I personally hope that the Republicans in the House keep fucking around and taking a beating, so I don’t think I can recommend that you call them to try to talk them off the ledge. Jump you fuckers is more my attitude.
But if you’ve got time, fire off a letter to the editor of a local paper. They print all kinds of garbage so don’t spend too much time on it. In fact, if you sound too coherent, it may just convince them you are’t a real Applebee’s-going American. So just fire one off, maybe make a few lame “The Gingrich who stole Christmas” (off the top of my head, you can say the intransigence of Gingrich in the 90s is what to led to all of this) jokes or some references to “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” (newspapers love that one) or “It’s A Wonderful Life”. For kicks, you can mention that the folks down at the Applebee’s aren’t too happy with the Republicans in Congress, these folks say when their bosses tell them to get something done before Christmas, they do it.
Or whatever. They print a lot of garbage so don’t sweat it.
Baud
Don’t read Ezra today. He’s in full concern troll mode, arguing that the tax cut issue helps Romney.
Egg Berry
Fixed for accuracy.
different-church-lady
So you’re just going all scorched earth, eh?
JPL
The President pushed back his news conference until 1. I wonder if there is a deal in the works… nah!
Yutsano
Or words to that effect.
Tim F.
A fine point. Letters to the editor are an extremely effective way to spend your time and energy.
Mary Jane
An unexpected benefit to having a coherent and fact-based LTE published was it provoked a hilarious response from an outraged teabagger. I hope the less insane conservatives in this red-purple area of CA took notice.
Baud
@JPL: My prediction is that this will probably end with some “deal” wherein the President agrees to negotiate with the House on a full-year extension in January–in other words, what he would have done anyway. Of course, he will then be accused of caving to Republicans.
r€nato
I’m more worked up over both parties debating who’s going to loot the Social Security trust fund to a greater extent, than about the GOP reneging on their deal and getting hammered for raising taxes.
This is just going to help advance the GOP argument that we should privatize it. (it also does have the very real effect of helping make SS less solvent.) In fact, if and when it comes time to restore the funds, I can see the GOP proposing that the 2 percentage points cut from the employees’ contribution, be restored only if used to establish private personal pension funds (as if such things don’t exist already). This may be why they want it done for a year, not just two months; they don’t want to try to make such an argument until after the election.
Punchy
It’s all about their salad bar, bitches.
J.W. Hamner
@Baud:
I don’t know how much the politics of not extending the tax cut helps/hurts Romney… but if there is a negative economic impact it certainly hurts Obama more than anybody else.
gnomedad
Strategic stupidity. Oh, joy.
JPL
@Baud: The MSM will report it just the way you said. Orange man will say he won.. hahahaha
Xecky Gilchrist
I dunno about LTEs. What we really need is for a bunch of people to show up at town hall meetings, screaming until spittle flies from their mouths and carrying misspelled racist signs. That’s the way that Democracy(tm) really works.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Tim F.: Heh. Indeed.
Also too, make sure you include a line about these clowns being the same ones that voted to end medicare since a) only old people read the paper and b) it makes politifact cry.
Baud
@J.W. Hamner:
That was Ezra’s theory, but I don’t think it necessarily holds up where one party is clearly saying “no” to the President’s attempts to help the economy. It’s a unique situation, however, so it’s hard to predict how voters will react.
MikeJ
@Xecky Gilchrist: Republicans don’t let people who disagree in to town hall meetings. the only Republican around here, Dave “did I mention I caught the green river killer after failing for only 30 years” Reichert only addresses private meetings where the Chamber of Commerce can control the list at the door.
BGinCHI
@JPL: Agreed, but I think the horse is out of the barn on this one for any folks who have any idea what’s going on. The 27% are never going to care anyway, since they don’t live in a reality-based reality.
I was hoping they’d take Orange Julius up on his 1 year offer by taking some of the earlier compromises off the table. Probably too much to ask….
j low
@DougJ- Speaking of out of touch- We don’t go to Applebee’s any more. Too expensive. 2011 has been more of a Golden Corral kind of year. Snack counter at Target works too.
