GOP Rep: "We have to get something out of this. I don't know what that even is." I get it now: They want us to throw a surprise party.
— billmon (@billmon1) October 3, 2013
LOL, Senate Dems brought a poster of Marlin Stutzman's "disrespected" quote to their presser. pic.twitter.com/oJoLRmKv0I
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 3, 2013
"WHAT DO WE WANT?" "UNSPECIFIED SOMETHINGS!" "WHEN DO WE WANT THEM? "IT'S TOO LATE, YOU DISRESPECTED US!"
— Jake McIntyre (@jakemcintyre) October 3, 2013
.
Cue jokes about “surprising” your least-favorite GOP terrorist… in a back alley… with a sockful of horse manure…
NotMax
Former Speaker Hastert (gently) bitchslaps the current Speaker.
Warren Terra
We can compromise, the sock can be half-full. Though doubtless others would claim it was half-empty.
Hal
Has he tried yelling at a local parks employee for relief?
David Koch
It’s like Glenn Close’s character in “Fatal Attraction” bellowing, “I will not be ignored!”
NotMax
@Warren Terra
And the Tea Party/Libertarian goo-goos would bellow “Who stole half of my manure?”
dmsilev
You know, I’m so old I can remember when the Republican Party and the conservative movement had scarily impressive message discipline and the Democrats could only manage confused and scattered responses.
Hill Dweller
The Republicans want pain. It’s really that simple. They love hurting people.
celticdragonchick
I was gonna go with surprise in the alley with a basket hilt claymore sword, but that is just the Scottish Jacobite in me coming out.
Baud
I will never understand the patience that non-liberals have for Republican antics.
Gozer
Because REASONS!
EDIT: Or stuff and things
RareSanity
@NotMax:
Wait, you mean the “rule” that the GOP uses to justify its unified obstruction isn’t really a rule at all?
I’m just shocked by this…
celticdragonchick
@Baud: Low information voters don’t get upset until The Voice and Dancing With the Stars get pre-empted.
PsiFighter37
It’s like seeing a Double Rainbow, but stupider. “What does it mean?!” indeed.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Shouldn’t we be the ones getting something?
Like maybe a reacharound?
PsiFighter37
@dmsilev: You don’t have to be that old. It was happening last decade…2004 presidential election was a perfect example.
David Koch
None of them seem to have any self-awareness gene.
the Conster
Cruz and Boehner need to be found bound together in the trunk of one of Christie’s limousines.
debbie
I would like someone to point out to that representative just how much he and his pals have disrespected the President and then ask him if he likes how that feels.
debbie
I would like someone to point out to that representative just how much he and his pals have disrespected the President and then ask him if he likes how that feels.
? Martin
@debbie: Black. Doesn’t count.
John F
@Hill Dweller: Well not all of the time, especially when it comes back on them:
<a href="
dmsilev
@PsiFighter37: Yeah, that was sort of the point. I’m not actually all that old; I can see 40 approaching but I haven’t hit it yet.
RareSanity
@? Martin:
Any further communiques from your friend in D.C.?
Thank you for sharing all of that last night, I was absolutely fascinated by the look behind the curtains.
beltane
@David Koch: Michael Grimm is from Brooklyn. He really ought to know better than to whine about being insulted and spoken down to. It’s like he’s begging for more.
Felonius Monk
@the Conster: Oh, they are bound together. Cruz was Boehner’s private lawyer back in 1998 when Boehner sued McDermott.
dmsilev
@RareSanity:
It’s more what you’d call a ‘guideline’ than an actual rule.
NotMax
@dmsilev
Don’t think of it as forty, but as thirty-ten.
MikeBoyScout
Apparently junior high school never ends.
Neener neener neener
mdblanche
Somebody picked a bad week to get lost and Wall Street is getting a tad nervous.
dmsilev
@NotMax: I’m going to follow the example set by one of Oscar Wilde’s characters:
Nemo_N
At CNN, a dismayed Dana Bash was asking Harry Reid if calling the Tea Party “anarchists” was going to far.
Unlike most liberals/dems, Reid didn’t back down.
John F
Felonius Monk
@efgoldman: Agreed. However, we could have a large truckload of cow pies delivered for their dining pleasure.
