Charles Johnson at LGF:
Amazingly, Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) manages to write a puff piece about the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville without even mentioning Tom Tancredo’s racist call to bring back literacy tests or Joseph Farah’s Birther/theocrat speech and resulting standing ovation.
It really isn’t that amazing, and I am sure none of you will be surprised that the Fonzi of Freedom, Nick Gillespie, is also pimping this bullshit. But the reason Gillespie and the rest of the fiscally conservative frauds are able to get away with this nonsense is because the media and the Democrats have failed to get the truth out. Here is a sample comment from Reason:
Obama could have avoided all of this by governing more like Clinton. He could have permanently painted the Republicans as the party of fiscal irresponsibility after record half-trillion-dollar deficits under Bush. Instead he tripled them.
You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.
The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists’ assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.
About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.
Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.
About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.
If the analysis is extended further into the future, well beyond 2012, the Obama agenda accounts for only a slightly higher share of the projected deficits.
How can that be? Some of his proposals, like a plan to put a price on carbon emissions, don’t cost the government any money. Others would be partly offset by proposed tax increases on the affluent and spending cuts. Congressional and White House aides agree that no large new programs, like an expansion of health insurance, are likely to pass unless they are paid for.
And now that Republicans have successfully killed HCR and we still allow the military to spend well over a half a trillion a year on our excellent adventures, the budget is going to be out of whack forever. We aren’t “allowed” to raise taxes, we can’t cut military spending or we will get invaded by Uzbekistan and will all be wearing Burkhas by the end of the motnh, we aren’t allowed to reform health care and do something about costs, farm subsidies are a sacred cow that all the “fiscal conservatives” will never allow us to cut, and worst of all, the people are so misinformed that they are unaware which party they should be blaming for this mess.
The only Republican I have seen who has any credible plan on anything is Paul Ryan, and his plan is, quite simply, a sign that the Republicans feel they have won their 40 year class warfare battle and are moving on to generational warfare. Basically, all it does is say– “Hey, you- old people. I got your back. No cuts in anything, and in fact we will make sure we spend money in the most outrageous way possible on your health care (medicare advantage). The rest of you- under age 55. Sucks to be you.” And even then it doesn’t “fix” things for half a century. It really is probably the most shameless piece of legislation I have ever seen and amounts to little more than an enormous transfer or wealth to those people over 55.
The fact that the Republicans get away with this bullshit is staggering, and a complete failure of the Democratic party and the media- the Republicans and the glibertarians can’t help themselves, as this is just their nature. The very week our glibertarians are waxing eloquent about budget deficits, the Republicans are trying to pack tax cuts and slash the estate tax in a… JOBS bill. Because when Paris Hilton’s parents die, her having more money will create Jobs. Because we need another hole in the budget. And yet they say nothing. And if they did say anything, they would probably support it, because more tax cuts = more better!
Christ- the Republicans won’t even support reform of the Student Loan process, where we are blowing tens of billions funneling money to private lenders for no reason whatsoever.
I’m simply at my wits end.
Robin G
Honest question, here: Are we sure no one in the Dems or progressive caucus has said anything? Media spin on this crap can be pretty all-encompassing. I mean, it’s really all academic, since if we haven’t heard about it then it’s a tree falling in the woods… but are we sure no one has tried?
Probably not, but I’m having one of those weird moments of faith in my fellow man.
bemused
Hmm. Conservatives have been wringing their hands over future debts their children & grandchildren will inherit from soshalist Obama policies. I have a hunch that those same conservatives over 55 will throw their kiddies & grandkiddies under the bus in a nonosecond.
Comrade Luke
I’m with you John. I don’t know what to do anymore.
geg6
Good rant, John. The student loan reform is a particular bugaboo for me as a financial aid officer. Sallie Mae is currently running scare ads on the rock and alt radio stations here framing this as a job cutting piece of legislation that will hurt young college grads’ job markets. It’s despicable. I contacted our campus newspaper to get them to run a story on this so that I can make sure they hear the real story that this is about cutting the cost of their loans and increasing Pell funding and just cutting banks and lenders out of their cut of the whole thing. Which has never had any value in the process other than increasing the costs. One easy example is that a federal Parent PLUS Loan has an interest rate of 7.9 if it is for a Direct Loan school and the same exact loan has a rate of 8.5 in the FFELP program. The only reason for that difference is the FFELP Loans have a lender as a middle man. For no discernable reason other than a big giveaway to those lenders. Makes me furious.
ajr22
The democratic message machine just sucks. The Republicans take any stupid issue Acorn,death panel, van jones, and by weeks end not only is their entire base frothing at the mouth, the liberal media is covering it. Yet when the Republicans put out a budget ending medicare and social security you wouldn’t even know unless you read blogs. The democrats need some coaching on the use of talking points.
Aredubya
Not to support the GOP’s continue obstructionism and willful disregard for actual, functional, fiscally sane government, but some of the wasteful programs you mentioned wouldn’t be cut for a simple reason: jobs. Those private loan companies and agribusiness (both small and large) do provide jobs for a great many people. Cutting or eliminating the programs would bump up real unemployment rapidly. Same goes for the defense dollars on research and weapons systems. There’s assuredly waste inherent in those industries and the federal spending that supports them, but one would have to consider alternative means of employing those laid off before just swinging the axe.
Neutron Flux
Thanks for the second block quote with the breakdowns. These will be helpful talking points if the wingnuts at work start their usual rants.
Brick Oven Bill
Please explain to me how not wanting illiterates to vote is racist. Oh wait, never mind. That is the Democratic Party’s base.
El Cid
It’s pretty impressive that we have a multi-billion dollar news industry and yet you still have to work hard to understand that an economy near collapse leads to revenues not collected by the government, and that tax cuts for the rich also count as revenues not collected by the government, and that ordinary people gaining their 11 million lost jobs back would provide an enormous amount of revenue, and you can actually do fiscally better by increasing revenue, it’s not just all the magic of tax cuts.
Kryptik
Don’t forget that anything done on the energy and climate side of things is dead because a couple snowstorms proved there’s no energy or climate crisis. After all, nature proved science wrong, so go ahead and stoke those coal fires higher, after all, Al Gore is fat.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Meanwhile, Palin’s popularity continues to plummet, Obama’s still popular, and HCR isn’t dead.
Man, some days it feels like I’m the only one here who doesn’t need to down prozac like tic-tacs.
Neutron Flux
@Brick Oven Bill: While it is true that some say it is racist, the bigger issue is that it is well contra constitutional.
You being the strict constitutionist, I am surprised that don’t denounce literacy tests.
Dan Robinson
The problem is that our elections are a beauty contest. People like Palin tend to win those. Palin against Obama? He would have problems.
Our form of government has problems and it should be changed. The Founding Fathers did not foresee the rise of the public relations boom. We have places, e.g., any School of Communication at any university, where people study how many times a lie needs to be told before it is believed as true. This isn’t cynicism. This is fact. The same process is applied to our political system. The toll on the body politic has been heavy.
Brian J
You know what is really frustrating about all of this? Going after the Republicans won’t require over the top rhetoric or quasi-personal attacks. It will require nothing more than a constant restatement of the facts and a simple demand: that they come up with a list of spending cuts, program changes, and tax increases. Each time time any Republican or Democrat talks about a deficit commission, Obama just needs to stand those three things before he gives it another moment’s thought. And he does not need to budge, no matter what sort of temporary problems he faces.
But yes, it is ludicrously frustrating, not because the Democrats are perfect or necessarily have the right ideas, but because they have a set of values and go about enacting them in a reasonably responsible manner. Tax and spend? Yes, part of the time, perhaps even all of the time. But that beats the hell out of tax cuts for the rich, spending on military blunders and inefficient social programs, and useless deficits and debt. As bad as the Democrats are, the Republicans are indefensible. Screw them.
joe from Lowell
Jesus, John, cut and run much? How many times have you written the post-mortem on health care, only to be back writing about the ongoing battle two days later?
rdldot
Something strange has happened to Charles Johnson. It is the same thing that happened to you, John Cole. Well, good on him.
