I’m with DougJ and others– just be quiet, Roberts.
When did the Republicans become such whiners? Was it always this way, because right now the entire party seems to be based on a perpetual whine. The elitists don’t like us. The media is unfair. The Democrats aren’t being bi-partisan. They want to force gay cocks down our throats. They want to raise my taxes. Jon Stewart was mean to Marc Thiessen. Katie Couric asked mean questions.
On and on and on and on. Nothing but grievance after grievance building into one long sustained whine. You’d never know that they ran things as recently as 15 months ago, they way they are acting, and have basically had their way in politics for the last two decades.
Hell, the whole basis of the tea party movement is a sustained whine from Republicans upset they got voted out of office because they suck and old white people upset that the country is changing. Yet listen to them, and you realize how utterly full of it they are- “No taxation without representation….” Ok- so what is your position on DC Statehood, tea partiers? If DC was overwhelmingly white and leaned Republican, the wingnuts would be referring to it as the “occupied territories.”
I’m so sick of it all. I can handle Republicans as assholes. I can’t handle the damned whining.
cervantes
A permanent sense of victimization is a fundamental feature of conservative psychology, actually. They were just as whiny and complained just as much of being oppressed when they were in power as they do now. It’s what they do. It’s who they are.
MikeJ
“This is my microphone.”
moe99
They want to bring real waterboarding back, I’m sure:
http://www.salon.com/news/torture/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/03/09/waterboarding_for_dummies
Mnemosyne
Right around the time that Nixon realized he could turn his sense of grievance against the world into political success.
SiubhanDuinne
Somewhat O/T: Y’all may know this — I haven’t checked today’s earlier threads yet from work — but Ralph Reed has announced that he will not run for the GA-07 Congressional seat being vacated by John Linder. We had discussed him a week or so ago as a likely candidate, I think maybe in one of Dengre’s threads.
Corner Stone
The 60’s.
Kryptik
It’s the Persecution Complex, John. And it’s been part and parcel of their tactics for ages. Look at the whole ‘liberal media’ smear. It’s been one long persecution complex-fed campaign, and look how it’s worked out for them.
Even when they run things, they act like the aggrieved party because they can’t stand to not have things go their way, and somehow, someway, it garners sympathy from people who are harmed the most by their policies, and even worse, the connected and the powerful who share the same bubble as they do.
slag
Yes. It really has always been this way. By virtue of their persistently decrying “victimology”, Republicans have always gotten away with being this whiny. Always.
Or: What Kryptik said.
martha
John, I think Jon Stewart spoke quite eloquently about this subject a year ago–paraphrased, I believe he said something like “it’s your turn to eat the shit taco, now do it and enjoy it…”
But, they’re behaving like 8 year olds.
Typical.
Mnemosyne
See also: Orthogonians vs. Franklins.
Nixon’s personal resentments are the base of the modern Republican Party. It’s pretty sick when you think about it.
Shinobi
Should someone call Johnny’s Mommy or Daddy? I heard the kids on the playground were mean to him today.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
When you feel entitled to the core of your lily white soul, every perceived slight is an insult to your existence.
And shrinking as the majority race in the country they believe to their core is theirs, cannot be easily remedied in a supposedly free county, so the whining is set on rock and roll. We are going to have to fight these fuckers, again, down the road. And not with words and slogans.
Kryptik
@martha:
I think Jon set it better when he noted that most of the GOP folks were “confusing ‘tyranny’ with losing”.
The sad part is how well they’ve worked the refs to make them agree that losing WAS tyranny.
ellaesther
Via Gawker, via the International Herald Tribune from 1964 (coincidentally the year of my birth, but I digress):
former_friend
John knows that, Cervantes. Not sure what the game is, but John Cole knows Republicans are watb’s from way back.
Though I have to wonder: it’s almost like Americans don’t know the Right stands for INequality and the doomed right of would-be Kings. Or even that our nation fought WWII against the Right.
It’s just odd.
Oh, and the Republicans “have basically had their way in politics for the last
twothree decades.”I’d say “fixed” but Cole knows that too.
All this feigned ignorance brings up the question of how long before the money looted from the taxpayers filters down through the blogs … who knows? It just seems now would be a time for intelligent honesty and presentation of facts. Seems like it, but it’s not happening … why?
Must be one of those unknown unknowns. But I do know that Cole is aware that Republican named Reagan held power in the 80’s.
trollhattan
I, for one, can’t wait to see what sort of grumpy old man CJ Roberts turns into. He’s well on his way (Gawd help us all).
ellaesther
@cervantes: Also. This. Also.
debit
@martha: I think it was, “You lost. It’s supposed to taste like a shit taco.”
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: Way before the ’60s. “Who lost China?” was one whiny blamefest. Douglas MacArthur did a lot of finger-pointing and stab-in-the-back complaining.
The Grand Panjandrum
Shit I remember when former Rep Tom Davis (R-VA) was chairman of the House committee that oversaw DC. He butted into local politics every chance he got. You had Congress critters from all corners of the country sticking their noses into local politics! State rights and local control my ass. Its only invasive Big Gummint when you don’t like the policy if GOP World. Wasn’t it the GOP who was screaming for the House committee to stop marriage equality in DC? Oh, yeah, it was.
John Arbuthnot Fisher
Presiding while black is undoubtedly a contributing factor. When it comes to the most visceral, non-policy whining, as in birth certificates, Van Jones, Sessions on Sotomayor, etc., it’s hard to imagine anything but resentment over race and cultural identity motivating Republicans.
brantl
These guys have been whining that taxes were too steep on them since there ever were taxes. We have the least taxes on income in the industrialized word, and it’s been that way for EVAH. They’ve always been this whiny.
Citizen_X
You mean health care, John, HEALTH CARE, HEALTH CARE, HEALTH CARE!
Christ on a crutch, don’t give the game away!
Bill E Pilgrim
November 2006, followed by November 2008.
When in power, wield it without compromise or mercy. When out of power, whine endlessly about how no one will compromise or let you run things.
It’s like they’re following a manual written by Ghengis Kahn and Felix Unger.
Ash Can
To be honest, there’s plenty of whining on both sides. The thing is, though, the whining on the left is tempered and somewhat offset by an awareness of a greater good, and a general desire and willingness to do positive things for people in the interest of pursuing that greater good. On the right, however, there’s only whining. They have no sensitivity to or awareness of a greater good beyond themselves. The world beyond themselves is something to be feared and mistrusted, and derided as something inferior to themselves. When that world inevitably intrudes upon their comfortable little bubble, they react. And since they don’t have the psychological tools or social support to react in a constructive and therefore effective manner, their reaction defaults to whining.
bayville
The sad thing is, these whining GOP guys and gals are the ones Dems are petrified of.
Violet
They can’t not do it. Republicans are essentially conservatives – as in, they want to conserve the status quo. Something happens that threatens the way things are (whites being in power, men running things, etc.) and they try to stop it from happening. Shouting, whining, lying – whatever it takes. Anything to maintain the status quo.
Sully likes to pretend that conservatism is about Oakeshott and fiscal responsibility and so forth. And it may be in some academic sense. But in the down and dirty real world we all live in, it’s about fear. Fear of change and fear of losing power – those are what really motivates conservatives and hence Republicans. Fear is the fuel for the conservative engine.
Jason B at Work
I’m dealing with some cognitive dissonance on this, I admit. On the one hand, John Cole and others are certainly right about the constant desperate thumbsucking of Republicans lately, but on the other, I fundamentally agree with Roberts on issues of decorum. However, in my opinion, he has just broken those same rules by speaking up about it. At least he had the sense to wait it out a bit. I actually don’t blame him for being pissed off about the SOTU address. Obama was out of line, clearly, not that I disagree with him on substance. Given the traditions of Washington, and the careful and tense sort of civility that must be protected in order to stave off national dissolution (does anyone here doubt the fragility of the country given how polarized things are, and how awful the media is doing its job?), I figure the disregard of these traditions is only going to come back to bite us in the ass, because now that the President has now shifted the window of acceptable behavior even just this little bit, what do you think the Republicans are going to do next time they get into the oval office? (Hopefully decades from now.) I can guarantee you it won’t be a gently mocking turn of phrase.
Maude
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
This.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Kryptik: Nah, they were worse when in power. I mean there were perpetual victims, “christians being persecuted” and all the rest of it, but those actually in power were swaggering and calling everyone traitors.
They definitely became less swagger and more whine once they lost. It’s the passive-aggressive side of someone who’s basically just aggressive.
Clark
Reminds me of one of my all time favorite Onion articles. And Republicans keep making it relevant too.
zmullls
Roosevelt critized the Supreme Court plenty, and tried to stack the deck with tons of new Justices.
The SC can decide whatever they want, and the President of the United States can say what he wants about it.
I heard the latest meme today that SOTU speeches have become “partisan pep rallies” and maybe SCOTUS shouldn’t attend.
Well, duh. It’s the President’s annual chance to make his case on his initiatives and goals. It’s inherently “political” in the best sense. And if one side is looking for any and all disagreement, and not looking for common ground, you can bet your bottom dollar it will look “partisan.”
Not to mention that there’s a lot of *agreement* on not liking the Citizens United case.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Jason B at Work:
Actually it wasn’t at all clear to me that Roberts was recommending that everyone be non-reactive like the court, or whether he wished instead that the Justices could get up and yell also.
FormerSwingVoter
Dude, my roommate is a full-fledged wingnut, to a literally unnerving degree (as in, “too bad the South lost the Civil War”, etc). He was complaining about the march to soshulism when Bush was in office. He pointed to the decline of the dollar before the financial crisis hit and said that it was proof that soshulism was BAD and that the country was DOOMED because we were being driven to SOSHULISM. I wasn’t sure how the Republican gov’t he voted in could possibly be driving us into soshulism. Neither was he. This is even ignoring how completely nonsensical the argument was: Soshulism is bad because the dollar was falling in value compared to the Euro.
The one thing he knows – the only thing – is that he is a victim because there are people who disagree with him. This is how he feels now, this is how he felt five years ago when Repubs controlled all three branches, and it’s how he will always feel at any and every point in the future.
It’s time to stop treating conservatives as if their “tough guy” self-image has any bearing in reality. They are worthless, hysterical, pearl-clutching wussies and deserve to be treated like the sniveling cowards they are.
jayjaybear
The confluence of the Republican Party (and the political Right in general) and right-wing Christianity is one huge whitewater rapids of high-pitched whimpering. Both of the tributaries here institutionalize victimhood and persecution, which turns both of those into necessities. Without persecution, neither the Republicans nor the RW Christians have an identity. This despite the fact that both Republicans and RW Christians are, at worst, well-tolerated and, at best, ascendant in the political world of the US.
El Cid
Since they consider themselves the only legitimate rulers of the nation, and all liberal / Democratic competitors to be mere sideshows and sops to the poors at best and capitalism and authoritarian patriarchy challenging seditious enemies under normal circumstances, it’s only natural that they are shocked, insulted, and aggrieved when Democrats and/or liberals speak plain and blunt truths about right wing behavior and intentions, and that’s even beyond the permanent aggrievement stance they’ve adopted since Northern conservatives condemning progressive reforms in the first years of the 20th century (Teddy R’s “Square Deal,” insulted as anarchist and irresponsible imprisonment of industry) and Southern rich terrorist organizers working to violently roll back post-Civil War civil and political rights for blacks and non-Democrats.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Clark: This one was pretty great too.
