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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Yes, cutting spending will hurt people

Yes, cutting spending will hurt people

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Ezra Klein sums up the anti-union proposal put forth by Wisconsin’s Governor:

The best way to understand Walker’s proposal is as a multi-part attack on the state’s labor unions. In part one, their ability to bargain benefits for their members is reduced. In part two, their ability to collect dues, and thus spend money organizing members or lobbying the legislature, is undercut. And in part three, workers have to vote the union back into existence every single year. Put it all together and it looks like this: Wisconsin’s unions can’t deliver value to their members, they’re deprived of the resources to change the rules so they can start delivering value to their members again, and because of that, their members eventually give in to employer pressure and shut the union down in one of the annual certification elections.

Of course, the whole crisis is manufactured to begin with. Walker created the deficit through tax cuts and new spending, and is using it as an excuse to go after the unions. Get ready for more of the same across the country. Walker also wants to get control of Medicaid for reasons that should not be too hard to surmise.

Meanwhile Andrew Sullivan continues to distance himself from Obama and the left he so unabashedly embraced during Obama’s first two years by calling the Democratic senators who strategically fled Wisconsin “pathetic”; by complaining that the president is “AWOL” on the question of deficits; and by sarcastically responding to this excellent piece by Freddie deBoer on the very real human cost of spending cuts with a post titled “But Cutting Spending Will Hurt People!”

It’s a rare talent that allows a pundit to mock and deride both the poor and the blogger they’re responding to all in just the title of a post, but Sullivan manages. He then outsources his response to McArdle who commences in arguing for cuts in pensions and healthcare services because she doesn’t want to see cuts in pensions and healthcare services. The “math demands it” according to Sullivan, even though the average Wisconsin public employee pension is only $24,500 much of which the workers themselves contribute; even though Social Security is not going to sink us no matter the false assertions of pundits and politicians; even though healthcare is the real issue and even though Obama tackled that issue first, expending almost all his political capital on it in his first year in office to however imperfectly enact reform.

Reader Interactions

221Comments

  5. 5.

    Warren Terra

    Dammit, Kain, if you keep on paying attention to the facts rather than blithely letting the talking points wash over you, you will never again be Serious and will not be Restored To Conservatism.

    PS Since its clear that he came back from his extended illness utterly worthless as a blogger, and for all that I’m happy he’s feeling stronger, can we demand that Sully’s stunt bloggers be reinstated because at least we knew they’d never have anything worthwhile to say?

  6. 6.

    BGinCHI

    Anyone know whether Sully’s absence was to get an elective lobotomy?

    He sure as fuck sounds like he lost his brain.

  9. 9.

    Dan

    Yeah, Sullivan is a deficit hawk with the same fervor he demonstrated as an Iraq war hawk.

    There are those that don’t want to learn and those that simply can’t.

  10. 10.

    Mnemosyne

    Can we get someone better at math than Sullivan and McArdle to check their figures before we let them start making grand pronouncements that “the math demands it!” Neither one of them has a particularly good record when it comes to actually getting the math right.

  11. 11.

    Violet

    @BGinCHI:
    Agreed. I wonder if he’s started a new medication or something. Or maybe a lefty type hurt his feelings while he was sick and he’s taking it out on the Democrats and the President. Maybe Obama didn’t call to see how he was doing when he was sick?

  13. 13.

    BGinCHI

    Someone should ask Sully whether putting the wars on the deficit line makes Obama different than Bush.

    Or, when you want welfare for Iraq and Afghanistan, deficits are fine. But when you want investment for the USA, deficits are impossible.

    Fucking hypocrisy, how does it work?

  15. 15.

    ldrks

    As a New Jerseyan, the rule with Chris Christie is that he’s lying. I actually want him to run for President, just to get him out of our hair so we can get back to being treated like adults.

    God, I haven’t been so angry since Bush was in power. It seems as though these new republicans hate two kinds of people: the young and the not rich.

  16. 16.

    El Cid

    If the deficit and debt magically were to disappear, and no government program changed, how would all our jobs come back?

