I don’t know what effect his marathon speech will have, but everything he is saying is needs to be said. Having said that, I almost had an aneurysm when Mary Landrieu came out there and started her nonsense. “I know we don’t have weeks or months to make this decision about tax cuts.”
You had ten years, you asshole. Ten. Years. And that includes the last two years.
If she was so concerned about the economy and the budget, she wouldn’t have had a hold on Jack Lew for months.
Napoleon
And she was one of the Dems that voted for the tax cut 10 years ago.
Spiffy McBang
Maybe this got handled in ABL’s thread, but I don’t get why Sanders was up there talking forever. Did they not have 41 votes to stomp cloture? Did he just feel like saying a lot of what needed to be said, and/or showing what a real filibuster is? Senate rules are such that you simply don’t need to get up there anymore, so I’m curious… although it is patently awesome that he did it.
beltane
At least Bernie has been saying these things consistently back since he was mayor of Burlington. It’s good that a lot of people finally heard him.
Joe Beese
Is he fucking retarded? Or just on drugs?
Perry Como
$32 billion tax break for one family. That’s fucking awesome.
jl
@Joe Beese: You mean Cole, or Sanders, or one of the commenters?
My money is on you mean Cole, but we try to be discrete around here, fella.
Dave
Fucking Landrieu. She votes for these damn cuts in the first place and now has the brass tacks to complain about the deal. There were Purity Hounds at the GOS talking like she was the best thing evah. Jesus wept…
AAA Bonds
@Spiffy McBang:
Because now the media are talking about it, for at least the next couple days or so.
JimK
No story lasts more than a week.
Hunter Gathers
Landrieu’s outburst is a testament to the short attention span of Louisiana voters. She knows she won’t get called out for it, since ‘Huggies’ Vitter easily won re-election. If it happened more than 2 weeks ago, they’ll forget about it.
AAA Bonds
As someone who is very skeptical of this bill from the Left, I do agree about Landrieu. She is a campaign finance opportunist, as a rule, and so I believe her stake in this may be more than the obvious.
burnspbesq
Landrieu is only a Democrat because her father was a Democrat. Her views on most issues fit comfortably within the mainstream of Republican “thought.”
Davis X. Machina
@Spiffy McBang: There was no motion before the body. So there was no previous question to be put, and hence no cloture.
General Stuck
Landreiu is the last dem senator holding out in the deep south and almost everything she says is for the benefit of saying what voters in LA expect her to say. She is being crazy and wrong in a crazy and wrong place, is all. It is offensive to liberal ears to hear it, but it is part of our experience in this country.
The neo aristocrats don’t want to hear the truth, and never have. That wealthy and prosperous blue states fund their happy asses with a giant money funnel that runs straight from the federal treasury, into their red state treasuries, largely to be looted by a handful of oligarchs and wannabe oligarchs, that these patriotic states produce as an industry from echoes of the past. Along with a shit pile of poor people.
They want to hear all the buzzwords about rich folks producing jobs, and liberals suck, so let’s stick it to the cheese eating pointy heads and their welfare nanny state. They don’t want to hear the truth, that liberal prosperity of the northern aggressors keeps their southern shit piles of poor in bacon and beans, and the pitchforks in the barn instead of up their cracker asses.
Too bad they can’t market lies for their trouble.
Suck It Up!
@Dave:
this is why I have no sympathy for their kind when they cry that some politician/pundit betrayed them.
uila
@Dave: And of course the DeMint caucus gets to wail endlessly about the spiraling deficit. Win-win for those assholes!
Comrade Luke
Landrieu was the only downer of the whole thing. I don’t know if that implies that there were so few people supporting Sanders that she was the only one (other than Brown) that was willing to give him a piss break, or that she’s such an opportunist that she jumped at the chance to get up there.
FlipYrWhig
@General Stuck:
But why would Louisiana voters gravitate towards her newly-discovered pseudo populism? Ghost of Huey Long? I would have thought that the smart self-interested play for her, considering whom she represents, would be to run to the cameras and embrace “constructive bipartisan compromise.”
(ETA: Added the quotation marks late.)
Keith G
I do not care about Landrieu as she is a side show now. I hope Bernie is shaming the president – shaming the president for constructing a compromise in which (if I understood the news articles) the bottom 20% of earners will see a tax increase.
If that is indeed the case, than that is quite a piece of work.
AAA Bonds
@General Stuck:
The history of the Democrats in Louisiana is pretty complicated, as it is in North Carolina, and anywhere in the Democrats’ traditional territories that the party has remained strong. There have been progressives and reactionaries out of both states, although certainly the state party in both favors the latter, which is why they end up in the Senate (we tried to put Erskine Bowles there a couple times ourselves).
I’d profitably put aside the gut-driven South-bashing and begin examining exactly what Landrieu has to gain from this. Because I agree with John and others: she’s shifty and opportunistic and her stance on the tax issue is no exception. So what’s the opportunity here?
General Stuck
@FlipYrWhig:
I didn’t hear her speech and assumed it was the standard southern line for the tax cuts. Apparently not, and it doesn’t make sense her demagoguing Obama’s deal. But then, maybe it does.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
Well, that’s the whole point. Bernie is making a nice case for progressive policy. Great, he is good at it. But he can’t PASS progressive tax policies, nor can the entire Dem caucus organize itself to do so.
So.The.Fuck.What? What good does it do to talk about this shit all the time and then completely fail to produce a working congress, and then scream at the White House when the president decides to walk away from congress’ cowardice when it’s time to get something done?
THIS is when congressional Dems decide to take a stand? Too late, you stupid shits. And hiding behind the skirts of the White House to do it just makes you look more asinine.
AAA Bonds
@FlipYrWhig:
Exactly. Why is she doing this? It makes little sense to me, knowing what I know of her, unless there is an occult motive.
SectarianSofa
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
Word. What I was trying to say in the previous thread.
jl
@AAA Bonds: My best guess is that if a better compromise emerges, she uses her Senatorial prerogatives to commit some Senatorial prerogative extortion and block it for some inane reason until she gets something she wants.
But I don’t know much about this stuff.
mr. whipple
As much as I defend Obama, I can’t hold him harmless in this. Democrats, every one of them, had 10 years to devise a strategy to deal with this. At the least, they had two full years to get this done. I hold every last one of them accountable, including Obama, Sts Nancy and Bernie and the whole fucking caucus.
gizmo
http://www.sandersforpresident.org/2010/12/10/announcing-the-campaign/#comment-120
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/12/10/HP/R/41779/Sen+Sanders+Held+a+Tax+Cut+Filibuster.aspx
Enclosed is the link for the Sanders For President website, and also a video link for his 8-hour marathon speech today, which you can watch on C-Span in 3 parts. I fully expect 87 comments saying that Sanders can’t be elected, but if we consider that the Republican Party and the corporate press think that Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin are viable candidates, then all of a sudden a Bernie Sanders run for the White House doesn’t seem like an unrealistic proposition. We gotta start somewhere…
Davis X. Machina
@FlipYrWhig: A Louisiana Senator is elected to mind the Walton family business, the Arkansas Rice Federation’s business, and Tyson Foods’ business, then let them buy the votes needed to keep you in office. It’s classic Adam Smith division of labor, with each party doing what they’re best at.
