both decide to cap insurance costs below the excise tax they will have additional money they could do a lot of thing with it. Most arguing against the tax on the plans insist the companies will just pocket the money. And that all companies would. This is just not how it works. One of the two competitors will realize it can attract more employees or better employees with the additional money and will seek them out often at the expense of the other company.
This is really, really basic economics. Please see my first post in this thread.
Hiram Taine
@Ailuridae:
You don’t understand the difference between a seller’s market and a buyer’s market?
No wonder you seem a little confused from time to time.
Ailuridae
@Chuck Butcher:
A modern example of what? Of wages increasing?
We don’t have to wait five years to see who’s FOS: you are.
And what do you even mean by a Fed payment? The subsidies that you completely misrepresented a week ago? The 440B expansion of Medicaid (shh … Medicaid is a public option)?
gwangung
@Hiram Taine: I think you’re oversimplifying things, as things rarely collapse down to buyers/sellers markets, particularly in unionized fields.
Ailuridae
@Hiram Taine:
So employer’s completely control the labor market? That’s why everyone makes minimum wage. Oh wait, you don’t have any idea what you are talking about.
malraux
@Hiram Taine: These rules won’t last for just a year or two. Sometimes there will be high unemployment and low unemployment. That doesn’t change the reality of total compensation. Sure, in times of high unemployment the level of total compensation will be crappy. That’s not a particularly relevant point.
Lynn Dee
Could someone explain what an “emo” progressive is?
Anyway, haven’t been here for a while, but I remembered it as I’ve had to line more and more sites off my list. FDL has gone completely insane.
ellie
@kay: Hey Kay! You must be in Wood County or thereabouts. You have my sympathy regarding Latta. I am in Toledo and Kaptur pissed me off with her vote for the Stupak amendment and I let her know it. But she is pretty liberal otherwise.
Jean
@Redshift: You may have long checked out of this thread, but I remember you very clearly from FDL of old, and you helped me (“Dana”) back then get in touch with some wonderful Richmond people with whom I worked on more than one campaign. I share all of your concerns and remember the history well. That community died quite awhile ago. Sad.
Hiram Taine
@gwangung:
The average wage in constant dollars has changed very little for decades, I’m not aware of anyone credible who thinks this trend (or lack of such) is going to change any time in the foreseeable future.
In fact for the bottom 75% or so of Americans the average wage has dropped for decades.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2148/2439174960_6a9ffc784f_o.png
Ailuridae
Alright. I’m off to bartend for the next 6 hours. Soon there will be another thread like this and I can play whack-a-mole with the FDL bots.
Ailuridae
@Hiram Taine:
Wages total compensation. That’s, you know, the point.
Darryl
Then be really careful. Econ 101 is the foundation of some really terrible arguments in the blogosphere.
(I’m not following what you guys are talking about, and I don’t have an opinion on it. I’ve just seen some really erroneous arguments that come from naive supply and demand notions. “Raising the minimum wage will increase unemployment” etc.)
Porlock Junior
@Emma:
Cheers to Emma for the Dorothy L Sayers quote, “[T]he first thing a principle does … is to kill somebody.”
In honor of circular firing squads, I’ll take the liberty of reproducing the response to that comment in the book:
“‘The real tragedy is not the conflict of good with evil but of good with good’; that means a problem with no solution.”
As a dedicated member of this side of the squad, I’m making myself consider for the moment the people who really are doing stupid things in an effort to achieve a good end, and ignoring the ones who really are working for the Republicans. In that context the quote is true and important.
And if anybody can identify the inner quote about conflict, please please please supply the citation, because Wimsey fandom, including the Yahoo group LordPeter, has not run this down in years of trying.
(Dialogue is from Gaudy Night, a fine book for anyone who likes good dialogue, as well as women’s issues as they looked 75 years ago, though they’ve now changed — umm, how much?)
malraux
@Hiram Taine: It’s interesting to note that the 90’s increase in ave wages also corresponds with a decade of significantly slower growth in insurance costs. It leads significant credence to the idea that controlling the cost of insurance will raise wages.
