I enjoy Jon Chait’s blog but his predictions are generally wrong. Still, I’m glad to see this:
Hear me now and believe me later: If Republicans win and maintain control of the House of Representatives, they are going to impeach President Obama. They won’t do it right away. And they won’t succeed in removing Obama. (You need 67 Senate votes.) But if Obama wins a second term, the House will vote to impeach him before he leaves office.
Wait, you say. What will they impeach him over? You can always find something. Mini-scandals break out regularly in Washington. Last spring, the political press erupted in a frenzy over the news that the White House had floated a potential job to prospective Senate candidate Joe Sestak. On a scale of one to 100, with one representing presidential jaywalking and 100 representing Watergate, the Sestak job offer probably rated about a 1.5. Yet it was enough that GOP Representative Darrell Issa called the incident an impeachable offense.
There’s certain stuff that I’d like to see happen for no good reason. I’d like to see Usain Bolt run a 9.4 100m, I’d like to see Don Draper ditch Dr. Joyce Brothers and go back to one of those cool women from Season 1, even if she’s on the spike (that was depressing), I’d like to see Bob Somerby be a guest on “Hardball”. And I’d like to see a Republican Congress impeach Obama. It would be a nice absurd capstone to a particularly ridiculous era in American politics.
Nick
sorta reminds me of my coworker who said he wanted Carl Paladino to win because “i want to see the classic New York where crackheads wandered the streets and everyone lived in fear, because it was more interesting”
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
If the Pukes do try, and I believe that the car thief Issa will try, I wonder what Obama’s reaction will be. Depending on his reaction, I could see 2012 being like LBJ kicking the shit out of Goldwater. Is that what John Thune/MItch Daniels wants?
John Bird
We’ll at least get some fun hearings to run their reputation into the ground.
You think Republicans can’t handle ‘complexity’, listen to a full episode of Limbaugh or Hannity some time. They’re not right on any of the facts but they will spend weeks going back and forth on obscure theories and single lines of bills and school newspaper articles on candidates’ cousins’ dogs.
This is how you got Watergate/Monicagate, it’s how you got Birtherism, it’s how you got the takedown of ACORN, it’s how you got the conspiracy theory that Soros blew up Deepwater Horizon so Obama could give him a tax break, which is what the wannabe Tidewaters shooter cited as his motivation.
Trust me, they’ll spend a bunch of taxpayer money finding out if Michelle Obama is her own granddaughter from the future.
And really, that’s tax money that they’re using to run campaign ads against themselves during prime-time news shows and on front page headlines..
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@Nick:
I’d like the return of at least a little bit of the old school New York too.
Omnes Omnibus
You’ve finally gone nihilist, haven’t you?
MattF
They’ll impeach him for being too fucking smart. And who knows, the Senate may agree.
Nick
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: ,
He criticize it and the media will blast him for criticizing it.
General Stuck
It was the cheap pleasures that conquered The Roman Empire, they get us all sooner or later.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@Omnes Omnibus:
Our political system may have to hit rock bottom.
Tom Hilton
In other news, Chait predicted that the sun would rise tomorrow.
I mean, of fucking course they’ll impeach him. Anyone who doesn’t understand that hasn’t been paying attention.
JPL
Obama lied. He ran on hope and change. As with former President Clinton, it wasn’t the sex, it was the lie. What will we tell the children. Oh my!
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Also, too, I want to see the TradMed’s reaction to car thief Issa’s attempt. If they play it up as I think they might, we should takeover Versailles. And yes, I mean it. Marches. Sit-ins. You name it.
Tom Hilton
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.: The sad reality: there is no such thing as rock bottom for a political system. (And for those who fantasize about revolution: revolution is much, much worse. It’s much, much worse while it’s happening (and gets worse the longer it takes); if it succeeds, no good that comes from it will even come close to balancing the bad of the revolution itself; and if it fails, things get several orders of magnitude worse.)
John Bird
Personally, I would like to see a robot on Hardball that responds to Chris Matthews with statements randomly extracted from Bob Somerby columns.
“DID YOU SEE THAT PATTERN ON HIS TIE! FORGET HEALTH CARE, THAT’S TAKING IT TO THE STREET!”
“Incomparably, Matthews’ dissembling dilution of the facts didn’t just redden his own puffed-up face – it reddened ours as well, dear reader.”
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@John Bird:
If I knew how to do that animation thing, I’d do that.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Nick: If that’s the case, see my other comment. If the Big Three don’t want to broadcast the truth, we should make them do it. If StopBeck can reduce Beckistan’s advertising to Goldline and survivalist bullshit, we can do that to the TradMed.
kindness
While it might be entertaining bile for the Phaux Pnews set, I found the same side show really aggrivating during the 90’s.
Why do I get the impression that many on the right are intentionally trying to start a shooting civil war here in America. Might be time for liberals to buy up some shotguns & rifles….
John Bird
@Tom Hilton: I don’t think that’s necessarily true of all revolutions, that their costs outweigh their benefits. I think it’s likely, though, for any given revolution.
And the revolutions whose benefits arguably outweigh their costs usually do so because of continuity between ruling classes beforehand and after (such as the American Revolution), which is not really what most people want from a revolution. So you end up with Britain fighting slavery on the high seas while America tailors its elections to preserve the plantation system.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Tom Hilton: You don’t need a full scale revolution. A first step would be taking over the Big Three. If that means showing up where ever Fluffyhead Gregory and Nitwit Williams go(among others) I am all for it.
Violet
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
All empires fall.
fucen tarmal
call it unwarranted optimism if you will, but i have the sneaking suspicion that the media, new, old and wtf, have absolutely no clue what is going on in the lives and minds of voter….
i am calling this a moot point because it will never come to that…its not the politicians who are out of touch, its the media.
the delicious corollary will be watching the political media hold its own wake, post-election.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Why do I get the impression that many on the right are intentionally trying to start a shooting civil war here in America.
Because they are!!
John Bird
@kindness:
Thanks; I was beginning to wonder if people had forgotten how the right acted under Clinton.
It was largely the same theories: this guy is a secret Marxist, he was trained by Marxists and probably owes his allegiance to another country, X and Y in his administration are gay prostitutes, his wife is also a secret radical and probably a lesbian, he’s going to take your guns away and put you in a camp unless you blow shit up right the fuck now.
And it died down under W. Bush because these people liked W. Bush, as they liked Reagan, as they liked Nixon – because these leaders allow them to identify themselves as just like a powerful guy, and identify that guy as someone who holds all their beliefs and paranoid fantasies but can’t say it because he is also being oppressed by the gay, the Jew, the Communist, and the rap artist.
Omnes Omnibus
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:Government should not be a 12-step program.
Juicebagger
@Nick:
No Nick, that was you who said. You see, imaginary coworkers don’t count.
It is strange, though, that as the only employee of The Mom’s Basement Times you still haven’t risen above the level of gofer.
General Stuck
@kindness:
By gawd, you are correct. But if we are going to march into battle together, you are going to have to change your handle.
Jamie
The GOP does not deal with waiting or frustration particularly well. It’s government by the bullies on the grade school playground.
Dan
well, i generally think you can never go wrong betting on republican stupidity, but I would think even they remember that the whole clinton impeachment mess didn’t exactly work out in their favor.
That said I wouldn’t be surprised to see Issa spend the next two years launching investigations on absurd topics. First up, do any vegetables in Michelle Obama’s organic farmer’s market come from communist Cuba?
