Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

It’s a doggy dog world.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

When we show up, we win.

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

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36Comments

  1. 1.

    Third Eye Open

    I enjoyed this quote from the commentariat: “Given that economic value is central to everyone’s well-being, and Gov. mostly destroys economic value, how can anyone be in favor of greater economic involvment by Gov.?”

    So basically, every heart-attack and oil spill is GREAT NEWS! since it expands the GDP. You see, God works in mysterious ways…

  2. 2.

    kommrade reproductive vigor

    Tsk, tsk. Clearly Mr. Chait (if that is his real name) has forgotten Republicans are graded on a curve.

    Therefore the GOP’s idea to invade another country while cutting taxes for the rich and smirking about going to war with the army you have was automatically 10 billion times better than any silly Demoncrat ideas about social justice or taking care of real humans before and after they emerge from the womb.

    Sheesh.

  3. 3.

    Comrade Jake

    I’m just wondering what sort of nutjobs we’re going to see get elected to the House and Senate in 2010. Is it better to have GOPers with zero ideas or teabagger friendlies who are just plain crayzee? I’m not sure.

  5. 5.

    cleek

    @Comrade Jake:

    i’m hoping we get a huge crop of teabaggers! not enough to swing the majority, but enough to turn the GOP caucus into a seething mass of aggressive ignorance (as opposed to a seething mass of aggressive cynicism). i’d rather have 50 GOPers who really believe Obama is a Kenyan than 50 who will pretend to “have doubts” for the sake of votes. let the GOP freak flag fly!

    putting a mass of actual teabaggers into the spotlight, where mainstream America can gawk at them in horror for two years, will destroy the GOP for a generation.

  6. 6.

    Kilks

    Definitely read the collection of conservative scare quotes in the twentieth century.

    My personal favorite,

    “[The Act represents] a step in the direction of Communism, bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism.”

    —The National Association of Manufacturers, in 1938, condemning a national minimum wage and guaranteed overtime pay

  7. 7.

    Max

    @Comrade Mary: I read that. It’s so good.

    I’m totally sick of the “Obama has lost the base” crap from the usual suspects. Who elected them spokesperson?

    The new CNN poll doesn’t support it. Obama’s approval has gone UP with libs.

    Linky Here.

  8. 8.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    The root cause of the collapse, as we all know by now, is that financial firms have grown so large and interconnected that the risks they incur can bring down the rest of the economy, forcing the government to intervene.

    Let back this particular truck up for a moment. I think Chait is still describing symptoms here, not root causes.

    Point 1:
    Comparisons between the very volatile and panic prone economy of the post-1865 US and now suggest that the root cause of our economic problems is excessive income and wealth inequality. When you get too many $ at the top of the food chain chasing too few low-risk investment opportunities, bubble-nomics is the inevitable result. Just cutting down the size of the banks isn’t going to solve that problem

    Point 2: A lot of Keynesians like to say that the stimulative spending of FDR’s New Deal and WW2 fixed problem 1. But I think more credit for getting us out of the Great Depression and keeping us from having a sequel (until now) has to go to the sustained period of high marginal tax rates which continued under Truman and Eisenhower. FDR borrowing money to prime the economic pump wasn’t enough, and the govt can’t just go on borrowing and/or inflating the currency forever – that isn’t sustainable. The true rebalancing of wealth and income which created economic stability in this country for half a century and built our large post-WW2 middle class came from the redistributive effects of high marginal income tax rates.

  9. 9.

    gf120581

    It may be a little unfair to say the GOP has no ideas. It may be more accurate to say the GOP has no ideas that (a) haven’t been utterly discredited by the Bush Administration’s incompetence or (b) aren’t complete idiocy (like their idea of a five year spending freeze to combat the economic crisis – brilliant only if you liked the thought of Great Depression 2: The New Millenium).

  11. 11.

    Steve V

    The Milton Friedman quote, “economic freedom is an end in itself,” is essentially the position of the majority in the 1905 Lochner v. New York decision that struck down a state law regulating working conditions. The GOP talks a big game about returning to that era, and the only reason their views ever gain any popularity is because that era is so long past that nobody is around to scream about how terrible it was for average people.

  12. 12.

    Keith G

    For me it seems to come down to a sense of (greater) community. As of late, conservative ideas seem to either exult the ability to build, then concentrate wealth or emphasize religious and cultural conformity. The former could easily be seen in some of the arguing against HCR, as in, “I got mine-ism”

    So yeah, Chait is spot on in this. And this is why I am quite concerned about the future of this country. Repubs can enjoy short term electoral success by appealing the lesser angels of our nature. In doing so, though, very necessary changes in our politics and our society are not being made and these bills *will* eventually come due.