Landrieu lost because someone else bid fair to do that job better, or because another senator could be obtained to do that job more cheaply
The free market at work.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@mr. whipple:
Well sure, general and diffused rage is harder to refute than specific, targeted rage.
But the truth is, congress is just broken, and Obama did not break it.
Who did? I think eventually most people will be able to figure it out.
SectarianSofa
@nancydarling:
Well, there’s a reason wyldP is in my pie filter.
mr. whipple
@AAA Bonds:
O’Donnel conjectured that Obama’s approval rating in LA is lower than dirt, so it helps her to bash him.
WyldPirate
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
A case could be made of who was hiding behind the skirts of whom.
Obama is going to tack harder right over the next two years. This “compromise” was only the beginning.
There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth here.
jl
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
“So.The.Fuck.What?”
From the clips I saw Sanders was taking an opportunity to make a good case in a way that would get press attention.
What is wrong with that?
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@gizmo:
Great idea. Nominate a Socialist for president.
This blog gets more relevant every day.
jo6pac
@nancydarling: Thank you
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@gizmo:
Great idea. Nominate a SociaIist for president.
This blog gets more relevant every day.
General Stuck
@mr. whipple:
this would be my guess. just the simplest form of politicking.
mr. whipple
For crying out loud. If/when Bernie caves and votes for this, like he did for HCR after saying he wouldn’t, are there gonna be more calls to primary him?
gizmo
Landrieu will probably hold out until she gets funding for a new VFW hall in Camel Hump, LA, and will then roll over and vote for the Obama / GOP tax deal.
WyldPirate
@nancydarling:
sorry. didn’t mean to offend you. I use that about once or twice per year.
Not much different than calling a man a dick or a dickhead, but I realize we aren’t as easily offended by that.
My apologies.
General Stuck
@mr. whipple:
He’s an independent.
but that won’t matter, you are snarking?
AAA Bonds
@jl:
If so, that is a hell of a convoluted reason to become a media face for this. Landrieu has something to gain that’s more than opposing this for tactical benefit later.
There has to be some motivation for her in being as publicly outspoken about it as she has been, because that’s not something she always does, any more than any other Senator. She usually prefers cautious, centrist language, pitching herself as a cross-aisle broker, like Breaux used to do.
I suppose I can’t rule out a real change of heart. But for Landrieu, that would be an astronomical departure from how she’s done business. You can Google up her voting record and ratings from different organizations if you want an idea.
Comrade Luke
When should he have done it? Before Obama was elected? During the HCR debate? I know: how about WHEN THE FUCKING ISSUE COMES UP ON THE CONGRESSIONAL CALENDAR?
So now not only do Democrats have to fight back, they have to fight back on the schedule that satisfies you?
And someone had the gall to call ME a purity troll. On a positive note, any time I thin I’m getting too cynical I can just come here and feel better again.
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
Because tax cuts for the rich are overall very unpopular. They’re obviously very unpopular among the Democratic voters who Landreiu will be appealing to in her next primary, but they aren’t even very popular among Republican voters. The Republicans have to vote for them because they’re so popular among the party’s financial backers- who will finance wingnut primary opponents against anyone who votes against them- not because they’re really popular among the Republican rank and file.
AAA Bonds
@General Stuck:
Yeah, except, pushing publicly for benefits and against tax cuts is unlikely to gain her more support from people in Louisiana who don’t like Obama, unless the political ground there has shifted radically and only she has the new polls.
Davis X. Machina
@jl:
Nothing, and I’m glad he did it. What I’m worried by is the sheer number of people who think they watched the storming of the Winter Palace on CSPAN today,
Show me a floor speech that actually accomplished anything at any level, from city council on up to the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.
FlipYrWhig
@Davis X. Machina: Are you merging Landrieu and Lincoln into a single amorphous New South just-barely-Democrat?
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: your gettin soft
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@jl:
As I said somewhere (which thread, I forget), Sanders makes a great case for progressive policy.
Unfortunately he and his friends can’t PASS progressive tax policy into law.
So ….. isn’t it a little late in the congress to come along and stamp feet and demand that the White House save congress from its epic ineptitude? The GOP can get its entire membership to vote no on anything, any time. The Dems don’t seem able to get their entire membership to agree on what day it is.
Heh. I said “epic ineptitude.”
phantomist
Here comes my commie with a millionaire
With strap-on hunger and a feedbag
Grinning ear to ear cuz she commandeered
A cocktail weenie at the protest
Drink to the party drink to the host
Fuck this party lets hit the coast
Drive your Nova like it’s stolen, go commie go
She got a Nova, commie drives a Nova
Davis X. Machina
@Davis X. Machina: For ‘lost’ read ‘loses’ — I’ve gotten her permanently crossed with Blanche L. — the reasons are pretty clear, and pretty much the same, come to think of it. Post-Katrina the two states have come to resemble each other even more.
Petro-chicken plutonomies.
stuckinred
Ellsberg on KO
AAA Bonds
@Roger Moore:
I would point out that the Democrats, while certainly having a larger donor base in terms of individuals, are also heavily funded by rich people who would stand to benefit from tax cuts for the wealthy. Often, these are the exact same rich people who are funding the Republicans.
This is something that everyone needs to keep in the fore of their minds when considering who is doing what and for what reason.
Nellcote
@jl:
That he did it on a Friday, the traditional “news dump” day?
Chessy
@Keith G:
I’ve seen this criticism but as far as I can tell it doesn’t make much sense. The argument seems to be, the bottom tax bracket won’t get quite as much out of a new payroll tax cut as the Making Work Pay Tax Credit, so the Obama tax deal is raising their taxes.
I see two major issues with this line of reasoning: first the Making Work Pay Tax Credit was expiring soon anyway (it was part of the Stimulus), and if nothing is done and the Bush Tax Cuts completely expire the bottom rate will be also be doubling from 10% to 15%. So if the purity Koslings succeed in killing the deal the bottom bracket will be getting a double hammering.
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
If Obama can get Mary fucking Landrieu to tack to the left by tacking to the right instead, I want him to start proclaiming his love of Ayn Rand right fucking now.
AAA Bonds
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
What I don’t understand is why you’re repeatedly belittling Sanders and his allies personally, calling them “stupid shits”, talking about “stamping their feet” when they argue in favor of the party platform, etc.
That makes you seem insincere, I won’t lie.
