We’ve talked about the importance of our Galtian overlords’ fee fees a lot here over the past few months. But I’d like to know: When did rich people become so touchy? Where are the stiff upper lips and WASPy reserve of yesteryear? Rortybomb (via) says it’s all in the conservative game:
To bring it back to conservatives, if you are the type who worries about (yet secretly hopes for) the time in which the business community leaves our country to create a gulch utopia, Obama saying very polite things about business leaders while letting them write regulatory rules is much more important than whether or not he gets people appointed to the Federal Reserve and draws lines in the sand over government stimulus.
Matt Ygelsias (via) skewers it well:
The notion that economic growth depends crucially on the subjective feelings of the business executive class is one of the most pernicious ideas to take hold over the past 12 months. One should distinguish this hypothesis from the accurate point that rational expectations matter in the economy. Expectations do matter. But this is often confused with the idea that if the waiters at Davos are rude this year the economy will go into a recession, but if Obama gives a CEO a really sensual back rub growth will return.
I don’t remember things being like this in our past few recessions. I don’t remember Ronald Reagan being asked to suck off the Hunt brothers — though I’m sure he would have for the good of the nation if necessary, he was a great patriot. And no one seemed to think Al Gore’s humiliation of Ross Perot in that televised NAFTA debate hurt the economy too much.
Could one of you photoshop emopants onto one of those rich people New Yorker cartoons?
Nick
Slightly OT: Rudy Giuliani said on Piers Morgan than Wall Street bonuses are good for poor people. My right wing “independent” friends swooned. When I asked how the hell does this make sense, was told “well bonuses are taxed” to which I responded “wait a minute, aren’t taxes too high?” to which they told me “Yes, we should cut taxes and spending so jobs will be created” to which I responded “So we should give Wall Street execs bonuses so they will pay taxes to help poor people, but we also should cut those taxes and spending on the poor people”
Then I was called nasty names and told to “fuck off”
I’m sure Obama would have better luck though, right?
DougJ DougJson
@Nick:
He’s seen as more centrist than you.
TR
OT again:
The Daily Show is crushing Megyn Kelly for her Bizarro World claim that no one on Fox News ever likened their opponents or their politics or their tactics to Nazis.
It was a low, hanging ball, but nice to see them knock it out of the park all the same.
different church-lady
Isn’t this just another version of what Fox did to the news landscape? Obama’s gotta make lots of noises about how much he loves business because otherwise he’s a socialist. Just like all the normal news outlets have got to report whatever Drudge churns up because otherwise it proves they’re liberally biased.
Donut
One of your better lines…
As has been stated often elsewhere, and I believe recently by Ron Jr., based purely on stated issue positions, not to mention actual policies he pursued, the elder Reagan couldn’t even be able to win a Republican presidential primary these days.
Comrade Luke
There really needs to be a Balloon Juice Hall of Fame for snippets like this.
Elvis Elvisberg
Conservatism has degenerated into pure identity politics. Obama is resented because he’s “one of them,” not “one of us.”
It’s a funny thing, conservatism, as a principled ideology anyone would have recognized 35 years ago, is dead in this country. Liberalism, meanwhile, has been the target of a 30-plus year negative PR campaign. So about twice as many people describe themselves as conservative than liberal, because conservatism has been merely discredited by deed.
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
I can’t help but notice that you always have a ready made anecdote about something your “friends” have to say about the various political topics du jour. How convenient.
And then those anecdotes always seem to cast your “friends” in the worst possible light, leaving me to wonder why exactly you would associate with them to begin with…
DougJ DougJson
@Bob Loblaw:
Isn’t what friends are for?
Elvis Elvisberg
As to the Hunt family & conservatism, here’s what Ike had to say:
But hey, Ike had tax rates at like 90%. It must have been all that time spent in France that turned him into such an America-hating socialist.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
So?
Merkin
@DougJ DougJson:
I think what Bob is trying to imply is that Nick made that whole thing up and those people don’t really exist and “shut up, shut up, I can’t hear you, we’re a progressive nation”
Merkin
@Nick: Is your friend a Wall Street dude? Cause that would explain it then.