Watch it to the end for some added current events relevance.
Corner Stone
@Jason B at Work:
I could do with a little less insider decorum and a little more pimp slapping.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
It was an oblique reference to the days of hippies and free love.
But I agree with you otherwise. The mythical Republican that John Rogers misses so much never, ever existed in reality.
Corner Stone
@Citizen_X:
I knew there was something you guys weren’t telling me!
PTDB, indeed.
EEH
@Citizen_X: My wingnut friend whined exactly that the other day: “Health care is being shoved down our throats!” The she announced that she’s a teabagger. Yeah, that was such a surprise.
Evinfuilt
@Violet:
Winner, its not hard to understand whining when the parties main goal is status quo.
“OMG things will change, stop it stop stop it!”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Corner Stone:
Keep going back.
In The Gathering Storm Perlstein has some intersting stuff about how the conservative wing of the GOP reacted to the manuevers at the 1952 GOP convention which led to Eisenhower being picked over Taft, and the psychology of the Taft wing of the party at that time being based on resentment and persecution complexes nursed thru the Great Depression and WW2 and into the 1950s.
This was in part because big business was able to get along better with FDR and the New Deal Liberals than small business owners during the 30s, 40s and early 50s. The former were able to get large contracts from the federal govt that the latter could not compete for, and small business owners depended more on a paternalistic model for maintaining labor peace in their factories, which was disrupted by the New Deal and emboldened labor unions. Hence the blinding hatred for unions and the gubmit in the small business sector which provided a lot of support for Taft. When Taft lost the nomination, batshit insane paranoia was their reaction.
Corner Stone
@former_friend:
I’m generally onboard with any criticism of Cole, but if this is supposed to be some semi-reference to bloggers getting paid to spread disinformation?
I’m sure it happens somewhere and am equally sure this blog isn’t one of those recipients.
Theys just ignant.
theturtlemoves
Given all the folks tracing this back to the 60s, I’d like to interject a theory that also brings in the joys of inter-generational warfare. It’s the Boomers again. The sense of perpetual victimhood isn’t isolated to conservatives of that generation. Look at the Pumas of today and some of the folks on the left who play Oppression Olympics to determine which group has gotten it worse from The Man. It’s a generation that were taught they were all precious little snowflakes and when the world doesn’t treat them like that, they whine about it. Or maybe not. I just figured the theory would either ring true or piss off a bunch of old farts, which is some reward in itself…
Pasquinade
Daily Show host Jon Stewart made fun of conservative attempts to label President Obama as a tyrannical leader and advised GOP members Tuesday to “pace their rage” because being in the minority party is supposed to taste like a “sh** taco.”
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Stewart_Fox_GOP_confuse_tyranny_with_0408.html
lol..Breitbart whining about St. Patrick’s Day
Svensker
@moe99:
That makes me want to vomit. Sadistic, fucking bastards.
I wonder if the notation about the emergency tracheotomies for waterboardees who are unable to resume breathing (charming, huh?) explains the missing necks on the bodies of the 3 “asymmetrical warfare suicides” ?
Limited government conservatives, my ass.
shortstop
Yes, but they’ve got that attractive bullying trait to balance it out.
John Cole
@former_friend: Nonsense. The Republicans were on the attack in my memory. I may be remembering it wrong, but I’m not playing a game. And yes, I was wrong about how long they have been in charge.
The Populist
The GOP are pussies that is why they whine.
They are pussies because they are greedy, soulless ghouls who can’t manage a checkbook let a lone a fucking budget (conservative my ass).
Let’s see what makes them pussies:
They need laws to watch and follow law abiding citizens over the slightest suspicion and tap phones all in the name of beating the “terrists”.
They run up deficits that make Obama look conservative.
They hide behind a mantra of less government yet nobody has expanded government intrusion into our lives more than them.
They claim to want to have a majority say in government when America made them the minority party. When asked to help craft legislation they hide behind filibusters and holds. The same party that whined when the dems would threaten a filibuster over tax cuts for the rich or a supreme court nom are now using it 100 fold to make dems look ineffective to the average villager.
They hate minimum wage laws, health care or anything that will help the average person yet give the worst kind of government cheese and breaks to corporations who give them contributions.
I can go on and on and you get the picture. These pussies are whiners because they are all about themselves. These people are not keeping in any way to what the founding fathers intended. The founding fathers would never criticize welfare or safety nets that HELP people and families. They would definitely be questioning the GOP on their pro-corporation bullshit (a corporation IS NOT AN INDIVIDUAL you tards).
Pangloss
It isn’t just Vitter who’s wearing soiled diapers in the GOP.
slippy
@EEH: I wish a winger would say that to me. I would respond:
“Oh, that must suck. I remember back when the Iraq war was shoved down our throats, and huge tax cuts for the rich. Sucks to be you, BITCH.”
The Populist
Righties, bring on the coup because you have no idea what will happen when the people see what you have done…they will fight back.
Mike E
That would be handy–wiping out my shitty neighbors while maintaining a spotless household.
Of course, you can skip all the heartache and just refer to the DSM IV, you know, the section that covers the narcissistic cluster of personality disorders. Not that I’m saying neoconservatism is borne out of some kind of mental illness, or anything COUGH BoB COUGH
Shawnzilla
Because they’ve got nothing, you know it and I know it. You can see it when they are talking about Health Care or Global Warming or anything. Talking Points and bullshit.
LuciaMia
Another addition to the Whine List- Karl Rove’s ‘memoir’ came out this week.
Tsulagi
Will go against the grain here saying on balance I agree with Roberts that a president calling out the SCOTUS during a SOTU address is wrong.
Don’t get me wrong, think the court made the wrong decision. And who doesn’t like a public bitchslap? But it was done during a SOTU where like the military assembled in the front rows, SCOTUS justices are expected to remain motionless neither cheering nor booing partisan politics or policy. That’s tradition, and it’s good tradition with a purpose.
If done during something a Questions Period with the justices, slap away. But when the other guys/ladies can’t fight back? Nah.
Don’t think Roberts is whining. An AP story had…
He’s right, and he’s also correct a SOTU address is not the place to conduct that criticism.
Svensker
@theturtlemoves:
Speaking as an old fart, go fuck yourself. Gently, with a flower, of course.
El Cid
Again, you want to historically separate the strain of anti-government paranoid conservatism in the North and Midwest from the anti-federal white supremist anti-secular anti-labor right in the South.
Something often forgotten since the reactionary right wing Southern movement began as Democrats and then post-Civil and Voting-rights became Republicans and then largely took over the party’s leadership, along with their mimics in the West.
JackieBinAZ
@Corner Stone: I think he means money filtering down to the point where bloggers feel an affinity for the moneyed class because they have a shot at being part of it.
The Populist
@Mike E:
I have noticed they are following the writings of Adolf Hitler who played the same game when he built up his Nazi followers.
Pick out easy scapegoat groups to attack. Attack them in public to find the disillusioned. Make up everything you can about them and keep hammering home misperceptions, stereotypes and lies and voila…you have a revolution and a population too dumbfounded to speak up or push back.
Evinfuilt
@The Populist:
So what does that make the Dems that cave to the pussies demands time and again?
The Pussies have power…
The Populist
@JackieBinAZ:
You mean like Michelle Malkin who has made some good money being a mouthpiece of the far right?
The Populist
@Evinfuilt:
The Dems are idiots for allowing it BUT unlike the sheep herding right, the dems have too many factions that never go along with their leaders the way the right does.
So basically, they aren’t as much pussies as a disorganized group of disparate interests that can’t agree 100% on anything. I find some solace in that the Dems aren’t sheep the way the right is. I do wish they’d line up behind the core dem principles such as health care reform and other key issues though…
ajr22
The entire party is butthurt about everything. Speaking of butthurt me thinks it should be in the lexicon.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Tsulagi:
If Obama had chosen to criticise a more minor decision, I might have some sympathy with this position. But the Citizens United decision was a political earthquake, in the long run possibly the single most important political event of the year, with consequences which will flow for decades if this decision is not reversed via legislation. To simply ignore it during a SOTU address (which after all is at least in theory a marker regarding where we stand now and where we are going as a polity) would be to neuter the whole exercise. The SOTU address should be concerned with what is important in our public life, not merely what the Sally Quinn’s of DC feel it is polite to talk about.
malraux
What the holy hell is up with this “ram it down our throats”? On the substantive level, isn’t that what democracy is? IE the majority opinion carries the day.
But on the more important level, what the hell is up with that particular phrasing? It feels like its code for something, but I don’t know what. Is it just supposed to be code for gays are icky? That democrats are barbarous dictators? Seriously, what the heck is meant by that?
The Populist
@ajr22:
They can’t believe that America rejected them. Even when the GOP had power they still whined and cried about everything.
Remember the “you don’t support our troops” lines that came out when anybody questioned Bush? If they wanted to kill abortion they could have but they use it to keep whining about why liberals aren’t to be “trusted”. The GOP are cynical a-holes who pretend to care about strawman issues but really are a bunch of jerks who like the status quo as long as their rich benefactors continue to get whatever they want.
theturtlemoves
@Svensker: I was hoping for that sort of response, you whiny damn hippie. :)
MikeJ
@Tsulagi:
You call *this* a bitchslap?
That’s it. The entire extent of his “smackdown”.
kay
@Tsulagi:
I can see your point, but I disagree. Supreme Court Justices, all federal judges, really, are carefully and deliberately insulated from the political process. The selection and confirmation process is political, but once they’re past that hurdle, we tuck them carefully away and tell them they’ll be speaking through their opinions.
That benefit comes with a cost, for them. They can’t accept the protection and then complain they can’t deliver a rebuttal.
Justice Roberts had his chance to speak, and his voice is really powerful, it’s for all intents and purposes the last word, in a substantive sense, and he doesn’t hesitate to use that voice, and wield that power. Barack Obama doesn’t hesitate to use his either.
The Populist
@MikeJ:
The right crack me up. Keep up this charade and I promise you they will lose a whole generation of young folks that will make the cons pay in the long run. Think of the 60s and the hippies when you keep going in this partisan, cynical pro-big business, fuck everybody else direction.
The Populist
@kay:
I am just happy to see Obama use his bully pulpit to make a very valid point about this bullshit decision. It’s “We the people…” and nowhere do I see a corporation cited as a person.
I may also add that in the beginning of this country businesses had to PROVE their value to the community before being granted the right to do business (a charter) by the government. A lot of countries still do this as well.
Proof positive Roberts, Scalia and Alito are full of shit on this decision.