Davis X. Machina
Landrieu is probably inspired by the salutary spectacle of Blanche Lincoln’s politicial corpse.
Not that that will save her. LA as a Democratic state is a thing of the past, Cao’s defeat notwithstanding. Vitter et al. are the wave of the future there.
Comrade Luke
Another great thing about this speech was that Sanders addressed the thing that’s been most upsetting for me about this proposal.
Every analysis that talks about this as a winning proposal does so with a gigantic caveat: that everything expires in two years as planned.
There’s no way that Republicans are going to let any of this expire in two years. Given that fact, this is a shitty proposal. You need to go into the discussion knowing that Republicans are acting in bad faith, and assume they’ll demagogue it to hell when the time comes. Pretending that they’re going to be reasonable is just hopelessly naive.
Of course, that’s what Obama is counting on too, so I look forward to seeing Bill Clinton trotted out in two years to tell me why extending everything until 2014 makes sense, the day after Austin Goolsbee is announced as the new CEO of Citibank.
General Stuck
@AAA Bonds:
Diaper Dave just won in a landslide. My money is on radical shifts against obama, or not so radical, yet near total/ She is a democrat, and those seem quite endangered on a statewide basis in LA. And double for any alignment with Obama. Makes perfect sense to me, though I suspect she is toast no matter. And btw, I kind of like Mary, she just lives in the wrong place.
WyldPirate
@stuckinred:
yeah, hell, I know. PC ain’t me. I wear the coat grudgingly.
ETA: On Ellsberg, he is the FUCKING MAN!.. He and Watergate was my political wakening as a 13-year old until I lapsed again later as a teenager. Him and Uncle Walter after Tet.
SectarianSofa
@Comrade Luke:
OK, that actually made me chuckle.
nancydarling
Thank you. Apology accepted.
dr. bloor
@jl:
Actually, it sounds like you know a great deal about this stuff.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@AAA Bonds:
Sanders may be sincere. But his associates there in the Dem caucus are not. They are lying self serving shits who constantly calculated their political fortunes ahead of the best interests of the country, specifically for the last two years when they had the best opportunity for advancement of their supposedly beloved progressive agenda that they will ever have. That opportunity is now gone, thanks to them.
If Sanders could get up there and say, with conviction, “We (our caucus) gave it our all, we put our asses on the line for this president and his and our agenda …..” But, I digress, because as we all know, they did nothing of the kind. But they demand that the president do it for them now. Fuck them. They have gotten exactly what they deserve, and with any luck, they will have the balls to pass the compromise plan and give the country what it deserves, which is the best of several not-great choices. Which is exactly the opportunity that the president was big enough to give them.
And in case you haven’t been logging my work here for the last six years, I am not out to be “sincere” to anybody here, or persuade anybody. I am here to say what I think and anybody who doesn’t like it can argue a counter position, or kiss my ass, or whatever they want to do, I could care less. If your argument beats mine, so be it. If not, so be it. Life goes on.
AAA Bonds
@mr. whipple:
I don’t see how it would help her with people who dislike Obama in Louisiana to attack FROM THE LEFT, though, or even to attack him on this issue when there’s plenty of other (effective) ways she can prove anti-Obama bonafides in the South.
Louisiana is not a throwback to early 20th century populism or anything like it. The split is the same way there as most other places: people who don’t like Obama are much more likely to be in favor of tax cuts and against extending benefits than people who like Obama.
Few people are in favor of extending tax cuts for the rich, in Louisiana or anywhere, but it still doesn’t obviously benefit her to make a big deal about this bill, right now, in her state, with her record.
I suppose it’s possible she’s shaving off some weird populist chunk of the current anti-Obama electorate for her very own, following specific identification by her pollsters, although for what purpose, I don’t know.
My guess, and I don’t think this really explains it, is that since her seat’s not up for grabs until 2014, she’s making a calculation that this is a time to prove her Democratic bonafides and get her face on TV.
That would also probably involve a calculation that this bill will be remembered for a long time as a royal screw-up, which is what interests me more. She may be trying to be “that guy” who opposed Iraq in 2003. Still, none of this has the ring of truth to it and all of it is speculative.
AAA Bonds
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
Yeah, but the question of sincerity is whether you’re offering an argument, or just attacking the people you perceive as foes of the President.
To clarify, what do you believe that the Democratic Congress should have done preceding the opposition by certain Democrats to this bill?
John Cole
@Spiffy McBang: Basically, my take on things is there was nothing on the schedule so they are basically venting before the Republicans and the blue dogs bend the progressive wing over again for another rogering.
beltane
@General Stuck: Obama must be extremely unpopular in LA if filibustering a tax cut bill with an s-word Jewish senator from Vermont is a more appealing alternative for her.
FlipYrWhig
@Davis X. Machina:
Ya gotta be _real_ careful frying that.
AAA Bonds
@General Stuck:
So your theory is that she’s written off the election in 2014 and is now speaking her mind?
Or is it that attacking Obama from the left will help her and her party with an anti-Obama, Republican-favoring electorate in Louisiana?
Because neither sounds likely at all.
I’m not trying to create strawmen here, but I’m really lost as to how you believe this will help her.
Joe Beese
House caucus meeting: “Fuck the president”
J.W. Hamner
None, but I can’t begrudge disgruntled progressives a little fanservice.
mr. whipple
@AAA Bonds:
That’s my guess. She said it was ‘immoral’, and seemed like that word was carefully chosen.
FlipYrWhig
@AAA Bonds: I guess she might want to get some face-time doing some “attacking,” knowing that the direction–“from the left”–will be swiftly forgotten. I haven’t been listening, but are her actual critiques “from the left,” or is she railing against back-room deals and political machinations and such?
General Stuck
@John Cole:
Man, you can set your clock by it in the senate. Been that way since Reagan, probly be that way when Queen Sarah takes her throne, and brings back Friday nights at the Coliseum.
The Raven
Let’s hear it for the Senate’s only socialist! Kraw-kraw-kraw!
Davis X. Machina
@John Cole: Coalition politics, as usual.
When Jackson’s Democracy was split between Northern mechanics and Southern proto-agribusiness, we saw the same stuff. When there were Southern Whigs, and Free Soil Whigs, we saw the same stuff. And so on, down to the present day.
Coalition parties are fissiparous, but can command majorities on legislation so long as it doesn’t exacerbate the existing fault lines in the coalition. The Democratic party is a veritable salad bar of possible fracture planes. Has been since Noah shut the door on the Ark.
The present incarnation of the Republicans aren’t bothered by this, because they’re not a coalition party. They’re a revolutionary parliamentary faction plus two ladies from Maine. When they were a governing coalition — Eisenhower era, say — they were just as fissiparous. The Taftite isolationists v. Vandenburgian internationalists. Goo-goo reformists from the Northeast v. California crazies. And so forth.