I’m also going to guess he didn’t live in New York City in the 1990s otherwise it would’ve been clear how much bullshit Giuliani was spewing.
Nick
@DougJ DougJson:
Maybe, but he would first have to sell himself as a centrist, which, you know, would make him a sellout and everything.
Nick
@Merkin:
Well the one who instigated it works for CBS-TV and grew up on Long Island. The others also work in various forms of media (radio, magazines) and all grew up on Long Island.
I don’t know what their parents do, maybe they’re bankers.
Arundel
This was good. It reminds me of the straight reporting- as in, with a straight face- that the reason corporations having record years, sitting on billions in cash, weren’t hiring. “Uncertainty.”
Uncertainty. About taxes. About health care. About the weather, or any other thing. These are the swashbuckling risk-takers, the daring capitalist class whom we’re told deserve every cent of their loot, because of their taking on risk, taking a chance, derring-do and bootstraps. Even though risk for these great men has been minimalized to exctinction by the system, and their rescue by “too big to fail” and all that.. we’re told these brave adventurers cannot hire because of “uncertainty”. In other words, they need absolute guarantees they won’t lose a penny ever. And this is reported as a legitimate excuse.
Who in the world except these Masters ever have certainty, about anything, ever? Anyone here refuse to do what’s needed because the outcome is not guaranteed to your benefit in advance? So much for the brave risk-taking financial high-fliers, the daring moguls. Oh, they’re scared of the uncertainty. So’s everyone else, mostly thanks to them, but they’re the ones getting told bedtime stories, coddled.
All bullshit of course. The jobs were destroyed for a reason and a profit, they are not coming back. This is just delaying delaying their ever having to say so. Just noting the cover the press gives them, the overlord class. That mere “uncertainty” was a reasonable thing, instead of a woeful excuse that makes them look like the cretinous greedheads they really are. And cowards to boot.
Omnes Omnibus
Entirely the wrong type of person was allowed to become rich. You know, quants and ethnic types. They get so emotional. It’s embarrassing, really.
/Old WASP type
Bob Loblaw
@Merkin:
I think what Bob was trying to say is that Nick apparently routinely consorts with rather petty and venal “friends,” and perhaps this reflects more poorly on him than on the country at large.
Maybe he should stop getting their elitist nonsense on the record all the time and start hanging out with less awful people. Unless he likes this arrangement just to further his totally robust theory that all American politics can be summed up by the petty musings of Modern Family loving trustafarians and hedge fund lackeys…
MattR
@Nick:
Say no more.
Martin
IMO, only the bankers and media execs expect to be treated like celebrities. Most other CEOs – the ones that actually make stuff – usually want you to leave them the fuck alone so they can get shit done. In my experience, they obtain self-satisfaction by moving product and driving their competitors crazy.
DougJ DougJson
@Bob Loblaw:
This isn’t your best trolling effort. It’s better to stick to with simple insults and not get involved with speculating about other commenters’ actual brick-and-mortar lives.
geg6
@Bob Loblaw:
What a purist you are. You must live in a bubble or a deserted island somewhere in the South Pacific. The rest of us poor bastards, sadly, have to live in the wider world where we are often forced to interact with people who are politically batshit crazy. It is unfortunate, but we get by by trying to point out the error of their ideas in the hope of turning one or two toward the right path. We all can’t live in an ideological paradise, but I’m glad you, at least, are spared from ever hearing a word of disagreement. Bet your holidays are nice and quiet, if a bit lonely.
srv
Didn’t I read here about the rich getting all uppity during the 30’s?
harokin
I think a lot of the rich are lawyers, bankers, McKinsey consultants, CEOs and so on who are making ungodly amounts of money without contributing anything of value and who are feeling a little defensive about it. I think the same also goes for third or fourth generations of wealth who realize they have none of the skill or vision of their grandparents and are trying to find some meaning and justification for their lives.
The vig that has been taken by the wall street traders and their friends since the 1980s is just stunning. And they are defensive about it.
ant
did anyone ever find video for when taibbi said “fuck the business community” at that round table?
Jenny
But doesn’t everyone want love?