NotMax
Should this debacle drag on that long (and I don’t see it doing so) imagine the right flank skulls-exploding outrage over there being no money for “non-essential” Christmas trees and holiday displays.
David Koch
To the wingers furious about being disrespected, it’s not like any of you would ever interrupt a President during a Congressional address, screaming “YOU LIE!”
RareSanity
@dmsilev:
I’m thinking that it was just a convenient cover story that sounded “official” enough for people to believe.
Republicans: “We’re not obstructing, we have to follow the Hastert Rule. If you wanna blame somebody, blame him for instituting it.”
Hastert: “Those people are nucking futz…I’ve never even heard of this rule they’re talking about…and frankly would prefer if they kept my name outta their filthy mouths.”
fuckwit
This seemed appropriate: http://i.imgur.com/ZW340Kd.jpg
geg6
Fuck these mother fucking mouth breathers. They’re losing and losing badly. This shit is hitting the national news and even local news. It’s not pretty. Even my formerly total talibangical wingnut staff assistant is pissed that they’re fucking around with Obamacare. Her son works full-time for an employer that doesn’t provide health insurance and she’s been quizzing me for weeks about what he might be able to get under the ACA. When they’ve lost her, well, they’ve lost the war.
Hill Dweller
@Nemo_N: The Village is just as responsible as the wingnuts for our current predicament. They’ve enabled the crazy.
Davis X. Machina
@RareSanity: And thirdly, the Hastert Rule is more what ye’d call “guidelines” than an actual rule.
Arrr.
beltane
@fuckwit: No, that is never appropriate.
? Martin
@RareSanity: Actually, yes. We’re in day 3. Not much of substance said today, though, but the tone is different. It’s nudged from him trying to be persuasive to being insistent. He’s hitting the talking points a lot more today. The pressure is showing.
PsiFighter37
@geg6: But it doesn’t matter, because the Park Rangers were ordered personally by Obama to keep the veterans out of the parks in DC!
I wish the Democrats would point out how the GOP grandstands with veterans whenever they can, but they always vote to cut their benefits, their combat gear, etc.
MattR
@NotMax: Of course he can’t resist taking shots at Obama as well. But I guess that is to be expected. The Republican former Speaker of the House is not going to put the blame solely on House Republicans.
John F
House GOP Pleads For Funding For Kids With Cancer After Canceling Research For Kids With Cancer
Felonius Monk
@fuckwit: Is that pic taken directly from a TeaBagger recruiting poster?
NotMax
@PsiFighter37
Anyone can sneak through while the rangers are obligatorily bowing down towards Mecca under orders from a certain president.
/talk radio channeling
RareSanity
@? Martin:
Sounds like the the “leadership” is going around to the people they think might break, and letting them know what the consequences are for breaking ranks, and giving them extra “training” as to what is approved from them to say.
dmsilev
@geg6: And they’re also becoming objects of absurdity and ridicule.
Today I was at a colloquium, and the speaker was talking about relativity and he opened by talking about how there can be one objective fact and different observers will see it differently. And then put up a slide showing headlines about the shutdown (the objective fact), followed by one showing Obama (“He feels pretty bad about all the people who aren’t getting paid and all the stuff that isn’t getting done”), then Cruz (“He looks pretty happy”) and finally Boehner holding a bottle of whiskey. No comment to the last, but the room exploded in laughter.
Ruckus
That sock with the horseshit better have rocks in it as well. I’m thinking mostly rocks with a little horseshit mixed in for the pungent odor and possible infections.
Southern Beale
Republican: What do we want!!!
We don’t know!
When do we want it?
We don’t know!!!
Here’s my take:
geg6
Rachel is highlighting the House chaplain’s opening prayer for the last few days. He’s been kicking the Teahadis in the teeth, hard, since the shutdown. And they have to sit and listen to him. But they probably don’t care, even though he’s been there for a decade and is a retired admiral. You see, he’s blah.
PsiFighter37
@dmsilev: Given how much reporters love to chase a scandal in DC, I’m surprised they pretty much don’t care about reporting that the Speaker is an alcoholic.
They only chase scandals if there are PENISES! involved. In particular, Democratic PENISES!
PsiFighter37
Really? I got thrown into moderation for talking about dicks?