  17. 17.

    sukabi

    It may be early in your conversion yet, but Rachel Maddow had a segment on this last night… another angle on going after the unions is that there are only 3 major sources of reliable big money for democrats campaigns… and they are all unions …

    the video “Bake sales vs Billionaires” is the one where she compares GOP & DEM campaign finance sources.

  18. 18.

    meh

    nah he’s just angry cuz that’s what he’s supposed to be. He will always be the slightly less entertaining contrarian voice over there…sweet jesus I wish TNC would get a respectable job somewhere else…hate that I give that rags pageviews.

  20. 20.

    Zifnab

    Of course, the whole crisis is manufactured to begin with. Walker created the deficit through tax cuts and new spending, and is using it as an excuse to go after the unions.

    I see Republicans are finally embracing government efficiency. By the old play book, the GOP would increase spending and cut taxes during their administrations and then let Democrats do the union busting. But watching Walker tackle all of it inside a single budget cycle is truly remarkable to behold.

  22. 22.

    Violet

    @E.D. Kain:
    Those facts really are pesky things, aren’t they? They get right in the way of Sully’s posts, so he just shoves them aside. McMegan seems to have learned that lesson well.

    @ldrks:

    It seems as though these new republicans hate two kinds of people: the young and the not rich.

    And women. They really hate women.

  25. 25.

    Splitting Image

    Andrew Sullivan is looking more and more like a young John McCain. This is just Andrew being all mavericky and stuff.

  26. 26.

    Dan

    Anyone ever see the movie “Everyone Says I Love You” by woody allen? The son in a very liberal family suddenly turns into an arch-conservative. At the end they realize he had a blood clot or something that was cutting off flow to his brain. It gets resolved and he regains his liberal sanity.

    Here’s hoping sullivan’s recent rightward turn has a similar explanation.

  27. 27.

    Mark S.

    Green balloons! Can we take a break from Sully? He’s mostly a fucking idiot.

    Apropos of nothing, does anyone else hate how the British spell it “maths”?

  28. 28.

    General Stuck

    I don’t know why you all read Scully and have so many posts about his blathering. He is a republican, with all the bells and whistles that come from that mindset. The fact that every now and then, he has a brain fart of conscience, is not anything to get exited about imo. Especially when those BF’s are utterly, or near that, without rhyme nor consistency. And on some issues social, he is a rancid wingnut. I don’t care that he pimped the Iraq war, and then didn’t, unless he makes a commitment to question all his winger impulses.

    That said, it is entirely correct that all this anti spending horseshit by national and state wingnuts, is nothing more than a ruse to target whatever liberal white whale that is bothering them the most. Or, more accurately, threatening them the most, as nearly every thing these people do is a reaction to one kind of fear of another. On the national stage, it is the ACA, and whatever smaller liberal fish they might catch in their nets.

    On the state level, it runs the gamut of racial, ethnic, the poor, the disabled, even the middle class, for the sin of not making themselves rich. The mouthbreathing posses like the tea party, are in it for the hate, the RW intelligentsia, if it can be called that, is in it for electoral advantage, and ultimately for unfettered profiteering for their plutocrat masters.

    And all of them are acting like folks whose backs are against a wall, and the normal posturing on winger philosophy, I think this time, will give way to draconian action, and if WI is any indication, the kind of action you can see on any Three Stooges rerun.

  30. 30.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    Since Sullivan wasn’t born here, he had to come here. He totally fits in with what is wrong with America right now: Unable to see beyond their noses to realize that the party they have voted for will do everything in its power to to destroy them.

    At least some of the people in Wisconsin are realizing the cost of their actions before the governor there signs the bill.

  31. 31.

    garage mahal

    I’ll be down on the square and the Rotunda for the 4th straight night raising hell. Scott Walker and Andrew Sullivan can go fuck themselves.

  32. 32.

    DougJ®

    @Mark S.:

    We should happy he didn’t say “the maths demand it”.

    As I’ve said before, I hate the English, not because they starved my great-great-grandfather to death, but because they stuff like “maths”.

  34. 34.