Suck It Up!
@fucen tarmal:
that is 100% fact.
John Cole
The best part of the impeachment process will be arguing with the progressives who, although they disagree with the reasons Issa or whoever are throwing out, think it is justified because of the way he handled the public option or whatever the idiocy of the day is.
John Bird
Here’s some good strategic knowledge: a lot of teabaggers and far right-wingers are:
1) active tax cheats
2) the losers in bitter divorces
3) the losers in bitter custody battles
4) effectively ignorant of their rights under law
So, you know, do what you want with that. I’m not making any suggestions . . .
Jamie
@John Bird:
It’s been quite a period of historical revisionism recently, with the GOP now claiming they liked Clinton and didn’t like W..
AhabTRuler
@John Cole:
I guess you won’t be able to really enjoy it like you did last time.
Maude
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
#9
Is that like Peak Wingnut?
Is there a bottom?
Linda Featheringill
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Well that would be interesting. Haven’t been to a sit-in for a while.
The whole process would be entertaining to us. But I am not sure what it would do to Obama. Or Michele. Or the girls.
I would rather avoid the whole thing and get my entertainment some other way.
Edited to add:
Of course, if being smart is an impeachable offense, Obama is doomed!
Jamie
@John Cole:
Now, now. Jane Hamsher will sober up by the time impeachment comes.
different church-lady
Wait, I’ve got it: let’s have Pelosi start impeachment proceedings NOW and then republicans will have no choice but to oppose it!
Suck It Up!
@John Cole:
they will its ok ’cause he’s a war criminal, a bigot and a corporatist.
The Grand Panjandrum
I’d love to see Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld standing over a trap door, each with a noose around his neck. But we must look forward, because looking backward is a waste of time.
Socraticsilence
I don’t want to say anything but lets be honest here- the first comment on the TNR post is over-the-top but hits on a potential side effect of attempting this- what happens to race relations?
Seriously, try impeaching the first Black President over even more trivial shit than they went after Clinton for and see how that goes over- the GOP will go from 10% of the African-American vote and vague emnity/apathy to outright hatred. All I’m saying is if this goes down Glenn Beck et al better hope Fox has its own catering crew because between this hypothetical and the steady increase in anti-Latino rhetoric I wouldn’t eat the food Fox has delivered if you paid me.
Omnes Omnibus
@John Cole: No, the best part will be when some teabagging Congresscritter, in a moment of premature triumphalism, calls Obama “Boy” to his face.
John Bird
@John Cole:
Personally I think the best part of the progressive movement you’re describing is their raggedy brimmed hats and how they stand stock still on poles to protect our nation’s cornfields from attack.
Seriously, can you at least wait until there’s a position to take on an issue before you decide what some other Democrat’s is inevitably going to be?
AhabTRuler
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Free-speech zones. Security arrangements. TASERS(TM). Controlled-access areas. Lock-downs. Preventive detention. &c. &c.
General Stuck
@John Cole:
You can argue with them, I will be carrying a Clown Cannon into that cheeto fight. New RoE.
Citizen Alan
There is a part of me that thinks, karmically speaking, Obama may deserve to be impeached. No, not for any high crimes or misdemeanos (though I still think he’s an accomplice after the fact for Bush’s war crimes), but for one simple reason. As the second commenter to Chait’s post noted, Obama consciously decided to make his entire presidency into a referendum on “taking the high road,” on reaching out to the opposition and “healing partisan divides” even as it became clear that his enemies would see this nation destroyed before they ever allowed him any meaningful success in the eyes of the American people.
Whether he is impeached or not (and for the good of the nation, I hope not), Barack Obama will go down in history as the Neville Chamberlain of the United States — a leader who, when confronted with an emerging Nazi menace and and existential threat to his nation, did not have the gumption to stand up to it, and who instead bleated about how he would forge “peace for our time” between Democrats and Republicans while studiously ignoring the storm clouds on the horizon.
Ellie
Yeah, I haven’t warmed up to Dr Faye either. I’m about 99% sure she isn’t in for the long haul though. Too bad Rachel is out of circulation. And poor, poor Midge.
Oh, wait, we were talking about possible impeachment? I think Chait’s probably right. Bring it on.
Suck It Up!
@The Grand Panjandrum:
well if that’s the only punishment that would satisfy you then I think its best to move forward.
fasteddie9318
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
He’ll try to reach some common ground by offering to only be president 4 days a week.
Socraticsilence
@John Bird:
No, you got Watergate because the associates of a President organized a break-in to gather info to discredit a political foe.
Pangloss
@kindness: I have a feeling the elderly, overweight, tough-talking White folks who are seemingly angling for a shootin’ Culture War aren’t quite as handy (or ruthless) with the guns as they think they are. It’s one thing to park in the handicapped section of the shooting range and roll the old Powerchair (obtained at little or no cost through Medicare) up to the paper targets 40 feet away, but it’s quite another thing to pit your skills against people who grew up on the rough side of America’s broken cities.
Redshift
The one improvement is that in the 90s, one could reasonably complain that impeachment was taking away time from more important matters. If the GOP takes control of Congress now, we can be damn sure that if they weren’t spending all their time on investigations and impeachment, they wouldn’t be doing anything useful anyway.
Citizen Alan
@John Cole:
This progressive would consider the impeachment of the second Democratic president in a row to be nothing less than an attempted coup d’etat for which armed violence is the only rational response.
Professor
@JPL: They will impeach him so as to demand he shows his birth certificate and stuff like not being the son of Malcolm X
John Bird
@Socraticsilence: Er, Whitewater.
Whitewatergate? That didn’t happen, did it? Too many syllables? Too on the nose? Just felt they were lucky getting “water” in there for free?
Dennis SGMM
@Dan:
Ferfucksake, they can’t even remember George W. Bush. The American voter can’t remember George W. Bush. If the Republicans take back the House you will see investigative committees tumbling out of the Insane Klown Kar every fucking day. They will at least attempt to impeach Obama even if the articles of impeachment have no chance in hell because that will get them the loony vote forever.
trollhattan
Evidently, Chait’s prediction has stirred the loins of the Doughy Pantload into some bettin’ action! (we apologize for this image)
http://instaputz.blogspot.com/2010/10/another-bet.html
Linda Featheringill
@kindness:
I get the impression that they don’t think that we will fight back. They didn’t think that we would fight back politically with GOTV and [gasp!] negative ads.
I also think that even if they suspect we might fight back, they all know the libruls & DFHs are wimps and old women who can’t fight worth a damn anyway. So there.
I don’t think they really want a shooting civil war.
Socraticsilence
@John Cole:
It would put lie to the whole- “we objected to Clinton too” routine so many of them have.
Jamie
@Citizen Alan:
Was Clinton a progressive when he was impeached. He’d been triangulating for at least 4 years by then, by my count,
Hunter Gathers
Chait is wrong about the timing of impeachment. Charges will be filed before the summer of next year. It doesn’t matter if the GOP controls the Senate or not. Issa will start investigations ASAP in January, and the teabaggers will push whoever the GOPer speaker of the house is (my money’s on Pence or Cantor, Boehner will never be speaker) to go along. Shit, they may go ahead and push for it as soon as they take control. And the MSM will eat it up. ‘Fuck a bunch of high unemployment, let’s impeach that ni-‘
Tim O
And I’d like to see a Republican Congress impeach Obama.
