Sullivan doubles down:
This simply doesn’t make sense. Hate crime laws for most categories, including federal measures, have been around for a long time. The only new thing here – the only thing that has fostered “a decade of opposition and delay” – is the addition of sexual orientation. So the president had a chance to defend gays from being excluded from the usual roster of victims, in front of military leaders, and he had to walk backwards into this strange circumlocution.
He’s lost his damned mind. As several of you have pointed out, nowhere in the bill do the words lesbian or gay appear:
The word “gay” never appears in the bill. Neither does the word “lesbian,” “homosexual,” or “bisexual.”
It protects people from being targeted because of their sexual orientation. Which of course applies to everybody.
So Obama was absolutely correct in describing it as a bill that “protects people based on … who they love.”
And what does it say that Sullivan only seems to give a shit about the gays. What about the lesbians? What about transexuals? Why do you hate them, Andrew?
It really does take big brass balls for Sullivan to complain about the legislation, then to complain about the way the legislation is signed, and then to do so disingenuously, because the line preceding the quote that gives Andrew the vapors so much states that there will be another signing ceremony specifically for the hate crimes legislation.
I seriously am to the point that every time I open memeorandum or check the progressive blogs, I’m beginning to see the same kind of batshit crazy I see on right wing blogs. Has every one just lost their damned minds? Did everyone go insane?
*** Update ***
And no, I am not claiming Sully is a progressive, I was just thinking that everyone has gone nuts.
*** Update #2 ***
From the comments:
I would like to note something from Sullivan’s writeup:
The only new thing here – the only thing that has fostered “a decade of opposition and delay” – is the addition of sexual orientation.
This is false on two levels. First off, the bill adds not just sexual orientation, but gender identity. This may not effect Andrew Sullivan, it sure as hell effects me. It’s also a pretty big deal historically speaking. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality this is the very first transgender rights bill to ever pass at the Federal level.
Second off, even if Sullivan had said “sexual orientation and gender identity”, it would still be simply wrong that adding these new categories is the only thing the bill does. The bill also strengthens the existing hate crimes law in several ways, including expanding the cases in which Federal authorities may step in to investigate a hate crime when local law enforcement falls down, and giving grants to local law enforcement agencies who find they do not have sufficient funds to properly investigate hate crimes. If you will notice the bill’s official title “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act”, James Byrd Jr. being a heterosexual black man who was tortured and killed by white supremacists in 1998.
Sullivan opposes this bill, but apparently never bothered to learn a single thing about it.
But he didn’t say “gay.”
Sid
No, it’s you.
Sifu Tweety
I surely hate to see the bear of very little brain held up as an example of a progressive blog(ger), even if we have all been through so much together over the years.
Demo Woman
Politico said that Judy Shepherd was in tears and Obama hugged her. Vicki Kennedy said Ted was somewhere smiling. Sullivan just wanted a special invite to the signing ceremony because after all he is gay.
Mark-NC
You have to remember that Sully was? a GAY REPUBLICAN.
That’s a rare and very confused bird!
soonergrunt
Not everyone–
Sullivan was shakey to begin with, GOS has crazy 24/7, but it usually doesn’t overwhelm the site, cough, PIE FIGHT, cough, but the FDL main site has definitely gone hard for the batshit in recent days.
Demo Woman
How’s the pup?
Zifnab
Slow down there, sparky. You can’t quote conservative Canadian Andrew Sullivan and use this as a blanket smear against progressive blogs. That’s like quoting Joe Lieberman and asking why all the Dem senators are voting against health care.
You’re going to have to give us more than “Sully and the progressives said…” or I’m not going to take you seriously.
el_gallo
Since when did Sullivan become a
member of the 5th columnprogressive? His asshattery is all his own.jeff
This is especially odd from Andrew, who has hailed the end of gay culture as we become Americans who are gay (no biggie), instead of a theoretical and terrifying “other” to be used to scare dipshits into voting for evil people.
ronin122
I think everyone probably just lost their mind (t3h stupid is contagious), but the lefty and wingnut sites seem to have lost theirs for entirely different reasons and through different mechanisms, of course. Not sure what to say though, I think half of us on the left seem like they’d be happier if the WH and/or the Dems in general never did a single thing to their liking (essentially, be the GOP minus the batshit lunacy) than actually have things happen that may be good (this, some HCR, hopefully repealing DADT and DOMA but look to Congress on that one, but you know them they can’t multi-task for shit and sadly it may be a good thing). My theory is that getting something gives them expectations, which means reason to bitch and whine. Whereas if he was like McPalin we’d have none, thus we wouldn’t care what happens.
Sad thing is I used to think that most of the whiners were all PUMAs. Now I realize everyone’s just fucking either impatient or “listen to ME first”, not to mention most the left perpetually wants to be disappointed. Not sure what to say, but I stopped reading most articles on the lefty blogs and refuse to read the comments except for on here. Just go on to get the basic stories-of-the-day and updates on goings-on.
El Cid
I’m starting to think that to you, all excited worrying that Democratic leaders may fail to do what many people want sounds alike to you.
How Andrew Sullivan fits into the category of “progressive” blogs, I’ve no idea. He’s a long-winded nitwit who occasionally happens to back the sane position when it stirs him.
Comrade Luke
Andrew Sullivan
…
…
progressive blogs
I see what you did there.
General Winfield Stuck
New dance. Let’s All Do the Backwards Circumlocution/
I aint insane, butt maybe a little crazity.
ronin122
@Zifnab: I think while erroneous in calling Sully a progressive, JC’s posts the last few weeks show the context, that this sort of thing is also rampant in the land of lefty sites. I think he was just bunching them all together and today it was Sully to get on his nerves. Probably gets the same reaction from the rec list on GOS every other day (I know I’ve gotten to where I just roll my eyes to half of the posts).
beltane
At GOS there are always running battles between the crazy and the not-crazy. They are quite enjoyable. Firedoglake on the other hand…
Jon
Politics is the art of the possible. If you want to make all your dreams come true, you should have been a theater major.
handy
I find a great number of the former group comprise the latter as well.
John Cole
CHRIST. Check the damned update. It was just a stream of related thought that everyone has gone insane, not an assertion that Sullivan is a progressive.
Comrade Luke
“Even the liberal Andrew Sullivan says…”
Yes, two posts. That’s what you get for not having an edit button :)
Comrade Luke
OK John. I accept your apology.
(this is fun)
SGEW
Stop looking at Memeorandum. It’s bad for you.
freelancer
@soonergrunt:
I can’t read FDL’s main page. I stick to Tbogg and Ackermann. His post an hour ago on Hoh was insightful and the end line had me giggling.
Re: Sully.
WTF? Calm. Down. Andrew. The Road Runner didn’t maul Matthew Sheppard. Get some distance fer Christ’s sake.
Comrade Luke
@jeff:
Not really. The biggest trait about Andrew Sullivan, WAY more than being gay, is that Andrew Sullivan only cares about what specifically affects Andrew Sullivan.
He’s a pretty big tool; I thank BJ for reading him so I don’t have to.
John Cole
@ronin122: Thank you.
Demo Woman
How’s the pup??
AhabTRuler
@John Cole: Just about everybody, no matter how well-meaning, is fucking nuts. We are a selfish and self-centered culture. Sorry.
Zifnab
@ronin122:
You’re going to have to link me. I’m a regular at Orange Satan and Pandagon, and neither of them have been anywhere near this level of crazy.
The biggest objections have been over DADT, a rule that most people believe the President can just wave away with an executive order. While I don’t know if executive order is better or worse than Congressional Legislation, I do empathize with progressive GLBT folks that were promised quick and decisive change on this particular front only to be left in gay rights limbo.
But on hate crimes legislation? I haven’t seen one front page post doing anything but laud this bill.
El Cid
I don’t think ‘everyone has gone nuts’. I think that on many issues, particularly health care, there are enormous decisions being made at a fiendishly quick pace and often somewhat behind the scenes. If there is any time that people, particularly core activists and writers, should work themselves up into a moment-by-moment fervor, it’s now; maybe people forget, but there’s an entire population of lobbyists and lickspittles who are doing everything the most excited liberal bloggers are doing and more, complete with freakouts, it’s just not happening publicly on blogs.
mcc
I would like to note something from Sullivan’s writeup:
This is false on two levels. First off, the bill adds not just sexual orientation, but gender identity. This may not effect Andrew Sullivan, it sure as hell effects me. It’s also a pretty big deal historically speaking. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality this is the very first transgender rights bill to ever pass at the Federal level.
Second off, even if Sullivan had said “sexual orientation and gender identity”, it would still be simply wrong that adding these new categories is the only thing the bill does. The bill also strengthens the existing hate crimes law in several ways, including expanding the cases in which Federal authorities may step in to investigate a hate crime when local law enforcement falls down, and giving grants to local law enforcement agencies who find they do not have sufficient funds to properly investigate hate crimes. If you will notice the bill’s official title “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act”, James Byrd Jr. being a heterosexual black man who was tortured and killed by white supremacists in 1998.
Sullivan opposes this bill, but apparently never bothered to learn a single thing about it.
—–
Incidentally if anyone would like to move away for a moment about thinking about bad punditry and instead focus on what you can positively do to help gay rights, here is a great diary someone posted on DailyKos today going over the three ballot measures on LGBT rights being considered in Maine, Washington and Kalamazoo, MI next Tuesday, and listing nationwide volunteer and donation opportunities for each. If you could toss in a few dollars or make a few phone calls, we really have the opportunity to make next Tuesday a turning point.
(Also, if you’re a DailyKos user, if you’d consider recommending that diary I for one would appreciate it. I think it would be really neat if we could get if on the rec list.)
shortstop
Maybe, but I’m noticing a lot of rageaholics on progressive blogs* lately. The same people who spent the entire primary season in thundering furies against all things Clinton (and I was one of the people who thought her campaign was appalling and frequently said so, but I managed to maintain the long view) are now railing against every Obama move and coming up with comical conspiracy theories about the thousands of ways he’s plotting to stick it to us…or already has, but we fools just don’t know it yet.
Part of it is just some people’s inability to ever achieve political perspective — individuals who tend to fall in love too easily frequently also turn on the objects of their affection — but a big piece of it seems to be that some people just thrive on conflict and anger and literally can’t get through the day without a public enemy.
*Under no objective standard could Andrew Sullivan fit this description.
Calouste
@ronin122:
You do realize you are talking about Americans, do you? Being impatient, self-centered and obnoxious are generally considered to be their defining traits by the rest of the world.
Mousebumples
@Comrade Luke: I “read” Sully mainly for the links that he finds. I have little to no interest in his opinions/reactions to things because it largely involves him going on and on about how he totally understands that Bush left quite the mess for Obama to clean up, but CLEARLY anything and everything on the gay agenda should be priority numero uno.
And while I do agree that DADT and DOMA need to be repealed, I think that silly little things like the economy and health care should be tackled first. And, you know, those two pesky wars that we have going on right now. (although, granted, DADT does fit in there)
sparky
a. thanks for canning BOB, or at least that persona. i still think it’s a spoof.
b. if i get in the habit of checking blogs too frequently i tend to forget that most of it is excited flotsam that will sink without a trace in 24 hours.
c. it would be okie-dokie with me if you all never linked to Sullivan again. just sayin.