    Zach

    Has Sullivan addressed his support for the Bush tax cuts which currently are the largest single component of the national debt and deficit? As I recall, he forcefully argued that the tax cuts were a good thing because they would force the country to grapple with the deficit more quickly. Seriously.

    Once stimulus spending winds down and revenue ticks up to normal levels, the budget deficit will roughly be equal to the annual expenditure on interest on our debt, so debt that’s accumulated over the past decade is more important than, for instance, the social security shortfall.

  36. 36.

    Violet

    @JPL:
    They love any fetus until the moment it pops out of the vagina. Then they’re happy to walk away. Although if they can fit in a session of “blame the woman who got pregnant” and other associated finger-pointing first, they’re even happier.

  38. 38.

    Corner Stone

    @Mark S.:

    Green balloons! Can we take a break from Sully? He’s mostly a fucking idiot.

    Been asking this for upwards of 3 years I think.
    It is to laugh because Cole was heartbroken and pining for his Sully bear while AS was out.

  39. 39.

    Southern Beale

    From the link:

    You can find Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal here. It’s called “the Budget Repair bill.” The section that’s attracted all the anger is “State and Local Government and School District Labor Relations.”
    __
    In it, Walker proposes that the right to collectively bargain be taken away from most — but not all — state and local workers. Who’s left out? “Local law enforcement and fire employees, and state troopers and inspectors would be exempt from these changes.” As Harold Meyerson notes, these are also the unions that happened to be more supportive of Walker in the last election. Funny, that.

    So, first Walker ginned up the budget emergency requiring this “repair” and then he exempts his friends from the surgery he says is required.

    In other words: asshole.

  40. 40.

    Dan

    part of sullivan’s problem is that he feels the need to comment on every controversy regardless of whether he knows anything about it.

    When he’s talking about stuff that he does know, he can be pretty insightful. He doesn’t know shit about wisconsin, though.

  41. 41.

    DS

    Despite his laudable efforts in condemning torture and support for gay rights, Sullivan is simply a classic British Tory class warrior. He hates the poor, working-class, unions, chavs, Mancs and all the rest. I’m sure that he has whacked off to a picture of Thatcher a few times as well while sitting in his Cape Cod cottage, totally oblivious to what its like to be a middle-class person in this country and elsewhere at present. That fucking elitist marble-mouthed bastard can go to hell.

  42. 42.

    Comrade Luke

    And even though I loathe Yglesias, he’s having one of his broken clock moments when he says this:

    in post-union America, rich businessmen will be the only viable sources of political funding. So to an even greater extent than is the case today, politics will take the form of “culture war” battles or “sector versus sector” fights (pharmaceutical companies’ support for the Affordable Care Act is probably the shape of things to come) over rents in which the fundamental interests of rich businessmen qua rich businessmen are off the table.

    I know it’ll never happen, but one huge benefit to having a ridiculously high tax for the rich is that it would reduce campaign contributions. As it stands now, the rich get policies enacted, which give them even more disposable income, which allow them to contribute even more money to politicians that will enact policies that give them more money, lather, rinse, repeat.

  43. 43.

    shortstop

    @Mark S.: Yes on ignoring Sully and sort of on “maths.” It actually bugs me more that they say “al-yew-min-ee-um.” I really hate that.

  44. 44.

    R-Jud

    @Mark S.:

    Apropos of nothing, does anyone else hate how the British spell it “maths”?

    No, I always thought it made sense to shorten “mathematics” to “maths” rather than “math”.

  45. 45.

    DougJ®

    I blame Punchy for my relapse. He needs to be in there saying “But what does Sully think?” in every single thread to keep me on the straight and narrow.

    That said, this Sullivan post is well worth it for “the math demands it”.

  47. 47.

    shortstop

    I swear to dog that I had not read BG’s post when I made mine. I really, really had not.

    But just to prove my bona fides, other sources of annoyance: meegraine, dinnasty, vittamin.

  50. 50.

    Gozer

    the average Wisconsin public employee pension is only $24,500 much of which the workers themselves contribute

    And there, dear readers, is the crux of the biscuit.