Culture of Truth
Call John Boehner. Tell him not to let Mitch McConnell, Karl Rove, the Wall Street Journal, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Richard Lugar, Harry Reid, Olympia Snowe, Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, The Washington Post, Scott Brown, Lisa Murkowski, Bob Corker, the New York Times, 89 U.S. Senators and the American people push him around!
Liberty60
OT, but a cheerful pick-me-up for the emo libs;
A case where Dems actually play hard and play to win, and play smarter and better than the GOP in the California redistricting.
I hate gerrymandering as much as anyone, but it is nice to see the good guys win one.
Bruce S
Ezra Klein has a more sobering look at how this shakes out here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/wonkbook-mitt-romney-is-winning-the-payroll-tax-fight/2011/12/22/gIQAtAPJBP_blog.html
His point is that the President tends to get blamed when bad shit happens. There’s definitely truth in that observation. Typical voters don’t see what a lot of us see clearly.
Edit – didn’t see this referenced above. I wouldn’t glibly dismiss Klein on this.
Jewish Steel
Sully’s also in love with getting stoned.
On the racist newsletters:
Then IN THE NEXT FUCKING PARAGRAPH:
You clairvoyants can make all inferences you like. I’ll be over here making a call on character which is deeply different, trust me.
BGinCHI
@Jewish Steel: Sully doesn’t see the way he thinks as a “huge subjective leap.”
He thinks his thoughts are true and therefore not “subjective.”
Subjective is for little people.
bemused
@Mary Jane:
Yes, I’ve noticed that in my local papers and their online website comment sections too. The more fact-packed a comment is, the more childish and petty the wingnut comebacks are. Wingnuts are usually reduced to slinging sometimes hilarious insults such as this one to a reality based commenter, “…your smarty pants ‘facts’ “.
RSA
@Xecky Gilchrist:
“The Democrat Party is Rascist!!!” Just to help ’em get started.
schrodinger's cat
@Jewish Steel: BTW what do his self important pronouncements of endorsing candidates mean exactly. He is not even eligible to vote. Didn’t he just become a permanent resident this year? So he has to wait between 3 and 5 years (depending on whether the federal government recognizes his marriage) to become a citizen.
r€nato
@Jewish Steel: christ. It’s not that hard to figure out. It used to be fairly safe to talk racist smack to your fans and your base. Send out a newsletter, which likely would only get seen by like-minded racists and bigots and never be heard of beyond East Bumblefuck, Texas. After a few months, every copy of the newsletter would be either in the trash, the compost heap, or residing in the author/editor’s archives.
But once Ron Paul decided he wanted to be something more than an unknown back-bencher, and once he understood that it’s now impossible to keep that shit ‘in the family’, that it lives on forever and can be sent to those awful DC liberal media commie symps with a single click, he stopped talking that talk.
Not all libertarians are racists, but more than a few racists are libertarians.
r€nato
@bemused: or, “OH YEAH? WHAT ABOUT (some Democrat who allegedly did something sort of like that 40 years ago, so therefore IOKIYAR)???”
these fuckers learned how to debate from Karl Rove, Lee Atwater and the whole Great Clenis Witch-Hunt Circus, and it shows. Smear your opponent, attack attack attack. Facts are propaganda if they don’t support your side, and propaganda are facts if they do support your side.
TooManyJens
Hey DougJ, Glenn “both sides do it” Kessler is doing a live chat at 1pm. Just in case you’d like to bring your inimitable style of questioning to the proceedings.
Cris (without an H)
Dear editor,
I thought Congressman Rehberg was a regular guy like me when he and his drunken buddies from the state roundhouse crashed that boat on the rocks. But now he’s voting to raise my taxes? What gives, Denny?
Sincerely,
Not a crank
eemom
This is kind of a weird post — reads almost like a battle between the real DougJ and the troll DougJ.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Bruce S: Though, even through the fog, they currently blame Republicans more than Obama. Now, in one of those flashes of cognitive dissonance, their solution may turn into voting for a Republican.
MikeJ
@eemom: That’s what it’s like inside his head all the time.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jewish Steel:
You know, Sullivan demonstrates just how doublethink works.
Obviously, Ron Paul is a duckspeaker.
