Now if I were Jane Hamsher, I would probably be losing my shit over the factual inaccuracies in this broad swipe at me from her. I’d probably start this post saying “Jane Hamsher is no blogger or activist, she’s a smear-monger who makes things up and projects her own fantasies onto her stories.” Or something like that. Instead of a hysterical response, I”ll just point out two quick things. First, when she states this, she is simply making shit up:
The self-described “populist” was feeding dutiful JournoList scribes like Jon Chait, Matt Yglesias and John Cole cues to attack the “left” for raising justified concerns about both the bill, and what it would mean for the Democratic Party:
Time for a hockey puck sized valium, Jane. I was never, ever a member of Journolist. I was never invited, I never accepted, I never read one email before Tucker Carlson decided to publish them. You are just flat out wrong. I have never had any association with Journolist. You’re just wrong. And, btw- you could always ask DDay if I was on the evil Journolist, because he was a member.
Second, this is also false:
And it’s no mystery why freshly minted Democrat John Cole was cheerleading the comfortable familiarity of a Republican health care bill – after its passage, Nancy Pelosi quickly sent out an email bragging that its underlying principles were written by the Heritage Foundation, with the helpful quote that “Democrats have been less than true to their principles.”
I have repeatedly and consistently stated over and over again that I would prefer any health care bill penned by Jane, D-Day, Jon Walker, or any number of far more progressive bills- if they had any chance of passing. Unlike some, I am quite capable of counting to 60. There were never votes for the public option. I supported the HCR bill because it was better than the status quo. That’s it. If I had my way, I would nationalize the entire damned industry- my military healthcare was pretty damned good. I didn’t feel that way even a few years ago, but watching this healthcare debate opened my eyes to the basic fact that our system is a disaster and there are few incentives to cost-save. Even something as common sense as end of life counseling was demagogued to death. Hell, even the way we train doctors makes no damned sense.
I know you hate Rahm and all the evil centrists, but at least get your facts somewhat straight.
stuckinred
Wondered when you’d show up!
taylormattd
She can’t. She’s a liar, a nutjob, and a PUMA so filled with rage that Obama won, she has decided anyone who ever says anything mildly positive about him or his political accomplishments is a terrible person.
John Cole
@stuckinred: Was at the dentist for FOUR AND A HALF HOURS. And my teeth hurt, and I’m going to bed. I’ll deal with this shit later after a couple glasses of wine.
geg6
Someone in the other thread, I think, said she’s the lefty version of McMeghan McArglebargle.
Never, ever, ever, ever right and freaks right the fuck out when called on it.
I can sign on with that.
MaximusNYC
“Show Me On the Doll Where Rahm Touched You” is still my favorite post category on BJ, or possibly anywhere.
joe from Lowell
Anybody who describes the members of a Koch-brothers-funded organization as “anti-corporate” needs to eat with a cork on the end of her fork like Steve Martin in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
stuckinred
@John Cole: I heard you had to go back, hang tough!
Kryptik
Since I’m about at my last frayed nerves, and the left wing blog meltdown is just too much for me to bear, I’ll just note my other (amongst other thing) source of depression:
Byrd’s seat is going to end up either won by a candidate endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce and wants to repeal the health bill….or someone who said ‘I got my money the old fashioned way: I inherited it’ and wants to ensure that wealth is perpetuated for the wealthy, believes volcanos are the real source of Global Warming, and wants to roll thingsback to where ‘Capitalism the way it should be’: Back during the gilded age.
Somehow John, I find myself intensely glad I’m not back home anymore.
General Stuck
Cool, Dear Jane letter from ex boyfriend. No doubt the one who picked his nose in bed, and left socks draped over the cat.
EX republican. EX EX EX, meets true believer dragon lady with nut clippers big as sheep shears. Popcorn!
Trinity
Hamsher is the Bachmann of the left.
Hope you feel better soon John!
suzanne
@joe from Lowell: Win.
Sorry you feel so craptacular, John. Got any Vicodin?
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Unlike some, I am quite capable of counting to 60. There were never votes for the public option. I supported the HCR bill because it was better than the status quo. That’s it.
To have read so much as a single day of this blog during the HCR debate and come away with any other conclusion about John Cole’s position is to have read with blinders on. Over your eyes. Keeping you from actually seeing the blog. While you were busy making shit up. Behind your blinders. In the privacy of your own fevered mind.
Jane Hamsher – wow.
JWL
Memo to Hamsher: “When you strike a King, kill him”.
Paul L.
So there is no such thing as Medical Discharge.
anonymous
Passive-aggressive Hamsher reply in 5…4…3…2…
david mizner
Well, Jane (and thousands of others) kept arguing that you needed to count not to 60 but to 50. And we were right. But in the end they didn’t want to try to get the fifty, and you apparently didn’t want them to try.
Facts straight indeed.
dmsilev
@John Cole:
Be careful, this could be a symptom of stage-one Althouse Syndrome.
dms
Rosalita
@John Cole:
I’d suggest something stronger and more medicinal…like scotch or whatever your favorite poison.
New Yorker
Yup, and you’re also not a hysterical child who will throw a temper tantrum and spite yourself by demanding that we destroy any attempt at healthcare reform if the first attempt isn’t the absolutely perfect option. It’s the leave-and-take-the-ball-with-you instinct appearing in an alleged adult.
yet another jeff
Wow…ever so gently she slipped over the edge and actually became The Jane Hamshers Of The Left….
Tom Hilton
@geg6:
I think whoever called her “Orly Hamsher” in that thread was much closer to the mark.
taylormattd
@anonymous: Exactly. It’ll be a snotty update. “One minor detail wrong, and the obamabots in the veal pen go nuts!!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@david mizner:
No. You weren’t. You really weren’t. And no matter how many times you say you were, you weren’t.
ETA: and whether there were even fifty votes for a PO, had push come to shove, is a highly debatable proposition. Blue Dogs and Deficit Peacocks are not smart people.
anonymous
@JWL:
I prefer the original Bal’mer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP-lrftLQaQ
jl
I have reservations about bloggers writing health care bills. If we go that route, Obama will try to reach out in a post partisan way to those who have been on both sides of the ideological divide.
In other words, Cole will be chosen to write it.
And if Cole is in one of his ‘moods’ we will get TunchCare, the guiding principle of which will be ‘the quick and the dead.’
Joe Beese
It’s difficult to get votes for a public option when you’re lying about wanting it in the first place.
beltane
Does this mean that Jane Hamsher is about to mount a primary challenge to John Cole and his corporatist sellout ways?
If the Republicans do not take Congress this year, I suspect that Hamsher will go more ballistic than any random teabagger. She will be livid, frothing at the mouth, and ready for her own show on Fox.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@John Cole: Oy. Four and a half hours…? I’m sorry for your trouble! Here – have some tea and a hockey puck sized Valium (Jane won’t take anything from you anyway).
akaoni
@General Stuck:
Popcorn! indeed…
Davis X. Machina
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Narrative….facts.
Facts….narrative.
Decisions, decisions.
O.K. — send the facts out into the desert with Joe Pesci.
Not really that hard a decision after all.
Bella Q
Why would she want to let (the actual) facts get in the way of a good pissing match? That would be a totally new twist, now wouldn’t it?
General Stuck
No, but it could mean she mounts John Cole. If there is an entertainment gawd.
taylormattd
@david mizner: And you accuse others of magical thinking. I mean really. To you, the fact that a pared down bill just barely squeezed through via reconciliation after weeks of negotiating is evidence that a stronger bill would have passed with 50 votes?? Delusional.
david mizner
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
??? Are you saying they couldn’t have tried to get the PO via reconcilation?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/16/senate-quartet-urges-reid_n_464077.html
Omnes Omnibus
@Paul L.: And this is what we call a non sequitur.
taylormattd
@Joe Beese: hahaha.
eemom
damn, I picked the wrong week to have to work for a living.
Resident Firebagger
Why Hamsher called you a Journolist member, I have no idea. It’s an error, but it seems kinda minor. It really does.
Mike S
Maybe if you alligned with Grover Norquist she would respect you more for your strong progressive credentials.
eemom
@Tom Hilton:
There were also those who called her “the left’s Ann Coulter.”
Bullsmith
For all I understand, and share, many disappointments and frustrations, I cannot for the life of me figure out WTF is wrong with Jane Hamsher.
The Raven
We corvids think battles within families are really cool. Croak!
Cyrus
I dunno, if the “Jane Hamshers of the left” doesn’t have to include Jane Hamshers herself, then who says that you have to actually be on JournoList to be a “dutiful JournoList scribe”? :)
John Cole
Wait a minute. I thought I was just told that there were 60/51 votes for the public option, GUARANTEED.
Are you now telling me that all the savvy political activists might be wrong, and the neophyte John Cole might have been on to something when he said the votes weren’t there and the POS assholes in the Senate were lying?
taylormattd
@Resident Firebagger: Hahaha, I win!
burnspbesq
@david mizner:
And we were right
Bull. If you sincerely believe that, then (as my shanty-Irish granny used to say) you should have your head examined.