The GOP can govern through the back door today because there’s a part of the Democratic coalition they can pull across with various siren songs.
In other words, and to paraphrase Che, out of the Democratic coalition, they’ve created two, three, many Nick Cleggs.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@Joe Beese:
Well, that has been the Senate Dem caucus cheer for two years now.
AAA Bonds
@mr. whipple:
If so, that would be big news; it would mean that an unidentified populist sector of one state has had a sizable impact on national economic policy. I can’t think of the last time that happened, and if it went down in Louisiana, it would at least imply the possibility of a rising white American populism that opposes Barack Hussein Obama for, ahem, reasons other than policy. Which is potentially scary.
On the other hand, Landrieu’s team may actually be putting money on the Left to make a difference in a Southern state where Republicans are making gains. That, too, would be unusual and big news.
amk
Saint Mary – Latest dkos petition drive to the pope himself on the works, probably by a FP’er. You betcha.
General Stuck
@AAA Bonds:
My theory is that Landrieu is in pure impulse reactionary mode for political survival similar to Lincoln in AR and is not thinking about 2014, but keeping the anti Obama wolves away in real time, that is most likely the entire state, minus AA’s/
It is the only thing that makes any sense, unless she is angling for some more federal cash for NO’s or something else in her state. I doubt Obama has white support out of single digits in LA.
mr. whipple
@AAA Bonds: I have no idea, just guessing.
mr. whipple
Besides striking me as a tool for the petrochemical industry, she seems pretty bright and not given to impulse. It’ll be interesting to watch as we move forward.
PanAmerican
@AAA Bonds:
Recent GOP funded LA poll.
Davis X. Machina
@General Stuck: Vitter’s comfortable win, against a deep blue Blue Dog in Charlie Melancon, and in the teeth of a scandal that’s the closest thing we’ll ever see to Edward Edwards’ ‘dead girl or live boy’ scenario, has to have scared the piss out of the last six or seven white LA Democratic politicians.
What do you do when you push all the buttons on the dashboard and nothing happens
My guess is ‘teach the odd course at LSU’…
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@AAA Bonds:
Well, they could have …
Been disciplined, fought back against constant Republican procedural scheming, calling out the “silent filibustering” in which Republicans never had to stand up and speak for 48, or even 8 hours, to actually filibuster anything …. fight like rats to change the rules in the Senate.
Fight like rats for the President’s agenda and programs, stop constantly looking out for their precious electability and show a willingness to cast a vote that might get them in trouble at reelection time …. apply the kind of cutthroat tactics in their chamber that they seem to want the White House to apply down the street. Maybe elect an ass kicking name taking majority leader for their caucus. Stand up to the phony town hall rageouts of 2009, called their adversaries on the bullshit of Death Panel and Medicare Cuts rhetoric during the healthcare debates.
Maybe act like a strong, cohesive majority instead of acting like a scared, confused bunch of rabbits … basically the same things that this blog said almost every day that the goddam congress was in session since January 2009 … quit acting like a bunch of little old ladies.
Give me one reason why Obama should lift a finger to fight for these shitheads or provide cover for them now, when they have left him in a coffin corner of poor choices and no room to maneuver. When did senate Dems exhort the White House to more progressive ideas during this congress, on domestic or fiscal policy? Where were the senate Dems lining up to make sure Obama got credit for stimulus, for auto industry rescue …. where was the lame duck calendar that put us in a favorable bargaining position at crunch time?
Who was supposed to be leading these guys? Harry Reid, or Obama? Because I couldn’t see Harry Reid doing that great a job of it.
Suffern ACE
One does have to wonder what they did with those 10 years. Did they ever, you know, meet to discuss what they wanted to do were they ever to win again? Or did they just think Karl Rove was right and his majority was permanent and then think that theirs was permanent, too.
Only school uniforms will save us.
Kiril
For those of you not from Louisiana, keep in mind that Landrieu is a big name here, so generic Dem v Rep dynamics don’t neatly align. My mayor’s name is Landrieu, too.
Joe Beese
You know who else was stabbed in the back by his generals?
I kid. I kid the President.
AAA Bonds
@FlipYrWhig:
My point here is that both the obviously politically smart thing for her to do, given CW about Louisiana and given her past record, is to not oppose this bill to begin with, and certainly not to come out and say things like:
Because the tax cuts for the rich are unpopular, but she stands to lose support by opposing this bill among the people she wants to keep on her side (anti-Obama Louisianans). Opposing this bill, as I said, isn’t likely to get her cheers from the anti-Obama crowd. There’s a reason the Republican media line on this has been “Obama wins against his own party”.
But she may be trying to carve out a populist space all her own, it dawns on me, that will put her in the media for some time before her next election. She may have concluded that after playing it safe for her entire political career, the only way to survive the Republicans in Louisiana is to reinvent the political landscape and try to bring other centrist Dems along with her. Ambitious, if so, and very unlike her and her staff.
Or, she may have ruled out a run in 2014 entirely – which opens up a number of possible reasons, some cynical, some laudable, for carving out her own space on the bill.
AAA Bonds
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
So you’re saying that Obama doesn’t owe Democratic Senators anything because they didn’t OPPOSE previous compromises more vigorously?
That seems strange, because one would assume Obama wanted them to support those bills.
Or are you saying that Obama should not countenance left-wing opposition because right-wing opposition made it hard to pass the bills he wanted?
That also doesn’t make a ton of sense.
The whole point of view seems to assume that there is Obama, and then there are his enemies, and Obama needs to oppose his enemies. But that’s not how it is.
WyldPirate
@Davis X. Machina:
Awesome post Davis X. Machina.
What you describe about the Rethugs has been their means of survival since Reagan. Reagan’s key to success was sniping off all of the old Dixiecrats from the South that left the Dem Party in droves and form most of the Rethugs base in the South today.
This is how the Rethugs snipe off various Blue Dogs and more moderate Dems. There is such a wide gulf to accommodate the range of factions amongst the Dems that in the more conservative states, it’s the only option for someone to challenge a Rethug. If a dem can win in the more conservative states, they occasionally–or often–have to play to their constituency that has the fence post up their ass on certain issues.
I think that this has been then most helpful thing in the 30+ year campaign by the Right to make the word “liberal” a pejorative. It’s worked like a charm, too. So much so, it can convince people to vote against their own interests over and over again.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@Joe Beese:
Well, that is funny, actually. But the fact is, the senate is just broken. I don’t see how the country goes forward with such a dysfunctional contraption acting as a giant political bottleneck in turbulent and dangerous times.
And where these guys get the balls to stand up on the floor of this trainwreck of a body and demand that the White House fix the mess they are constantly making is beyond me.
Bush had the right idea, he just rubber stamped whatever they did over there, and took credit for it. Or that’s what it looked like from here. Other than getting his precious war, what else did he wrestle out of congress in 8 years besides massive spending and tax cuts that they were eager to pass?
