__
Quick note: There will be no Book Chat this Wednesday, due to out-of-town visitors. Don’t count on my posting much for the next few days (yeah, yeah, ‘disappointment’ is not the word for that).
__
Meanwhile, a photo via Dave Weigel:
And reminders from Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly that, whether you’re discussing domestic issues…
It’s awfully difficult for a presidential candidate, when pushing one of the central themes of his campaign, to make an argument, then take the opposite side of the argument, then go back to the original argument, all in the course of a week.
__
It’s even more difficult to execute the rare flip-flop-flip, and manage to get the underlying issue wrong in each instance. But when it comes to shifting with the wind, Mitt Romney is, shall we say, unique.
__
Let’s quickly review. Mitt Romney aggressively pushed the argument that President Obama made the economy “worse.” Romney was lying, and even after the claim was proven false, the Republican frontrunner repeated it anyway.
__
A few days after repeating the bogus line, Romney reversed course, telling reporters, “I didn’t say that things are worse…. What I said was that economy hasn’t turned around.” This was a lie about a lie, wrapped in a lie — he had said things are worse, and all available evidence shows the economy has turned around from the crisis levels of 2008 and 2009.
__
Yesterday, Romney reversed course again…
… or foreign policy… When it comes to Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney, if you bet on “always wrong, never in doubt“, you will be seldom disappointed.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
The problem with expecting nothing is that ‘nothing’ never happens. Something is always happening, and even going in with blank expectations, you can always end up with a conclusion or consequence that’s entirely unpalatable.
Trollenschlongen
Does this philosophy also apply to all the instances in which candidate Obama changed his mind/position on issues, or “flip flopped” if you will, from pre to post election?
Such as on FISA, for instance, as one example?
Ruckus
Isn’t any conservative conclusion or consequence unpalatable?
Turgidson
And yet, Romney at least shows flickers of discomfort with his pathological lying, which makes him less scary than his opponents in the GOP primary, who all seem utterly at home with it, or perhaps are so far gone that they actually believe the rank excrement that spews forth whenever they speak.
I don’t consider Huntsman to be a viable GOP candidate, but I suppose he also winces just a bit when he mouths the unhinged platitudes he knows he must say in order to be noticed by the rabid base.
Stillwater
The old ‘I never said X’ dodge. It’s a good one, cuz if challenged you get to shift to the ‘I never meant’ line which no one can challenge you on without sounding like an asshole. And that’s how we end up losing to these fuckwads.
Corner Stone
OT a little I guess but as FlipYrNick’s favorite blogger says:
Jobs bill jobs bill jobs bill jobs bill jobs bill
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
So Mittens was for it, before he was against it, before he was for it again.
This is why it’s so easy to laugh at him
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoU41UwL5LI
TooManyJens
Somebody linked me to this turd of a column earlier today, and I’ve been pissed off ever since.
America’s Atheocracy
Please don’t use this to start one of those tiresome atheists-vs-believers flamewars. I don’t necessarily have a beef with believers. I think most of us here can at least agree that this “woe is me, Christians are oppressed by atheists, atheism is anti-American” bullshit is, well, bullshit.
When did objective reality stop mattering?
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
It runs in the family: The Brainwashed Candidate
Joel
For some reason, Mitt looks like he’s wearing a yarmulke in that picture, which creeps me out.
Davis X. Machina
He looks like a President. But then, everything here looks like Italian food.
A nation of chain restaurants deserves a President Romney.
harlana
Wow, Mitt looking kinda haggard there.
All I need to know about this son of a bitch is that he strapped his dog to the car for a 12-hour trip. If he were a Democrat, would this story, which was featured in that nazi-liberal rag, Time, still stay somehow buried?
srv
Y’all are just nattering nabobs of negativity. Look at the positive side of this – his mind is open enough to flip-flop.
Martin
When did it ever matter?
Rhoda
@Davis X. Machina: I know it looks like Mittens is going to be the GOP nominee; hell he’s running a general election campaign now and Rove is desperate to clear the field for him.
But I don’t buy it.
If he is the nominee; I think he’s going to have ten times the problems that McCain did unifying the base in ’08(even with Sarah on the ticket). And that means getting passed the primaries; where is his path?
He looks good. The money men like him. But I keep flashing back to ’08 and the way every damn one of those Republicans wanted to take him down. I don’t buy that that hates gone away. And the fact he couldn’t make his ’08 fundraising totals means he’s got issues that aren’t showing up yet in the polls IMO.
He’d be the best candidate of the bunch; but I don’t see the GOP going down that road.
cathyx
If Mitt really, really wanted to be president, he would change his religion. Mormons just aren’t electable yet.
goblue72
Romney is a Republican and therefore a complete shitstain. Beyond that, however, his problem is that he’s truly a moderate Republican at core, trying to run a national campaign in a party controlled by sociopaths.
I lived in Massachusetts when he was Governor. Before he went full bore on running for President, he governed like a moderate. Faced with a huge budget deficit, he signed off on a combination of spending cuts, fee increases and closing corporate tax loopholes. (yup, Mitt Romney closed tax loopholes) He filled his cabinet with technocrats from both sides of the aisle. Got a Republican version of universal healthcare passed which wound up covering almost everyone. Was marginally “green”. And was even moderate Republican on gay marriage (opposed gay marriagen, support civil unions) and modestly pro-choice.
Then after his 1st year or so, he realized he needed to be full tilt evil to win the Republican nomination for President and then went about repudiating most of his former positions, became virulently anti-choice and anti-gay marriage, and spent all of his time out of state bashing Massachusetts.
I think this is why he flip flops so much. What he needs to say to win over the teabillies and other Confederate loons that run the modern day GOP is completely in opposite to what he really believes, and he can’t keep it all straight in his head 24/7. He lives a life of complete cognitive dissonance and comes across as completely fake.