John Cole
@david mizner: Yes. I love how they all came out showing their enthusiastic support for the PO when it was clear it would never happen.
David
@david mizner: LOL, that’s exactly what everyone is saying. 4 is not the same as 50.
FlipYrWhig
@david mizner: Dude, that list includes people who said vaguely supportive things about the idea of a public option, or who could be deduced as supporters from previous statements. By that standard, Baucus would have had to have been a supporter, because his original draft statement included a public option. I think it’s pretty apparent that they never had 50 either. It was close, and it’s too bad that some of them didn’t use the balls God gave them.
david mizner
It’s too bad Hamsher’s so sloppy with her facts (mistaking Cole for a member of journolist) because she has a knack for being right about core issues. For example, she was rightly critical of the health care bill while Cole applauded a Chait post calling it:
I believe you, Cole, when you say you wanted a better bill, but you were also one of the progressives (or whatever you are) who exaggerated the awesomeness of this one.
Garrigus Carraig
I can’t guess why Jane went after you, but I sure as hell ain’t gonna say no when the popcorn goes around.
bago
@eemom: I picked the wrong week to start work.
wmd
@anonymous:
Does Jane ever post in comments here?
Glenn does, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jane here.
I do think it’s incorrect to call her a PUMA. FDL wasn’t significantly opposed to Obama until the FISA vote, and even then the level of opposition was more along the lines of “Obama isn’t the saviour he’s made out to be, but McCain/Palin would be a disaster”.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Joe Beese: No. Just, no. Are you a real person? If your doctor tries a surgical procedure and there are complications, do you accuse him of sabotaging the surgery? Was his master plan to fail?
Alex S.
So Jane also uses Journolist membership as a smear now… She’s probably filled with resentment because she isn’t accepted like those guys. But then, she is a populist and those guys are mostly technocrats. David Sirota probably wasn’t on Journolist, either… I guess that it has come to the point that everything Jane says or does is personal.
Napoleon
@david mizner:
PO did not qualify as something that could be passed through reconcilation. It really is that simple.
taylormattd
@John Cole: See, before it was all about how you supported this terrible bill because you are “newly minted” and on journolist, etc., etc.
Given those things are lies, however, the firebaggers will now switch the subject: Hey, let’s rehash the healthcare debate. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Let’s ignore that Jane Hamsher is either stupid or a liar, let’s instead talk about how Obama IS A LIAR AND SOLD US OUT ON THE PUBLICOPSHUN.
david mizner
@John Cole:
????
That’s a different issue. You said in your post you know how to count to 60. Being the upfront guy who are, you’ll surely acknowledge that 60 votes weren’t needed.
Jesse Ewiak
Name something better since Nixon won his first term.
Jade Jordan
50 votes through reconciliation was a fantasy. Most of the bill did not fit the strict rules.
We should have killed that initial social security bill since it covered so few people. That would have saved us from having to kill the comprehensive SS plan now.
Jane does not speak for me. See Jane-see neon light that follows her saying look at me I am important.
Mnemosyne
@Joe Beese:
Ah, my favoritest Glenn Greenwald paranoid eruption of all time. It’s apparently impossible that Obama wanted a public option but realized that it would be impossible to get it through the Senate and gave up.
Nope, the only possible explanation is that Obama flat-out lied during his entire campaign about ever wanting one in the hope that someday he would be in a position where he could raise people’s hopes and then kill it because he never wanted it in the first place. Because that’s clearly the more logical and rational position.
Omnes Omnibus
Why has today turned out to be Firebagger/Manic Progressive Day at Balloon Juice?
beltane
@John Cole: You’re not understanding their thinking. You see, if the Democrats who wanted the public option wanted it even more, Ben Nelson, Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, and Joe Lieberman would have succumbed to the force of all this positive energy. That is why Bernie Sanders is more to blame than Olympia Snowe: he didn’t use his magical hippie powers to their full potential.
david mizner
@David:
Oh, I agree. I doubt they could have gotten they votes, especially because Obama wasn’t willing to fight for it.
My point, my only point, is that 50 votes, however elusive they were, were needed to pass it. Not 60.
geg6
@david mizner:
Oh, I must be bad at math.
4 = 50.
Gotcha.
timb
Does Jane have any sense of history? Any sense of the momentum of healthcare law?
She should go read Joseph Caro’s masterful “Master of the Senate.” What you learn is the Senate has been, since the Civil War, the place liberal legislation goes to die. In 1955 LBJ forced through a watered down, toothless Civil Rights bill. The first one to pass the Senate since Reconstruction. He had to fight the Right and the Left. The law itself had no real immediate impact, but you know what it demonstrated? It showed to everyone not named Strom Thurmond that Civil Rights legislation would not destroy America or the South.
It’s exactly the same situation here. This watered down bill is going to help a crapload of people and, when the nice middle class white folks who were scared by Rush learn they will not die, it will be infinitely easier to pass new laws.
Plus, and you can bank on this, the short-term thinking which is all most MBA’s are capable of, will dominate insurance company thinking and they will offer less and less for more and more, while exchanges hum along. There will some sort of universal, national healthcare in this country within the decade.
Would the world be better if it happened tomorrow? Hell yeah, but the world doesn’t work that way. If it did, then Jane may not have made the stupid mistake of putting Joe-Joe in burlesque-era make-up.
FlipYrWhig
@Bullsmith: She needed a niche. Her initial splash was the Scooter Libby/Valerie Plame/Fitzgeral story, right? You can’t ride that forever. So her niche is to be the “activist.” And on HCR she came up closer to the top of the food chain because she had lived through scary health problems. It’s just that the sense of personal stake amplified the sense of frustrated grievance and now this is what we have.
Dave
@david mizner:
How is saying “something is better than nothing” defined as “exaggerating the awesomeness of this one?”
You and Hamsher are part of this subset of Democrats who think everything can be done RIGHT NOW. Well you know what? It can’t. Shit, people like you would been bitching out FDR in 1934. “Why isn’t everything done yet? Why isn’t the Depression over??”
Don
It’s going around today. I harassed Greenwald on twitter for linking to John’s post about Obama and the Sekret Killings and saying “Two steadfast Obama supporters – John Cole and Bob Cesca – on presidential assassinations: http://is.gd/fvRx8 http://is.gd/fvRzo” He responded that “If those two aren’t steadfast Obama supporters there are none.”
Obviously you could call John a more steadfast supporter than Hamsher but you could just as easily call him practical. Both she and Greenwald seem determined that because he supports Obama more often than they do that he must be some sort of O-bot.
I think it’s sad that they want to embrace that sort of false dichotomy but it’s damned near tragic that Hamsher would adopt this jingoistic righty strategy of chanting “Journolist!” A sensible person would be embarrassed to share strategies with those nutters.
eemom
@JWL:
Le Win.
John S.
Lefty zombie lies are just as annoying as righty zombie lies. My favorites:
#1 We could have had single-payer healthcare with 50 votes.
#2 We could have passed anything/everything via reconciliation.
#3 We should have made the GOP filibuster and talk all night.
Davis X. Machina
@Alex S.:
The only mailing list David Sirota would ever join would be David_Sirorta-L…
david mizner
I think Hamsher would probably be better off not writing I-told-you-so posts — they tend to be unseemly — but she’s entitled, as Dave Weigel pointed out.
“Hamsher, Vindicated”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/weigel/archive/2010/08/31/hamsher-vindicated.aspx
And a lot of progressives in the blogsophere were also predicting a political payoff. Here’s Pollster:
http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/healthplan.php
Steve
@Cyrus:
John > Jane, but this comment still wins the thread.
david mizner
@Dave:
Guess you missed my block quote:
Chait called it
“the most dramatic improvement in social justice in at least four decades”
and Cole seconded it.
geg6
@david mizner:
You do understand how reconciliation works, right?
Ooops. Guess not. My bad.
Midnight Marauder
@david mizner:
Here’s something that simple-minded twits like you are almost wholly incapable of understanding. Just because the Affordable Care Act does not contain every dream measure liberals wanted included in the final bill, that does not somehow mitigate the final legislation from having a sizable and very tangible impact in the day-to-day lives of millions of Americans. It’s a victory that, although incomplete, is still entirely worth celebrating.
That you could be so gleeful and obtuse in demagoguing something that is providing long-sought after relief to your fellow citizens is a rather shameful display.
Camchuck
Only one of the following is true:
Cole went on JournoList.
Hamsher went on Fox News
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne:
That’s where I drew the line on Greenwald too, particularly because the guy’s beat is the law and civil liberties, and all the stuff on HCR had nothing to do with any of that, and yet he still managed to parlay his “principled administration critic” status into being taken seriously, even deferred to, on an issue he knows no more about than any other online pundit. But we’re both veterans of the Greenwald Wars, so we don’t need to go through that all over again.