TrishB
@JenJen: I’m in Mean Jean’s district, too. It kills me. I grew up with politics in NYS. My grandfather was a county judge for 30 years, we had 2 state supreme court justices in the family, and our local congresscritter visited after holiday dinners for cocktails. The congressman was a Dem Hawk, but while most of my family didn’t agree with his politics, no one ever felt the urge to smack his face silly as they would like to if they saw Schmidt in person.
SiubhanDuinne
I long ago forgot who said this, and with 300 posts or thereabouts in this thread I’m not about to scroll back to find it, BUT: in that ages-ago exchange about Heinlein and military service and voting rights, someone used the phrase “contentious objectors.” May I just say, that’s possibly the best typo or Freudian slip or whatever it is that I’ve ever seen, and having made it through the +/- 300 posts since then, I think “contentious objectors” is a pretty damn fine description of quite a few people in the room. Naming no names.
MelodyMaker
@gbear 227:
TrishB
@malraux: How do you figure that employees are getting 8% raises via insurance benefits? The cost of the plans available to me were raised by 15% or so, and my contribution percentage went up, while my employer’s decreased. The plans change every year in order to keep the cost down. Oh, and no raises for the year.
General Winfield Stuck
@SiubhanDuinne: I left you a comment in a previous thread. FWIW
SiubhanDuinne
@Porlock Junior: glad to see someone from the LordPeter group here. I was very active on that group for a long time but dropped away several years ago and haven’t returned, even to lurk. But on the off chance we were around at the same time, my nom was “Dean, darling, you’re being a cat” (which you will likely recognise as also a line of dialogue from Gaudy Night — in fact, from earlier in the same scene you [and Emma] referenced).
Dennis-SGMM
@malraux:
That’s true for part of the 90’s, but using it as a predictor of future gravy for the working person overlooks the fact that the 90’s ushered in the enthusiasm for offshoring jobs. There’s now the implicit threat of further offshoring hanging over the heads of most wage earners. Factor in high unemployment, employers’ desire to make up lost profits (Said lost profits possibly based on boom time assumptions), and the fact that any decrease in health care costs is hoped-for rather than specifically written into either the House or the Senate bill and I wouldn’t hold my breath while waiting for my wages to go up as a result of the passage of HCR.
Mark S.
@mr. whipple:
Take the first s off.
Also, because of a certain pill, the correct spelling for a political theory advocating state ownership of certain industries is “soshalism”
malraux
@TrishB: First, it should be something closer to 2-3% raises. The cost of insurance itself has recently been going up by around 8%, but that’s not all of the salary. So my statement was somewhat wrong.
Now:
That could still be a raise. Did the employer’s contribution amount increase, even if their contribution percentage went down? If so, then that’s a raise. The total amount the company paid you went up. Its just that it went to benefits rather than pay. Yeah, it sucks that more of your total compensation went to benefits over wages. That’s still a raise though.
Moreover, had your employer not had to pay more for insurance, they would have given that raise to you in wages. They don’t care particularly about how they pay compensation; aside from the fact that the government currently says that they’d rather employers give raises in the form of increased health care payments over wages.
tomvox1
Says Hillary is 44:
These “people” are not Dems/Progressives but rather Tokyo Roses of the Right. Something like “Tonight your beautiful progressive dreams are being ravaged by the Bush Lite corporate stooge in the Lincoln Bedroom, Joe…Now here’s Glenn Miller.”
G.J.
A Mom Anon
What’s going on is people are pissed at the direction this administration has taken on a host of issues. Many of the left for their reasons,and the right –well any reason will do.
So the answer –if one will take their head out of the sand-Stop fighting ghosts and non-existent bogeymen and deal with the actual issue that many feel betrayed because of all the promises and not much delivery on them so far.