Even bloggers who hate Obama still want him to them love.
Think about the meltdown after his December presser when he didn’t show them love, even though they were in the midst of bashing his brains in over the tax deal.
Deep down, it’s a Boomer/Me-Decade thing.
Where Streisand’s version of “feelings” when you need it.
Bob Loblaw
@geg6:
Wait a second, I’m the sanctimonious one this time?
What a burden to have to educate the poor dears day in and day out, huh? They know not what they do. What a tremendous martyr you are for the cause. Keep fighting sister! We shall overcome!
jl
Jefferson wrote about the noise and difficulty created by the ‘croakings of reaction’ way back when. (Sorry, do not have a link to whatever letter that was).
John Adams (the heinous tyrant of sailors’ mandated big gummint health insurance policies) thought that Tom Paine was a dangerous buffoon or historic proportions. That damn godless Paine with his wild ideas about old aid pensions, social support for young families all paid for by taxes on the rich, not out of working wages).
I don’t think the rhetoric now is any worse that it was during the New Deal.
As I commented here sometime ago, when I used to go on voter registration drives, I would often meet reactionaries who thought the U.S. had fallen to communism with the New Deal.
So the whining and threats and complaining have been around for a long time.
What is new is the lack of a counter argument in public debate. IMHO, also, too.
Ailuridae
I can’t speak with Nick but nearly all of my male friends are conservatives or libertarians but for me that’s just a job hazard thing.
I’ve certainly heard them making typical “trickle down is good” but “there should be less trickle down” arguments with only a sip of beer between them.
handy
@geg6:
I personally make people I become acquainted with sign a progressive purity pledge card before I upgrade them to friend status. That way when we get together we blow magic ponies up each others’ skirts. (You can take that image any way you wish).
Which reminds me, this is very quickly becoming my favorite software license. Screw the Free Software Foundation. Splitters!
DougJ DougJson
@Ailuridae:
At least they’re the kind of people you want to have a beer with.
Ailuridae
@geg6:
I think about this a lot when I encounter the limo liberal crowd. Seriously how does somebody not regularly interact with even fringe elements of the right wing.
My father and two brothers are full on paleo-conservatives and that is a step to the center from the tax protester militia movement stuff from my youth. And, yes, all three of them are incoherent right wing talking points machines but I still do talk to them. They’re kin and all that.
handy
@DougJ DougJson:
Then again, maybe not.
Ailuridae
@DougJ DougJson:
I get you but
They’re the kind of people who can understand what it feels like to lose an awful lot of money (or make an awful lot of money) on any given day. I’ve tried to show other people PnLs from when I traded or session reports from work now and they’re eyes just gloss over. It really is a foreign universe from people who have steady incomes or incomes that are based on performance.
Violet
He didn’t need to. Jimmy Carter already did it. He appointed Paul Volcker Chairman of the Fed in 1979 and Volcker saved the Hunt brothers’ bacon in the silver market debacle. Plus, Reagan was a conservative and a Republican. He didn’t have to prove anything.
Neither of them was President. Only Presidents, and especially Democratic Presidents, have to polish the knob.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw: Shorter Bob: If we ignore them, they don’t actually exist.
Nick
@geg6: Or, at least for me, we get by by pointing out their batshittiness to fellow progressives so that we can all figure out how to beat them at the game they keep inexplicably winning.
Mnemosyne
@harokin:
You don’t hear Bill Ford whining about how the president is just so meeeaaannn to him. Quite the opposite, actually.
It’s almost like people who actually know how to do their goddamned jobs don’t spend all of their time fuming about the president pointing out that they’re incompetent idiots who almost blew up the global economy. Mostly because they’re not the incompetent idiots who almost blew up the global economy.
mclaren
Methinks our erstwhile Galtian overlords recognize the precariousness of their current position.
Here’s an excerpt from the recent Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance report “Tunisia: A Digitally Driven Leaderless Revolution”:
Sound familiar?
Extremely high unemployment? Out of control food and fuel prices? Disruption of the daily lives of ordinary people?
DougJ DougJson
@Ailuridae:
I have a friend who was a commodity trader. It does sound stressful.