Lev
I know what you mean, John. I sometimes criticize Obama, but it’s usually because I don’t think his media strategy is robust enough, and that he’s not harnessing the populist anger out there to forward his objectives (and I worry that angry and scared people are going to naturally flock to the GOP, which is nothing but anger and fear). But healthcare is up to Congress, not him. DADT is up to Congress, not him. Sure, he can give speeches in front of Congress, and make phone calls, but that’s kind of it.
valdivia
Thank you John. I know I keep saying it but hey I feel grateful when someone notices that even people who support Obama have this crazy bs things they have to yell and complain bout (and no I do not mean things one should complain about but really frivolous bs that gets a lot of people in a froth)
And OT–so i am grading midterms and I am pretty gob smacked that one of my students 1. decided the exam was an exercise in powerpoint. Her answer to the short section were monosyllabic and really said nothing. Pure bullet point thinking. And then decided to write an essay that was historically wrong and answered none of the questions. I have been teaching for years this is the first time I get someone so totally trying to bs her way through an exam. Just wow.
Ok. Done with my academic rant.
Calouste
@Comrade Luke:
He calls himself a Conservative, so what else would you expect? There’s a reason Dubya had to use the term “compassionate conservative”, because compassion for others is not commonly associated with conservatism.
jenniebee
My brother’s very feminist, very liberal ex-girlfriend gave him a t-shirt that said “Vote Your Vagina” and then broke up with him because he wore it all the time, but he didn’t wear it earnestly enough.
So yes, there are now and have always been crazy lefties (and the degree of leftyism does not in any way correlate with the degree of crazy, btw). The leftards are embarrassing and the rightards are fucking terrifying and the twain meet more than you’d think. Such is the way of the world.
AhabTRuler
Did BOB get canned? Hmm, what a shame.
handy
@jenniebee:
Or another way to put it:
crazy lefties make you want to roll your eyes, crazy righties make you want to run for your life.
Nora Carrington
I wish Sullivan didn’t write like an angel. Every once in awhile someone will link to him (his fucking brilliant take down of Pat Buchanan’s “losing their country”, for example), and I read for awhile. It’s usually not more than a few days before something comes across his screen that has girl cooties on it and he loses his (considerable) mind, however, and I quit him. Again. I mean really, is there any explanation for the extremes of his Palin derangement syndrome other than misogyny of the “I-smell-cunt” kind?
It doesn’t help that I think he’s right about HRC, either.
LM
I know what you mean! I keep pulling sites off my favorites bar, but it’s gotten to the point I can barely click around long enough to finish a big mug of coffee. First I ditched AmericaBlog, then Firedoglake, then HuffPo, and I love dKos but too many diarists sound like freshmen who’ve just learned how to be bitter. (Am I just old? Do people not remember what it was like to be a Dem during Johnson and the draft, Carter and the Rose Garden “strategy”, Clinton and NAFTA and Dick Morris sleep-overs?) Thank goodness for the B boys–Balloon Juice and BooMan.
valdivia
@shortstop:
this.
dmsilev
@jenniebee:
Did your brother’s ex-gf explain exactly how one “earnestly” wears a T-shirt, as opposed to just plain wearing it? Or, for that matter, how one distinguishes an earnest wearing from an ironic wearing?
-dms
mcc
Also if it matters count me in the camp who heard “B.O.B. has been banned” in the last thread and responded with “oh thank goodness”.
General Winfield Stuck
My liberal bubble was burst during the primary when we were visited daily by “committed progressives” telling us a black man couldn’t be elected in this country. It was a question that shouldn’t have been asked by sincere people of the left, let alone answered. There are no hero’s in politics, left or right, only people who want something, and people who want something else.
jenniebee
@handy: and both of them give you some unintentionally hilarious groupthink sloganeering. Between Teabagging as a national movement and Voting Your Vagina… History students 100 years from now are simply never going to stop laughing at us.
CaseyL
I was going to say that it does hurt to see sites I used to like go over the edge. But on reflection that isn’t really true.
I haven’t actually liked FDL for a couple years now, since it became more of a mutual personality cult than a real conversation site. And there’s always been a sharp difference between the front-pagers at dKos and the diarists. The sites that went nuts over the Hillary-v-Barak battle weren’t too tightly wrapped to start with.
Basically, the sites I used to rely on are still good to go: dKos front pagers, TPM, ObWi, BJ, Tbogg, etc. And the nuttier ones, like FDL, Shakesville, Taylor Marsh, etc., were always kind of nuts.
Also, to echo others, Sully is not by any stretch of any imagination progressive or lefty. He’s a disaffected Tory, and only disaffected because he’s gay and his ideological fellow travelers hate gays. If he weren’t gay, he’d be a pro-war Daniel Larison.
Midnight Marauder
@valdivia:
You should crush that fool and tell them don’t bring that Kool-Aid to a grown person’s party.
jenniebee
@dmsilev: It was pretty clear that The Brother thought the shirt was a scream.
Cerberus
@mcc:
This. As a transwoman, this legislation is huge. This is dance in the streets time. I actually did a little jig when it passed the Senate and while I look forward to ENDA and the rest, this big step is a big moment and on all the other SANE queer blogs it is being treated as a noteworthy accomplishment.
The problem?
Andrew Sullivan is a fucker.
Yes, a fucker.
Andrew Sullivan cares about one person, Andrew Sullivan, hates women and anyone not white and as such has had a bug in his ass about hate crimes since day 1. He assumes no matter what that it won’t be HIS ass randomly beaten down in the street, like hey, what happened in Brooklyn to a gay man not less than a month ago.
So of course Sullivan is breaking down into plaintive shrieks at this point about how signing this is some giant betrayal, because to him the only legislation queers need is better immigration laws for poz gay men. Because that’s all he sees as affecting him.
He is to put it again, a fucker.
The queer community not blinded by hatred for the other is reacting incredibly positively to this news and loves the special ceremony and especially tireless Judy Shepard seeing the results of her hard labor.
This is a huge moment and the queers are grateful and happy.
But Andrew Sullivan is a goddamn goatfucking fucker.
geg6
I used to love FDL but I can barely stand to go ther anymore. It’s PUMA central, even if they never identify themselves as that. I still give them hits for Marcy Wheeler, though. And TBogg. The front page is horrid though. I admit to being a bit hysterical lately. HCR is near and dear to my heart, though, so I make no excuses for that. I apologize if I offended anyone in any HCR threads and hope you all understand that this is so important to me. I was also an asshole in the rape thread, but no apologies for that. I stand by my assholishness there because I also have a vested interest in that subject and I was only being an asshole to much, much, much bigger assholes than I.
Comrade Jake
I saw that Sully post today, and just had to laugh. Sully’s been on his “I’m so righteous for gay rights” kick for at least a month now. This is just SSDD.
freelancer
@General Winfield Stuck:
I’m picking out a thermo’s for you.
valdivia
@Midnight Marauder:
LOL. I just had to take a break after that because after reading 30 exams and encountering that I thought my head would be perpetually stuck on top of the desk.
Comrade Jake
I’m sorry but FDL jumped the shark for me several years ago with the Valerie Plame fiasco / Scooter Libby trial. That place was just over-the-top insanity for at least six months. It was unreadable.
Cerberus
Here’s the president’s comments on the signing, to which as a queer individual, I say, that’s my president:
Link here.
Lev
Unlike most of the posts here, I generally like Sullivan’s blogging. Sometimes, though, he holds Obama up to his own arbitrary standards, just like many liberals do. Hell, just like I do sometimes. But at the end of the day, I’m sure as shit glad I don’t have his job.
Max
What is even more interesting is should you choose to accept the mission to visit some “progressive” blogs, Talk Left, America Blog, Digby, Taylor Marsh, My DD, etc., you wouldn’t even know that Obama signed a historic bill today.
Not one front page post on any of those blogs. Nada.
Endless posts about how Obama was wrong to trust Lieberman, Obama is weak, Obama is “just words”, Obama is going to make the wrong decision on Af/Pak…. Puma!
Wankers.
RedKitten
Nuh-uh. We’re not taking credit for Sully. He’s a Brit.
soonergrunt
@freelancer: Yup, Tbogg and Attackerman, my two favorites over there. I like Marcy (emptywheel) when she explains legal stuff. Jane, and the others on front page have done a synchronized double-back-double-twist-from-handstand into the crazy pool. And they haven’t come up for air, yet.
General Winfield Stuck
@freelancer:
punctation is’nt my specialty
Cerberus
@jenniebee:
That’s fucked up. Every feminist I know was furious at that idea that women just vote for other women because welp, they just follow the vagina. But then, I don’t hang around racists, so maybe that was the problem.
MikeJ
Did you see what else Obama did? When he enacted this law he signed it with *his* name! Like his name is the only important thing! More proof of his uppityness.
SGEW
@Cerberus:
This is a pretty strong statement. I, for one, disagree; I would not characterize Andrew Sullivan as either a racist bigot or an outright misogynist. “Hate” is quite a word.
I hereby dedicate this “in all fairness” Sully apologia in memory of B.O.B., our heretofore gold standard of racism, misogyny, and hate speech.
M. Bouffant
At the non-violent (but almost violent) extremes of the political spectrum there’s more psychological trouble (expressed politically) going on than actual political expression.
Max
@SGEW: (cough) Bell Curve (cough)
Comrade Jake
You know who else used to walk backwards into strange circumlocutions?
Hitler.
handy
@Max:
Jeralyn has calmed down quite a bit since her peak nuttiness during the primaries, but BTD and the 2 or 3 TL commenters keep that place a perpetual wankfest.
General Winfield Stuck
@M. Bouffant:
And the short version
both sides got crazy motherfuckers
SGEW
@Max:
Stupid != hate
Max
@ John Cole….
Andrew has tripled down.
Here
Darkrose
Because Andrew is one of those gay white men who only cares about gay white men. He’s unhappy that being gay shuts him out of the white Christian male privilege that he would otherwise enjoy. Fix that, and he could give a shit about the lesbians, the bisexuals and the transgendered–especially the transgendered, because they’re so, flamboyant and ruin the narrative that we’re just like everybody else.
I often think that Sullivan would have been happier in the pre-Stonewall days of the gay movement, when the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis insisted that marchers should wear gender-appropriate clothing and refrain from public displays of affection. Certainly the only thing that he has in common with me–black, disabled, female, not Christian–is that we both are primarily attracted to people of our gender.
soonergrunt
@mcc: Done!
Ash
Who the hell cares what Sullivan thinks of this? In his glibertarian paradise no one would be prosecuted for hate crimes and anyone could do whatever the hell they want for whatever reason they want.
salvage
I don’t understand this. Andy Sullivan is and always has been a goddamn moron who will say anything sometimes because he’s two-face and sometimes because he’s zero-brained.
I’m not sure when Sully snuck back into the People We Should Listen To Club but there was a time when you didn’t need to explain why he was wrong, all you had to do was post a link to whatever crap he’s spewed.
Oh Sully Watch, we need you now more than ever:
http://sullywatch.blogspot.com/
iu1995
@John Cole: You are not alone. Look, I’m a progressive blog (and Sully) junkie. But they are ALL getting on my last doggone nerve! I had to kick the FDL habit about 6 months ago. Now Huffington, AmericaBlog, MyDD and Sully are on the verge of being skipped. Heck, while I’m at it, Kos and TPM are starting to bug be a bit too.