Martin
Translation, for those not appreciating the statement:
TooManyJens
Martin: I don’t know, maybe it didn’t. I’m not sure how much better that would make me feel.
Linda Featheringill
She did say open thread, didn’t she?
The President’s short little speech about the debt/budget.
If he said anything of great import, I didn’t hear it.
He did say he wants them all to get busy and work on it. He also said he wants a more nearly permanent solution, not a temporary bandage that will lead to this problem again. He said he was a firm believer in savings. He referred to “spending on tax breaks and deductions.”
Is this new and different? Is it significant?
Lolis
So is the reply button gone forever?
Just Some Fuckhead
Hooboy, I totally called this one.
There goes that cudgel.
Corner Stone
Neither is a black guy.
Davis X. Machina
@ Rhoda: None of that matters. Have you seen who’s in the White House? (Yeah, I know, he was running for it in 2008, but running for it, and being in it, are two different things.)
They’ll crawl over broken glass on hands and knees to vote for Mitt. Like they were Daleks. The alternative is too
darkhorrible to contemplate.Martin
It never really did. Hell, the very idea of objective reality is a relatively modern one, and even then it’s mostly going to exist outside of religion/superstition and those things influenced by religion/superstition.
Most immediately, the political debate can be summed up as following:
“Party X: Here is a clear objective statement of fact.”
“Party Y: Fuck you. Why do you hate America?!”
“Journalists: Clearly reality must lie somewhere between the fact and fuck you. Let’s have a Nobel Laureate debate Charles Manson and maybe that will reveal the truth.”
So, no, it never really mattered and it still doesn’t.
Martin
“It’s inevitable that Rudy Giuliani will be the GOP nominee.”
“It’s inevitable that Hillary Clinton will be the Dem nominee.”
I’ll just leave those here…
Corner Stone
This was the tell. It’s the weasel language President Stuck and kay need to get behind cuts in “waste, fraud and abuse” in Medicare.
Corner Stone
Mittens is going to have to do the political equivalent of whipping his johnson out and wiping it clean on Nancy Reagan’s drapes to not get the R nom.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@21 Just Some Fuckhead
Fortunately, everyone here knows that’s all just a head fake, and that President Obama is about to break free and nail one of his patented 11-dimensional 3-pointers. And when when Mitch McConnell, the Red Queen, fouls him, he’ll turn it into a 4-point play for The American People.
.
.
Amir_Khalid
From what I’ve seen so far, there’s no way I’d call anyone in the current Republican field a serious candidate for president, compared to the incumbent. The most I would say for Mitt Romney is that he seems the least unserious of the lot.
Martin
Slightly. Obama basically has suggested that the GOP doesn’t have anything. They aren’t even asking for anything permanent, just some temporary solution with promises of a real solution down the road. Basically, they don’t want to vote on the shit they’re peddling and are asking to vote on something else so they can keep peddling their shit. Obama is calling them out on that.
I think the safe conclusion is that the banker side of the GOP and the teatard side of the GOP still aren’t getting along and can’t come up with a plan that the other side won’t go nuclear over. So instead they’ll ask to appease the banker side today with promises to pay the teatard side next tuesday. I think Obama just told them to fuck off with that plan.
I don’t know why everyone is so certain that Obama is going to cave here – even the GOP doesn’t want to vote for the plan that you guys think Obama is so ready to give a blowjob to. Not going to happen – the GOP is going to pass the Dems plan with some token changes because they aren’t willing to piss off the non-27%ers at this stage. That’s what happened last time that everyone declared the sky was falling.
The Pale Scot
Quality TV:
Godzilla, Mothra and King, I haven’t been this entertained in years,
Best line so far; “I think the monsters are going to fight” .. General “are you sure?”
on some channel called ENCA.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@26 Corner Stone
“Our current Democratic Platform requires Medicare to give very bad health care very efficiently, thus furthering The Will of The American People in a truly bipartisan fashion.”
.
.
Martin
You are aware that so far Obama has only expanded Medicare services?
Davis X. Machina
I’ll buy all your Romneys, at the market, Martin.
Corner Stone
And any action Davis X doesn’t want to cover on the Senate going R in 2012, I will take.
Corner Stone
Let’s discuss this again after the debt ceiling deal is agreed to with 6:1 cuts to revenue.
JPL
Republicans are hypocrites. If they think Mitt is the best choice to unseat Obama, then it’s Mitt. If they think Cain is the best to unseat the other black guy, then it’s Cain. The goal is to send Obama back to Illinois or Hawaii or Kenya.
Roger Moore
@Lolis:
It’s gone Galt. Producers can make their own nicely formatted reply sequence. It’s only moochers and parasites who demand that creators like John
GaltCole do their work for them.eemom
eeyeeew. Teh Mittekin is kind of icky close up.
Spaghetti Lee
Given all the people in this thread who can apparently predict the future, this blog could make a pretty penny in the fortune telling business. Unfortunately, we’d only be able to give “You and everyone you love will die horribly” type of readings.
Martin
Ok. So the over/under is $6 cuts to $1 revenue. There’s got to be a minimum on cuts to be a reasonable bet. If they cut spending $6M and raise $1M revenue, that’s so insignificant that the GOP could never claim it as a victory. (Which is pretty much what happened the last time we went through this.)
So what’s the minimum cut or revenue number?
JPL
As far as the reply button goes, I say we type in the reply section… reply button..reply button..reply button over and over to show how disappointed we are.
replybutton..replybutton…replybutton…replybutton…
we could even join a union..
JPL
fuckity,fuckity,fuckity,fuck..
hmmm this is not acceptable…fuckity,fuckity,fuckity,fuck
btomdarga
Well, regarding that Benan is just full of it.
It is certainly not true that ALL available evidence shows that. SOME metrics show it has gotten a bit better. Other metrics show no real change. The unemployment rate has dropped from it’s high of 10.1% (Oct 2009) to … a still awful 9.1%. This is still higher than it was at any point from Late 1983 to Apr 2009. The fact that it’s “down” from it’s local maximum doesn’t necessarily mean that the economy has really turned around or that it couldn’t easily rise again. There is NO convincing evidence that the rate will not increase again, much less that it is likely to keep falling with any speed.