Leelee for Obama
@El Cid: This is the right answer. Since the creation of the nation, a certain group of people in this country wanted another group of people in this country to be inferior. Early on, it was Native Americans, but we killed off so many, that was no longer satisfying. We also had white, poor indentured servants to piss on, but they could earn their way out, and be just like the upper tier (yeah, right) Then, we imported slaves. When the Civil War kicked that system to the curb, the WATBs donned sheets and hoods, and scared the Beejsus out of the soon less Radical Republicans, and Jim Crow was born. Then, very brave people of many races changed that. African Americans are still treated badly most of the time, but the whiners have a much wider field what with uppity wimmins, damned immigrants and Oh Noes! a black President.
I don’t know if we can ever get past this shit. Entitlement by whiteness is tough to crush- My family has done their bit, my Grands are all mixed in one way or another. But, crap-too many WATBs to overcome, I’m beginning to think.
SpotWeld
They were always whiners.
Before they whined in small stump speaches and within the small confines of exclusive groups. They drummed up sympathy (and money) and the collective angst of the upperclass as they pointed out that the “lucky ducks” of the underclasses were getting all uppity and making being rich all the less special.
Now, with modern hyper-connective, hyper-pervasive, and hyper-now media all whines are boradcast.
The right-wing message machine is now always in front of a live mike and the background noise is up front and cetner.
Sadly, the right-wing main audience, the upperclass (and the middle class who have been convinced they’d be upper class if it wasn’t for those darned liberals) have always been hearing that noise and just don’t listen to it’s content anymore.
Mike E
@The Populist:
Ahh yes, the classics! One could postulate that there really isn’t anything new under the sun, but being out of work, I don’t want to ruin any future historian’s livelyhood–making cogent analysis resonate in a way that gives good people the courage to confront these sociopaths. The side that treats this as War is finding no downside to ruthless projection.
The Populist
@Leelee for Obama:
Not just that but there were elements of the early founders who wanted to make the President a king. Thank god the cooler heads shot that down.
MikeJ
http://politicalwire.com/
kay
@The Populist:
Obama doesn’t enjoy the protection Justice Roberts enjoys. Obama is up in 3 years. He’s in the fray.
Justice Roberts wants it both ways. He wants to be protected from the political process (and I think he should be, actually) and he wants to voice a dissent to the political actors.
He can’t have it both ways. Justice Roberts spoke, loudly, when he joined that opinion, and we’ll protect him from losing that seat, although his opinion is unpopular. No one protects Obama.
Allan
@The Populist: They also need massive social opprobrium and discriminatory laws directed at homosexuals to (sometimes) dissuade them from sticking their penises in other men’s anuses and wriggling them around in excrement. If this stuff was legal and socially permissable, they’d be doing it 24/7/365.
jrg
Momma always said that stupid is as stupid does.
joes527
@Tsulagi:
I can’t agree.
The SOTU is a constitutional requirement that the president tell congress how things are going. Turning it into a costume party where everyone must sip their tea with pinkies extended gets in the way of the business of governing.
Argue that the attendance should be slimmed down to POTUS + Congress all you want, but arguing that the SOTU is a dance rather than government doing business is just wrong.
PeakVT
I think Reagan brought the anti-government whine into the mainstream, and Gingrich brought the culture war whine into the mainstream. Then 9-11 plus the Iraq War (which are still lumped together in the minds of most conservatives) brought on the anti-foreigner whine. They keep getting louder and louder because conservatives have lost on nearly every front except the economic one.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
At the next SOTU address, Obama should say that out of deference to Roberts, et. al. this year he is going to be giving a State of the Corporations address instead of talking about the people of the United States, and then proceed to read out the details from the most recently published set of financial statements from Exxon, Walmart, etc.
Bill E Pilgrim
@MikeJ: No kidding.
So from now on, if I respond to someone by posting:
“You have taken a position with which I disagree, which if implemented would lead to many negative things happening”,
..henceforth I will be considered to have just “bitch-slapped” someone?
Republican rules make me dizzy.
Clark
@jrg:
i believe the phrase is “Conservatism is formless like water.”
MikeJ
Idea:
Put into action:
pharniel
I save my whaaaambulace rides for the Team Killing Fucktards on my side of the fence.
Leelee for Obama
@The Populist: Honestly, I always agreed with this sentiment. But, lately, I am more than a bit impressed with the Queen. Not saying we’d be like that, but …..
El Cid
@Clark: True, but I think raw sewage works better.
The Populist
@PeakVT:
I think it always existed but Reagan took that and made it part of his appeal to these people.
Seanly
@FormerSwingVoter:
Good post.
I am in the demographic where I should be a conservative blowhard. I’m a white, 42 year old civil engineer. One grandfather was a Yankee-fan Bircher (though he and I never got to talk politics). The other grandfather was a union-hating blue collar worker (he was a gold-smelter, a trade too small to have a union).
But my parents brought me up to see how much I have gotten from this society. By the very fact of being white, male & middle class, my success was pretty much guaranteed. Many other groups start off several rungs down the ladder, assuming they are even allowed on the ladder.
I’ve always understood that my place in the world is based on big, big head start my color & creed gave me. That it isn’t the head start it once was strikes me as a good thing. For others, its reason enough to fly their rascist/freak flag.
Clark
@El Cid:
Conservatism is like raw sewage, ever swirling, ever onward and forward!
Lee
This is one reason why I read Balloon Juice.
3 contributors, 3 stories on the same subject.
3 completely different (and entertaining) ways to get the same point across.
Leelee for Obama
@Clark: twirling, and twisting and leaving a stench
kay
“To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally, I’m not sure why we’re there,” said the chief justice, who has attended the event since he joined the court in 2005.
Well, he can certainly decline, but I have to wonder why this “political pep rally” suddenly became so repulsive to him.
Oh, right around 2009?
rikyrah
whiny little biyotch, our Chief Justice is.
The Populist
@kay:
Further reason why people need to wake up and see the hypocrisy in these righties.
They sure as hell LOVED pushing the SOTU as a pep rally for America’s “greatness” through bombing lesser countries.
cleek
put me in the “since Nixon” slot, too.
read “Nixonland” – or even the first 100 pages (where i am right now). the entire modern GOP makes complete sense when you see how it was created, and it’s all there. things like the perpetual victimhood (which was Nixon’s own insecurity commoditized for home use) and the “appeasers!” attack (in the 60’s it was commies and blacks, today it’s terrorists, but it’s the same attack – liberals hate America and will always side with its enemies) are straight from his sweaty little brow.
JasonF
@Tsulagi:
I could not disagree more.
In the first place, Presidents have been criticizing courts during the State of the Union going back for decades. Harding did it, Coolidge did it, FDR did it, Eisenhower did it, and Reagan did it — to say nothing of mroe generic criticisms of “activist judges” and the like.
In the second place, President Obama did not “call out” the Court. He made two statements. First, he said that the Court had overturned a century of law. That is an empirical fact. Either it is true or it is not (whether you believe it is true depends on whether you think the 1907 Tillman Act can be read to be consistent with Citizens United). That is no more calling out the Court than it is calling out the Court to say Brown v. Board of Education overturned a century of law. It says nothing about whether Citizens United was rightly or wrongly decided. It simply says what happened.
President Obama’s second statement was, in effect, that Citizens United will have bad policy consequences that he would like Congress to address. That is obviously a subjective question — many on the right disagree that Citizens United has bad policy consequences — but it should not be read as an attack on the Court. To read it as an attack on the Court, one would have to assume that the Court is supposed to be making policy judgments in determining whether a statute is Constitutional. But the underpinning of conservative judicial philosophy since the Warren Court era has been that policy decisions have no place in judicial decision making. This is the point I made in DougJ’s thread. You can’t have the cake of saying that the only job of the Court is to weigh the text of statute against the text of the Consitution and eat it too by saying that the political branches are not permitted to assess the policy implications of the Court’s decisions.
jrg
That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. Comparing the party of Sarah Palin to the “Greek concept of kairos” is pseudo-intellectual masturbation of the highest order.
Oakeshott may as well be Sully’s imaginary friend, Gubby MacToothfairy, because both have fuck-all to do with “conservative” politicians (and even less to do with the morons that vote for them).
MikeJ
@cleek: To be clear, “since Nixon” means ’48, not ’72.
And I’d have to agree those above who point out that there was a lot of prewar whining when FDR saved America and capitalism from the Republicans.
NobodySpecial
@kay:
Be nice to him, it was the first year he wasn’t allowed to bring his sex slave in under his robe.
Blue Raven
Perhaps Roberts should advise his fellows on the Court that they should stop making decisions based on politics and use the document they are supposed to use as their foundation. Would save him from these petty embarrassments like being rightfully and righteously called on the carpet for redefining “the people.”
Zifnab
@PeakVT:
I honestly don’t even know. It seems like there was a brief era in the 50s, after WW2, when the anti-government crusades and the culture war shouting match was reduced to a dull roar. Truman won in the face of his own party’s racial intolerance. Eisenhower took two terms, molding the federal government into the highways and humvees model we know it for today. Then the sixties came around, and we got Nixonland, and it was back to the old class warfare that’s been going on in the country since Jefferson and Hamilton were bickering back in the 1780s and Washington put down the Whiskey revolt.
But yeah, they didn’t start the fire. It was always burning, since the world was turning…
Midnight Marauder
@cleek:
Bingo. I just started diving into Nixonland myself, but this was the same impression I had right off the bat. I mean, within the first 2-3 chapters, that fact is just staring you plainly in the face.
Only someone like BTD could miss it.
PaulW
They do it because it works. We call it working the refs and every one of these instances you describe were extensively covered and parroted by the Villagers. Doesn’t matter that the same clowns that were bitching about “Up or Down Vote” were happy to pivot to “Jamming it down their throat”. They knew that Dancing Dave will invite them on “Meet the Press” and whine right along with them. Mocking them is the only thing that helps.
El Cid
The moron brigades were out in force on C-Span’s Washington Journal this morning, once again calling in and whining that basically all of modern government that white right wingers don’t like was UNCONSTUSHULL, and that the deficit was the biggest deadliest problem ever (now that a black Democrat is Preznit, of course) and we basically need to shut down gubmit except for the military and deregulate everything blah blah blah blah blah.
Mnemosyne
I got about halfway through Nixonland before I had to stop because it was causing a carpal tunnel flare-up. That is one ginormous hunk of paper.
Now that I have an iPod Touch with the Kindle reader, I think I may spend the extra $10 and get the digital version so I can finish reading it without having to put my hand splints on.
cleek
@MikeJ:
of course. didn’t mean to imply otherwise.
WereBear
@Midnight Marauder: I love that book, just read it several months ago, and looking forward to doing it again.
Mr Furious
@Tsulagi: I don’t have a problem with Obama doing what he did. On the flip side, I didn’t and don’t have a problem with Alito showing his disagreement with Obama during the SOTU.
Brachiator
They can dish it out, but they can’t take it. They really believed that they were the permanent majority, that America was by definition not just conservative, but inherently Republican (even before the GOP existed as a party).
They can’t handle the simple truth that they were kicked to the curb by voters. And they certainly can’t handle the sea change in politics or demographics.
I also like the irony in this recent Wall St Journal headline and story,
I mean, if you are outnumbered, doesn’t that make you the “minority?”