Back to work, self…
Face
What the hell is JournoList?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@beltane:
And Mark Pryor and Claire McCaskill and Jim Webb and Mark Warner and Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu and…
That’s also assuming two big debatable notions: 1) that the PO could have been written up to fit reconciliation rules, 2) that even Dems who sorta-kinda supported the PO would have been willing to offend David Broder and The Sacred Comity by making this play, Dianne Feinstein leaps to mind, but I really doubt she’d’ve been the only one.
david mizner
@Mnemosyne:
No, Obama lied after his campaign and said he didn’t campaign on a public option. Get your facts straight.
Svensker
@Resident Firebagger:
When you’re using your factoid to make a point, especially a point with a smear attached, it’s not such a minor error.
And sorta OT, what happened to BillPilgrim? Did he get pissed off in some shouting match and bug out? I miss him.
Sorry ’bout that teeth, John. I can relate — with the price of gold these days, my mouth is worth about $1/2 million I think.
David
@Midnight Marauder: +1000
JPL
I just finished reading all the comments below and now I discover there is a new blog about Jane. Gee…
Enough already. By the way I’m a little disappointed that John was not invited to email with other Journolist members. They could have used his insight. I think we can infer that Jane wasn’t invited either or she would known who the members were. Maybe she can trade emails with her new best friends Erich and Grover.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
Because today is the day John led with the full frontal “Holy Shit, Obama Really IS Just As Bad As Bush!” post.
Shorter Irony: The rumors of my demise have been somewhat exaggerated.
Davis X. Machina
@Face:
It was a treehouse.
John S.
@geg6:
You cannot argue with a zombie. All they are capable of is moaning and hungering for the braaaaaains of anyone who isn’t a zombie.
rootless_e
Since every reputable poll shows Dems problems are the traditional voter turnout that happens every off year, I’m not blown away by Hamsher’s prognostication
FlipYrWhig
@david mizner:
Oh, jesuschrist. He said he didn’t campaign on a public option, he campaigned on a comprehensive solution to health reform, of which the public option he talked about on the trail was just a small part. In other words, not “I never said anything about a public option” but rather “I never campaigned on the public option as the be-all and end-all of health reform.”
Ash Can
@Omnes Omnibus: You said it. I went and got a bunch of stuff done today, came back here to check in, and the place is a shambles.
Is it cocktail hour yet?
Observer
@Midnight Marauder:
I don’t think your language is really called for. And that pretty well applies to everybody here, from John Cole all the way down.
There’s no point in this anymore. If folks can’t get along then they should split up. The logical thing for “progressives” and FDLers is to get even more vocal and do their own version of the Tea Party.
Trying to convince people, ostensibly on their own side, has proven fruitless so it would be more strategic to engage the public directly in a contest of ideas and organization and start running their own candidates.
Either they will be proven correct or the so-called “pragmatic” Dems will be proven correct. Recruiting people and running them is hard work for sure but it’s the logical next step.
They’d be “taking it to the streets” to quote the Doobie bros.
But there’s no point in this endless hostility back and forth.
asiangrrlMN
@Midnight Marauder: Yep. You got it in one.
@david mizner: Yes. It was. No other president has passed healthcare reform, and regardless of all the blathering you’re doing about it, actually people are benefiting from it. So, it is historic. Just because it’s not personally tailored to your desires and wishes does not make it any less so.
@Observer: That IS the whole point here–we get to shout at each other. And, I don’t see anything Midnight Marauder wrote that was particularly hostile or salty or anything. He made a valid point.
As to your larger point, it’ll happen some day. Probably sooner rather than later after the GOP explodes.
Cole, sorry about the harrowing time at the dentist. Ignore the Jane Hamsher of the left and get some rest.
Gus
Wow, I never knew BJ was such a powerful lobby. Powerful enough to kill the public option.
david mizner
Hilarious.
It was a strong proponents of the PO who doubted that Obama and Dems really wanted it, who kept trying to get them on the record supporting it whereas Obama’s defenders claimed he supported it, and that it would be in the final bill.
Now that Obama and Dems did as we predicted, ditched the PO, his defenders say, stop complaining. The votes just weren’t there.
Mnemosyne
@timb:
The funny thing is, there’s not a single nation on earth that has been able to move from a private insurance system to a national healthcare system in a single step. South Korea is considered to have done it at lightning speed, and it took them 15 years.
Apparently part of American Exceptionalism is that we can do something that no other country on Earth has ever done and immediately switch from a private health insurance system to a public one with a single piece of legislation.
JGabriel
@Cyrus: @Steve: Seconded!
.
FlipYrWhig
@rootless_e: Not to mention that political observers have been saying since ’08 that the difficulty with reaching out to youth and minority voters, as Obama did, was always going to be striving to sustain their engagement after the election. Not engaging “the base” or liberals, but rather the first-time and infrequent voters they roused to action specifically for Campaign ’08.
david mizner
@asiangrrlMN:
I hope you don’t actually believe this:
Tom Hilton
@david mizner:
And again: bullshit. Passing it through reconciliation, even if that were possible (there were never 50 votes for a 50-vote threshhold), would have meant a) leaving out portions of the bill essential to the overall reforms, and b) an expiration date in 10 years.
JGabriel
Jane Hamsher, 2006/03/24:
John Cole @ Top:
I can’t wait to see the RomCom about two bloggers based on the Cole / Hamsher chemistry.
Seriously, you two kids, get a room.
Edited to Add: Is anyone reminded of the Point/Counterpoint sketches SNL used to do with Jane Curtin and Dan Akroyd? I keep expecting Cole to write, “Jane, you ignorant slut …”
.
BTD
Meh. Engage in a continual a pie fight, and some of it gets on your clothes.
And I know, having started some with you in the past. I wish all of you, Jane, Cole, etc., could just move on.
Cole had a great post the other day – whatever happened to people just disagreeing about stuff?
socraticsilence
She called him a Journlist member because Jane is Jane- partisan, opinionated, extraordinarily sloppy with the facts, basically she’s Sean Hannity without a radio show.
jwb
@Don: “it’s damned near tragic that Hamsher would adopt this jingoistic righty strategy of chanting “Journolist!” A sensible person would be embarrassed to share strategies with those nutters.” Well, she basically has joined with the crazies of the right, so the fact that she is spouting right wing talking points should surprise no one. Norquist certainly knew what he was doing when he encouraged her, and I’m sure he, of all people, appreciates the high strategic value of keeping the left wing disenchanted.
ETA: She’s a pawn who thinks she’s a queen.
Punchy
Incredible amount of hatred, fury, and insults on the BJ tubez today. That abortion of a thread a few down may set records for epic mcLaren rants and the use of the word “fuck”.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
John, do you have some kind of independent verification of this? Your word’s not much good on this. Couldn’t you have belonged under a different screen name? You were certainly beside yourself with offense when Journolist was finally brought down, and you’ve outed yourself as being fond of behind the scenes back and forth with other bloggers and public figures for which the eyes of your unwashed BJ regulars here are deemed unworthy.
Another BJ tic: incoherent, disproportionate hatred of Jane Hamsher, Glenn G, and Hillary Clinton. But it is fun to read threads in which psycho hatred of all three come spewing forth, especially on a day when the administration of BO shows itself once again to be a cynical exercise in mendacity and betrayal.
Tom65
Jane is nothing more than a grievance farmer (h/t Polly Poplar @Rumproast). If she can get in a few swipes at her perceived peers in order to bolster her emo progressive cred, she’ll do it every fucking time.
Any post about Jane should contain the following: Grover Norquist – now STFU.
taylormattd
@BTD: So Armando, you do realize Jane was the one posting lies about John? He’s not allowed to respond?
Also, I’d be interested to know how often you pop over into the threads at that shithole and tell people they need to move on.
Nimm
What you don’t seem to realize, Mr. Cole, is that demonizing those with whom you disagree, and assuming evil intent instead of a simple honest difference of opinion, makes for a much more dramatic and righteous essay.
So you can see the dilemma.
Face
@JGabriel: Did you really have to bring up the Willy Pete? Because I hear it should be classified as a WMD.
slag
@Camchuck: __
It’s no mystery why Jane, a former liberal, would feel so comfortable with the Faux News crowd.
Napoleon
@BTD:
Suddenly my mental image of this place is the pie fight scene out of Blazing Saddles.
FlipYrWhig
@david mizner:
First of all, “strong proponents of the PO” include people who still wish it was there, but wishing don’t make it so.
Second of all, in my memory at least, “Obama’s defenders” certainly continued to claim he supported it — and, to be honest, I’m sure he _still_ supports it — but didn’t make predictions about whether it would be in the final bill or not.
I’m not sure why you think you were right. This is the Greenwald bit all over again: “there was no PO in the final bill, proving that no one ever wanted there to be a PO in the final bill”; as opposed to “there was no PO in the final bill, proving that there were not enough votes to get a PO in the final bill.” Greenwald and, I guess, you, think the absence of the PO proves that no one ever really wanted it. That’s not really how “proof” works.