He got his war, his huge deficits, and said out loud that he would leave the messes for the next president to clean up. Now that is leadership.
AAA Bonds
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
For what it’s worth, I do think the Democrats should have moved swiftly toward “Senate reform” if they wanted to enjoy the fruits of their victory, and some mundane combination of myopia, cowardice, and greed prevented this. It’s the story-that-wasn’t of the year, in my opinion.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@AAA Bonds:
No, I’m saying what I am saying, not what you are saying I’m saying.
I’m saying that the senate doesn’t work, and he can’t fix it, and they are lying shits for suggesting that he can.
How you want to analyze that out is up to you, but that is the way it is.
arguingwithsignposts
haven’t read the whole thread, but I just have to co-sign the Landrieu part.
ETA: I’ll throw verbal bombs at Louisiana @kiril – your politics is fucked. FUCKED! Your people reelected David Fucking Vitter to the Senate. Suck It. You deserve what you get.
AAA Bonds
@WyldPirate:
Why isn’t it in the interests of white, poor conservatives to vote to support a social order that vests them with a sense of day-to-day superiority and works to roll back previous attempts to dismantle the effects of this order?
There’s nothing the matter with Kansas in that sense, in my opinion. Social conservatives do, generally, vote in their own naked self-interest. If you are poor, it makes more sense to make it really count that you’re poor, white, straight, and male, rather than poor and otherwise.
Of course, it makes more sense not to be poor, but economic fatalism on the part of the American poor is not a symptom of current Republican dominance or messaging, or a screw-up on the part of the current Democrats.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@AAA Bonds:
Agreed!
And if I could be king of the senate today, I would tell those reprobates to go in front of the cameras, suggest that they want to work with the White House to get this deal done and improved if they can, thank him for his help, and then get down the street and do some serious work with Obama and his team to get this done and plan for the next congress.
In other words, do something that makes it appear that the government is actually working. The fact is that the two-year giveaway to the rich is not the end of the world, it’s fixable and we can live with it if other things are getting done.
Just my opinion.
Christin
I’m sure the purity morons over at DKos are trying to contain their lonely orgasms at the thought of drafting her to primary Barack Obama. After they get done working with the Teaparty to teach him you don’t mess with the base. If the base consists of about 100 people who post there from six a.m. until 3 am the next day.
Sanders is pretty much for reals pure, so he gets to do what he wants. He walks the talk. But she’s the same caliber of asshole as are the assholes in Congress who peed their depends and decided not to vote on any of this until after the mid terms and are now out of time.
Suffern ACE
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective: Can’t be stressed enough. Remember George Bush’s Health Care Reform, that patient’s bill of rights? Well it just kinda died and no one had an existential hissy fit about it. Oh, yeah. He rushed back to Washington one Good Friday weekend for Teri Shiavo. I believe that was his finest moment of his 2nd term.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@Christin:
Honestly, if the senate Dem caucus was all like Sanders, we probably wouldn’t be in this state of affairs. But he is one of a kind.
Most of those guys are posturers.
Jules
If the Senate had been able to get the House bill passed this last weekend I have a feeling the President would not have felt the need to step in.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@Suffern ACE:
That was surely the high point of his presidency. Fighting to let congress try to revive a corpse in one of the ugliest acts of political opportunism in history.
WyldPirate
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
stem cell research ban, huge unfunded Medicare drug bill. Dems have to take a hit on the bush tax cuts. it wouldn’t have passed w/o Dems.
TOP123
@Joe Beese: Um, the Kaiser?
Is that the answer you were looking for?
AAA Bonds
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
You actually just addressed the original content here in a post that loaded while I was typing, so I’ll edit it out.
mr. whipple
To me, that was the real tragedy of the House losses. Unlike the shitheels in the Senate, a lot of people in marginal and swing districts took hard votes, did the right thing and got all hell beat out of them.
I could never understand the dissatisfaction/lack of enthusiasm for House dems, who were very productive and did the right things.
johnny walker
@Nellcote: The other option would’ve been picking a different date, on which he’d fail to do it at all. There was nothing else scheduled, thus no cloture vote to be called and no way (that I’m aware of in my limiting understanding) to kick him off the dais. Opportunities to give an 8.5-hour speech a) before the lame duck expires and b) with nobody able to cut him off are pretty limited.
I don’t know where you stand on the subject, but the CW among the popular kids in the comments on this blog trends toward “Well it’s better than nothing!” It’s interesting to compare reactions to Sanders’ imperfect political stunt to those given to Obama’s/Congress’/Whoever it’s convenient to assign ownership to at the time’s imperfect legislative compromises.
Davis X. Machina
@AAA Bonds: Economic fatalism is a large part of the bastard Calvinism that is, pace the Constitution, our state religion.
Ant efforts to substitute the fallible judgment of human legislatures for the ineffable Divine Will as to the distribution of the outward signs of His election are blasphemous, and progressive taxation is thus an offensive stink in the nostrils of the Lord.
WyldPirate
@AAA Bonds:
The same reason it was easy to do the same before the Civil War and during Reconstruction and, to a large extent ever since—when you are poor and off a specific group, you can easily be played by the more powerful to blame the weaker for your own lot in life. It is one of your small comforts in your miserable existance in that you can say–“at least I’m not them.
It the same reason we demonize our enemies in war–to dehumanize them. It makes it easier for you to live with your own conscious and blinds you from directing your rage towards its appropriate target.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@AAA Bonds:
I write it but you don’t seem to get it, or don’t want to.
Again: Congress is broken. It doesn’t work. It is an insult to the concept of democracy, where having a majority and winning elections can be thwarted by stubborn, unreasonable idiots. A position widely agreed to by this blog and its inhabitants for at least two years now.
Obama did not break it. He cannot fix it. Nor is it his job to do so.
A position for which I know of no counter-argument.
Therefore, for senators to demand that he “fight” for what they want, when they have no ability to get it themselves as they should, is nothing but dishonest posturing and blame shifting. He sees a mess they made and tries to clean it up. That’s apparently the best he is going to be able to do. No plausible counter-scenario has been proposed by any of these guys to my knowledge.
Sanders is an outlier, I have no beef with him, but he is making a futile gesture at this point.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@AAA Bonds:
No problemo, the posts are passing each other thick and fast on the Intertubes tonight.
General Stuck
@mr. whipple:
Comparatively small voting bases, compared to statewide senate races, I think around 600,000 total citizens per House seat, most of them gerrymandered for pol effect, and the dems winning some winger rigged ones in 2006 and 08. And very susceptible to relatively small amounts of campaign cash, that this time the goopers spent at a 7 to 1 ratio over dems, overall, thanks to CU.