Davis X. Machina
@Southern Beale:
I’m not sure what this means. The public option was to be offered on the exchanges pari passu with products from private health-insurance companies
geg6
@PsiFighter37:
You didn’t say the magical incantation: FYWP.
Baud
@geg6:
I saw that. Thought he was God himself. Amazing chaplain voice.
RareSanity
@PsiFighter37:
You clicked “Submit Comment” entirely too aggressively…you needed a timeout.
ruemara
@PsiFighter37: They weren’t salted, spicy ones, in a bag.
geg6
Aaaaaand Elementary is on. I’m out. Night all.
David Koch
Damn, she’s gorgeous.
mainmati
Well, crap, 9-1 Pirates on the losing end. Ok, we can get this. 1st game was just to lull the Cards into complacency. Good strategy, I think. So we tie the series tomorrow and then just kill them in PNC Park AMIRITE?
Baud
@David Koch:
Who is that?
HelpThe99ers
Exactly:
Oh, and we’ve lost about 700,000 public-sector jobs since the start of the Great Recession.
David Koch
@Baud: Wendy Davis
mdblanche
@David Koch: Isn’t Grimm supposed to be one of the alleged moderates who’s going to vote for the clean CR one of these days?
NotMax
@reumara
Most everything snackable is better with a bit of li hing powder.
LeftCoastTom
@RareSanity: I still want to know what those consequences might be, given how often Boehner has happily allowed his committee chairs to ignore and diss him.
They’re afraid Boehner will unfriend them on Faceybook?
Baud
@David Koch:
Thanks. Didn’t recognize her at all in that shot. But I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of her over the next 4-8 years.
Frankensteinbeck
@Nemo_N:
I am strongly wondering if some of this is deliberate strategy. The GOP went nuts years ago, but the public is very, very slow to catch on. Obama created an ‘only adult in the room’ reputation. The Democrats created a ‘just trying to get things done’ reputation. Now the GOP have flipped their wig in a way that pisses off the public, and our side is free to go on the offensive because absolutely everyone knows that if Obama and the Dems are going ‘No, you’re being crazy anarchist bomb throwers’ then both sides are NOT at fault.
Okay, absolutely everyone but the pundits, but even people who get news from them think pundit spin is stupid.
David Koch
@mdblanche: he’s a lying ass hole, just like the rest of them. he went on hardball last week with his “I’m reasonable” crap and then proceeded to pour out a bunch of lies about ACA.
Tommy
@mainmati: Go Cardinals. I often joke, and I am not joking, my mom put headphones on her belly so I could hear Jack Buck call a Cardinals game when I was a fetus.
You know “Birds on the Bat.” But I feel for the Pirates. I do. We win most years and I can’t imagine what it is like being fan in that town.At my core I am just a sports fan ….
Now with that said I hope we beat the Pirates into the ground the next few days.
Tone in DC
@Southern Beale:
Some things haven’t changed for about five years, have they.
the Conster
@dmsilev:
The two conservative white Republican lawyers in my office in downtown Boston were speaking quietly in one of their offices about how the Republicans have REALLY fucked this up – there’s no question in anyone’s mind that this is a huge fucking Republican clusterfuck of epic proportions.
PsiFighter37
@mdblanche: Being ‘moderate’ in the GOP means you don’t listen to what the voices in your head tell you to do. Seriously, the people being bandied about as ‘moderate’ (like Mike Fitzpatrick in PA-08 or Peter King) are NOT moderates…they’re goddamn conservatives who haven’t stuck their heads all the way up their asses. Yet. And only on certain issues (put a brown person near Peter King and see what happens).
@RareSanity: It might’ve been the caps lock that got me timeout land. BJ has a way to filter out excited talk regarding genitalia, even if only to illustrate a point. Not the point…
Suffern ACE
@RareSanity: yeah. I was in a relationship for a few years that had rules like that. Stuff that no reasonable person would agree to being held over my head as a binding agreement. Hopefully the breakup will be as liberating for congress as it was for me. I bought brown shoes. I definitely remember being forbidden from wearing brown shoes and buying a pair the first chance I could get.
RareSanity
@LeftCoastTom:
Public shaming…
It doesn’t help your reelection prospects when even people in your own party are saying you’re no good.
Mary G
@David Koch: I think I might make a sign and go up to picket Darrell Issa’s new office in Dana Point tomorrow. (In my mobility scooter I paid for myself because Medicare has clamped down due to fraud.) He ignored my letter and now I feel a bit like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction myself.