I know it has only been a year–but the problem is that we are not even trending in the right direction on many issues, but going in the opposite direction of what many thought was promised/implied by an Obama victory.
If we had wanted Clinton style politics we would have voted for a Clinton.
SiubhanDuinne
@General Winfield Stuck: I would most likely not have returned to that thread, so thank you twice — once for the advice and once for alerting me to your comment in the first place!
malraux
@Mark S.: No really, the plural of shoe is a filter word.
@Dennis-SGMM: There’s a reasonably solid consensus that employers look at total compensation over just wages. If you cut the cost of one form of compensation, the others will rise.
Mark S.
@Ailuridae:
I don’t think so. The insurance companies pay tax on what the employers pay them. When people talk about the loss of tax revenue, they are usually talking about the employees who don’t pay income tax on the health care benefits provided by their employers.
As for the excise tax, it’s hardly a deal breaker for me one way or the other. It won’t raise any money, but that isn’t the point of it. It may contain costs somewhat, I don’t know. If premiums keep rising at the rate they’ve been for the past decade, we’ll be so fucked in ten years it won’t really matter.
Emma
Porlock Junior: I just pulled Gaudy Night from the bookcase. Time for a re-read. Sometimes the old ones are best. And the conflict between ideals and reality seems rather apropos at this moment in time.
Besides, it does have the greatest proposal in the history of literature!
Tomvox: Dear God!
YellowJournalism
Is that what they’re calling it now? I’m terrible with all the new terminology.
TrishB
@malraux: Sorry, I wasn’t clear about that. In fact, my employer’s overall contribution to benefits was less than last year’s in dollars, say 150 per month last year, 100 per month this year (made up numbers!). They are contributing less to offset the employee contribution. Then again it may be all moot, as we might be sold in a few months. Then the fun begins.
Elie
@tomvox1:
(Sorry to all for coming in so late on this thread –)
Yeah — Absolutely…and for some time now…
Many who we have thought were progressives or somehow “on the side of progressivism” are fakes..and stalking horses. Way upthread Ann B. Nonymous commented on the need for some possible look behind on the funding to some of the sites and I a agree…(trying not to be too paranoid here)
With so much at stake for the corporists – the possibility of heavy regulation, passage of health care — do you think that they could just rely on the Republicans and right crazies to “get the job done”? They are coming from all angles and under all guises in my opinion — and I stress that because I have no proof other than the just common sense, “what else explains this”.
I of course take myself with a grain of salt — but I am questioning and I think that we all should — seriously.
Redshift
@Jean: Great to see you, too! I’m actually heading down to Richmond for the day tomorrow for the ceremonial swearing-in of Mark Keam, a friend who I helped get elected as a delegate this year.
(I know it’s a long shot at this point, but if you want to try to make connections while I’m there, email me at razorsharpwith AT gmail, and I’ll check before I leave.)
Bostondreams
@tomvox1:
What a bunch of disgusting dead enders. Obama has had a workable and working Senate majority for all of 11 weeks.
As to what the special election is a referendum on, it seems to me that it is more on the incompetence of the Coakley campaign and the Boston party than on Obama, who is still popular in Massachusetts.
Oh, and these people are just DREAMING and HOPING that Hillary will pull a Kennedy and challenge the sitting Dem president in 2012. What fun that would be!
The Raven
@mr. whipple:
Out of a very weak field, by about 1/3 of the registered Democrats, or about 10% of the state population. If the state party wanted someone stronger, they perhaps–perhaps!–could have found someone. I don’t think–though I may be wrong about this–Coakley is of Kennedy’s stature, not even the young Kennedy.
Sly
If you guys are having this Coming to Jesus moment over places like FDL and OpenLeft, than that’s kind of sad. Sorry, Billy, there is no Santa and there actually are complete fucking morons on the left.