Kryptik
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
That’s ‘cuz the Big Lie may not work immediately all the time, but it still works when the sane side just sits on their goddamn hands.
licensed to kill time
Meester Cole, when you are volatile you make my day. Don’t let them get on your last wit. Excellent post.
and BOB, STFU, you ignorant slut.
geg6
Aredubya: You have got to be kidding. Jobs at Sallie Mae and Citiassist will be just fine. What you don’t mention is their huge alternative educational loan market which generates huge amounts of money and run much the same as we’ve seen our other fine financial institutions of the nation recently. Many schools have Direct lending and we are spreading the word and more and more schools are getting out of FFELP. Schools that care about their students will opt out more and more. If we get the word out to students and families, this can be a potent issue, as I have seen myself when I give high school financial aid presentations and mention the differnce in cost to the consumer between the two fedral programs. Parents are pissed, regardless of political affiliation when I explain why the discrepancy exists.
Napoleon
Quite simply Obama and Reid are complete incompetents. Only an idiot would pretend rolling over and not doing recess appointments this weekend is some kind of win.
Kryptik
@rdldot:
Unfortunately, for every John Cole and Charles Johnson that turns over from the dark side, we get an Erick Erickson and a Glenn Beck rising to national prominence on TV.
Cat Lady
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
BJ is also linking to LGF as a rational voice in the discourse. So that, for what it’s worth, is kind of remarkable. But yeah, where are the Democrats who will step in front of the cameras and point out the obvious, since the media is unwilling to move off their talking points? When will one of the bobbleheads ask what exactly is the level of taxation that Rebublicans have in mind? If it’s zero, then let them try to make that argument, and push them on what programs they would need to cut. Those questions need to be asked over and over, and yet they’re not asked at all.
Brick Oven Bill
David Leonhardt of the The New York Times writes to us:
“Some of his proposals, like a plan to put a price on carbon emissions, don’t cost the government any money.”
Barack reads to us:
“If you make less than $250,000/year, you will pay no new taxes. None.”
Aristotle teaches us:
“Rhetoric’s possible abuse is no argument against its proper use on the side of truth and justice. The honest rhetorician has no separate name to distinguish him from the dishonest.”
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Napoleon:
You’re half-right.
cat48
I wonder if the student loan bill could go thru reconciliation because it would affect the budget. There might be 50 that would go along with this.
Matt Y. had a post yesterday wondering why the Dems just couldn’t do what the prez asks and how if they had, we might actually have accomplished a few things. As soon as he asks for something, the House and the Senate both do different things. The prez gave them a completed financial regulation bill with a consumer protection agency bill in JUNE 2009 and they are still f’n with the bills making changes. So it does no good to give them a completed bill. I don’t know how the Senate Dems can be saved. The Sen. always changes House bills so no need to worry about House. The Senate is hopeless.
I don’t understand why they can’t just repeat the talking points the prez gives them. He can’t go out everyday and say the same thing. It would just be odd. However, they could but wont. They are useless or f’n retarded.
Napoleon
@Aredubya:
Sweet Jesus, you can not possibly be serious. Here is an idea, by not funneling money to the banks more students can get student loans and so get better jobs and with more students going to school schools and their suppliers will hire more employees. There is your jobs program.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Cat Lady: The people who can make that argument are out there, in the party, and in Washington. For some reason, Al Franken and Alan Grayson don’t get on TV as much as Presidents McCain and Brown.
Maybe if we got Brad Pitt to run for office?
cat48
I wonder if the student loan bill could go thru reconciliation because it would affect the budget. There might be 50 that would go along with this.
Matt Y. had a post yesterday wondering why the Dems just couldn’t do what the prez asks and how if they had, we might actually have accomplished a few things. As soon as he asks for something, the House and the Senate both do different things. The prez gave them a completed financial regulation bill with a consumer protection agency bill in JUNE 2009 and they are still f’n with the bills making changes. So it does no good to give them a completed bill. I don’t know how the Senate Dems can be saved. The Sen. always changes House bills so no need to worry about House. The Senate is hopeless.
I don’t understand why they can’t just repeat the talking points the prez gives them. He can’t go out everyday and say the same thing. It would just be odd. However, they could but won’t. They are useless or f’n retarded.
Mike G
the Republicans won’t even support reform of the Student Loan process
Why would they? Useless economic-rent collectors are the essence of the Repig business wing. Most of them produce nothing useful and profit from privileged position and manipulating government policy in their favor through
bribed congressmencampaign donations.Remember Chimp’s cabinet – stacked with cronies from Halliburton, railroad companies, utilities and such, all businesses that rely on government revenue or regulatory favors — hardly a real wealth creator in the bunch.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Righteous rant, preach on Brother John! IOW, we are fucked but I already knew that so no surprise there. I don’t know what the fuck happened to the sane people in our country but they aren’t in congress. Nobody wants to face reality and do what is necessary because other nations are giving us money to sink ourselves ever deeper. They’re our ‘enablers’, so to say. We’re addicted to spending more than we can afford and that is it.
I can only hope for the day that some brave politicians stand up and tell the over-65 crowd that ‘We were looking at cutting your benefits off but instead we think we can prevent this by raising taxes a bit on the rich. Are there any objections?’
Some look back to the 50’s and think of how strong our country was then. Maybe because the country was strong because the rich paid a hell of a lot more in taxes? That and they jailed criminals back then. Now they give them golden parachutes, multi-million dollar bonuses and cushy titles.
All to push paper at high pay and low taxes with lots of loopholes.
We don’t make much here any more but we sure do have some talented people who know how to push paper around and make it look like we are actually accomplishing something. All the while our career politicians only care about raking in the cash, fooling their constituents or bribing them by bringing home the pork. The rest of us are left treading in water that is rapidly rising.
Oh well, it’s just another day in the sacking and burning of Rome.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
I’m demanding the Manic Progressives tag for this thread.
Kryptik
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Yeah, that’s honestly a problem. I don’t think it’s just a matter of Democrats just getting on TV or talking to the media. It’s that the media seems to give a disproportionate amount of credence to anything a Republican says, compared to Democrats, on the same subjects despite the Republicans having most of their facts woefully wrong.
One just needs to look at “With Sprinkles” Sidoti and the glowing “Masspocalypse” coverage to show that the media is essentially the GOPs cult of personality.
meh
The problem, as I see it, is the same problem that I have with my 18 month old. I can’t reason with her. I can’t negotiate with her to not throw the remote control in the trash, or put my Ipod in the diaper pail. It’s just who she is at this particular moment in time. The Democrats spend so much time trying to elevate the discourse in the country past the 2 second sound bite and clever turn of phrase – death panels, death tax, cut and run, tax and spend, etc. The GOP realizes that we are a nation of Attention Deficit Disorder toddlers that have no interest in policy discussion. If a policy position can’t be whittled down to a 1 sentence or less soundbite, we don’t give a shit.
The Democrats need to start playing by the rules of the game as it exists today and not as they wish would exist. Some of the best filmmakers, ad execs, writers, etc are liberal – you need to call their asses in to help get the message out – they know what particular opiate the masses want – they have experience selling this shit.
bemused
The media is a bitch but Dems don’t use their tv time efficiently or effectively to get their points out in short, easy to understand sentences that even americans can get it. Dems that do get on tv babble shows need a crash course in snappy sound bites that get to the point & delivering them twice as fast as the hosts & the Rs.
FlipYrWhig
@Cat Lady:
The media brings the cameras. It doesn’t matter what Democrats say if there’s no way for it to circulate, no cameras to step in front of.
John O
I keep trying to have this discussion (and that in the previous thread) with my GOP pals, and I keep saying, “Defend this vote! C’mon! What were the reasons?”