Joe Beese
@Mnemosyne:
Former DNC Chair Howard Dean, who has been a sharp critic of the compromises made to the Senate health care bill, said on Sunday that he was “disappointed” by the lack of fight from the White House — specifically, the administration’s abandonment of a public option.
Mnemosyne
@david mizner:
And Greenwald expanded that out into a claim that Obama had lied throughout his entire campaign about wanting a public option.
Previous Greenwald column on the same subject here.
Somebody here needs to get their facts straight, but it ain’t me.
Nimm
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
Instead of asking him to prove that something wasn’t done (and it shouldn’t be necessary to explain why the burden of proof falls on the accuser), why not provide evidence that it was?
Do you have any evidence other than the fact that he wrote in support of the bill….? Is supporting the bill now prima facie evidence of membership in JournoList….?
Zifnab
Sorry, John. But there were 60 Democrats (well… 58, a Socialist, and a Lieber-Dem) in the Senate when HCR came up for a final vote. The vote to end the filibuster is supposed to be straight party line. Backing out on that should be enough to cost you a committee seat and a Presidential visit when you run for reelection.
And, in some ways, it did cost us a seat. Byron Dorgan – the honorable Senator from North Dakota – basically picked up his ball and went home in protest over health care reform. This guy was from the we-reelect-our-incumbents-no-matter-what capital of the US. He all but gift wrapped the seat for the Republicans for a generation.
So this happy talk about “Oh, I can count to 60” seems great on paper, assuming Senators are these bedrock bastions that can never be moved. But then go ask Ben “kick backs for Nebraska” Nelson or Blanche “Oh shit, I’m a liberal now” Lincoln or Arlen “the Party Flipper” Specter about their staunch political beliefs. They wilt in the face of a generous offer or a nasty reelection.
Squeezing those last few votes out can be difficult. But they only become impossible when you absolutely, positively refuse for any reason whatsoever to put a Senator back in line when he goes off the reservation.
Tom65
@Nimm: what dilemma? Jane took a gratuitous swipe at John with demonstably false information, and he fired back. It’s one thing to take a shot at someone, but at least get your fucking facts straight.
lol
What’s the difference between JournoList and Townhouse?
JGabriel
@Face:
I think we can safely avoid that discussion, since, as noted above, Jane never wrote about it.
.
JPL
You’ve Lost Your Shit
Mnemosyne
@Joe Beese:
Again, deciding to abandon the public option after negotiations is not the same as lying for over a year about wanting one, which was Greenwald’s contention. See my links above to Greenwald’s posts if you’re still confused.
BTD
@taylormattd:
John is no innocent in all this Matt. He threw some nasty punches himself over the past year. And a lot of them were inaccurate. As for this “lie,” sounds more like an honest mistake,. It is hardly central to the post. The post is not about John Cole.
I think Jane’s post is intemperate and unnecessary, especially in her discussion of the Journolist, which was just a group of like-minded individuals. I disagree with a lot of them, but they did nothing wrong. Silliest story of all time.
I could not care less if John was on the Journolist or not.
Two straight posts on this nonsense? Really?
wmsheppa
@david mizner: asiangrrlMN is right, at least when it comes to the last 40 years or so. I think it’s a pretty easy case to make that this is the largest, most significant (in terms of number of people impacted) health care reform since medicare was established under President Johnson in 1965. I seriously doubt that asiangrrlmn literally meant that no other President ever has passed health care reform legislation, and assuming otherwise is pretty inane.
BTD
@lol:
Absolutely nothing. Silliest “controversy” of all time.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: And it’s also not the same as not thinking it’s a kick-ass idea, but realizing that you’re being undermined by a cohort of Senate Democrats who don’t listen to reason because they’re kind of selfish and stupid and don’t know how to counterpunch if Republicans say “Spending! Liberal! Scary!”
Tom Hilton
@david mizner: And how, exactly, is that assessment wrong?
BTD
@Napoleon:
Too much of it. I’m no innocent, but I have been a lot better lately. And Cole called for acknowledging the people disagree about shit. How about taking that advice to heart.
Poopyman
Looks like I picked the wrong time to go off and do actual work.
@John Cole:
I’m guessing that three of those hours were spent fighting off 2 burly dental technicians trying to wrestle him into the chair.
Aaaanyway, nothing going on here that your continued presence will alter. The natives are already riled up. Just don’t mix the wine with painkillers.
karoli
Bravo for the reply, but it truly bugs me that Jane drives traffic to her site by trying to divide Dems/Progressives/Left this close to midterms. It is, in the end, all about her.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@BTD: I’ll post what I said the other day: It’s the internet.
Midnight Marauder
@Observer:
Your mistake is in thinking my language is aimed for a general audience, as opposed to being specifically tailored for a long familiar know-nothing. I hold david mizner in no high esteem and view him as being wholly unserious intellectually.
Here’s the thing, though. They’ve been proven wrong consistently, again and again and again. Let’s just take this thread, for example. You’ve got david mizner excitedly running around telling us about how unpopular the Affordable Care Act is and how prescient Jane Hamsher was in
fomenting and cultivatingpredicting that unpopularity. But then you find out that the “unpopularity” is really a manifestation of people realizing the legislation didn’t go as far as so many people proclaimed it would:Hmm, that sounds a lot like people saying this is a nice foundation to continue the push for more reforms and changes, and that their “dissatisfaction” is a result of the bill not doing more…which can be easily corrected since the foundation has already been established.
Man, that sounds a lot like that analogy to Social Security prominent Democrats have been making for months now, and that so many on the Left continue to deride as being nonsense. Who would have ever thought that history would play out in the exact same way as it did last time?
Joe Beese
@Mnemosyne:
1. Lieberman: Obama Never Pressed Me On Public Option
2. In perhaps the first honest acknowledgment by a Democratic leader on President Obama’s dishonesty, weakness and lack of leadership on healthcare reform, Nancy Pelosi in her Friday press briefing, pointed out that one of the reasons the public option wasn’t included in the House reconciliation bill is because Obama never pushed for it in either the House or senate bill.
3. President Barack Obama is actively discouraging Senate Democrats in their effort to include a public insurance option with a state opt-out clause as part of health care reform.
John Cole
The part that does reference me states that I was just dutifully reporting, in collusion with the Journolist people, pro-HCR diatribes. The fact that I am not now nore never have been a member of Journolist seems like it is pretty central to the allegation.
Steve
@JGabriel: Cheers to you for actually finding the Jane Hamshers of the Left thread. What a classic.
JGabriel
@BTD:
That’s irrelevant. Jane got some facts about John wrong (as John kind of did about Jane in the past), and John has a perfect right to call her on it and correct the record.
Again, John is right to correct the record – which only he can do. DougJ commenting on the story first doesn’t change that.
.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Midnight Marauder:
People who read history.
socraticsilence
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
Good point- and how do we know that Glenn Greenwald isn’t secretly a supporter of John Yoo- sure its illogical but he does seem to support legal theorizing on Healthcare whose to say that in private such latitude doesn’t extend to civil liberties?
Seriously, this may just be the single dumbest argument I’ve ever read.
slag
@BTD: Yeah. But this isn’t just a disagreement. This isn’t saying that John Cole thinks X and I think Y, and here’s why I’m right. This is rumor and innuendo spreading. This is impugning people’s motives. This is all around being an asshole. And if the interwebs are good for anything, it’s for calling people out for being assholes.
That said, once you call someone out for being an asshole, it’s probably best to disregard them from that point on. Because it really does just get old after a while.
timb
@Mnemosyne: We could if Obama and John Cole were really Jesus and his flaming sword of righteous justice! President Palin will fix all this and give us the democracy we deserve.*
*Sadly, she will you the precedents Obama has established to have people like us killed without trial, but at least she will save the republic with the help of Jane and the rest of the firebaggers
JPL
@John Cole: Hope you feel better soon. Have another glass of wine but not with painkillers. We want to hear from you tomorrow.
Southern Beale
This is true however my whole beef about this is that it was never even on the table. We should at least have had the conversation. Hell, we should have had the conversation about a real single payer healthcare system, whether we had the votes for it or not. It would have been a “teachable moment” for one thing.
Because we sure as hell were fighting the single-payer battle, though “Obamacare” is the exact opposite of single-payer. All of that yammering about death panels — that is an anti single-payer argument. We were fighting about single payer when it was never even on the table, and therefore we were never able to have a REAL debate about it because our side kept sitting there going “but that’s not what’s in the bill.” Ditto the public option.
The opposition came out of the starting gate with guns blazing with all of their factual inaccuracies and fear ploys. Thanks to Obama and the Congressional Dems we never got to really fight back.