Finally, something you and Hamsher agree on! (tongue firmly planted in cheek)
Citizen_X
@General Stuck: Oh, I don’t know. My 12-gauge tactical shotgun is named Kindness.
Socraticsilence
@Citizen Alan:
And this goes a bit too far as well- the GOP aren’t Nazi’s, they aren’t literally planning to round up an minority group and commit mass murder.
Omnes Omnibus
@General Stuck: As a ex-artilleryman who hates clowns and spent half of his military career doing gunnery, I have to say that is one fun little game.
Socraticsilence
@Citizen Alan:
No, that would be a rational response though.
John Bird
@Citizen Alan:
Yeah, I think we can take it for granted that John Cole doesn’t know how the left responded to the Clinton impeachment.
The only thing I remember is some perfectly legitimate criticism from feminists who pointed out that even though Clinton didn’t commit any crimes and the impeachment trial was an attempted coup by the moralists, it was problematic that he’d done what he did with a woman in his workplace with such a power imbalance between them and it wasn’t a good idea to just brush it off as an innocent dalliance (although none of them suggested that he should face anything more than public scorn over it).
The impeachment trial, as I remember it from my teenaged lefty days, was actually the biggest boost the Republicans could have given Clinton among his left-wing critics.
I mean, leftist criticism of Clinton was FAR more vocal than that of Obama, but it in no way extended to support for the impeachment trial or for attacks against the President from Congressional Republicans.
Still, Balloon Juice gets a lot of its chuckles out of making up positions that they imagine the Leftist Bogeyman would hold, and I guess that makes sense if you need jokes, because really the posters here seem to agree with the left on almost everything but hold on to the idea that they’re the center of the party.
Davis X. Machina
If the Republicans take the House, the Judiciary Committee will vote out at least one article before the end of July, 2011. Look at who sits on it now, and tell me it won’t happen.
I expect the House to vote to impeach in a vote where at least ten Democrats vote with the Republican majority — and they won’t all be Blue Dogs.
Socraticsilence
@Omnes Omnibus:
Can I put money on said Congressman hailing from a state South of the Mason-Dixon (I’m thinking Wilson, though Georgia’s cracker delagation is also a bit off).
Zifnab
Maybe the Republican Party is like a crazy old girlfriend. She seemed so sexy when you first met her and she promised you a really good time. And then your credit card got maxed out and you were getting in fights with people over stupid shit she says they said or did and you’re pretty sure she’s sleeping with some rich banker guy behind your back. But even after you dump her, you can’t help but remember that amazing BJ she gave you in the car behind the Denny’s. And by god the nice, polite, stable, responsible girl you’re dating still doesn’t make you feel any better since you went unemployed. So maybe one more ride on the pony will remind you why you broke up with her to begin with.
Maybe America needs to go down the roller coaster just this one final time. ’10 is the year we finally lose our nachos all over the place and swear to never, ever, ever do this shit again no matter how cool it looked on TV.
Maybe America just needs another round of Republicanism to remind us that ’06 was the right choice. I don’t know. I just hope by the time we’re done being idiots this one last time, the nice girl Obama will still be willing to take us back.
General Stuck
@John Bird:
And you were doing so well, grasshopper. The Truth, what do you know about the truth.
Omnes Omnibus
@John Bird:
The differences are almost always tactical. It is fights over how to get to where most of us generally agree we want to go.
Martin
@different church-lady: That could almost work.
Mnemosyne
I predict the impeachment topics: Tony Rezko and ACORN.
Omnes Omnibus
@Socraticsilence: Jeff Sessions. You can just tell he wants to do it so bad that it hurts.
Citizen Alan
@Jamie:
Hell, no, Clinton was never a progressive! Reread my comment. I was responding to Cole’s idiotic assertion that the progressive caricatures that exist only in his mind would actually come out publicly in favor of impeachment. It would be an attempted coup on the part of the Pukes today, just like it was in 1998, regardless of what you thought of Bill Clinton. And it should be responded to exactly like any other type of coup — with people who love their country putting aside minor policy differences to go after the coup plotters by whatever means are available. And, yes, depending on the eventual circumstances, that may include organized violence. Unless some people who like to joke about hippie punching are prepared to let Barack Obama be the last Democratic President ever elected in this country.
debbie
Oh, I hope they try and impeach. They’ll just be digging their own graves. There will be no better GOTV for 2012.
Citizen Alan
@Socraticsilence:
I am of the strongly held belief that unless this nation changes course, we are about twelve years away from internment camps. Less if Obama loses in 2012 or is removed from office before then by other means. The defining characteristic of the modern GOP is the utter demonization of those who are not its members. My only question is who will be the first to be sent to the camps — illegals or Muslims, there are advocates for both. The gays seem to have a bit of a respite, but then Jim DeMint hasn’t become Senate Majority Leader yet.
Elizabelle
@fucen tarmal:
I am so hoping you are correct about “the media” and pollsters not being in touch with the 2010 voter.
jimBOB
@Hunter Gathers:
Charges will be filed before the summer of next year.
I think that’s right. The frothing teahordes will demand nothing less.
I remember seeing an interview with Barbara Jordan in which she talked about how when the Judiciary Committee voted the initial article of impeachment against Nixon, she cried. Not out of sorrow for Nixon, but for the fact that the nation had come to such a pass. To her, and to her fellow committee members, impeachment was a tragedy, something to be pursued in desperate straits.
Republicans have turned what this once a solemn constitutional last resort into a frivolous grandstanding exercise. Of course they’ll impeach Obama, and in haste. Scum.
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan: You will find that, if it happens, there will be a few progressives who think he deserved it. In a country of over 300 million people, you will always be able to find someone.
Edited for clarity. If you think it is bad now, imagine what it was like before the edits.
Davis X. Machina
@Zifnab: Here’s the problem — The GOP is jonesing for the crazy, but the crazy is like an opiate — it takes more and more of it to have its expected effect, right up to the point where the amount needed to nod off, and the lethal dose, begin to approach each other.
Zuzu's Petals
I’d like someone to look into the deal that Darrel Issa took to pull out of the 2003 California recall election. Given that he dropped a couple of mil of his own money to bankroll the recall, it must’ve been sweet indeed.
On the other hand, since he has little to show for falling on his sword, maybe they just had the dirt on him.
This is a man with no sense of self-irony, eh?
John Bird
@General Stuck:
Hey, every time I see a post on here from a front-pager that is like “I bet those progressives would just argle bargle doop de whoop over this imaginary thing I thought up” I respond the same way. You can keep score if you want but I stopped at three. It’s easily the most foolish part of this blog.
And if the posters here weren’t noticeably to the left of the party leadership on issues like civil liberties, health care, and financial reform, I doubt I’d comment here at all.
FlipYrWhig
@Jamie:
The “left” ain’t handlin’ it too well either.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Suck It Up!: You mock gays for suspecting he’s a bigot. But what do you make his aide calling being gay a “lifestyle choice” in response to gay teen suicides? I find suggesting that they chose being gay and being bullied until they no longer wanted to live to be rather offensive.
Citizen Alan
@Omnes Omnibus:
You can probably find someone who self-identifies as a progressive and who thinks that in 2012 they’ll ascend to join the aliens living in Haley’s Comet. That doesn’t mean its remotely fair to attribute that view to progressives as a whole, unless you have a really dull axe to grind.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@AhabTRuler: You are afraid of that? Is that why people don’t protest here no more? Loofah O’Reilly calls the French p-ssies, yet I see them protesting and taking to the streets, not us.