*crickets*
cat48
@Kryptik:
I read in the NYT this a.m. that the prez & Dept Energy is probably going to set carbon levels with an Executive Order due to Cong. gridlock. Also, DADT. The feathers will fly over carbon levels I’m sure. Noticed he has his highest Gallup rating in months at 52% today. That won’t last long–he’ll be back in the 40’s in no time.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Kryptik: The GOP knows how to play the Village. They’ve had years to glean from Saint Ronnie’s playbook, they know how to stroke the egos, work the cameras, and steal the news cycle.
As a rather astute guy once said, however, ‘you can’t fool all the people all the time’. Just look at 2006 and 2008. Or at declining newspaper readership or TV viewership. Despite the Village having been against him since he dared to take on Hillary, Obama won convincingly by and large because the American people had enough of the GOP’s bullshit. Elevating Palin and the Teabaggers as some sort of new-and-improved GOP ain’t going to cut it when they’re preaching the same shit we heard from Bush’s enablers. All of David Gregory’s fluffing ain’t going to save ’em from that.
The GOP’s lost the narrative, and its going to take a lot of soul-searching before they re-find it again.
scudbucket
Of course, recognizing that it is a multi-billion dollar industry explains why the dis-information on policy issues exists to begin with. What’s really puzzling is the level of denial the media/pundit/expert-analysts are living in. The US is literally teetering on the brink of collapse (maybe we’re already there?), and the media plays cheerleader to the delusions of partisan hacks and free-marketeers.
mcc
Last week the Democrats attempted to pass a jobs bill. The Republicans refused to go along unless some of their ideas were included. “Their ideas” turned out to be reducing the estate tax (?), and renewing portions of the patriot act (??), two things clearly having nothing to do with job creation. Unable to convince his own caucus to go along with these non-job-related changes, Reid had to scale down the bill (there were indications he may try to pass the other parts piecemeal later) and delay the vote two weeks.
This is pretty significant: Republicans like to argue that every Democratic program “kills jobs”, or that they are the party of job creation. Yet given the opportunity to participate in a jobs bill, the Republicans first tried to load it up with wildly unrelated things– implying they had no ideas of their own as to how to spur job creation– then tried to obstruct it.
It seems like the Democrats were handed a gift here. We want a jobs bill. We want to expose the Republicans as opposing job creation or improving the economy, disinterested in the problems of real Americans and interested only in crazy, tiny ideological obsessions (the Republican address this week attacked allowing accused terrorists to have trials). And we were given a neatly framed opportunity both to bring this to the public’s attention, and use the moment to promote a jobs bill with an upcoming vote.
But the party Democrats said nothing. You’d have to have been following the news pretty closely to have told what happened.
And the independent progressive message machine, as far as I can tell, to the extent it acknowledged this happened at all used it as an opportunity to expound on how worthless Harry Reid / Barack Obama are and how this is all their fault, the Democrats’ fault, the Democrats are to blame.
FlipYrWhig
@bemused:
Have you ever seen a Republican use his TV time efficiently or effectively either? I don’t think I have. I don’t think either side does this well. I think every talking-head segment on Obama’s priorities becomes Republicans saying “Bad” and Democrats saying “Not ideal, but necessary.”
I always go back to Eric Alterman’s “working the refs” framework for what conservatives have done to the media. I think the media gatekeepers are much more afraid of getting yelled at by conservatives, so they go out of their way to present the essence of Republican points more neutrally-to-positively, whereas they tend to present a skeptical take on Democratic points. There’s far too much outright sloppiness–like the whole thing about how Obama didn’t begrudge the bank bonuses, when his point was obviously the reverse. They suck, irredeemably and irreversibly. When they pay attention, it’s negative, and when they don’t pay attention, it’s negative too.
Mark S.
I’m fascinated by Rep. Paul Ryan. I didn’t know who the hell he was a week ago, but I’m starting to learn:
He’s a total Randian who makes his staff read Atlas Shrugged. He actually believes this shit. Why the Republicans allowed this nut to write their proposed budget (and you could tell Boehner and co. were not exactly pleased with the final product) is a mystery.
If the Democrats were smart, eh, I’m tired of typing that line.
Drive By Wisdom
Mr. Cole, maybe it is time you consider a post-blogging career.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
It wouldn’t matter now, the rich own the big media outlets. Keith and Rachel are mere distractions and that’s their purpose. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad they are there but I know why. They are the exception, not the rule. As long as our mass media is owned by the rich who are spoon-feeding us bullshit via overpaid personalities who mostly lean conservative (for both job security and to protect those dollars from greedy libruls!), we just don’t stand a chance.
I’m afraid we are going to need a full-metal meltdown before our politicians are going to confront reality. Same for a good portion of the public, they really have no idea how bad things really are.
Brick Oven Bill
Steve Martin, while performing in The Jerk says:
“Mom, I’ve found my special purpose!”
Barack tells his friend Harry:
“Harry, I have a gift.”
Plato teaches us that:
“Oratory or rhetoric can be little more than flattery, that it can be addressed to (and stir the emotions and not the intellect of) women, slaves, and others and become little more than a shameful public harangue.”
The Grand Panjandrum
The Washing Post has hired that Cheney-apologist and torture sympathizer Marc Thiessen to write a weekly column.
FlipYrWhig
@mcc:
Again, I just don’t know if that’s true, looping all the way back to the first comment by Robin G. I think all kinds of things happen, all kinds of statements made, that never get covered.
Tazistan Jen
@joe from Lowell:
Hey, some days a persons gets discouraged.
Kryptik
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Well, they already pay Jackson Diehl. How long until they finally hire John Bolton full time on the Iran beat? Maybe give that Gerard prat a regular article to psychoanalyze Washington and wonder why Conservatives are just so much better and down-to-earth than them damn DFHs.
Silver Owl
It is revolting to think that America will be, for a while, a shit hole of ugly rich white men that systematically wiped out younger and older generations for their egos and greed.
I never did get why anyone believed the family value thing. Conservatives are destructive not constructive. It’s all conservative man ego 24/7.
El Cid
I think Democrats should start talking up how reasonable it would be to privatize Social Security, as long as there are proper bipartisan safeguards and rules.
It isn’t true, but it’s what I would expect them to do.
Cat Lady
@FlipYrWhig:
I recall that one of the more common excuses by the media for the media not doing their jobs during the Bush Darkness was that since Democrats weren’t making a fuss, there was nothing to report. The Dems don’t even appear to be providing the material for “some Democrats disagree”, or if they are, then the media is worse than lazy, it’s evil. I’m just not sure where to put my outrage anymore. Barney Frank is my rep, and I see him now and again calling out teh stoopid. Not enough, but he has a public profile. John Kerry is FAIL, and if he doesn’t start getting a higher profile, his seat will turn over too.
Get a fucking backbone Democrats! [insert Dean scream here]!
aimai
John Aravoisis had a really great line “how hard is it to demonize the demons?” when talking about the Health Care Debacle and the Insurance Companies. His point is that the Anthem/Blue jack up of premiums which the White House/Dems are now going after is just the obvious tip of the iceberg–so why have they taken so long and done such a miserable job of attacking the Insurance company. This is like shooting fish in a barrell, populism wise.
But this goes back to the first moves towards reform. The calculation the White House made–and it wasn’t the wrong one at the time–is that by refusing to demonize the Insurance and Pharma companies they would be able to slide reform past these major stakeholders. But when conservadems and republicans linked hands and brought reform to a halt before August a different dynamic arose. The astroturf teabaggers and the republican party essentially refused to be part of the concordat which was mild, sensible, insurance co. reform. At that point it became necessary to either find a way to pay off the right wing with massive doses of corporate money (which the reform party never has since reforms are always anti corporate) or to gin up public protest and fervor against the insurance companies and against the conservative Senators. But the White House never had such a strategy lying in wait– it had bought its own rhetoric about a new kind of politics, or at any rate had promised to muzzle public opinion if it ran to far left/anti banker/anti insurance company.
Messaging stinks because the democrats don’t want to swing as far anti banker/anti insurance company/anti rich as the populace would want them to go.
aimai
kdaug
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
Yup. Top marginal during Ike was 90%. CEOs earned ~40x their workers. One person (father) could work, own a home & car and feed his family.