IOW;s perfect storm of bad economy and extra cash for the GOP, and a highly demagogued HCR bill that hasn’t taken effect yet.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@WyldPirate:
Good points
johnny walker
@mr. whipple: Bernie’s not a Dem. Yeah he caucauses with them, and it’s not my point to split hairs about that but rather: it really comes down to a single independent Senator to armtwist the entire Senate Dem caucus into passing good legislation huh?
Sorry, but this whole “man, where was Sanders when he was getting tons of extra funding for community health centers added to the HCR bill? Where was Sanders when he’s been making these arguments all along? Why didn’t Sanders singlehandedly make it all better?” act is pretty bogus. On the one hand Obama’s playing the hand he’s dealt, making the best of a bad situation, etc; on the other how dare Sanders speak up without having solved this all himself ahead of time?
Give me a break.
Err, and I see that I f’d up and responded more to the post you were quoting than to you. My bad.
AAA Bonds
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
Well, I agree that the whole federal legislative system is broken, but not with your attempt to remove culpability from the White House, which certainly didn’t push to reform the Senate externally by any measure, and which is not seeking to discipline the Senate’s most unruly Democratic members by any means, but rather continues to give them what they want.
Frankly, Obama and his advisers appear to be no exception to the rest of the rich and powerful: they are content to live with the system that personally benefits them, and probably unable to practically consider an alternative. As I will likely never be wealthy, they will always remain my foes on some level, as they will remain yours.
johnny walker
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective: “Who did? I think eventually most people will be able to figure it out.”
You mean a combination of Republican obstructionism and Democrats enabling the same? Or were we operating in the fantasy world where the rest of the country’s eventually going to wake up and realize the Dems haven’t made a single mistake. Possibly the alternate fantasy world where all of Congress is equally to blame and the actual blameless party is Obama who had no idea that Congress (and particularly the Senate) was fickle, cynical and difficult to motivate until he actually took office?
Obama defenders went to keep arguing the whole “but congress is just so damn mean!” point, as though the obvious followup question, “Then why’d he want to be President?” doesn’t occur to most of the population at large. Nobody gives a shit about the President’s excuses re: how goshdarn hard it is to get the Senate to cooperate. That is not a convincing argument for anyone who doesn’t already reflexively support the President. If the average person knows Congress is broken you expect them to give the President a pass for knowing this is the case well and still going in without a plan to whip it into shape?
It’s weird how the “we deal with the world as it is” types continue to simultaneously insist that if we just blame this on Congress often enough peoples’ opinions will change.
General Stuck
@AAA Bonds:
I don’t think it’s personal, any alignments with the rich. We are all captured by our electoral system, specifically, how it is funded and the glad handing and favoritism it spawns, that is going to get a lot worse with CU. I am not as critical of dems as other liberals, for simply playing the game as it is, or, money, private money being the mothers milk of getting yourself elected, then reelected. That is required to govern. Until the country wakes up and is willing to change this river of corporate cash, then nothing will, nor really can change. Lest our side unilaterally disarm based on principle, losing principle.
It will take a constitutional amendment to end pay to play in this country, and to once and for all turn the government back to the people. Otherwise, stick a fork in this republic,
FlipYrWhig
@johnny walker: I have no issue with a ballsy Senate that hashes out its own legislative solutions to pressing political and social problems. I have a bit of an issue with a toothless, ridiculous Senate that most often complains that Obama doesn’t give them enough direction suddenly finding its voice to complain that Obama took charge too much.
I would love to see Senators negotiating their own priorities and kicking them up to Obama to sign or veto, all Constitutional-like. But my sense is that Obama probably feels like, “Hey, dumbfucks, if everything’s going to keep topping out at like 53 votes, someone’s gotta change the damn game, or we’ll be sitting here with our thumbs up our butts for the next two solid years.” If they want to find a better way, bring it. I’m all for it.
mr. whipple
I’m not down on Sanders for his speech today, am glad he did what he did, and won’t let the conveniently timed email he sent for fundraising stop me from thinking this was a cynical ploy. I’m gonna send him money anyway.
My point was ‘Sanders for president’? Whatever. And, I was jabbing at the LW schmucks that just months ago called for Bernie to be primaried for voting for HCR.
But I am down on all of them, including Obama and Pelosi and Reid and Brown and Sanders and Schumar and every last one of them now grandstanding and casting blame for procrastinating on this until the last minute. It’s inexcusable.
FlipYrWhig
@AAA Bonds:
I have a pretty strong sense that Obama wants the Senate to reform its own damn self. (And he did mention filibuster reform on his Daily Show appearance, which I was gratified to see.)
For fuck’s sake–not at you, AAA Bonds, but at the Senate itself–they’re supposed to be legislators. If they don’t like the results they’re getting out of the machine, either they can fix it, or Obama’s going to start hitting it until something comes out.
Davis X. Machina
Self-del — used the S-word. Damn you, Lasalle and Marx and Kautsky and Jaurés..
Davis X. Machina
@mr. whipple:
It’s as if a Socia1ist were ….a politician.
I have to go warn my French and German friends, who have no idea what awaits them if this catches on
johnny walker
@Mnemosyne: So in your mind this wasn’t actually a pragmatic compromise so much as the resurrection of the 11-dimensional chess meme.
mr. whipple
@Davis X. Machina:
Hey, how’d that get thru moderation?
Dee Loralei
@Davis X. Machina: Just wanted to say, fissiparous is a most excellent word one seldom reads or hears any more, kudos to you, good sir.
gizmo
What’s amazing about this tax cut issue is the fact that not one of the Republicans who think that gazillionaires need a big tax break have been called out by the media to explain themselves. Just once I’d like to see Mitch McConnell get a microphone shoved in his face and be forced to articulate the case.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@AAA Bonds:
No, I simply don’t agree with your premise. In fact, the idea that a president would become actively involved in reforming the rules of the senate just seems grotesque. That would be like the senate deciding to structure the white house staff to its liking.
I don’t know exactly where these lines are drawn, but I am pretty sure that a president trying to style the senate to his liking would be have little or no political viability.
The senate makes its own rules, it’s their job to make it work. I totally disagree with your argument.
Davis X. Machina
@mr. whipple: Number 1 for lower-case l.
Leet-speak is your friend….
SectarianSofa
@johnny walker:
Yes, a resurrection of the 11-dimensional chess meme, *but is it really* a resurrection of the 11-dimensional chess meme?
Davis X. Machina
@gizmo
I’d settle, in this holiday season, for giving the sanctimonious bastard an on-camera pop quiz on the Sermon on the Mount.
Anyone want a recession-proof job, try sepulcher-whitening.
mr. whipple
@Davis X. Machina:
Thanks!
General Stuck
@SectarianSofa:
not by me, never use it to describe what Obama does. And I am a full throated obot.
mr. whipple
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
IIRC, LBJ tried to keep a physical presence in the Senate and they told him to bugger off.
mr. whipple
@SectarianSofa: I thought we were up to 19 dimensional chess.
johnny walker
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective: “Sanders may be sincere.”