Also, too, are rightwingers just getting dumber & dumber? I’m a liberal in Southern California and right now my Google ads are all for Ken Cooch for governor of VA and “Obamacare! BAD FOR VIRGINIA!”
Jebediah, RBG
@Ruckus:
As an old-school pacifist, just brass knuckles for me, thanks.
Ash Can
Blanket parties make for excellent surprises.
NotMax
The needle on my respect meter pinned while watching the Elizabeth Warren clip just now shown on MSNBC.
Southern Beale
@Davis X. Machina:
Memory Hole, July 2009:
By the way, this is “socialized medicine” worth taking the government down over.
David Koch
Black Jimmy Carter was on fire today at a rally in Maryland
Davis X. Machina
@Southern Beale: IOW, the public option was to have been one of the offerings on the exchanges, which is more or less what I said. The exchanges are not an ‘instead of’ the public option.
One of the things that made fighting for the public option difficult was that by the time it was an issue, the phrase was used indiscriminately to cover everything between an actual public-insurance option, through single payer, to an NHS-USA.
mdblanche
@RareSanity: “I hear-I heard what you were saying. You-you know nothing of my rule. You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you ever got to be speaker of anything is totally amazing.”
@PsiFighter37: That’s how they sound on TV anyway. Their voting records are virtually identical to their conservative colleagues. Their moderation is an informed attribute.
Citizen_X
@David Koch: All that and 10X the brainpower of the current Governor!
Roc
So what are the odds the media that bought-and-repeated “occupy has no clear message or goals” will apply the same standard here?
joel hanes
@Baud:
Didn’t recognize her at all in that shot.
Field marks: unmistakeble shoes, for which she is famous
NotMax
@Roc
Slightly less than the odds of Louie Anderson winning the gold in the high jump.
? Martin
@RareSanity: I don’t think they’re worried about him. Like I said, he’s in a safe district, and he’s not going to be primaried from the right, so this is really all academic to him.
I might have this wrong, but the sense I get is that he’s genuinely perplexed that Obama/Reid not only haven’t caved, but aren’t hiding from the cameras either. They’re not following the script. And I should somehow be mad at the Dem leadership over this.
I mentioned yesterday that the GOP expectations here were unreasonable from a basic negotiating standpoint. Their opening demand was temporary funding in exchange for the permanent elimination of a major piece of legislation, with no promise that in a month they wouldn’t come back for another major piece of legislation. I told him only a fool would fall for that – that it was a bad faith offer, and I asserted that he knows it’s a bad faith offer. His counter (confirming my assertion) was that they immediately dropped that for a 1 year delay. And I said the counter was an equally bad faith offer because there would be at least two other opportunities like this in the next year for them to demand yet another year – that the GOP was really just making the same offer as the first time, but in a slower package, and I asserted he knew that as well and if the GOP assumed that Obama or Reid couldn’t see through that Boehner was worse at this then he appears.
Today I told him what I thought they did wrong – that their offer wasn’t a budget but a CR. At least with a budget one of those two rooks is taken off the board, but with a CR it leaves them both in play, so there’s absolutely no incentive for the other side to make that play because they get no assurances that this won’t go on forever – unless the GOPs gambit from the outset was that the Dems care more about a functioning government than they do and therefore will give in first, so it didn’t matter what the GOP offered – and that’s why they’re getting hit with the hostage taking label. Promising to not shoot the hostage is of no relief while you are still holding the gun – you have to put the gun down, and the GOP isn’t offering to do that. The risk to the GOP is that anyone who understands this stuff and thinks through the moves on the board could come to no other conclusion than the GOP has admitted to themselves as part of their rationale to do this that they care less about a functioning government, and that’s absolutely lethal to the party. That the debt ceiling is upcoming with no assurance that the other rook won’t be played, and that he has colleagues going on TV talking about how excited they are that the government is shut down provides clear proof of that thinking within the party, and that outside of a subset of Republican voters, voters will find that attitude absolutely disgusting. That’s the kind of thing that turns voters off of a party forever. I told him I don’t think he’s of that mindset – I don’t think he’s happy about this shutdown, but by refusing to stand up to the individuals that are happy about this, he’s going to be labeled with that position whether he likes it or not.
