Mark Knoller, who was last seen counting the number of times Obama played golf, has a real winner this morning:
Obama Says Bipartisanship, But What He Wants Is GOP Surrender
What these presidential appeals for bipartisanship always mean is: do it my way.
Mr. Obama said he “won’t hesitate to embrace a good idea from my friends in the minority party.” But he wants his way. He wants his energy policy enacted along with his jobs bill, his financial regulatory reform and his health care plan.
And if the opposition continues to block his objectives, he said he “won’t hesitate to condemn what I consider to be obstinacy that’s rooted not in substantive disagreement but in political expedience.”
When a sitting president calls for bipartisanship by the opposition – he really means surrender. And if they block his proposals, its “obstinacy” and not political views they hold as strongly as he holds his.
Missing from this “analysis” from Knoller is the fact that but for bizarre Senate rules, a vast MAJORITY of the House and Senate want what the President wants. Missing from this analysis is the fact that the GOP is not acting as an honest partner and is voting as a block, providing not one vote. Missing from this analysis is the fact that the WH has made so many concessions to the Republicans and included so many of their demands into legislation that the left wing is pissed, and the GOP turned around and voted against it anyway.
He doesn’t want them to surrender. Hell, if they would just vote for bills that they co-signed, he’d be happy.
Nothing is going to change until our pudgy, well-paid, lazy stenographer class is as desperate as the rest of the American people. If Mark Knoller and Michael Gerson had no health care, made 17k a year, and had a pre-existing condition, I bet they’d think differently about things. But then again, that is suggesting he even thought before barfing up this piece.
*** Update ***
Mission accomplished. Knoller is rewarded with his Drudge link.
scav
john, check the contents of your coffee can this a.m. we can’t keep up. :)
El Cid
The problem is that Democrats insist on trying to ram through legislation which has things that either Republicans didn’t author or oppose. We could finally have bipartisan solutions, maybe, if Obama would just let the House Republicans write all the legislation and then make sure all the Democrats voted for it. That would be true democracy and reflect the will of True America.
chopper
of course he wants his bills. he’s the damn president.
the GOP, on the other hand, are the minority party in congress. this isn’t supposed to be an equal relationship. bipartisanship means the minority party comes to the table with some decent ideas and a willingness to acquiesce to the fact that they are not in control any more. the GOP has neither.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I believe the term is projection: Since Boehner and McConnell have said that the president must start over with their proposal, then surely the president is being stubborn for refusing.
Time for a good solid punch in the neck.
Waynski
Also missing from this analysis is that this is an unprecedented effort to block a new President’s agenda in it’s entirety. Bloody asshats.
General Winfield Stuck
Now yer frieking me out. Just read this little turd of an article. Obama wants wingnuts to surrender. That must be why they have filibustered any thing that moved out of the WH and congress. Usually without a single winger vote, even after many of their amendments were incorporated into the Finance Committee HCR bill, even after Obama made a third of his “stimulus bill” tax cuts/ This shit is getting so out of control. The media is incapable of calling GOP horseshit for what it is. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because nearly all goopers are white and Obama is black. Nah, couldn’t be that, or fishing for viewers in a white dominated consumer America. Surely not that.
John Quixote
Mark Knoller’s parents didn’t send him to the best schools that they could afford so that some uppity negro could lecture him from some damn lecturn.
My ‘un-named sources’ tell me that Mark Knoller fucks pigs.
beltane
Mark Knoller says that Democrats and Republicans are equal, but that Republicans happen to be more equal.
thomas Levenson
I keep trying to be an MSM dude. I teach students on models from major venues. I write dead tree stuff. I still refer to television and radio, when I mean video and (audio) pod/webcasts.
But it is sh*t like this that has enabled me to avoid TV news (and network websites) for the better part of a decade. There is nothing there…and there is no reason to believe that the structural decline in network viewership, MSM eyeballs will cease anytime soon.
Which, of course, means that the echo chambers of niche “news” and info will continue to dominate. Ugly all round, and this is just another depressing demonstration that the people who think they are the grown ups at the table are just destructive children more deluded than the rest of us.
Yes, I haven’t finished my first cup of coffee today, and I’m grumpy as hell.
John Quixote
@General Winfield Stuck:
Are you a self-hating cracker like myself?
My hatred for white people grows by the day.
Libertini
Love this analogy, John.
There are actually people waiting (much like my dog) to gobble up whatever thing Knoller and his ilk barfs up.
Wilson Heath
Obama identified the predicate condition: “a good idea from my friends in the minority party.” It’s not his fault they don’t have any.
El Cid
Les Leopold, labor and public health researcher and author of The Looting of America, situating the current debate:
But, um, well, STOP DA SPENDIN’! CUT THA TAXES! STOP GIVIN’ OUT ALL THAT UNEMPLOYMENT WELFARE! DON’T LET WASHINGTON MESS UP WALL STREET WITH ALL THA REGULATIN’!
Maude
Playing victim.
The righties have nothing to surrender.
scav
@John Quixote:
Thanks to the One drop policy, one can opt out.
Just Stop Passing.
General Winfield Stuck
@John Quixote: I hate bullshit and lies wherever they come from, and whatever the color of the source. Just so happens, most of it comes from my shade of white.
