Froomkin quotes Obama and nails what’s really gone on the last thirty years:
“A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations… were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.”
The inevitable conclusion here is that establishment Washington is complicit in what went wrong. That includes all the people in positions of power who accepted what was happening as simply politics as usual — even as the country was slowly but inevitably headed to that day of reckoning.
After all, since the Reagan era, even mainstream Democratic leaders have internalized the trickle-down, free-market, small-government mentality which Obama now blames for our woes. Few in the Democratic party — or the mainstream media — did much more than watch as the economic playing field tilted further and further to the advantage of the rich.
On cue, David Sanger of the Times wanks:
It (Obama’s economic plan) may also be a postmodern, post-Clinton form of liberalism.
Are the concerns of working class Americans now the issue that dare not speak its name? Is the fact that that the middle class has gotten fucked on health care, on wages, on taxes so distasteful to mention that elite media can only dance around the topic with terms like “Burkean bells” and “postmodernism” and “class warfare”?
El Cid
By even indirectly suggesting that the concerns of working class Americans are not identical to the concerns of the super-wealthy, hallowed be their names, whose merest thought enables us with life and blood, you are committing class warfare and stirring up populist hatred among our delicate peoples.
Brachiator
Yep. That just about covers it.
Incertus
@El Cid: Given how bad we’ve been shit on for the last thirty years, the super-wealthy are lucky their heads aren’t on pikes right now. I love T-Bogg’s take on it, though.
Atanarjuat
Re-quoted for emphasis:
Absolutely, 100% correct.
But let’s mostly blame the Republicans anyway. It’s easier that way.
-A
TenguPhule
Yes, lets.
Because they actively led the destruction.
TenguPhule
Nothing that can’t be fixed by a French Revolution.
Original Lee
And then Froomkin follows up with this post, which seems to be moving the debate in the right direction. Is sanity returning to a select few in the Village?
Xecky Gilchrist
Are the concerns of working class Americans now the issue that dare not speak its name?
Yes, because the media would have to own up to their complicity every time they did speak it.
Indylib
I was just about to post a comparison on the Klein thread between Obama and Clinton. For all of the bitching from certain concern trolls about how Obama isn’t progressive enough at least Obama is making forward progress toward – you know, progressivism.
Clinton was, at times, part of the problem, occasionally part of the solution, but mostly he was a stop-gap. He sat athwart conservative forward motion and yelled "Impeach me!" His largest accomplish was delaying the wingnuts from gaining power sooner. I have no idea if that was a good thing or not.
The Moar You Know
Hell, it’s not only the "elite media" that do this little dance. A substantial number of the middle class that is doing the catching for the pitching rich thinks that it’s "soc!alist" and worse to believe that they are getting the high hard one with no lube from our oh-so-precious wealthy, and that the chafing pain they feel upon sitting is the fault of unions and lieburuls.
Fuck this stupid spam filter, by the way.
TheFountainHead
Fixed. Sanger owes me money now.
hana
I’m so glad you’ve been calling pretentious BS on the "Burkean" nonsense. That has annoyed me for some time now, but just about everything that particular blogger writes annoys me for other reasons, so I wasn’t sure how objective I was able to be.
El Cid
There’s simply no question that many major leaders of the Democratic Party following along the right wing economic agenda were following Republicans’ lead.
NAFTA was drafted by Carlos Salinas and set up under Bush Sr., and then chosen by Clinton to push through with strong Republican support, the support of a few (often conservative) Democrats, and against Democratic majority opposition in both House and Senate.
Carter’s expansion of Savings & Loan backing only whetted the appetites of the Reaganites, who pushed through with Democratic Congressional support complete deregulation of the Savings & Loan, so, of course, that branch of our financial system tanked at taxpayers’ expense.
And Phil Gramm was clearly the architect and lead pusher of the destruction of New Deal era protection on banking and the sanctification of the complete destruction of the U.S. banking system through the Commodities Future Modernization Act, but not without the cheerleading of all the Turd Way Democrats telling us stupid Luddites to get with our new, hip, 21st century banking system.