The parasites have worked to destroy that system for 60 years. They’ve succeeded.
General Winfield Stuck
Silly Obot. ObamaRahma kilt HCR by not being liberal enough and failure to waterboard Joe Lieberman. It was their girly man efforts to be bipartisan that did it and why the Republicans run the government with a heavily white minority. And John Cole and his sissy minions stand in the way of making Obama more like Bush and the Commanding Figure of progressive dreams. The repubs would be on the run if not for the WH taking charge of the Senate and making their shit work right.
Get with the program Cole, and direct your ire at Obama. If you Obots hadn’t thwarted left wing righteous concern by attacking real democrats and glad handing your double agent buds in right wingville, all this wouldn’t have happened. You are a phony, a vichy dem in elephant suit and aren’t not foolin’ nobody with your pandering to Manchurean Barry.
Brick Oven Bill
Perhaps you would care to join us, and the world could be as one, kdaug.
Teabaggers want to preserve the Constitution and do not talk of Chairman Mao.
Democrats want to change the Constitution and consider Chairman Mao to be a philosophical leader.
Teabaggers do not go as far as the uber-Teabagger John Lennon, and argue to change the heads of Democrats, as we believe in the free exchange of ideas. But you still might want to come to an event and check things out. There are often attractive females at these gatherings.
bemused
@FlipYrWhig:
Rs have bite size memes they repeat over & over, death panels, etc, that really grab their base even if they are bs. That they do much better. Dems need wordsmiths to work up some for them. Kind of hard to condense complicated issues into a few words if you want them factual vs the republican lies but why should facts be harder to put into sound bites than lies? Then again, since when do Dems give any credence to suggestions from outside DC until it is way late in the game if ever?
FlipYrWhig
@Cat Lady: It seems to me that the media only covers Democrats in two ways.
(1) The Democrat who is Obama.
(2) Democrats who are upset with Obama.
OK, maybe add a third.
(3) Democrats asked to explain why they’re not accomplishing anything.
When was the last time you saw a non-Obama Democrat saying something positive about an Obama agenda item? It pretty much never happens. In the Kerry case, I’m not sure that Kerry is unwilling to go on TV; I’d guess he just isn’t asked.
But, again, I don’t think Republican politicians look good or get their points across on TV either. It comes across as competent on Fox News because the presenters and news producers have it all worked out to help them look good.
No one does that for Democrats, with the occasional exception of Olbermann and Maddow, and even then they give a lot more airtime to critics than defenders.
There’s something just fundamentally rotten at the transfer point between whatever the Republicans blastfax to the media, and the news producers’ decisions about what stories to cover. They cover Republican-fomented stories, like this bullshit about Miranda rights for terror suspects. I’m sure that the Democrats are constantly distributing press releases and other statements. But the producers don’t cover them. That’s who’s at fault, IMHO: the people who decide that what the Republicans think is an important story IS an important story.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Brick Oven Bill:
This is embarrassing, trite, asinine and hypocritical… but hey… for someone who publicly fiddles w/ his own prions endlessly… what do you expect?
FlipYrWhig
@aimai:
Seems to be pretty fucking hard, considering that health insurance companies successfully got the public to turn against the Clinton-era attempt at health care reforms, and considering that there is a deep-seated belief that American free enterprise necessarily involves rich corporations insisting on government non-interference. We have a populace that sees the government as a bigger demon than insurance conglomerates.
mcc
n/m
mcc
Used the Bad Word and got held for moderation. Trying again:
@FlipYrWhig: I think if you watch it’s definitely the case that the democrats are frequently going out and making the case that they later get attacked for not making, and the media just ignores it. I think this happened on health care, where the President spent months going to the people and explaining the HCR bill and the media (institutional and independent) instead covered crazy protesters yelling [redacted] and “you lie”. I think it’s happening on the Republican obstructionism thing.
In the particular case of the jobs bill I can’t find evidence of the Democrats, institutional or otherwise, trying to call attention to the jobs bill even if I dig. Maybe the DC weather problems had something to do with that. Maybe they’ll make a bigger deal when the actual vote comes (or maybe that will be difficult because it looks to be scheduled at about the same time as the “health care summit”). One way or another they don’t seem to consider this something that they need in the public eye.
Surely there are things that could be happening, to get the public’s attention. Obama made a big deal about a jobs bill during the SOTU, he doesn’t seem to be talking about it now even if you search, this week his address is talking about PAYGO. We have this great big political party committee that in theory exists to push a message, surely there’s something it can do? We complain we can’t decide what the television covers but you actually can pay for air time on the television, they’re called “commercials”. In fact the party committee exists more or less exactly to run commercials, and there’s supposed to be like an election this year? Or never mind the party even. Where’s, I don’t know, PCCC? The left could somehow find a way to independently finance and run commercials attacking Democrats for not getting things we wanted passed, why can’t we run a commercial to pass something or attack Republicans?
mr. whipple
“But this goes back to the first moves towards reform. The calculation the White House made—and it wasn’t the wrong one at the time—is that by refusing to demonize the Insurance and Pharma companies they would be able to slide reform past these major stakeholders.”
Um, I watched every Obama town hall and anything related to him speaking on HCR, and at each and every one he did bash insurance companies. To say otherwise just isn’t so.
Now, I do think that set up some real dissonance, insofar as he was bashing insurance companies at every turn while pushing reform that would have given them 30 million + new customers, many of them subsidized. The only thing I could think of why he was doing it was that health insurance companies must poll lower than whalepoop, yet polls show most people are satisified with their insurance. And in many ways they are the safest to bash. No one bashes their doctors, their nurses, their home health providers, their local hospitals, etc. People do realize their premiums increase, however, and I think they must figure the reason is that it’s because insurance companies are the ones making all the $.
Brick Oven Bob
Teabaggers have grasped the essential truth of their Platonic solids that eludes the math-averse Barry. Thus, when retards bowl, only bowling is for retards. Teabaggers exude raw sex appeal, as the aptly-named Rep. Foxx demonstrates. Do you know what Bobby Ray Inman was doing before he was running the microelectronics industry? In summary, as noted GOP leader John Lennon opined, if you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.
FlipYrWhig
@bemused:
I don’t actually agree with this. I think stupid shit like “death panels” and “death tax” are seen after the fact as key to the triumph of bad Republican ideas, but aren’t actually key in the moment.
(Did people who might otherwise support health care reform start to oppose it because they believed that there would literally be “death panels”? I don’t think so. Their real fear has always been The Government telling them what to do. Why they’d rather be bossed around by big business and big religion than big government is something I will never, ever understand, and I can only attribute that attitude to Cold War Hangover.)
Frankly, I think their only two successful memes are “tax cuts” and “keep safe.” Maybe “government control bad.”
Then again, we have, um, none.
PaulB
It’s even worse than that. It probably doesn’t “fix” things at all! See this story on TalkingPointsMemo.
Ryan cooked the books by asking the CBO to: “assume that the major tax cuts he calls for won’t create any change in federal revenue over the next two decades–at all.”
This assumption is almost assuredly false and is certainly not an assumption that the CBO would have used in an honest analysis. Remove that assumption and Ryan’s budget leaves us in deficit-land forever.
The Republic of Stupidity
@FlipYrWhig:
I wonder what that populace thinks of the 40% leap in insurance premiums that just landed in California this week?
Betty
I’ve decided the only course left is to provide Dog Whisperer training for the Democrats. Perhaps then they’ll stop letting the Republicans pull all this crap and start acting like pack leaders. A girl can dream.
Betty
Oh, I forgot to say how much I love your name for Nick Gillespie. I only saw him on TV a few weeks ago and was astonished at his appearance. Fonzi is just the right description.
Brick Oven Bill
Obama: ‘Constitution Stained’”
Anita Dunn, wife of top Obama lawyer, and former Obama employee, speaking in a manner very much like a frog trying to catch flies with its tongue:
“Chairman Mao is my philosophical leader.”
