Why did Cory Booker come out against criticizing Bain? Because he’s a corporatist whore. Why did the Times go all in on taking Booker’s side? Because they’re errand boys, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.
Once people took up arms for the right to live like humans, now we’re told that saying something mean about vulture capitalists is beyond the pale.
dr. bloor
The good news is that the Obama campaign doesn’t give a flying fuck about the Sunday Morning Slobberings of a Mayor-wanna-be-governor.
Mino
That title throws me.
BTW Cory will be on Rachel tonight.
And Obama did a double reverse on Cory’s remarks that was pretty good.
Baud
Remember when ending wars was a top priority:
But I guess a Democrat saying something stupid about Obama’s campaign strategy is a far more important thing for our news media to talk about.
Holden Pattern
Once again, one sees that personal virtue (e.g., Cory Booker as snow-shoveling, burning-building-running-into heroic mayor) does not necessarily translate into understanding what good public policy would be.
Mark S.
I like when they say this is an attack on private equity. WTF does that mean?
Cassidy
I really like Booker. I wish he hadn’t given FOX ammunition all day long. That’s all they talked about.
Keith G
Cory B–ker really loves Cory B–ker. Not much else matters.
Water balloon
Surprise surprise Glenn G is upset that Democrats are mad at Booker. They’re Unfairly treating him like a heretic apparently. He really does just hate Obama and anyone who supports him.
Stuck in the Funhouse
No surprise who came running to support Core Booker. Anyways, I hope it was worth it for Mr. Booker, as he is likely to get a starring role in upcoming GOP campaign ads.
Phil Perspective
Want to know why else? Think Progress has your answer:
http://thkpr.gs/K5wPmq
Stuck in the Funhouse
How did I get in moderation? shut up, that’s why.
Chris
I haven’t been this disgusted by a Democrat since Joe Lieberman in the health care fight. Fuck Cory Booker.
Water balloon
I don’t know why my comment was sent to moderation, but I just pointed out that Glenn G is upset that Democrats are mad at Booker. He really just does not like people who still support Obama.
Twisted Martini
Great Apocalypse Now reference. “The horror, the horror…”
Violet
I wonder what Cory B00ker thinks of George Tierney, Jr. of Greenville, South Carolina?
eemom
Why DougJ — you sound actually pissed.
JPL
Mitt’s campaign is that he knows how to create jobs. Now he’s pouting because someone had the audacity to say prove it asshole. Okay I added the last word.
Mark S.
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
As I learned earlier, B–ker trips the spam filter.
Spaghetti Lee
I’m kind of amazed at the speed which Cory B’s gone from hero to goat. No mercy, I see. Well, the spam filter won’t let me link it, but there’s an old thread full of praise for him if you search for his name. You know, if anyone wants to retract anything.
I’m personally gonna give the guy a mulligan this one time. Seems charitable.
Tim I
Doug, you hit it on the head, which is something I could enjoy doing to ‘Booker the Hooker’.
Many politicians are pieces of shit, but Booker the Hooker has found a new low. May he rot in hell!
Spaghetti Lee
I’m kind of amazed at the speed which Cory B’s gone from hero to goat. No mercy, I see. Well, the spam filter won’t let me link it, but there’s an old thread full of praise for him if you search for his name. You know, if anyone wants to retract anything.
I’m personally gonna give the guy a mulligan this one time. Seems charitable.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mark S.:
Class warfare, basically.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mino:
’cause money’s great, but you need a ground game and institutional support– and maybe the support of a popular president?– to win a statewide (primary?) election in New Jersey? I hope Obama et al make him sweat, but I doubt they will. They’re better people than I. I hope The Rachel Maddow pokes him some, just brings up all those vulgar internet people talking about his love of Wall St is all it will take.
I haven’t seen/heard the speech, but I was so glad to hear the campaign is moving on. I liked Kerry and Gore a lot, but I doubt they would have done the same.
Baud
@Water balloon: If there is one good thing about this whole Boo ker thing, it’s seeing Democrats (at least those who matter) circle the wagons, rather than kneecapping each other as usual.
Mnemosyne
Mayor Cory’s last name trips the spam filter. Don’t forget to also re-check any links to see if his last name appears in them and put them through something like tinyurl if it does, or you’ll trip the spam filter.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Chris
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
“Look, we have a black guy too!”
Surprised we haven’t heard more from Herman Cain or Allen West in that respect. It’s not like they have a lot of options…
Suffern ACE
@Baud: Yeah, let’s take this to the open thread. I’m tired of b o o ker and this Greenville nonsense.