Tommy
@Southern Beale: This year my mom got really sick at 67. Went in for a “simple” operation and ended up spending a month in the ICU. Two weeks in a rehab place.
Bad, bad things happened.
My parents got the bill. They didn’t pay a dollar.
Dad a former high-level DoD guy of 30+ years (Civilian). I was like dad don’t you get how “neat” that is. Not that mom got sick, that really sucked, but that you had NO healthcare expenses. All covered.
I think I said, you know other people might like to have that …
RareSanity
@? Martin:
It’s that damn echo chamber they have formed around themselves.
It allows them to think that they’re playing chess, when they’re actually playing checkers.
Citizen_X
@HelpThe99ers: I want to sock Stuart Varney in the jaw for that. Federal employees are making “a lot more money” than he is being a Wall Street propagandist? Piss off ya Limey carpetbagger.
“I want to punish these people?” What kind of sickness does this guy have, that with all his comfort and money he fantasizes about hurting people guilty of doing their jobs? Fucking psycho.
LeftCoastTom
@RareSanity: 1) But we already know Boehner won’t even do that, and 2) “Ted” Cruz doesn’t seem to mind.
Tone in DC
FYI.
The woman who was killed today on Maryland Avenue, NE (Miriam Carey) was a dental hygienist. She had no firearm.
mai naem
Only the GOP would have a Speaker named Boner, one whackjob Senator named Cruise and another whackjob Senator named Randy. And, yeah, I know this is sophomoric humor.
Alex Wagner just had Tulsi Gabbard on. I know she’s not the best Dem rep Hawaii could do and i know I shouldn’t be commenting on this, but jeez, she’s model pretty.
The Dangerman
@? Martin:
“Hey, after saying I’d like to fuck your wife, I immediately dropped my demand to only a blowjob.”
mdblanche
@Citizen_X: An underestimate, surely?
Ruckus
@Jebediah, RBG:
It is the sentiment that counts, isn’t it?
RareSanity
@LeftCoastTom:
1.) It won’t be Boehner. It will be all the Tea Partiers, Fox News, Drudge, Rush, and all the rest of the members of the Wingnut Wurlitzer.
2.) The Tea Partiers in the House, don’t much care for Cruz right now.
NotMax
@mai naem
The Gabbard family were the big money behind opposing same-sex marriage in Hawaii, among other faults.
PsiFighter37
@Tone in DC: Maybe some mental health issues, then? It makes zero sense otherwise.
Hope that her kid (if it was hers in the car) is taken care of.
FlipYrWhig
@David Koch: Don’t you get the feeling he’s just barely resisting doing that Chris Rock bit about how if you pay child support for your kids you don’t deserve credit because it’s what you’re supposed to do? “What do you want, a cookie?”
Jay C
@Mary G:
We’re in the NY/NJ media market, and the GOP clown running against Cory Booker for Senate is making opposition to “Obamacare ” the centerpiece of his campaign ads – blathering about the President’s “lies” , and claiming Booker will be “Obama’s rubber stamp”. As if that’s a negative….
PsiFighter37
@Jay C: I guess the insinuations about Booker’s sexuality didn’t do the job?
RareSanity
@Tone in DC:
As tragic as that situation is, she didn’t need a firearm, she used her vehicle as a weapon.
There’s a Capital Police officer in the hospital right now because of it.
NotMax
@efgoldman
52 pick-up.
RareSanity
@efgoldman:
I was thinking more along the lines of peek-a-boo, but that would have broke my metaphor.
? Martin
@RareSanity: I don’t think that’s quite it. He knows they’re playing checkers. He candidly admitted they entered this with a weak hand from the outset, so he can read the board just fine. I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know there.
But I was trying to show him what that revealed about them, which they may not have anticipated. The Fox News watchers might not take the time to think this through because they’re too busy spiking their GOP footballs in their living rooms, but everyone else can look at the deal and conclude that it’s completely unfair. And if they’re having trouble getting to that point, Stutzman and Bachmann are doing a bang-up job leading them to it.
LeftCoastTom
@RareSanity:
Yet they’re doing exactly what he says.