Turgidson
@Indylib:
Yes and no. I mean, if he’d just kept his pants zipped while he was in office, Gore may well have won and they wingnuts may not have ever taken over all 3 branches.
That said, my belief is that from a policy and ideology standpoint, Clinton was probably the best we could hope for, considering the ideological climate in the country. He was sort of the Democrats’ version of Eisenhower – Reaganism was still king, but the people soured on GHWB (much like people soured on Truman).
I just wish Bubba had listened a little more to guys like Reich and a little less to guys like Rubin.
Xecky Gilchrist
@El Cid: …but not without the cheerleading of all the Turd Way Democrats…
Damn straight. This was the main reason I didn’t want Hillary to win the nom – that whole internalized DLC nonsense that there’s something shameful about being a Democrat and that we must worship Republicans.
Fulcanelli
OT, but…
This needs to be thrown in the face of every asshole wingnut TownHall/Freeper/NRO/Limbaugh/Malkin douche nozzle on the fucking planet every 5 minutes for the next 50 years. I’m beyond postal. I am gonna put a fucking hurt on at least one of these fuckers and record the screams to use as a ringtone on my cell phone.
/rant. seeking sedation
pegleghippie
You know, as silly as all this is, if I see Obama reading some Derrida I’ll do a little happy PoMo dance
MobiusKlein
Don’t forget the "What Climate Change" caucus. Politics as usual vs doing something useful now.
SpotWeld
Does anyone else get the feeling that those who support Obama plan to work hard to create something and have the expectation that president encorporate some that work , where under Bush the supporters of that president expected the (now former) President to work for his supporters in the sense he had a check list and as long as he got the major bullet points the major movers and shakers of his party would let him do anything else he wanted?
I really get a sense of (attempted at least) collaboration between the various grass roots movements and the administration. Admittely they seems to end up at cross purposes, but there really seems to be a unified feel of "we disagree on the details, but we all want everyone to suceed here".
I just don’t recall get that under Bush. Previously it was more a feeling of "you’re either with us or you’re against us."
Bob In Pacifica
I’ve always maintained that left-right obscures most issues, which are really top-bottom. But then I’ve always been accused of being a class warfare kind of guy.
On NPR over the weekend dickweed Juan Williams was saying that the people making over 250k were the people "making the jobs" for those below in a right-wing talking point against reinstituting pre-Bush tax levels. But what makes jobs is demand along with the money to satisfy that demand. In other words, the more people with more money, the more demand there is. You can open up as many businesses as you want, but if no one buys you’ll be closing all of them shortly. That’s how capitalism works.
The problem with most capitalists is that they try to get all the money. It’s like playing Monopoly. After someone has all the money the game ends. In the real world the winners don’t have to have all of the money, just enough of it to destroy the economy. Which is what we have here. Capitalism works when everyone has a house on their piece of property and can continue to go around the board forever.
That One - Cain
Tilted to the super rich/rich. But aren’t they eating it too? It seems to me that they are losing a lot of money and they should. Maybe we can turn the page on "quick profits" trumps all mentality that has permeated most of the 90s leading to a succession of "booms" as we wander around drunkenly from one crises to another. Really, we have seriously taken a beating in the past 30 years. Bad leaders, bad policies..
cain
Rick Taylor
And if David Brooks is wondering why there are so few nice reasonable economically responsible moderate Democrats, this is why. People like me nodded as the administration did the economically responsible thing and increased the payroll tax to support social security and presided over reduced deficits, and we got reamed. Badly. A trillion or more for a war, more for tax cuts slanted to the rich, calls for further sacrifice in social security, and a world economic meltdown. Never again.
gnomedad
@Atanarjuat:
I do not think this means what you pretend to think it means.
zzyzx
And meanwhile, Red State wants to further shrink their tent:
Keep going guys. There still might be some moderates who still like you.
myiq2xu
The campaign is over but CDS never dies
sgwhiteinfla
DougJ
This is off topic but you got me hooked on the WaPo chats and I finally got a question in today.