You really need to watch the tongue in the video. There is something very wrong with this woman. Following the circulation of this video, Obama promoted Anita’s husband.
kdaug
@Brick Oven Bill:
Hmmm. This is the same party that’s been co-opted by the birthers, deathers, racists, and Republicans? The one with Sarah Palin as it’s leader? The one with no real agenda or ideas other that “I’m mad!!!!!11! Washington suxors!”?
No, thanks.
FlipYrWhig
@The Republic of Stupidity: I think there’s a _huge_ swathe of the public that hates the government worse than any other aspect of modern society. Which is not to say that they like those other aspects; their hate for the government is just that much more intense than their hate for insurance companies, oil companies, etc. I bet their reaction is, “That would suck, but getting the government involved would only make a bad situation worse.”
Kryptik
@Betty:
It might be worth it, just to see Cesar Milan reach and snap behind Judd Gregg’s ear and go “TSST!”
Josh Huaco
And Cinder Block Crematorium Bill returns. Is there a pie filter for Safari?
bemused
@FlipYrWhig:
Exactly. Where are the progressive sound bites?
Al Franken said recently that the Democrats’ bumper sticker on hcr would say “continued on bumper sticker 2”. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
It’s a mystery to me why so many R’s I know haven’t given up thinking their legislators are actually working for them vs big bidness.
@John O:
Bring up inconvenient facts like R’s votes to screw them to an R & like John O said, it’s crickets. Blind loyalty?
El Cid
@Brick Oven Bill: You’re such a useless fucking parody retard. Fuck whoever it is that thinks this shit is funny.
Fuck you, whoever thinks this bad imitation of a pig-headed asshole is funny.
Kirk Spencer
@kdaug: Speaking of… that may be coming to an end. Eric Erickson is banning truthers and birthers from Red State. (No, I refuse to link. Not even for this.)
Lurker
I got into an argument with a co-worker yesterday. He had all kinds of odd notions about “Obamacare” (even though CONGRESS wrote this legislation, not President Obama).
He was surprised that I’ve been rejected three times for private health insurance. He was even more surprised that I could not go on my spouse’s private health insurance — that the insurer could reject part of a couple and accept the other. (Duh). He honestly didn’t know how bad the private insurance market was for people with preexisting conditions, and he took offense at the thought of rejecting people with preexisting conditions. However, he still opposed “Obamacare.”
He complained that no one could find out what was in the bill for themselves. He demanded to see the legislation online in PDF format. I didn’t have the links memorized, but I told him it was online for anyone to read.
He told me that “socialized medicine” was wrong. I told him that the Senate bill had no government providers, and that it used only private insurers, private medical facilities and private medical workers.
He told me that the government couldn’t do anything right, and he didn’t trust them to get involved with his health care. I repeated that the Senate bill relied on private insurers, private hospitals and private doctors.
He then said that what we needed was not “government healthcare,” but instead more regulation of existing private insurers. I *again* repeated that that was what the Senate bill did — that it relied exclusively on private insurers the same way Switzerland’s system relies on private insurers.
He told me that he didn’t want higher taxes to pay for someone else’s health care. I told him that the Senate bill would let me buy my own private health insurance with my own money. (I left out the lower-income subsidies for simplicity’s sake).
He said we should ban discrimination against preexisting conditions, but we should not have a mandate for individuals to purchase coverage. I told him that would make his individual insurance premiums skyrocket. I pointed out that’s what New York and New Jersey have right now, and their premiums are higher because healthy people can choose not to purchase insurance coverage until they get sick. I told him Massachusetts’ Swiss-style universal system keeps premiums down for everyone by forcing healthy people into the pool. The premiums of the healthy people help pay for the cost of treating the sick people.
He told me that health insurance was not a right, and that other countries that made health care a right did so at the expense of their citizens’ freedom. He said that we Americans only get great things like the Bill of Rights because we can deny health care to our citizens. (WTF?!?!?!?)
He then said that universal health care only worked in other countries because they had smaller populations. I told him that this bill brings coverage to only 30 million uninsured Americans, less than the population of Canada.
He said doctors barely earn enough now to cover their malpractice insurance and their medical school debt. He said that health reform would cut medical wages and drive doctors out of business. I pointed out that more and more folks are losing their health insurance all the time, and I asked him how awesome it would be if *no* doctor could count on getting paid for their services in the future because the majority of their patients were uninsured and unable to pay.
Again and again, I asked him *why he didn’t want me to pay for my own health insurance with my own money.* He had no good answer for that.
He did tell me that he listened to a lot of Rush Limbaugh and that he agreed with Rush on everything. I demanded that he tell me Rush Limbaugh’s plan to help people like me. He didn’t know. I also pointed out that Rush Limbaugh earned enough money to cover his own medical costs, so Rush Limbaugh could not relate to uninsured Americans.
Again, he had no good answer for that. My co-worker just opposes health reform. In the name of freedom.
Excuse me while I slam my head against this desk.
*slam*
*slam*
*slam*
b-psycho
The ease with which some responded to my questions with basically “but the libruls are worse!” was amusing, in a sad way.
Brick Oven Bill
Well then you are surely right El Cid. I think she said she was actually ‘joking’. You can tell this by viewing the video (sight, sound, although filtered through media).
After Glenn went after her, she stepped down not in defeat, but instead to spend more time with her family, or perhaps to pursue other career goals.
This we must understand.
The Good Chairman killed 70 million people, which is a very good way to avoid bloodshed. This is much better than Hitler, who killed 6 million Jews.
70 is less than 6, you see.
GregB
I wonder what political party in America would be the most likely party to instigate purges against the intellectuals and the educated?
Help me with this one BOB.
-G
Nick
@Robin G:
Of course they’ve tried…Grayson’s been out there, so has Sherrod Brown. Grijalva spends to little time attacking conservatives and more time attacking the administration, but he’s been out there too.
The media IGNORES them.
mcc
@Lurker:
For the record, a good canned response for these situations is “thomas.gov”.
Alas, that only helps if someone actually wants to read the bill and isn’t just using “I haven’t seen it” as an excuse to oppose it, since they have to know which bill to look up. You can get from the front page of Thomas there to the health care bill by clicking “H.R. 3590”, which is under “top 5” on the left, but you wouldn’t know to do that on your own and an incurious person wouldn’t think to try. Still, “thomas.gov” is the easiest to remember / safest thing to say and it works in all circumstances.
(For the health care bill specifically, a better reference might be “democrats.senate.gov”– the most recent bill text has been linked from the top of the page for a couple months.)
cat48
@Betty:
I don’t think the Whisperer could help Dems. They have always been like this. They undermined Carter, Clinton, and now Obama. They don’t think as a “pack.” That is their problem. It was all so predictable to me, but then I have been around a long time. The Senators behave like they are self-employed. They always have. A strong Speaker like Pelosi is usually able to keep the House together for a vote. I don’t know what would work in the Senate. Maybe shorter terms–if they had to worry about getting re-elected every 2 yrs., they might not be such loners.
mcc
Brick Oven Bill is fucking with you! He’s not an actual conservative! Stop responding to him!
scudbucket
@FlipYrWhig: We have a populace that sees the government as a bigger demon than insurance conglomerates.
To think otherwise is slightly subversive, anti-American. The media embraces this view even more than the average citizen, though in a more nuanced form. The meta-belief belief they hold, it seems to me, is that a reluctance to embrace government intervention promoting/sustaining the social contract is healthy, and at the core of American free-market values. It follows from this that the burden for those advocating government regulation or intervention is ridiculously high. Simply demonstrating that a government-implemented solution actually leads to better outcomes according to some preferred value doesn’t suffice, and is in fact laughable. What you have to do, in normal argumentative discourse, is show that a ‘free-market’ (read: pro-corporate) solution to a particular problem is impossible. And pointing out that a free-market solution is unlikely to achieve its goal, or that it leads to unintended additional problems, is cast aside as being argumentative.
Brick Oven Bill
Only if you can define ‘intellectuals’ and ‘educated’, can I provide you with an accurate response GregB.