Tax Analyst
Picture Lucy from “Peanuts” except that when Charlie Brown tumbles head-over-heals after she moves the football she whines because he didn’t break his neck and die.
And then Charlie (us Democrats) wonders to himself what he did wrong, but never, ever gets up in the bitch’s face and tells her to knock that shit off.
I wouldn’t want to be Lucy, but when do we get tired of being Charlie Brown?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Zifnab:
IIRC from Paul Kennedy’s Rise and Fall of the Great Powers that was also the time when the US had roughly a 50 percent share of the manufacturing output for the entire world. Ever since then the US economy has been on a long downhill climb from a superdominant position we were never going to be able to sustain. It was I think a lot easier to keep the demons at bay when the business of America was business, and business was doing not just well, but great.
The other part is that after what people had been through during the 30s and 40s, a lot of people were tired of politics and just wanted to get on with their private lives.
So in a lot of ways the 1950s were a very strange and anomalous period. Any political movement centered on trying to “get back” to that period (or more like what we nostalgically remember and mythologize about it) is both doomed to failure and going to have all sorts of things wrong with it.
Tax Analyst
@Brachiator:
Well, not if the other guy only counts as 3/5 of a person, like the Founding Fathers etched permanently into stone.
JSD
Glenn Greenwald has written pretty extensively about how the Republicans cast themselves as victims. It was especially pernicious when they were doing it while in complete charge of the gov’t. At least now they are doing it out of power, so the hypocrisy meter is dialed back from 11 to 10.
Cerberus
@Violet:
This again. They’re whiners, they’ve always been whiners because the goal is simply to prevent change and whining loudly, throwing tantrums, and the other distraction tactics burns out those pushing for positive change.
It’s also why they’re easier to rally authoritarian style. Because what the right-wing is searching for is an emotion, an assurance that everything is as they left it, with them still in full control and no threats to their power centers. Whereas the left is looking for positive change and well…that’s a lot of things and a lot of disagreements on how much change is positive and how fast the society in question can handle it and what can we settle for over the whining.
Plus, you have a whole bunch of fronts where someone is more interested in one change over another. Got a rich minority member, they might not necessarily be as gun-ho about reforms for the poor. Got a poverty-focused male, they may be willing to bend on women’s rights, etc…
And the name of the game isn’t to really win anything because victory is impossible. Outside really bad chaotic events, society moves forward especially in the long term. So conservatism is more about running out the clock, seeing the least amount of change before you check out so you personally get the maximal amount of unearned benefits from systemic inequalities.
If it seems they’re worse now, it’s merely the result of a lot of clocks ticking due all at once (like in the late 60s, early 70s), we’re getting closer to a time when white men can’t carry an election like they used to, where women are so used to the benefits of working, education, and controlling their sexual freedom that they’ll be more and more willing to stand up for themselves, where the gays are less and less willing to stay in the closet and die quietly out of sight, and even where the poor are beginning to blame banks and corporations again instead of just “government” or Satan. Not to mention the big hit to credibility that were the Bush years and the beginning of the end of the Muslim Hate ride that bought them an extra decade of absolute dominance.
The bright light is that this level of noise may make these decades painful to live in as are all interesting times, but it also means we’ll see more actual wins. The push-back after Tiller, the tumbling dominoes of gay marriage, that funny-named black guy in the Oval Office, the fact that health care is closer than ever before, these are all very good signs of some very important milestones finally being crossed. And the right-wing is whining at mach 11 to try and drown out the eminence of the change and try and buy themselves a couple more years before they’ll have to admit to any of it.
See also libertarians trying to pretend their economic philosophies weren’t just disproved violently by the crash. Anything to sustain the delusion just a little longer.
Tsulagi
@joes527:
Haven’t, and never will. The SOTU is an address stating to this country and others where we stand and where we’re going. All three branches of government are there, and should be there. It shows the strength of our institutions. The military attends, and should, as a quiet statement to other countries they will unquestionably stand with the president if s/he orders the use of force.
When Obama called out the Supreme Court by name, and yes it was a bitchslap, everyone on the planet knew he was calling out five of the justices and implying their overturning “a century of court decisions” may have had partisan roots. He was calling out the court in front of the world. Wrong place/venue to do that.
Also kinda dumb. May give some personal satisfaction that lasts for a few minutes and get some cheers from the crowd. But if I had been a justice there and Bush during a SOTU had delivered a FU to me and four of my co-workers, that I couldn’t respond to at the time, for a decision he didn’t like, honoring our country tradition I would have sat there quietly but would have been thinking “No, fuck you. Remember I will be in my office on the job long after they box up your stuff when you’re shown out the door of the WH.”
MikeJ
@Tax Analyst: To be fair, many Democrats are Schroeder. Head down, absorbed with great thoughts, oblivious to the outside world. We do occasionally let a little Vince Guaraldi go though.
Rahm! of course would be Pig Pen. Dirty fighter.
kay
@NobodySpecial:
I watched parts of his confirmation hearing. His goal, as I understood him, was to reach a broader consensus on the Court by issuing narrower opinions. He all but promised fewer 5-4 opinions, and he seemed to say that he would fulfill that promise by using “restraint”: he wouldn’t reach contentious issues, because only messy liberals reach contentious issues, because they “overreach” and he’d be more rigorous than to fall into that trap.
“Easy!” Like all their “solutions”.
I think that’s been a big ‘ol failure, on his part. Another cherished conservative maxim bites the dust. It isn’t “easy”, he doesn’t use “restraint” and there’s a lot of contention on that Court. He’s turning into Mr. Five-Four.
licensed to kill time
@theturtlemoves:
I really get exasperated at the Boomer Blaming, speaking as a Boomer myself. It is a HUGE cohort and any attempt to generalize is painting with a very wide brush indeed.
Besides, we also didn’t trust anyone over 30. Funny how that works out. You young whippersnappers are gonna get old some day too, and the “Generation Teabaggers” label that some media hack slaps on you is going to sting ;-)
Perry Como
In all fairness, some Republicans are begging for it.
Xenos
It is pretty comprehensive whining which I guess is the only way to express their resentiment:
whining that the ‘elites’ don’t respect them;
whining that the racial minorities have too much power;
whining that the religious majorities won’t let them bully them;
whining that women are not subservient enough;
that our allies don’t fear us enough;
that our enemies hate us for the wrong reasons;
that the urban areas have too much representation in our political system;
that businesses are hamstrung by too many regulations;
ad infinitum.
And every one of these whines are utterly 100% backwards. But like some sort of ongoing magic spell, they need to keep reciting this stuff so that their whole world does not disappear in a puff of logic.
Clark
@jrg:
Masturbation is exactly the word. And Sully should know better, since he has an “award” for pseudointellectual quotes.
But somehow he has a soft spot for posts on how many conservatives will the free market allow to dance on the head of a pin.
joes527
@Tsulagi:
WRONG.
You want to have a costume drama where everyone dances on queue that’s fine. Just don’t confuse that with the SOTU. That meeting is actually an important part of making our government work.
Rick Taylor
The good news is whining and complaining doesn’t win elections. Your base may appreciate it, but it doesn’t look good to anyone else. The right wing used to come off as tough, and it used to be liberals who looked weak when they protested them being unfair. Josh Marshall even coined the phrase the “bitch-slap theory of politics.”
Jay B.
Zin, I usually agree with what you’re saying, but not here. In the least. The 50s?! It took McCarthy until 1954, when he attacked the Army and Ike, before he was truly weakened. In the meantime, HUAC crippled careers for several years more. Most blacklisters couldn’t get proper work until the early 60s, if ever. The culture war was heightened by the worst period of Cold War paranoia. To say nothing of the Civil Rights movement and the unleashing of the victimized, angry whites by Southern politicians.
Then, in 1951, Buckley published God and Man at Yale by 55, I believe, he started the National Review. It never ends.
Brachiator
@Tsulagi:
What’s the right venue for this?
Folderol and Ephemera
@Brachiator:
In the shower. Naked.
Sly
Speaking of WATBs, Markos called St. Dennis a little prick. The sound of exploding Hippy heads will be heard in 3…2…1…
gbear
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Well also November 1992 followed by November 1996.
All I can say is I’m so glad that we’re never whiney.
The Populist
@Brachiator:
Yet, Bush and co did it too. How many times did Bush speak at press conferences whining about judicial activists? What does this tell the world?
Tax Analyst
@theturtlemoves:
Consider me “pissed off” you little asshole. I’m about to turn 60 and I’ve voted for exactly ONE Republican in my entire life (Richard Riordan for his 2nd term as L.A. mayor).
Take your whiny-assed theory and shove it up your ass.
KS
I speak as someone who was fewer than 50 feet away from him when he made the comments, and as a DFH: he answered the question he was asked.
I don’t see why this is news. It’s a single comment out of a 90 minute presentation/Q&A session that has been blown out of proportion.
He made comments that made it seem that the devolution to partisan pep rally mode had already happened, and he also said that it didn’t matter which side was giving the speech: he didn’t see the need for the Supreme Court to be there.
I find it hard to fault the man for giving up his time to go to a law school to speak, and attacks like this will make the rest of the Supreme Court Justices very leery of trying to go and help provide perspective for law students like this.
That being said, I disagree with him on nearly every 5-4 decision he’s been involved in. But this whole thing is being blown way out of proportion.
I blame the librul media. (I know they’re not really liberal: they’re just lazy and found a sentence that they could seize on out of 90 minutes of him talking.)
KG
@Evinfuilt:
The history of the world in four words, impressive.
Zifnab
@Perry Como:
Have you seen how they dress?
cleek
@Sly:
good.
PeakVT
@Zifnab: I agree that the class warfare has always been there, along with the anti-government sentiment. It just seems to me that Reagan brought out the whiny side, as in “high taxes are ruining my life!” It’s one thing to say that the government is spending too much, or doing things that it shouldn’t do. A generalized whine is different, and was something new. But I’m probably biased about the timing because Reagan was the first president I was aware of.
I’m glad today’s whiners weren’t around during the Cold War.
Tsulagi
@joes527:
Now see, I was trying to be all nice to you in my previous response. Mom has called me out in the past saying just because you don’t agree with someone or they say something stupid, you don’t have to put it up in their face. She’s one of those turn the other cheek kind of Christians. But were you born retarded, or is it just a singular life achievement for you? Sorry, mom.
@Brachiator:
Just about any other time. Personal press conferences, Press Secretary giving a statement of the president’s position, etc.
r€nato
Way too many comments to see if anybody has already voiced my take on GOP whining…
I completely agree it started with Nixon, but I think what greatly amplified it was the success the right-wing has had with working the media refs.
Careers have been made out of institutional whining about the media, and it has paid off. Why not be the whiny wheel that gets the grease on other topics?
wasabi gasp
Republicans whine because they know the real titty babies, the Dependents – ironically called Independents – need to have their ideas fed to them daily on a double-beef bacon explosion drive-thru menu.
BTW, you know why they didn’t give you any napkins? Obama took’m to was the hands of terrorists.
Makewi
What you see as whining it appears the larger populace sees as correctly voicing their opinion. It’s working, so don’t expect to see it change.