Jewish Steel
@BGinCHI: Sloppy, sloppy work, Mr Sullivan. I even chose to overlook the “big racist” which smelled a little weasely. You’re marks were already borderline. I’m afraid you’ll be taking this class again.
JPL
@r€nato: The reason it is paid for is because they take the money from the general fund and put it in the soc. sec. fund. It’s an accounting gimmick. The biggest lie the repubs tell is that it cuts soc. sec.
If there is no money in Social Security it’s because they want the tax cuts for the rich to continue.
El Cid
@Jewish Steel: How quickly do you think it would have gotten Ron Paul’s attention if his newsletter wrote editorials endorsing the Federal Reserve? Bet he’d have noticed that and done something.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@eemom:
Fixed.
JPL
@Jewish Steel: Paul openly thinks that businesses have the right to refuse to serve blacks and that the magic of free markets will take care of that. Yeah right!
r€nato
@JPL: are they actually taking the money from the general fund now, or is that the proposal for the future? I understood that at some future time, that money will be restored to SS from the general fund.
TooManyJens
@El Cid: Or if he somehow hadn’t, I bet the Ronulans wouldn’t be so quick to forgive that.
BGinCHI
@Jewish Steel: Yeah, his logic comes down to “he’s not a racist because he didn’t say anything in public.”
That’s not a low bar. That’s a bar just lying on the ground.
Unless Sully’s definition of racism is “not saying anything in public that could be deemed racially insensitive.”
r€nato
@JPL: yep. Because that’s how it worked in the 1950s and 1960s.
flukebucket
uh-oh
tkogrumpy
Sorry Doug I’ve already been grinding them out left and right and they won’t let you publish more than one a month.
JPL
@r€nato: I thought it was now but I could be wrong on the timing. The repubs will lie about it though and MSM will read their daily email on the air and say it is fact.
Cris (without an H)
Dear editor,
Starting in January, there will be no payola in my alphabetical file, and I blame the House Republicans.
Sincerely,
Janie
PeakVT
If people are going to call or write someone today, it probably should be “moderate” Democrats that might be tempted to throw the Republicans a lifeline so as to be seen as “mavericky” by our shitty press corpse. See Wyden, Ron.
r€nato
@JPL: I’m fairly certain that the proposal is that when things are better in the future, the funds will be restored to the SS trust fund from the general fund.
If you think that’s going to be a simple matter so long as the Goopers control at least one of the houses of Congress…
dr. luba
Just sent a letter off to the Free Press:
The House Republicans seem to have two different views of taxes. When taxes are cut for the rich, they pay for themselves. But when taxes are cut for the working class, they need to be offset immediately by cuts…….to programs for the middle class.
They also believe that not renewing tax cuts for the rich is a tax increase, but not renewing a tax cut for the working class is sound fiscal policy.
So tax cuts for the rich are renewed every year. But the working class tax cut will expire December 31st.
Interesting, isn’t it?
les
@r€nato:
I think it’s the same old routine, mostly–cash in used for cash out, excess used for other expenses and replaced by treasuries. Difference is that some of the treasuries represent the “missing” cash, as opposed to looted cash. So, assuming (risky these days) that the gov won’t actually default on treasuries, SS is in the same shape as always.
RD
Republican congressmen once swore a blood oath to Grover Norquist.
I am here to honor that allegiance.
Quincy
@Bruce S: I agree with Kevin Drum’s take that if the Dems are ever going to refuse to pay the ransom, this is the time to do it. Unlike the debt ceiling, this isn’t a no- going-back-from-this moment. If Boehner refuses to fold and the tax cut expires Jan. 1, it’s not as if the economy loses half a percent growth in one week. Obama can just spend all of January asking Republicans to pass a payroll tax cut and repeat it every month until they do. I’m of course concerned about the hit to everyone’s paycheck while the standoff drags on, but the Republicans really don’t want to be talking about this 6 months from now during the heart of campaign season. That gives the Dems more leverage than they’ve had on any issue since 2009.
bemused
@r€nato:
Yes. Anything proposed by a Dem is like being ruled by mullahs, the Chinese, Marxists, Communists or “occutards”.
I’ve noticed that the wingnut commenters have not been talking about Romney, Gingrich or any of the R candidates for several weeks. It’s mainly attacks on Obama and Dems. It’s always telling to note what topics they studiously avoid.
tamied
@flukebucket: Scary, isn’t it?