So while I do think Jane Hamsher has gone off the deep end on this I understand her anger. I don’t think she’s necessarily helping the cause, but I’m pretty fucking pissed off about it myself.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
We might perhaps also mention that the PO that was in the House bill, dropped by the Senate, was IIRC so small and restrictive that it would have had little effect. I, for example, was ineligible and would still be paying $350 a month for my $5,000 deductible/catastrophic policy. I still would’ve rather had it in there, ’cause I’m an O-bot sell-out incrementalist, but it seems the PO is being talked about as if it were the Medicare buy-in. It wasn’t.
BTD
@John Cole:
If you believe that, then of course you should respond as you have. I think your impression is wrong.
I took it more in the “Axelrod argued these things to these folks and they agreed” way.
It’s about Axelrod, not the Journolist. But I never understood what the supposed scandal of the Journolist was. People exchanging e-mails? Who gives a shit?
I am positive nothing anyone sent you in an e-mail was passed on without thought. And Anyone who has ever exchanged ideas with Klein, Chait, Yglesias et al knows they would not either.
I disagree with you and them all the time but never for a second would it occur to me to think that what you and they write is what they actually think.
I dunno, I guess I’m getting old, cuz I am sick of the silly fights.
Let’s at least fight about shit that matters, even if our actual fights don’t matter.
JGabriel
@Steve: No cheers warranted: it’s in the Lexicon. If anyone, cheers should go to Cole, et. al., for including it – even though they knew smartasses like me would use it for joke fodder.
.
eemom
@BTD:
What did John EVER say about Hamsher that was inaccurate?
Because I’m kind of into facts, and I’m pretty sure that’s just bullshit.
On the contrary, he bent over backwards trying to be personally nice to the twat even while calling her out on her lies. I’m quite sure of that, because it annoyed the hell out of me at the time.
taylormattd
@Joe Beese:
You are seriously claiming that because Mr. No-Mosk, Howard Dean, claimed to be “disappointed” in Obama’s effort on the public option, this means Obama was “lying about wanting it in the first place”
Jesus, are you stupid or just hysterical?
BTD
@slag:
Meh. She thought he was on the Journolist. She’s wrong. She should correct it.
This is a lot of teeth gnashing over pretty much nothing.
To be clear, being on the Journolist is not a sin in my eyes. Not one little bit.
Poopyman
@david mizner:
Dude, can you name any improvement in social justice since 1970? HCR delivers a minuscule amount of awesomeness and it’s still the most dramatic improvement in social justice since 1970.
Hell, the fact that this crappy bill passed at all given the number of spineless or conservative Dems in the Senate still amazes me.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
At this point, the thinking seems to be that if the Democrats had wanted it — really, really wanted it, honest and true — they would have gotten it. The fact that they didn’t get it is proof positive that they never wanted it in the first place.
IOW, your basic magical thinking: failure only happens because you didn’t try hard enough.
timb
@Southern Beale: It was on the table and about a million Democratic Senators said they wouldn’t vote for it. Single payer was never on the table, since ben nelson recoils from the thought and he and Evan Bayh hide in the bunker Republicans built for them until the hippies and crazies leave the Senate gallery and the rightful corporate stance is re-established
Nimm
@Tom65:
a) relax
b) I guess I didn’t make it obvious enough that the post was tongue-in-cheek. I do not believe”sensational and holier than thou” vs “accurate” is really a dilemma…. and I had thought that would go without saying, but apparently I didn’t communicate that well.
FlipYrWhig
@Southern Beale:
It was too on the table. It was even in the bill before the final negotiations. We had the conversation. The public option polled well and could be explained easily. And a group of conservative Democrats in the Senate killed it anyway, and they wouldn’t budge on it, and frankly it was surprising they let the whole project get all the way to passage even without it.
BTD
@eemom:
IMO, a fair amount. But who gives a shit now? I don’t.
Can this pissing contest just end?
I like this blog, despite it all (I get to comment here, I avoid it at my own blog because we are a lot more civil than here) and especially when we are debating stuff that matters. Even if our debates don’t.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
Where is the disproportionate hatred of Hillary Clinton? She’s barely been mentioned on this blog all year.
Anomaly100
There are no words, but there are letters; WTF?!
BTD
@Poopyman:
The 1993 tax bill.
Drive By Wisdom
Four and a half hours is going to seem quaint after your first trip to the hospital under Obamacare.
You all can keep assidiously arguing the minor faults of your plan on the ash heap of what was the greatest healthcare available in the world.
BTD
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
True. And welcome it is. 2008 and 2009 were kind of ugly on that point.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne:
Also the reason why baseball players don’t get game-winning hits.
BTD
@eemom:
BTW – “the twat”? Really?
Omnes Omnibus
@socraticsilence: It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Mnemosyne
@Joe Beese:
Seriously? That’s your “proof” that Obama was lying about wanting a public option? People who didn’t think he tried hard enough?
Dude, you may need a dictionary to better understand what “proof” consists of. Especially when your claim rests on the assumption that Joe Lieberman is an upstanding, truth-telling citizen.
ETA to fix wrong word.
BTD
@JGabriel:
Fair enough. I would have e-mailed and taken a pass on this one if I were him. Easy for me to say I suppose.
I wrote a response to a Cole post about a post I wrote last week. I thought Cole mischaracterized my argument and said so, but I was at pains to not take it personally and treat it for what I honestly think it was – a mistake.
Does anyone really believe Jane wrote Cole was on the Journolist knowing it was wrong? Really?
FlipYrWhig
@Drive By Wisdom: Also, the American education system is clearly the best in the world, because people come from all over to attend Harvard. Oh, sure, some people will say that not everyone gets to go to Harvard, and that high-end universities are only tangentially related to the kinds of education most people will ever experience, but I don’t see what _that_ has to do with anything.
burnspbesq
@david mizner:
Please explain why you want Cole to acknowledge something that is demonstrably not true.
gimmeabreak
@karoli:
Amen. That’s really all it boils down to.
BTD
@taylormattd:
I don’t comment or post at FDL. I think you and I can agree that reasoned discourse is not found in the comment section there.
Tom Hilton
@BTD:
The factual error is only part of it, though. The other part is that she uses JournoList membership as a smear–as shorthand for a whole host of charges that are too nebulous and unsupported to bear articulating. (It’s basically the way Greenwald was using TNR the other day, and the way Republicans use all kinds of things–San Francisco, Islam, ‘socialism’, etc.) Poor idiot Jane has the habits and character of a wingnut, and the fact that her political beliefs are (nominally) liberal doesn’t make up for that.
Southern Beale
FlipYrWhig,
You’re right the public option was on the table. Single payer was not. I think my comment was related more to single payer.
The Other Chuck
@Poopyman:
The Americans With Disabilities Act springs immediately to mind.
eemom
@BTD:
I give a shit, because you made the accusation, you need to back it up. I assume you don’t give less of a shit now than you did 10 minutes ago.
You can also just admit you pulled that accusation out of your ass with zero basis for it.
And yes, TWAT. Or if you prefer, ASSHOLE. Jane Hamsher is, in fact, a despicable, spiteful woman who is deserving of that invective — and I have plenty of evidence for that.
If it offends your little prissy-ass sensibilities, go comment on her blog, where you are quite safe from hearing Jane called anything but a genius/goddess/savior of mankind.
burnspbesq
@JGabriel:
Cole won’t do that, because there’s no evidence that Jane is a slut.
Ed Marshall
@BTD:
Is that a joke?
Mnemosyne
@Southern Beale:
Honestly, though, we weren’t going to get to single payer in one step, especially in the middle of a recession. It was always going to require multiple steps and additional legislation.
As I mentioned above, South Korea is considered to have made the transition at lightning speed and it took them 15 years. It took Canada over 30 years.
FlipYrWhig
@Southern Beale: True, but IMHO single-payer is a non-starter with huge swaths of spending-averse, not-particularly-liberal Democratic politicians, and having that conversation would probably only succeed in exposing how little support there would be for such a thing. If the public option was a bridge too far, a sign of excessive government involvement in people’s lives — you and I both think that’s pretty stupid, but Landrieu/Lincoln/Nelson/Lieberman and more drew a line there — single-payer was doomed from the start. IMHO a campaign for single-payer has to originate outside professional politicians and build momentum; but even then I have my doubts, because as sensible as it is in real-world policy terms, that’s how Big Honkin’ Liberal it would surely be caricatured as in officialdom.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@BTD:
eemom keeps it real with the salty language. Deal with it.
Midnight Marauder
@BTD:
For as much time as you spend over here, you really don’t learn much of anything, do you?
General Stuck
@BTD: You always miss the high, or low art of mockery here, sometimes even of ourselves. It is hardly noble, but mighty entertaining for folks with combative natures that populate this blog, that begins with the cynical smartass owner, and I mean that in a good way, and those who have stopped here for their blogging fix.
BTD
@eemom:
I have to? To satisfy you? No, I don’t. Any objective observer, hell Cole himself, will admit he went overboard on FDL.
Including misstating what was argued there.