Besides, dismissing complaints about the economy because of a few macro-level metrics is just a losing political strategy. All Politics is local and people who are out of work and/or living in places that are still very hard hit are NOT going to just ignore what they see around them, much less their own experience, and decide that they can stop worrying about the economy just because some guys produce some reports saying that some macro-economic indicators are slightly improved. Trying to hype up their data like it “proves” the economy is getting better, rather than just hinting that it might be, smacks of desperation.
NonyNony
@Rhoda
Well look at what McCain did. He “refudiated” his entire previous political persona. He went to the religious right leadership and groveled for a while (let’s say groveled, because what he actually did was probably pretty sloppy and really not an image anyone needs this close to dinnertime). He went to Grover Norquist and “groveled” some more. He basically humiliated and debased himself before all of the pillars of the GOP to get the nomination. He also lucked out because he had two people that the various GOP factions hated more than him – Romney to his “left” and Huckabee to his his “right” (hated by the religious right loons and the anti-tax nuts respectively).
And then, once the primary was over and done with, he had to pick a veep with pizazz to wow the anti-tax loons and the religious right nutjobs. Which is how Palin entered the picture.
So I think we see a path for Romney here. First “refudiate” your previous political career. Then you – ahem – sloppily “grovel” all over the religious right and the anti-tax nuts. He needs to make sure that someone the religious right hates more than him is in the mix (Huntsman will do nicely there) and that someone credible the anti-tax nuts hate more than him is in the mix (not sure about that one yet – too bad he couldn’t get Huckabee to run again. Some of the anti-tax loons are trying their damndest to discredit Bachmann right now though, so maybe it will be her.) And there you go – a path to victory.
Then he needs to find someone to razzle-dazzle the offended factions and convince them that he’s one stroke away from putting their “chosen one” into the White House (as McCain attempted to do with Palin). Dunno who he could pick on that front, but that’s his path to “unity” once the primaries are over. If he gets the nom, I’d bet money on it.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
New Ohio law allows poll workers to refuse to direct voters to their right precinct if they show up at the wrong poll locations. The justification?
And thus we lose Ohio for at least a decade…
Corner Stone
Yeah, I should have typed that out a little better.
I’m going with between .85 – .90 cents of every dollar is a cut to services and the remainder is closed loopholes.
dogwood
There are plenty of ways to put Medicare cuts on the table. Start with Part D. Besides negotiating for drug prices, why not means test the damn thing. People taking advantage of the prescription drug plan are receiving a benefit they didn’t pay into that’s being provide by borrowed money. In the case of Medicare Part D a huge swathe of Republicans and scared Democrats created a new universal entitlement in order to get votes. Millions of Americans were without any healthcare at all, but we ponied up for the Koch brothers’ meds. Geesh.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Linda Featheringill
Martin #31
debt/budget
As in “I’d gladly pay you next Tuesday for a hamburger today”?
You seem to be optimistic about the outcome. If the Dems can hang together, you might be vindicated. Perhaps it will look at first glance like the Pres & Party gave a lot but will come out a bit later that they really didn’t.
Thanks.
btomdarga
Jesus. I use to hate radicals … but now I something think that …..
rather than kvetch about the possibility of the debt ceiling fiasco causing economic chaos, we should be preparing for that chaos. We should be
1) Repeating, loudly and often, that the consequences of not raising the debt-ceiling will be very very bad. I know this isn’t secret but the more we repeat it the more people will remember who was right when it actually happens. Likewise, force them to repeatedly deny it and more people remember how wrong they were.
2) Agitating and constantly repeating that there is a “Class War” being waged against the Middle Class and Poor by the super-rich. Prime their outrage them for the time, if we do hit the ceiling, when the first priority will be paying interest to bankers. Prepare them to see these interests as further proof that their slice of the pie is being stolen and given to people who already have a hell of a lot.
3) Reminding them that they have the power to stop this if they are willing to stand up and flex their muscles. They are stronger than their enemies and only the lack of concerted action handicaps them.
Davis X. Machina
@ NonyNony
The obvious choice: Bachmann as VP. There’s little attraction to another term in the back benches — she’s not going to make the House leadership after her campaign folds. I can’t see anybody in this crowd retiring, or stepping aside, for her. If anything, after Boehner loses the Speakership this winter, there’s going to be a need to find a place to hide him.
Emperor of Ice Cream
I wish the people who are obsessed with Dems (that is, Obama, since there are no other Dems who matter in the opinion of too many) wanting to make “cuts” in m’care & caid would think about the real longterm play here. Per capita expenses based on demographics are going to have to come down. The issue is whose hide is going to come from – providers or recipients. The basic battle line is Dems are trying to take it from providers ( pharms, insurance, testing centers, hospitals – that whole big for profit money pit) and Reps from consumers. I for one want Obama negotiating “cuts” rather than anyone else.
Emperor of Ice Cream
I wish the people who are obsessed with Dems (that is, Obama, since there are no other Dems who matter in the opinion of too many) wanting to make “cuts” in m’care & caid would think about the real longterm play here. Per capita expenses based on demographics are going to have to come down. The issue is whose hide is going to come from – providers or recipients. The basic battle line is Dems are trying to take it from providers ( pharms, insurance, testing centers, hospitals – that whole big for profit money pit) and Reps from consumers. I for one want Obama negotiating “cuts” rather than anyone else.
MobiusKlein
@Roger Moore: HA!
Made the reply button work!
It’s still in the html – just hidden by a CSS rule
A clever person could override this in some other css file, say with
eta: formatting ftw
Emperor of Ice Cream
I meant to say all of #53 b/c there is no way to provide good healthcare to all without getting a handle on overall costs.