The Dems did it under the last administration, and it seemed to work for them. I expect to see this tactic continued until it doesn’t work anymore, which should be just about never.
mr. whipple
@MikeJ:
Oh, man. I see what you did there. LOL.
Xenos
@Makewi: Larger population? Only in your dreams, and in Rasmussen polls, which amount to the same thing.
kay
@KS:
I see that, but, again, Roberts jumped in. He knows everything anyone says, ever, is a referendum on Obama.
They’re polling the Citizens decision. Roberts can stay above the fray, but he can’t if he jumps in.
Cacti
I’m a Gen X’er, born in the 70’s and I can’t remember a time that Republicans haven’t been a bunch of whining Nancys.
Waaah…welfare queens
Waaah…affirmative action
Waaah…taxes
Waaah…abortion
Waaah…feminism
Waaah…separation of church and state
Waaah…Clinton’s sex life
Waaah…gays
Waaah…muslims
Waaah…a black President
In my short lifetime, butt hurt has been their stock and trade.
Brachiator
@Tsulagi:
RE: What’s the right venue for this?
Or even the State of the Union address. There ain’t much in the way of formal rules about this. I can understand the idea of tradition and protocol, but there is an equally long tradition of American politicians, even presidents, not giving a rat’s behind about formality and protocol.
Tax Analyst
@Cacti:
Makewi
Is it fair then that if one party should break with the normally followed protocol that other interested parties then not be bound to it. I know this will make Doug and John cry due to all the whining, but it seems fair.
Michael
OT, but at the Great Orange Satan, President Dean is expounding again.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/3/10/844836/-Im-going-to-fight-for-a-public-option-until-we-get-one
Somebody just needs to kick him in the face repeatedly until he shuts the fuck up. As former Governor of the most white bread, small state in the flag, he needs to acknowledge that his play in the deep end of the pool really doesn’t do anything to help.
TuiMel
I’m trying to remember: Did the Bush Whitehouse have anything good to say about the “Kelo” decision involving eminent domain?
Karen
The GOP is an abusive husband who whines when their “bitch” (Democrats) breaks the rules and won’t take the abuse anymore.
Nellcote
@Jason B at Work:
And I’m sure Roberts gave Alito a stern rebuke for mouthing off at the SOTU.
heh
Fergus Wooster
“My wife doesn’t have a fur coat. She wears a respectable, wool Republican coat. .. . Checkers . . . ”
“You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more. . . “
kay
@Makewi:
Conservatives want all the benefit and none of the risk.
Justice Roberts is insulated from the political ramifications of his commentary. President Obama is not.
I can remove the two mens names, and it holds. Justice, insulated- President, not.
That’s why the President gets to go after the decision, but the Justice can’t go after the President.
geg6
Meanwhile, expect a whole lot more whining and crying when (or should I say, if?) people get a load of GOP budget/deficit genius Paul Ryan’s awesome, awesome budget plan:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2010/03/paul-ryans-budget-doesnt-balance-the-budget.php
Tax increases for 90% of us and, whaddayano, tax cuts for the rich!
Cacti
@Michael:
I can’t imagine why Obama never gave him a Cabinet position.
Mnemosyne
@Tsulagi:
Obama specifically wanted to say that he expected Congress to pass legislation that would invalidate the Citizens United ruling. Are you saying that the president shouldn’t discuss specific legislation during the SOTU even though the Constitution says he should or that he should have phrased it differently?
I don’t blame the justices for being pissed but it’s kind of hard to argue that the president shouldn’t publicly tell Congress what legislation he’d like them to pass because it might hurt the justices’ feelings.
Xenos
@Cacti:
Maybe we should establish a Department of Mime, and make him Secretary.
Bender
39 months, but who can count these days?
But you were alive during the Bush years, right? So you have no excuse other than …amnesia? What you imagine as excessive GOP whining pales ghostly-white in comparison to the eight years of DFH mewling that spewed from Democrat bongholes since Bush beat The Holy Scientician, Al Gore. Remember Bush beating Gore? Because you nancies still haven’t stopped whining about it, nine years on.
And DougJ’s hissy-fit about republican whining? Come on…He’s got to be a spoof. Or his irony-meter went Chernobyl.
geg6
@Michael:
I simply don’t understand why it’s unacceptable to so many around here to try to get as much as we can out of this process. I agree with Dr. Dean. If we don’t get it, I won’t say kill the bill and neither will Dr. Dean. But I also won’t give up the fight to make the public option a reality, especially given the mandate.
Dr. Dean is quite right to say that the fight isn’t over just because some here and some in Congress will say it is. Fuck that and fuck anyone who condemns people for fighting for what they believe and who aren’t trying to hijack the current bill while they do it.
slag
@Michael: Dean is doing the smart thing there. Alan Grayson is doing the smart thing with his Public Option Act. Somebody’s got to bring the left back on board and these guys are doing that. Give the left something to work for in November. We’re already sold on the Public Option, so tag onto that. It’s smart. I like it. I hope it works.
Makewi
@kay:
A ridiculous but not unexpected assertion that one party should feel free to opine on an issue while the other must remain silent. A regularly practiced tactic from the left side of the equation. Doesn’t it ever get tiring trying to silence the opposition?
Pangloss
Somebody should make a video of the GOP whiners and crybabys set to Helen Ready’s 1973 hit, “You and Me Against the World.”
slag
@kay: You seem to be expecting an intellectually honest assessment of this issue from someone who is neither intellectual nor honest. It’s a nice idea.
tyrese
Waaah…science
Waaah…edumacation
Cacti
@geg6:
Well, not today anyway.
But who knows what he’ll banging his spoon on his high chair about tomorrow or next week.
The Populist
@Bender:
Well, if the right had allowed the PROCESS to play out instead of whining about the legal vote count procedures, maybe people wouldn’t be so upset.
You can accuse others of being upset as WHINING but reality is this: If the Supremes had put GORE in over BUSH, you’d be whining nancy boy…I would be all in on that bet.
I love you guys…I really do. The fact remains that nancy boys are on the right not in the center or left. A-hole.
Fergus Wooster
@geg6: Hear, hear!
Brachiator
@Folderol and Ephemera:
RE: What’s the right venue for this?
Maybe if you’re Rahm Emanuel or a feverish dream of Eric Massa.
Gregory
Late to the party, but…
At least the Nixon Administration. Except for the gay cocks bit, and substituting Woodward and Bernstein and Helen Thomas for Stewart and Couric, Republicans were whining about all of that back then.
And let’s not forget the various excuses for dodging Vietnam whined by many now-prominent Republicans, too.
The Populist
@Makewi:
The larger populace supports Barack Obama, so what’s your point?
So basically when a GOP follower whines it’s stating an opinion but when you guys try to shut up legit concerns from the left it’s whining?
What was Rush doing the other day when he wanted to run to Costa Rica? Oh yes, whining.
WereBear
When logic, precedent, and common sense are all against you, what else can you do… but whine?
ajr22
I just imagine Theison going home after the Stewart interview and pouting and crying to his wife. ” I just wanted to talk about torturing people, and he he he wouldn’t let me make my point. It wasn’t fair, they like torture, they told me so. He made fun of my book to, Bill Kristol said he would be nice to me”
patrick II
Having worked with and known judges personally, I can tell you that even the nicest of them can be pretty self righteous, even when discussing baseball at lunch time. They get used to having that gavel in their hand and saying the last word. How much more so that must be for a rigid ideologue with a lifetime appointment to be the chief of all judges.
It’s going to be a long thirty years.
slag
@Cacti: You’re not seeing the situation or Howard Dean very clearly. He knows what his job is, and he’s doing it.
It’s true that some of Dean’s past statements on this issue were easily misconstrued/misquoted, but he’s not the crazy person you’re making him out to be. Or at least he hasn’t seemed that way to me. And certainly isn’t seeming that way now.
Martin
@Cacti:
Republicans typically blame people that have no power – the ones that have the least ability to influence public policy. Rarely do they blame those in power (unless they happen to be Democrats).
The Populist
@geg6:
Yet here’s a fact for the nancy/pussy righties who need big government to spy on them in order to feel safe from the big, bad al qaeda wimps:
Obama has LOWERED taxes on 90% of Americans. Wow…truth hurts I guess. But I digress, truth means nothing to a whining constituency that likes to tweak facts to serve an agenda.
The Populist
@Martin:
Much like Nazis did in the third reich.
The Populist
@geg6:
(previous post in moderation hell but I think I know why):
Yet here’s a fact for the nancy/pussy righties who need big government to spy on them in order to feel safe from the big, bad al qae-da wimps:
Obama has LOWERED taxes on 90% of Americans. Wow…truth hurts I guess. But I digress, truth means nothing to a whining constituency that likes to tweak facts to serve an agenda.
Allan
@Makewi: is whining about being silenced. God, if only it were true.
bemused
@geg6:
That’s incredible. Well not really. Ryan is just more upfront about their real intentions. The GOP may try, again, to distance themselves but this is what they really want. Any R not in the 10% income bracket is just delusional if they continue to believe republicans have their backs.
Conservatives with money & power believe they are very special people & everyone else must bow & scrape before their awesomeness. Ryan’s beauty of a budget plan is just another example.
Makewi
@The Populist:
At best this support is split evenly, and is trending ever downward. On specific issues, such as the current health care monstrosity, he clearly doesn’t have the support of the people.
Bender
And Roberts is 100% correct to call out Obama for his chickenshit cheap-shot. Obama knew he was breaking with decorum by using the SOTU to whine (yes, whine) about the Justices who know constitutional law 1000X better than his non-published pretend-professor ass, and he knew that the Supremes, who have a measure of class not found in neophyte Chicago-machine pols, would uphold that decorum during the partisan ovation after the unseemly “clapper line.” God forbid one of them should “fight back” by shaking his head during The Zero’s punk attack! Sic the press on him! They should just sit there and take it like potted plants!
When Roberts holds a national, primetime press conference to explain how Obama is an out-of-his-depth wannabe-scholar, then they’ll be even in terms of classlessness. Until that day, stop your whining about Roberts’ whining about Obama whining.
The Populist
@Allan:
Yet he is not. Weird how that works but if I remember right didn’t Ari Fleischer threaten people to “watch what they say” as if big bro was coming to get those that it didn’t agree with?
Seems to me the right does prosesteth too much.
Cacti
@The Populist:
And to show how he’s not going to take it anymore, he’s going to run away…
To a country with Universal Healthcare.
Bender
You mean the “keep counting until the Democrats print, errrrrrrrr, FIND enough votes to win and then stop immediately” PROCESS?
No thanks, you already got a senator and a couple governors in that way. Count yourselves lucky.
licensed to kill time
@WereBear:
When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead
and the White Knight is talking backwards
and the Red Queen’s lost her head
Remember what the Dormouse said
Feed Your Head
(Your comment made that song pop into my head – I often feel like Alice through the looking glass these days)
Tonal Crow
@Michael: Yeah, hippie-punching is clearly the road to victory. Let’s rev up the base (which is, after all, almost entirely constituted of people who love Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln — we’re a center-right nation, don’tcha know) with another round of Circular Firing Squad, then rake in the goodies. Hey, they gave me a really nice pen that says, “America’s Health Care Plans” on it, plus a tote bag emblazoned with the slogan “America for Joe Lieberman!” Bet you’d like to have those. Hands off, big boy.
cleek
luckily, i can’t hear it.
ahh, bliss.