The Wurlitzer model (your first point) makes more sense on the GOP side. But I’m not convinced it would act on behalf of Boehner. In fact I’m mystified most of all by Boehner, nobody’s going to take his job because nobody wants it and in any case they’d never find a majority of the entire house to favor anyone else. Seems to me more likely that Pelosi would just borrow a page from Willie Brown, find a disaffected GOPer, and offer him/her the speakership in return for equal representation on committees.
RareSanity
@? Martin:
I see where you’re coming from…they think that they’re pulling a fast one and no one will notice.
I think people are noticing.
RareSanity
@LeftCoastTom:
That’s a good point about Cruz.
As far as Boehner, one thing is for sure, he’s finding himself in the generally Democratic position of trying to herd cats. He has to try and pacify the nuts in his party, while appearing to be sane and reasonable to everyone else.
His actions are mystifying because he’s trying to do the impossible.
? Martin
@RareSanity: Yeah. People are noticing in spite of how bad the news coverage has been of this. And I think it’s only going to get worse for the GOP. The hot mic moments all do a little bit more damage that can’t be undone.
Ruckus
@RareSanity:
I still don’t understand why people keep giving the orange drunk the benefit of the doubt. He is a conservative, with all the baggage and bullshit that comes with it. He may not be able to herd cats but that’s because he is one, not because he’s trying to.
opiejeanne
@? Martin: Which thread was it in? I missed it and would like to read it.
Gex
@the Conster: Since it hurt them last time, and it looks to hurt them this time, I sure hope they will be slower to pull this stunt next time.
Ah, who am I kidding? This is a party and a base that actively derides the idea of knowing things or being intelligent. Doubtful they will wise up and learn.
catclub
@Hill Dweller: I agree. The protected FOX cocoon has its advantages and disadvantages. The candidates are not sharpened up by tough questions.
? Martin
@opiejeanne: Here.
opiejeanne
@Tommy: My dad had that kind of health care for his retirement package, really gold plated. He was eternally astonished that my husband doesn’t have something similar.
opiejeanne
@? Martin: Thanks. I will take a look.
We had Loretta Sanchez for our Rep when we lived in Anaheim, and every candidate that ran against her was a total joke.
LeftCoastTom
@opiejeanne: That seems fair enough, she won that seat by running against Bob Dorner (R-Idiot), who was a total joke.
Orange County seems to have a thing for total jokes..
opiejeanne
@LeftCoastTom: Even better was her last opponent while we lived in Anaheim, a guy named Tan or Win or something who had run first as a democrat in San Diego for something, then moved to our district and ran as a republican against her.
Among his many stupid moves were having his relatives campaign right outside polling places, well within the politics-free zone, and sending out a letter to a lot of registered voters with Hispanic surnames in Santa Ana telling them in Spanish that if they tried to vote they would be arrested. He claimed it was just a bad translation. There was more but I can’t remember it all.
Before that we lived in Huntington Beach for 2 years and had the delightful Rohrabacher as a rep. Yeesh.
Burnspbesq
The payback for Operation Payback has arrived.
Indictments. Lots of indictments.
How many Anons have to go to jail before that community learns that if you fuck with DOJ, DOJ fucks back?
http://www.businessinsider.com/anonymous-indictment-ddos-attacks-2013-10
Burnspbesq
@LeftCoastTom:
We got a new critter in the last redistricting; they moved us from Royce’s district to Campbell’s.
Campbell has decided to hang it up, so the seat will be open. Gonna be weird to have a chance to won.
coin operated
@? Martin: Damn…just…damn.
Please excuse the gushing for a moment, but there is some inside baseball here that would make Woodward and Bernstein jealous.
Keep it up Martin!!!
? Martin
@Burnspbesq: Campbell is my rep, and was before the redistrict. We had a better chance beating him before the redistrict. We’re R+12 now. Obama won the old district by a hair in 2008. It’s a real longshot now.
trollhattan
@fuckwit:
Nobody yell “pull” while the kiddies are climbing out, m’kay?
virginia
Wow! Fascinating — Many thanks. Beautifully stated.
fuckwit
@? Martin: Is there any chance of you talking this guy down from the ledge?