Martin
It is:
Part of PPACA. That was the trade-off for closing the donut hole.
MobiusKlein
@MobiusKlein: Blockquote fail. argh
Martin
Dems don’t have to hang together, the GOP does. I don’t know why everyone seems to be under the impression that the Dems are more divided than the GOP is. That’s not even close to true.
Linda Featheringill
corner stone #37
Medicare:
I read about one federal proposal to direct funds towards follow up on patients to cut back on hospital re-admissions. Medicare clients could spend more time with visiting nurses at home and less time with the nurses who work in hospitals.
This might very well result in large savings for Medicare, as well as better health for the folks on Medicare.
Such savings in Medicare might be very good.
[I admit, though, it is a proposal and not an actual policy yet.]
cathyx
Could someone who is computer literate and a good explainer, explain in plain english how to do the reply without a reply option?
Linda Featheringill
Martin #42
You didn’t ask me but I’m going to chime in anyway. :)
6:1 cuts:revenue would certainly be better than 9:1.
Of course, if Obama wants to count tax breaks for the very wealthy as “spending,” then eliminating some of those could count as savings and make the deal even better.
I find the idea amusing. A rose is a rose is a rose. But it it gets us to a desirable outcome, I don’t care what they call it.
OzoneR
AP tweet
+
tax hikes, that’s right, AP called it “tax hikes”
but it’s the Democrats that have a messaging problems, sure.
DFH no.6
Spaghetti Lee @41 wins the thread.
I say that from the apparently schizophrenic “Obama’s done pretty well, all things considered, but we’re still probably doomed” perspective.
rikyrah
Tweety said it tonight — they would go against their country in order to hurt this President.
Cat Lady
cathyx:
click on the commenter’s “Link” next to the time stamp.
Copy the URL
type the following:
commenter’s name :
don’t include the brackets, and don’t use spaces.
TooManyJens
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik: The good news … well, no. There’s no good news here. But unlike with other voter suppression tactics, this is one where election-day volunteers will be able to help. If people are disenfranchised by inaccurate voter-caging lists or if they don’t know they need a driver’s license until Election Day, they’re fucked. But a volunteer sitting in the lawnchair outside the polls can at least do something about this.
That said, this law is evil and the Ohio GOP are evil fucks for supporting it.
Corner Stone
cathyx
@67. Cat Lady-
What do you mean by copy the URL? What URL?
Cat Lady
I can’t get the script to write in plain text. I’ll be back.
Elisabeth
cat lady
Just a test
edited to say that didn’t work.
jeffreyw
cathyx Right click on the blue “link” right beside the time stamp. click on “copy link location”, go to reply box and type the name of commenter you want to reply to then select what you just typed-hold the left button down as you move the cursor across it, then click the blue underlined “link” button just above the box, right click in the popup and click paste. now type your reply
Elisabeth
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/07/05/open-thread-seldom-disappointed/#comment-2657544cat lady
MobiusKlein
@cathyx:
enter in @(lt)a href=”#comment-XXXX” (gt) username (lt)/a(gt);
where XXXX is the comment id, as you can see as the last several digits off the ‘link’ reference above.
—-
The issue is that somebody didn’t read the specs: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/selector.html#dynamic-pseudo-classes and tried being clever with the :hover tag on the comment element. But hover only works for anchor tags, per the spec.
Messing with the css rules makes the reply button appear on every comment, rather than the one your mouse is over. Hover also has limited meaning in touch screens, since there is no mouse pointer that drifts above the text. It’s only CLICK or such.
eta: fix fmt
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Why do people have that snide little prick David Frum on their TeeVee shows?
Elisabeth
jeffreyw
third time’s a charm?
edited to say: Yahoo! Thanks!
Just Some Fuckhead
@btomtarga:
I think you might have more success by supporting a party that shares your goals. You can try the John-the-Baptist-Crying-in the-Wilderness thing but there are parties out there on the left that could use an influx of like-minded folks to be viable versus wasting a lot of time kvetching about the New Republican party.
Yurpean
Don’t know if y’all are interested, but over this side of the pond, where we’ve been getting fucked by the minions of Rupert Murdoch for much longer than you have by those Johnny-come-latelies at Fox News, the sky has fallen on part of the evil empire, a sunday ‘newspaper’ called the News of the World.
You might have heard about the phone-hacking scandal that’s been rumbling along since 2007 – the NY Times ran a few stories about it to piss Murdoch off a year or so ago. On Monday the Guardian reported that a NotW paid PI hacked into the phone of a 13 year old girl called Milly Dowler, days after she went missing (her body was found 6 months later). They listened to the voicemail, and then, because the account was full, they deleted some of the messages (from the phone of a missing child, potentially destroying evidence) to make room for new messages that they would be able to cull for stories. The fact that the voicemail went from being full to not was noticed by the girls family and taken as possible evidence that Milly was still alive – which they told the NotW in an exclusive interview. Needless to say, a hell of a lot of people are outraged at this downright evil, unethical, illegal behaviour (destroying potential evidence in a missing child & subsequent child murder investigation). There are further indications that the families of other child murder victims were similarly targeted as well as the families of people killed in the 7/7 London bombings.
News International, the subsidiary of News Corp who own Murdoch’s UK papers, as well as Sky TV are in a state of panic as they are run by Rebecca Brooks, who was editor of the NotW at the time of the phone hacking. In further political intrigue, until January the PM’s director of communications (ie spin doctor in chief) was Andy Coulson, who had been deputy editor of the NotW when this was going on. It’s basically the biggest media scandal in the UK for decades.
Sorry for the info-dump, but I thought some of you might be interested in the villainy of Murdoch, and his troubles in the UK at the moment.
sukabi
now that’s a photo of someone who knows he sucks, and is just realizing that everyone else thinks he sucks too.
Corner Stone
Man, I tell you. This fucking website is the ultimate DougJ mindfuck. Every once in a while he will take some feature away and watch a bunch of lemmings here struggle to find a way around the deficiency.