DougJ
@tkogrumpy:
Good for you!
Judas Escargot
@Jewish Steel:
Shorter Ron Paul: Who needs all the trappings of modern civilization, when you can have legal pot and a gold standard?
Original Lee
Obama just spanked the House on national TV over the failure to pass the payroll tax extension. Not his best, but I guess he can’t show the exasperation to the level he must be feeling right now.
Original Lee
Oh, I guess FYWP has decided that slapping the buttocks is now naughty or something. Sheesh.
Original Lee
What a prude F.Y.W.P. has become.
Paul in KY
My congressman is Ben Chandler & both my Repub Senators are like the voices of reason on this mess (pretty freaky, that).
I would ask one of our thespian BJers to call in & act like a Tea Partyer. Say something like: ‘I don’t particularily care that that Kenyan Commie & that there Democrat congress got the payroll tax cut done. It was done & by God I don’t want my taxes raised!’
r€nato
@bemused: I think they are starting to realize what we knew long ago… they are DOOOOOOOMED to a second Obama term.
El Cid
The Krug-Man with another reminder on why there really is a difference according to who holds the Preznitzy:
You don’t have to sound like you’re in uniform constant agreement in order to grasp the profound difference which is real.
The Other Chuck
The tax cut is toast, so why bother helping Republicans with their message? When your opponent is drowning, throw him an anchor.
Soonergrunt
@Original Lee: Cleared.
DougJ
@TooManyJens:
Thanks! I got a good one in.
bemused
@r€nato:
Hence, the uptick in Obama bashing rants. They’ve got nothing else. They sure aren’t gushing about any of the R candidates. Crickets.
MikeJ
@DougJ: Which one? Vouchers for fact checking?
MikeJ
@MikeJ: Ahhh, no, Broder.
Waldo
As someone who used to edit letters to the editor, I beg to differ. While it may seem that newspapers will print any old gibberish signed by a reader, it helps to give the letters editor some reason to rescue yours from the dung heap. To improve your odds:
Keep it short.
Pick one point and make it clearly.
Avoid spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.
Have a fresh opinion — or a fresh way of expressing a stale one.
When an editor is choosing between two (or more) letters on the same subject, any or all of the above can factor into the decision. Anything you can do to make that decision easier will help.
HeartlandLiberal
A few paragraphs from a loving two page rant I faxed the Indiana delegation in Congress, Reid, Pelosi, Boner (sic), and the White House yesterday:
Grover Norquist, whose boots the GOP lick every chance they get, strolled through Congress a few weeks ago and told his flock of GOP members of Congress that white was black, and day was night, and letting this tax break on the middle class expire was not the same as letting the tax breaks on the super rich expire.
And the GOP listened, and so for this year’s Christmas present, they are working like furious little last minute elves in the house to leave a lump of coal in the stockings of the middle class.
I of course hope that the House does screw this up so badly that the tax holiday expires. Why? Because although an insane minority of Americans and members of the GOP think the American people will blame Obama for this, his approval rating just hit 50%, while Congress’ rating bottomed out at 9% approval rating recently.
I wonder why that is? So please, I encourage the GOP members of the House. Go ahead. Make our day. Build a bomb, sit on it, and flip the trigger. America is watching. And America is very, very eager to get to that voting both next Fall. And I do not think it is because of their love for the current incumbents in Congress.
DougJ
@MikeJ:
Yup.
harlana
Republicans are William Wallace.
I hope they’re ready to have their innards ripped out, then.
navigator
Renee Ellmers of NC’s office is too busy to answer personally, so on her machine I begged her to stick to her guns, let the tax increase happen…and then noted that I’m a partisan Democrat, and she should take that into account.
I added that, though I would like to see her defeated next Fall, she is currently making our area look stupid, so please to just stop it.
She’s one of the ones who signed up for Federal Health Care on Day 1 after campaigning almost exclusively against the ACA. I swear that the person who answered her phone for that call defended the decision by insisting, “But that’s PRIVATE insurance, not GOVERNMENT insurance.” I really do think they’re that stupid.