I like this quote from SEIU head Andy Stern:
“I have no sympathy for the congressmen and senators who say they’re taking too many hard votes,” he continues. “The worst that can happen to them is they lose their jobs. Workers are taking much harder votes every day.”
DBrown
But they will also lose their government provided health benefits, too!
Punchy
DKos is officially off-limits for any sane person. There’s a “STFU, Obama rulez” diary, followed by a dozen “No, YOU STFU, Obama succd”, and a bunch of meta “Why cant no one not decline to STFU, and oh by the way, recc me” diaries.
Whore’s bath of anger and fury. Yikes.
And yeah, I’m surprised the SEIU has time to make quotes, being so busy beating up protestors and such.
jenniebee
Oh, those union thugs and their thuggish ways!
Seen the new and improved Gladney yet? (h/t Jesse at Pandagon).
This woman has severe health problems, uses a walker. She shoved someone at a rally with her walker and had her foot stepped on. This is all offered as evidence of liberal hate. I shit you not.
Zifnab
@Punchy: Angry people disagreeing with each other?! On the internets, you say?!
lotus
Speaking of no-sympathy-for-the-mutts, Ezra’s got a good one on the hash Baucus has made of his chance at Senate immortality.
Ash Can
@Punchy: There’s immaturity at DKos to spare, to be sure, but you’ll find that everywhere on da toobz. There’s also a good deal of value among the flotsam and jetsam — well researched pieces with lots of handy links — for those patient enough to wade through all the other stuff. And I have to admit that I’ll take the occasional food fight over a boring and predictable site with 20 people all sitting around nodding at each other. (That and an insistence that all discussion be based on reality are what keep me away from the right-wing sites.)
@jenniebee:
They have to jump on stuff like this because it’s all they have. They’re struggling to find something, anything, at the bottom of the barrel. It’s kind of pathetic, really.
debit
@Punchy: I had to close my DKos tab when I saw the “Told You So, Suckers!” (suckers implied) diary.
It’s funny and sad at the same time when the Friday polls come out and indicate that extremism is reducing the GOP base to, well, crazy baseland. Funny because they did it to themselves and sad because very few posters on DKos seem to see it as a cautionary tale.
JGabriel
Punchy:
Why would that be a problem for someone named Punchy?
.
parksideq
@DBrown: At this point, I feel that any congresscritter who plans to vote against the public option should drop their federal health insurance benefits and buy it on the open market as a matter of principle.
HAHAHAHAHAHA, what was I thinking? Anyone voting against it has no idea what the word “principle” means.
thomas
I’m really beginning to like Andy.
Our current congress critters think they were elected to collect a pay check and polish their own egos. Doing their job never crosses their mind.
used to be disgusted
I thought the STFU post on DKos was amusing. It had funny pictures. And the point wasn’t STFU, you’re wrong — but STFU and go do something. Which is always salutary.
The Grand Panjandrum
@jenniebee:
Aaawww….. Does that mean we’re your favorite turds?
Wow. Imagine that. A Congress critter getting in front of the mics to tell us how difficult it is for them to …
1. Send other people’s kids to die in a fucking war we should have never fought.
2. Send our tax dollars to Wall Street executives because THEY broke the fucking system.
3. Vote for decent healthcare for all Americans because someone is calling the a [ fill in favorite winger perjorative here ].
Boo fucking hoo.
low-tech cyclist
Awww, poor Congresscritters! Apparently they’re being expected to do their jobs!
Dear Congresscritters, it’s cliche time, because so many of them apply. Like:
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the fuckin’ kitchen.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
Etcetera.
lotus
Cute: Grassley sent out a flunky on little tippytoes this weekend to explain that he doesn’t really believe what he said about grandma.
If there were a God, Chuckie’d have a roaring case of shingles by lunchtime today.
Comrade Darkness
I’m with dbrown. The very least we can do is save them from their government sponsored health care.
Eric U.
my favorite loser in this whole thing is Isakson. He proposed an entirely reasonable program which has now somehow evolved to “death panels.” And he has to disavow any relationship to the program he had previously sponsored. Republicans deserve this sort of thing to happen to them. The article yesterday about how the base hates their republican reps is pretty funny too. Seems to me that they are in a no-win situation, hopefully they take down some blue dogs with them
Violet
@parksideq:
YES! Where is the “Eliminate health insurance for Members of Congress!” protest? Sign me up for that one. Right along with the “Medicare is Soci al 1ist Medicine! Eliminate Medicare!” protest.
If these idiots are against soc1al1$t medicine, then they should be against all of it. Why the heck are seniors getting to partake from the so(ial1sm trough, while the rest of us don’t get the option? Either everyone gets to enjoy the benefits, or no one does. Those seniors are greedy, selfish bastids.
And the Congresscritters? Let them learn the joys of getting health insurance on the open market. If it’s good enough for the general public, it’s good enough for them. Right?
Awesom0
Yeah and if Obama doesn’t grow a pair and actually start fighting for this, he also deserves to lose his health insurance (let’s just assume this would happen) in 2012.