This may surprise you but I don’t think you are a fair observer on this issue.
burnspbesq
As long as we’re going to spend (or so it would appear) the entire day crying over spilled milk, or diving into water under the bridge, or whatever – anyone want to re-fight the battle over inclusive vs. exclusive ENDA? Or how about whether to do cap-and-trade or immigration reform first?
Omnes Omnibus
@BTD: I think there is a different dynamic between you and John than there is between Jane and John. There appears to be between you and John mutual respect and acknowledgement that you both share fundamental goals even though you often disagree about tactics and strategies. I do not know if the same holds true between John and Jane. Given the different dynamic, I would expect that reactions to criticisms, inaccuracies, and perceived attacks would differ.
BTD
@General Stuck:
So the “people disagree” post was snark? I admit I did not catch it.
Dennis SGMM
When you’re #1 in references to “Skull fuck a kitten” you have to expect that every punk-ass blogger in town is going to be gunning for you.
eric
@BTD: Your last sentence is the key. She is using it as a smear and that emboldens a meritless righty smear. It would be like me referring to the birth certificate controversy. In the real world there is no controversy, so I am only giving credence and weight to an untruth.
ETA: Tom beat me to it.
Poopyman
@The Other Chuck: @The Other Chuck:
OK. That’s a good one. Not quite as sweeping as HCR, IMO, but certainly an improvement in social justice, which was my challenge.
BTD
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t disagree with that.
This situation is not John’s fault. But I tell you I think John and everyone would be surprised if they dealt with Jane on a personal level (it should not take that, but often it does.)
She’s not the ogre many of you think she is.
She does a lot of things that I believe are wrongheaded, and some things I am glad she is doing.
But she is not the evil person many of you think she is.
BTD
@eric:
That’s a good point. The Journolist thing she not be fueled by any progressive. It is phony horseshit.
BTD
@Midnight Marauder:
I guess not.
Poopyman
@Dennis SGMM: Well, we are a snarling mass of vitriolic vicious jackals here, after all.
BTD
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
That’s not salty language Doug. That’s sexist language.
If you are cool with it, that’s on you.
Dennis SGMM
@Poopyman:
I know but, sometimes we should take a look at our bad sides as well.
BTD
@Ed Marshall:
Not at all. I am always amazed how progressives underestimate the importance of tax policy.
So I know your comment is not a joke.
BTD
@eemom:
I much prefer asshole.
Twat is sexist.
BTD
@Tom Hilton:
That’s a good point.
General Stuck
@BTD: When it comes to Jane, there is a history, that is part spoof of each other and occasional mutual cage rattling. Sometimes it seems a little too close to bickering sometimes found in true love and there is little or no lasting ill will toward each other. At least that has been my take since I’ve been here.
edit – my guess is Jane pinged Cole with journolist remark, with the extra jab of EX republican. but I am just a humble minion.
Citizen Alan
@Zifnab:
This sums up my biggest complaint about the HCR fiasco (and electorally speaking, Obama has allowed this “triumph” to turn into a fiasco). We didn’t need 60 votes to get a public option, we just needed 60 votes to end the filibuster of the public option. But once Obama and his cronies made the “tactical decision” that no Democratic Senator should ever suffer any penalty from joining with Republicans on any issue no matter how important, not in filibustering the President’s signature issue, they practically ensured that troglodytes like Nelson and the Lieberpig would sabotage the process at every turn.
President Obama came into office in a stronger position than any Democratic president in my lifetime. And he spent his first year in office groveling like a whipped dog before all the Repukes and Conservadems in a futile effort to win their love. And when crunch time came, they turned him into a joke. As far as I’m concerned, he’s still a joke today.
Omnes Omnibus
@BTD: I will defer to you on that. I have never been a hater; I also was not a huge fan of hers either. Nevertheless, whatever her intentions and motivations, I think that she is a net drag on positive action these days. That’s about as far into this swamp as I want to wade.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@JPL:
God Almighty. This blog already had a pathological obsession with the woman. Balloon Juice has been trying to bait her for years and they finally got a bite. Congratulations.
General Stuck
I kind of like Jane. She has a feral quality that is fearless, even if misguided, that I find appealing. Likely why I’m single.
slag
@BTD: I agree the JournoList thing is silly. But Hamsher’s insinuating that there’s something wrong with being a member of JournoList. And that insinuation is the problem. As is the insinuation that it takes a Republican to value HCR for what it is–a much-better-than-nothing compromise. These aren’t marks of simple disagreement; they’re transparent attempts to demonize those she disagrees with.
I get so sick of this style of argumentation because it really is a trademark of the right. Faux News style. Why not just run around calling John Cole’s mama a Marxist while she’s at it? That’s the real problem that John should have addressed more directly in this post (IMHO). This method of persuasion has no place on the left.
Citizen Alan
@Drive By Wisdom:
Well, as much as we all may disagree about the relative merits of Obamacare, can we all at least come together to agree that “Drive By Wisdom” is an utter fuckwit.
Chris G.
Dude, Jane Hamsher HAS no Koran.
And Another Thing...
@General Stuck: Your “ping” comment is interesting, but I think you give her too much credit. She’s got a history of saying and doing things in reasonably high profile ways that suggest she doesn’t think through what she’s doing (Joe L in blackface, Grover N.) . She’s a highly motivated loose cannon.
Ailuridae
The public option never had 50 supporters nonetheless 60.
The whip count stopped at 45
It is disappointing that the FDL crowd is so willing to be dishonest about this. It crapped out at 45 supporters using regular procedure. Yes, a lot of Democrats were willing to sign on to a bill that included a public option but that’s because they were negotiating to get a bill a passed. 45 supporters of the public option and not all of that is clear, hard support.
The public option as a standalone measure can be passed at any time via reconciliation if it could have been passed as part of a larger bill via reconciliation. So if the Dems ever had 50 votes for it (it is plain as day they didn’t) Saint Russ Feingold could have introduced it at any point in between then and now.
FWIW, while I feel bad that Reid trusted Lieberman during the Medicare buy-in phase of negotiation Lieberman consistently and without equivocation said he didn’t support a Hacker style public option.
I also love how the “pass the PO through reconciliation crowd” ignores the fact that the House whipping to do so crapped out below 130 even luke warm “yeas.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan: Yeah, that’s pretty much not subject to debate.
Adrienne
@BTD: Boo hoo. While I *kinda* get what you’re going for, “Twat” is really not any more sexist than calling someone a “D!ck”, which seems perfectly acceptable (even if somewhat inflammatory). Genitalia either way. Throw in assholes and then we’ve really got a party.
Steve
@BTD: One of the BJ house rules – although it also applies to much of the Internet – is that EVERY misstatement is intentional, knowing, purposeful, etc. You can’t just say someone is wrong. It has to be YOU’RE WRONG AND YOU KNOW IT.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@General Stuck:
I don’t often agree with you these days, Stuck, but that is a brilliant.
BTD
@Adrienne:
I strongly disagree. If we were in England, I would accept that the usage was gender neutral.
In the US, men are not called twats, c–ts, bitches or similarly gender specific epithets.
Just as cracker is not the equivalent of ni–er, in a society steeped in sexism, I’m not at all comfortable with twat as an epithet.
I accept that I am as PC as you get.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve: That’s a lie and you know it!
bayville
@BTD:
As opposed to here, during the historic HCR failure?
Funny. Revisionism at its best.
eemom
@BTD:
Then calling someone a “dick” is also sexist, yes?
As for this:
No, not to satisfy me — but if you wish to preserve any credibility on an issue, you don’t just toss off an allegation like that with ZERO factual backup. That’s not argument, it’s talking out of your
asstushie.My recollection is that John did NOT misstate what was argued at FDL. You have submitted no evidence to the contrary, so you lose.
Just in general, btw, “because I said so” is not a winning argument on this blog, anymore than it is in the legal community, in which I am told you purport to reside.
BTD
@bayville:
No, this is not a bastion of reasoned discourse. But in my perusal of FDL comments, it is better here.
Believe me, my posts are treated better by the FPers at FDL than the FPers here, so the easy put for me is to say FDL comment threads are better, but they’re not imo.
bayville
@BTD:
cool.
Chad S
@Trinity: I think thats unfair to Bachmann. She’s a screamer. I’d call Hamshear the Ralph Reed of the left.
FlipYrWhig
@Citizen Alan:
What should they have done to penalize them, and why would it have worked to change their votes? You have a group of conservative Democrats who would like nothing better than to be thorns in the side of the Democratic president who got blown out in their states/districts. What leverage do you have over them? Seriously, game it out, and show me how it’s possible to get them to behave _more_ like loyal Democrats, such that they stand to benefit more from doing the Democratic thing they don’t really want to do than from thumbing their noses.
chaseyourtail
Good for you, John. Don’t take any of her crap.
wengler
I like Jane Hamsher and FDL, but their ‘kill the bill’ campaign was stupid. I think they made a basic mistake that thinking crisis would produce a better bill. No, we are already in a health crisis and all it means is that more people in 90 percent of households are either gonna die or go bankrupt or probably both.