FlipYrWhig
@Barb (formerly gex): Why the fuck would you choose to interpret an at-worst slightly clumsy phrase like “lifestyle choice” as “queers must die”? Seriously, that’s just about the strangest thing I’ve ever seen someone profess to be disgusted about.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Citizen Alan: I’m with you on that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan: You are now creating a straw Cole. You have been around BJ long enough to know that the swipes at progressives are aimed at a particular subset of self-described progressives who claim to speak for the “Left.”
Mnemosyne
@Barb (formerly gex):
You mean the speech where she said it was horrible that these kids were driven to suicide and that they had been “tortured” by their classmates and how, as a mom, she didn’t want her daughter to live in a world where kids could be bullied to death with impunity? That speech?
Barb (formerly gex)
@Citizen Alan: I think many somehow think Americans are immune to what befell the Germans. All I know is it takes a bad economy and demagoguery. And we have plenty of that.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: Mnem, can you and I start a new country somewhere? I think this one is broken.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Linda Featheringill: I think you are wrong. And if it does happen, the result’s gonna be the same the second time around. I don’t see Cole as the Sherman type though.
Mnemosyne
By the way, here’s what that evil monster Valerie Jarrett said:
Yes, clearly she’s saying the kid deserved to be tortured to death for being gay. Great reading comprehension there, Barb.
Barb (formerly gex)
@FlipYrWhig: Where did I say that “lifestyle choice” = “queers must die”? I said that was highly offensive. Reread my words.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, I think I can speak for left when I say that Cole is nothing but a hippie-punching fagbagger.
Nick
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
Head on over to South Jamaica, Queens where a pimp and his ho were murdered last week.
John Cole
@Citizen Alan:
A couple of years ago, I would have agreed with you. But after what I have seen the past year and a half, with the non-stop carping and the incessant “self-criticism” and the constant negativity, I’m not so sure anymore. Have you not watched what the Republicans and the teahadists have been saying and doing the last year and a half? They’ve done everything but openly call him the n-bomb, and yet that has not been enough to unite the party. I’m not so sure impeachment would anymore.
As to race relations that someone else mentioned, some folks better start waking up. There is a not insignificant group of black Democrats who are about to blow a fucking gasket at the way self-described Democrats are treating Obama. I don’t know why this is so patently obvious to this lily-white hick from WV, but the poutrage sect of wealthy white folks leading the ever important “keeping Obama to his word” charge don’t seem to get it at all.
But then again, when your unemployment rate among your teens is in the 20’s and 30’s, you don’t have time for poutrage.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: No, it always best to pick a phrase out of a speech and extrapolate meaning from it. Looking at the phrase in context is so bourgeois.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Omnes Omnibus: You mean like Lyndon LaRouche considers himself a Democrat?
AhabTRuler
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: Yeah, but the French aren’t pussies, so what’s yer point?
Even the French won’t tolerate a leftist uprising these days.
Linda Featheringill
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
So you think that many people on the right would be willing to resort to guns, etc.?
Barb (formerly gex)
I’m telling you “lifestyle choice” gives ammo to people who think it is a choice.
You can talk about people being gay or whatever or you can talk about people choosing to be gay. In this climate I think it makes a difference. That’s all I’m saying.
And I don’t think that it would have been hard to avoid that phrase – a phrase that was coined by anti-gay people to emphasize that they feel it IS a choice and not innate.
I said I found it offensive. I said it makes me suspect some things about him. Everything else you guys are saying you are reading into things – assuming we are all fagbaggers or whatever.
Reread what I said. I said suggesting in any way that those kids CHOSE that is offensive. I stand by that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: For example.
Zuzu's Petals
@debbie:
I wanted nothing more than to see the bastards behind the Clinton impeachment thrown out in 2000. As far as I know, few if any suffered the slightest consequence for their disgusting behavior.
FlipYrWhig
@Barb (formerly gex): OK, I shouldn’t be just blatantly insulting to people I don’t know, so I’m sorry for that, but, I truly cannot see how you could take one perhaps _slightly_ out-of-tune remark and bend it into something that is part insult, part dogwhistle to the religious right, which is what you said at first on the E.D. Kain thread.
Tom Q
Why do people act as if the Clinton impeachment hurt the GOP? They held onto the House in the next election; did lose seats in the Senate, but only because they were buffoons who’d been elected in the ’94 tsunami; and got their idiot into the White House. Yeah…they really paid a steep price.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Mnemosyne: Not that I am saying Obama believes the same as Paladino, but you do realize that people like Paladino say the same things when the rubber meets the road on things like anti-gay bullying.
Denouncing violence against gay teens is easy – even Paladino does. But “lifestyle choice” strays very close to a dogwhistle to me.
Fax Paladin
If the Republicans get control, the groundwork for impeachment will start being laid about .04 microseconds after the new Congress is called into session, for one simple reason, the same one as for Clinton: as a tactical move to bog Obama down even more and keep him from accomplishing anything that might get him re-elected.
The name of the game is to keep the fire trucks locked in the garage so Obama gets the blame as America burns.
Nick
@Tom Q:
They came within a handful of seats and a couple hundred votes of losing everything. It hurt them, but not enough.
they also lost what was clearly a good shot at a large majority in 1998.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tom Q:
On a karmic level, they sure did.
General Stuck
@John Bird:
I once was fooled by the notion that if people had many of the same basic beliefs as me, then they were on my side in politics. When the chasm of issues versus process first ignited the early battles of prog and obot, it caused me great angst, and hi BP. I tired to reason that process was as important as issue purity, and about all the sausage making parts of process. It fell on deaf ears, for those stuck on issue purity at the expense of progress, and was doubly insulting them calling themselves real progressives, when they were not.
I don’t suffer lies well in my late middle age, and when I finally realized there was no leading of horses to water, let alone making them drink, I discovered that in politics, having the same or similar beliefs on issues, in fact, does not make people on the same side by default. You have to get and stay elected in our zero sum political system, and if you don’t, the other side gets to make the rules, that for republicans, is these days closely related to murder and mayhem.
And when I had this epiphany, it also dawned on me, that in politics, if someone isn’t on your side, they are by default, on the other one.
Maybe you need to spend some time in the archives of this blog, to discover the memes we mock the other side with, wingnuts of the left and right, there is most often some past example of it being actually real.
You are young still, I take it, and can be forgiven for not yet learning that in politics in this country, no one here gets out alive. It is the one thing, or it is all of the other thing. At least for the foreseeable future. What side will you be on?
tim serbo
@The Grand Panjandrum: hanging is so tacky, as Saddam said. better Rumsfeld and The Man with No Pulse be required to forfeit their riches to Planned Parenthood, Feeding America, Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders, Habitat for Humanity, Partners in Health, etc. And they’ll need to spend a few semesters emptying bedpans at an underfunded municipal hospital.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T but the Delaware Senate debate is underway on CNN.
Mnemosyne
@Barb (formerly gex):
In what way does that quote even imply that the kids chose it? Jarrett is saying that the kid’s parents did the best they could and fully accepted him, but the school let him be tortured by his classmates.
Where, anywhere, does she even vaguely hint at it being the kid’s own fault?
Here’s the second half of the speech, since you seem to have missed it:
Please point out where in that paragraph she says anything that even vaguely resembles blaming the victim. Just one thing.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Omnes Omnibus: So we as a blog no longer believe in such thing as dogwhistles? I am NOT saying that is what that was, but trust me there are people who WILL seize upon that exact phrase in that manner. Would a little caution be too much to ask?