Help me help you.
Nick
@Cat Lady:
This is complete bullshit and I’ll give you two words as to why
MAX CLELAND.
licensed to kill time
@Lurker:
Great rant and good on you for taking your co-worker on in good faith. Rush Limbaugh is a cancer on the body politic and he does immense harm to low information voters and gives tacit permission to selfish assholes (like a wealthy neighbor of mine who thinks he walks on water).
Your poor head – it’s time for you to stop all of that slammin’ and give yourself kudos for trying, anyway.
aimai
Lurker,
You know your co-worker best and maybe you feel like you didn’t make a dent. But I think you should really feel proud of yourself, and take heart. You did a really good job of offering this guy information that he may ultimately be able to use. Its not to be expected that a casual conversation with you is going to produce a “wow! everything Rush told me is a lie” kind of conversion moment. But it is really possible that over time some of the points you made may give him pause when he’s listening to Rush, or give him a chance to seek out new information. Many of the things you said to him he appeared to brush off but its been my experience that often people like that end up mulling over what you said, and even drawing on it later. I definitely had that experience in dealing with my Republican contractor and, as I’ve said elsewhere, after three years of haranguing and gentle argument from me, and the crash of the end of the Bush years, he came all the way around and now sounds quite a bit to the left of me. You really did a sterling job of talking to this guy.
aimai
SiubhanDuinne
@The Grand Panjandrum #46:
I’ll probably get flamed for this, but . . . .
No question that Thiessen is a tool and an apologist for torture, and I think the WaPo made a horrible (though not in the least surprising) decision to give him a regular megaphone.
But on this particular issue, I have to agree with him. Something important and beautiful changed once the IOC decided to let professional athletes compete in the Olympics. I kind of understand the original rationale (IIRC) that strictly amateur athletes suffered financially (and American athletes couldn’t effectively train for competition the way the fully-subsidized Soviet bloc athletes could and did), but what has happened in actuality is more like what happened to the “redress-of-grievances” line in the Constitution that turned into an unchecked gazillion-dollar lobbying system.
So I have to come down on Thiessen’s side on this, although probably for different reasons. (Like George Will and baseball.)
Tonal Crow
Thank you. I’m glad you agree that it’s time for Obama and other leading Democrats to learn how to use their bully pulpits.
bemused
@Lurker
If I was your co-worker I would immediately start researching your arguments & find out for myself. However, that would be what most reasonable people would do if they wanted to know what was fact & what was not. Your stubborn co-worker is too scared to do that, not when his whole being is invested in these beliefs. That would open up a whole can of worms. Question one thing & then he would have to question everything.
Several years ago I could only conclude that listening exclusively to Rush & Faux kills braincells.
A friend just told me she was talking to someone & said something about NAFTA. The other person didn’t know what NAFTA was, thought it was some kind of environmental organization.
Cat Lady
@Nick:
I don’t know what that means. Which is bullshit – what I said or what I said the media said? And what did Max Cleland have to do with what I said?
El Cid
@Brick Oven Bill: Cut the shit out, whoever this is. It just isn’t fucking funny.
Cat Lady
@Lurker:
Good on you, but this is what should have happened in a just world.
bemused
@GregB:
LOL
Then, following the intellectuals, they will turn on the peasants when they have served their purposes.
demo woman
@Cat Lady: During a time of war the democrats were told to stfu or they would be branded as traitors. Yeah the good old days.
Brick Oven Bill
El Cid.
No. You be quiet instead.
jwb
@PaulB: “Ryan cooked the books by asking the CBO to: “assume that the major tax cuts he calls for won’t create any change in federal revenue over the next two decades—at all.”
Why haven’t we heard about this before?
licensed to kill time
Shorter BOB: You shut up! No, YOU shut up! Mom, he hit me!
El Cid
@Brick Oven Bill: You’re a complete fucking jerk. You think you’re funny because you can imitate some asshole right winger. But what you’re doing is joking about how many Chinese starved to death in the Great Famine versus how many [Jews and others] were slaughtered in Nazi Germany to make a joke about how right wing shit-heads ignore all the times they quote Mao and Stalin and Nazis and to pretend outrage that a White House official really wants to implement the Great Famine because she quotes Mao far less frequently than Reagan and Bush and Bush Jr. officials and campaign hacks. Ha ha!
Big deal. You can imitate a right wing Beck fan. Wow. What a fucking satiric achievement. You must be at least 5 or 6 years old to have mastered that.
cat48
John Brennan told Gregory when the Repugs criticize the prez, it helps Al Qaeda. Bond and Peter King demanded he resign or be fired immediately. LOL
Brick Oven Bill
Continuing on…
Hyman Rickover teaches us:
To create you must care. You must have the courage to speak out. The world’s advances always have depended on the courage of its leaders. A certain measure of courage in the private citizen also is necessary to the good conduct of the State.
Otherwise men who have power through riches, intrigue, or office will administer the State at will, and ultimately to their private advantage. For the citizen, this courage means a frank exposition of a problem and a decrying of the excesses of power.
It takes courage to do this because in our polite society frank speech is discouraged. But when this attitude relates to questions involving the welfare or survival of the Nation, it is singularly unfitting to remain evasive. It is not only possible, but in fact the duty of everyone to state precisely what his knowledge and conscience compel him to say.
Many of today’s problems can be brought forward only by complete candor and frankness; deep respect for the facts, however unpleasant and uncomfortable; great efforts to know them where they are not readily available; and drawing conclusions guided only by rigorous logic.
Go Teabaggers.
El Cid
Somebody have a killfile link for Greasemonkey?
Brick Oven Bill
El Cid.
You may now please be quiet.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T but watching Olmpics coverage last night and this afternoon, I am a bit surprised at all the GE spots NBC is running. I’m sure on paper it shows up as paid ad revenue, but since GE owns NBC . . . . Just sayin’, as Bob Costas would say.
bemused
Oh God. When Brick Oven shows up it reminds me of how quickly a chicken carcass goes bad in the garbage can & I forgot to take out the trash.
Brick Oven Bill
GE’s Jeffery Immelt is also Obama’s economic advisor SiubhanDuinne.
Windmills. Rachel.
Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding
You may now please be quiet as well bemused.
Cat Lady
@demo woman:
Yeah, no.
I think it was Howie “Conflict of Interest” Kurtz in his chats for Hiatt’s Fish Wrap (R) that kept insisting that if the Democrats didn’t throw tantrums about Bush’s lawlessness, then reporters couldn’t be blamed for not reporting on Bush’s lawlessness. I think Cilizza ran with that ball, too. I really don’t want to go back and look through the archives to confirm who said what and when, because it will give me a sad. I just remember being all WTF?! when that argument was repeated by “a media critic” as the reason why our media isn’t teh suck, and then firing Froomkin was the cherry on top.
Hob
El @El Cid: Here’s the pie filter.
mcc: I think BOB is both here to fuck with us, and also a person with genuinely vile beliefs who wishes harm on others. But either way, yeah, it’d be nice if people didn’t answer him and egg him on.
FlipYrWhig
@scudbucket:
I completely concur, and Lurker‘s story helps prove it. And I think it’s because the idea that The Free World was up against “totalitarian” regimes–the view that Nazis and Communists are two sides of the same coin, and that coin was The Government Telling You What To Do–got thoroughly entrenched over the 20th century. It became the manner by which Americans were exceptional. And it’s not going away anytime soon.
To the degree that rhetoric and framing accomplish anything, IMHO the most necessary counternarrative we need is that the government, when run by competent Democrats, sets right again things that are unfair. And doesn’t have to apologize or act embarrassed for doing so. I think Obama speaks this way a lot, and it’s appealing. But the center-right Democrats just don’t believe it, and they have calculated that they are better suited appealing to their voters as brakes on the other kind of Democrats–who just like to tax, spend, and waste–rather than as fairness-and-justice-makers.
JGabriel
Brick Oven Bill:
Hmm, why don’t we let the Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement field that one:
Does that it explain it, clearly enough that even an intelligence as mean as your own can comprehend it, BOB?