Bobzim
They know their ideas won’t stand scrutiny past the title and they’re terrified that going on live TV and have Obama explain that while they sit there getting “lectured” will make for more pliable moderates in both parties.
It’s all desperate pre-spin.
General Winfield Stuck
@thomas Levenson:
Same here, watching asshat Bond got me started. Turned off the teevee, getting ready to do the same with computer. Tired of being pissed off all the time from liars and thieves.
A Mom Anon
After the freaking asses sent a letter to the WH demanding that everything be scrapped,that their demands have to be met or they’ll take their toys and go home? (like they haven’t done this already?) Jesus Flashdancing Christ on a stripper pole. I hate these fucking assholes.
John Quixote
@General Winfield Stuck: My wife likes to tell me that I was a Black Panther in a former life. I hate me some Whitey. It would not be so bad if every stupid argument I ever heard of came out of the mouth of some dumb-ass Honkey.
Zifnab
@John Quixote:
There are plenty of good, honest, intelligent, well-meaning, and reasonable white people. Unfortunately, they’re all under 40.
Either age is inversely proportionate to IQ, or something was in the water during the 70s and 80s that turned all the sensible adults into fear-mongering idiots and raging douche bags.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@John Quixote: I just seriously hate lots of other people for being white. Maybe we should call them flesh-colored like the old crayon. They wouldn’t get why we’re laughing at them, again.
Elisabeth
I accidentally heard Savannah and Todd tease their next segment on how Obama can look serious about bi-partisanship. WTF? How about the GOP
lookget serious about bi-partisanship? (I know, I know, ain’t gonna happen.)eric
@thomas Levenson: the last minute of network news i watched was in the morning W stole the election from Gore and it was reported as it was meant to be. I was always a cynic, but i could not stomach the vapid homages to mammon, our national diety among the uber-class.
my brother and I have had an ongoing discussion/debate for 20 years about whether things are improving or not. the short answer: it depends. We are winning some of the social issues, but at a pace that fails to help the suffering. So, in absolute terms you can argue that we are winning against the xenophobes and homophobes and bigots and religious zealots. But, if you are a siungle mom or dad working multiple jobs (if you are lucky) to feed your kids without health insurance and your family is suffering, what kind of improvement is that in a country that espouses the virtues it does and has the means to lift people lives…if only it were not such class warfare to point this out.
eric
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Zifnab: Hate to burst your bubble, but I know plenty of under 40 people that are still just asshats. I live in Texas.
kay
“he joked that the Senate leaders, Democrat Harry Reid and Republican Mitch McConnell had gone out to the South Lawn to make snow angels – together.”
He’s better with the press now. Looser. He should take questions more often, IMO.
DBrown
Damn – the weather is getting worse; already over a foot of new snow on the two and a half that we just cleared. The drifting is starting and all the roads will be buried again. This is ugly. The poor people that still don’t have power will have to wait many more days and of course, many more will loose power. Thanks to global warming and all the AO’s who don’t understand shit and think that more storms that have more snow somehow underminds the AG models – wrong. That’s exactly what those damn models call for and we are paying for here.
This weather sucks and this is exactly what we may be getting even more of in the near future. Come the heat waves in the summer (flash floods followed by long periods of super dry spells), there is nothing about AG that we will like. More rain (on average) will be countered by most coming down all at once and being terrible snow (where it does no good) or run off that does little for the water table. Damn, I hate this.
maye
someone send knoller this post on his twitter account.
Bob In Pacifica
Actually, Maddow made a good point last night. The four things that the Repubs wanted for healthcare (I think she used a clip of Boehner stating them) have been included in the big Senate healthcare bill. And yet now the Repubs have moved the goalposts again.
Obama’s plan to have a summit essentially requires the Repubs to put up or shut up. Having a summit will expose them. They know this. Will they show up?
ppcli
Didn’t Republicans used to say things like “elections have consequences”? And that the filibuster is a shameful antidemocratic trick that should be abolished. Whatever happened to change their mind, I wonder?
But seriously folks, I can understand that journalists will forget all this stuff in a second, because they’re lazy, craven conventional wisdom mongers who flee from genuine thought the way vampires are said to flee sunlight. But why are the Democrats in congress not toughening up? As I recall, the years of Republican control of Congress were an unending stream of humiliations large and small for the Democrats in the minority. Meetings rescheduled with no notice to times that conflicted with preexisting Democratic party meetings, lobbying firms threatened with losing all government business unless they hired nothing but Republicans, office space taken away for no reason,… that sort of thing.
If the Democrats had one hint of self-respect and spine (I know, I know…) they would just tell the Republicans that if they keep acting like assholes they will get a taste of the kind of treatment they doled out. No more pork for Alabama. NASA and the CDC gradually moved closer to Caltech and MIT, (which is surely a reasonable thing to do, couldn’t possibly be a political motivation) etc.
The worst thing is that by this cringing deference, they are looking weak and slowly guaranteeing that in a couple more election cycles the schoolyard bullies will be getting back into a position to start dealing out the schoolyard bullying that they have shown themselves masters at.
I just don’t get it.
John Quixote
@Zifnab:
I chalk it up to good old fashioned brain rot. The older you get, the more likely you are to believe that blacks, hispanics and anybody else who can’t trace thier ancestry back to Europe are the reason why you can’t get ahead. It’s never the corporations, or the pols that they own lock, stock and barrel that are screwing you, it’s the minorities. ‘Cause Daddy said so.