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
Apparently, your alternative is to use Rudy Giuliani interviews as conversation starters. What, was Larry Kudlow off that night? I think this puts me well ahead on points.
Also, I guess I’m a limousine liberal now. Which is fucking sweet. Moving on up in the world. Maybe I’ll catch Nick’s Long Island country club buddies at Trader Joe’s sometime. We can argue about the tax rates on carried income. It’ll be fun.
hamletta
@srv: Yeah, the rich did get “uppity” in the ’30s, if you can count an assassination and coup de etat as “getting uppity.”
It always stuns me that I never heard about the Bonus Riots or the plot against FDR even in college-level history classes.
To be fair, maybe I just blipped them out. My high school history teacher showed us Night and Fog (with parental permissions, of course), so he wasn’t shy about ugly, but it was an America, Fuck Yeah! kind of ugly.
Bmaccnm
@DougJ DougJson: “I have a friend who was a commodity trader. It does sound stressful.” I was an NICU nurse for a lot of years. Real work. Mistakes have real consequences. Stressful like you wouldn’t believe. I think I made $20/hour, and hardly ever heard a “Thank you”. Go cry, commodity trader. Then find something real to do.
Ailuridae
@DougJ DougJson:
It is, especially if it is your money on the line (which it was for me the last two years).
I was never a BSD but was really comfortable and I left because I enjoyed cards more. When I talk to kids out of school about trading I relay a trading aphorism: If it looks like you are going to be a 100K a year trader for your entire life that will be a pretty shitty life. The stress is brutal, you are constantly running into either former colleagues who blew out and are busto or who hit it big and you feel like a failure, the culture of trading itself is incredibly coarse and dehumanizing etc etc.
Martin
@DougJ DougJson: So what? Lots of jobs are stressful. Life and death stressful. Yeah, swinging big dollars around is stressful but taking a gun off of someone who intends to use it, or being a paramedic is unquestionably more so.
I’m not downplaying the stress of losing millions of dollars for your firm one day, but we don’t make excuses for people in all of the other stressful jobs that pay shit. At the end of the day the traders’ lives aren’t in any danger and if they’re even moderately competent at their job, they can bleed that stress off with a big fucking paycheck.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
Well gee, excuse me for calling out idiocy. I didn’t start a conversation with them Bob, I called out Republican lies on my Facebook status and they responded. But you’d rather we ignore them, except Obama, he should fight them…while also ignoring them.
Martin
@mclaren:
Doesn’t sound like the U.S.
Our peak unemployment rate would be envied by 80% of the countries on earth. Food prices rose 2% last year. Fuel prices are half of what they are in Europe. Disruption of daily lives? Maybe a bit, but the American Dream has always been about being gunned down in the street by a gang banger or being lynched by some racist fuck. By all accounts, we’re in a period of relative calm.
Nick
@mclaren: Um, Tunisia’s unemployment rate is like 15%.
Ailuridae
@Bob Loblaw:
Bob, the limo liberal clip wasn’t about you. Not much here is, much to your personal surprise and perhaps chagrin.
A lot of us encounter conservatards each and every day. And many of us gave friends or even friendly social acquaintances who fall into that category. You apparently find this highly unlikely or implausible. I honestly can’t fathom how you would think that – do you teach at Reed or something?
handy
@Nick:
And that’s a lot of idle hands, if you catch my drift.
Ailuridae
@Martin:
Ill say this. If egg prioes keep on rising I might consider joining a militia. I’ve had it.
I used to pay 2.60 for my two dozen eggs a day. Now it is over four dollars. Four fucking dollars! I’m outraged.
Martin
@Bmaccnm: My aunt was an NICU nurse until she retired on medical disability. Turns out that tanding 12 hours a day for 40 years is bad for you. Yeah, she’d agree with the stress, and the pain.
And thanks for the work. Both my kids did a tour in the NICU.
To illustrate to the audience the kinds of mistakes – one day my wife was given a bottle from her stock to feed my daughter. Halfway through she realized that it didn’t have her name on it. Ew, but no biggie, right? Turns out another mom with a kid in the NICU was HIV+. Staff stress levels went to 11 right that moment. Everything turned out fine after a whole mess of blood tests of everyone in the place, but there were new procedures in place within the hour which I know they still follow to this day.