It’s slowly beginning to look like my daily fix will only come from, this blog, Taegan, CrooksandLiars and HinesSight.
I’m getting the withdrawal shakes just thinking about it.
heh … maybe I could add Little Green Footballs to the rotation. He’s been singing a very different tune lately. His change of heart is the same way you reeled me in.
valdivia
I am definitely not reading Andrew until someone tells me it is safe. I hate when he gets all aggro like this.
freelancer
@SGEW:
I’m inclined to agree. Baffling promotion of “The Bell Curve” notwithstanding (and that’s a huge caveat and kind of why I didn’t respond initially), I don’t see Sullivan as a racist or even a misogynist, but then again, I’m a straight white male who possibly has internalized some form of racism or sexism just for being alive in this culture.
Just because I don’t see it doesn’t mean that others don’t or it isn’t there. I just try to be more self-aware and when I become a reactionary bomb-thrower, it’s usually not an issue that lies in a nebulous gray area.
geg6
SGEW: Sorry, but Sully is totally a misogynist. He never addresses women’s issues unless it’s to condemn abortion with his righteous more Catholic than Catholicness (unless we’re talking about gay Catholics). And I detest the Wasilla Wingnut with the best of them, but he was waaaaay over the line (and still is…see his posts today about Levi Johnston) with her. And his Clinton obsession (not in a good way) includes Hillary and I want to punch him in the neck whenever he talks about either Clinton. Andrew thinks girls are icky poo and it comes through loud and clear to anyone who can hear those dog whistles.
General Winfield Stuck
@Max:
This is classic wingnut mode, which I have always considered Sullivan/ The sane mode is a bug, not a feature.
Demo Woman
@valdivia: lol.. I actually went over to see if he wrote an apology.
The wackiest blog though was Larry Johnson’s. I wondered what happened to those whitey tapes.
handy
@iu1995:
And for a little lefty levity, don’t forget Teh Sadlys
Cerberus
Oh yeah, and for a MUCH better time than reading Andrew Sullivan whine, listen to THIS
It’s Obama’s speech at the signing ceremony. You can see the wave of emotion on James Byrd’s mother and Judy Shepard’s faces.
Proudest damn moment of my life…(I clarify that Nov 2008 was only downgraded to a narrow second place by being a californian after prop mother fucking H8).
Ash
@freelancer: Oh, he is most definitely a misogynist. And as a gay guy, he’s even worse than most misogynists. It’s very easy to tell every time he writes about abortion.
He of course has no idea that he is one and would vehemently deny it, but self-awareness has never entered the equation when it comes to him…
Midnight Marauder
@Max:
Wow. Just wow. I don’t think bitter is the right word, but that’s just such a…warped perspective of the world as presented in that post. And as was discussed previously, Sullivan clearly has no idea about what hate crime laws are intended to do. I mean, no idea whatsoever. Which is odd, because you would think someone so bent out of shape about such laws would take the time to read up on them and see whether or not they’re fauxrage was legitimate or not. But not Andrew Sullivan!
“I don’t have time to read about what the bill actually does! I have a 4:30 wank session that I desperately need to get started! DAMN YOU, OBAMA!”
Max
@handy: Ummm.. Jeralyn is the leader of the “Free Roman” pack.
That site is wacked.
El Cid
@MikeJ: That was awesome.
John Sears
@General Winfield Stuck: Dear Eris, can Sullivan just not shut the fuck up?
Aha, as I figured, poor widdle Andrew is upset that he’s not the center of attention.
JadedOptimist
I’ve been reading Sully for years, now. I admire him for admitting how wrong he initially was on Iraq, and for his tenacity on the torture issue. He’s right when he calls out the Human Rights Campaign for being too timid. He was right about marriage equality before – well, just about anyone.
But…
He is (by his own admission) ‘excitable’. And his pride is easily wounded. When that happens, he tends to regress back to the shallow conservatism that got him his first big gig at TNR. I think there are two things that are bugging him right now. He’s never been a part of the Beltway “scene” – something he claims not to care about. But hey, we all want to be part one of the popular kids at school. By being one of Obama’s more vocal early supporters, maybe he thought this would change. But it hasn’t; he’s still on the outside. Maybe he really did think he should have been at the signing ceremony (for a bill he opposed?), logical or not. That’s pure speculation on my part.
More likely is that he’s freaking out about his immigration status. He’s about to run out of visa extensions, but can’t start the citizenship process because of an existing rule barring HIV+ folks from applying. That rule is in the process of being repealed, but it’s moving slowly. It’s not clear that it will be done in time for his particular situation.
It would be real easy to project from this personal situation to anything related to LGBT issues – It’s not getting done fast enough! What’s the holdup! Don’t you see that people’s (i.e. my) lives are affected? I think that’s what’s happening, and why Sully is starting to seem kind of unhinged a lot of the time. I still love his blog, I just skip over the crazy in the hopes that it’s a phase that will pass.
Cerberus
@SGEW:
Well his misogyny really comes out when talking about abortion, but it comes out when talking about contraception or any pro-women bill. He seems more gay out of intense hatred of women than any actual attraction to men.
And racism, unapologetic promotion of The Bell Curve. One needs to know exactly what was in The Bell Curve to know that this is something one does not think plausible without KKK level hatred of blacks. It’s like claiming you are not a homophobe if you have ever tried to popularize and support The Pink Triangle.
But in general, he has intense indifference to anyone who isn’t him.
AkaDad
Sullivan and other gay Republicans are angry because for their whole lives they’ve been bashed for their sexual orientation and now, on top of that, they get bashed for their failed policies.
MikeJ
OT, but if Doug is around, he’s in NY-23, no? Politicalwire says dirty tricks going on there:
MNPundit
@JadedOptimist: Oh say what it really is, Sully routinely goes into hysterics! :D
Robert Waldmann
Dear John Cole
I have often wondered what it was like to be a rock ribbed Republican loyal reader of balloon juice during the period when your views on the Republican party changed.
I find stuff like “every time I open memeorandum or check the progressive blogs, I’m beginning to see the same kind of batshit crazy I see on right wing blogs ” very alarming.
Your not reconsidering are you ? I don’t worry you will go back to the Republicans, but I don’t know, maybe the wonkocrats or the social credit party or something.
I’m a liberal. I have been since I can remember. I have always lived around liberals, plus the occasional conservative or Marxist-Lenninist included for diversity.
Believe me progressives have always said and written batshit crazy things. We can’t keep up with the tea partiers, but that doesn’t keep us from trying.
mcd
When politicians do what politicians, even Democratic ones, do, it shouldn’t be all that surprising.
Personally, I’m still waiting for my retroactive immunity. And my pony.
handy
@Max:
In fairness to her she’s pretty much kept to the crime blogging. But BTD’s ego has stunk that place up since arrival.
freelancer
@Ash:
Yeah, I got that sense, when he would post the personal, heartbreaking stories of people who needed the choice of whether to continue their pregnancies or not, and I just became more of a cemented pro-choice, he kept hedging his bets and referring to his cafeteria Catholicism, “Eh, I’m moved, but I’m still agin’ it, in principle, you see.”
Today, he’s gone ’round the bend, but I really think it’s not as much disdain for Obama’s White House as it is pure fucking hatred for the HRC and the establishment GBLT lobby. That said, he’s still embarrassing himself.
Leelee for Obama
I have taken several days off from the crazy, and I can say w/o equivocation, that I haven’t missed it at all. Wandered over to GOS a little bit ago and saw someone smart saying that attacking Obama till he’s hobbled is probably not in our best interests. That was nice!
I wish I understood Sully-his thinking gels with mine often enough that I like some of his stuff, and he can write very well. However, when he’s off on this kind of nut-ride, I wonder if he’s smokin’ something really strong. This hate crimes law is a mitzvah, and should be treated with respect. If Sully doesn’t get that, I think his mind is a bit addled. How can it be a bad thing to enhance punishment for crimes aimed at specific races, genders, gender identities, et al? The idea is to dissuade people from committing these crimes, so it’s good all around.
On a different note-I have been studiously ignoring BOB for quite awhile, so I missed his latest bad acts, but I wanted to say Thanks, John and DougJ, for banning him. He may provide some with entertainment, but he upsets far more people, so I don’t think he’ll be missed too much. Is it permanent? Or will he get another chance at some later date?
Max
@handy: The Roman Polanski case is crime related and she is leading the charge that he is being unfairly punished. I cannot understand how someone could defend a adult man who drugged and sodomized a 13 year old girl.
But, I’m an O-bot.
Demo Woman
Definitely OT but the First Lady and Dr. Biden are going to throw out the first pitch????? I hate the Yankees!!1
handy
@Max:
Yeah that was pretty indefensible. And, to their credit, the pearl clutchers called her out for it in the comments. But normally her stuff is quite good, especially with respect to death penalty-related issues.
gnomedad
Sully has always taken a firm stand against circumloqution, at least for infants.
freelancer
@Demo Woman:
Are we gonna get a FTFY thread? I’m thinking, yeah.
John O
I cannot stand hate crime legislation (just another step towards Thought Police, blah blah) and but still I think this is very sensible and more importantly clever piece of legislation.
As I said last night, it was also pretty clever to propose a $3.5B energy grid upgrade (duh, QED) completely under the political radar.
Meaning even the Villagers think this it’s a good idea.
demimondian
@mcc: For those of you in Washington State, please remember that voting to APPROVE I71 is voting in favor of preserving our expansive domestic partnerships. The wording of the initiative is confusing.
SGEW
[B.O.B. memorial Sully apologia continues!]
Look: Yes, I believe Andrew Sullivan has serious issues. Everyone knows Andrew Sullivan has serious issues. That is one of the reasons people read his stuff – issues can be quite interesting!
Some of his issues include his bewilderingly unexamined problem with women, his contrarian naivete about race (but his interactions with Ta-Nehisi “Best Writer on the Internets” Coates have been extraordinary), his sublimely self-indulgent policy and subject preferences, and the credence he pays to gossip and innuendo that fits certain narratives he is fascinated by (see, e.g., Palin, or the Woodpecker).
But actually racist? Or an outright misogynist [1]? I would prefer to save those words for those who truly deserve them, such as Pat Buchannan, or John Derbyshire. Andrew Sullivan is merely unenlightened; no more sexist than most men (N.B.: most men are, indeed, sexist, so this is faint praise), and more of a contrarian twit than actually bigoted against other ethnicities.
[1] Re: Sullivan and abortion, contraception, and other related matters – Andrew Sullivan is a practicing Catholic who only openly questions dogma that directly interferes with his own life. So, in the sense that many Catholics (and Baptists and Muslims and Hindus and Jews and etc. etc.) are misogynists, yes; he’s a doctrinal misogynist. Granted.
Demo Woman
@freelancer: I don’t know. I did not realize that Gen Odierno’s son had lost his arm. What a nice pitch though. The first and second ladies were the cheer leaders.
John O
@Demo Woman:
I have a weird respect-hate-love relationship with the Yankees. It was hard not to like Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio and Mantle as a little baseball fan. But I liked Wooden’s UCLA teams, too, as an impressionable youth.