El Cid
@Elisabeth: For purposes of major news media / pundit discussion, Bi-partisanship is defined as either when (a) Democrats in a majority yield to Republican policy preferences, or (b) conservative Democrats agree to vote with Republicans.
If anti-(a) or anti-(b) happens, it turns out to either be a merely interesting and quirky happening of little interest, or resounds entirely in the favor of the Republican. I.e., John McCain deserved endless public fellating for having, in the wake of having helped destroy an entire branch of our banking system, decided to join with Russ Feingold to attempt to control campaign finance manipulation. (Thanks to Citizens United, though, we’ve entirely won this issue with FREEDUM.)
eric
@John Quixote: It is something different: anger. Most people do not retire with the lives they thought they would lead and the means to retire in luxury. Whose fault is that? The “other.” If only the “other” did not ruin things for me, be it women in the workplace, black people getting affirmative action and welfare, losers getting government handouts. Those people see themselves as playing by the rules and getting shafted. They NEVER think of looking at their own voting habits over the last 40 years.
Church Lady
My, my, Obama fanboy John is certainly feeling cranky towards the critics this a.m., given the tenor of this post and the previous one, as well. I guess he hasn’t had a chance to peruse Ruth Marcus’ column yet. I expect a screed against her will be the next posting to pop up.
bob h
Solipsism seems to be the disease of the DC establishment.
Zifnab
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Well, howdey. I live in Texas, too. And I know a solid mix.
But I was suggesting that all non-asshats were under 40. I never claimed everyone under 40 wasn’t an asshat.
Da Bomb
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): I live in Texas too and yes there are plenty of hateful “honkeys” under age 40 that live here. And the most of the hateful has came from a lighter shade of nude(?)
But hateful and teh stoopid come in many shades. For instance, the new it girl within the RNC is a woman named Angela McGlowan. She wouldn’t pass the paper bag test.
She sounds like Sarah Palin with a tan.
scav
@El Cid: Just gotta choose your Dads. Mine veered even more seriously left and broke out into severe bumper-stickeritis and designing alternative vehicles. it seems to be genetic, well, except for the bumper-stickers.
mr. whipple
That’s pretty much it.
El Cid
@mr. whipple:
Michael
Harrumph. On an OT note, Sweet Baby Jesus forbid that you might reflect negatively on FDL, nyceve, slinkertwunt or some of the ill-contrived shit stirring of Howard Dean when posting at the GOS.
Chickenshits.
danimal
Honest question: Is Knoller a winger or an idiot?
John Cole
Remember when Church Lady pretended to be an independent?
Good times. Can’t wait to heal the squealing when her husband’s insurance premiums for their company double every year.
Kryptik
Ahh, yes. Obama just is being too damn partisan. Why can’t he be a good Democrat and just give Republicans everything they want?…oh, wait.
No, seriously, I’m fucking, fucking sick of the operative definition of bipartisanship we had. Bipartisanship does not mean “Give Republicans everything they want or else” regardless of who’s in the majority. Compromise and Bipartisanship are give-and-take. Not take-and-demand for Republicans, and give-and-cower for Democrats.
Kryptik
@danimal:
Can’t he be both?
John Cole
@danimal: I vote both.
thomas Levenson
@eric: I actually do think that some things are demonstrably improving, but mornings like this on Balloon Juice reminds me (a) that I live in a small bubble of experience at the MIT end of Cambridge. Smart people actually try to figure out useful things a lot and I get to talk to them. Skews the perceptio — which gets corrected here.
Then there’s (b): the fact that as the MSM declines, it becomes easier, in some ways, to use concentrations of cash to create a 50 +1 (or simply a plurality, or an obstructionist minority) to advance ultimately destructive ends. See carbon taxes, the non-existence of, or health care reform, the debacle, for examples.
So while I know it is certainly possible to have both a better polity and society, I am never sure if my son will see it in his lifetime.
FSM! I need more coffee this a.m.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Zifnab: Yeah, but I just turned 40. Then again, maybe I’m one, too.
suzanne
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I’m of the opinion that we should give Texas to the Tea Party asswipes and the anti-vaccine nutters and the Hummer-driving tools and we’ll just have 49 states. I’m good with that.
Especially with an embargo so fucking inpenetrable that you would be tortureed with dreams of drowning kittens just for CONSIDERING approaching the border. Seriously. I’m sick of trying to make common cause with these douchenozzles, and I feel like rather than put them in their place, we just keep bending over and whimpering, “Thank you, Sir, may I have another?”
Kick ’em out. Fuck ’em.
Kryptik
@John Cole:
Oi, John. My braincell. Give it back, I only have a handful left.
John Quixote
@Da Bomb: I’m fairly certain that McGlowan has “Welfare Queens” and “Strapping Young Bucks Buying Steak” written on her HandPrompter.
‘Cause that’s how she rolls. Stupidity knows no color barrior.
Dan Robinson
Burn, baby, burn!
John Quixote
@John Cole: Speaking of insurance company assfuckings, my department head at work has to pay for his hernia surgery out of his own damn pocket. A hernia he got AT work. Because the store manager was too lazy to send in his paperwork on time. Since our manager screwed up, workman’s comp won’t cover it. And Blue Cross/Blue Shield refuses to pay for it. Because they consider it a workplace accident. And we supposedly have a ‘cadillac’ health insurance plan through our union.