Ailuridae
@Martin:
You keep thinking about this from someone who works at Goldman or something equivalent. That isn’t most traders lives.’ There is no firm. There is you and your 4:1 or 40:1 (if you took a stake or are giving up percentages) leverage and well nothing else.
But that wasn’t the point Doug was responding too. Bob was amazed that some of us are constantly around conservatives and libertarians. I pointed out that sometimes it is just who you are (my doctor friends spend most of their time around wingnut doctors too) – if you trade or do something similar you spend your time around other traders and they are, to a person, political whack jobs. It is almost a wholly unique job so you talk to people who it is commonplace for as well.
PeakVT
When did rich people become so touchy?
When they decided judge themselves by their net worth, and the rest of America decided not to go along – especially those who have been downsized or outsourced.
Bring back the Eisenhower tax rates I’ll write about how fucking great our CEOs are on a daily basis. Until then, they can kiss my ass.
mclaren
@Nick:
Um, America’s real unemployment rate, U6, is 17%.
Get a fucking clue.
Martin
@Ailuridae: Wow, that’s high. Here in overpriced socal we pay about $1.79/doz at the farmers market. But $4 really isn’t awful for 2 doz if you think about it. That’s slightly more than $1/lb which is right in line with almost any low-priced meat source. At $2.60 you were getting a hell of a bargain.
Ailuridae
@Nick:
It really depends how Tunisia measures their unemployment though. Most nations outside of the US don’t have an equivalent U-3 v U-6 division like the US and those standards at least amongst industrialized nations are closer to the more honest (IMO) U6 standard.
All that said, drawing comparison’s between Tunisia and the US is pretty silly. Even for mclaren
Nick
@mclaren:
No. That’s the “underemployment” rate. If we measured Tunisia’s the way you’re measuring that, with people working part time and not getting government subsidies (which keep in mind nobody does in Tunisia) it would be like 35%.
El Cid
It would certainly have been interesting to see Gore debate someone actually knowledgeable about NAFTA in order to argue the other side, instead of goofball Perot.
But he was a big name, and that was a better way to pretend that opposition to NAFTA was all Luddite / nativist idiocy, so, why not?
The miserable thing about watching that debate is that none of the administration’s or USA*NAFTA (the largest ever business coalition lobby ever seen) points were actually debated.
You just had Mr. Fruitcake taking up desk space.
Martin
@mclaren: What’s Tunisia’s real unemployment rate with a per-capita income of $3851?
Perspective: you don’t have it.
Nick
@PeakVT:
they didn’t?
NobodySpecial
@Ailuridae: No, I think Bob’s amazed that Nick keeps ending up in these kinds of conversations with his friends and losing. Of course, Nick’s the same guy who defaults to ‘Dem messaging sux4life’ and ‘nothing can be done’.
Ailuridae
@Martin:
I buy my eggs at a live chicken place down the block. Some of the price bump is seasonal but some of it is a legitimate price run only some of which could even hope to be explained by the salmonella stuff from the summer.
But mostly I was kidding
Nick
@Martin:
Once would think that would have more to do with the situation in Tunisia than the unemployment rate.
Merkin
@NobodySpecial:
In all fairness, he’s been right fairly often. Hang around a few conservatards who call themselves “independents” and you’ll begin to sense nothing can be done too.
Fang
Let me suggest something further.
The Galtian Overlords are oversensitive because:
A) They know the screwed up big time, really big time, and anything that comes remotely close to pointing that out scares them.
B) They’ve bought their own propaganda.
C) Some of them are second or third generations and thus sort of out of touch with reality.
Honestly, I think a good half the various supposed “Producers” couldn’t do most day-to-day jobs we do.
Nick
@Ailuridae:
You’re asking Bob to admit that the whole right wing is not just a ruse put in place by corporate Democrats as an excuse to sell progressives out, but an actual political force that makes up nearly half the country.
Good luck with that.