.
Lesley
Hey bring on the literacy tests. Every single tea bagging idiot would fail and it would be the end of the Stupid Party.
Nick
@Cat Lady: What the media said, because Max Cleland, a Senator from Georgia, was sure making a fuss and the media teamed up with his opponent to demonize him and cost him his Senate seat.
There were Democrats who were making a fuss, they were either demonized, marginalized, or bashed into submission.
Nick
@Cat Lady:
Except, like I said, Democrats DID throw tantrums and they were defeated or told to STFU.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Brick Oven Bill:
Admiral Hyman Rickover… the architect of the modern US Navy.
A brilliant man.
A nice quote.
ABSOLUTELY nothing in that quote pertains to teabagging…
Nice try.
Epic fail.
No cigar.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Nick:
And ignored by the so-called lib’rul MSM…
And when so-called ‘
conservativeHATE talk’ radio dominates the market by 90% to 10%, and more, in some markets… you certainly DIDN’T hear about it on AM radio, that’s for sure.Kennedy
John,
You need a new tag to the effect of “We Welcome Our Chinese Overlords” reserved for posts as depressing as this one.
Or however you want to word it. But it needs a tag imo.
licensed to kill time
@The Republic of Stupidity:
I think BOB’s got him confused with that dude Snoopy was always after.
jurassicpork
Fox News at its Finest, Pt IX.
JGabriel
@Brick Oven Bill: And just in case 111 has too many words for you to read in one sitting, here’s a video — a succession of pretty still pictures that, when presented at a rate over ~15 frames per second, give the impression of motion — where Rachel Maddow breaks it down for you.
I can think of few things more fury-inducing than listening to some ignorant jackass advocate for a return to those practices by which we discriminated and enforced racism against our fellow citizens in the past. The recent past.
So. Watch the pretty pictures go by, BOB, and learn.
.
Cat Lady
@Nick: @Nick:
Oh, agreed. Well then like Cole said in earlier post, Nothing is going to change until our pudgy, well-paid, lazy stenographer class is as desperate as the rest of the American people.
How can rational discussion prevail when it’s so much easier to be stoopid and negative? Obama can’t do it all. What else will work? We need to figure this out soon because fat, lazy, stupid, hateful and dangerous is where we’re going, and we ain’t seen nothing yet.
SIA
Great post. I feel oddly depressed.
The Republic of Stupidity
@licensed to kill time:
You could have stopped w/ “I think BOB’s confused” …
As a matter of fact… that’s one of those multiple use comments.
Save it… it’ll come in handy over and over and over again.
But enough of that…
J. Michael Neal
@aimai:
Because they are interested in the truth. Obama has talked about this problem, but he has done so after understanding what is actually going on. With regards to the Anthem/Blue Cross rate increases, the problem is not evil insurance companies. It’s the system, in which the insurance companies are doing the only rational thing.
First, the 39% rate increase only applies to a fairly small fraction of the already small fraction of customers that buy individual insurance. The problem is that, in many of the risk pools, healthy people have cancelled their insurance, leaving only the sicker ones to care for. I realize that jenniebee refuses to believe that adverse selection occurs in the health insurance market, but that’s exactly what’s happening here.
Sure, it might be more politically effective, and would certainly make for a shorter sound bite, if Obama went on the air and just attacked the insurance companies as evil. It would also be wrong, certainly on a factual basis. The problem isn’t the insurance companies’ behavior. It’s the system the insurance companies operate in. They aren’t evil; they’re horribly inefficient at achieving the goals we set for the health care system. Ideally, we’d switch to a single payer system and eliminate the insurance companies altogether, but it’s not because of their black hearts, just because they don’t serve any purpose.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Brick Oven Bill:
Well, Billybob, that issue was settled a long time ago:
Remember Bill, it’s not the intent. It’s the outcome that matters. If a literacy test keeps people away from the polls, then it is illegal and unconstitutional for that reason alone. It doesn’t matter what the rationale is for having the test. The Constitution does not prescribe any test or demonstrations of skill or knowledge as a prerequisite to voting.
Sorry.
jeffreyw
@SIA:
Cheer up, hon. Homer is still available.
Tonal Crow
@FlipYrWhig: There are many progressives who distrust (though not usually hate) governments. They generally believe that both governments and corporations tend to limit personal liberty, and that both need continuous, rigorous citizen supervision. You’ll usually find these people in the civil libertarian camp. I’m one of them.
NR
@mcc:
They definitely share in the blame, because Harry Reid refuses to play hardball with the Republicans.
If the Republicans want to put a bunch of bullshit in the jobs bill in exchange for their support, Harry Reid should tell them to go to hell. Then, put the bill on the floor as-is and dare the Republicans to filibuster it. If they do, get out there every day and say “We could have X number of people back to work in a month but for the Republican filibuster. Republicans are stopping us from putting Americans back to work.” Say it every fucking day until November if you have to. No more of this crap where he pulls every single bill that doesn’t get 60 votes.
Who is worse, I ask you – the Republicans who kill every piece of legislation that could help America, or the Democrats who routinely let them do it in the most painless way possible?
Tonal Crow
@FlipYrWhig: The point is not whether people reading the bumper stickers believe that HCR would enact literal “death panels”. Rather, it’s whether the stickers induce an emotional aversion to HCR. Playing to the emotions is where the GOP excels, and where the Democrats bite like starving vampires.
mcc
So I’m thinking about Lurker’s story, and although it isn’t really the important thing about the story, I’m kind of bothered that I can’t think of an immediate, obvious answer to something like “He demanded to see the legislation online in PDF format”.
I mentioned thomas.gov but again that’s just a big baffling search engine you have to actually learn to use. What I was really suggesting there is something more like “tell them to poke around on Google News until they find the bill number, then go to thomas.gov and type it in, and hope they managed to figure out they want H.R. 3590 and not H.R. 3692”.
I’m wondering if it would be useful for there to be a site somewhere with an easy-to-remember URL that’s just a constantly-updated cheat sheet of a bunch of clearly labeled links to “The Health Care Bill” and “The Jobs Bill” and whatever primary documents are in the news at any given moment. If I were to set something like this up, would this be something at least one other person would use (either as a quick reference or as something to direct people to)?
Jules
@Lurker:
I guess that’s why they all drive those cheap cars and live in rundown neighborhoods and send their kids to the local public school.
Tonal Crow
@mcc:
Well, if the Democrats in power didn’t hit that bee-autiful slow ball out of the park, then their worth is indeed in question and they indeed bear part of the blame. Without good rhetoric from the top, progress is far more difficult.
Tonal Crow
@NR: This. This every day.
Jules
@mcc:
http://reid.senate.gov/
It is right on the front page of Reid’s website.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brick Oven Bill #107:
Let’s clarify, BoB, using the tools of logic at our disposal.
Jeffrey [correct spelling] Immelt is a *member* (one of many) of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.
So is Martin Feldstein, former *chief economic advisor* to President Ronald Reagan.
What’s your damned point?
Jess
Before y’all sink into a black pit of despair, check out Norman Ornstein’s column from a few weeks ago and think again.
mcc
@NR:
Th… that’s exactly what Harry Reid did.
The bill is going to the floor Feb.22, as soon as Congress gets back from their scheduled break.
cat48
@Tonal Crow:
NYT Editorial on 2/12/10 “How Not to Write a Jobs Bill” and WP had article also.
mcc
@Jules: Okay, so that’s actually pretty good! Plus it’s got a prominent jobs bill link. But I wasn’t thinking so much of “where’s the PDF for the health care bill” specifically, what I was thinking of was more something that you could reference to find “whatever’s hot this week” without having to check ahead of time to see if it had it.
Even if Reid keeps it updated constantly (I imagine it does, the democrats.senate.gov page was good about always having the latest draft version of the HCR bill) his page would never have links to, for example, the jobs bill the House already passed. What I’m wondering is if it would be useful to aggregate links to the raw text of House bills, Senate bills, court decisions etc in one place. Maybe not. I dunno.
scudbucket
@mcc: If I were to set something like this up, would this be something at least one other person would use (either as a quick reference or as something to direct people to)?