Did the Whitey Tape get flushed down the memory hole already?
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@The Raven: Well, OK. Perhaps there was someone stronger. So… who?
The Raven
FDL headliner TBogg on voting for Coakley:
FDL front-paged diary:
I think we can fairly say that this represents the editorial view of Firedoglake.
Croak!
Elie
@John Cole:
YAY!!!!!
Sorry — I am very late to this thread but just had to comment… YAY!!!
Elie
@Darryl:
I think that the book “Tipping Point” is very apt right now…
We never see big change coming — all the set ups and small shifts.
Such is the case now — I believe.
Also
For those of you who want to clean house and make it radical — few know what that level of chaos means and unless you do — you need to shut up.
It takes patience and persistence and optimism to reform large, complex social and political systems. We have been at this about a year and are a bunch of WATBs — why isnt it done yet, why isnt it perfect and why do I have to pay anything?
We deserve shit for all of our carping and immature creepy whining.
Go read history. We are very fortunate — very. More than we deserve and it makes me sick.
Darryl
Err, the Raven, unless I’m drunk (borderline) it looks like what you call the editorial view is the smart thing. In other words, vote for liberal dems, don’t stay home to punish the conservatives, because it won’t punish them, it’ll just shoot you in the foot.
But I’ve had too many vodka cranberries and might not be interpreting that right.
Karen
I always thought that the PUMA people would not have pulled this crapola on a white male politician.
I still do.
Darryl
I’m confused. Do you believe that we can’t see big changes coming, or that we can, and you currently do?
Darryl
It’s not that we didn’t know this, it’s that we forget it, because we look to the right and we see Bill Kristol and Pat Robertson and Sean Hannity and The Corner and Rush Limbaugh and Megan McArdle and Michelle Malkin and Atlas Shrugged and RedState, and after all that, we start to think, only stupid people are on the right, and we look to the left, and we see Rachel Maddow and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and Barney Frank and Paul Krugman and Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall, and we start to think, only smart people are on the left. It’s not that we didn’t know there were some dumb people on the left, it’s just that in the normal discourse the stupid people have been so thick on the right, and the smart people so thick on the liberal side, that we forgot a bit.
The Raven
@Darryl:
Yes, that’s the point.
BTW, it looks like Coakley’s opponent is a nutcase. I’m not sure I support Coakley, but I know I oppose Brown. (o/~ Swear there ain’t no heaven/But I pray there ain’t no hell! ~/o Why, yes, ravens do sing, sometimes. The croak is a territorial call.)
kay
@Karen:
Low information voters over at FDL.
A quick Wiki peek turned up this on Coakely:
In May 2007, Coakley testified before the Massachusetts State Legislature in support of the passage of a “buffer zone” law that created a 35-foot buffer around entrances and driveways of reproductive health care facilities that offer abortion services.[9][10] The law was signed into effect by Governor Deval Patrick on November 13, 2007 and challenged by opponents.[11]
After the law was struck down by a federal court judge, Coakley successfully defended the law before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on July 8, 2008.[citation needed]
On February 5, 2009, Coakley led an 18 state coalition, as well as the Corporation Counsel for the City of New York and the City Solicitor of Baltimore,[13] urging the Environmental Protection Agency to take action in response to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA. Though the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA did have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, the Agency had yet to make an official decision on whether it believes that greenhouse gas emissions pose dangers to public health or welfare.[14]
Coakley inherited litigation of the fatal 2006 Big Dig ceiling collapse from outgoing Attorney General Tom Reilly in 2007. On March 26, 2009 she settled the final lawsuit pertaining to the incident.[15] Through eight lawsuits attached to the incident, Coakley’s office recovered $610.625 million on behalf of the State of Massachusetts.[16]
On July 8, 2009, Coakley filed a suit,[17] challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. The suit claims that Congress “overstepped its authority, undermined states’ efforts to recognize marriages between same-sex couples, and codified an animus towards gay and lesbian people.”[18] Massachusetts is the first state to challenge the legislation.