JMY
At the end of the day, nothing will satisfy people – liberal or conservative. Obama could save the world and people will still have something to complain about. My biggest fear after Obama won the election was that liberals would turn into conservatives with the bat-shit craziness, not necessarily ideology. Bush completed screwed the country up so badly, that we’ve lost all patience and people are taking it out on this president who has to clean up the mess, when they didn’t take it out on the person who made the mess.
General Winfield Stuck
@handy:
She’s a criminal defense attorney. They just swing that way by reflex.
freelancer
@Demo Woman:
I’m not watching. I just wanted to embolden the sentiment. It’s never too early or late to say FTFY.
JMY
Oh is it just me, or is a lot of the complaining from the left coming from progressives who didn’t support him in the primaries, but rather Clinton or Edwards? Not that his own supporters don’t criticize him, but it’s something I wondered about.
John O
@SGEW:
Well said, thank you.
Andrew and I are past it now, but our early (and quite infrequent) e-mail conversations had a lot of me saying, “Dude, you’re a gay Catholic. By definition, “issues.”
But he never ever disagreed that he had them, nor called me out on any of mine. He’s a good, smart man, with whom I disagree on a ton of shit.
geg6
OT but I gotta say FUCK THE YANKEES! I keep getting text messages from my friends in NY and they know it pisses me off. Bad enough that I hate baseball, but even if I didn’t, I’d still hate the Yankees.
Cerberus
Yeah, for a sense of how big this is for me personally and how much Sully is pissing me off: This page is the list of dead transpeople in the last year, murdered in hate crimes, usually poorly investigated and where the defendants if caught feel free to use “trans panic” as a defense. On that list 12 have been killed in American cities.
It won’t drop that number to 0 next year, but it will send a message. These cases will be investigated seriously or they will be taken over by the feds and it will send a message to defendants considering the trans panic defense that that is less accepted than last year.
Most importantly it sends a message that the government cares if we live or die. It sends this message to every bigot thinking about taking out an “it”, that it’s no longer acceptable. It’s now officially frowned upon by the U.S. Government.
It won’t stop hate crimes from occurring, but it will make a huge dent in the entrenched attitudes that allow them to happen and the resources for cops in investigating them.
All in all, this means I get to feel a little safer when I come home to the States and walk the streets again.
General Winfield Stuck
@SGEW:
Well, I’m deeply offended little lady. :)
valdivia
@JMY:
This. I really do think a lot of the country is still suffering from Bush regime political PTSD.
MikeJ
Am I the only person on earth who can not hear Jorge Posada’s name without breaking into that song from the Lion King?
SGEW
@General Winfield Stuck:
>:(
JMY
@valdiva:
That’s the only explanation I can come up with. I don’t think people really understand the condition in which Bush left this country in. I think it is bigger that we all thought. Hell most of Obama’s presidency will be fixing things Bush did.
Cerberus
@SGEW:
Let’s just agree to disagree.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
My friends and co-workers think I’m nuts because I’m planning on going to Reykjavik in December for my vacation. I just want to go sit in the dark and drink for a few days to get away from all the shit flying around down here.
fourlegsgood
Yes, everyone has gone quite mad. I plan on drinking heavily until the madness lifts.
Though it might be a while.
Dreggas
John, you really just need to post this youtube and be done with it. it explains it so well.
Ash
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: You are kinda nuts. If you want some peace, Iceland might not really be the best place to go right now….
Northern Canada maybe?
General Winfield Stuck
@valdivia:
Yes absolutely, PTSD is a good enough word for it. Trained reflex from recent experience and projecting that onto a new presnit is how I would articulate it. Nothing quite like it in my lifetime. The so-called Unitary Executive Bush presidency has left us all in a lurch from how this country should be., and generally has been run by gooper and dem presedents.
It’s going to take a while to unwind, and a lot of cathartic raving will ensue during the process. And it.
Demo Woman
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just buy black out curtains, a few cases of beer and sit in your bedroom for a week?
Andrew J. Lazarus
That should be “whom they love”. Unless they teach different English in Kenya!
Cat Lady
Sully can be petty and self-interested and I can still read him. The PUMAs are petty and self-interested, and I’ve never been able to read them. Obama was the best possible outcome available, and I’m fucking thrilled, and I won’t criticize him even when he doesn’t do everything I want, because I REMEMBER EVERY FUCKING THING ABOUT THE LAST EIGHT YEARS OF BUSH. [insert Dean Scream here].
Cerberus
@JMY:
I think so. I think for a lot of progressives, the Bush years were like one big extended Prop 8. So they’re emerging from it rabid and hungry for necessary and needed change and so are savaging those trying to clean up the mess and patch up the holes and get the good stuff through congress for not fixing it faster.
I think a lot of it was the impotence of protesting Bush. We did it, we did it a lot and some of us got very creative, but Bush and the media made it clear that no matter what we did we’d get ignored if he didn’t decide to go out of his way to fuck with us just for spite.
I think having that happen and getting someone who listens to protests, ALL protests, are making some of my progressive friends crazy because they are breaking out full force for fear that if they don’t do enough, the entrenched Washington conservatives and crazy teabaggers will dominate the ear of this president too and so are upping the volume for hope that it’ll get through.
The problem is, that while that might be good, because he does listen to the people, he’s also a man in his own right, with a good head on his shoulders not some ping-pong ball and that has gotten a little lost in the freak-out. He really is an ally, the ping-pong ball are the conservadem senators, sadly they have taken a number of lessons from Bush.
MikeJ
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Hot tubs. Aquavit. Beautiful Icelandic girls. I’ve got no problem with Iceland anytime.
General Winfield Stuck
@SGEW:
OK, not funny,. Then neither is sweeping generalizations of what most men are.
John O
@Cat Lady:
Exactly. At this point, I’ll take what I can get.
geg6
Can I just say that if I could, I’d move a couple miles west just to get Sherrod Brown as my senator? I really like him.
SGEW
@Cerberus: I tend to assume that such agreement is already implicit. There are notable exceptions (bye Bill), but I do try to be agreeable.
Blue Raven
If hate crimes are thought police, so is premeditation as a condition on murder.
And John Cole, thank you for banning BoB. When I get reduced to using the degree of insult I was hauling up against him, I know he’s dead to the rest of the place, too. The last time you banned him, it was after the Kennedy death thread and I was getting that angry with him then, too.
Leelee for Obama
@General Winfield Stuck: I’ve been saying this for a few years. I think PTSD set in on 9/12/01, and has only gotten worse. We on the left have been so frustrated by the Bush years and now the continuing ridiculous excuse for media that we are suffering, that many have a slightly unhinged quality when it comes to politics. I wish it were otherwise, but that’s what is happening. Chill pills all around would be a blessing, no?
freelancer
Not to get semantic, but death threats are an explicit (thereby provable) expression of premeditation, and no one considers a death threat to not be a crime itself.
SGEW
@General Winfield Stuck: I didn’t intend for it to be a generalization; it was more of a statistic.
But I see your point, and apologize for the implied criticism. Let’s not let this turn into a “what is the patriarchy?” thread, plz.
And it was, actually, kind of funny. In your particular way.
Dean
Oh noes!!! Time for John Aravosis from AmericaBlog to do another interview with ‘PajamasTV’!!!!!!
How dare Obama sign into law hate crimes legislation that protects gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender people!!
It’s just more of the same…George W. Bush Jr.
What’s next? A health care bill that includes a public option?
Asshole….
Should’ve stayed home in November….
Cerberus
@SGEW:
Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply you were unreasonable, only that we have different points and weights for the “line” where one becomes irredeemable, which I think is perfectly acceptable, but alas won’t help us agree to a simple term in this particular discussion.
geg6
Leelee for Obama: I think the PTSD diagnosis is correct. I know I suffered from it (and may still). I thought I was going crazy the last 8 years and it may have been true by the end of it. But it’s really the media (trad and alt, both) that keep it going. I think I could calm down and move on if they’d recognize their part in it all and change their ways. But the Village is entrenched in their ways and I despair for our country because of them.
John O
@Blue Raven:
I agree with you, but it is the murder that matters to me, not the reason for it.
John O
@Blue Raven:
I agree with you, but it is the murder that matters to me, not the reason for it.
General Winfield Stuck
@SGEW:
It was meant as sarcastic humor. whatever way that is.
JMY
This blog, Bob Cesca, and Washington Monthly’s blog are the only progressive blogs I can read without wanting to blow my brains out (There are several others as well). I can’t say the same for Daily Kos and a few others because if something doesn’t go their way, it’s time to hit the panic button. And I stopped reading The Huffington Post eons ago. I can’t stand that site anymore.
res ipsa loquitur
Has every one just lost their damned minds?
Yes.
I’ve suspected as much for a while now, but I knew for sure when Reid made the announcement about the public option the other day. I went and lurked in the comments at a liberal blog I used to frequent and saw one Obama hater tell another that Reid had included the public option because “the left of the left” had pushed him. The implication was that anyone who had had the slightest bit of faith in Obama (e.g., me) was an idiot and not part of the club anymore. I thought, “Good Christ, is there anything human beings won’t do to divide themselves”?
John O
@Blue Raven:
Yes, it could be a FYWP kinda night.
Anyway, motive is infinite, therefore un-legislatable. I don’t care about what’s going on inside your head. I care what you do about it.
tc125231
@Dreggas: Perfect. Just perfect.
Michael D.
@Cerberus:
Wow…what a…I’m trying to think of a word here. Oh yes, MORANIC thing to say.
Andrew recently mopped the floor with Pat Buchanan for his “white America” post. And has followed up with great examples of how American culture IS black culture and how great that is.
And to those asserting Andrew only cares about Andrew.
– Iran (darker skinned people, a lot of them are.)
– Torture (or a lot of brown people, I might add)
– Last time I checked, he wasn’t in the military, and has no personal interest in DADT.
– Healthcare – He has great health insurance, but supports Obama’s plan, for the most part.
– Drug policy
– Last I heard, he wasn’t up for the death penalty; yet, his support for abolition mirrors yours (I think, anyway)
– Anti-religious right – the whitest of the white, by the way
– I checked, and I still think he’s a big Obama supporter (probably only the white half though)
Hell, I could go on forever. And anyone, ANYONE, who thinks Andrew Sullivan is a Republican is delusional. I disagree with him on Hate Crimes, but the assertions made about Sullivan by Cerberus and others here are simply ridiculous. You have a person here who supports you on almost everything. But like typical Democrats, you are all ready to shoot each other up if one of you steps out of line on anything.
Call Andrew a lot of things, but “a racist” is just totally libelous, and “only concerned about Andrew” is simply a lie. And if “hating Sarah Palin” means a person hates women, then count me in – and just about everyone here.
Leelee for Obama
@General Winfield Stuck: Hey, Stuck! I knew you were joshin’ when you called her “little lady”. I kind of like that kind of thing though, so there’s that!
Trinity
Yes, everyone has gone nuts John.
I blame Obama.
Also, too.
Cerberus
@John O: The murder isn’t a simple murder, it is an act of terrorism against a specific group.
Maybe it would have helped if we called it out as what it is from the beginning, but that’s why the motivation matters. Because it is a murder intended as a message to a community.
Also, we prosecute all murders by intent, this is so we aren’t treating someone who killed someone by unavoidable accident or who had no other choice in order to save their lives the same as those who plan it in advance with full and knowing intent.
tc125231
@Cat Lady:
Words to live by.