    The powers that be are trying to steal funds workers paid into. What you have I want and I will get it by any means possible.

  52. 52.

    shortstop

    And “jag-yoo-ar.” I lived in the UK and have suffered under the tyranny of excellent sohseeallist medicine, so I can pile on.

  56. 56.

    Calouste

    @DS:

    The only reason Sully supports gay rights is because he is gay himself, not out of empathy for his fellow man. If he was straight, he’d follow the GOP party line on gays.

  57. 57.

    Fuck U III: The Duck Fucks Back

    See, Kain, the problem isn’t falling out of love with Sullivan, it’s not falling back into love when the pendulum swings.

    Think you can hack it? Lotta Juicebaggers can’t.

  58. 58.

    shortstop

    @DS: Ah, we can get at least two tags out of this thread: “The math demands it!” and “fucking elitist marble-mouthed bastards.”

  60. 60.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    The Brits say “orientated” and the way they pronounce lieutenant is, as even other Brits will admit, an abomination.

    That said, you can pry my Radio Four out of my cold, dead hands.

  62. 62.

    Wile E. Quixote

    Sullivan is a contemptible idiot. I’ve lost any patience I might once have had for him. Listening to him bitch about how hard it is for him to support two institutions that want him dead, the Republican party and the Catholic Church for who he is, is sickening. He’s a pathetic drama queen who would be dead of AIDS if the Republicans had their way, because no doctors would treat him, no insurance companies would cover him and no pharmaceutical companies would be developing drugs to treat his illness.

    I have to wonder if someone, somewhere is pushing this deficit hawk meme. The way it’s just sprung up, seemingly out of nowhere, makes me suspicious, especially since The Atlantic is a fundamentally corrupt institution that solicits money from large corporations. Are McMegan and Sully just jumping on the bandwagon like the lazy, hypocritical opportunists they are, or is something more involved?

  63. 63.

    Splitting Image

    @MattR:

    @shortstop: And don’t get me started on the Canadians. They can’t decide if they want to speak like Brits or Americans.

    Nonsense. We speak like Americans and spell like the British.

  69. 69.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    @Warren Terra: Plus In Our Time, Thinking Allowed and Start The Week. I would happily pay a license fee for all of that. Thanks, British taxpayers!

  70. 70.

    shortstop

    @Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): Do they all still say lefftenant? I thought it was only the aristocratic holdouts nowadays.

    Just so I don’t give the impression that I don’t love me some English people, I will now laugh at the local pronunciation of several of our Chicago streets. I know we have discussed this here before, but it bears remocking:

    Racine = Ray-SEEN
    Paulina = Paw-LYNA
    Throop = Troop
    Devon = De-VON
    Goethe = GO-thee

  71. 71.

    Emma

    I feel like one of those prophets that keep shouting into deaf ears: just because you’re on his side it doesn’t mean he’s on your side.

    Evil that I am sometimes I dream of Sully getting his wish… and then getting his gay ass kicked out of the country by his fanatically anti-gay republican “friends”.

  72. 72.

    Svensker

    @DS:

    That fucking elitist marble-mouthed bastard can go to hell.

    Let’s dress him up like Marie Antoinette first.

  73. 73.

    Wile E. Quixote

    Oh, and that fucking asshole Bobo has a column up today about reducing the deficit. Funny how this was never a serious issue for any of these shitheads, McMegan, Sully or Bobo during the Bush years, but now that some teabaggers got elected to Congress and we have a Democratic president it suddenly is.

  77. 77.

    Sockpuppet

    You BJers do understand that it’s possible to go a day without giving a shit about what is written in The Atlantic (or its blogs), right?

    When a full quarter (or more) of your daily output is dedicated to the work of two fucking writers, Sullivan and McArdle, day after day after day, you might be in need of an intervention. But wait, what does Fallows think? Has anybody checked?!

  80. 80.

    Calouste

    workers have to vote the union back into existence every single year

    Any lawyers here care to explain how this wouldn’t violate the freedom of assembly clause?

  81. 81.