Ash Can
@kay: It’s no use, Kay. You’re a seasoned attorney, and Makewi is nothing but an articulate punchbowl-pisser. You’ll never get an intelligent argument out of her. Just — hey, whaddya know — more whining.
Jay B.
The poor dears. With that mean ol’ Chicago politician having the temerity to disagree with 5 out of 9 judges (hey, asshole, do “the Justices who know constitutional law 1000X better than his non-published pretend-professor ass” count the 4 who obviously agree with Obama? How do you square that knot, fella?) who knows what will happen next?
Where’s a fainting couch when you need one? Oh heavens the discourse!
The Populist
@Bender:
Cheap shot? How is it a cheap shot when the Supremes were WRONG to take down 100 years of legal precedent?
Bush, Reagan, even Nixon used the bully pulpit to fire off their issues with the supremes. C’mon, don’t be disingenuous or trump talking points over common sense.
If Obama is a chickenshit, so was Reagan who called out the Supremes a couple of times when he disagreed.
Need I remind you of the a-holes on the right who send nasty notes to judges all the time using terms as JUDICIAL ACTIVISM to sell a point they are parroting from their congresscritter? If you think it’s chickenshit of Obama, then it’s just as chickenshit of a congressperson going on Fox to rip the courts as activists thus sending the unhinged into writing violent notes to these judges.
Obama disagreed, he has a right to it. He didn’t call them out the way the right do anytime they lose a case.
Brachiator
@Makewi:
RE: …equally long tradition of American politicians, even presidents, not giving a rat’s behind about formality and protocol.
It’s not really about parties and phony equivalences. But thanks for playing.
Makewi
@Bender:
Heh. I think it is a fairly simple truth that the party out of power is the party that whines. Whining gets you face time in front of the camera when you can’t command it by the simple manner of holding the reigns of power.
Nellcote
@Tsulagi:
What alternative place/venue would you suggest that would also interest the Village media?
Cacti
@Bender:
*cough* Clarence Thomas *cough*
slag
All this pie is making me hungry.
Jake
@Bender:
It is a good thing that Republicans never break with decorum.
Ash Can
@The Populist:
Oh, God, can you imagine? We’d be drowning in tears to this day. (I’d still take that over what we actually got, though.)
scarshapedstar
Well, the Southern Strategy could be described as “whining about n***ers” so I’m gonna say, yes, certainly ever since Nixon.
Chyron HR
@Makewi:
Hey, Makewi–how did your crusade to get abortion outlawed by, um, whining on the internet last night go?
What’s that? It didn’t get abortion outlawed for even one second? That’s too bad. Try harder next time.
The Populist
@Makewi:
Yet Bush won a second term with declining numbers. You won’t sway me on this because history has proven your thinking wrong time and time again.
Michael
Somebody drove the left off with a bunch of simpering fucking bullshit that made me want to go cock-slap hippies.
That somebody would consist of a small group of rabble rousers, one of whom is Dean.
So yes – in my mind, he needs to SHUT THE FUCK UP. Every time I see somebody blither out a “Thank you, Doctor Dean” in a Kos komment, my monitor faces a risk of having a hole punched in it.
If he was that committed a doctor, he’d still be doing it – but he’s not. As a politician, he managed to deliver some healthcare to the whitebread small population of a higher economic demographic state.
Whooptie fucking shit. Let’s see him accomplish that in West Virginia, or Ohio, or Kentucky, or Colorado, or any of the larger places that he doesn’t understand jack about.
The Populist
@Nellcote:
I think these people think this should be Iran or something where a politician isn’t allowed to call out the Mullahs. Same thing…they want authoritarianism to trump what is the President’s right to call out a wrong.
Cacti
@Tonal Crow:
Yes, the base.
What upper middle class white liberals have anointed themselves.
The Populist
@Bender:
Yep, I knew you’d say that. So basically the court got involved when it shouldn’t have and that is fine because it was your guy. Sorry bud, I am an independent with no love of the parties.
I lean left but I once was a Republican. You can try to paint with that brush and you will lose the argument everytime.
If Gore had been installed by the court it would be YOU “whining” when you’d be correct to call out the fact that the court should NOT be installing Presidents.
Man you people are confused. But heck, do as I say not as I do right?
No Joy in Mudville
I think it was on the night preceding October 23, 4004 BC.
And they’ve been at it ever since. The word is that Noah, a Winger (complete with sexual misconduct), did nothing but bitch and moan throughout the duration of the cruise.
“You eat too much.”
“Stop making so much noise.”
“T-Rex leave that baby hippo alone and get back to your cabin.”
And on and on and on….
slag
@Cacti: Since the Public Option has consistently polled well throughout this entire healthcare debate, your elitist criticism is hardly valid.
kay
@Bender:
Oh, so it was about class, and not fairness.
It was about being classy.
I swear, you’re all lightweights, on the Right.
The Populist
@Makewi:
BTW Makewi, Obama has support on the Public Option and he needs to push it hard.
Health Care Reform polling is too subjective to be believed. I wouldn’t be too confident with that pronouncement you keep making. People are fed up with being fucked over by large companies all in the name of “free markets.”
Until you can PROVE we have free markets here, that is one weak argument the right make on why we should leave it in the hands of the insurance companies with zero regulations attached.
Makewi
@Chyron HR:
Interesting. Considering the actual content of my comments regarding Stupak, Hyde and ObamaCare, your comment may end up being the stupidest thing I read all day. It’s still fairly early here in the Pacific, so feel free to try to top it.
Cacti
@slag:
Support a public option is rather different position than “public option or kill the bill”.
That territory is almost exclusively occupied by white, wine track liberals with health insurance and above median incomes.
Michael
Tonal Crow
Fuck you.
Thirty years of my life has been utterly wasted in an economic sense, thanks in large part to pony seekers and Naderites who insisted on all or nothing. Your cohorts’ rhetoric on most subjects was ridiculous and you refused to punt the ridiculous from positions of high visibility.
Makewi
@kay:
fairness as defined by those who feel aggrieved. Sure, what harm can possibly come from that, people being so eminently reasonable and unselfish and all.
Mike in NC
Thiessen should have gotten a baseball bat enema for that performance.
kay
And, just as a factual matter, the conservative Justices actually didn’t sit there stoic and silent.
One of them was audibly whining. It got a lot of press.
The Populist
@Makewi:
It’s not so stupid outside of trying to call you names.
The right could give two shits about abortion or else they would have done something years ago. They don’t because they would be done as a party once they outlawed it.
The sad part is that people can’t even accept that it’s NONE of their BUSINESS what somebody does with their body. It’s a family matter and not some busy body who wants to shove a bible in my face and tell me that I have to live according to some language written in an old, outdated book that advocates killing disobedient children and stoning adulterers to death.
See, if people on the right really cared about these children, they’d do more to make their lives complete (adoption) instead of pretending abstinence is something two people in the heat of passion will ever practice.
Yep, I see foster kids rotting in foster homes with funds being cut in large sums, so am I supposed to want to see children suffer because somebody gave a guilt trip to a young girl to carry a foetus to term and give it away once it leaves her womb?
Wow…
Scott
Republicans are all about being classy. That’s why they yell shit during the SOTU, hang up bone-in-the-nose pictures of Obama, and blow up federal buildings.
slag
@Michael: I hear you. But all I can say is that I’m glad you’re not running the Democratic Party. And I’m pretty sure I’ve never said that to anyone ever before.
Makewi
@The Populist:
Health Care polling is too subjective unless it points to what you believe is the will of the people is what I suspect you mean. People are fed up with a lot of things, constantly and consistently.
In any case, I am not suggesting that no changes be made to the health care system in this country. I am stating that this change being suggested is not the right one, and will likely make the situation worse rather than better.
scarshapedstar
@Michael:
That’s the ticket. The real problem with the last few decades was been that liberals have been too unwilling to compromise.
I don’t know how I failed to see it.
Tonal Crow
@slag: Quite so, e.g.,:
12/2009 Thomson/Reuters poll: 60% support public option.
2/2010 Research 2000 poll: 34% of Nevadans would be more likely to vote for Reid if he fights for and wins public option, vs. 15% less likely to support him.
geg6
@Cacti:
You know what? Fuck you. Dr. Dean has been nothing but supportive of almost every goddam HCR proposal that’s been floated. Like me, he prefers single payer or a public option. But he hasn’t been out there in the kill the bill crowd or whining or crying about not getting his pony. He’s been out there working his ass off to get any kind of HCR done.
Fuck you. We wouldn’t even be in the position to be discussing what kind of HCR we want or that Congress will vote for without Dr. Dean. Really, fuck you.
Makewi
@The Populist:
Seriously. I wish I could understand why you feel the need to go off on tangents about things which are unrelated to what I was actually saying. My suspicion is because you have no actual argument against my comments and yet still feel the need to use up all that speed you gathered charging my windmill.
If you want to discuss what I actually said, feel free to do so, otherwise save it.
El Cid
@Mike in NC: He’s not a Haitian immigrant in New York holding up a wallet, so that’s unlikely.
slag
@scarshapedstar: We may need a “Show us on the doll where Howard touched you” tag. If we want to be all fair and balanced, that is.
Tonal Crow
@Michael: The middle finger is the last refuge of the person who lacks an argument. Did you know that I’ve been consistently pushing to PTDB? I’ve called congresscritters over 50 times on this issue in the past few weeks. How many times have YOU called, big boy?
flukebucket
And oxen. Don’t forget about the killer oxen.
The Populist
@Makewi:
I respectfully disagree. YOU think I am being subjective? No, polling firms that gauge this issue as unpopular tend to ask pointed questions to elicit a negative response.
You can keep telling me the sky is purple, but I see it for what it is…blue. People want change, the right needs this to fail only because it will help them now in 2010.
The bill is flawed like many laws BUT since your party loves to tell us to give the free market a chance, the insurance companies lie about bullshit while increasing premiums under the guise of losing money when that is not the case.
Michael D.
A la Red State, we should organize a campaign to send Republican members of Congress blocks of cheese.
Tax Analyst
@licensed to kill time:
It enters my mind almost ALL the time these days when I think about the Republicans positions and how the media faithfully regurgitates their talking points as if they had some basis in reality.
(Sigh)
Also, the presence of the current Tim Burton remake of “Alice” is another reason why the lyrics to “White Rabbit” might just pop into your head.
Cacti
@geg6:
Umm…
Bullshit.
Tonal Crow
@slag: LOL!
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Cacti:
Oh my,. Solid right hook hippie punch with that one. I heard the China Snifter crinkle on impact.
you win the round.
Cacti
Howard Dean “working his ass off to get any kind of HCR done”.