Baud
@Spaghetti Lee:
It’s temporary, unless Cory says something more stupid to keep it alive. It’ll be over by next week.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Here’s the prez’s speech (actually, the comments at a press conference).
@Spaghetti Lee:
I’m not going to be super hard on Mayor Cory since he’s still a young politician (we’re the same age, so clearly he’s practically a teenager!) Hopefully he will take this as a learning experience as to why you should stick to the talking points when you’re acting as someone else’s proxy and not go gallivanting off with your own off-the-cuff opinions.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Spaghetti Lee: I think the difference between Boo ker and any number of other Northeastern, moderate Dems was his ham-fistedness, and the really bone-headed rush to do his bone-headedly false equivalence between the Bain ads and the Rev Wright shit.
and seriously… “nauseous”? Have a bourbon and toughen up, Margaret Dumont.
lacp
@Baud: Charity is a good thing. Whether Hizzoner is worth any might be open to question.
http://blackagendareport.com/content/fruit-poisoned-tree-hard-rights-plan-capture-newark-nj
Kanamit
Book-r made his name shilling for corporate education reform. He can go to hell.
Abstruse
Cool thread title, my great grandfather was tried for treason for leading the miners at the battle of Blair mountain.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I think that Booker perfectly highlighted why Obama is right in going after Romney, his vulture capitalism and how it has nothing to do with leading a nation.
Obama is pretty good at turning lemons into lemonade. Right now, I bet Booker is making LOTS of ‘lemonade’.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Oh chit, my comment was eaten by the fascist WP spam filter.
Please save.
Thanks,
Me
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Abstruse:
Could you tell us more about this?
Heliopause
If you guys would just drop the anti-B00ker jihad this would go away in a news cycle or two. At least make the Romney people spend a little money to keep it in the public eye, you’re doing it for free.
I was reminded again today during Obama’s press conference how a skillful politician handles this stuff. He managed to both defend his position and praise B00ker. If you Juicers weren’t so monomaniacally bent on revenge you’d have noticed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Wow, did Rachel go soft on Boo-ker, lumping critics of Himself in with the dishonest right-wingers, she all but used the phrase “professional left”which would’ve been fun to watch heads explode.
Mino
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Both campaigns, Obama and Rmoney’s, are proving to be rather nimble in their reactions, actually. Strategery is something else, though.
Cassidy
@Spaghetti Lee: Yeah, but is what it is. Unfortunately, this election is way too important to go off the reservation. He really should have known better.
OzoneR
This is all Obama’s fault for not hitting Romney hard enough on Bain. Also, because of Rahm.
right?
Mino
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Probably why they chose Maddow rather than Ed’s program, that also invited him.
Mino
@OzoneR: Actually, I rather enjoyed Rahm this week. Heh.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Mino:
IMO a smart move. Going on The Mr. Ed Show would only allow that bigmouth to inflict more damage. Rachel is a bit more measured in how she approaches a subject.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think that’s a smart move; downplay it and attack the right on their attack using Book-er. Then Team Obama silently shoves Book-er off to the side and rolls onward.
It doesn’t feed any story and Book-er is out of it (probably in more ways than one).
eemom
@Spaghetti Lee:
Good point. Between the B**ker story and the lynchmob down below on the latest Catholic Church thread, the groupthink level is off the charts here today. Mark Antony would be thrilled to have this easy of a crowd.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@eemom:
Spoken like J-Lo.
Ron
The way Booker (sigh, moderation here I come) handled things on MtP was pretty poor, I agree. I think the idea that he should be condemned FOREVER MORE for this one screw up is stupid too. He’s pretty clearly come out since then saying what he thinks, even walking back any false equivalence tonight on Maddow. Do we really want to forever condemn someone for one screwup?
MIkeInSewickley
Having read the later posting on the history of this guy, I call bullshit.
He is a corporate whore and would not think twice about stabbing anyone in the back to get ahead…like all good Wall Street vultures.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I really feel that this country is moving toward some kind of watershed moment in which we either just admit to being a banana republic with a huge lower class scratching for existence or we go full out class warfare that starts peaceful but grows in violence. We are seeing it in Europe and our corporate masters are starting to see problems with keeping the first generation that will not do better than their parents from learning the truth.
With each passing day, I get a little less optimistic that this will end well.
eemom
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
Jennifer Lopez?
ETA: Oh. I mean the Shakespeare Mark Antony. Shall I explain?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
Now you’ve done it. Prepare for incoming scathing words THAT MEAN SOMETHING!!