I’ve found that when you’re saying something, and the other guy isn’t responding to what you’re saying, he’s just throwing non-sequitur talking points at you, then the conversation is basically over, and there’s some resistance at work that’s deeper than youv’e gotten, and maybe even can’t get to at all. i.e. when I get to that point in political conversations, it’s out of the realm of intellect and into the realm of personal or group identity, deep prejudices, a belief in some authority that they can’t or won’t disobey, phobias/fears, and other things that would require psychoanalyis or some deeply transformational life event to change in them. That’s usually where I choose to back off, and wait for life to do the convincing for me.
virginia
@virginia:
@Martin is what I meant above. Too old for the reply feature.
It surprises me that folks involved in putting this turkey forward would have so little understanding of how it’s coming across. Then again …
Your analysis gives me some small hope that if they can’t figure out that crucial feature of the exercise — larger public perception, I mean — they are well and truly screwed. Lack of awareness at this level, and playing for these stakes, equals kinda sorta astonishing. One thing be to be this craven — quite another to be this dumb. Plotting 101.
At any rate, many thanks.
virginia
@fuckwit: @fuckwit:
Most of us can be persuaded and led gently into coming back down off the ledge, as you put it, if we feel that the person addressing us is willing and able to reflect what we are thinking and feeling. Pretending to be sympathetic, empathetic goes a long way — for good or ill. An obvious mediation technique — a standard form of manipulation. I don’t mean saying one agrees — Just clearly repeating and reflecting what the other is putting out. Stating the obvious, so apologies on that front.
Ruckus
I think I’m going to have to defriend about half my FB friends.
1% of several million by the third day for a product that doesn’t take effect for 3 months. Wonder what will happen in about 60 days as we get closer to full implementation?
Obamacare is going to be the end of civilization as we know it! I sure hope so, if what I’m seeing now is what anyone would call civilization. People so hateful of everything they can’t even form rational thoughts.
? Martin
@fuckwit:
Directly? No. I’m trying to shake his confidence by suggesting that more of his constituents (of which I’m not, but I do have a connection to his district) than he might realize can draw conclusions without relying on Fox or MSNBC or whoever. So I’m challenging him along different angles, and I think he’s actually appreciating that because he’s continued the conversation. He already doubts this strategy – that was abundantly clear when he conceded their position was weak. I’m trying to push that doubt harder, in a variety of ways.
But he’s not going to lead the charge to flip – he’s not a moderate. And there’s no upside for him because he’s safe. Now, if 20 GOPers do break ranks and side with the Dems, he’ll probably join them if it looks like at least half of the caucus is going to break. He’s not going to want to be coming home on the same bus as all the tea partiers.
But along the way the caucus is talking, and I want him going into that caucus saying that some random voter has got their number, and if that’s getting out there, then they’ve lost this. I really do get the sense that this whole exercise assumes that the voters are too dumb/distracted with life to really understand what’s happening. So, I don’t think the strategy is exactly dumb, rather that it’s a strategy that relies on us being dumb. If we choose to not be dumb, then yeah, it becomes a dumb strategy. If that makes sense.
Hopefully he comes back tomorrow. I’ll try reaching out to him after this is all over and see if I can get his thoughts once the pressure is off.
fidelio
Does billmon mean a surprise party or a Surprise Party (may not be legal in Alabama?
johnny aquitard
@? Martin:
God these people really lack any ability for introspection or self-awareness don’t they?
It’s like it’s almost a cliche, a caricature of the typical conservative, but damn if it ain’t true.
johnny aquitard
@fuckwit:
This is where the conservative movement has been for years. The party steered intentionally for that open sewer with the southern strategy and making the god-botherers feel at home. (unsurprisingly there’s a big overlap between the bigots, neo-confederates and the fundies.)
As others have said before, the modern conservative movement is a mental condition that should have a DSM classification.
johnny aquitard
@virginia:
These are the people who are empathy-challenged. It seems to me people who have difficulty being empathic will also likely have difficulty receiving it from others. They constantly misinterpret it.
In fact we know conservatives see empathic behavior as a negative; it’s weakness, foolishness, contemptible. And they are contemptuous of people who display it. Shit if these people had the normal empathy gene they’d never have voted to take food away from the poor, or education away from all but the well-to-do, or health insurance from millions.
And they are unable to see how that makes them seem to other people.
So good luck with that. They don’t have the normal receptors for empathy. It’s like trying to deprogram a cult member, or talk a psychotic off their legde. It really should be a DSM entry.