Makewi
@The Populist:
If it’s so popular why hasn’t it passed? The GOP can’t stop it, since they simply don’t have the votes. Why does this bill that you claim people are clamoring for not have the votes needed to pass?
kay
@Scott:
I know, right? Conservatives are complaining about decorum.
Obama should have pointed and yelled “you LIE!” at Justice Roberts.
Or stood up there Tweeting his friends.
Tax Analyst
@Makewi:
Apparently you don’t read your own stuff.
geg6
@Cacti:
And Dr. Dean said “kill the bill” when exactly?
licensed to kill time
@Michael D.:
Or some bottles of red red whine (nah, too much potential for enjoyment :)
Cacti
Dammit. My link of Howard Dean doing the news show circuit to try and kill the Senate Bill isn’t showing up.
Anyhoo, Deanies saying their guru has worked to get any kind of HCR passed and hasn’t been crying for a pony are unbelievably full of shit.
geg6
@Cacti:
Evidence, asshole. You got none.
The Populist
@Makewi:
If I was pushing your buttons, you’d know it.
As for my “tangents”. I was responding to the post you responded to where the OP called you out for “whining” about abortion. I therefore laid out my case for why I think the right is wrong on this topic.
You can ignore me but it was NOT a response to something you responded to me on. Like I said, It was my take on the OP’s response to you as well as your comments.
My other posts have been on topic in response. If you can’t handle it, please feel free to ignore me. I am not one to call names unless I think I am being trolled.
You want to play a game with me, fine so be it. If you want an honest debate, I am trying to give you that. Your call…
Cacti
@geg6:
Dean said kill the Senate bill back in December.
The Populist
@geg6:
I remember him saying he did not like the Senate bill and wanted to kill it on a talk show…which one I can’t remember but I suspect Maddow?
Then I remember he backtracked a bit to say he was misquoted. On what point he was misquoted I do not remember. The OP may have gotten it half right.
gwangung
I’m certainly impressed how several factions of “liberals” have managed to heave this thread around to make it all about them, instead of where the focus started out on….
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Makewi: Are we being bad again Scarlett?
Svensker
@Makewi:
Who was calling whom “traitor” 7 short years ago?
The Populist
@Makewi:
OKay, now we are back on topic.
Easy… it hasn’t passed because blue dogs are pussies and the right will not talk at all about compromise. People support HCR because they know it’s needed. They are polled as negative because of how the question is framed.
Now, really, you do know why the dems have been wimps on this right? They don’t have the votes to override a senate filibuster. Because of this threat they backtracked and finally did pass it.
Now it’s in reconciliation. Come on Makewi…you know the answer. If it didn’t pass it would NOT be in reconciliation so both houses can fix it for one final bill to the president.
The problem now remains that the dems are afraid if they put a public option in there the right as well as right leaning dems will vote it down or filibuster again in the senate.
El Cid
I wouldn’t get too upset about contemporary domination of Democratic / liberal activism being the province mostly of upper-middle and upper-class activists, since that has pretty much always been the case since maybe a few times in the 1930 and outside union leadership.
Brachiator
@flukebucket:
RE: Advocates killing disobedient children and stoning adulterers to death.
Fixt.
The Populist
@gwangung:
The focus has remained on Roberts. It has also branched off into why extremely right wing people seem to excuse behavior they call out liberals on everyday…so it’s on topic, just with many different points going at once.
Cacti
@geg6:
geg6
@Cacti:
You really are pitiful. I’ll do your work for you and then show you how little you actually know (or what a lying sack of shit you are).
Dec. 15, 2009:
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/health-care/howard-dean-kill-the-senate-bill/
Dec. 19, 2009:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/12/20/howard-dean-senate-bill/
For all of four days he wanted to scrap the shitty Senate bill and go with the House bill. Oh, the humanity! Oh, the hippie unicorns! Oh, he’s sabotaging all of HCR because he said something one day and then changed his mind four days later because HCR is too important to him and us to not go for even a shitty bill!
licensed to kill time
@Tax Analyst: Another thing that comes to mind is Bizarro World from the Superman comics:
Help! I’m stuck in Bizarro World and I can’t get out!
slag
@Cacti: You mean when he said this?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@gwangung:
That’s just what liberals do when they are bored. 3 liberals in a room = 5 opinions, etc. You know you are a liberal if measuring the number of different ideological stances you hold requires fractal dimensions.
Catsy
As others have noted, they’ve always been whiners–a sense of grievance against and oppression by the Other has long been an integral part of the
reactionarymindset, and it’s practically required in order forfascismconservatism to function.But it really kicked into high gear when they started realizing that they’d lost: not just a couple of elections, but the verdict of history.
They’re dinosaurs, and they know it. The rest of the world has largely left their sick ideology behind, to the point where they have more in common with repressive regimes like Islamic theocracies or China than with other Americans. The majority of Americans have rejected their flavor of hate and division. Gay marriage is a reality, and they can only delay its acceptance, not stop it. They’re wrong on the objective facts of almost every major issue of the day.
There will always be reactionaries and conservatives, but 20th-century-style anti-gay, anti-woman and anti-American conservatism is as dead as the dinosaur, and all that remains is the mop-up. They know it, and they’re lashing out like cornered animals.
Tax Analyst
@Makewi:
Here’s a question about things you have actually said: I’ve noticed several commenters point out your penchant for making false equivalencies and what I have also noticed is that you NEVER respond to THOSE particular comments.
Perhaps you can respond to the general gathering as to why those comments generate silence from your corner. It might be instructive and it might explain why or how you always seem to come up with further phony equivalents as the thread grows in size.
I (and perhaps a few other folks) eagerly await your response.
slag
@gwangung: Just out of curiosity, how many more comments do you need to see about Republican whining? Is this a particularly deep subject?
The Populist
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I guess it’s 100 times better than a con chat room where if you even deviate from the status quo, you get flamed.
geg6
@Cacti:
So saying you don’t like the Senate bill is the same as sabotaging HCR?
Damn. It’s my fault HCR hasn’t passed yet, then. Because I really don’t like the Senate bill, even though I support passing it now and didn’t back in December. All those letters I’ve been writing and phone calls I’ve been making have all been for naught!
maus
When their martyr complex had manbabies with their chickenhawk nature and they tried to co-opt the perpetual underdog status of progressive policy, the grassroots, and civil rights.
In aping what they don’t understand, they only heard the most shrill and obnoxious from the left, and regurgitate what they think freedom sounds like.
You’re tone-deaf, fuckers. Stop playing make-believe with things you don’t understand.
Nellcote
@former_friend:
And yet “Liberal Fascism” was a ‘bestseller’.
It’s never occured to you that Wingnut Welfare institutions are paying their ‘interns’ to troll comments areas of the blogs/news sites? Who pays Breitbart?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I find it quite entertaining myself. But do have my rubber mallet handy, just in case.
Michael
scarshapedstar
Aren’t three decades of “Fail” in messaging enough?
It was progressives that fueled The Swimmer’s primary challenge to Jimmy Carter, the event that bruised him so badly that he didn’t have a chance. And yes – I call Ted “The Swimmer” because he should have been permanently shelved as a fatally flawed candidate after Chappaquiddick. unfortunately, he had so much preening ego and so many fucking idiot progressives that he thought of himself as indispensable. As a result, he turned into a lightjning rod and a symbol of out of touch limosine liberalism.
Progressives could have then become a foil to Reagan era union busting and his war on the middle class, but you guys were too busy dressing as skeletons in opposition to the nuclear arms race to really get involved. When given the opprtunity to save family farming from the combines, you sent Jessica Lange to congressional hearings to talk about her experiences acting as a farmer’s wife in a movie. Remember that embarrassment?
Then, when presented opportunities to talk sensibly about the arms race, you trotted out old sepulchural voiced hippies and kids in skeleton suits. you couldn’t be bothered to speak of it economically beyond platitudes about how many school lunches it would cost.
Finally, Reagan was done. Who got foisted on us? Mike Dukakis, another flawed, weird New Englander with a bizarre family life.
It just goes on and on – the Kerry/Edwards combination? What a laugher. Rich and Richer, with a woman on the side.
Feh – spare me American progressives. What a fucking bunch of losers.
The Populist
@geg6:
Hehe, too true. I think what the GOP supporters forget is that it’s okay to backtrack if it means getting a good result. They think it’s some kind of crime to revise or change one’s mind.
Corner Stone
What is a “wine track liberal”?
maus
There’s nothing dumber than little pussy-baby conservatives wishing death on liberals and crying when we say a bad word to them.
“TUT-TUT, LIBERALS SURE ARE HATEFUL/USE BAD LANGUAGE/DON’T BELIEVE IN FREEDOM OF SPEECH HEH/ARE THE TRUE RACISTS”.
Fuck off, trolling isn’t constitutionally free speech, and I’d expect to be banned from your sites if I just sat around and jerked myself off while making snarky one-sentence no-signal to noise comments.
These douchebags aren’t into actual commentary, they just want to spurt their terrible sense of humor into every conversation and rile people up.
Ban them all, seriously. I respect some conservatives for their actual intentions to argue and have dialogue, but these people are manchildren. They can go talk about EL OBAMANOID KENYASOTERO in some other teabag PUMA echo chamber where people tolerate such idiocy.
Tax Analyst
@licensed to kill time:
Oh, absolutely. BTW, I heard that Sarah Palin is going to run for Preznit of Bizarro World in 2012. She’s just going to use her Katie Couric interview as her campaign platform. Or she might just find the Bizarro Code a better stated example and use that.
Tsulagi
@Nellcote:
Well, if I could have my wish and druthers, the venue would be like that Questions time Obama had with the R-baggers at their retreat. Have zero doubt something like that would be extensively covered by media. I’d pop some popcorn for that.
While the nine justices, including the five evildoers in the Citizens decision, have more extensive training and experience in the law than Obama, pretty sure he’d be able to hold his own. Would like to see him ask Thomas to walk the group and the country through his reasoning that corporate entities are actually live private individual citizens and entitled to unfettered free speech. Then ask the Gang of Five what at least one of those
assholesfine justices would need to see in signed legislation trying to prevent corporate and big moneyed interests from buying American politics that would pass their constitutional muster.I’d even watch that on pay per view.
Cacti
@geg6:
-Howard Dean
“Working his ass off to get any kind of HCR passed”
So you’ve gone from “guru Howard never said kill the bill” to “well, he changed his mind four days later”.
Silver Owl
I think republicans were more mature before Gingrich got them all squealing and whining about the blow job. It’s been getting worse ever since.
Nellcote
@geg6:
Actually, he was for about a month but he’s come around.
slag
@Cacti:
Well, since Dean isn’t currently out there advocating to kill the bill, I appreciate the help he’s giving here. And since I tend to be one of those clipboard-toting idiots you see on the street corner trying to get people registered to vote, I’m grasping at anything the Democratic Party is willing to send me that will make the job a little easier. Characterize my concern as “whining” or being a “WATB” or what-have-you; I don’t care. It’s a real concern for me and has been since the end of last year. So, I appreciate what Dean and Grayson are doing right now quite a bit.