Abstruse
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
Sure, William “Bill” Blizzard. Led the miners at Blair mountain and was arrested and tried for treason in Charles Town WV. While he awaiting trial he was the captain of the prison baseball team. He was acquitted and went on to be an organizer for many more years. There is a placard on Kanawha Blvd. in front of UMWA headquarters.
Is there anything specifically you want to know?
Cassidy
@eemom: The Catholic Church has earned the ire. It’s hard to stand by people who continue to give money to a corrupt organization. Book only made a mistake doing what he normally does best.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Mrs Andrea Mitchell Greenspan doing a better job of discussing this than Cory Boo-Ker or Rachel Maddow.
OzoneR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
nah, not in New Jersey. It’s a Hillary state. They’ll vote for Obama, but there’s no loyalty to him there.
eemom
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Excuse me? Is there an insect up your ass that needs attention?
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Abstruse:
Really? Very interesting.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@eemom:
Tell me little girl ’cause I need to know.
But Booker was ambitious.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: I was always a fan of Cassius.
@Abstruse: Cool.
Abstruse
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
Glad you think so. There’s even a play Shepherd University put on two year’s ago called “the trial of bill blizzard”, was pretty cool going up there and watching it.
My advisor in college was a labor historian. My life was easy.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@eemom:
Just because you regularly get bugs up your ass here there is no reason to think that everyone else does. Or were you offering to look for one? If so, no thanks.
Even though I’m a huge asshole your fat head would do too much damage to it.
Peregrinus
@Spaghetti Lee:
Well, to be completely fair, some of us thought he was a goat long before this. I’ve never been able to go whole hog on Cory Booker considering his support for corporate education reform before and during his term of office.
EDIT: FYWP, of course (and myself, for forgetting not to trip that spam filter).
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: I love it when you derail your own threads. Which is a subtle distinction from trolling them. This should create some high
comedydudgeonvitrioloutragesomething like that. Somebody’s gonna be pissed, anyway, and will not be subtle or polite about it.Peregrinus
@Omnes Omnibus:
I liked Mark Antony. Did the ol’ “Friends, Romans, countrymen” speech in tenth grade.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Abstruse:
If you’d ever like to do a guest post about this, let me know.
Omnes Omnibus
@Peregrinus: As I understand it, the real Marcus Antonius was a bit of a musclehead and a thug. Gaius Cassius Longinus was the shizznit, just sayin’.
ETA: “I hope that people will understand that for all, cruelty exists in proportion to hatred, and goodness and clemency in proportion to love, and evil men most seek out and crave the things which accrue to good men. It’s hard to persuade people that ‘the good is desirable for its own sake’; but it’s both true and creditable that pleasure and tranquility are obtained by virtue, justice, and the good.”
– Cassius
Abstruse
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
I appreciate that very much. This is one of my favorite sites. I’ll see if I can knock something together.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Abstruse:
Cool, the history of organized labor is the truth that dare not speak its name in establishment media.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
My email is goppatriot50 at gmail dot com, or use the contact link in the upper right-hand corner.
Peregrinus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, the real Mark Antony was an asshole, no doubt. One of my favorite pieces of all Latin literature is Cicero’s II Philippic – the one where he calls Marcus Antonius a sod, a drunk, and variants thereof for a good few pages.
The version of him in the play is much better, though. I never got far enough into Shakespeare to look at the context, but I imagine with my collegiate knowledge of English history I could pull something substantial about it out of my butt.
Baud
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
:)
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Yeah, that cracked me up too.
@Peregrinus: Well, Shakespeare was kind to Brutus and Cassius compared to Dante having them get gnawed upon by Satan for all eternity. Not big fans of the the Roman republic, that lot.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
I could do a guess post on the life and times of my moonshining grand pappy. There could be mention of sheep though, so I don’t know, this being a family friendly blog and all.
Mark S.
Why am I not surprised?
eemom
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
That you are, and I must say you had me fooled. Thanks for the eye-opener.
You know what? You can google day and night, and there is one thing you will never find me doing on this blog: being a gratuitous asshole to someone else, especially a fellow regular commenter, without personal provocation.
So go ahead, stick that roundish lump of shit on your neck back from whence it came. I’ve taken note.
eemom
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
Ambitious was Shakespearian for Very Serious.
@Omnes
Let me have men about me that are fat.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Julius was reputed to have “interesting” tastes.
eemom
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Sorry to disappoint you, but the whole J Lo thing went over my head. I really know nothing about the woman, which is why I had to google to get the Mark Antony connection.
However, if you’d like to enlighten me about why I’ve been insulted, I’ll see what I can do to work up some vitriol.