In 2009, Coakley won settlements of $60 million from Goldman Sachs [19] and $10 million from Fremont Investment & Loan [20] for their abuse of subprime loans and lending.[21]
They don’t have any idea what they’re talking about when they trash this person. Not a clue.
She may not be as “warm” as Brown, but she’s done some really solid progressive work, and I haven’t seen anything to convince me she deserved the attacks that came from “progressives”.
Darryl
Okay, I thought when you said Croak you were meaning something like “That idea’s gonna die / should die” something like that. I was confused.
Darryl plus …uh… I think the medical term is TNTC.
kay
@The Raven:
You know what would have been nice? Something on her record or issue positions. Anything at all on her work. Not her campaign, and not how she might further the goals of the FDL community, but something on her goddamn work. She’s been working for 25 years. Mostly on worthwhile issues. An endorsement that doesn’t mention that?
We’re the reality-based people? My. Ass.
Darryl
I want HCR to pass. I have a friend who wants it to fail, thinking that it’s just a big giveaway to the corporations and that if it fails and the peril becomes more perilous a more serious and comprehensive reform will emerge out of the crisis. Yesterday I thought his view was stupid, but today I can say, while i still disapprove, i can at least understand how it could make sense.
But like all reform, it is first passed as inadequate crap, and later expanded into something worthwhile. Though if Coakley loses and HCR is completely dead I hope some liberal senator beats the everliving shit out of Joe Lieberman.
(Law Enforcement Disclaimer: I would never advocate doing so blah blah blah….)
gwangung
People who think that are thinking that there’s only one possible solution to the crisis. And that they’ll LIKE any solution that comes out of that crisis. Um, right.
The Raven
@kay: Point. Personally, though, I’m just glad they’re rallying the troops. And, you know, if you want to get her record out to FDL regulars, post it on The Seminal. At least some of their people will see it, and if the FDL editors really like it, they’ll front-page it.
The Raven
@Darryl: on passing HCR. I worry that, between mandates and the Chevy tax, the current bill will gut the middle class. It might actually make things worse in the end, hard though that is to imagine.
(Visualize a LOLcat: “The middle class / I ated it.”)
handy
I know Insurance Companies and HMOs are the devil (disclaimer: I work for one of them), but how come these HCR discussions never get around to talking about hospitals inflating costs of service and the Big Pharma cabal that keeps drug prices so high? The proposed excise tax seems like a fart in the wind in trying to curb costs.
Yutsano
@handy: One of the reasons/excuses for that price inflation (at least the official one the hospitals give) is that it allows them to cover costs for covering the uninsured which they are legally obligated to do. This doesn’t exactly say why an anesthesiologist should be earning $500,000 a year, and good luck getting them to accept a reduction in pay.
redstar
@ John Cole
These hippy beat-up threads really drive traffic and keep your centrist fan-club amused beating up hippies, don’t they?
You say Barack Obama has gotten more “progressive” (whatever that means) legislation accomplished in a year than Bill Clinton in eight.
Ok, let’s see a blog post where you make that case.
Personally, all I see is Lily Ledbetter, which was a slam-dunk. Joe Lieberman would have gotten Lily Ledbetter done (which sort of undermines the “progressive” bona fides of the accomplishment, you know?) Beyond that, the overarching achievement of the Obama administration in the 1st year?
The trillions for bankers program, drawing interesting results in a recent poll: http://www.nationaljournal.com/img/topline100114.pdf…
In question 22, 1,200 American adults were asked the following:
The results are surprisingly far worse than even I expected:
So, Mr. Cole, a quite recent and not particularly convincing conversion to the Democratic cause, while you are talking about Obama’s sole “progressive” achievement in his first year, Lily Ledbetter, many of us long-time party activists are quite sure why so many Billy Bedwetters in the party are running around with their heads cut off in MA and pointing fingers in every direction but at themselves.