Cerberus
@Michael D.:
The Bell Curve.
Period.
John O
@JMY:
Interesting. I still go to HuffPo regularly, and I visit the GOS for general “hot topics” only. Steve Benen is some kind of Wizard, and I have to read him every day.
I come here in the same way as I do WaMo.
MikeJ
Premeditation is the difference between the needle and a five year minimum. Society has been “punishing” premeditation for a long, long time
tc125231
@John O:
That’s one view. I think he is pompous and self centered, but does have his moments of intellectual courage. Not many. But a few.
General Winfield Stuck
@Leelee for Obama:
I have never called a woman in my life ‘little lady” and wouldn’t except to snark about generalizations in general about what men think or do.
Michael D.
@John O:
We use different thought process every day to prosecute differently. That’s why we have varying degrees of homicide.
If someone hack a person to death for no other reason than he wanted the guy’s Rolex, that’s different that the woman who thinks someone is breaking in and accidentally shooting her son who happens to be coming home late.
Two dead innocent human beings who did nothing to deserve the death they suffered.
Two VERY DIFFERENT perpetrators of homicide who will get treated very differently because of what they were THINKING.
I happen to think that people who go after people for the characteristics they exhibit are FAR more dangerous than those who don’t.
Michael D.
@Cerberus: Good to see you take one thing from a person’s past and judge him for it for the rest of his life. I still think what you said early was stupid given his entire body of work.
SGEW
@General Winfield Stuck: Sarcasm is your particular way, sir. You’re not exactly a stranger to me, you know. My emoticon was intended to be, in my way, ironic. Ah! Internet communications. How confuzing.
@Michael D.: So much for agreeable disagreement. Fine points on racism (tho’ the “Bell Curve” imbroglio is the key criticism, I believe), but you failed to burnish Mr. Sullivan’s credentials when it comes to defending him against charges of sexism. Funny.
tc125231
What? On Yglesias, Krugman, or Ezra Klein? Kevin Drum? Baseline Scenario?
I seriously doubt it.
Clearly you are reading the wrong blogs. The thing is, there are NO sane blogs on the right.
Chad N Freude
Would someone be so kind as to pint me to the notice that Brick Oven Bill, noted philosopher, historian, classicist, and sociologist has been banned? I have been busy serving the overlords who pay for my health insurance and have not been keeping up here.
I must say that I will miss him. Hammering on his stupid statements was more fun than playing Whack-A-Mole (and he was much easier prey). I guess I’ll have to find another pastime.
And @gnomedad: I was really hoping no one would capitalize on the circumlocution pun. At least not before I did. Walking backwards into it strikes me as awkward and potentially painful.
Cat Lady
@JMY:
My feelings exactly. This strange little BJ world of like-minded rational hopeful educated funny cynics who love animals, food, music, movies and sports gives me a hApPy.
General Winfield Stuck
@SGEW:
LOL. This is true.:-)
Leelee for Obama
@General Winfield Stuck: No offense meant, I’m just from an old-fashioned family filled with lots of very tiny women-I’m 5’1.5″, when I stretch, and I’m taller than the others are/were! “Little Lady” was a term of endearment around my house, plus, it saved the guys from remembering our names….snark!
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: Typo: “point”. Why was the Edit button banned?
MikeJ
Since so many people have said in this thread, “I can’t read liberal blogs except for this one. And my thermos. Just this blog and my thermos. ” Can we come up with a definitive list of non-insane blogs of any political flavour? (and just political – even though Crooked Timber touches on politics, they’re really an academic blog) Ideally we’d just look at the blog roll, but perhaps we can influence it.
I read: here, LGM, atrios, wamo, plum line, whiskey fire, TPM. Here and LGM are just about the only places I’ll bother with comment.
+2, and ftfy
Shawn in ShowMe
With regard to Sullivan’s race con game, this blogger provides an excellent summary of how Andrew operates:
Radical Negative
Shorter Sullivan: “Are Africans stupid? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.”
John O
*sigh*
Yes, everyone out here, I understand that there are differences in how we prosecute violent crime.
I’m just suggesting that the liberal view of “hate crimes” means that a lot of people are going to get prosecuted for things that had nothing to do with what was really going on the criminal’s mind.
Cerberus
@Michael D.:
It’s not really a small moment. The Bell Curve wasn’t some slightly racist book that anyone could have mistaken. It was something akin to The Pink Triangle. It’s a bad fucking book to love, much less eagerly promote and defend even after the history had been pointed out to you for years afterwards.
But frankly, fuck you. No seriously, I don’t give a fuck about Andrew Sullivan, he is an embarrassment to my community and right-wing fucktard. Today is awesome, one of the best victories in a good long time for my community. I’ve got a frosty bottle of Blå Thor waiting for me and I’m not spending another minute on Andrew Fucking Sullivan.
Obama, my man, the president I had such high hopes for, signed today the first piece of legislation EVER recognizing gender identity and strengthening hate crimes laws that will prevent people like me from being killed at the rate of once a month just in this country and once every three days in the world.
Eat, drink, and be merry everyone. Skjold! Cheers! Mother fucking HOORAY!
MikeJ
@John O: People get prosecuted for vehicular homicide everyday and the concept of murder never went through their minds.
Cerberus
@John O:
And fuck you too!
Go OBAMA! Woo!
SGEW
@Cerberus: Mazel tov!
geg6
Michael D: Do you think it’s possible that perhaps a woman might see things in Andrew’s writings that you couldn’t because you have never been the target of the subtle but very clear misogyny that some men exhibit? And as for his racism, I’ll accept that he’s not a racist when he quits celebrating the Bell Curve and apologizes for it instead.
gwangung
I’ll drink to that.
General Winfield Stuck
@Cerberus:
Shouldn’t have to have hate laws for anyone in a perfect world, though it took too long for this one, we need them in this imperfect world IMHO, if for no other reason that to put a black mark on hatred, so everyone can see it for what it is.
Michael D.
@Cerberus: Hey. I’m not a foe of yours here. I’m happy about today too, and it means just as much to ME as it does to you. In fact, givin my own personal situation, it’s one step on the way to other things that are MORE important to me than you.
I just think your wrong about Sullivan. That’s all I said. Hate me for that if you want, but if you can’t have that argument without a “fuck you” then I guess I won’t bother further.
But I’m happy for us both today.
No “fuck you’s” from me.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Come on. Two “Look Sully is pitching a fit and doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about” posts in one day. Why?
There are a ton of four star assholes out there screaming that the bill means you can be arrested if you don’t fuck a dog three times a week. Just run Hate Crimes Bill through the gazzoggles and you’ll see tons of these bastards wetting their pants and just begging to be mocked. Why waste your time with one deluded Canuck Conservative Clown? You know he’s going to walk it back any way.
Part of the reason he’s so damn useless is even his tantrums are bo-ring.
Michael D.
@geg6:
Do you think it’s possible for a gay person like me to see things in the perceived inaction of the Obama administration on certain issues that you couldn’t because you’ve never been the target of subtle (or not so subtle) but very clear anti-gay bias that many powerful men and women exhibit?
If I asked THAT question here, I’d get killed for it!
John O
Awww, man.
Honestly, guys and girls, I get it. And maybe “hate crimes” are a step in the right direction.
I just don’t ever see Power giving it up, or even shrinking theirs. In this way bad things go.
You have my unconditional support: One of my best friends has a TG young’un.
So GFY.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Demo Woman:
Yeah, but the Aurora Borealis is kind of hard to simulate.
mcc
Well I don’t know if this helps, but here are the best physics blogs I know…
Not Even Wrong [physics news + the intersection of science and media]
USLHC [Official DOE group blog for U.S. scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider]
Backreaction [more philosophy-of-science tending writing from a Perimeter Institute researcher]
Dorigo [insider-y particle physics news and occasional updates on Italian politics from a Tevatron researcher]
Resonaances [particle physics blogging, infrequent posts but extremely in-depth, which can be a good or bad thing]
valdivia
JMY and General Stuck–I have been mulling the PTSD thing a while because some of the over the top reaction, assumtption of treasonous behavior, and constant need to counter and fight cannot be a healthy political discourse.
I personally read here, Greg Sargent, Bennen and Sulli (when he is not in a snit). The others I cant anymore. TPM this last week has been the biggest disappointment.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@MikeJ:
To me, Iceland is paradise.
valdivia
OT do you guys think now that I am done with one batch of exams I can start drinking??? Is that unfair to the ones that i already graded?
geg6
Michael D: I don’t know why you think I or anyone else here would freak out if you said that. I, personally, don’t think so, but I’m not gay so I can’t claim to know if there is such subtle ant-gay subtext. I can only pronounce on their policies and process, which seems to be moving along with deliberation, albeit more slowly than I’d like. Please, if there is such subtext, point me to it.
AnneS
OT — can we have a World Series thread? plz go phlz. :)
chrome agnomen
SULLY’S GAY????
wow. i would never have known except for the fact that the percentage of people that self identify as republican, is the same as the percentage of his posts that don’t mention the fact that he’s gay.
just keep on huggin’ that right-wing bowl.
ruemara
Lieberman, notorious “gang of 14” member, person who hates to filibuster, is threatening to filibuster. If this blog hadn’t mentioned this law passed, I would never have known, even on huffpo & GOS, because they are busy shooting at Obama for Lieberman & Reid. 3k people have been protesting outside the American Bankers Association, with nary a whisper in the MSM and no teabaggers are in evidence. I can’t stand “the left” as much as I can’t stand “the right”. Death and explosions in either of our stupid wars of idiocy are increasing and no fricking plans will stop that. And there’s not a scrap of chocolate or ice cream in my house.
The world is quite mad, Mr. Cole. And our only choices are the madness of awareness or the madness of ignorance.
John O
@John O:
Just for the record, I know I only “get it” in that the reason I “get it” is because I’ll never “get it.”
See, “South Park.”
MikeJ
@John O: Really? A “some of my best friends are jewish” and a GFY? I understand you think intimidating blacks or gay people or Jews is ok, and everybody here was pretty nice in explaining why our opinion differed. You don’t like dissent, and answer even the most polite disagreement with “go fuck yourself.” And now you’ll probably go tell people how mean those awful libruls are.
So please, go die in a fire you worthless piece of shit.
ruemara
I heard a new term today, from William & Mary College’s first ever transgender homecoming queen. S/he calls himself a “gender queen” and says her/is dress and gender can depend on the day. Her/is preference is for gender neutral pronouns and is campus leader in lgbt issues.
This may be a stretch and lord knows, I’m just an old fashioned bi from nyc, so I may be a bit slow on the uptake, but perhaps not putting in a current term such as “gay” or “lesbian” or “bisexual” makes a law that is more fluid and can change along with the vagaries of English slang and cultural norms. So we can quit seeing how homophobic Obama is because of it. Or not, it’s not my stomach getting ulcerated.
John O
@MikeJ:
No.
I’m sorry.
I went to GFY because a person I love unconditionally love has gone through the parental horror of watching an only daughter go male, and because I feel badly that my writing skills aren’t enough to help you understand how I really feel about it.
I’m sorry.
geg6
ruemara: I think you are exactly right. This.
John O
OK, now rip me (and my friend the TG parent) for calling it “horror.”