They really didn’t take into account the structural corruption that makes good bills die and prevents this government or any other from passing ANY bill that takes money away from rich people. Single payer is cheaper, more efficient and covers everybody. It also destroys the private healthcare industry and takes money away from extremely rich people. Drug price negotiation keeps drugs affordable for the sick, and also takes away money from extremely rich people.
So we have a bill that does some good things, but fundamentally costs a lot more than a better bill would because 55-60 US Senators can’t possibly be bothered to do something in the interest of 90 percent of the American people. Welcome to the US in 2010. Gutter sniping isn’t gonna fix this mess.
Crusty Dem
@BTD:
Stop being such an ignorant twat.
Jilli
I’ve given up on FDL since shortly after the election. Jane Hamsher turned into a shrill, hyperventillating whiner. I just couldn’t take it any more.
anonymous
I see BTD has arrived to engage in aforementioned passive-aggression.
applecoreinaz
King? Uh-huh
John Cole
@BTD: I don’t think she is an ogre, and in the past I had quite pleasant conversations with her. And to be honest, I prefer most of her policy prescriptions to what comes down to us from DC. I support her when I think she is right- most recently, her marijuana campaign has been great, and she was on the side of the angels with the student loan stuff.
I do think that she does more damage to the cause when she goes overboard. What did targeting Joe Lieberman’s wife do for the cause of HCR? Nothing. And on and on.
General Stuck
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
Thanks and the disagreement these days is mutual, that’s the way it rolls sometimes.
Adrienne
@BTD: Well, I’ve called plenty of men a “b!tch”, “p*ssy” and my new personal favorite, “Douche” also gets regular airplay. It really depends on the circumstances. Like I said though, I kinda see where you’re going but when you have both “d!ck” AND “twat” making the rounds, it’s more like the his/her bathrobes of epithets.
Of course “nigger” and “cracker” are different given the history, but “twat” is not an equal stand-in for “nigger” in that “twat” doesn’t quite have that whole history of oppression/slavery/rape/whips/chains/lynching/redlining/Jim Crow attached. I’m not sure there’s any epithet that has anything even approaching the baggage “nigger” is dragging behind it so that analogy falls rather short.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@General Stuck:
I don’t think disagreement can be unilateral.
Violet
Late to the thread, but glad to see you respond, John. I was sure you’d never been on JournoList.
Sorry your teeth hurt and hope you are deep into a glass of something strong by now.
joe from Lowell
Re:John Cole:
That’s the most infuriating part for the Reality-Based wing of the Reality-Based community: these people who keep calling me a corporate sellout trying to secretly impose a neo-liberal agenda? I agree with them, pretty much across the board, on the issues! I want a single payer health care system. I want to legalize drugs. I want a carbon tax, and a millionaires tax bracket, and a big ol’ estate tax, and a twelve-digit cut in the military budget, and SUPERTRAINS connecting all the less fortunate cities in this country with Lowell.
But if you don’t agree that lighting some incense and chanting “The people…united…” is going to sway Bill Nelson’s vote, that makes you fucking Cheney.
kay
@david mizner:
Health care reform benefits poor people, primarily. Most people in the US have health insurance. 85%. It’s 94% for white college graduates.
When progressives couldn’t spin that simple fact away, they went to “the middle class”.
Only about 11% of the poor people who will benefit from the health care reform law vote, because poor people generally vote in lesser numbers than middle and upper classes. There won’t be a political pay-off, which Schumer admitted (and Democrats in Congress knew).
Doesn’t mean it won’t help poor people. It will. Hugely. And progressives opposed it.
Nick
@david mizner:
Actually we did try to get fifty, remember that effort to get the public option attached to the reconciliation bill? We couldn’t even get 50.
We could count to 60, and we could count to 50, and with the public option, on a good day we had 47, the other 13 were opposed or didn’t care either way.
General Stuck
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
Nope,.The boomerang law of physics and blogging I think.
Nick
@david mizner:
Actually this “Obama defender” never thought it would be in the final bill. In fact, I never thought they would BE a final bill. It seems impossible that Senate Democrats would give Obama this victory since they hate him so much. I was ecstatic we got as close as getting a Republican on record at supporting a TRIGGER for it.
kay
@Nick:
I don’t think it matters. The people who will benefit from the health care law don’t spend a lot of time on the internet. They’re poor people.
Maybe bloggers can tear their new Medicaid card out of their hands, and rip it up, as a protest.
Steve
@kay: Middle-class people have a lot of issues with health care that get addressed by the bill, like pre-existing conditions, the problem of losing your coverage whenever you get laid off, etc. However, these aren’t necessarily the kind of problems that you know you have until you actually have them.
kay
@Steve:
That’s true, but I realized early on it was mostly about poor people.
When that fact became clear progressives started telling me their wouldn’t be enough doctors for all the newly eligible poor people (like that hasn’t been a huge issue for 20 years, and of course will have to faced and remedied) , or that states fund Medicaid (duh, this was news to them) and so poor people were being tricked into thinking they were being covered.
I heard more reasons why the health care law wouldn’t help poor people than I can shake a stick at, and the reason those excuses were offered was because….the health care law DOES help poor people!
Progressives has a tough time with that reality, so they chose to deny it.
It was amazing, the lengths they went to to deny that the law helps poor people. Poor people disappeared! All of a sudden, all they could talk about was the middle class.
Tim
@beltane: Oh, like a “100th Monkey” kinda thing? :-)
Wile E. Quixote
@Paul L.:
You know Paul, if you weren’t just another lazy, worthless chickenshit little Republican coward and if you had actually gotten off of your lazy and worthless ass and joined the military (and no, watching Red Dawn or the beach volleyball scene in Top Gun is not the same thing) you’d know that this statement of yours made absolutely no sense whatsoever and was in fact incredibly fucking stupid.
If you had joined the military you’d know what a medical discharge is and you’d know that a dishonorable discharge has nothing to do with the foul and vile smelling discharge that impregnated your mother’s diseased womb and inflicted you on the planet.
Wile E. Quixote
@Poopyman:
Roe v. Wade? The creation of the EPA also comes to mind. Oh, and even though there hasn’t been a lot of federal action on the issue I’d have to say that it’s probably a lot easier to be GLBT in 2010 than it was in 1970. But hey, don’t let me bum your pissily pessimistic little drama queen high.
Litlebritdifrnt
@BTD:
As you say “twat” is used for both men and women in the UK, for all you know eemom hails from there (or has spent time there). I call people twats on the internet all the time. There is nothing sexist about it, only in the prudish minds of Americans who don’t get out of their country enough.
Jamey
John, I prefer to think of you as being more minty-fresh, than freshly minted.
But Hamsher? Sounds like she’s gotten into Althouse’s cooking sherry again.
MikeMc
Jane Hamsher alludes that John Cole is “suspect” because he was a moderate republican that became a moderate democrat. Yet, she blogs at HuffingtonPost. In the 90’s Arianna was one of the biggest right-wingers douchers in the game! She wanted to destroy the Clinton Presidency. Screw Jane Hamsher. I think the bleach she uses to die her hair is seeping into her brain
Billy K
I liked this place a lot better before all you people went looney.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Joe Beese: specifically, the administration’s abandonment of a public option.
Nice try in quoting Howard Dean to back your nonsense up but that HuffPo piece only states his opinion that the White House gave up on the PO, there is no other evidence offered in the piece. Eventually Dean changed his position on the bill, didn’t he?
How do you like Dean’s opinion on the “Ground Zero mosque”? Do you agree with that? If not, then what makes him right in the article you linked to?
AxelFoley
@karoli:
Yup. Funny how she does shit like this around midterms or when an important vote is about to come up.
Lynn Dee
I used to check in at FDL fairly regularly. That stopped cold after that Grover Norquist stunt. Shortly thereafter, the word “firebagger” entered my lexicon and has remained there ever since.
Jane Hamsher is a complete nutjob.
LiberalTarian
I stopped reading Firedoglake sometime before Obama was elected. Still a TBogg fan, but I don’t read any of the others anymore, even Marcy Wheeler. I was interested in the Valerie Plame story, which they covered very well. But, they started getting pretty … judgmental … about all kinds of things they didn’t have much expertise in.
I went to the trouble of finding a bunch of peer reviewed articles for Phoenix Woman once, and sent them to her, but she didn’t have the back ground to understand they were peer reviewed. Her first question: are these peer reviewed articles? Her first statement, “I am quoting blah blah blah, who is a well-known scientist blogger, and therefore his opinion is the be-all and end-all of all things scientific.” Right. Scientists are completely uniform about their opinions on major topics. Right ….
Yeah, pretty much stopped reading them at that point. Jane was pretty preachy, Christie was pretty wordy, and after the Valerie Plame stuff died down I wasn’t much interested in Marcy anymore. I might have seen some of the PUMA stuff and shied away, too, I don’t really recall. I just remembered not being very interested in spending time reading them anymore.