I will await your blog post on how much better for progressives Obama has been than Clinton was.
ds
Exactly. They’re absolutely right that some form of health care reform is inevitable. The government’s and corporate America’s health care obligations are so great that something has got to give. The “cost curve” must be bent. That’s what scares the hell out of me.
One pretty easy way to “reform health care” would be to scrap Medicaid, and stop requiring hospitals to give uninsured people emergency care. It sounds crazy today, but it might be an appealing idea to voters in 10, 20 years, when health care costs are through the roof, and hospitals will have to pay for more and more uncompensated care.
People are crazy to assume that whatever form of health care reform arises in the future is going to be better, or more progressive than what’s being proposed now.
The game plan is something like:
1. Let the system deteriorate further
2. ???
3. People vote in Dennis Kucinich to adopt single payer
It would make sense if Americans were instinctually left-wing. The more likely result is that they’ll vote in Sarah Palin who will protect health care for “Real Americans” by getting rid of health care for the “those people.”
handy
@redstar:
Now there’s something I think we can all agree upon.
Mary
FDL ran and published another poll against a vulnerable Democrat, this time in Ohio, which John Boehner is crowing about. More FDL donors are furious.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/16/825926/-OH-01:-John-Boehner-now-proudly-tweeting-FDL-Jane-Hamshers-polling
Sly
@redstar:
Joe Lieberman has historically been good on labor issues. He was one of the key initial sponsors of EFCA. Just because he’s an asshole on a host of other issues doesn’t mean that Lieberman can be relied on for some progressive causes, especially those causes that are required to get elected in Connecticut. And Lamar Alexander, who’s dumb as a fuckin rock, is in favor of a ban on mountaintop removal. His support doesn’t mean that getting a ban on mountaintop removal wouldn’t be a major environmental victory.
But, more to the point, ARRA probably remains the key achievement of the first year of his Presidency. Sotomayor is probably a close second.
As for the poll you cited, when it gives the breakdown on the opinion on TARP I and TARP II (and that those polled know the difference between the two), I’ll give it some credence.
Xenos
These contradictions are not going to heighten themselves.
As a nation we could have done it the easy way (hard times now) or the hard way (reality beating us up for the next 20 years). It looks like that right, left, and center have decided to continue the current political sideshow for another generation. We want change, but we have not suffered enough to want it enough.
media browski
@Joe Beese:
Huh, Joe Beese trolls here too?
redstar
@ Sly…
Read the poll question. It says very clearly: actions in the past year.
That’s all on Obama/Geithner/Summers now. Their billions for bankers program is about the only visible help for anyone they’ve come up with so far, and the only thing people see is those bonuses.
Maybe that’s why blame for the economy is shifting to Democrats. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/11/20/cnn-poll-blame-for-recession-shifting-from-gop-to-democrats/
If they had actually thought to rapidly do something for regular people instead of the plutocrats, you know, they might be getting some credit from the public right now, but the poll I cited initially shows clearly that this isn’t the case..
And anyhow, 95% of voters don’t know the difference between Tarp 1 and Tarp 2 so your comment clearly not particularly pertinent.
But, nice try.
henqiguai
@malraux (#102):
Nope. I recall a passage wherein it was stated that if you were blind, deaf, and ‘mute’, your desire to perform federal service had to be accommodated, even if it was counting the hairs on a caterpillar by touch. It’s been a few years since reading the book, so perhaps it was within the context of federal military service; I just vaguely remember it was simply some form of federal service.
Regardless, I think it’s an idea with a great deal of merit; minimally, as a starting point to have a serious discussion on the quality of what passes for an electorate in this country. Based on what we’ve been doing, politically and policy-wise in this country, the American electorate is almost pure stupid. I hate stupid.
redstar
@ Sly more to the point, it doesn’t matter if voters know the difference between Tarp 1 and Tarp 2. Voters are voters, and if you aren’t doing dick for them, they don’t tend to do dick for you.