Either that or he’s made a calculated political decision to publicly attach himself to a movement (social democracy) that is an absolute political liability in this country and will remain so long after Sanders is dead.
“They are lying self serving shits who constantly calculated their political fortunes ahead of the best interests of the country, specifically for the last two years when they had the best opportunity for advancement of their supposedly beloved progressive agenda that they will ever have.”
Which would be relevant if more than one “lying, self-serving shit” (Landrieu, which I’ll totally grant) had actually taken the floor to speak out against this. Brown and Sanders have been making this case since they got seated. Your argument cannot seriously be that Sanders has no right to behave in an ideologically consistent manner unless he can stop the other Senators from being shitheads.
“If Sanders could get up there and say, with conviction, “We (our caucus) gave it our all, we put our asses on the line for this president and his and our agenda …..” But, I digress, because as we all know, they did nothing of the kind. But they demand that the president do it for them now. Fuck them. ”
My bad, that’s exactly what you’re arguing.
“And in case you haven’t been logging my work here for the last six years, I am not out to be “sincere” to anybody here, or persuade anybody. I am here to say what I think and anybody who doesn’t like it can argue a counter position, or kiss my ass, or whatever they want to do, I could care less. If your argument beats mine, so be it. If not, so be it. Life goes on.”
You know, if you could make up your mind whether or not Sanders is personally to blame for every Dem Senatorial failing of the last couple years I might think you have a point. It’s pretty clear that you really do think it’s irrelevant what Sanders himself has done/said in the past on the these issues as long as he’s still caucusing with a group of shitheads. It is less clear — but imo a perfectly reasonable conclusion based on what you’ve written here — that you also believe more of the burden of persuading the Senate caucus falls on the shoulders of a single independent Senator than the guy who is the head of the entire Democratic Party.
“If Sanders wants to bitch about the deal not being good enough he should’ve made the Senate pass something better”
vs.
“Senate’s broken dude, can’t blame Obama. It’s not like there’s any persuading them anyway. People should just be grateful he’s big enough to cut a deal.”
Whether you take advantage of the opportunity to point out how little you care about persuarding people (which must be why you’re still here, still responding to other commentors six years later) and whether being a hypocrite yourself is important to you or not, that’s massively inconsistent intellectually.
@SectarianSofa: Oh snap, I hadn’t even considered the possibility that the POTUS is cunning enough to trick us into thinking he’s playing on a chess-board with more dimensons than he really is. Or one that’s actually a checkerboard. Or perhaps a game of tic-tac-toe.
In fact I posit that Obama’s entire first time is just a game of possum before he really knocks our socks off starting early 2013. He plays the REALLY long game, don’t ya know.
freelancer
@mr. whipple:
Same way this does: SociaIist. Mwuhahahahaha!
mr. whipple
Here it is:
“In his capacity as Senate president, Johnson wished to be named permanent presiding officer of the Democratic caucus. He claimed—wrongly—that Vice President Alben Barkley, a former Democratic majority leader, had presided over the caucus a decade earlier.
The caucus greeted this proposal with stunned silence. Then, Albert Gore, Sr., a Senate moderate, rose to recite a catalog of shared grievances against the former leader’s arm-twisting style. A party staffer described the scene. “[Gore’s] face was flushed with indignation beneath the neat and orderly waves of gray hair, and his speech was slow and deliberate as he released his words in a prolonged drawl, intensifying the agony that they seemed intended to inflict on Lyndon Johnson.” A senator who was present later told a reporter, “Johnson sat there, his face ashen.” At that point, Mansfield threatened to resign as leader if the caucus rejected the motion.
Senators voted to approve Mansfield’s proposal, but the tally among the 63 Democrats was a humiliating 46 to 17. Johnson stormed out of the room muttering, “Those [expletive deleted] sandbagged me.” With that, he gave up any pretense of serving as the Senate’s “super-leader.”
The next time he returned to a caucus meeting, it was as a guest of Mike Mansfield.”
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Lyndon_Johnson_Dethroned.htm
SectarianSofa
@freelancer:
Hmm — surprisingly effectively. I think I will have some of this sociaIism, thanks.
You Don't Say
Landrieu voted for the Bush tax cuts. She’s is a supreme hypocrite and should be ignored.
Mnemosyne
@johnny walker:
Responding to new information and doing something different because of that new information is now “11-dimensional chess” and not, you know, good strategy? It’s really so bizarre that Obama would think, “Okay, the Senate’s been fucking me over for two years, let’s see how they like this tax deal” that the only way it could happen would be as some magical “11-dimensional chess” move?
If this is how people understand politics then, Jesus, no wonder we keep losing.
Cain
@Roger Moore:
Except these wingnut opponents won’t be giving tax cuts to the rich either..
cain
Dollared
General Stuck
Very nicely put. In fact, loved the whole comment.
We are in the 150th year of the Original Marshall Plan. My ancestors came over from Germany to escape the Prussian takeover and we’ve been funding the Confederate Takeover ever since.
Dollared
Whoa – so does “Zapatista” and “Sandinista” get through moderation as well?
I’m swinging for the fences – what about “Trostkyite?”
Earl Butz
@AAA Bonds: Where have you been the last two years? The only way that the “white American populism that opposes Barack Hussein Obama for, ahem, reasons other than policy” could be any clearer would be if they just started screaming “nigger, nigger, nigger” on TV 24/7. Which I think we’re actually going to see, sooner rather than later.
Socraticsilence
You want an honest answer? The Sanderthon will do nothing, perhaps be mocked by most admired by those it speaks to and ignored by everyone else- the real world is not, as much as we would like it to be, The West Wing.
Dollared
@Earl
I really, really don’t buy the racism argument. White working folks are really, really drowning. And Glenn Beck is telling them they are right to be afraid. And Spock O’bama is telling them that he’s arranged it so they can pay a private insurance company 10% more every year for the rest of their lives, and he’s going to cut their social security, and oh, well, he just can’t do anything to keep the Chinese from stealing their jobs.
Do you get it? Obama is doing NOTHING for white working folks. They really don’t care about DADT. They don’t care about greenhouses gases. Obama doesn’t “feel their pain.”
The cons are all liars and grifters, but at least they have an explanation for what happened to these formerly proud people.
Obama? He doesn’t do “populism.”
You don’t need racism to explain why white voters have given up on him.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@FlipYrWhig: And wouldn’t the White House reforming the Senate be a violation of the separation of powers? How would that one fly, and how many Senators would go along with the president if he tried that?
Dollared
Don’t reform the senate now. It will be Republican in two years. Look at the seats at risk chart.
Suffern ACE
@Dollared: Honestly. For the Love of God. Reform the Senate before we have to burn it down!