Turns out we really did trade the BluesMobile for a microphone.
Ash Can
@Bob In Pacifica:
They’re already making excuses, so my guess is, no way.
@Church Lady: Did Marcus write something stupid again?
kay
@Bob In Pacifica:
Right. Which only makes this very strong indictment of Obama’s attempts at compromise more mysterious:
“When a sitting president calls for bipartisanship by the opposition – he really means surrender. And if they block his proposals, its “obstinacy” and not political views they hold as strongly as he holds his own.”
What “views” do Republicans hold, again? Besides killing a bill that Democrats might possibly get credit for?
beltane
@mr. whipple: But the fact that they don’t make $17,000 a year means that they are somehow more worthy than people who bust their asses every day doing hard work. The sense of entitlement with these douchebags is their most repellent trait. One upon a time there was a sense of noblesse oblige and the humility that comes with knowing “but for the grace of God there go I.” Now we are governed by a group of lazy morons who have been raised to think they have it good because they worked harder than everyone else.
My husband once worked making snow on Mt. Mansfield for slightly above minimum wage. No benefits whatsoever doing backbreaking, dangerous work in real temperatures of 40 below zero. I would love, just love, to see some of these asshats forced to live like that for a few years. It would be interesting to see how they adapt (or not).
J
The site is not loading again — either with the regular URL or the fix you gave yesterday…Only able to access it by viewing individual posts or links here from elsewhere.
John Quixote
@Ash Can:
Is the Space Pope reptilian?
beltane
@suzanne: Would we get to shoot them if they try to cross the border? How about bombing them if they misbehave? They need to secede and be rewarded with full South of the Border enemy status.
Max
Most people don’t even know who Mark Knoller is, or think he’s the singer on the “money aint for nothing and chick’s for free” song.
Honestly, every time I think my heads going to explode, I realize that the majority of Americans don’t follow things as closely as we do. I talk to my friends and they look at me like I’m from Mars.
But, maybe I deluding myself.
Church Lady
@John Cole: They went up 18% for the coming policy year – we’ve got some people with some pretty severe health problems on the policy. The odds that anything we’ve seen the the current health care bill are going to make it any better are slim.
And yes, John, I am pretty independent. I’m not rooting for the GOP. Unlike you, however, I am able to recognize things that I don’t like coming from the Democrats.
I think you are a man of extremes. You claim that you were some kind of wingnut (although reading your posts prior to 2006, it strikes me that you were rather moderate) in your earlier political incarnation. Now, I would place you in the pretty hard left catagory. Either that, or you’re just playing to your fan base in order to increase page hits. If you disagree, please state something that you actually disagree with within the current Democratic/Presidential agenda. I’ll be somewhat surprised if you can. And you might even try adding a front pager that’s just a little more moderate than the current gang.
beltane
@J: Now that you’ve posted a comment, the site should load normally. Maybe it’s a ploy to make us write more comments.
Napoleon
@J:
Same with me
kay
@John Quixote:
This is all I could find. It’s boring and completely self-referential, like everything Marcus writes, but not really controversial or anything:
“In my house, to be honest, we’re getting kind of cranky. When the kids start whining about how they want to go to school, you know it’s snowed too much. I baked chocolate chip cookies yesterday — sorry, Mrs. O — and even that didn’t seem to help. So it was a relief to sign on and be greeted by a different kind of deluge: appreciation.”
beltane
Why did Drudge put “obesity” in quotes. Is he an obesity denier?
scav
Trust me, Preachy Churchy, you and most ‘mercans wouldn’t recognize hard left if it was written on your hand. Go Prey Elsewhere.
John Quixote
@kay: I read it as well. I’m thinking of suing Marcus for the 5 minutes of my life I just wasted.
Ash Can
“If you disagree, please state something that you actually disagree with within the current Democratic/Presidential agenda. I’ll be somewhat surprised if you can.”
LMFAO
Napoleon
@beltane:
Hum, now that you mention it now that i have posted I can get on.
anothervoice
Sorry for the OT but I can’t see the website for the past few days. I’ve tried from a variety of computers, both firefox and IE won’t render the opening page. The only way I can see anything is by going to a direct post from another blog site, i.e. ?p=34391.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@John Quixote:
Excelsior!
Kryptik
OT, but sweet green Jesus, the stupid is strong again the past few days.
Republicans aren’t the only ones using the snowstorm to “debunk” global warming, Even Democratic Senators are likely calling the coming energy and climate bills down the pipe dead because the blizzard somehow makes the case that global warming is fake.
Fuckers.
eric
@thomas Levenson: I may be moving to your fair city…..perhaps I can reach out to you via the intertubes…..I would post my email, but it is my name and I try to keep some limited anonymity on the ‘tubes.Eric
Church Lady
@kay: @John Quixote:
For your reading pleasure: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/09/AR2010020902469.html
beltane
@Kryptik: Funny about that. Up north here we’ve had the mildest, most snow-free winter ever. Same goes for the Pacific Northwest. These nitwits really do think that inside the Beltway is the only place that matters.