But good luck with that implied elitist crap. It’ll play well in November.
redstar
@ Sly more to the point, it doesn’t matter if voters know the difference between Tarp 1 and Tarp 2. Voters are voters, and if you aren’t doing dick for them, they don’t tend to do dick for you.
But good luck with that implied elitist crap. It’ll play well in November.
General Winfield Stuck
@redstar:
No they don’t. And the bailouts were a political loser from the beginning. Now Obama may well have handled it better, but those who rail about the bailouts and other ugly components of the government rescue, need to square the circle of reality. Or, by not intervening with government cash and control, what would have been the result.
Just having Lehman go under, a relatively small company, nearly brought the economy down. What would have happened if Citigroup, AIG or any of the behemoth financial corps had gone under? The answer is catastrophe that voters would be a whole lot more pissed about. And would have rightly blamed Obama for the disaster.
Instead, we have an economy that is still breathing, and last quarter had a decent GDP, much of the TARP is being paid back, albeit the greedy fools made out quite well and we are still in need of re regulation, with pending legs in congress.
Voters measure economic health, by and large, by the number of decent paying jobs being created. That is always a lagging entity for even ordinary downturns, and this one was much worse than that.
Voters are still anxious about that, and since Obama is president, he will get the blame. But the truth is there has been much improvement on that front since March when job losses were running at 700 K a month. Now it is close to even, with the trend mostly pointing to the positive.
But until the economy starts producing a couple hundred K jobs per month, voters will be pooh poohing the administration and answering negatively to any question from pollsters about the economy.
In other words, you are trying to paint a masterpiece of Obama fail, when only one color matters. The color of job creation.
kay
@The Raven:
I don’t care enough to “get her record” out. I don’t think I’ll bother posting my 60 seconds of wikipedia research to enlighten the Coakley experts. I don’t think I should have to.
I would think looking at her actual record on issues liberals care about would be the place to start, when evaluating how liberal a Senator she might be, but apparently not.
Fact is, we don’t have any idea whether she’d be to the right, left or anywhere at all in comparison to Kennedy, because we didn’t look at anything relevant before making up our minds that she sucked.
bumblebums
@media browski:
Meteor Blades put Mr. Beese in the penalty box for a week. He’s locked out and apparently looking for new parlors to poop in.
Bruce Webb
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Never has a screen name been so apt.
FDL is not exactly spilling over with welcoming diverse opinions these days. Instead they are grabbing onto the tactic that has doomed the Left since day one:
Heighthen the Contradictions. Almost always deployed by middle class parlor pinks and college kids against the actual interest of the adult working class who are just expected to take it and take it while the Vanguard Revolutionaries focus on the glorious future after that Revolution. Strangely for workers that generally adds up to “Jam Tomorrow”.
This is the same thing that happened in the late 60s and early to mid 70s as Nixon, (a guy that had all the fascist instincts of the Bush/Cheney) fell and was replaced by first Ford and then Carter (both decent men), the New Left fell into this same type of plague on both their Houses crap, splintered the New Deal/Great Society coalition between urban liberals and union and other blue class workers in favor of purist agendas. The end result was three-fold: the New Left splintered into ineffectiveness across the board, their actions created enough blow-back to help deliver us to Reagan, and by discrediting the liberal project delivered the Democratic Party to the DLC Corporatists.
Heckuva job FirePups!
Thad
HillaryIs44 is FreeRepublic with a pink coat of paint. Actually, FreeRepublic at least has some semblance of philosophical consistency. The big pink? Not so much. Those people are weird, deluded, and scary. How does someone claim to be a supporter of Hillary Clinton while apposing 90 percent of what she stands for?
bemused
Willf:
This is the economist’s evidence for why wages rise if the cost of benefits fall.