A while back he changed the hanging “dash” to cause a strikethrough for the rest of the thread. So everyone started doing something else to separate comments. I myself used a tilde for a while.
Then he mangled the fucking right hand margins so you had to refresh a certain number of random times to get the text to fit into a screen
Next he made the screen roll back up to the last comment viewed when you hit “refresh” to see new comments.
Now he’s killed the poor fucking “Reply” feature and people are doing whatever they can to manually compensate.
I’m telling you, DougJ is one sick and twisted motherfucker and this whole place is his own little version of Hostel/Saw.
dogwood
@Emperor of Ice Cream
If there are many serious people left in government, I’m sure they understand this. Right now it’s just a political food fight with the most passionate aiming their anger at the President. To the angry right he’s a dangerous radical Marxist. To the angry left he’s a weak, sellout corporate tool. It makes for lots of fun on the internet. I don’t know how all of this plays out, but I’m pretty sure the Reps’. hand isn’t as strong as they are letting on.
In honor of your handle and the great Wallace Stevens:
Let be be the finale of seem
JPL
Yurpean -I read that Cameron was shocked but what will happen? Cameron has to go from shocked to throwing the bastards in jail before I believe anything he says.
dogwood
@Martin
Thanks for the information. And thanks for informing me without calling me stupid.
Southern Beale
So apparently Rick Santorum said Obama only created eleventy billion jobs and he could do so much better! What a fucking maroon, the gift that keeps on giving.
Veritas78
Poor Mitt. All this work, and at the end, he runs into me, and a thousand like me, willing to make an advertisement for Obama declaring that “RomneyCare saved my life. Thank you, Mitt Romney. Without RomneyCare, I would never have gotten the medication that reduced both my dangerously-high cholesterol and blood pressure. Thanks, Mitt! Now, I’m voting for the man who will spread your fine healthcare plan across America and save the lives of millions more Americans, just like you saved mine.”
cathyx
jeffreywDoes this work?
cathyx
Mobiusklein You just don’t get computer illiteracy
MobiusKlein
@Corner Stone:
More like CSS mind fuck. really, CSS rules would set Cthulu’s mind spinning.
DougJ should read this, which might help.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4686997/firefox-hover-opacity
Southern Beale
@ Yurpean –
I have been following that story. Amazing that the media in the U.S. has completely ignore it. Oh wait, who am I kidding!
CJR has a rundown of the hacking scandal news for those not familiar with the story. The missing person phone message thing just has me floored. That’s fucking criminal.
Yurpean
Some links to further information:
Original Guardian story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/04/milly-dowler-voicemail-hacked-news-of-world
NY Times blog post with a good summary of events, plus video of Hugh Grant (yes, the actor) talking about the situation: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/former-editor-denies-knowing-that-missing-girls-phone-was-hacked/
Last year’s NYT article about phone hacking:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/magazine/05hacking-t.html
Jack Schafer at Slate’s been all over this (and other Murdoch stories) for years:
http://www.slate.com/id/2298439/
WereBear
Keith Olbermann’s show will be covering the Murdoch scandal. Truly appalling.
cathyx
jeffreyw
cathyx
jeffreyw now?
jeffreyw
@cathyx : Yes! remember to add a space before you start out, and you can fancy it up by going with the @ sign to begin and a colon at the end of the name to make it look like it used to.
SRW1
jeffreyw
Make sure though that there are no two “http://” in the link after pasting the url of the comment?
Southern Beale
@WereBear
My question is of course, why aren’t they doing it here? Surely they are. If News Of The World “reporters” are hacking into peoples’ phone messages in the UK is there a reason they aren’t able to do it here? Are our phones different? Surely to god if they’re doing it there they must be doing it here.
It would be irresponsible NOT to ask this question …
cathyx
jeffreywtest
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
@Veritas78:
Are you sure?
Firebaggers and PUMAs say RomneyCare is evil and should be repealed.
cathyx
jeffreyw test
Just Some Fuckhead
Our lazy media? All they have to do is look pretty for six figures.
MobiusKlein
@cathyx: I do – the job of a programmer is to make other’s computer illiteracy not matter so much.
There is no reason you (or I) should have to do so much work to use the reply feature.
—
in fact, I was wrong above in why the reply button is missing. Why? Because CSS is too damn complicated. Something removed the per-comment ‘class name’ of comment.
But I’m sure DougJ already knows this.
cathyx
@jeffreyw- when I click on your name, it doesn’t go to your reply, shouldn’t it?
Linda Featheringill
yurpean #79
hacking into phones of victims
I read about that. What a painfully evil thing to do to the surviving families. And yes, they did mess with evidence and should serve time for that – those who did the actual dirty work, those who directed this work, and all those higher up who knew about it.
Southern Beale
There’s a parody David Duke 2012 Twitter account.
Oh good lord.
burnspbesq
@ JPL:
Slow down, there, Bunky. If the guy should have been Mirandized and wasn’t, nothing they got out of him will be admissible unless and until a majority of the Supreme Court can find some inventive new theory as to why it should be.
And here’s the thing: it’s a lot harder for the Supremes to erode Fifth Amendment protections than it is for them to erode Fourth Amendment protections. A half century of watching cops Mirandize suspects on teevee has brainwashed Americans into thinking that Miranda is carved in stone. After all, if Kojak, Mick Belker, and Sipowicz all did it, it must be required, because they would never give criminal scum anything they weren’t entitled to.
Southern Beale
I think we should spread a rumor that the New York Daily News hacked into Casey Anthony’s voicemail. Maybe the u.s. media will cover the story then.
cathyx
@jeffreywmaybe 10th time is a charm
jeffreyw
@SRW1: If the http//: is selected-“in blue” when you right click and then paste in the link popup it will be replaced with the url that included one of it’s own, you can get one too many http etc in the url if you mess up.