Suck It Up!
@Barb (formerly gex):
Don’t play that victim shit with me. I meant every word I said in my post and Obama has been accused of all of those things. He has been called a bigot and a homophobe. A bunch of geniuses over at Dkos went so far as to say he was imposing Jim Crown on gays. They didn’t “suspect” shit, they flat out said it. No strawman here either. Pick a blog, any blog, and you’ll find those accusations in a post or in a thread.
“You mock gays” my ass. Sarah Palin would be proud.
eric
just a heads up: the GOP is not going to try and impeach obama for something trivial, they are gonna make it treason, straight up, no chaser.
The penalty for treason is death.
good times.
Triassic Sands
I don’t think Watergate should be 100 — that probably should be awarded to Reagan and Iran. Watergate would be above 95.
Bush/Cheney were guilty of offenses that also might rate 100, but certainly well about 90.
Clinton’s BJ and subsequent lying probably rated something in the low twenties. It was ugly, but not really worthy of impeachment and removal from office.
On this scale of 1 to 100, most presidential missteps clearly don’t warrant impeachment and removal from office. Going back to Eisenhower, I think one might make the case that LBJ committed impeachment worthy offenses (concerning Vietnam, Tonkin, etc.). Remarkably, I think Nixon, Reagan, and Bush all committed legitimately impeachable offenses and GHW Bush probably deserved it for his role in Iran-Contra when he was VP.
What about Obama? Well, he’s turned the country into a Maoist-Leninist-Stalinist-Islamic terrorist state with significant Nazi tendencies. Case closed.
Linda Featheringill
@Barb (formerly gex):
But gay men use the phrase “lifestyle choice”. Don’t they? They used to.
Does it have a different meaning when a non-gay person uses the term?
What do I know? That was probably back in the year 1525 or something.
Suck It Up!
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’ll watch it on SNL.
Juicebagger
@Nick:
OMFG, No! Stop
the pressesDad’s printer!So, I know that New York is a city of only 8.3 million people, and I don’t want to be unseemly, but. . .
. . . did you know them?
FlipYrWhig
@Barb (formerly gex): FWIW, I don’t think “lifestyle choice” is a phrase coined by homophobes. I think it’s a phrase coined so that silly people didn’t have to say the word “sex.”
(I remember reading a letter to the editor in my college newspaper from a proudly gay professor who said he _wanted_ to think about his sexuality as a choice, because he thought that it was awful to suggest to people that being gay was such a curse and a burden that no one would possibly ever choose it.)
Barb (formerly gex)
@FlipYrWhig: Well, certainly emotion is part of that, there’s no doubt. I may have been careless with my wording earlier too, for which I apologize.
Nonetheless, I stand by my take on that phrase. Lifestyle choice is a phrase that was deliberately coined to diminish the breadth and scope of what it means to be gay.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@John Cole: Look. People are pissed off about the state of the economy. And no, Obama is not doing enough. I’m still gonna do GOTV and other things in ’12. The question is what Obama and Co. should do now. If the GOP takes one or both Houses, they aren’t gonna compromise for anything. The problem was, a lot of us knew that they never were gonna compromise with Obama once he was elected. And we still had dicks like Nelson and HolyJoe in the caucus. The question then becomes, either help get more Democratic Senators elected, or change the Senate rules. It’s time to drive a stake through the heart of the GOP. The question is, will we get help doing it from the Democrats in Washington. Because, for now, without a completely neutered GOP nothing will get done that’s needed to get us out of the hole economically.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Linda Featheringill: Sure. Just look at Beck’s deranged followers. Ever listen to the dreck that is right-wing radio?
John Cole
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: I wasn’t defending Obama. I don’t think he has done enough on the economy or to the banksters.
I’m just telling you how I perceive some people as seeing things.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Mnemosyne: I think the word CHOICE implies a choosing of some sort. I guess maybe that’s just me.
What I am trying to do here is point out, from a gay perspective, that THAT PHRASE was coined by the religious right specifically to minimize what it means to be gay. And it is annoying to find Jarrett using it
Mnemosyne
@Barb (formerly gex):
So the Obama administration is just paying lip service to wanting to support anti-bullying programs and will not actually do anything? That’s a pretty major charge. Please present your proof.
Again, you are claiming that the Obama administration is lying when they say they want to stop bullying and giving a wink and a nod to the Christian right by using the phrase “lifestyle choice.” That’s what it means to say they’re using a dogwhistle.
I realize people are pissed off that the DADT repeal didn’t pass, but you’re verging on paranoia here if you’re claiming Jarrett’s speech was all a lie meant to reassure the right wing. Seriously.
Comrade Mary
@Barb (formerly gex):
Nobody accidentally blows a dogwhistle. So are you saying that Jarrett (and Obama) are deliberately reaching out to homophobes through the use of that term in one live interview by Jarrett?
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: If you think the phrase “lifestyle choice” in and of itself is kind of like “handicapped” or “Oriental,” something that was once almost polite but now a sign of ignorance and old-fogey-dom, then it makes some sense. But I really don’t find that “lifestyle choice” has that resonance. Then again, I’m not gay, and my gay friends are at the beach this week and didn’t even invite me.
Nick
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
you do both, there are plenty of Democrats running who want to change the rules (Conway in KY, Giannoulis in IL, for example). Get them elected, push for rules change.
Omnes Omnibus
@Barb (formerly gex): I don’t know that we “as a blog” believe in anything. I think it was probably an infelicitous phrase in an otherwise reasonable remark. On the other hand, I am not looking for excuses to condemn gays or the Administration.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Suck It Up!: Well certainly not all gays have said he’s a bigot.
Man, I am speaking earnestly and trying to speak carefully. But the bile being spewed at me is difficult to fathom. You are all welcome to feel differently about that phrase. I guess it is just me. I think suggesting that being gay is a lifestyle choice gives ammo to some people who do really think that gays really do choose to be gay for some perverse reason. And it would be easy to avoid using that phrase. And I’m upset about it.
Davis X. Machina
@General Stuck: I liked this.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@AhabTRuler: Really? Last I heard, the French were still striking and holding protests. Or have you not heard about the past week or two?
Suck It Up!
@John Cole:
You got that shit right!!
eric
@Comrade Mary: while she is defending the right of gay person to be treated as a valued human being….sort of the way Dana Perino spoke about doing right by gay families.
Imperfect rhetoric, perhaps; but good sentiments otherwise.
I will take national politicians talking positively about the rights of gay youths as a big ole step in the right direction.
dirge
You know what I’d like to see?
Preemption.
Obama carefully catalogs all of his illegal “get tough in the war on terror” moves, pardons everybody who followed his orders, and submits the bundle to a Republican congress as articles of impeachment against himself.
Not only do I think that it’s the responsible and honorable thing for him to do, but it’s always good politics to show you’ve got a brass pair, and I think it’d work as a devastating wedge issue against the Republicans.
The downside is that if he pulls it off, the balance of powers will be dead. But it’d sure be entertaining.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
To me, it sounds more like when Harry Reid was trying to say nice things about the president and used the word “Negro.” We all slapped our foreheads, but very few people thought Reid was deliberately being insulting.
beergoggles
Republicans are bullies. Anyone who stands up to them will give them the vapors and the media will have to come to their rescue. Obama slapped em around last time he visited them for his outreach. I think they might remember the sting from the spanking.