For the record I named 5 more but they didn’t publish them.
Weekly Standard
New York Post
Boston Herald
Investors Business Daily
National Review
Incertus
@zzyzx: They’re not very good at math, are they? Even if you assume that Limbaugh’s numbers are accurate, and even if you assume that everyone who listens to him is a dittohead and will do his bidding in an election, say, they’re still what, 40 million votes short of the presidency? That’s a hell of an electoral strategy right there.
Napoleon
@Rick Taylor:
Very well put – that is exactly where I am.
ricky
If that’s just OT, warn us when you get PO’d.
cleek
bring it, you mewling pissant McVeigh-wannabes.
Emma Anne
@Rick Taylor:
This is exactly why I have an allergic reaction every time I hear someone talk about "reforming" or "shoring up" social security. I am actually starting to trust Obama enough that if he takes a look at social security I might just have a rash and not an anaphylactic reaction.
Zifnab
@sgwhiteinfla:
Oh! Oh! I saw this Family Guy Episode!
Xecky Gilchrist
@Incertus: They’re not very good at math, are they? … they’re still what, 40 million votes short of the presidency? That’s a hell of an electoral strategy right there.
Indeed, they’re not very good at math, or they’d realize the Laffer Curve is a bunch of crap.
Michael
All wingnut, all the time.
srv
Other than one or two exceptions, the ideology of the Democratic Party since Reagan has been to provide a minimal veneer of resistance, focused on electability, to whatever the f**k it was that Republicans wanted to do.
Now that their symbiotic host has gone completely insane, the party will have to find something on their own that will unravel the mess. The ideology of not-completely-batshit-insane is unlikely to work out, but that’s all our ‘democracy’ has to offer.
Indylib
Fuckity fuck I am sick of these asshole wingnuts acting like they have a fucking clue about the "Founding Fathers". You’d have to be schizophrenic to believe all of the different things all of the Founding Fathers believed.
The Founding Fathers were not a homogenious group of people. For God sake it took them 4 years between official end of the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention to agree what kind of government to create. Not to mention the fact that the Founding Fathers that signed the Declaration of Independence by definition were revolutionaries – the frikkin conservatives were the Tories.
ksmiami
Because so called conservatives keep forgetting that phrase.. hmm what was it? Oh yeah "PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE" motherfuckers. What did they think this meant? It is obscene in a democracy that someone like Paulson can earn 500 million dollars for pushing money around and it detrimental to our society that people earn so much from doing so little. Our country needs a strong middle class and people need to realize that even if they break out and make it into the top 1/2 of 1 percent. it is better to have a well off nation than be like the Phillipines.
AARGH
Jon Karak
Like wolves circling an ever-fattening pig.
Al Swearengen
You need to ask tax-cut dead-enders what jobs rich people are going to create with their tax cuts. These dickheads don’t or won’t understand that we have a huge overcapacity problem that they’re ignoring when they scream to give the rich more tax cuts.
Here’s what Mike Shedlock, an investment analyst with Seattle-based Sitka Pacific and who writes the econblog "Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis" says at the above link: "What is it that we need more of? Do we need more Wal-Marts, more Pizza Huts, more nail salons?"
Shawn in ShowMe
@Al Swearengen
Love Jeff”s reply early in that thread:
"We don’t have an overcapacity of domestic energy production."
Krista
And that’s something to consider. As we are continually reminded, Rush IS an entertainer. It’s not inconceivable that a considerable chunk of his audience is made up not of dittoheads, but of regular folk who listen to Rush solely for the comedy factor.
Mike in NC
Remember, Dubya said he "didn’t do nuance". How’d that work out, by the way?
John Cole
Al Giordano gives it to Peter Daou.
As good as Nate Silver was the past year with the numbers, Giordano was with everything else.
cleek
seems to me that you’d need to agree with the bulk of what he says before you could find anything he says funny. if you disagree with his basic premise that liberals are evil, then 70% of what he says is going to come across as something other than funny: insulting, stupid and ignorant probably.
bootlegger
At least one conservative gives props to the Left.