You’re kind of an asshole too, btw.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
FWIW, I survived the lynching (which, in fairness, was somewhat self-inflicted). I’ve been called worse things by better adversaries.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@burnspbesq:
At least it was a high-tech lynching.
burnspbesq
@MIkeInSewickley:
What your analysis fail to take into proper consideration is that the people of Newark, i.e., the people who actually get to vote for him and can judge his performance in office up close and personal, seem to like him. A lot.
What your analysis also fails to take into proper consideration is that it costs a lot of money to run for elective office in this country, and under our current system of campaign finance, in order to get money you have to get it from people who have it. And in case you haven’t been to any part of Newark other than the airport lately, there is no money there. So anybody who wants to run for mayor of Newark has to do substantially all of his or her fund-raising outside the city.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that I doubt anyone who could get elected to anything would meet your standards of purity.
burnspbesq
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
There is that.
Hey, did you get to listen to Papa Grows Funk? Impressions?
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@burnspbesq:
I like it!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Abstruse: I’m looking forward to it!
burnspbesq
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
Cool. So do I.
I think I’ve listened to every bit of Fischer-Dieskau I own since Saturday. Damn, that guy had an instrument.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@burnspbesq:
Aside from being a lawyer and a still-practicing (rather than fallen away) Catholic, you remind me eerily of my roommate from college sometimes.
Water balloon
@burnspbesq: Chuck Schumer needs Wall Street money too, but you would never see him directly opposing the entire messaging strategy of his party the way the mayor did. He wouldn’t call it nauseating and compare it to gutter tactics.
Peregrinus
@Omnes Omnibus:
@eemom:
I have a citation for that. Suetonius’ Vita Divi Juli (“Life of the Divine Julius”) says that at least one senator publicly said “Julius is every woman’s man, and every man’s woman.”
This, along with discussing why Romans tended towards political speech including the the Latin equivalent of “my worthy opponent takes it up the ass” and how that was in the poetry of the time, was part of my baccalaureate honors thesis in classics. No, I’m not joking.
Peregrinus
@Water balloon:
I have my disagreements with Burns, but this isn’t one of them. Like I said upthread, I have my reasons to dislike Cory B__ker, but I think Burns hits the nail on the head.
Chuck Schumer gets Wall Street money, sure, but he also gets tons of money from other parts of the state as well, so he can afford to spread his messaging around a little more. Newark’s got no fundraising base established in the city, so 100% of that will come from outside.
MIkeInSewickley
@burnspbesq: Which is precisely why nothing will change unless laws are forced starting at the lower levels to even the playing field on funding.
Basically you are admitting that every politician is bought and sold – Virtuous but whorish.
Purity in practice is not likely but it would be refreshing to have individuals who will at least work toward a goal of the needs of the many rather than the needs of the very few.
I’m just a jaded teacher who is tired of sending off my graduates into a game where the odds are so badly against them, starting with their student loans.
Again, I am less optimistic with each graduating class and the Clown College that is Wsshington is no better.
By the way, I know some folks in Newark who would differ from your opinion on Booker and his Huey Long shtick.
burnspbesq
@Peregrinus:
I’d rather see Cory raising money in the city than in Ridgewood, Summit, and Mendham. That money would come with much different strings attached in terms of a potential future run for statewide office.
eemom
@Water balloon:
Yeah, but Schumer is an old guy who’s being doing this shit for decades. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I had the impression that B**ker is fairly young and inexperienced. I think pretty much anybody deserves some slack on that basis.
I think I saw that Obama even said something to that effect today. Could have been a spoof though; who can tell the difference anymore.
eemom
@burnspbesq:
Of that I have no doubt.
Peregrinus
@burnspbesq:
Speaking as someone whose sophomore year roommate was a guy from Ridgewood who spent most of the night before election day agreeing with his mother that Obama would destroy the middle class, like Hitler in Nazi Germany and Chávez in Venezuela, entirely agreed.
(Edited for clarification.)
burnspbesq
@Peregrinus:
Place has changed a lot since I grew up there. We actually sent a crazed lefty, Andy Maguire, to the House for two terms in the 1970s. After that we had 22 years of Marge Roukema, who was about as sane and reasonable as you could ever hope a Republican would be. Now it’s Scott Garrett territory (ick).
Peregrinus
@burnspbesq:
Yeah, don’t remind me. I had to explain to him why Scott Garrett is not the “libertarian” he claims to be. Didn’t get very far. (But then, again, Nazi Germany destroying the middle class tells me he didn’t have the strongest grasp on history or language.)