On the other hand..
I can’t wait for Obama to move to the
far rightcenter and try to compromise with the Republicans on his impeachment.FlipYrWhig
@Barb (formerly gex):
Some of my thinking about sexuality as a choice comes from an anecdote I retold above. I’ve known at least a few people who felt politically committed to the idea that their sexuality, really everyone’s sexuality, was indeed a choice–at least as a matter of _identity_, i.e., “I am gay” as opposed to “I am a guy and I think that guy is hot”–and that we as a society needed to figure out ways to respect such choices.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Mnemosyne: I’ve said none of the things you claim I said. I said the phrase is offensive. I said it gives some people ammo to continue to think that gay people are just deviants who choose to behave a certain way. And just from a semantics perspective I find talking about a gay kid so desperate to end his life has having chosen that aspect of his life that cause so much misery.
That is all. I don’t even think that it is MEANT as a dogwhistle, but I do think it will be taken that way. I wish they wouldn’t have used that phrase. Apologies for any careless wording that may have led you and everyone else here to believe otherwise.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Nick: I know, but given the make-up even if we hold pretty much steady, there will still be more to do. Basically it’ll come down to 2012. That means having a good recruit ready to go in Maine(because the Teabaggers are gunning for Snowe). And having candidates ready other places as well, because the Teabaggers are going to primary McCain’s other BFF(Graham) as well.
cat48
Jonathan Bernstein was on this about 1 1/2 yrs ago. You can leave a comment at his blog to guess on what date the Investigation/Impeachment will begin.
geg6
I cannot imagine how they would contain the fury of everyone but the Teabaggers (there is no GOP any more; let’s all be real about that) should they tie the country up in more impeachment follies. The last time was during a time of peace and prosperity. This one would have as a backdrop a war and a half and the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s, with a related looming second financial meltdown that will affect millions of homeowners and all potential home buyers. I can’t see how Democrats or most true Independents will sit for it.
I know they will do it. I can’t believe that they are all delusional enough not to understand that this has been a disaster once when the country had few real worries and will be exponentially more disastrous under current conditions. I know, just know that Rove (for instance) cannot be that removed from reality. He’s a cynical, dishonest liar, but I don’t think he’s stupid.
Mnemosyne
@Barb (formerly gex):
I understand being upset about it — like flip said, the phrase made me wince because it’s an old-fashioned phrase that was once polite to use and now isn’t, like “handicapped” or “Oriental.”
The vitriol is coming from when you started implying that it was somehow a dogwhistle to the right wing to signal that the Obama administration really doesn’t care about bullying and won’t do anything. That’s going beyond simply objecting to her using a stupid phrase.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: But until Barb reacted that way, I would never in a million years have thought that “lifestyle choice” was on par with “Negro.” Maybe I missed something. I would have said it sounded to me more like saying “dungarees” instead of “jeans,” that is, people don’t really say it anymore, but not because it’s offensive.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Comrade Mary: I guess what I mean is that while I do not think it was meant in the way that I find offensive, the fact remains is that it can be widely interpreted in a way that I do. I assume they were speaking to the American public, the very same public that has been legislatively and politically been very anti-gay over the last decade. I think that teen suicides and DOMA and DADT are all in the news right now and a little care might have been taken.
I guess none of you have to believe me when I find it offensive to even suggest that this particular living hell is something those kids, or I, chose for ourselves.
Mnemosyne
@Barb (formerly gex):
You compared Jarrett’s speech to Paladino’s lame-ass excuse making right before he launched into his anti-gay diatribe.
Again, I understand being upset at the phrase. I don’t understand deciding that it means Jarrett’s words about tolerance and respect are no more sincere than Paladino’s. I just don’t get it.
Nick
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
and Massachusetts (Brown), Nevada (Ensign), Arizona (Kyl), Indiana (Lugar).
And defend all of our seats, as we have A LOT to defend. Especially North Dakota, where Conrad may retire, Florida (Nelson), Montana (Tester), Virginia (Webb), Missouri (McCaskill), New Jersey (Menendez) and I don’t know what we want to do about Nelson in Nebraska
Barb (formerly gex)
@Mnemosyne: And for that I apologize. I really did mean to say that it will be heard as a dogwhistle by some. I really do not believe that was a dogwhistle in that sense.
Again, the main thing here for me, the bottom line, is talking about a kid so distraught he killed himself and using the phrase lifestyle choice. Say lifestyle if you want. Choice is the problem there.
FlipYrWhig
@Barb (formerly gex): But it’s pretty clear that even reading Jarrett in the most uncharitable way possible, she would have to mean that they may have chosen their sexual identity (reading “lifestyle choice” literally), but they didn’t deserve to have that sexual identity made into a pretext for humiliation and harassment — and that’s the living hell part.
freelancer
@Barb (formerly gex):
That’s an awesome Naomi Wolf impersonation, btw.
beergoggles
@Barb (formerly gex): “THAT PHRASE was coined by the religious right specifically to minimize what it means to be gay”
I would expect any gay person who lived through the
ReaganAIDS holocaust years to raise their hackles when they hear it. There just aren’t enough of us alive to make sure the youngins understand the implications of what ‘lifestyle choice’ means.Linda Featheringill
said by Mnemosyne
To all you hysterical gay people:
I am bisexual. Does that count? Can we chat as equals? Or at least as semi-equals?
You are probably expressing your reactions to the world in honest and quite descriptive worse. But this is just your opinion. YOU DON’T SPEAK FOR EVERY GAY PERSON IN AMERICA.
There are a lot of us out there and a lot of different opinions and a lot of diversity.
I do have a thought for you. If you are so sensitive and sufficiently full of pain regarding your sexuality so that you are offended by everything that this particular administration says about homosexuality, maybe you have some conflicts you haven’t worked through yet.
tim serbo
@Barb (formerly gex): not sure it’s a dogwhistle. my guess it’s an example of the one thing wingbaggers do well, and that’s insinuate their terminology into the general discourse. “lifestyle choice” is right up there with “partial birth abortion” as the sort of easily-assimilated phrase that comes to influence the way people think about a heavily freighted topic like Teh Ghey or abortion. i’d bet Jarrett, when she spoke, wasn’t even conscious of the earwig effect of a phrase like “lifestyle choice” and all its crummy implications.
Zuzu's Petals
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Ah, wish I’d seen Nick’s comment before posting. Makes sense.
Still, I’m not sure how much can be tied to voters’ disgust with the impeachment. Would have liked to have seen the culprits themselves kicked out…that would’ve been a real statement.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Mnemosyne: No, I was trying to point out that speaking out against anti-gay bullying doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t anti-gay. I mean in general by way of example, not in specific about this speech. I was sloppy, and again, I’m sorry for that carelessness.
Mnemosyne
@Barb (formerly gex):
But let’s say that Jarrett’s speech was about a kid who was teased to the point of suicide because he did something that was a genuine choice, like getting a Mohawk.
If you swap that in, can you read Jarrett’s words and honestly say that she was assigning any blame to the kid whatsoever, or that anyone could read the speech and decide that the kid deserved to be tortured like that because he chose to get a Mohawk?
Barb (formerly gex)
@freelancer: I’m not saying we’re there, we’re almost there, or whatever. I just think it is a mistake to think that Americans couldn’t go there.