From Andrew Bacevich’s The Limits of Power (p.26):
Full frontal assault on the constitution? The Left is the only force that makes Cons respect the Constitution. The only "full frontal" the Left does is nudity.
Shawn in ShowMe
@cleek
You can absolutely find bigots hilarious while disagreeing with everything that comes out their mouths. I used to love All in the Family. But Archie Bunker wasn’t the leader of the Republican party. Rush is.
Brick Oven Bill
Gibbs is on my TV saying ‘uh’, and driving me nuts. I counted the ‘uhs’ on one question on earmarks. Gibbs said ‘uh’ thirty times in this one answer. THIRTY TIMES. I estimate that one in 3.5 words out of his mouth is ‘uh’.
Indylib
@John Cole:
Rushbo is fungus. Win!
Krista
Not laughing with Rush, laughing AT him due to his utter idiocy. I would wager that most people who watch Maury don’t give a sweet goddamn who the father of Tawnya’s baby is — they just watch it for the sheer trainwrecky goodness.
Napoleon
Highlighting Rush is one of the smartest things the Dems have done politically in the last 70 years. The political wits of anyone on the other side of that discussion, like Daou, seems to me to be open to serious question.
Porkulus fka Media Browski
@gnomedad: Well, ignoring the meaning of facts/history/quotes/numbers/science is a well-developed and documented Wingnut talent.
@Brick Oven Bill: Uh . . . How’s that bet that Obama will be below 50% by April 15 going for you there?
Uh . . . Also.
Zifnab
@Krista: It’s worth noting that he’s one of the few voices on AM radio not speaking in tongues, or at least in a foreign language.
If your options are NPR, hip hop, alternative, the Jesus Network, and Rush, you don’t have to be a ditto-head to tune in.
That said, you do have to have a pretty thick skin to listen to him bash everyone from cripples to minorities to furries to Dan Rather in between fellating his sponsors and blustering about how smart he is. I can make five, maybe ten minutes of the swill before I get that whole gagging sensation and have to change the channel. I don’t know how his regular audience does it without going insane.
The Grand Panjandrum
@John Cole: That Giordano piece is a gem. Thanks for the tip. He advocates cornering GOP congress critters and forcing them to say whether or not they want Obama’s economic plan to fail. I would like all of them to be on the record.
The entire "Rush the Entertainer" meme is getting old. He is conveniently an "entertainer" when he says something outrageous, and he right on the issues when he talks about "issues". Convenient. Very convenient, and a big dodge. Why don’t Republicans just admit that they have to kiss Rush’s ring or be drummed out of the party by the dead enders.
The Grand Panjandrum
What Larison said.
BDeevDad
It’s called Unintentional Comedy and there is a rating scale.
valdivia
Giordano was really one of the best during the primaries and has always something insightful to say about what is going on strategically. I am very glad to see him hit Daou. Is it that these people fear Rush or what? What could be smarter than revealing who gives the wingnuts their wingnut ideas instead of letting them pretend they are all ‘Burkeans’ or ‘moderates’. Shine the light on it, best thing that could happen.
Martin
Ultimately, it’ll probably also be one of the best things for the GOP in the long run. The GOP said no to the simulus and are saying no to everything else. They give no plausible reason for the ‘no’ votes other than politics – no alternatives, no competing plan, but they are afraid to admit that it’s politics. So Obama shoves them at Rush who is openly saying that it’s all politics, and that politics should trump the economy.
The only way out for the GOP is to actually come up with alternatives and competing plans and to start voting with Obama here and there. Their only plans so far are to keep doing what got us into this mess. Their no votes are killing them. They need to break out of the ideological box and Obama is forcing them to do it sooner rather than later.
ImJohnGalt
From the Sanger Piece:
Why is it so goddamn incomprehensible to these fucking Heathers that there are successful people out there that don’t begrudge paying taxes to fix their fucking country?