TBogg still rocks though.
AxelFoley
@eemom:
Damn, did someone just get told?
Lynn Dee
@Nick (msg 234): I’m with you there. I see the ACA as the first step — the framework of something we’ll one day look back on the way we now look back on SS and Medicare. I remember saying that back in February or March to a firebagger type, who said to me a month or so ago, “So where’re those amendments you promised?”
I said: “What are you talking about? It hasn’t even been five months!”
Lynn Dee
@General Stuck: Yeah I used to like her too. Right before she got really really stupid.
AxelFoley
And damn, Cole, your mouth got fucked up at the dentist? Didn’t you wreck your shoulder earlier this year?
Fuck, this dude is indestructible. A lesser man would be dead by now.
Corner Stone
@John Cole:
Motherfucker. Get a new fucking dentist. One who can count to 32.
Damn.
Lynn Dee
@joe from Lowell:
Her policy prescriptions are fine. It’s her willingness to embrace the nothingness of losing everything that I can’t abide. And the petty vindictiveness, characterized by temper tantrums in which she tries to tip over the playing table and send the pieces flying.
whwitewidow
@Tom Hilton:
Wrong, the PO is deficit reducing, so could easily be included in reconciiliation, and would not have had to sunset. Pelosi tried to push to get it included at the end, and 40 senators said they would vote for it, but before that could be done Obama himself put the kabosh on.
tkogrumpy
@Observer: Ditto. whoops, guess that makes me a ditto head.
Sharon
@Poopyman: I’m having a bit of a problem characterizing a bill that would roll back my access to reproductive health services if I get dumped into the individual market, as the most “progressive legislation in 40 years.”
It’s a small step toward making the individual market less treacherous. It’s a step toward peeling back Medicare costs over the next 10 years.
It’s dependent upon 50 state insurance commissioners and the governors who appoint them, beating back the depredations of the insurance lobby.
We could have done so much better.
Elise
Well, speak for yourself there… I wouldn’t want a health care bill penned by idiots who know nothing at all about health care.
Jane must be short on cash to be starting this fight up again.
Jim in Michigan
I love it, John. You have to wonder what is in their heads to make them act so stupid.
gimmeabreak
@JaneHamsher having a hissy fit both on Twitter and her blog over John’s response.
Here’s her “clarification and apology”:
gimmeabreak
Wow, that blockquote didn’t go well. Sorry all!
RareSanity
I am extremely late to this epic post, but, I just had to say something about this:
@BTD:
This is not a wine and cheese crowd BTD. You’ve been around here long enough to know that. We cuss, call each other names, and, are just generally argumentative and confrontational.
That’s just how we fuckin’ roll. Get the fuck over it.
DougW
@John Cole: Even
Maybe many glasses of wine. Hope it’s a good one! You deserve it!
FlipYrWhig
@Jilli:
To be fair, that was a “preexisting condition.”
Andy K
@BTD:
Really? Is that what this is about? Really?
Let’s do a little editing of Hamsher’s comment and see if there isn’t something else going on there that’s pissing Cole off:
Now I’m not all that up on the Carlson-Journolist kerfuffle, so I don’t know if Axlerod was feeding cues to the bloggers who were on it.
But let’s parse further:
Or, rather, more clearly:
Looks to me as if Ms. Hamsher is attacking Mr. Cole’s integrity, his ability to think critically about the issue. She later challenges his integrity by pointing out that Cole was once a Republican, which isn’t exactly anything that Cole has ever kept a secret.
Which brings me back to Journolist. If Axlerod had indeed fed cues to Journolist in order to get them to act as political hitmen against the left, then the motivations and integrity of those on Journolist who acted on Axlerod’s cues should be questioned. Again, I don’t know if Axlerod actually used the Journolist bloggers in this manner, but if he did and John wasn’t a member of Journolist, shouldn’t Ms. Hamsher withdraw her accusations towards Mr. Cole, or prove that Axlerod used another pipeline to feed cues to Cole?
So maybe this is more than just Mr. Cole getting in a huff over some bad reporting. Maybe he’s standing up for his integrity.
300baud
Personally, I’m in favor of that general principle. But I’d rather see pure ad hominems kept to a minimum. It’s better to cuss on point, or in an exclamatory way. And if we have to get personal, I’d rather we not do so in a way that reinforce various pernicious -isms.
E.g., I think there’s enough to bash about Hamisher without getting sexist or Andrew Sullivan without attacking his sexuality. In the same way I think there’s plenty for the right to bash about Obama without going after his race.
since 1970
@Poopyman:
you are either the best PPACA/Obama ball washer ever or one ignorant fuck
Clean Air Act
SSI
OSHA/EPA
Title IX
ADA
Immigration Act
EITC
CHIP
onceler
“…counting to 60…” LIAR!
the health care bill passed via reconciliation, 60 votes NEVER needed, this was a huge sham! I’ll take any improvements we can get, but yes, we were HAD by the Dems. straight up, no chaser. if you can’t deal with that truth, you have NO business in journalism.
timb
Who’s a journalist? He’s a blogger and college professor. Still, one doesn’t have to be a journalist to tell you to pick the apples and oranges you just threw on the ground and go away
Phoenix Woman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Actually, the public option proposal was alive and well until the Obama White House started meeting with healthcare-industry stakeholders and the pharmaceutical industry.
But let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that “there were never
6050 votes for it” (move those goalposts!) . Why then did Obama campaign on the public option, if He Who Is Such A Clever Guy knew that there weren’t ever 50 votes for it?The answer to that question might also help answer these questions:
Why is he refusing to prosecute torturers, but instead prosecuting the whistle-blowers who reveal it?
Why hasn’t Mister Fierce Advocate done an Executive Order repealing DADT?
Why didn’t he do recess appointments for the various people the Republicans have blocked?
Why does he hold his fire with Republicans and conservatives and throw under the bus anyone to the left of Jon Kyl?
(By the way: I love how now Peter Daou, a moderate Dem if ever there was one, is now lumped in with the evil FDL crew as an arch-radical apostate for the horrid crime of explaining political reality. Oh, well.)
Phoenix Woman
@Tom Hilton: “Smear”? Funny, I thought it was to point out how a certain e-mail list to which a number of Villagers, Villager wannabees, and progressives belonged was a convenient vector for propaganda.
FlipYrWhig
@Phoenix Woman:
Because he thought it was a good policy idea, but realized that there was too little support and no way to budge it and pushing harder for one item, even an excellent one, might jeopardize the passage of the entire package? Is that really such a difficult concept to grasp? Does that really require a whole lot of theorizing about secret deals and back-stabbing and elaborate email conspiracies and peacock strutting about your superior level of enlightenment?
FlipYrWhig
@Phoenix Woman: For that matter, is it very hard to imagine that someone like Baucus or even Grassley might well say, “Between you and me, I like this public option, but I can’t vote for it because it’ll piss off my biggest campaign contributors. I hope that it passes but I can’t have my fingerprints on this thing”? Hearing that, being an advisor to the president, you might think, “Let’s keep working on this guy, because we might be able to flip him.” And, trying that, you might end up, say, prolonging the whole process in such a way that it looked like a lot of aimless meandering. Hey, whaddya know, it really did look like that!
TheLeftisRight
@John Cole
“Have you no sense of decency, Sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
Some have already pointed this out but it obviously bears repeating since you either do not understand or are willfully misrepresenting the basic fact that passage of the health care bill in the Senate did not require 60 votes. The final bill (which did in fact contain ideas proposed by the Heritage foundation and other right wing groups) was passed through BUDGET RECONCIALIATION. Since a significant number of people posting on this site apparently do not understand this process a simple explanation is in order. As long as a provision in a bill proposed under the budget reconcialiation process “AFFECTS THE BUDGET” it is not subject to a filibuster and can be passed with a SIMPLE MAJORITY. This was the way that the health care bill was in fact finally passed. IT DID NOT RECEIVE SIXTY VOTES, but only 56 VOTES. By definition, a public option would have affected the budget and thus could have been included in the final bill at any point. In fact, several minor provisions in the bill were found “not to affect the budget” during the final debate and were removed. This changed the bill and required that it go back to the House for an additional, final vote. A public option could also have been included at this time, and it would have received the support of at least 53 Senators who were on record supporting it. It would also have passed in the House where a clear majority of Democrats had previously supported a public option. The votes of of Republicans and ConsevaDems such as Max Baucus and Joe Lieberman were not required. This would have allowed the public option to become law, and would have made the health care bill substantially more popular with the 40% of Americans who think it does not go far enough. Instead, the public option was blocked by the Democratic Leadership under the mantra that “the bill cannot be changed” in any way because this would have allegedly caused the bill to fail. As discussed above, the bill was in fact changed and it still passed.
It is your credibility that is called into question when you make statements that are so transparently false.