John Cole
You have to be shitting me. I can list, off the top of my head, dozens of things I not only oppose but have bitched about on the front page about the Democrats. In no particular order:
over-reliance on drone attacks
continuation of apparent disinterest in civilian casualties
failure to come down hard on banksters, rating agencies
failure to fast track financial reform
failure to pass ENDA
failure to enact cramdown
reliance on Bush era surveillance
failure to close Gitmo
unwillingness to investigate Bush era illegalities
drug reimportation
failure to enforce any sort of party discipline
complete and total failure to fight back against GOP spin
failure to end Bush tax cuts.
And on and on and on. The problem with you and most of the dim bulbs out there is that I put these failures where most of them belong- on Congress. Specifically, the Senate. I also understand WHY they are failing to do some of the things they are doing, even though I disagree.
mcd410x
Don’t watch TV or cable news: It’s a freakin cesspool.
jibeaux
Yeah, really, John. It’s not like it’s YOUR fucking blog or something. Personally, I will settle for nothing less than Broder himself. I don’t care how many times I read how awesome bipartisanship and the middle of the road is, it’s never enough for me.
wasabi gasp
Try this if having trouble accessing the home page:
https://balloon-juice.com/?p=index
Kryptik
@beltane:
Not to mention the whole goddamn idiotic ‘Weather = Climate’ mindset that allows this sort of shitwit-ery to persist AND be not only be politically relevant but the prevailing mindset over the people we actually look to for leadership on this stuff.
Why the fuck is our country so broken and why does it seem like there’s nothing to be fucking done about it?
kay
@John Quixote:
Can you believe that’s all you need to churn out to get space in the Washington Post?
Maybe she mistakenly submitted an email she wrote to her sister? That’s probably it. We know they don’t have “editors” at that paper. Just a Marcus snafu.
scav
OK, I think I’ve got the mood of the day. For sanity’s sake, I’m off to make a garbure. takes all day.
thomas Levenson
@eric: Come on in, the water’s fine (though the beer is better….)
I’m easily findable — and do get in contact when/if you come.
Eric U.
@danimal:
He’s a winger and an idiot, but I repeat myself.
Keith
Read the rest of Knoller’s headlines. This is somewhat typical for him.
thomas Levenson
@John Cole: Feeding the trolls again, I see. Generally a mug’s game, but sometimes unavoidable.
The problem is that the wingnut world practices lockstep, (see Palin, Sarah, and her “retard” explanation — Limbaugh good, Rahm bad, e.g.), and projects the same on the world they are too frightened actually to encounter.
Morans!
Citizen_X
For months, we* have been complaining that Obama hasn’t fought back hard enough, or at all. Now that he counterpunches just a little bit, the media collapses onto the fainting couch.
Given this post and the last one, I think we’re going to see a lot of this from now on–or at least I hope so, because it means Obama’s fighting. So: has the Village turned on Obama? Are the Chuck Todds of the world going to just be happy to see a brawl going on? Does it even matter out here among the hoi polloi, the way it didn’t during the Clinton administration?
*Or, as the Church-of-Communism-Anarchism-What-Are-Those?-Lady calls us, the “hard left.”
Waynski
@John Quixote — I know many clean, articulate white people who aren’t thieves and liars, many are even friends of mine. You shouldn’t paint them all with the same brush.
Comrade Tudor
Hey John, still can’t access the homepage, and the /index.html link was working yesterday but doesn’t today. The only way I got here was a cross-post from Bob Cesca. Might want to keep looking into it if you’re not already.
beltane
@Kryptik: Starving the tree of education has led to the small, bitter fruits of ignorance. Most everyone in this country under the age of fifty has received a second-rate education that did not value critical thinking skills or a deep knowledge of history. And this includes many of those people who attended the “best” schools.
demo woman
@Church Lady: The Balloon Juice gang is pretty moderate.
Talk about moving the goal post.
TPM has more info about Paul Ryan’s budget plan. Do away with capital gains taxes.
Notorious P.A.T.
LOL. We need a moderate front-pager. Because it’s just so hard to find non-liberal voices these days.
kgc16
@Zifnab: You know, that’s really offensive. I get that balloon-juice commenters can be equal-opportunity offenders, but once in a while you should look carefully at what you’re writing. I know plenty of people over 40 (way over 40) who are good, honest, intelligent and well-meaning, and liberal; and I know plenty of under-40 douchebags. I know I shouldn’t even bite, but this reminds me of the insane thread about boomers and gen x and gen why and who gives a fuck. Fuck you. You yutz didn’t invent open-mindedness.
ETA: Waynski @ 89 says it with more equanimity and humor. Guess I need more coffee.
kay
@Church Lady:
Thanks. It’s classic no-content Marcus. She objects to the health care reform forum Obama requested.
I don’t blame her, really. I’ve read reams on health care, it’s dull, there’s a lot of numbers, and I’m just scratching the surface. I did learn a lot though.
But everyone can write the two word phrase “tort reform”. That’s a complicated subject, too, but it sure sounds good.
“Since 1986, 38 states have reformed joint-and-several liability rules; 23 states have enacted statutes limiting noneconomic damages, and currently 18 states have such statutes in place; and 34 states have restricted punitive damages”
Napoleon
@Citizen_X:
I hope Obama keeps punching and the Dems have to learn how to ignore the media. It is one of the only things I respect the Republicans for is their ability do so because they realize what a bunch of clueless knuckleheads are in the media.