  13. 13.

    Tom Hilton

    Well, they are the party of ‘ideas’ in the sense that they never let the real world interfere with what they think is true. Democrats, then, are the party not of ideas but of reality.

  14. 14.

    BR

    Here’s a list of things from the HCR bill that will take effect in 2010 (from Sen. Paul Kirk):
    * Establish a high-risk pool that will give uninsured Americans with a pre-existing condition access to coverage;
    * Prohibit insurance companies from dropping coverage for Americans because they get sick;
    * Prohibit the imposition of lifetime limits on coverage;
    * Require insurance companies to report the percentage of premium revenues that they spend on medical benefits for their enrollees, and force them to rebate any excessive costs or profits;
    * Require insurance companies to provide free preventive services;
    * Require insurance companies to cover dependents up to age 26;
    * Provide a discount on drug costs to seniors who fall into the Medicare Part D doughnut hole.
    * Provide a tax credit to small businesses that provide health insurance for their employees.

  16. 16.

    Wicked Witch of the West

    Right in the center of that montage of retroactive abortions I’d like to see is the epitome of the entire frickin party. Whiny Glenda Beck. “But, but, but I told you I WANTED A PONY!!!” Sucks being you Glenda.

    Please pass the popcorn

  17. 17.

    John Cole

    @DougMN: I tried to read it be he lost me when he said Obama had not presented any coherent ideological position and the “laissez faire” leadership. Just complete fucking nonsense.

  18. 18.

    R. Johnston

    @BR: Here’s a list of things from the HCR bill that will take effect in 2010 (from Sen. Paul Kirk): . . . * Require insurance companies to report the percentage of premium revenues that they spend on medical benefits for their enrollees, and force them to rebate any excessive costs or profits;

    I don’t have the slightest idea why anyone thinks this provision is a good idea. At best it’s a transfer of wealth from insurance companies to medical providers; at worst it means that insurance companies will pay for completely useless and even harmful treatments so that they can keep an extra 15 cents on every 85 cents wasted while also raising premiums to recover profits that would otherwise be lost.

    Anyone who thinks that there is going to ever be a single red cent rebated to consumers under this provision is fundamentally retarded. Without price controls and strict regulation of allowable medical expenses, requiring a minimum percentage of premiums to go to medical expenses is worse than useless; it merely encourages wasteful overspending and spending on useless treatments.

  19. 19.

    Rheinhard

    I looove some of the comments on that article! Especially this observation (which hits home since I too am I a scientist / engineer and have had almost this exact same thought but never enunciated it so succintly) in response to typical wingnut drivel that only the market creates value and the government is necessarily a “parasite” thereon…

    (ir)rational: I’d take a bit of care throwing around the parasite label too dogmatically on this, if I were you. To give but a single example: government pays most of the cost of education in this country. The Federal Government payed for most of my higher education, through forgivable loans and grants, years ago. The payoff to society was to get an educated, productive engineer, rather than an uneducated manual laborer. That Federal “parasitism” has yielded many times in taxes what the investment cost, but still, most of the wealth my engineering has created, has accrued neither to me, or the government, but rather to the corporations for whom I’ve worked, and thus ultimately, to capital holders. So, in this chain whereby the government pays for my education (giving, not taking), I create value, and most of that value is sucked up by capital owners, who is the parasite?

  22. 22.

    mcc

    The Federal Government payed for most of my higher education

    This doesn’t really help any point I want to make, but I can’t stop laughing at this sentence.

  23. 23.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @R. Johnston:

    Anyone who thinks that there is going to ever be a single red cent rebated to consumers under this provision is fundamentally retarded. Without price controls and strict regulation of allowable medical expenses, requiring a minimum percentage of premiums to go to medical expenses is worse than useless; it merely encourages wasteful overspending and spending on useless treatments.

    I’ve said before, will probably say it again: go look at railroad regulation 100 years ago. Back then the railroads were incredibly wealthy, appallingly powerful, had at least half of the Senate in their pocket, and were sucking the oxygen out of the rest of the economy. What to do?

    The railroads were tamed in two stages. The Elkins Act in 1904 regulated equity in the application of rate schedules (railroads couldn’t play games with offering lower rates to some customers than others, which benefited the trusts they were in bed with at the expense of everybody else). It was widely hooted down as a miserable failure. TR’s progressive allies howled because he’d sold them out, he was too eager to compromise, and was all talk and pretty sounding speeches but didn’t back it up with action.