Martin
@Ailuridae: Fair enough. I will stipulate that I’ve done enough derivatives trading to have lost 2 years income of my own money in a day, so I’m not unfamiliar with the concept. I’ve also had people die from trauma in my arms, and the pain of the former fades awfully quickly compared to the latter.
Comrade Kevin
@geg6:
I believe his real residence is under a bridge somewhere.
Martin
@Ailuridae: I think you have every right to be a little touchy over a 40% price increase. 2 dozen a day, though? I’m not sure I want to know how you go through that many in a day.
Bob Loblaw
@Ailuridae:
You’re right, I really need to make more friends with people I consider politically retarded. The mutual respect warms my heart.
Ailuridae
@El Cid:
I’m not strongly anti-NAFTA* but I would have liked to have seen a more credibly opposition to Gore than Perot.
*I am parsing those words specifically as I am (and always was) against NAFTA but it doesn’t explain as much as people want it to. The US already had a mini jobs exportation situation within the country by the time NAFTA was signed with Southern States taking tax breaks that northern states funded to take jobs from those states. As someone from the Capital District in NY GE and their ilk moving all of their jobs to Tennessee and Kentucky didn’t rip the heart out of Schenectady Albany troy and Pittsfield any fucking better. Sure they stayed “in America” but well fuck that.
As far as there is a truly egregiously bad consequence to NAFTA it was what it did to Mexico.
Ailuridae
@Martin:
I’m a pescetarian (no animal meat or dairy) and I train pretty hard. So I need to get 150+ g low fat protein a day – egg whites are an easy solution.
Martin
@Bob Loblaw:
Well, at least now you know why we appreciate you so much. Keeps us all warm at night.
Martin
@Ailuridae: Yeah, that’d do it. No dairy? I’d take my own life. I classify foods by how many forms of dairy they have in them. I’m not as bad as that guy who can only eat cheddar cheese, though I am slightly envious. My wife would never tolerate that.
Thought about free-range chickens? Nearly free eggs and you can chase them around for exercise. Kill two birds with one stone, metaphorically speaking.
Ailuridae
@Martin:
But I wasn’t comparing the stress. I was suggesting that there is something uniquely stressful about trading in that people outside of trading can’t understand the stresses because while that stress is very real it is almost all manufactured. But if you elect to participate in that market (and most do it to compete) you are going to spend your time talking to other people who do the same thing. And that’s largely to avoid the “How was your day?” conversation from your SO where you tell her you “were long 4000 shares of CECO, market moved you are now struck those shared 2 point out of the money and the stress is eating you up” and have her in response to the same question say “One of my clients was shot to death by her ex after violating his restraining order three times”. Because that conversation stinks.
So people who trade or play cards talk to each other (as do nurses for that matter). No surprise there. And those other people who get your job are mostly wingnuts. Also no surprise
Ailuridae
@Martin:
My friends in Alamadea have most of their back yard in coops (too lazy to look up the spelling). Sadly I live in classic urban hell – I’m just outside the Loop in Chicago. If I ever relocate anywhere with better weather than here I’m all over chicken raising. And a real fucking garden.
General Stuck
CNN has a new poll out tonight with Obama’s approval at 55 percent, and 60 percent approval for handling terrorism. Ouch/wingnuts
Ailuridae
@Bob Loblaw:
Is your real judgment of the value (or utility) of another person based solely around their political beliefs? This might explain your purity quest nonsense.
El Cid
@Ailuridae: Actually at the time I was working more with independent labor union leaders (i.e., not the PRI dictatorship-controlled labor federation) from Mexico. And it hasn’t been that difficult to follow studies of and debates about the effects of NAFTA there.
No, NAFTA wasn’t a new thing as far as relocating jobs and capital else where. What it was was a way of codifying such trade regimes with no chance whatsoever of them being modified short of cancellation of the treaty.
It just didn’t seem to matter at the time that the arguments emphasized publicly for the trade regime were pretty much horse-shit, including the very economic study cited endlessly by Gore and others by Hufbauer & Schott that there shouldn’t be any loss of investments by US manufacturers here. One of their little assumptions was that US businesses investing in Mexico would only do so in addition to US investments. Cute, that.
freelancer
Late night OT please. I’m done with politics for tonight, maybe for a while.