About all I can say to defend myself is if you knew her, you would understand. She’s a Saint. Like most sane parents, she loves her children unconditionally, and by the transitive property of trusting the people you love, I do, too.
BethanyAnne
@John O: I’ve wanted to ask someone who opposes this on thought police grounds something. Do you support the separation of manslaughter from murder? Intent is what separates those crimes, and that seems to me to be criminalizing thought in the same way.
valdivia
Someone kill me now–reading these exams I actually feel like quoting McMegan and writing on the margins ‘this is all technnically true but collectively nonsense’.
sorry for all the grading comments. as you can see I am losing my mind.
mk3872
Sullivan has set the barometer to which he measures Obama on gay rights solely on 2 pieces of legislation: DOMA & DADT.
To Sullivan, anything else is seen as condescending and an insult.
This sort of narrow boxed-in mindset is why we must all remember that Sullivan buys into the classic conservative ideals such as no govt & no taxes and worships WM F Buckley.
BethanyAnne
eep! sorry to pile on John O. didn’t read further down the thread
schrodinger's cat
@valdivia:
What do you teach?
BethanyAnne
@John O: For what it’s worth, I’m trans, and I don’t think “horror” is a poor choice. People have lots invested in gender, and parents are losing something they thought fundamental about their child. Um, this is hard to talk about in text, and on a blog. It’s definitely a loss. It’s a gain, too, but you have to process the loss before you can see that.
valdivia
@schrodinger’s cat:
Poli Sci Latin American focused. But this term I am not doing anything fancy (I like to teach about the military and right wing political parties in the region) the course is an intro for Freshmen on latin politics/history. The exam is pretty easy but some of the whoppers I am reading today are really really tempting me to drink while grading. Or alternatively–quote McArdle. Who knew?
Cat Lady
@mk3872:
Andrew Sullivan
criticizes Obama
It’s all about him.
/haiku
tomjones
He was also wrong when he wrote:
In fact, as NPR reported, this law addresses a critical shortcoming from the Shepard investigation:
So much Sullivan fail…
John O
@BethanyAnne:
Yes, I do, BA.
But just because some black guy kicked my ass because I flirted with his girlfriend with no serious intention doesn’t make it a hate crime. And we are not far enough along the “post-racial” path to get by that, in terms of assigning motivation.
I’m with you. There are clear-cut, obvious situations where pure hate is a motive. Sentence them accordingly, by the Judge and jury’s opinion when it matters. Not by fiat. I give you, “no tolerance.”
Ash Can
@valdivia:
Depends. Are you a happy drunk or a mean one?
gbear
@jeff:
Have you ever tried to read his book Virtually Normal? It’s kind of a technical study of gay relationships and marriage, heavy on Catholic morality and do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do. It was the most boring gay book that I’ve ever tried to read. I gave up and donated it to the local GLBT library. Hypocritical, also. Too.
John O
@BethanyAnne:
I guess what I’m trying to say is, “I know,” BA.
Like most things, it is a process.
Cain
@JadedOptimist:
I’m not sure he should care. After all, didn’t Obama admit that he reads the Daily Dish? Who gives a shit? Hell, he’s on a lot of CNN and MNBC shit too. I doubt he has penis envy that he’s not on the cocktail circuit with the rest of those bozos.
If I see Jake Tapper though, I’m definitely going to resist the urge to punch him in the neck.
cain
Max
We need a Top Chef open thread… I love me some Kevin.
Sorry to be OT, but it got very heavy in here. However, BJ is a VERY diverse community. Rockin’.
John O
@John O:
HeyZeus: “Zero” tolerance.
John O +3.
General Winfield Stuck
@Leelee for Obama:
Absolutely none taken Leelee.
Fern
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Nononono! he is not a Canadian.
Moonbatting Average
I’d like to (at least) second the request for a World Series thread…. I’d love a space to wail and gnash my teeth when the Evils came back and win this game
Martin
I agree. Can we get a full round of Fuck the Fucking Yankees in here?
valdivia
@Ash Can:
a very very happy drunk. I am giving up and continuing tomorrow under the same circumstances–rain, tons of coffee and bad mood about all the crazy people in politics. so now I can be +1 without worrying about it.
General Winfield Stuck
@Martin:
I will second that emotion. FTFY’s!!
Cain
@Cat Lady:
I’m a total o-bot. I think he is a good person. I look at his family and how he treats them and I know that he is a good man and he’s doing a damn good job representing my values. I might not agree with everything, but I think from the actions he’s doing he’s earned my trust. Whatever he does, I know that he’s going to look at it with a seriousness and logic that his predecessor would never do. We need him and we need to stop acting like victims and cheer him on and give him all the support we can so that he can help us help him. (and that includes protesting)
cain
General Winfield Stuck
@Cain:
We are legion.
John O
I apologize for my part in the heaviness.
The problem, for me, in going all-in anti-Yanks is that I hate the Phillies about as much, and they’re not as cool.
I’m pretty much in the Anyone But Either Club, as much as I hate clubs. The fun thing that is if I bother to pay attention, an emotional favorite will emerge. I have a suspicion it will be the Phils, based on my background noise, but I haven’t been paying much attention.
I’m all about BJ.
Jen7
“I seriously am to the point that every time I open memeorandum or check the progressive blogs, I’m beginning to see the same kind of batshit crazy I see on right wing blogs. Has every one just lost their damned minds? Did everyone go insane?”
Yep, I have noticed that too. I just don’t get it. They’ve put great expectations on Obama. Too much for such a short period of time, IMO.
John O
@Cain:
Thank you, too, Cain. Obama has seriously pissed me off on any number of issues, but this is one tough country to be the President of All.
He’ll do his best, of that I’m pretty confident. I would be very suspicious of him if he did 100% of what I wanted. :-)
jeff
@gbear
No I did not read his book, or any of his books. Actually, I never read books by pundits…nor does anyone else.
jeff
@gbear
No I did not read his book, or any of his books. Actually, I never read books by pundits…nor does anyone else.
valdivia
@Cain:
count me in. as an O-bot.
valdivia +2
General Winfield Stuck
as in many, not the biblical one.
Trinity
Ignore the traditional media. They suck.
Haven’t we enough evidence of this?
Fern
@Cain:
I’m starting to think that his approach of keeping a public option out of the bill might have been the wiser choice – now they’ve got something that may get voted down, and then there’s nothing.
Max
@valdivia: O-bot here! We need a secret handshake or knock.
John O
All right, I’m old-school about baseball, hate the DH, and love the fact that Lee is putting up the literal 0.
Greg Maddux is the greatest right-hander of my lifetime.
I like my pitching dominance when it comes to baseball.
Kudos to Lee, so far.
valdivia
@Max:
or a secret drink?
still at +2
Betsy
No open thread? I don’t feel like getting in a pissing match about Obama’s level of devotion to various causes tonight.
Martin
I’ll agree on Kudos to Lee – but I’m pissed I’m cheering for the Phillies. Fuck the fucking yankees for forcing me to cheer for the Phillies.
madmommy
@John O:
Greg Maddux is the hero of my early baseball fan years. I grew up a Braves fan, when they sucked eggs. I went to Fulton County Stadium when there were so few people there you could hear every catcall and heckle. Maddux could paint the corners like no one else. Having him, Glavine and Smoltz in one rotation was a gift from the baseball gods.
Martin
I think Obama, being a White Sox fan and all, would agree with our devotion to FTFY.
Anne Laurie
@Comrade Jake:
And yet, I found FDL’s coverage of the Cheney cabal’s assault on Valerie Plame, and thereby on the CIA’s work to defuse the spread of nuclear terrorism, fascinating. I greatly respect Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel) as a legal source on progressive issues. And Firedoglake is where I first encountered TBogg, who led me to Sadly, No!, who lead me… here. For What It’s Worth.
And if we’re recommending “progressive” general-interest blogs, I would like to highlight Wonkette (which is no longer connected to Ana Marie Cox), Gawker, and Jezebel? I realize these are all professional or at least semi-professional blogs, but each site has one or more contributors I’d pay to read, and a lot of links to stuff I wouldn’t see elsewhere.
Max
I like the Cubbies, so I’ve got no dog in this hunt, but I am a joiner, so I say…. FTFY.
And Kevin won the quickfire! Woot.
John O
@madmommy:
I’m with you, mm. When I was a kid, I loved the Orioles of the McNally, Cuellar, Palmer era. IIRC, they had a year with 4 20-game winners. Dobson?
I just want my pros to be good. I always find myself rooting for Tiger Woods and Roger Federer.
kay
It is pretty amazing that liberals aren’t celebrating, just a little, today.
The other big news out of the hate crimes signing was this: Obama has succeeded in paring back nearly all of the wasteful spending on outdated and useless weapons systems that he set out to cut, in this first budgetary round.
With the support of Secretary Gates, he got around Congress, who are in love with defense industry lobbyists, as we know, and made real progress, more than has been made “in decades” according to the NYTimes.
I’m really quite pleased. Those sacred cows deserved to die.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Max: Uh, hello? Terrorist Fist Jab?
Duh.
Little Macayla's Friend
@ruemara:
ok if I steal this?
“. . the madness of awareness or the madness of ignorance”
kind of like tasting peanut butter and chocolate together for the first time.
valdivia
Okay last exam related comment of the night–one of my students made a verb out of the word Papal Bull. As in, “the Pope Alexander VI papal bulled the land west of the azores”. Priceless I tell you.
+3.
valdivia
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
FTW!
John O
@Comrade Jake:
That is incredible nonsense. I have my issues with FDL holding the POTUS’ feet to the fire the degree they do, but I’m glad they do it.
And FDL’s coverage of the Libby-Plame deal was by far the most intelligent and nuanced in Newsworld. I understood their POV, but I thought they documented that POV pretty fabulously.
geg6
I have my bitches with the O, but I always stop to remember how I felt last fall and HE was the one who made me feel it. After the darkest 8 years of my life, he made me hope (yes, I know; so sue me). He still does. Being the decider is hard, but being an implementer is even harder. And I have faith that his decisions will be the best he can come up with and he’ll make sure that they get put into place. I really can’t ask for much more. And can I just add how much I love BJ and the BJers? No smarter, funnier, and more good hearted people exist on the Intertrons.
AhabTRuler
Apparently the powers that be are busy. The nerve!
Max
@kommrade reproductive vigor: Well played sir/madam.
kay
@geg6:
“Victory Over Military Lobby for Obama” is up on the NYTimes, and that made me smile.
Although it probably means half the Democrats in Congress will now go into full-bore hissy fits, mourning those contracts.
John Murtha alone….
robertdsc
This. All of it.
Cat Lady
We are O-bots hear us roar/
Cain
@John O: @General Winfield Stuck:
Indeed, sir!
:)
cain
Cain
@Fern:
Look who he has to work with. Sigh. FSM help us all.
cain
Martin
Ok, that was a fucking fantastic catch.
Betsy
@AhabTRuler:
Totally unacceptable. If *I* don’t have a life tonight, I expect them not to, either!
Betsy
Also, I can’t participate in the FTFY celebration because my partner is a lifelong, diehard Y fan, and will be super bummed all night if (when) they lose. (He’s really a fabulous guy; don’t hold it against him!)
Martin
Maybe. OTOH, that massive stimulus bill can take its place, at least for now. I’ll take that trade.