Dollared
Then you really don’t care about the people who will be hurt. I would put Obama at 60/40 for re-election, but look at 538 – the Senate will be Republican, and likely so will the House.
Obama has failed. There has been no realignment. Reforming the Senate now is simply the worst thing that could happen.
SectarianSofa
@Dollared:
Oh, let’s not get all melodramatic. It’s the blogs that have failed us.
Mnemosyne
@Dollared:
Glenn Beck is telling them that they should be afraid because Obama is going to take all of their stuff and give it to black people. That’s why he’s constantly whining about how Obama is turning the US into Zimbabwe. You know, the country where Mugabe kicked white people off their farms and gave them to black people.
If you don’t think the Republicans are deliberately playing on the racial fears of white people, you’re blind to reality. They spent months turning “Muslim” into a synonym for “nigger,” and then set their people loose on mosques all over the country.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@johnny walker:
You wrote a great post, but the person you addressed it to wasn’t talking about what you are talking about.
Sanders is okay as a spokesman for progressive ideas, but he’s powerless and misguided as a member of that fucked up body. If he were typical, he could organize his peers and maybe shape the place up. But he is not, and he can’t.
The rest of the Dem caucus is mostly a bunch of buttheads, IMO. They tease at progressive ideas, but vote like little old ladies from the Daughters of the American Revolution. They are afraid of their own shadows on the national stage, and spend most of their time posturing for their voters and then sucking each others’ cocks in the cloakrooms. I have no respect for them.
It saddens me to see the nice harmless Sanders being used by these shits to give them cover, to make their moral argument about two years too late for them to actually make a moral contribution of any kind. What they appeared to do was roll over for every Republican threat, trick, deception, subterfuge, lie and verbal beating for the duration of the congress until there was no time and no juice left on our side for engaging on the tax cuts, much less winning anything in that context.
But anyway, I explained what I think above, and despite your best efforts to rewrite it in your own excessive verbiage, it was clearly stated and I will stand on it, since it is both accurate and succinct. Neither of which I can say for your screed. Your silly bullshit about me persuading people is all I need to know that you are either drunk or crazy. I don’t do persuasion, because I am not interested in whether anyone is persuaded. I argue just to argue, to test A against B and see how it turns out when the negative is printed onto the printing paper. It’s an exercise. I don’t give a shit what you think. I have no respect for it, for one thing, so why would I be interested in persuading you? I am not running for office, or looking to make friends. I don’t know who you are or care. You’re one of those turds that hangs around on blogs and gets into exchanges like this to prove how smart you are and impress people.
I am just here to piss off people like you. I don’t like you, and if I can drive just one motherfucker like you away from the blog just out of disgust, then I have probably served humanity in some small way.
Every word I have said about Sanders and the senate is better than every word you have said about it. But more importantly, I’ve shortened your life by raising your blood pressure and bringing massive amounts of negative energy down on you in the form of the disapproval of others, which may or may not be apparent to you now. I, on the other hand, am stented and on blockers. My blood pressure cannot go above 115/70 and my pulse always floats at around 50 no matter how many assholish posts of yours I respond to. I might live forever. You are fucked.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
@mr. whipple:
Ah, Mansfield. Absolutely the best senator I ever saw. Master of the one or two word answer to shitbird reporters’ questions. Clear thinker, honest as Abe Lincoln, smart, all business, never wasted a brain cell on value politics or personality politics.
If he were here today, we’d … have a working government on the Hill.
CircleSquared
Just like the Supremes didn’t want to hold up the swearing-in of a President who hadn’t won the election. I mean, jeez, guys, we’ve got a schedule to keep here, that’s more important than making a decision that affects millions of people…WHO ALREADY VOTED ON IT.
Grrrrrr.
Dollared
@Mnemosyne
No, really. The racist stuff is just the fringe of the Tea Party, the fringe of Glenn Beck.
It’s the phenomenal losses that our white middle class has endured. Especially in the Midwest. 40 years ago we all thought we had jobs for life, a pension, two cars, and a nice house. Now people the pensions are gone, the companies are gone, the house equity is gone, nobody can hold a job past 50, and our Democratic President is giving tax breaks away to millionaires and telling us he is going to cut Social Security.
For thirty years NOBODY in power has been on the side of the honest working class.
Yes, they turn to demagogues in their anger, and they blame the wrong people. But the people on this blog who think that all the anger at Obama is because of his blackness really insult working people, and really miss the material decline that has occurred, and has accelerated dramatically in the last ten years.
They voted for Obama in 2008 because they really needed help, and he has provided – Orszag, Summers and Geithner. They should be angry at him.
Think it’s all racism? Then you don’t want to win this battle, you just want to cry in your beer. Fuck all those working class people! The Republicans can have them! Shame on them for being stupid!
Well, if you don’t get their votes, you lose. FDR, Kennedy, LBJ, and Clinton understood that. I guess you’d rather call them racist and not try to help them, listen to them or solve their problems. I want Obama to learn to fucking pander – it’s how you win the right to impose the right policies through power, not gain a bit of backdoor stimulus by surrendering.
Ranger 3
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective: I want to have gay sex with this comment.
mai naem
Mary Landrieu is a beeyotch who voted more with Bush than against and is always for tax cuts for the rich even though her fucking state eats up tons of money and is definitely a taker state and not a donor state as far as the monies from the Feds.
Gian
My concern is less about personality than policy. Post cat-food comission reccomendations to screw with social security, we get an agreement to stop witholding the source of social security money in a “holiday”
if you take the other stuff progressives don’t like out of the deal – the estate tax modification, the continued lower rates for the top earners and such.
and look at the end of the 10 year tax holiday that we just had, it’s hard not to see this agreement, plus cat-food commission as the first salvos in a war to drastically change Social Security. In the analysis, you have to say, “is this best deal we can get, better than no deal”
and I just don’t buy that 13 additional months of unemployment are worth starting a march to the gallows for social security. I get it’s a hard choice, and UI is a worthy goal – but the payroll tax holiday after the catfood commission tells me that there’s more than a tax holiday in store for social security, and that in all honesty should be a deal breaker
LOCKBOX
Admiral_Komack
YAWN.
Where was all this energy and passion when the President wanted this done in September?
The Congressional Democrats were all, “Oh noessss, we can’t do that, we’ve got re-elections to win, and we’re scared of the Republicans, especially that awesome Scott Brown…ohhhhhhh!” (faints).
FUCK Mary Landrieu.
Admiral_Komack
@DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective:
Thank you.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective Johnson is right.
Nick
@Dave:
this is how you know GOS isn’t serious about anything.
DougW
@JimK:
Unless it’s a Republican oriented story, which is guaranteed to go viral in a nanosecond…
SectarianSofa
@Ranger 3:
Get in line, buddy. (Errr….)