How many times do people like Warren Buffet and Hollywood celebrities explicitly say that they’d be *happy* to pay back into a system that made them so ridiculously wealthy before this "rich people hate contributing to the common welfare" meme goes away?
Fucking fuckity fuck. This kind of vocalization of received wisdom is one of the reasons our pundit-class needs to be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
I need a cup of tea or something. My temples are throbbing.
BDeevDad
Anyone got some time and want to register/create PoliticiansWhoWantObamaToFail.com?
Napoleon
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I first heard it said around 1990 by a right winger I use to work with. It was a BS way to try and deflect the fact that Rush was vile and had an army of listeners with equally vile political views by making it sound like absolutely no one took what he said seriously.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Napoleon: I too heard it for the first time back in the early 90’s from a conservative friend. He didn’t admit it, but I took it as his justification for laughing at Rush’s often sexist and race baiting humor.
Napoleon
I work at a smaller law firm and a paralegal had asked everyone who they were voting for, and every single attorney, the highest paid people here, were voting Obama, and all but one staff person was voting McCain. And everyone realized exactly who was going to be paying the higher taxes.
Napoleon
@The Grand Panjandrum:
.
Bingo, that is exactly how I took it my coworker was using it.
Porkulus fka Media Browski
Gibbs on Limbaugh/Steele:
Brick Oven Bill
This is because the staff works for a living Napoleon. Perhaps some of them smoke cigarettes.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
No time to read the cited article yet, but is there a part about how the Dems and liberals were pretty much silent and complicit in the runup to the insane and useless Iraq war?
Just wondering.
The Grand Panjandrum
@ThymeZoneThePlumber: No.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
@Porkulus fka Media Browski:
I must say, I really like the Obama administration’s zeal to make the GOP wear Rush Limbaugh and make him their mascot.
I think it’s a smart move, and has a long and effective future ahead of it.
That fat, disgusting pig of a man is the perfect icon for that bunch. They elected him their king, now let him rule them.
jrg
As David Neiwert (and others) have noted, whenever a right-winger encourages violence or demonizes a class of people, it’s always a "joke". See the Sadly, No "funny" skull and crossbones.
See also the Obsidian Wings post. It’s not the least bit surprising that the GOP faithful (who somehow all think they are going to become millionaires tomorrow) cannot grasp marginal tax rates.
Whoever said that the Republicans are like a bunch of clueless, narcissistic teenagers nailed it. They don’t have a clue what they are talking about, but they think they know everything. How can anyone file their taxes year after year and not comprehend that your tax rate only changes for those dollars that exceed a certain amount?
Zifnab
@ThymeZoneThePlumber: Elected Dems and Liberals. Back on my college campus, you couldn’t spit without hitting someone bitching about the war. As a populist move, it was an absolute fail. I mean, most people thought this was going to be Gulf War Redux, not Vietnam 2: Electric Bugaloo, and I still couldn’t find many that considered it a great idea. At the time, the public just assumed it had to be done. But the on-the-ground liberals and democrats were horrified and objected loudly. They just didn’t have any representation in government.
Napoleon
Easy, either someone does it for them or they use the charts to calculate the tax, and never bother to learn how it actually works.
Martin
Smart
A regular visual cue for what the stimulus dollars are going toward. Learning from FDR…
Brick Oven Bill
The price of cigarettes just went up 20%, by a tax increase. This was the first tax increase of the administration.
DougJ
@sgw
Tuck Tuck is a complete idiot.
I asked the question from “Conservative McLovin” by the way.
Jay in Oregon
@Indylib:
I wonder how many wingnuts have even heard of the Articles of Confederation?
AhabTRuler
@Zifnab: You’re not wrong, but frankly, people are idiots. i think many people thought that Bush was going to do it anyway, so why bother making a stink. True, there was the desire for more Gulf-style war pr0n, but I think "most Americans," and their political leaders (i.e. followers), were deeply cynical and self-serving.