Yes. I certainly would use it and refer people to it and pull quotations from it. One thought from my own experience on this: realizing that the current incarnations of the HCR bill are about as good as it could realistically be (at it’s core, could be better on the edges) takes some serious hammering on the un-believers, of which I was one. The challenge is to get people to see how all the various provisions hang together, and what the alternative to passing it would look like. Personally, I need to thank the commenters here – mcc, JMN, FlipYrWhig, Auliridae, etc. – for trying (successfully in my case) to get folks to understand this.
Tonal Crow
@mcc:
Not quite. He did replace the Baucus/Grassley bill will his own, which is much smaller. What he didn’t do is create a convincing narrative about why he did that, or what the Republicans were doing to the Baucus/Grassley bill that he felt needed to be stopped. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0211/Harry-Reid-scales-back-Senate-jobs-bill-reflecting-voter-anger .
We need better rhetoric than that.
scudbucket
@FlipYrWhig: the government, when run by competent Democrats, sets right again things that are unfair. And doesn’t have to apologize or act embarrassed for doing so.
Agreed. In my view, the lack of unapologetic, non-defensive assertions that government programs benefit citizens and that regulation ensures stability and fairness in markets is the saddest thing about the Democrat’s marketing strategy.
SIA
@jeffreyw: Thank you dahling. He is adorable. You need to take him home.
General Winfield Stuck
Try to imagine a world without the US Senate as of today. What would be happening? Sure there are some blue dogs and even a few libs in the House who would buck at doing the right thing which would be cracking a hard whip on industry that are out of control in many ways considering the reasonable profit model the free enterprise capitalistic system as functioning in a way that benefits society as a whole. There would be some bucking and himming and hawwing but they would by and large do the right thing to fix this country under Pelosi’s leadership and rank and file liberal who are the majority. Along with the majoritarian rule of that body.
And Obama, does anyone really think he is a DLC corporatist at heart, considering his history of community organizing and other political philosophies espoused in books and speech:?
Granted he is not anti corporatist, as some on the left would like him to be, but do you think he wouldn’t responsibly put forth prudent reforms and re regulations on the business world that is out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct? I say no in a fundamental way.
And what do we have, despite all the tea bagging horseshit and screwed up clueless media? A government that the people of the US firmly put democrats in charge of running the country a little over a year ago. Nothing has really changed but Obama’s poll numbers dropping as expected when the honey moon is over, and the opposition getting pissed at the changes dems propose. But still with a poll average in the high 40’s and low 50’s, a little better than Reagan or Clinton at this stage.
So what is the problem, as our media has been and was screwed up before voters gave dems the levers of power, and wingnuts are still being wingnuts, though donning some new costumes and memes.
And even with dems having 60 and now 59 votes in the US Senate, no one should have expected all of our caucus to fall in lockstep like wingnuts do. It has never been that way, and actually, Reid and Pelosi haven’t done that bad in keeping most in line, as the Senate HCR bill getting passed proves, and fixes made for a final bill that even Joe Lieberman was expected to vote for cloture on, as was Nelson and the others to let the final vote occur. Then Mass happened and the wingers got one extra vote. Just one. And everything stopped cold.
So what is the problem? It is the Senate and it’s rules and a cabal of southern wingnuts who control the right wing and moderate wing of 2 or 3 goopers. It is a coup of sorts using rule 22 of the Standing Rules of the Senate as the tool of closing down the senate for anything Obama wants or the dems. There is no hard ball politicking going on by wingnuts. There is no politcking at all other than to stand in the corner and light a match to the greatest deliberative body on earth daring the dems to stop them with equal irresponsible actions. Just say NO. to everything is the senate wingnut message, on pain of political execution for any who don’t go along, by right wing bloggers and talkers who run the GOP clown car lock stock and barrel.
There really is nothing Obama can do against this other than do what he has been doing lately, reading the riot act to Mitch Mcconnell telling the truth that senate wingnuts are out to scuttle his agenda and his presidency, by not participating in any form with even a smidgeon of good faith.
And I agree that the rest of the dem family in congress and out needs to for once learn to do regimented style messaging. But I do not blame them at all for what is happening, nor Obama. Because a group of elected members from the republican party in the Senate has gone the sedition route, albeit legally, by abusing a rule to close for business the majorities will in the US Senate, well beyond any rational definition of maintaining minority rights.
So I wish the left would quit parsing the entrails of their own leaders for something they could have done different, because there is nothing. Though now they can make some changes by calling the situation what it is on a regular basis. But they cannot force Americans to believe them and they cannot force the media to be responsible.
This is the GOP and the southern delegation running the Senate and their supporters everywhere that is to blame. All of it. No exceptions. It is basically in the hands of US voters to do something about the situation, dems can try and educate them, the media won’t by and large, but this is on the citizens. It is not that hard to figure out, but they have to take the time to educate themselves. Sometimes they do, usually after much damage has been done. Let’s just hope they remember what GOP governance did for them not that long ago.
Mike in NC
I, for one, will welcome our new Uzbek overlords. They’re damn sure to be an improvement over the GOP and the Teabaggers. We’ll probably all get free health care, a goat, and a couple of chickens!
mr. whipple
@General Winfield Stuck:
What he said. Although sometimes it’s hard to fight anger and disappointment, always focus on Republicans.
ProgressiveJoZ
John, you ought to be going on every TV program everywhere and screaming this into the public’s ear holes.
Seriously I don’t understand why more people are not saying the things you are saying.
Toni
The main problem is that the WH and the Senate Dems are not on the same page.
Take the jobs bill. During the SOTU, the President outlined several of his ideas for job creation. Logically it would seem that the next step was that within a few days the Senate would come up with a bill that incorporated these ideas. Yet when they put up their bill, it was quite different. Even what Reid is proposing doesn’t quite match up. So the message is lost, there is no cohesiveness, and the public ends up thinking they’re incompetent.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
At least you’re at your wits end for the right reasons, i.e. right wing morons.
rs
@Lesley: I agree. Let Tancredo write one for black and Hispanic voters, but Chuck D gets to write it for white voters.
celticdragonchick
@Brick Oven Bill:
Fuck you, you goddamned historically illiterate piece of shit!
Let’s see how much fun it is when your local voting board skews the tests to keep you out like they did to African Americans for one hundred years.
BTW…if you are trolling for fun…fuck you anyway.
celticdragonchick
@Lurker:
Yep. I’ve heard that one a few times from “under-informed” Rush Limbaugh ditto heads.
Dontchaknow!
*(wink)*
Comrade Kevin
@Brick Oven Bill: The “literacy tests” were rigged so that African Americans would never pass them, no matter how literate they were.
Fuck off.
Aredubya
@geg6 + @Napoleon – I’m quite certain that this is how it would go down. You’re both entirely right that, eventually, that savings would turn out to be a positive boon for the indebted students and the country at large. However, the short term would look like:
1) Feds move to cease the pub-to-private loan programs
2) Private loan companies lay off people like crazy
3) ????
4) Profit!
Actually, for once, we can skip step 3 (and didn’t even need to collect underpants). That’s really how they’ll remain profitable, at least for a short period of time while they retool their business. The same would go for any industry that’s being bankrolled by federal contracts. Even worse, the savings incurred would likely turn into deficit reduction, with a neat combination of foolish fiscal policy (that Obama would gain no credit with the vast majority of the electorate) and increased unemployment (that Obama would get undue blame for). I don’t like it, but I do believe that’s how it would go down.
Don’t think it’s plausible? Take the attempts to retool Medicare part D as part of HCR. The GOP jumps all over it as slashing Medicare. It actually saves the country money, while replacing a pub-to-private boondoggle with more generic benefit support. Do the public and media get this second point? Nope, not at all. They take the GOP attacks at face value, not considering the reality. Rinse/repeat, that’s their strategy. And it’s working.