Paula
@General Stuck:
Hmmm. *nods in General agreement*
Incidentally, I have no idea why some of these people have their underwear in a twist regarding what appears on this site. I started to lurk around 2007-ish and stayed because BJ was practically the only high-traffic liberal blog where you could mock the FDL/Hullaballoo/Open Left set without getting called corporate, centrist sellout.
And now Cole’s supposed to be more polite to them? They’ve got a ton of other blogs that agree w/ their POV. Why wring your hands here?
WereBear
@Citizen Alan: Neville Chamberlain did push the start of the invasion back enough for Britain (with the US help) to prepare for the war.
Some call it appeasement, some call it pragmatism…
Jody
John Cole:
Mark this moment down, cuz it’s gonna go down in history as the day you called it.
The number of so-called “progressives” I see high fiving across the internet as they circle jerk to Obama impeachment fantasies is absolutely astonishing.
And if you call them out on it, you’re an Obot and a DLC whore.
Mnemosyne
@Barb (formerly gex):
I just hate to see one infelicitous phrase in an otherwise wonderful speech by Jarrett about tolerance used as yet more “proof” that the Obama administration hates gay people, and yet that’s already how I’ve been seeing it used. There were seriously people in that thread at DK saying that this was the last straw for them and they would never support Obama again. Even though the entire point of the speech is that the administration wants to take action to stop gay kids from being bullied in school, that single phrase was proof positive that Obama hates gay people.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Mnemosyne: Looked at that way, I get it. But the thing is, that district in MN already has anti-gay bullying programs. Nearly all districts do. The situation that caused this to be addressed is that these programs do not apply to anti-gay bullying. The school district in question refuse to allow any anti-anti-gay bullying programs.
But, yes, I see what you mean.
I just hate that phrase though. Not because of how it plays with the rest of the speech, but with how it plays with the American audience it will reach.
Bob Loblaw
@John Cole:
Again, I hate to break your widdle guilty white heart, but Obama is More. Popular. Than. Clinton. Was.
But somebody who’s worldview is so constrained by the internet as to have fucking blog wars with a failed Hollywood producer is unlikely to ever see reason. You’re living in a box.
So follow your blog’s m.o., call them splitters, and tell them to shut the fuck up already with their stupid fee-fees. Democratic presidents are never celebrated on high in their time. Not even Magical Negro ones Who Will Unite Us All and Reaffirm This Nation’s Promise.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Mnemosyne: Ah yes, but the GOP has managed to screw this country up by infelicitous harmless phrases. Luntz and what not. Call if framing.
I guess I have GOP shellshock.
tim serbo
@tim serbo: shorter me: wingers are sneaky. oftentimes, it’s the one thing cowards and weaklings do well.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne:
I checked Aravosis to see if the meme had started there… and it didn’t look like it. DKos, eh? That place has the vibe of the 11-year-old skater kids at the county rec center. They get the pants just so, and they egg each other on a lot, but I’ve never seen one land an actual trick.
Barb (formerly gex)
@FlipYrWhig: Me, I can tell the difference between Obama and anyone in the GOP.
My honest opinion of him as a President is that he is about the best we could have had at this time. And I sincerely hope he is indeed laying the groundwork for big change like Reagan did. And as an American I support him, and will continue to support him.
But goddamn I hate how careless he can be on gay issues. It was his voice on robocalls the Prop 8 side were rolling out in 2008. “Lifestyle choice” just struck me the same way. Innocuous from him, ammo for them.
P.S. I mean this sincerely, I appreciate the back and forth with you guys. It is hard for me to not speak out of emotion on this topic and sometimes I just need to blurt out what I’m feeling and it has clearly come out very sloppily. Please know that my heart is in the right place and that I will continue to support the good guys.
John Bird
@efgoldman:
I think a lot of angry racist white dudes liked Nixon because they thought that he knew how to spot a Jew, a queer, or a Communist, and ‘handle’ them. I think that’s why they liked Reagan, and I think that’s why they liked W. Bush.
Davis X. Machina
I would take an impeachment drive in ’11 as a sign that the GOP is confident that they can re-take the White House, and if it degenerated into a noisy farce a sign that they think they have a lock on it in ’12.
The one thing they did accomplish in impeaching Clinton — besides setting Joe Lieberman, the Gollum of American politics, loose from his cave — is in making a joke out of impeachment itself. The sheer velocity with which Republican Senators bailed on the enterprise was the tell — that and the clownishness of the House proceedings.
Think — who should have been impeached in the last 60 years — and wasn’t?. Reagan — Iran/Contra was an open and shut case, IMHO — Bush I and Bush II. So long as it is a joke, the political equivalent of the clown cannon, a GOP president can do what he likes with impunity from any countervailing force not involving firearms and ex-Marines from Kiev.
When the GOP feel the need to make a joke out of impeachment again, it’s a sign that they’re thinking of being able to do things that richly deserve impeachment shortly thereafter.
JPL
The political climate has created such angst, that I’ll ignore the message and react to comments in ways that I shouldn’t.
Shorter comment, I have become bitchy.
Watching the miners emerge today after 69 days in their underground hell, has helped. BTW 2 miners to go.
Then 6 rescuers will come up.
Mnemosyne
@Barb (formerly gex):
I’m not sure about that, either. Sure, the hardcore nutters who are already all but saying that gay teens should all commit suicide may hear it that way, but I think ordinary parents who are uncomfortable with the idea that their kid might turn out to be gay could find it affirming. Jarrett’s saying that the parents were good parents who supported and loved their child as he was even though he made a “lifestyle choice” they didn’t like.
Even if (and I think it’s a big “if”) Jarrett really does think that being gay is a choice, she’s still making the point that no one should be bullied and tormented for making that choice. I think that’s important.
Quaker in a Basement
That would be good, but it would only run a close second to Matthews being force fed one of his own kidneys on live teevee.
tim serbo
@Davis X. Machina: haven’t heard a take quite like that before. makes a lot of sense, actually.
Martin
Finally, some sense! ht Josh
Published in NRO
I agree. As a state employee I’ll give up my right to vote in state elections when everyone collecting social security or medicare gives up their right to vote in federal elections. Deal?
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
Here’s the DKos thread. This is hopefully a meme that will die pretty quickly.
I completely understand having the speech on in the background and having your attention caught by the phrase and being angry about it out of context, but I really don’t get the diarist’s continuing to be pissed off even after seeing it in context.
ETA: Andrew Sullivan also tried to push it.
demkat620
@eric: There are some days when I really believe Impeachment will not be enough to assuage the crazies this time.
Remember to them Obama = existential threat.
Birtherism is the gateway drug. That will be there high crime.
Keith G
@Barb (formerly gex):
Huh?
@beergoggles:
I was a gay political activist before Reagan. “Lifestyle” can be just lazy shorthand. I coined the term “Emotional Orientation” but it never caught on. As far this case, I look to the context of the total person.
But no hackles here and I do mock my fellow queers when they attack Obama as anti gay or even gay indifferent.
Come on Barb. Find other targets for that bile.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Mnemosyne: I appreciate your input. Truly. We’ve had a couple back and forth exchanges on gay issues when I’ve been hotheaded. I hope you understand why I might speak a little crazily on the issue sometimes.
Joel Mesaros
They could always impeach Obama legitimately for war crimes. Nah, never mind.
FlipYrWhig
@Barb (formerly gex): I’m old enough to remember how exciting it was that Bill Clinton actually said the word “gay” in the State of the Union address. And that doesn’t feel like it was all that long ago. So I guess it’s harder for me to hear “lifestyle choice” as politically objectionable. But I’m not gay (though not infrequently mistaken for it) so it’s not really my call, is it?