Hann1bal
@John O: Oh, I loved Greg Maddux, until he left. But now that he’s retired, I can eagerly await his inevitable entrance into the Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, it seems now that those old glory days of the Braves are gone, and so now I watch the Falcons instead, since they’re actually kinda good now.
Hann1bal -3 (hours of sleep)
John O
HRC is one of those issues I think the POTUS has played it about as well as he could. I present as evidence the (likely) fact that a pretty comprehensive HC bill will make it to conference.
After George King The Lesser, I think it is easy for us to forget that we don’t live in a monarchy.
The sausage factory will do what it does, but progress is being made no matter what if the President gets something he can sign.
I’m a single-payer guy, because I would prefer things be simple. But not enough of the rest of us feel the same way.
We’ll see, but I’ve a feeling the holdouts will cave to the polls.
John O
@Hann1bal:
I’m from Chicago by birth, and Chicagoland by upbringing. Losing Maddux was pure stupid, not unlike trading Lou Brock, who tortured me for several years as a child and baseball and Cubs fan.
Off to bed, y’all. I’m sorry for any tension I may have caused.
Have a great night, and a good Thursday.
Brachiator
@geg6:
Works for me. I am already certain that Obama is smarter than any Republican, in or out of government.
He has also shown that he is smarter than most self-identified progressives, whose ideas are as stale as those of the neocons.
I only hope that he grows to be smarter than most of the Democrats in Congress, who have good ideas, but are strangely afraid to develop them into workable solutions.
Martin
No, he’s really not. You just don’t realize it yet. Being a Yankees fan is like being a member of NAMBLA or the KKK. They might be really nice bagging your groceries, but there’s something fundamentally not right about the person. How could there be?
Consider yourself warned.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I too noticed the lack of ‘wreck’ listing at the GoS about this issue. One diary that finally stuck there has fewer comments than in this thread, someone in it observing that four earlier diaries about it didn’t make the wreck list.
For all of the screaming, rending of garments and hair that has gone on about Obama and his relationship with the GLBT community over at the GoS, you would think those same people would come in and say something good about this. Instead, it is almost as if they are trying to keep the hissy fit going rather than saying something good about Obama signing this.
What a great message to send the president.
Sully? The Bell Curve. That and he really only cares about what affects him directly. IMO he really doesn’t give a shit about the issues of others, it’s all about him.
That and stopped clocks are right twice a day, all very good reasons to ignore him.
Martin
Well, it would seem they are trying to tamp that attitude down, but overall they are much better equipped for outrage than for positive support. And I don’t think there’ll be any big celebrations there until DADT and DOMA are gone.
Fulcanelli
Man this place is tense tonight.
Chad n Freud asked up thread if there was some ceremonial comment or post where John kicked the chair out from under Bong Water Bill and I didn’t see a response. Was there one?
Re: Andrew Sullivan. I don’t really give a damn how good of a writer he is. The guy’s HIV positive, Catholic, Conservative and Gay. Emotionally he’s gotta be all over the map on a daily basis and that’s gotta play hell on your mind.
Talk about feeling alone in the world. He’s like the Last of the Mohicans.
williamc
I wasn’t going to comment, but now that the tread looks to be winding down, I wanted to pop in for some of this O-bot loving going on.
This one’s gonna go long, I’m sure, but you people are so bloody brilliant that I’ve read three or four comments this evening that make perfect sense that I’d never thought of.
Sully is going insane because love him or hate him, he’s at the top of his field, married to a hot American actor, with the beagles and summers at the Cape and he’s going to loose this dream life soon because of his HIV status. That would put anyone on a hair trigger, let alone someone as big a queen as he is (from one to another).
As for the O-bots, I think there are still more of us out there than you suspect; I’ve probably been one of the reasons O’s poll numbers have been going down, as I am dissatisfied with how he’s doing his job the past few months. This health care thing should have been done this summer; Nancy shouldn’t have been left hanging in the wind when she said that the CIA was lying to Congress; he should stop playing with the Right, they are trying to get him killed so they can finish the rest of us off; Van Jones was right, conservatives are ASSHOLES (and they proved it by using that comment to get him to quit!); um, ordering folks tortured to death isn’t just wrong, or just illegal, it’s evil.
PTSD, WTF, that’s gold! And so totally spot on. Everyone was so shocked stupid that our lives of ignorance and consumption could just be ended on a random blue skied sunny morning in September, in NYC for fuck’s sake, rich people in skyscrapers, in the capitol of capital in AMERICA, and the fact that we’ve all been working like dogs for no money at horrible jobs that we hate for the last decade, we’ve all been turned into barely insured zombies and that’s a toxic stew of crazy brewin’.
The emerging “loony left” isn’t just coming unhinged, its what Cat Lady hit on upthread, I REMEMBER EVERY FUCKING THING ABOUT THE LAST EIGHT YEARS OF BUSH. [insert Dean Scream here]. These are smart folks, the loony bloggers, we have all just been driven mad due to the fact that we were right on every policy issue the last 30 years and we finally get what seems like the holy grail (Conservative flame-out, a strong Democratic Triumvirate in Government, popular mandate to govern from the left, and yet we are still having to fight every day for the little things because nothing big is happening, even though we all had to watch in horror as the Republicans destroyed the country with smaller majorities and no popular mandates. Wouldn’t you be crazy too if you had to sit by for 30 years until the next real liberal came along and all he talked about was playing cute with the other team?
But…I’m in the tank for the President still. I tell people all the time: I’m too proud sometimes, and too immodest, but I’m a proud Alpha male, I never think anyone can get one up on me, and I’ll admit it, Obama’s smarter than I am. There may not be any heroes in politics, but we may have actually chosen one of the brightest from amongst us to lead us, as we always should do in the first place, and I suspect that that is what most “lefty elites” who have a problem with the President are really afraid of, they may have met the politico who they think might know more than they do.
But hey, at least they aren’t stupid f*cking teabaggers! F*ck those guys!
williamc
oh, and if anyone here has words in the real world with JMM from TPM please tell him to stop his reporters from filing stories that rely totally on anonymous sources!
i love tpm and don’t want that resource crippled because our guys are running the government now…
ruemara
@Little Macayla’s Friend:
Consider it a gift.
@valdavia:
holy cow.
Cat Lady
@williamc:
shorter williamc: this O-bot says although first 9/11 made us crazy, then O made everyone crazier, smart and crazy is better than stupid and crazy, and (hopefully) there are more of us than them: B-J DFHs FTW!
wilfred
Sullivan is a progressive? Progressives are those people who fought for Obama early for one simple reason – his apparent opposition to the Iraq war.
Progressives remain those people who are incensed that another 22 American soldiers are dead in Afghanistan and that more Americans were killed there in October than any previous month, and that we will shortly overcome the time the Soviets were there.
Liberal is someone willing to let Americans die in far-off colonialist wars if they get something in return: HEALTH CARE! GAY MARRIAGE! SAVE THE BANKS!
You sound like a born again Christian, Cole, still afflicted with conversion hysteria: Sullivan attacked Obama, Oh, Oh! The Villain.
Get the smelling salts.
mclaren
John Cole is correct. The left is just as full of kooks and cranks and crackpots as the right, possibly more so.
Everyone on this blog went apeshit when I made a post a few months ago proposing non-violent mass demonstrations to force Obama to obey the constitution. The idea of the president of the united states having to obey the constitution apparently unhinged most of the people here.
So it’s been clear for a long long while that most of the people on this forum are nutjobs. They’re kooks, no different from the teabaggers, no different from the Palin loonies, no different from the cranks who think it would be a marvellous idea to draft Dick Cheney for a presidential run in 2012.
Conclusion?
Somewhere between 1994 and 2004, most of the population of America went insane. Those few of us left who are able to form rational coherent thoughts continue to suggest:
[1] the president has to obey the constitution;
[2] kidnapping people off the streets, putting hoods over their heads, dragging them into CIA-chartered jets and sending them off to third world countries where they get tortured is not obeying the constitution, it’s a gross violation of the 8th amendment;
[3] using the telephone companies and the NSA to spy on the phone conversionsations of everyone in America is not obeying the constitution, it’s a gross violation of the 4th amendment;
[4] continuing an undeclared war in Iraq and another undeclared war in Afghanistan in violation of the War Powers Act is not obeying the law, it’s a gross violation of the law;
[5] refusing to even discuss a single-payer health care reform option and declaring it “off the table” is insane;
[6] proposing a larger military budget than the already obscenely bloated 1.4 trillion dollars America already pisses away on national defense is so insane that words do not exist in the English language to describe the lunacy of such behavior.
[7] If the members of congress and president Obama refuse to bow to the will of the American people (52% want us out of Afghanistan, 63% want us out of Iraq, 67% want a public option in health care reform) then the American people need to take to the streets and non-violently shut everything down. Block the streets, block the halls of congress, lie down on the steps of the capitol, whatever it takes to shut America down. Surround the White House with a candlelight vigil, whatever it takes to shut every office of the united states government down until real reform gets passed. Meaning: public option health care, U.S. out of Afghanistan, U.S. out of Iraq, genuine fnancial reform (no more 36% interest rates charged by banks, that’s called “usury” and it’s unheard of anywhere in the world except from mafia loan sharks and the corrupt and degraded sinkhole formerly known as “the American financial system.”).
Barack Obama seems to be under the illusion that he’s in charge of the united states government. Think again. The people of the united states of America are in charge, he’s just hired help, like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.
The kooks and cranks and crackpots who infest this forum — meaning, most of you — will hysterically shriek that a mass non-violent demonstration is “unrealistic” or a “delusion” or “a fantasy” or “impossible.”
Guess what, buckaroos?
Masses of people told the sufragettes in the early 1900s that their goal of getting the vote for women was “unrealistic” and “a delusion” and “a fantasy” and “impossible.”
It happened.
Mobs of people screamed that MLK’s dream of voting rights for blacks in the deep south in the early 1960s was “unrealistic” and “a delusion” and “a fantasy” and “impossible.”
It happened.
Hordes of people howled that ending the Viet Nam war in the early 1970s against the opposition of the congress and the white house and the entire military-industrial complex was “unrealistic” and “a delusion” and “a fantasy” and “impossible.”
It happened.
Things are only impossible in politics until they’re not. Five years ago, everyone concurred that while it might be nice to have a black president, it was “unrealistic” and “a delusion” and “a fantasy” and “impossible.”
It happened.
So don’t try to tell me that getting a public option for health care reform or pulling America out of Afghanistan and Iraq or reforming America’s grotesquely corrupt financial system is “unrealistic” and “a delusion” and “a fantasy” and “impossible.”
I know better.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way, kooks.
Brachiator
@mclaren:
French style tea bagging.
Comrade Kevin
@wilfred:
Way to read the thread first.
D. Aristophanes
Who the fuck reads progressive blogs, John? It’s much more entertaining to read the wingnuts and make fun of them. But seriously … no, not really. This is kind of a lame post, my friend.
D. Aristophanes
Also, per mclaren, the least kookiest thing you can possibly do is to declare everyone other than yourself to be total, unreconstructed kooks. That is a very un-kooky thing to do. Seriously – not kooky at all.
TenguPhule
Fuck Mob Rule.
If the 35% batshit teabaggers are allowed any say in running things, we’re all screwed.