    The Elkins act was such an embaressment that three years later when the follow up legislation was being drafted, they didn’t name it after Sen. Elkins because that would have emphasized in too painful and public a fashion what a shoddy piece of work the previous bill was. Hence the followup was named the Hepburn Act instead. It slapped price controls on the railroads via the ICC and finished the job in 1906 that should have been done in 1903.

  24. 24.

    ChrisB

    From the Hollywood Squares picture in The New Republic article, that’s Glenn Beck in Paul Lynde’s center square. Let’s see, who else:

    Sarah Palin as Charo (“Coochie, coochie!!”);
    Rick Perry as John Davidson;
    Michael Steele as Demond Wilson;
    Maybe John Boehner as Jim Bacchus;
    Joe Wilson as Morey Amsterdam (on second thought, no, I like Morey Amsterdam too much);
    Rush Limbaugh as ALF?

    That’s all I got.

  25. 25.

    kindness

    Chiat was too nice to conservatives. Had it been written by one of our own they would have taken the opportunity to point out hypocrisy & rank self dealing on every turn. But he was polite to the bums.

  27. 27.

    R. Johnston

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I’ve said before, will probably say it again: go look at railroad regulation 100 years ago.

    And I haven’t said it before but I’ll say it now: anyone who looks at the 19th century history of railroads while ignoring the most recent 30 years of history of the regulatory state in an effort to predict the behavior of the current regulatory state isn’t making an argument so much as delusionally masturbating.

  28. 28.

    gwangung

    And I haven’t said it before but I’ll say it now: anyone who looks at the 19th century history of railroads while ignoring the most recent 30 years of history of the regulatory state in an effort to predict the behavior of the current regulatory state isn’t making an argument so much as delusionally masturbating.

    Probably best left unsaid, then. Kinda misses the point (perhaps through lack of knowledge?)

  30. 30.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @R. Johnston:
    And I’d reply that anybody who thinks the history of the last 30 years of the regulatory state is more difficult or discouraging with regard to advancing progression regulatory legislation than the 1870s thru the 1900s is an ignorant ass who needs to go get themselves an education before they open their fool mouth

  31. 31.

    jenniebee

    I liked this part. It had such a “Bush will have no option but to govern from the center” flavor to it:

    In the days following the 2008 election, some Republicans predicted that the party would retool itself in response to reality–not just political reality but the actuality of policy challenges. “Republicans,” wrote conservative Ramesh Ponnuru in Time, “will have to devise an agenda that speaks to a country where more people feel the bite of payroll taxes than income taxes, where health-care costs eat up raises even in good times, where the length of the daily commute is a bigger irritant than are earmarks.”

  32. 32.

    ksmiami

    And I think that even the edges of the MSM are waking up to the fact that the GOP is not acting in good faith…. If 2010 (and I really think this will happen) sees a lot of economic improvement and if the dems pull their message together – the GOP is doomed

  33. 33.

    amorphous

    Shorter John Chait:

    These guys are fucking idiots, and dishonest at that. But if you have a half-functional brain you knew that already.

    The only thing that bothers me about this is that those who should be reading it will not, and if they do, it’ll be in one ear, out the other.

  34. 34.

    Mnemosyne

    @DougMN:

    So John, anything beyond some circular firing squad comment for Westen’s Huffington Post entry?

    I can’t speak for John but, having read it, I’m not seeing much there. Well, except for Westen’s claim that he speaks for all independent voters.

  35. 35.

    burnspbesq

    Every time I get ready to dump my subscription, TNR publishes something that is useful enough to make me reconsider.

  36. 36.

    Irony Abounds

    Chait is right. Think back over the history of this country, and pinpoint the major advances that have occurred: Ending slavery, anti-trust legislation, womens’ suffrage, Social Security, civil rights, even gay rights. All championed by the liberal side of the equation at the time they were adopted and opposed by the conservatives. Move ahead a generation or so from when those events occurred, and you find conservatives in general agreement with what were previously liberal positions and liberals moving on to promote the next liberal cause.

    America has moved steadily, if very slowly at times, in a more liberal direction, Liberals look for problems to solve and then conservatives react, except, generally speaking, in the case of war, and then conservatives look for wars to fight and liberals react. Is there anyone who would simply repeal any of those major advances today? You might get some squawking about repealing Social Security and Medicare, but only the wingnuttiest of the wingnuttiest would repeal it without establishing some sort of safety net.

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