Bob Loblaw
@NobodySpecial:
Finally, somebody else sees the weirdness here.
@Nick:
Isn’t it weird though that the most successful progressive President of, well, this President’s lifetime only came to be by ultimately explicitly ignoring the existence of the opposing party on his signature issue? Yep, really weird. I can’t figure that one out.
It’s almost as though preemptively apologizing for succeeding wasn’t sound politics in the aftermath, and that you can successfully legislate in this country without validating the right wing’s existence.
Ailuridae
@freelancer:
+1
asiangrrlMN
@freelancer: Ditto this. Thanks to anyone front pager up and about.
NobodySpecial
@Merkin:
The only way to sense that ‘nothing can be done’ is to believe nothing can be done in the first place, IMHO. Either all of Nick’s friends are so incredibly shallow that NO ARGUMENT can reach them or Nick is so poor at arguing for liberal positions that he can’t move anyone. Considering what Nick claims is his day job, I don’t believe the former.
freelancer
Over the last 3 months or so, I’ve been watching The West Wing. In the last 72 hours, I’ve been on a binge streak finishing up the seventh and final season. It’s hard enough being on the edge of my seat with respect to fictional politics, let alone our clown college reality version of it.
Ailuridae
@freelancer:
How good is it? I’ve watched bits and pieces but probably less than 10 full episodes ever and have been thinking about watching it all. I really liked “The American President” so I am not sure why I didn’t get into it when it came on.
MikeJ
@freelancer: Ah, the season with the candidate explicitly modelled on Obama and Josh who was modelled on Rahm. Good stuff. Although I don’t remember Josh showering with many people.
freelancer
@Ailuridae:
Oh you gotta give it a shot. Seasons 1-4 are perfect. Sorkin left the show from burnout after that. Season 5 is the worst season as they were finding where they wanted to go, but 6 & 7 redeem the show and make it oh so watchable.
@MikeJ:
There might be an argument that Santos = Obama, but that would be a way for Hollywood to forecast the exact future in a way which is simply unbelievable. I think that they ran with a new narrative and the minority similarities were similar but coincidental. Also, there’s a point to be made that before the demise of John Spencer (don’t google if you don’t know or haven’t seen the show), the producers originally had Alan Alda succeeding Bartlet.
MikeJ
@Ailuridae: West Wing is great and it is maddening. There are actually full episodes where the true believer liberal on the White House staff yells and screams that WE MUST PASS THIS TAX BREAK, no matter how hard it is to do! We’ll ram it down their throats!
It’s entertaining, but ignore any actual policy discussions in the show. If you have an iq over room temperature that part will drive you nuts.
MikeJ
@freelancer:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/21/barackobama.uselections2008
Martin
@freelancer: And yet it really did happen that way. Santos/Josh turning into Obama/Rahm is one of those ‘you just couldn’t make this shit up’ kinds of things. It’s just too unbelievable.
freelancer
@MikeJ:
@Martin:
Maybe that’s why I never really went for the comparison. I always saw The West Wing as a liberal utopia. That which was the goal, but in life, was almost cynical in its conception of the way the political world really worked. Then the show ended, and after that, Obama was elected.
Know Hope.
Yutsano
@freelancer: Coolest text I ever sent my brother after Obama won Pennsylvania: “The nigra did it.” Then I found out my dad voted for him. I think my parents are getting a touch hippie-ish on me.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Did that surprise you?
slag
@freelancer: I don’t know. I found the similarities between Bartlett and Obama quite striking too. I think of it like finding yourself in your horoscope. The West Wing characters and situations were general enough to be applicable in a variety of ways. Yet specific enough to be believable. It’s an art.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: This country elected Dubya twice. And there was the Bradley effect lingering out there as well. Never underestimate the stupidity or the racism of the American electorate.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Should have been more specific. I meant, did it surprise you that your father voted for him? I was gobsmacked he Obama actually got elected.
Sly
Whenever they began viewing themselves as irreplaceable. Concentrated power tends to have that effect on the psyche, and if you think it is bad now, the 30s were much worse.