Svensker
@kgc16:
Plus, it’s Joe Pesci’s birthday (yesterday)!
slag
@thomas Levenson:
So true. And the saddest part is that change is coming way too slowly. I haven’t had teevee reception for over 6 years. And I still get almost all of Jon Stewart’s jokes. Because nothing has really changed since the last time I watched (admittedly, I’m behind on his reality show teevee references, but if I’m curious, Google does the job).
I think the Executive Branch is finally starting the ball rolling on improving our discourse. Hopefully, it will start to roll faster if they keeping going as they are now–demanding real debate, fighting innuendo with facts, holding people responsible for their behavior. But it’s taken them over a year to get started, and we’ve got a long way to go.
And what you say about niche news is a real problem. I haven’t figured out if it’s worth the effort for me to counteract my habit of selecting my sources. There’s so much crap out there. And conservatives’ priorities are so different from mine that they don’t come close to offering any real information alternatives for me. I don’t care who’s sleeping with who or who hearts Chairman Mao. I just don’t. And no amount of reading Faux News is going to change that.
Notorious P.A.T.
Really? Congress is the commander-in-chief? Congress decided not to hurry on Gitmo because it would get in the way? Congress is the titular head of the Democratic party? It’s Congress’s job to enforce the law?
AhabTRuler
Bingo. Shortly after Manmohan Singh became PM of India, I had a a professor, who had a PhD in Poli-Sci no less, who, as part of her lecture, commented on how great it was that India had elected a Muslim Prime Minister.
williamc
@El Cid:
Glennzilla was talking about this a couple years ago, and it’s what really pushed me into organizing overdrive getting Dems elected in the first place. He’s right; nothing happens that isn’t all the Repubs plus the Conservadems or every Dem plan is watered down to ineffectiveness.
@Church Lady:
I hate all Church Ladies for a reason: they usually don’t know what’s happening in the real world that doesn’t involve the baby Jesus and the things they say are horsepucky that make no sense. If JC is a hard leftist, if the Administration is Sochulists, what does that make Kos, and Digby, and the rest of us leftists that aren’t Sochulists or Commies who strenuously disagree with JC and the President from the left? That’s why I call BS on most “independents”, they are usually brighter dim-bulb wingnuts. If you honestly can’t see that one side is destroying our political system and causing the other side to look weak by filibustering everything just to prove that government doesn’t work (because they are making it not work on purpose!), you aren’t an independent, you are a retard.
And yeah, I said it…
Da Bomb
@Church Lady: How in the hell is John Cole a member of the hard left.
Do you even know what the hard left is? Or are you talking out of your ass again?
John Quixote
@kay:
Not really. I was a news director at a small radio conglomerate (4 stations) in Kentucky from 1996 to 2000. I used to have daily arguments with my boss on what did and did not count as news. He was always pushing me to put out fluff like Baby Ruth’s drivel, ’cause people “don’t really care for hard hitting news reports, they want to be entertained. Folks find the news to be depressing”.
I used to spend 10 hours a day chasing down leads, writing copy, and interviewing local movers and shakers; you know, actual news. But my horsefucker of a boss was always on my ass for not searching the countryside for the best burgoo recipe.
A 24 year old college dropout had a better sense of what actually counted as news than the guy with a Master’s in Journalism.
Getting out of that whore of an industry was the best decision I ever made. Shit, I make more as a retail flunkie than I ever made as a broadcasting pro. Funny how shit works out like that.
Johnny B
The big problem with the traditional press, is that they think that they are doing their jobs. If you live in a million dollar house in Georgetown, get dinner invitations to Sally Quinn’s house, and have millions in retirement income, you have no interest in a progressive agenda. You support the Republicans obstruction because the only thing you want is more tax cuts so you can amass even greater fortunes playing propagandist (I mean journalist) for the privileged.
I have a family member who once was a proud member of the DC press corps. Once he drove me through a neighborhood in the suburbs of DC. The houses were massive. He turned to me and said, “John, look to your right. That’s what being a blowhard will get you.” He then pointed to this incredibly huge home. “That’s Chris Matthews house,” he said.
The dirty little secret amongst the well heeled traditional press isn’t that they are lazy and not as smart as they think they are (all true), but that they agree with the Republican agenda. If there is any doubt, watch how they rise up in righteous indigation when Republicans retake the House and demand tax cuts for the wealthy, and some Democrats try to stop or modify such tax cuts. They will write one story after another about “Democratic obstruction.” It’s hard to see a scenario that gets this country out of the mess it has created that doesn’t involve violence.
Da Bomb
@John Quixote: Don’t forget she probably has personal responsibility and self -reliance written down. As well as ” No forty acres and a mule for you!”
In short hand with misspellings.
ericblair
@beltane: But the fact that they don’t make $17,000 a year means that they are somehow more worthy than people who bust their asses every day doing hard work. The sense of entitlement with these douchebags is their most repellent trait.
If they did suddenly start making $17 large a year, they would be screaming for every bit of government help they could possibly get and more. Because unlike the lumpenproletariat goopers who have been carefully trained to suspect and reject any form of government aid as being bad for the soul, the rich goopers have absolutely no problem getting sugar from Uncle Sam.