Davis X. Machina
@tim serbo: Karl Rove. Inoculation. ACORN & voter ‘fraud’. Claim they do it first, make it a joke, and then do it in earnest. It’s a known MO
Mark
@Barb (formerly gex): “lifestyle choice” connotes, to me, a guy who hits the clubs, does crystal, perhaps some barebacking, is into leather, and generally bangs a lot of other dudes.
I hope that’s not what Jarrett was referring to!
tim serbo
@Davis X. Machina: like i said: sneaky. weak, cowardly people are scarier than strong ones.
FlipYrWhig
@Mark: Really? “Lifestyle choice” to me suggests someone kind of mom-ish who’s too embarrassed to say “sexual orientation” because it has S-E-X in it, ew!
eemom
am I the only one who finds it depressing as hell that so many people accept the “inevitability” of impeachment proceedings against a president who committed no crime — not even lying about a fucking blowjob?
That it’s just a matter of course that the U.S. Congress would expend taxpayer-funded resources on such a grotesque parody of justice, at an infinite cost to enormous problems that need to be solved?
That we’ll be the fucking laughingstock of the world again?
That people find something entertaining in any of this and would actually wish to see it?
Mnemosyne
@Barb (formerly gex):
I understand, and obviously it’s easy for me to see the other (straight) side seeing as that’s the side I live on. It’s inevitable after this whole thing that I’ll manage to say something offensive that I didn’t mean to be offensive, so feel free to go ahead and call me a doofus when that happens. :-)
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: As long as we are on that topic, I still don’t see lying under oath about a blow job as perjury in the Clinton case. So there.
JenJen
Agree that they’re going to impeach Obama. No doubt in my mind. I’m as sure of it as I am that the sun will come up tomorrow. Anyone who thinks the GOP learned any kind of lesson or became “nicer” since the 90’s hasn’t been paying a lot of attention. (not that anyone in this thread believes such a thing; I’m just late to the party again.)
And, I’m with @eemom. The certainty is depressing as bloody hell.
And DougJ, it broke my heart to see Midge like that. Needle and the damage done. Gotta say, though, I dig Megan the wild secretary from Montreal. I think she’s good for Don. And glad to see I’m not the only one who thinks Dr. Faye looks like Joyce Brothers, indeed.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Actually, I think you get to an important point. People, despite best intentions, say stupid shit sometimes. Infelicitous remarks, misspeaking, and genuine unawareness all come into play. The trick is how the follow on is handled. If I hear the offensive remark, how do I call out the person for saying it? Is it on me to make a determination about the person’s intentions? Should I make a fuss or do it quietly? Now if I said the offensive remark, how do I handle being called out on it? If the remark was indeed offensive, is it okay for me to get pissy with the person who confronts me about it because that person was combative? Etiquette is hard.
beergoggles
@Keith G: ““Lifestyle” can be just lazy shorthand. I coined the term “Emotional Orientation” but it never caught on. As far this case, I look to the context of the total person.”
The fundies have had plenty of time to push their phrases into common usage.
And in this case after my initial reaction I did realize it was just an unaware straight person.
joe from Lowell
You think Congress would impeach him in a lame duck session?
Because even if the Republicans take the house in 2010, they’re going to get booted into the minority when the Obama voters turn out to reelect him in 2012.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Improved.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@eemom: I don’t think anyone here finds it funny. It’s hugely depressing. But a lot of us also see what the GOP has become. They can’t abide a Democratic President. They’ve turned into Teahadists and more. The GOP has let the inmates run the asylum.
joe from Lowell
@eemom:
Gallows humor.
Admiral_Komack
“Wait, you say. What will they impeach him over?”
He’s making love to his wife!
Impeach him!
jimBOB
@Davis X. Machina:
When the GOP feel the need to make a joke out of impeachment again, it’s a sign that they’re thinking of being able to do things that richly deserve impeachment shortly thereafter.
I think you’re giving them way too much credit for thought. Impeachment, should it happen, will simply be an expression of blind rage. They’re not thinking strategically. In any case another GOP administration would behave like lawless thugs because that’s what they do, not for any other reason.
And I think impeachment would simply assure Obama’s reelection, not lead to a Palin presidency. Clinton, who was guilty of actual lies under oath (if immaterial ones), left office a popular man, more popular than St. Ronnie. Impeaching Obama from a clown car will just make him look better.
Kryptik
Impeachment is amusing the same way a car crash can be amusing: requiring a certain amount of detachment as a coping mechanism for the abject horror it deserves. Right now, we’re currently in one long, slow-motion car wreck straight into oncoming traffic. The only way we can really cope is to project ourselves outside of the situation and observe as if from afar, because trying to view it from the first person perspective is just too horrible to weather.
gbear
@Linda Featheringill:
We roll our eyes and do air quotes when we say it.
joe from Lowell
Well, no, it’s just the tone of voice they use.
But they might as well be rolling their eyes and doing air quotes.
burnspbesq
@John Cole:
Greenwald will lead the charge, citing Obama’s execrable record on civil liberties.
He’s right about Obama’s record on civil liberties, but he can’t see past his single-issue obsession. Which makes him a useful idiot for the bad guys.
General Stuck
@Omnes Omnibus:
Golly yes, being nice to smarmy motherfuckers takes it all out of me. Them and the idiots.
Xenos
Has anyone set up a pool to take bets on the exact date that impeachment motions head to the floor of Congress? Someone suggested this last week, and it clearly needs to be done.
celticdragonchick
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
Our country may tear itself apart and have the second half of our Civil War.
celticdragonchick
@Xenos:
About 120 days after he is sworn into his next term.
celticdragonchick
@geg6:
I think we have seen that even Rove isn’t calling the shots anymore.
I had whiplash from how quickly he reversed course on O’Donnell when the teabaggers start screaming “RINO” at him.
Nick
@burnspbesq:
No, when Obama fights back against impeachment over ACORN, Greenwald will complain he can’t because he doesn’t have a perfect record on civil liberties.
Xenos
@celticdragonchick:
That would be after the 2012 election, right? Maybe you mean 120 days after the next congress convenes, which I think would be during the summer break. Davis X. called July 1, which tempted me, in ‘The Price is Right’ fashion, to call June 30 as a matter of course. But July 1 is the last day before the long holiday weekend, so that is a really good call.
So. As a wild guess, I am going to claim June 30 on the legitimate theory that the punks in Congress will want to wrap up a day early and start the weekend on a Thursday evening.
Joseph Nobles
I wish this country thought cooking intelligence to lead us into a six-years-and-counting war on the other side of the globe rated a 100, with Watergate at maybe an 85.
mclaren
@Citizen Alan:
But that alien chick who lived in the tail of Halley’s Comet was so hawt, man. Yeah, she turned out to be a vampire, but nobody’s perfect, y’know?
bob h
I agree with Chait (“Socialism” probably the grounds for impeachment), but will an American public suffering thru this jobless recovery really stand for such Republican nonsense again? My guess is that the impeachment will trigger a wide revulsion against the Republicans, and that by 2012 they will be in disgrace, and Obama on the way to re-election. The country will have spent two years in the twilight zone.
kindness
For the record….I enjoy shooting cans & targets, but I don’t do it much any more. I have a couple 22’s. I don’t want to ever shoot a living thing if I can help it. It’s a karma thing, you know?