Cacti
Barney Frank aptly described Mittens thus…
“His only consistent political value is that he thinks he should run the world.”
Yurpean
@JPL There’s been a police investigation underway for a while now, and unlike the 2007 investigation which confined itself to just the Royal phone hack story (and resulted in a few people at the bottom of the NotW being thrown under the bus by Brooks et al) it appears to be being taken seriously.
The big thing that’s being pushed for is there to be a public inquiry, which would be able to force people to testify under oath, into the whole hacking situation. This is something that neither Labour when they were in power, nor the Tories now, want as it would supremely piss of Murdoch who holds a position of huge power in the British politic landscape. There’s a famous headline ‘It’s The Sun Wot Won It’ which ran after the 1992 General Election taking credit for the fact the Tories won, rather than Labour. No political leader wants to be on his wrong side, so they go around appeasing Murdoch, and occasionally genuflecting before him.
jeffreyw
@cathyx : Are you running Windows? First things first, I guess.
cathyx
No, a mac.
Yurpean
Bah, I’ve a couple comments in moderation after changing my email address to the correct one – hopefully they’ll show up soon.
jeffreyw
Oops. It’s so easy to do in Windows, you need a Mac guy to step in now. Sorry
Yurpean
Thanks, whichever FPer freed my comments!
PeakVT
@Yurpean – that would interest me more if one of our political parties wasn’t threatening to blow up our economy. Murdoch’s UK operations may be sleazy like nothing else, but over here Murdoch has managed to catapult something akin to a Viking raiding party into power.
scav
@cathyx: Did anyone answer your question about what a URL is? It’s the long string of text that tells your browser what page you’re on (and sometimes where exactly on the page you are). Full of backslashes. That’s probably what’s missing in your attempt at links, the address telling where the computer where to go. You want the thing that probably looks like
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/07/05/open-thread-seldom-disappointed/#comment-2657636
You need to copy that information and past it into the popup window you get when you click on the blue “link” thingy. Sorry, I’m not on a MAC so can’t confirm the exact steps you’ll see. I’m actually rather fascinated by how you’re getting blank URLs to appear as valid. Now I’m going to post this as watch what FYWP does to it.
Ruckus
srv
I’ll give up that his mind is open. We used to have sewers like that. Open. They were about as much fun. But possibly more useful.
scav
mmmm. not clear if cathyx was asking what’s an URL or something else by “what URL”. we’ll just have to hope my comment looks like a stab at answering either. Or I’m just blathering to myself as usual. I’d still like to see those blank urls she’s got going. I think I can get to the source from here . . .
Yurpean
@PeakVT Yeah, I can understand that prioritisation. The bad news from a UKian point of view is that if the Teabaggers succeed in sinking the US ship, the rest of the world economy is likely to go down with it.
At some times, American politics & the political system (ooh, a constitution, what it must be like to have one of those!) seem inspirational, other times though your politics scare me shitless.
Ruckus
eemom
eeyeeew. Teh Mittekin is kind of icky close up.
Far away too.
cathyx
@Yurpean – When I follow jeffreyw’s directions, a box pops up at some point and asks me to type in a url and since I don’t have one, I cancel it and that’s what appears.
Yutsano
@ Ruckus:
Willard is just icky. Can we just settle on that?
MazeDancer
@Yurpean
Yes, the Murdoch owned paper’s deleting emails of that poor child is being covered here. NY Times has front page reports on their web site.
But am much encouraged to hear that the Brits think this is so bad you feel it will cause trouble for the Evil News Corp Empire. It sounded impossibly horrible. But so does so much that News Corp does. Though, this did seem at an especially heinous level.
scav
@Yurpean: It’s not any better close up, less me assure you. Although a constitution seems to share an affinity with Dumbo’s feather in all honesty. I liked the comment on the radio4 show at 1:00 (I think it was there) about this thing finally having maybe reached its duckhouse moment though.
cathyx
scav sorry, wrong person.
SRW1
jeffreyw
Thanks. That was what I suspected as the reason why my first attempt had disappeared into the comment nirwana. My comment @96 was a test to confirm that. Which it sort of did.
cathyx
Does this work?
cathyx
Second test
SRW1
Yutsano @124
Can’t a man have a bit of empathy? Poor Mittens obviously is about to cry!
scav
Looks like you’ve got the basic idea there cathyx. Ha! And you’re off!
ETA. To get the exact URL of the comment you want to reply to, that’s when you need to click on the blue “link” text that follows the datestamp on the comment. That info may have gotten lost in the scrum. Not sure.
Yutsano
Empathy is for wusses and girly men. Real men only do hardcore facts.
cathyx
So here is what I did. I right clicked the link after the name, selected copy this link, clicked on the blue link tab in comment box, when the popup box asks for the url, I paste the link address into it and click ok, then I type my comment in the comment box, then link tab again and it works
cathyx
@cathyx I need to work on it a bit.
Ruckus
Yutsano
We can. He is.
scav
You got the idea. You just need to control how much text you have highlighted in YOUR comment box before you call up the pop-up link box. The text highlighted becomes underlined indicating that it’s got a URL behind it.
cathyx
Does it work now?
SRW1
cathyx
Heureka!
cathyx
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/07/05/open-thread-seldom-disappointed/#comment-2657697Now?