The whole bipartisanship concept is an elitist, insider pile of crap anyways. Looking for the best solution inside of your party or out is non-partisanship. Bipartisanship means that however stupid or publicly rejected you are, if you’re in the official D or R club you automatically get a seat at the table. Nevermind that it’s conveniently hauled out only when it benefits the goopers: the whole idea is nasty and undemocratic.
Da Bomb
@John Quixote: I worked in media for five years, counting some part time gigs moves it up to 7 years.
It’s a joke really. I don’t know what’s worse, radio or tv. I worked in both arenas. It’s the same shit, just presented differently.
kay
@John Quixote:
I still love newspapers. One of the most depressing things about the health care battle has been how little coverage the bill got, in comparison to the politics and process.
Ezra Klein should get an award. He waded in.
He didn’t try to skim over the surface and opine. He actually sat down and read the material. It’s an issue you can’t weigh in on without preparation. You can’t bluff your way through it, without misleading people. It’s too complex. It’s hard.
suzanne
@beltane:
Damn skippy.
John Quixote
@Da Bomb:
.
I only know radio, but I would have to say TV is worse. Much, much worse. Radio is dying the death that it deserves. I just wish it would take the telemovision with it.
@kay:
This.
Johnny B
@suzanne:
I’ve written about secession at length before, so I’ll keep this short. I think secession is in the cards for this country. If we continually refuse to address large, national problems, and allow the 40 percenters living in delusion to get their way, then other states will begin the demand to leave the Union. The right wing in this country seems to assume that they can impose any set of corporatism and right wing economics and we will all just accept the shit sandwich they serve. But, more likely, more people will start pulling towards splitting up the Union. Can anyone honestly argue that the parts of the country would not be better off if they left the Union and its dysfunctional governmental structure?
maus
@A Mom Anon:
Better do what we want or we’ll start being obstructionist, mister!
danimal
Thanks to all that answered my “winger or idiot” question. I’ve learned a few things.
1. Avoid reading Knoller (I’d never paid attention to him before).
2. Remember my math lesson about sets and subsets. Of course he’s both, winger is a subset of idiot.
colleeniem
test test
cokane
god i love your anger mr. cole
Josie
I must say I resent the smears in these comments against over 40’s and Texans. I am a life long Texan and over 60 and am more liberal than my children, who at times have accused me of being a socialist and an anarchist. You just cannot pigeon hole people like that with any degree of accuracy. You are all going to be surprised by the elections in Texas over the next few years. We are working hard to turn this place purple and then blue, and we will succeed.
Church Lady
It’s funny how many people take the Church Lady tag literally. For those that do, although I do believe in God and do consider myself to be a “Christian”, I am a lapsed (many, many years) Catholic, hold no current religious affiliation and only darken the door of a Church every two years on Christmas, just to make my mother happy.
John, as to your list, with only a very few exceptions, your gripes are with the inability of the Democrats to enact their agenda, not the agenda itself. On the political spectrum, I still think it makes you pretty far to the left. Given that you claim to have been such a wingnut (other than initial support for the War, I really don’t see it when reading your earlier writings), your current stance on most issues puts you pretty much to the left of the center.
Myself, I think I stand pretty much in the center. Do I want a smaller government and want to pay less in federal income taxes? Yes. I think I pay more than enough. Did I support our invasion of Afghanistan? Yes. Did I support the invasion of Iraq? No. Do I think everyone should draw Social Security and Medicare benefits? No. I support means testing. The wealthy don’t need it and should give it up in order to save it for those that do need it. Do I support no cap on Social Security contributions? Yes – it should be treated the same as the Medicare, with everyone contributing on every dollar of earned income. Do I believe in a Social Safety Net for the disabled and those temporarily down on their luck? Yes, but I also don’t believe in permanent government handouts. Am I Pro Choice? Yes, although I support limits when it comes to minor children. Do I support gay rights? Yes. As the mother of a gay child, I want my child to have the same rights I enjoy and fully support the repeal of DOMA and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Do I support the current HCR bills staggering around in our legislative branches? No, not really, because I don’t see where it will lower the ever-rising cost of insurance and I don’t believe that it will do anything to lower the deficit. Although I’m concerned about the uninsured, I admit I’m selfish in caring more about being able to continue to provide insurance coverage for my family and the families of our employees.
Here, though, just the fact that I don’t support ever increasing government programs and the taxes required to support them, do worry about the nation’s deficit spending and accumulated debt and the effect it will have on my children’s lives, have a strong belief in personal responsibility and think the current HCR bills are a mess, and don’t rah rah every move that Pelosi & Co. make, that makes me a wingnut. Given my social beliefs, I don’t think I pass the wingnut purity test and suspect I wouldn’t be very welcome.
Paris
This whole article is almost word for word Druggie Limpball from yesterday. ( I have a broken vehicle, am driving the back up one that can only receive the local 50kW AM behemoth on the radio, so had the unfortunate experience of hearing the blowhard yesterday afternoon).
The echo chamber begins with the message du jour.
AhabTRuler
@Church Lady:
…of everything, no doubt. But I knew that already.
kgc16
@Svensker: Happy Birthday and a h/t to him!
Sentient Puddle
@Church Lady:
Yeah, quite funny! Especially considering the fact that it’s the name you chose for yourself here. No idea why anyone would be crazy enough to think that someone who calls herself Church Lady goes to church.