I don’t actually remember (i was hiding from news in a depression), but what were the polling numbers on the war? I seem to recall the were majority in favor, and although the White House did propagandize, I don’t actually think that "people" are that stupid, if they care (big if, see Darfur, Somalia, &c.).
BDeevDad
The other problem is the media thinks this crap is politically relevant or else they just want to distract folks from real issues.
Zifnab
@Jay in Oregon: Libertarians like to talk about them like they were the good ole days. Which just illustrates why you would never ever want to let a Libertarian run your country.
28 Percent
Are the concerns of working class Americans now the issue that dare not speak its name?
At least the legitimacy of teh ghey is open to public debate. . Maybe the proles could capitalize on that to improve our visibility if the entire steel industry went gay or something.
Zifnab
@AhabTRuler:
I think you underestimate the scope of the propaganda. You had Colin Powell bullshitting the UN to its face with his "roving chemical labs" and "aluminum tubes". Not to mention the near weekly fluctuations in the terror alert level. People really were gearing up in expectation of another – bigger – wave of terrorist attacks.
And I can’t honestly blame them. Imagine if Clinton had gone on the air after Oklahoma City and announced "There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of Timothy McVeigh cells scattered around the country, according to our FBI intelligence, and they’re going to start blowing up office buildings some time in the next few months." That’s the kind of madness we got from Bush, and the media feed unquestioningly right into it. I mean, Rumsfeld was up on TV nearly daily telling people, "We know where the WMDs are." How do you argue with that?
AhabTRuler
IOW: I think that although the Gov’t. was criminal and the press were pathetic (burn in hell Judy Miller, go serve your master in his lair!), the American people let themselves be convinced on the subject. As long as everyone had their Playstation and SUV, it was all good.
28 Percent
oh damn. did it again.
Porkulus fka Media Browski
@ThymeZoneThePlumber: Think about this, after spending 4 years running against George Bush’s unpopularity, the Obama team has found a Republican who polls even worse than George!
I’d call it a brilliant strategy if the Republicans weren’t playing along so helpfully.
Indylib
@Martin:
I saw this and thought the same thing. I hope the signs are HUGE.
Like billboard size.
Dennis-SGMM
@Brick Oven Bill:
Smoking is not a necessity of life. Smokers can either pay more, cut down, or quit. This tax is not onerous.
Brick Oven Bill
Smokers typically make less than $250,000/yr.
Smoking, if you are honest about it, reduces the cost of a nation’s health care and social programs. Lung cancer is a terrible disease, but it does reduce the ratio of retirees to workers. This used to be a sales pitch used by the tobacco companies to foreign countries, and was unethical, but true.
AhabTRuler
@28 Percent: Bwah-ha-ha! That’s twice, at the least.
I have been waiting for it to happen again, but I wasn’t going to say anything.
Indylib
@Martin:
Jeezemcrow, all of the wingnuts commenters at Trapper’s site are complaining about how expensive the signs will be.
Teh stupid burns more some days than others.
Brick Oven Bill
‘I will not raise taxes on people making less than $250,000/yr. Period.’
‘This is not about that sheet of paper.’
Mike in NC
Absent a draft and a tax increase, it was as easy to market as a video game.
Oh, they think it has something to do with Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson, you know, Southern heroes.
DougJ
“We know where they [WMD] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”
(via)
Ed in NJ
Jonathan Chait at TNR points out a new journalistic low over at ABC News.
Wealthy Idiots Meet Idiot Reporter
AhabTRuler
They are liars. They have always been liars.
The Press are subservient. The Press has always been subservient.
We believe them when we choose to believe them.
I will acknowledge that there was fear as a motivating factor post-9/11, but that does not absolve. Indeed, all the rationalizations about propaganda don’t absolve anything, whether we want them too or not.