I am quickly starting to realize why I hate Democrats so much (the words I have for Republicans are so fowl someone still needs to invent them): They are a bunch of incredibly weak pussies.
Leadership requires COURAGE and I haven’t seen much of that from Obama recently.
Yes, this post is about Congress, but doesn’t the job of president actually include leadership and the ability to bully…excuse me, “persuade” Congress into doing something? GET MAD OBAMA. Fight for us!
Scratch that…I’m starting to think you’re more concerned about keeping your hill buddies happier than you are about looking after the good of the American people.
End non-sense Yeah and if Obama doesn’t grow a pair and actually start fighting for this, he also deserves to lose his health insurance (let’s just assume this would happen) in 2012.
I am quickly starting to realize why I hate Democrats so much (the words I have for Republicans are so fowl someone still needs to invent them): They are a bunch of incredibly weak pussies.
Leadership requires COURAGE and I haven’t seen much of that from Obama recently.
Yes, this post is about Congress, but doesn’t the job of president actually include leadership and the ability to bully…excuse me, “pursuade” Congress into doing something? GET MAD OBAMA. Fight for us!
Scratch that…I’m starting to think you’re more concerned about keeping your hill buddies happier than you are about looking after the good of the American people.
End semi-incoherent rant.
The Moar You Know
@Punchy: Rules I’ve lived by since 2005. Some of the frontpagers are good – well, only two of them, actually – and the commentariat are a disgrace to humanity, by and large.
Robertdsc-iphone
That’s a great quote.
As for the White House, I wish the message discipline was better. Rahm’s trigger crap & Sebelius’ multiple fuckups in being open to co-ops don’t help the folks who are fighting for this thing very much.
parksideq
@Awesom0: I feel you. How effing hard is it to convince congressional Dems to stick together on this? We have an overwhelming advantage in the House, and by the end of this month there will only be 39 GOPers in the Senate (until Charlie Crist replaces Mel Martinez, of course). What more can we possibly need to pass an agenda that’s not only been a cornerstone of the Democratic platform since longer than I’ve been alive, but also has the support of a majority of Americans?
This whole affair is fast pushing me from being passively agnostic to full-metal athiest. There’s no way to justify a God’s existence when Aetna et al get to play him/her each time they deny someone’s claim for life-saving care, all in the name of helping some exec add some Benjamins to his kid’s trust fund. And the worst part is, teabaggers are fighting for this to *continue* unabated. It’s like Marie Antoinette told them to eat cake and they answered, “we’d prefer shit instead”.
/rant
Awesom0
Whoa!
What the hell happened to my post?
@parksideq: AMEN!
RareSanity
Crass but unfortunately and painfully true.
I don’t know how the heck to do it, but there needs to be a wholesale cleansing of any Democratic Congressperson that has been in office since “The Republican Revolution”. It’s just like when the new coach gets hired to rebuild the losing team. First thing ya gotta do is get rid of all the players that just flat out don’t know how to win and bring in some new people that don’t have a history of losing.
The current National Dems just flat out don’t know how to win.
To quote Coach Mike Singletary:
“Can not play with ’em. Can not win with ’em. Can not coach with ’em. Can’t do it.”
Comrade Dread
He’s wrong. Or only half-right.
The worst thing that can happen to a congressman is that they lose their job, and then get hired on by a private company as a lobbyist or Washington spokesperson at five times (or more of) their congressional salary.
Comrade Darkness
@RareSanity: Is it just me, or does it feel like sometimes Reid and Pelosi were put in place because it would please the republicans?
Primary every dem still there since the contract on america. An excellent idea.
RareSanity
@Comrade Darkness: Their main issue is that they came of age during a time when Democrats were at their political nadir. They don’t even now what a “strong Congressional Democrat” looks, acts or talks like. They have no confidence in their message. They think that even if the facts are on their side, they will lose the PR battle because, “the Republicans are mean…*whine*”.
Not only that, but NONE OF THEM are willing to go the distance of principle. Rule number one of negotiations is be ready to actually walk away.
Several years ago, the Governor of my state of Georgia, Roy Barnes, decided that it was time to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag. He got all kinds of threats both political and physical, but he still changed the flag. He lost a reelection campaign to a wingnut who promised all the rabble-rousers that he would restore the flag. Of course, he didn’t, but that’s beside the point.
The point is, to this day, when asked if he regretted making the decision to change that flag at the expense of reelection he says, “No. Because it was the right thing to do.”
The Dems in Congress are not willing to go all in and risk not being reelected on something as silly as principles. Even though the American people overwhelmingly support those very principles. The “conservatives” say “boogedity, boogedity” and they piss their pants and run crying back to their rooms.
jcricket
You know what Americans like? Winners.
You know how you become a winner? By winning.
You know how you win? By using your strength (numbers, rhetorical advantage, facts, muscle, whatever) to outmaneuver your opponents.
You know how you lose? Give up before you start, or accept that winning is impossible, or give up along the way because winning is hard.
We (Democrats) suck.
rachel
rachel
Buk buk buk! Buh—baaaaawwwwk!