You say this as though it’s some point of pride. 95% of the time someone does this, it’s a red herring. At worst, it means the person hasn’t bothered thinking through their views. At best, it means they have, but consider these views less important than maintaining an illusion that they’re falling in line with some arbitrarily-defined mainstream.
And beyond all that, many fall to the delusion of relativity, falsely thinking that they’re dead center, so anyone significantly deviating is far-left/right. Which, again, smacks of this notion that falling in line is more important than views. It’s idiotic. Who cares if someone is far-left or right if they can successfully make the case for their view?
jibeaux
Award for Ezra Klein seconded, and proposed: my little sweetums. Young, cute, cooks, and thinks. Now, I’ve got a sweetums and I love him awfully much so this wouldn’t be anything inappropriate. It would be more like that Woody Allen story, The Whore of Mensa.
Libby
I love Knoller and his geeky counting stuff but that was a very lame post. I’m surprised. He doesn’t usually wallow quite so low into the Village cesspool. I tweeted something to him last night when he posted the link, but obviously couldn’t cover my dismay in 140 char. Besides, you always do it better than me, Cole. Some days I wonder why I just don’t post a permalink to you and quit blogging altogether.
John Quixote
@Church Lady:
So, what you are essentially saying is
-Trying is the first step towards failure
-I got mine, therefore, F.U.
The truth is that we (the country as a whole) have never even attempted to reduce HC costs, therefore no one is quite sure what to do, exactly, to reduce them. There are tons of pilot programs in the bill, in an attempt to find something that works to reduce them. How do you know that something won’t work if you don’t even give it an opportunity?
Why don’t you believe that it will reduce the deficit? You only selectively take the CBO at thier word when it lines up with your pre-concieved notions?
Centrism = doing nothing, because that’s the easiest position for me to take, ’cause I iz scared.
By the way, it’s only a matter of time before some bean counter down in the depths of your provider’s underwriting division finds some loophole in your policy that will allow your provider to get out of paying for a procedure that you or your children require.
I just got HC through my union, one of those ‘cadillac’ plans people are always talking about, and I will have to pay every penny of the procedure to remove two of my wisdom teeth, because I had fillings inserted into the same two teeth in 1993. Seventeen fucking years ago. But since the provider that I had back then is not the same as the one I have now, my current provider, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, has decided that my bad wisdom teeth constitute a ‘pre-existing condition’, and therefore will not help pay to have them removed.
Your provider will find a way to fuck you over. I can guarantee you that.
John S.
Blue Cross/Blue Shield just denied my friend’s claim for her tonsillectomy. Why? Because over a year ago when she moved back to Florida from California, she had a lapse in insurance coverage for a month. And according to BC/BS, she magically contracted the tonsillitis in that exact period of lapsed coverage, therefore they are not responsible.
But the system we have is just fine…
Comrade Kevin
@Church Lady: You’re just so mavericky! How convenient.
Val
And the response of the media to this marginalization of the minority was snarky, mocking pieces by the likes of Dana Milbank about the pathetic loser Dems having to hold hearings on Iraq in the basement. Where was their “concern” for bipartisanship then? And that was a Republican majority nowhere nearly as big as the current Democratic one. Back then, tamping down minority filibustering with the Gang of Howevermany’s compromises was the height of grownuppiness and praised by the Broder Villagers. Now, the majority is expected to suffer filibusters on National Mom and Apple Pie Week, which passes 100-0 when a vote finally happens, because, well, it’s the natural state of things to require 60 votes to pass Senate legislation, and it’s always been thus (“always” being defined as the attention span of the average journamalist, like maybe last week’s hit song).
I remember how what constituted bad news for Republicans was Jeffords’ defection to caucus with the Dems, leading to a 51-49 balance in the Senate, while going from 60 senators to 59 constitutes Waterloo for Democrats. And it wasn’t like Bush had a landslide “victory” in 2000 (it wasn’t like Bush had an honest victory at all, even in the EC, but …). Even before Bush’s already-a-disaster-of-a-presidency caught a lucky break with 9/11, the sympathy in the press corps was always with him, as well as the benefit of the doubt. Just like the Free Market True Believers who assume without questioning that a tax cut for the wealthy always trickles down to jobs for the rest of us, they assumed that since Bush was a non-popular-vote winner and because of the disputed and contentious nature of the electoral contest he would automatically seek compromise and cooperation. And of course, both propositions are belied by reality.
The Other Steve
Here’s the twit’s tweet:
The point should be about what’s best for the American people… not what serves the purposes of a party. This asshat is part of the problem.
Tax Analyst
@Zifnab:
& John Quixote, too –
Hey, just knock that fucking shit off! I’m less than 2 months shy of 60. Did not vote for Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Dole, Bush II or McCain (did I miss any). Voted for McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, Kerry & Obama. Did not vote for Nader. Don’t think I’ve EVER voted for a Republican for any major office (slight possibility I voted for Ahnold once…Bustamante was such a turd of a candidate, but I think I just skipped the Governor’s race that year).
Furthermore, I know a shitload of people my age and older and just about all of them fit your criteria.
Yeah, and everyone of YOUR generation(s) is just in total fucking harmony with the fucking universe, right?
And I’m pretty sure I can qualify in, you know, at least 3 of your 5 categories [good, honest, intelligent, well-meaning, and reasonable white people], OK? So all of you young zipper-snackers can just kiss my aggravated, aging ass, sonny-boy.