Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Let there be snark.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

We still have time to mess this up!

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

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

I really should read my own blog.

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Another BTW

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A lot of these plans I’m hearing about a Democratic counteroffensive (cripple the filibuster, shove HCR through with reconciliation) assume that Dems can aggressively go after what they want like, well, Republicans would, and that they won’t retreat in a panic from anything that might rile up the cast of FOX n’ Friends. Good luck with that.

Reader Interactions

36Comments

  3. 3.

    thomas Levenson

    And another thing: Republicans still hate America. Otherwise they wouldn’t so love the idea of bankrupting us to feed big Insurance and big Pharma while countries that think dying of financial arrest is, you know, a bad thing, eat our lunch.

  7. 7.

    wmd

    Does anyone remember the Senate make up this time last year? 57D, 41R. Roland Burris seated, then it changed to 59D, 40R Apr 28 (Spector), and 60D,40R on July 7 (Franken). Lieberman has been a R for the most part as far as cloture on HCR is concerned.

    The Senate had a “fillibuster proof” majority for just over 6 months. And tanks to Lieberman the scare quotes are needed, in essence you had him and Ben Nelson controlling the bill.

    Arguably the Senate composition will still be better than it was when Obama was inaugurated after Brown is seated.

  8. 8.

    LT

    Come on. Everyone understands that frustration – but that’s all this is. What fucking good is it? Is it really worth a blog post? Yeah, good luck with that – honestly. What the hell else is there to hope for?

  9. 9.

    dr. bloor

    @Punchy:

    Don “Moose” Lewis, the commissioner of the AABA, said the reasoning behind the league’s roster restrictions is not racism.
    …
    “There’s nothing hatred about what we’re doing,” he said. “I don’t hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now. Here’s a league for white players to play fundamental basketball without getting their asses kicked by guys who can actually play the game, which they like.”

  10. 10.

    Tomlinson

    Arguably the Senate composition will still be better than it was when Obama was inaugurated after Brown is seated.

    Yes, except that Our Brave Democratic Legislators are too busy pissing their pants in blind panic to notice that, and Obama is over on the sidelines impersonating a deer being run down by a tractor trailer.

  13. 13.

    Omnes Omnibus

    I wrote to my Congresscritter, one of the good ones – Tammy Baldwin, to suggest passing the Senate bill intact and then working to fix it afterwards. Then I donated to the Clinton Foundation Haiti relief efforts. I feel a little better. Stay motivated and do something positive.

  14. 14.

    Zifnab

    You know, if we wanted to be really super crazy we could pass the bill as is and then throw up an addendum piece of legislation that makes all the populist fixes.

    Let the Republicans vote down a package that includes scaling back the tax on blue collar voters, nationalizing the insurance market, and raising subsidies.

    Fuck it all, let’s not delude ourselves here. The Senate put itself in this mess. Max Baucus decided to jack off Chuck Grassley for three months and this is what we get. Now the House is supposed to suck it up and take the hit?

    Maybe the real problem in the Senate is that everyone has these cushy six year terms. If they were obligated to answer to their constituents every two years, perhaps they’d be less prone to dicking everything over like this.

  15. 15.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    Well, aren’t you just a ray of fuckin’ sunshine today.

    Doesn’t mean you’re wrong, though.

  18. 18.

    Zifnab

    @Punchy: Hahaha. When the fuck has Georgia ever produced a good white basketball player? Maybe they can play the Harlem Globe Trotters in exhibition. Lulz.

  21. 21.

    chopper

    i really would like obama to wake up from this pipe dream of bipartisanship with the republican ‘look, bitch, you knew i was a snake’ party.

    i would also like to see rahm be, well, rahm

  22. 22.

    DZ

    There will be no Democratic counteroffensive. Democrats don’t don’t agree on anything – it is a completely disfunctional Party. In my entire adult life, I have never had a single candidate for office at any level that I could vote for (apologies for the hanging preposition). I am tired of voting for the slightly lesser of multiple evils. I acknowledge that I have nowhere to go. I couldn’t ever vote for a Repub, liberatarians are as bad or maybe worse, the Greens are nanny-state whack jobs, what? In 40 years of activism on a number of issues, I have achieved exactly nothing while my Party moves inexorably to the right. I am done.