TenguPhule
Then get the fuck out of my way, kook.
wilfred
@Comrade Kevin:
I stopped reading Cole’s posts in their entirety after his 400th or so PalinPost and his perfect conflation of progressive criticism of Obama with objective pro-Palinism. Now I just read the punchline. Besides, my Sullivan remark was snark. Remember that? Probably not, as the veil of light has blinded people to what objective criticism actually is. Oh, and 90 people were blown to pieces in Pakistan in order to welcome the representative of the Messenger of Peace. And 22 Americans are still dead these last few days. But we talk about such things because they blur the incandescent light of the Nobel Laureate for Peace.
Cole is a political convert – the equivalent of a born again Xian, a Jew for Jesus or a Hare, Hare Krishna. Now that he’s Obama-treu, like he was once Reagan/Bush/Republican – treu he sees fit to lecture progressives on what progressivism ‘really’ means. The only consistent thing with John is his treuism – he’s as loyal as, well… you can finish the sentence. Same with the other posters, self-parodying mock-ups of the host.
What is never mentioned is anything that will detract from the sun-irradiated aura of the Philosopher King. Health care, kids, not mutilated American soldiers or the people they are supposed to be protecting.
Yeahhhh!
Steeplejack
@Fulcanelli:
John Cole at comment 35 in the “Barack Obama Also Hates Gays” thread:
Brick Oven Bill at comment 48 in the “Not Human” thread:
With further explication and analysis at comment 91.
TenguPhule
And wilfred with his magic wand will wave it and make it all go away in a moment.
Meanwhile, on Planet Earth, Obama is stuck with a military leadership full of treasonous conservative assholes, a hostile media and a legislative branch with the spine of a caramel cream.
But who knows, maybe the Palestinian leadership has learned to think like human beings in the last year.
JenJen
@Steeplejack: Thank you! Was hoping to get the background on that delightful news without scrolling through too many threads. You miss so much around here when you’re gone all day. :-)
Steeplejack
@JenJen:
Yes, and for once be glad you did.
Zuzu's Petals
@General Winfield Stuck:
O-bot here. Reporting for duty.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I see Wilfred has been drinking too much Sunny Delight again.
low-tech cyclist
John:
I’m obviously coming in late to this discussion, and I apologize in advance for lacking the energy to read through 285 previous comments to see if anyone’s asked this.
But can you please be specific about WHICH progressive blogs you think have gone batshit crazy in their criticism of Obama? I haven’t seen any of this myself.
There are millions of progressive bloggers. I’ve got a blog; doesn’t everybody? But if I get irrational in my blog, nobody would notice, nor should they.
I guess the question is, are these bloggers that jump on Obama at the drop of a hat anyone who gets noticed? And if so, why do I only hear about them when I stop by Balloon Juice?
dan robinson
Your first mistake was giving a shit about what Sullivan thinks. He is just another loud mouth in a sea of loudmouths yelling “Hey, look at me.”
Your second mistake was giving two shits about what Sullivan thinks.
Fulcanelli
I, O-bot.
That is all. Carry on.
waynet
@jenniebee:
Gotta get that shirt……
Nick
Too bad Sullivan wasn’t as sensitive about the actual lives of Iraqi men, women and children as he is about the rights of gay people.
What does it say about a man’s purported religious belief that he cares more about whether men can marry men than whether people in the 10’s of thousands are bombed to bits?
Lee from NC
OK, don’t have time to read all 289 comments but just wanted to ask why John is so obsessed with what gay people think of Obama? I mean, seriously, lately every third or fourth post is knocking some gay blogger or gays in general for being critical of Obama. Honestly, Obama has done very little for gay rights when compared to his campaign promise of being a “fierce advocate”.
But I can see where there would be disagreement. He has done more than we (gays) have seen since at least the Clinton years so we should be happy. OTOH, “fierce advocate” seems to imply much more. Especially since our main concerns are DADT and DOMA and those issues seem to be off the table.
Anyway, Andrew Sullivan is batshit crazy and always has been. To lump him in with the rest of gay-dom is unfair. And yes, you can find crazy left-wing bloggers, both gay and straight, who are critical of the president and some who are supportive of the president.
I just don’t get the constant focus on bashing the gays who are critical of Obama.
itsbenj
No, everyone hasn’t lost their minds. People observe the behavior and parse the language of the president. Hello!
This post is representative of a weird mindset. As someone who was on the BushCo train, and only ditched out on them when it was obvious to everyone with a brain that they were failing us miserably, it seems that some who then in turn embraced Obama want to apply that kind of hero-worshiping that they did with Bush to Obama. That’s not how any of this stuff (stuff meaning how citizens observe and interact with presidential politics) was ever supposed to work.
We are not supposed to be ‘fans’ of politicians.
itsbenj
@Lee from NC: agree with this comment. Sullivan is a silly, superficial person who has a much greater station in life than he merits. but I took a break from reading this blog for a couple of weeks after another one of these borderline homophobic posts, and then I read it again this morning, and there’s yet another one driving me away…shame.
Cyrus
Maybe somebody has already pointed this out, but Sullivan opposes hate crime laws in general. If they exist he thinks consistency demands that they cover hate crimes against GLBT people as well as hate crimes based on race or religion or whatever, but he’d rather they didn’t exist at all. I don’t remember his reasoning for this and I obviously don’t share it. But Sullivan isn’t demanding to have everything his way here or he’ll hold his breath until he turns blue, he’s objecting to what he sees as adding insult to injury. Stupid, but not necessarily primarily nuts.
I didn’t read the whole thread to see if someone had already said that, but just FWIW.
kay
@Cyrus:
He’s sloppy. He didn’t read the bill. He’s knee-jerk opposed to hate crime laws (on which there is a complicated, nuanced debate) because conservative legal dogma demands opposition to hate crime laws.
But he didn’t read the bill. It provides funding for local law enforcement for education on and prevention of these crimes, and Sullivan’s last post jeers at the whole idea of prevention.
Prevention of specific crimes is valid policy. We do that in the US, and we do it well.
As an example, I would point to domestic violence. That wasn’t an issue until policy makers made it an issue. It took twenty years. We trained police agencies. We trained public health agencies. We raised public awareness. It wasn’t an accident.
If he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he should find someone who does know. Or, read something.
Leelee for Obama
@Cyrus: The argument from conservatives that I have heard says that all murders and other violent crimes should be prosecuted equally, and that hate crime legislation actually separates out racial, gender-based, or disability-based violence from the polity. I disagree, not because I believe that all citizens shouldn’t get equal protection under the law, of course I do. The sad fact is that all citizens do not receive that equal protection, and hate crime legislation makes it more likely that they will. I’ve heard the same argument about the Voting Rights Act not being necessary, because the 14th and 19th Amendments took care of that. Reality-based people know better. The perfect world is not where most of us live.
This is the problem when I try to argue with a conservative, not a reactionary. They would make sense if the world worked the way it should. But it doesn’t, a lot of the time and they like to pretend that it does.
slightly_peeved
Maybe the people who aren’t so critical of Obama just remember the alternative. You know, The Lich King and Winky?
Or they remember most of the US presidents of the last 20 years, or something. Like the one who was suffering SENILE fricking DEMENTIA. Or the one that hated Broccoli. Or the teetotaller who you guys though was a good guy to have a beer with. I mean, you guys pick some corkers. Obama’s moderate and competent. I think that’s a good start.
kay
@Leelee for Obama:
It’s more complicated than that, though, in the real world.
My constant refrain with conservatism :)
We’ve always had laws barring assault, and that included assault against family members. Yet, people kept getting beaten to death by spouses and partners. Domestic violence was different.
We changed the policy. We identified a specific crime (domestic violence) wrote laws addressing that crime, trained police officers to recognize it and tally it, and tried to prevent it. That worked. It wasn’t perfect. It was probably over-identified initially, but now it’s just part of the tool kit.
Leelee for Obama
@kay: I think you’re right, kay. There are crimes that the general population will “walk on by” on, unless there’s a law that says they can’t. Domestic Violence is a big one, and what the law changed has saved countless lives. Hate Crime laws expand the consciousness of a nation, making it understand what is is to live in different circumstances, by making it illegal to ignore crimes that used to slip under their radar.
les
Thanks for confirming my decision to drop Sullivan’s site from bookmarks. The chance that a self absorbed, gay Catholic conservative/Republican wannabe, IGMFY will rise above his internal dissonance and say something reasonable is too slim to waste the time.
kay
@Leelee for Obama:
It’s so complicated. That’s all I’m asking him to acknowledge.
There was NO recognition of racial profiling until someone raised it, and put some money towards documenting it, and collected data, and trained police, and brought a coupla lawsuits, and so forth. I don’t know if it was “fair” as an abstract legal matter to put resources towards that issue, based on race, but I think the people who were getting stopped for driving while black probably think it was worthwhile and important.
These examples (DV, profiling) are generally liberal legal policy ideas, so I would expect Sullivan to look askance at them, but goddamnit, some of them have worked pretty well. I feel as if he won’t ever give liberalism credit. Like if he does, some wall he’s built comes crashing down.
ksmiami
For awhile (BOB posts not withstanding), Balloon Juice has been the last stand of the normal, non-screechy politically interested but have a life ppl blog.
John – Don’t let this blog ever go dark!
Cyrus
@Leelee for Obama:
That might be what they say but they obviously don’t mean it, because as far as I know they aren’t pushing to eliminate the distinctions between manslaughter and first-degree murder, or assault and aggravated assault, and so on. We already treat all kinds of crimes differently based on motivation. From most conservatives, I assume they sympathize with gay-bashers and view the crime as understandable, or a crime of passion (hmmm, unfortunate phrase) and thus not as serious as premeditation. That’s obviously not Sullivan’s explanation, so I’m at a loss.
kuvasz
I hate to hammer away at you John Cole, but Andy Sullivan is an intellectual fraud, and you would be better off reading the Drudge Report.
I don’t know how in the world you think you aren’t wasting your time reading the bullshit the guy writes.
Is it the guy’s accent that makes you think that shit is gold?
John Cole
@Lee from NC: I’m just obsessed with people saying stupid things. Two days ago it was the idiocy about Obama’s basketball team make up. I wasn’t “obsessed” with what women think about Obama then…
@itsbenj: I have no problem with honest criticism and honest pressure. My problem is with stupid nonsense like freaking out because it took a few hours to get a copy of the speech up on the White House website on a week-end. Or obsessing over whether the President uses the word “gay” while at a signing ceremony. Or blowing a gasket about his date in NY with his wife. Or morons yelling “just like Bush” and counting how much golf he has played.
It just so happens that there seems to be a lot of this stupid nonsense, and it makes me mental. You never see me criticizing folks like Greenwald or Marcy Wheeler when they point out the failures of the Obama admin regarding their civil liberties failings. You will see me throwing tomatoes at people claiming he is worse than Bush because Gitmo is not closed yet. You’ll never see me criticizing people who have pointed out the Obama team has not done enough to reign in the banksters, but you will find me mocking people who claim every day to day fluctuation in the DOW or dollar is proof that Obama has failed.
celticdragon
@SGEW:
Good take on that.
lupe
Sully does not pretend to be progressive, as most have noted. Moreover, he has a perfectly cogent rationale for opposing the hate crimes bill while supporting marriage equality. The fact that most of us don’t agree with him doesn’t make him crazy.