And of course they think the President should kiss their ass. They make more money than he does. A lot more.
Sly
@Merkin:
“Denial-icans”
In the first election when he was eligible to vote, my father voted for Nixon against Kennedy in 1960. At 21. Seriously. A 21 year old who voted for Richard Nixon. He then went on to vote for every Republican candidate for every office in all future elections, except for Perot in 1992. And he certainly “learned his lesson” after that.
But you better not call him a Republican!
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Actually? No. I know my dad didn’t put a lot of faith in Grandpa (nothing pisses off an enlisted Navy man like an entitled whiny Navy officer) and he thought Palin was an idiot (still does) but I thought maybe tribalism would overcome his good sense. What really got me thinking was when he and my mom voted for Murray over Rossi. That threw me for several loops.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Understood. I was surprised when my bro voted for Obama (as lesser of two evils), and when he recently called himself a Democrat (stuttering slightly over the word), I couldn’t have been prouder.
goatchowder
Actually, it was Nixon who sucked off the Hunt brothers, or seriously considered it, to the tune of “a million bucks”, according to the Watergate tapes. He was going to bribe them with a million dollars so they didn’t spill the beans on “the Bay of Pigs thing” (Bay of Pigs was Nixon’s code-word for Kennedy). Conspiracy theorists have had fun with this for 35 years now.
Weighing the options for coming up with such a bribe, Nixon said, “We could do it, we could do it, it wouldn’t be easy, but we could do it…”
goatchowder
They are touchy because they have taken the whole country hostage, and they have us by the balls, and they know it, like a moody, evil, and spoiled soon-to-be-ex-wife.
“You know, I could take all this taxpayer cash you just gave me for a bailout, and actually give it to starving people and businesses and municipalities who desperately need the money, but, I dunno, I just don’t FEEL like it…”
Nick
@freelancer:
I’m not sure there ever was a bigger sellout than Jed Bartlett.
Could you image if Obama put Priscilla Owens on the Supreme Court just so he could appoint Diane Wood. DailyKos would blow a gasket.
Jim pharo
Truth: this is an example of Things We All Know ™. Rich people are perfectly well aware of the truth about their wealth, and the burdens the rest of us face. They know this isn’t right. That’s why they are so sensitive: guilty consciences.
TR
@Nick:
Seriously.
Remember when his daughter was kidnapped, and he resigned — to let a right-wing Republican take over?! Such a sellout.
Merkin
@NobodySpecial:
Batshit crazy conservatives are shallow? Congrats on figuring that out Einstein.
Ron
@TR: That was just awesome. And Stephen Colbert has been on fire recently too.
Chris
@Elvis Elvisberg:
This.
I’m seeing people opposing HCR but furiously demanding that their Medicare benefits remain untouched, people howling about blue-state socialism but demanding millions every year in federal pork for their own states, and people calling for an end to regulation so the market can determine a fair price but then screaming treason and murder every time a free trade agreement is passed with another country.
You can’t seriously tell me these guys give a shit about anything as idealistic as “stopping socialism,” even by their definition of “socialism.” All they care about is keeping the money and big government on their side and against the “others.” It’s all about identity politics and it has been at least since Nixon.
Chris
@Arundel:
Well bloody said. I just forwarded that.
chopper
@goatchowder:
that and the fact that the nature of business and the rich has changed over the decades. it’s not that rich businessmen of old were all strong, silent personalities or something like that, but it seems these days that lax business rules coupled with guaranteed backing (in the form of business bailouts) by the gummint has created a class of WATBs in the business and financial communities. they’re allowed to do whatever they want and if they fuck up they get an even bigger paycheck.
it’s like raising your kids with no boundaries at all, and when they fuck up you give them money. of course they’re going to turn out completely dysfunctional which is exactly what we’ve done with the rich/business class in this country.
Redleg
“I don’t remember Ronald Reagan being asked to suck off the Hunt brothers—though I’m sure he would have for the good of the nation if necessary, he was a great patriot.”
LOL- the funniest- and most apt- thing I’ve read all day. On the down side, you may have ruined fellatio for me.