  23. 23.

    scudbucket

    @DZ: Democrats don’t don’t agree on anything

    I may be wrong here, but (after the giveaways to PhRMA, etc.) didn’t everyone but Nelson and Lieberman (maybe Landrieu?) agree to a bill with a Medicare buy-in? That’s huge, and presumably still an option through reconciliation.

  24. 24.

    graeme

    I can’t believe the quotes I’m seeing from Webb & Frank. If they’re going to be pussies, then they are fucked in November.

    That means we are, too. Grumble, whine, moan…

  25. 25.

    geg6

    @chopper:

    i would also like to see rahm be, well, rahm

    I’m not a virulent Rahm hater, but what makes you think Rahm hasn’t been being Rahm? Did you think Rahm has ever backed a liberal issue or candidate? Because if you think he has, you’ve got the wrong Rahm.

  26. 26.

    Chris Andersen

    I admit it’s a faint hope that Democrats would actually do the smart thing at this point, but if you don’t point out to them what the smart thing is you can’t expect that they will figure it out themselves.

    Giving up on trying to tell them how to be smart about this makes no more sense than them giving up on HCR.

  27. 27.

    Tomlinson

    Well, Obama just basically jettisoned covering more people in favor of what sounds like tort reform, pre-existing condition laws, and some sort of cost containment.

    That’s near capitulation. It’s basically the McCain plan.

  28. 28.

    DZ

    @Scudbucket:

    Well, I suppose it depends on where you sit. A Medicare buy-in is certainly superior to forcing people into the hands of private insurance companies, but such a buy-in will be expensive, and none of the HCR bills address financing in a even remotely reasonable way. Medicare buy-in is light years from single-payer.

    Is it marginally better than what exists? Yes. Is it actual reform? No.

  29. 29.

    Maxwel

    I think we will have figured Rahm out when we find who he works for in his next job.

    At this point our two choices of parties are the moron party and the banksters.

  30. 30.

    McMartin

    @Tomlinson: What makes you think McCain would have actually gotten such a plan instead of “tax cuts and you can use the savings to buy health insurance”? Or that he’d have pushed for it, or, indeed, even managed to remember that he’d made such a plan two hours later?

    The Senate Republicans don’t want the “McCain plan”. They want nothing, with a side order of nothing sauce.

  31. 31.

    Taobhan

    So, the Dems lose one Senatorial seat election and they’re already in full surrender mode. Hard to have a lot of respect for such jittery people – no wonder the Repubs always seem so stalwart in comparison. How long will it be before we see the skittish Dem majority in Congress pass an impeachment resolution against Obama to save their own skins? Pity the poor electorate which has to choose between the “nervous nellie” Dems and the “can’t figure their way out of a paper bag” Repubs. How did we end up with such a paucity of leadership in this country?

  32. 32.

    ruemara

    @Zifnab:

    ugh. reminder: legislative rules require finance committee participation and requires at least 1 vote by a REPUBLICAN to get out of it. Max “I Should Go Fuck Myself” Baucus had to play footsie to follow the arcane of rules. The shit he brought to it is why he can gfh.

    @JK:
    Southers choice is Obama’s fault? ah goddess.

  33. 33.

    maus

    A lot of these plans I’m hearing about a Democratic counteroffensive (cripple the filibuster, shove HCR through with reconciliation) assume that Dems can aggressively go after what they want like, well, Republicans would, and that they won’t retreat in a panic from anything that might rile up the cast of FOX n’ Friends. Good luck with that.

    Pretty much any suggestion that involves action assumes that the Dem leadership wants something other than a specious excuse to roll over and play dead.

  34. 34.

    JK

    @ruemara:

    Over 100 of Obama’s nominees are still waiting to be confirmed because Obama doesn’t have the balls to stand up for them. Southers pulled out because he knew that Obama didn’t have his back.

  35. 35.

    ChrisWWW

    I love all the folks here still bashing Rahm Emmanuel like he’s the real power behind the throne. If you’re going to blame the Obama administration, at least have the balls to blame Obama, not one of his direct underlings.

  36. 36.

    Citizen Alan

    @ChrisWWW:

    Why can’t we choose both? A pusillanious, milquetoast radical-centrist chooses as his Chief of Staff a thuggish consigliere well known for his contempt for the progressive wing of the party to advise him on how best to sacrifice the entire Democratic agenda on the altar of bipartisanship.

    Oh, and if Carter Obama actually comes out swinging for fucking tort reform, I swear to God I will start working towards getting him a primary opponent.

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