Ruckus
Yutsano
But icky also describes the entire field of rethuglicans. That is if icky is the feeling that I get just before I’m pretty sure I going to throw up. You know, when I’m not sure I’m going to but am strongly thinking about it.
cathyx
@cathyx Maybe yes?
cathyx
@SRW1
Test one million
Mike in NC
If flip-flopping were an Olympic event, Willard would have a lock on the Gold Medal. As it is, he’s setting himself up to be the GOP’s Great White Dope in 2012.
cathyx
@srw1 test
jeffreyw
Your hitting all around it! lol
You need to keep the steps in the proper order
1-enter the name in the reply box, maybe with the @ before and the : at the end> @cathyx:
2-right click the link in the comment you wish to reply to and click copy url
3-back in your reply box, select the name you entered in step 1 and then-
4-click the link button atop the reply box, there will be a popup with http//: in blue-right click in the box and click paste, then click OK
5-hit the spacebar and begin your reply
6-click submit
cathyx
@cathyx last try.
cathyx
cathyx now
cathyx
Cathyxnow?
cathyx
by george I think I’ve got it.
cathyx
Cathyx I’m so bad at this.
cathyx
Cathyx if this one doesn’t work, I really am not going to do it anymore, I promise.
cathyx
Cathyx Now, I’m ready for the next thread.
scav
You seem to be within striking distance (e.g. a question of practice) and computers are notoriously fussy about everything being exactly in the correct order. Maybe you should make a quick physical note of what you see in your comment before you hit Submit and then making notes about what the comment does and doesn’t do AFTER you hit Submit might help you figure out what’s going on. Congrats, you’re dealing with hyperlinks and anchor tags. Next stop is hitting your head with a brick and it feels relatively easy after this.
cathyx
@scav It’s quite clear that computers are not my forte. Thanks for your help.
J. Michael Neal
If any of the HTML nerds are still reading, any ideas on how to get my Blogspot blog to do “Read the rest of this entry” properly?
Anne Laurie
JMN: Behind the ‘dashboard’ here, there’s a tab (button?) atop the ‘New post’ block labelled MORE! When I click that tab, it puts the break in the proper place and adds ‘Read the rest of this post’ automatically.
Not sure of the Blogspot equivalent, but wherever the clickies are that let you do italics, bold, blockquote, et al there should be some equivalent to “MORE!” I’m guessing.
PeakVT
ooh, a constitution, what it must be like to have one of those!
On balance I think it’s better to have one, and to have one that is difficult to alter. And the US Constitution was a pretty good effort for its time. But it’s become dated, and there’s a nasty poison pill of sorts in it that is likely to prevent fundamental reform of the most broken aspect, which is the Senate, forever.
other times though your politics scare me shitless.
It should. We’re nucking futz.
J. Michael Neal
Anne Laurie: That indeed turned out to be the answer. However, you can only find that button on a new version of the post editing form. I didn’t know that there was a new post editing form, and once I finally figured that out, it took me forever to find where to get it.
Now I just need to figure out the side margins.
Chinn Romney
Uncle Mitt is a fast learner. Very fast, like lightning. He discovered last time around that it doesn’t really matter what comes out of your mouth. Just look at the guy that won last time, he said all sorts of shit and has done the exact opposite more often than not.
Nope. What we really want is to have a beer with our President, so he’s been working on that. He’s still giving off a bit of a Chardonnay vibe at the moment, but he’s much improved over 2008. Another year on the campaign trail and he’ll be barking for Bud, and you’re going to want one with him.
kay
JSF, tell me what you object to below, substantively, without relying on a rhetorical/political argument (“cudgel”).
I want to be clear on your position here. Is your position that Democrats are obligated to put unlimited amounts of single-payer (Medicare) money into a for-profit health care system? No cost controls, at all? Because if you want single payer (and you do) that’s ridiculous. I am opposed to that, on principle. I think it’s wasteful and reckless and won’t work. Am I to pay providers as much as they demand, with no regard for quality or price? How long am I supposed to do that?
And, is your position that Democrats have to do that (regardless of whether spending the money makes sense or not) because they have to hang onto the cudgel (the political argument), or because you think these cuts are substantively bad policy?
Because I’m not going along with that. I think it makes perfect sense to phase out payments to hospitals for uncompensated care, because the PPACA vastly expands Medicaid. They’re going to get paid. I don’t want to pay them twice. I also have no idea why the federal government is subsidizing the training of physicians in anything but primary care, because primary care is where the shortage is.
My substantive concern is the change in the payment formula for Medicaid. I see that as a deal-breaker.
The “cuts” to providers on Medicare I AGREE with.
Your position is to me a dodge, and it’s just the flip side of the Ryan dodge. You’re shifting costs to the federal government, and he’s shifting costs to individuals. But what about the costs? What’s the liberal response to that? Are you going to continue to insist we DON’T spend too much on health care, or that Medicare is solvent? Because I don’t think those things are true.
Give me the substantive liberal response to cost control in single payer. Don’t tell me about how you’re going to pay for it (Raising taxes, fine by me) tell me WHAT and HOW MUCH you’re willing to pay providers. An unlimited amount? Because that’s not a good enough answer for me. That goes against my principles. I think you have to grapple with costs. Deal with the fact that you want a public single payer and that public single payer is paying a FOR-PROFIT health care system. Tell me how you control costs in that scenario. Because I don’t want to spend 1/5 of GDP on health care.
Here’s what’s on the table. Tell me specifically what you object to, and offer me an alternative on controlling costs. If you can’t, just say “liberals have no substantive response to that question”. I think we need an answer to the cost control question.
kay
Since I’m already subsidizing physician training in the PPACA, tell me why I have to continue to subsidize the old system? Because spending money is stimulative? That’s an answer, I guess, but it isn’t a good enough answer for me.
So, any cuts or freeze to providers, no matter if the payments are duplicative of provisions in the PPACA or wasteful or nonsensical, are forbidden, forever and ever? Democrats can’t even talk about where money goes? Is it like how Republicans are forbidden to discuss the revenue side, and raising taxes? I’m not going along with that.
Just Some Fuckhead
Kay, you always find a way to chase the new shiny thing. We had a chance to get skyrocketing delivery costs under control during the health care debate but you were chasing a shiny new thing then: medicaid expansion.
Now that Democrats are offering up Medicaid and Medicare cuts as the answer to a ridiculously manufactured political quagmire, you’re chasing the shiny new cost control question.