With that said, you are free to carry on with your bitching about “ponies” or whatever it is that’s bothering you about those petulant, crazy leftwing wackos today.
asiangrrlMN
@Cacti: Agree with you here. I was born early 70s, and I can’t remember a time when the right wasn’t whining about something. It’s just that now that they are not in power, and the head guy in charge is black, their whining takes on a special flavor.
I also agree with you about the makeup of the bloggers on the left who are stumping to kill the bill. Mostly white, most (if not all) have healthcare. It’s been pretty fascinating for me to watch. To clarify, I am not counting Howard Dean in this bunch because he is backing the bill.
Oh, and I think the SOTU address is exactly the right place to talk about the decision. Obama did not bitch-slap anyone. He was simply talking about the ramifications of a really fucking bad legal decision. I am with the camp that wants to hear substance in the speech, not just fluff.
maus
It’s true, if the Cheezburger Network can pay their contractors minimum wage to make unfunny image macros, sure as hell these billion-dollar “thinktanks” can pay the unemployed a bit to shit up ThinkProgress, HuffPo (not that it needs it…) and Salon to the point where it’s miserable to read the comments. 20% of them are trolls, 50% are people responding to the trolls, and 30% are people who have anything to say otherwise.
It’s miserable, and blog owners who don’t email/ip ban active trolls are just as bad as the MSM and cable media, giving these people license to spew their trash non-opinions and making all the other posters frustrated.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Catsy:
It was always thus – take a look at the history of child labor laws for example. Or the 40 hour work week. And yet the dinosaurs never seem to go away. 50 years from now they’ll be bragging about how much they support the gay troops while raising holy hell about the Pentagon’s new plans to allow genetically modified hyper-intelligent dolphins to serve in Navy SEAL teams (because it might undermine unit cohesion, and who wants that fishy smell in the unit PX), and citing the Biblical story of Jonah and the Whale as evidence of how unnatural it is for mankind to have traffic with sea-creatures.
The Populist
@Silver Owl:
I blame DeLay and many others who always would say compromise is for weak people.
Cacti
@slag:
If Howard and his entourage want to go around waving their hands in the air, that’s fine.
As long is doesn’t distract the adults in Congress from finishing the adult work in getting HCR passed.
Michael
Corner Stone
Jane Hamsher, Glenn Greenwald, any Kennedy.
kay
Ultimately, I think Roberts loses, and he probably regrets all the attention this is getting.
He is, after all, the judge, and judges really do have to watch what they say because of the unique position they hold in our system.
Probably would have been wiser to bluff his way through this question, with a non-committal answer.
We’ve had local judges here attacked by local politicians for supposedly “lenient” decisions. I don’t recall any of them ever hitting back. Not a word.
Paul L.
Just see the Raw Story Michael Moore video.
Fascinating how his neck fat inflated/deflated like a bullfrog’s when he talked.
Mike Kay
@Michael:
Greenwald isn’t liberal, he’s Ron Paul libertarian. He went so far as to support the Citzen’s United decision that Roberts is crying about.
Cacti
@Corner Stone:
wine track = affluent
beer track = working class
slag
@Cacti: Well, I’m glad you will condescend to let him do his job. I’m sure he appreciates it.
Makewi
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Well I am, apparently. I don’t feel comfortable speaking for you.
Cacti
@Mike Kay:
Calling it the Citizens United decision is too polite.
The group was called Citizens United Not Timid.
The magnum opus of the Roberts Court should be remembered as the CUNT decision.
slag
@Cacti: No rightwing framing there. At all.
maus
@kay:
There’s no way to lose when your side writes the history, and I see no possibility that he’s not aware of all the attention he’s encouraging and devouring. He may be a horrible prick, but he’s not stupid.
bemused
@The Populist:
And Grover Norquist said bipartisanship is another name for date rape.
Cacti
@slag:
Yeah, his job.
Whatever that might be. I surely don’t remember electing Howard Dean to any position.
Nellcote
@kay:
Lifetime appointment=no regrets.
The media isn’t talking about the implications of the decision, they’re talking about the back&forth with the WH.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Makewi:
And stay away from the Magic Elixir, you know what that does to you.
kuvasz
Re: “gay cocks down our throats”
Let’s get something understood Mr. Coles, we, as in the vast Left Wing conspiracy you cite, do not intend to shove gay cocks down your throat. We are reserving gay cocks for the fundamentalist homophobes. You get good, old straight cock.
I hope this settles the question.
Makewi
@The Populist:
What is there to say. I am not pushing for, nor believe that abortion should be made illegal. As I have never made that argument, and instead was pointing out the truth (by linking the actual text) of the relationship between Stupak, Hyde and ObamaCare, I am not quite sure what the fuck you want from me.
Perhaps we should simply start over. What is it exactly, on the topic of Stupak, Hyde or ObamaCare that you wish to know my opinion on?
Makewi
@Tax Analyst:
Perhaps you could give me an example.
Nellcote
@Cacti:
I always wondered what happened to the NT.
Makewi
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
No worries. I gave it up for Lent.
Da Bomb
@Brachiator: That story has to be unpossible.
See remember if there are black children being randomly sucked into the sky by a spontaneous abortion tube in higher numbers than anyone else, minorities are still minorities and the majority is still the majority.
TAX CUTS!!!!!
/random wingnut
geg6
@Nellcote:
Four days. Exactly. From Dec. 15 until Dec. 19, 2009.
See post #256.
Tax Analyst
@Makewi:
Well, OK…
You were already called out on that one:
The next one is just a opinionated assumption since it is not at all clear in any sense that Obama’s HC positions do not have public support.
and then there you were on your #223 (below) contradicting your statement about a “clear lack of support of the people” stating there that HC polling is too subjective to indicate the true will of the people. I thought it was clear (#185) that the public did not support Obama’s stance. Which one is it?
In addition Populist has made numerous posts refuting your assertions, including calling you out on false equivalencies, particularly #246.
I know it is fruitless and pretty much a complete waste of time to ask you for honest explanations and substance instead of loopy or biased opinions all dressed up as “factual” when they are “in fact” nothing more than your opinions touted as some sort of known or common wisdom.
Shorter version: Bunk.
Nellcote
@geg6:
I’ll take your word for it. Probably all the “even Howard Dean says…” that made it seem longer. I just remember being shocked by him saying it more than a couple of times on MSNBC.
Admiral_Komack
“When did the Republicans become such whiners?”
-They always have been.
Makewi
@Tax Analyst:
I am amused that you managed to collect all my comments and put them in one place. Can you tell me where I made any claim that those comments were anything other than my opinion? You can’t because I didn’t.
Now on the other issue, regarding the actual text of the Stupak amendment, I did make factual claims and stand by them. As I have consistently stated, feel free to refute them.
The populist, rather than addressing my points, felt it more appropriate to pretend to debate me over the abortion issue itself, why I might hate poor children (but only the living ones), and why the greater right wing is just plain wrong on most things, but mostly about abortion. The whole thing is sort of like a bad Twilight Zone episode, or like telling your child that you know damn well they took the cookie, wearing the proof of it on their shirt, and having them insist repeatedly they did not.
I hope that clears things up for you.
The Populist
@Makewi:
Makewi, let’s indeed start over. I am not looking for anything from anybody but a point/counterpoint and the fact that it is understood that I like to go into my own little venting mode from time to time. Most likely you will disagree with me and that is fine. What I do is respond to a post sometimes and just riff on points I read even if it’s not directed solely at you. I guess it’s best to read between the lines and know if it is a response to your response to an OP, I may just be responding or playing devil’s advocate. As you see, I do not flame those with opposing views unless they are obvious trolls or they are being insulting.
With that in mind, my crib note points on each (keep in mind my arguing/opinion style is a mix of strong statements and the like —- I am what I am):
Stupak: Ridiculous little man who wants to derail HCR due to his C Street beliefs and selfishness and is overriding something that is needed in this country (whether we agree or not, it is needed). I think it’s ridiculous he is holding up a bill over abortion language that really is not going to make it any easier to get an abortion using fed funds (see Hyde Amendment). If somebody wants an abortion, correct me if I am wrong, they will have to either be with a non-government insurance plan or they pay for it out of pocket. Do you agree with this nonsense? Let’s play devil’s advocate and argue that it’s a republican holding up tort reform with the GOP in charge. You’d be mighty pissed if some liberal minded republican was holding up the bill with this nonsense that really isn’t an issue. What Stupak wants is to play God with the bill so he can get any mention of Abortion in there to make his c street religious lobby buds happy.
Hyde Amendment: Stupak is a fool and is wrong that anything in HCR will override the Hyde Amendment’s ban on federal funding of abortion, so what is the problem?
ObamaCare: Can we agree to call it HCR? ObamaCare is silly. The man is doing the right thing here and I believe history will side with him on this. I know you keep telling me he’s a one termer, and I disagree but why do I sense the right is freaking out over because once it’s in place and working, the public will spurn the right? Why can’t the right get more involved and talk it out vs being the spoiled kid who wants to take his toys home because he isn’t winning the war games?
gwangung
@slag: A magnitude more than the current comments (which pretty much reduce to “Me me me!!!!”
The Populist
@Makewi:
Okay, now you pushed my buttons (even though I have been pretty respectful to you).
I was making a generalized point about the right. If you think I was attacking you, I see why we can’t have legit debates.
You can pull the typical right wing bullshit game of trying to discredit me but I have YET to see you respond to any of my other points outside of telling me to start over (which I graciously did).
Argh, I see how it works. Sorry I spent time trying to treat you like an adult vs. the typical right wing poster who acts all annoyed because I made some overall observations of the right. If you were my target, I’d include your name.
Please learn to understand when somebody is making a general point or observation vs. something directed at you personally.
Whatever. We can still start over but if you want to act like I haven’t tried to debate you, that is a fucking lie.
Tax Analyst
@Makewi:
As much as anything else you ever say. There’s absolutely no point in addressing you further and I really should know better than to feed a preening troll, but sometimes I get sucked into these things.
Anyway, I think the Populist at #311 has a few points for ya to mull over.
maus
@bemused:
Well, the corporations/lobbyists DO get what they want over the consent of the people.
PaulB
We have, repeatedly. You just don’t like the truth, so you ignored it. Your prerogative, of course, but it does make you look rather silly.
Allan
@Makewi: For someone who has health insurance reform crammed down your throat, you sure have a lot to say.
arguingwithsignposts
Roberts should have never been CJ. Period. End of Story. It was yet another dick move from a dick administration. He can WATB all he wants, and he’ll still be CJ. f**k him, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy. Yet another refutation of Stanley Fish’s idiotic “Miss Me Yet?” theory.
Kerry St. Clair-Golding
You tell us John. Didn’t you used to be one?
bob h
In Roberts’ case, there is also a lot of whining about judicial pay. This is the route by which we probably rid ourselves of this lightweight.
Bender
The always-unsourced, always-unsupported “Reagan did it, too!” meme is an especially weak talking point. It took three minutes to search Reagan’s 7 SOTUs and find that not only did he never criticize the Supreme Court in them, but he only mentioned the Supreme Court twice in 7 speeches, and both were to praise them.
I’m sure your other unsourced, unsupported assertions are just as faulty. No linky, no sale.