[/bitter, jaded DFH]
Zifnab
@Brick Oven Bill:
Only after putting a terrible strain on the existing medical infrastructure. Going out with lung cancer is slow and expensive and it reduces your overall productivity. If you plan to work till you’re 65, but you die at age 50, you’ve short changed the system 15 years of your efforts right off the bat, plus all the time lost as you are crippled by your illness. You can contract cancer and be out of the work force for another five years before you actually die. So you’ve got a man at 45 who gets lung cancer, suffers within the system for 5 years, then dies 15 years before his time.
I don’t think anyone actually considers that a net plus.
Notorious P.A.T.
Matt Drudge rules their world.
Gregory
Fixed for accuracy.
AhabTRuler
You know what I like after I impugn the mutual complicity of the nation in crime? Some pussy! ;-)
Brick Oven Bill
The tobacco executives were referring to health care systems in the 3rd World, where the concept of the government spending significant resources on people with lung cancer is not the same as what we have been conditioned to perceive.
‘Read my lips, no new taxes.’
Elie
Indylib —
Its just that ignorance of the real history that makes me nervous about the current conservatives and libertarians. What history they do learn, they learn in summary, skipping all the details in between the highlights they choose to cherry pick. That incomplete summary knowledge mixed with their impulsive need to act in order to mitigate their loss of power would seem to make them a risk for violence and encitement to violence.
The Constitution also called for an orderly transfer of power and it seems that the Republicans believe that only Republicans are authentic and legitimate governors of the republic and that Democratic leaders are de facto illegitimate and therefore to be resisted…
The next year to two years will test this republic like it hasnt been tested in a long time, in my opinion. The collapse of the old financial order with major change of direction in terms of our national governance is going to be hard for conservatives and many progressives and liberals as well. I think that the real drama is yet to come.
HyperIon
@Turgidson:
I just wish Obama was listening a little more to guys like Reich and a little less to Rubin.
Zifnab
@HyperIon: I wish I had a pony.
HyperIon
@Al Swearengen:
tanning salons!
HyperIon
@Zifnab: i wish you had a better comeback.
Blue Raven
@myiq2xu:
Myiq, please, I think you really need to see a doctor. You’re hallucinating and posting nonsense.
CalD
Who was it that said every country has the government it deserves? Now granted, I may have been opposed to virtually every single social trend and public policy that led us to where we are now — in most cases well before it became fashionable (in some cases, still). But I also can’t help remembering that we live in a Democracy (of sorts) and that at the end of the day, there’s nobody here but us. I have to wonder if perhaps there wasn’t more I could have done, and sooner, to halt the downward slide and if the answer is yes (and you know it is) then as a living, breathing citizen of a Democracy I have to stand ready to accept at least some portion of the blame.
NickM
Blame is for the French.
mandarama, Eager Minion
@BOB
My mom (working class, uninsured) managed to cost Medicaid a staggering amount in the short time she took to die of lung cancer. Diagnostic surgeries, chemo, radiation, side effects management, medications, hospitalizations, final ICU stay. She got on with dying pretty quick, but she managed to need a whole lot of big government help to do so. This is one reason I don’t piss and moan about paying taxes. It’s also a reason I have to abandon my normal Southern politeness and tell you to fuck off.
I feel like it’s a Balloon Juice rite of passage.
jcricket
I work for a bordering-on-large law firm, and it’s nearly 100% Obama here as well, and the average partner makes north of $1 million/year. None of the associates makes less than six figures, and they’re all Obama as well.
Lawyers & judges vote Democrat something like 4-1. Must have something to do with that demonizing of lawyers/judges/the judicial system that the GOP has been so big on the last 8 years. Look at what happened to that (Republican) judge in the Schiavo case as an example.
bootlegger
@Zifnab: Actually my brother’s consulting firm ran the numbers for Big Tobacco (one reason he doesn’t work there any more) and there is actually a net savings to the state if people die young from smoking and even heart disease. The called it the Logan’s Run effect. Old age is medically expensive and something expensive to treat kills us all eventually anyhow.
To me this is no reason to avoid preventive care and I say tax tobacco to the point the black market for it makes crime too expensive. Its about quality of life, not $.