Of course, you realize we’re not having a health care debate here, right? No one is sitting around thinking how can we get Medicare under control with a debt ceiling vote? just like no one is sitting around asking if we’re really in this sort of fiscal nightmare, why don’t we do a few less wars.
If the federal budget worked like a family budget, which Obama reliably informs me is the case, a responsible family might, for instance, cut back on one or two trips to DisneyWar before telling Grandma to go without her blood pressure meds.
kay
You’re still telling me how you’re going to pay for it. Fine. Now we have the money, let’s pretend.
Pay for WHAT? Everything? You’re A-OK with putting unlimited amounts of money into a for-profit health care system?
The Medicaid picture is more complicated than you’re allowing. I still don’t agree with the Obama Administration proposal, but it makes sense, in terms of cost. They want to go to a formula where the states that refuse to pay for Medicaid (red states, predominately) get the same match as the states that pay their share of Medicaid (blue states). Again, IO don’t agree with it, I don’t think that’s the way to get there, but I WANT TO GET THERE. I don’t want to pay 1/5 of every dollar into health care.
Also, I have to tell you, if the liberal position is that I’m supposed to pay for-profit nursing home corporations an unlimited amount of money, forget it. The reason they’re proposing cuts to nursing homes is the PPACA expands home health care for the elderly, which is cheaper. I want to try “cheaper”.
I don’t even know how subsidizing for-profit nursing homes with no cost controls comports with “liberal principles”, let alone makes sense in a single payer scenario.
kay
Now that Democrats are offering up Medicaid and Medicare cuts as the answer to a ridiculously manufactured political quagmire, you’re chasing the shiny new cost control question.
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead: I kind of have to hand it to you for the effort at plain language.
But it should be obvious to you by now that you’re up against a kind of bizarro-world version of matoko. She uses much, much more English in replies but it’s the exact same style of posting otherwise. There’s less crazy in there but it’s the same brick wall.
kay
Obama is offering cuts in duplicative programs and payments that are addressed in the PPACA. Uncompensated care, physician subsidies and nursing home payments. All those things are changed/addressed in the PPACA. You object to even that.
So, tell me. When can Democrats address the cost of health care? When all the wars are ended? Never? When would be a good time? Is there some far-off day where we tell for-profit providers “no more rubber-stamped yearly increases”? Or is doing that a betrayal?
kay
Kay, you always find a way to chase the new shiny thing. We had a chance to get skyrocketing delivery costs under control during the health care debate but you were chasing a shiny new thing then: medicaid expansion.
kay
Your principled position is I have to pay for-profit nursing homes any amount they demand, because to not do so, or to point to the home health care funding in the PPACA that avoids nursing homes altogether, is a capitulation to GOP talking points?
You let me know when Democrats are permitted to speak about the cost of health care. Let me know when it’s a good time. Until then I’ll insist Congress rubber-stamp every for-profit provider demand, because godamnned, I have to win that rhetorical battle! If I give ground on massive over-payments to nursing home corporations, I lost and betrayed liberal values!
Corner Stone
Proving the rule that “less crazy” is always a relative term.
kay
Did you know that, cornerstone? Did you know the baseline they’re starting at in terms of payments to providers on Medicaid? Did you know last night that the “cuts” are from a higher projected base under PPACA?
If not, how are you commenting on the Democrat’s proposal on Medicaid “cuts” at all? From First Principles? Because you don’t know anything.
Here’s plain language. We’re now paying 72% of Medicare provider rates to Medicaid providers. That goes to 100% when Medicaid is expanded. Obama has a 28% increase to play with, in negotiations, without a “cut”. Providers of course want more, they want the whole 100%, but they always want more.
You’re such a crack negotiator, I would think you would need to know what it is they’re negotiating before weighing in with your expert advice, but I guess not.
kay
Proving the rule that “less crazy” is always a relative term.
Corner Stone
kay, I hate to break this to you but even if you make the same version of a comment 22 dozen times in the same thread, it does not mean that is *actually* the discussion that is ongoing. Or going to be had.
If you want to discuss something different so very badly then why don’t you FP something?
Chrisd
Kay, JSF has a point. I remember quite clearly your passionate advocacy of HCR was based on Medicare expansion to the over 50 crowd, and when Lieberman tossed that right out, you switched on a dime to raving about expanded Medicaid. I have no doubt if that were gutted as well, it would have been something else. The act of passing a bill was more important than any of the particulars of what was passed.
I get that you take this stuff seriously. As a doc, I certainly do, too. But your touchiness here, manifested by running strings of blog entries, tells me JSF struck a nerve.
kay
I don’t think that’s true. You’re going to have to show me something. I never advocated expanding Medicare, because it was never in the PPACA.
I DID advocate expanding Medicaid, and, again, I’m not clear that the Obama proposal changes the Medicaid expansion provision, because the PPACA starts with a more generous formula for provider payment than what is in place NOW.
The only point I remember making on Medicare expansion was the Lieberman didn’t kill it on behalf of insurers, he killed it on behalf of providers.
I based that on a press conference the AMA held right after he killed it.
I think Medicare expansion to 55 is a huge boon to insurers, because it takes the high users out of the private system. That doesn’t make it a bad idea, neccesarily, but presenting this as Lieberman kowtowing to insurers isn’t true, as far as I could tell. In this instance, he was kowtowing to providers.
You’re going to have to show me my passionate argument in favor of Medicare expansion in the PPACA. I don’t think that happened.
kay
I’ll tell you what I feel passionately about. That liberals be accurate. I’ll give you an example. About a year ago, Obama “cut” food stamp benefits. There was mass internet hysteria. But I read the article, and he put food stamp benefits down to pre-stimulus levels (they were part of the stimulus). In truth, he didn’t even do that, because he shifted some of the funding to school lunches.
That matters to me. The details matter to me. I can still disagree with Obama NOT extending stimulus levels of food stamps; there’s an argument there, but what I don’t want to read is a simplistic “he CUT food stamps!” w/out any context or numbers. Because that isn’t accurate.