    Svensker

    @freelancer:

    Driftglass is way ahead of you.

    Heh. I like Sully as Nancy. But if we dressed him like Marie A., we could have a real fun game of guillotine before dark.

  83. 83.

    Turbulence

    There’s one thing that should be mentioned in any article that talks about public sector pensions: in many states (I don’t know if WI is one of them and my calculator has gastritis), public employees cannot legally participate in Social Security. They’re not allowed to contribute, so of course, come retirement, they get no money. So for a lot of lifetime public employees, their pension is all they get. There’s no SS to cover them at all.

  85. 85.

    Warren Terra

    @Sockpuppet:

    You BJers do understand that it’s possible to go a day without giving a shit about what is written in The Atlantic (or its blogs), right?

    As someone who let my decade-long subscription to the Atlantic lapse in protest over its decline into self-parody (I recently received my third This Is Your Last Issue! issue), I am both aware that it is possible to ignore these sad bastards and appalled that a 150-year old institution with a proud legacy now features these assholes. Pointing out their repeated autodefenstrations is just fine with me.

  88. 88.

    les

    @Calouste:

    This; and he’d loudly blare the Roamin’ Catholic line as well. It’s silly to look for some kind of philosophical or ideological consistency with Sullivan. He’s pure and simple a selfish, short sighted son of a bitch, with a clinical case of cognitive dissonance. His position is always “you all need to do what’s good for Sully.”

  89. 89.

    khead

    I’m joining my union next week.

    I don’t know how many floaters like me there are out there (who have benefited from union representation but didn’t join) suddenly feel the need to do so, but I did after this week. If the protests spread to Pennsylvania, my wife and I may go.

    So, I guess I am really a commie now.

  93. 93.

    BGinCHI

    @khead: The WI asshole’s plan is to cut off fair share, too.

    That means folks who didn’t join the union yet benefited from the negotiations would not have to pay any dues.

    GOP: We Love Free Lunch.

    Cocksuckers.

  94. 94.

    kdaug

    Haven’t waded through these comments yet, but may I offer a congratulations to E.D. on the brevity of this post? I believe it’s the first that didn’t require a page break.

    Well played, E.D.

  96. 96.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Turbulence: In some states, but not all, public employees don’t participate in SS. It’s not a blanket ban.

    Being ‘free’ from having to pay into SS comes at a price.

    In those states where public employees don’t participate in SS, any SS OA benefits they might earn from prior private employment are reduced by the amount of their state pension.

    And any survivor’s benefits they might receive from a spouse’s SS are reduced, in some cases down to zero.


    GPO/WEP

  97. 97.

    PurpleGirl

    @Zach: I don’t know if revenue is going to, or even can, kick back up to higher levels. A large component of the reduced revenue picture are the lower amounts of income tax and lower social security taxes being collected. Until the millions of us without jobs get jobs and are actually working, that tax revenue just can’t be there.

  99. 99.

    JeffH

    A very simple rule of thumb with Sullivan is that if math or statistics pops up anywhere in anything he says, assume the opposite and you’re more likely to be closer to the truth. One of the most spectacular cases of innumeracy you’re ever going to see.

  102. 102.

    jfxgillis

    EriK:

    Maybe you don’t despise Sully, but you seem to had a new insight about his ideological posture.

    Didn’t someone [cough] tell you privately months ago what direction his politics would go once the policy he most desperately wanted from Obama, DADT repeal, was achieved?

  105. 105.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    There once was a fellow, brown-shirted
    To liberal dogma became subverted
    He quickly proved handy
    At bullying poor Andy
    There is no zeal like the newly converted

  106. 106.

    Svensker

    @shortstop:

    Pop is actually the biggest word for “soda pop” in north America (see cool map thingie at link). I grew up in Pac NW where they said “pop”, then lived in the south where they said “coke”, then NJ where it was “soda” and now in Canukistan where it’s back to “pop”.

    My son can’t stand that I say “pop.” Too bad for him.

  107. 107.

    khead

    @BGinCHI:

    I will take the criticism for being the kind of asshole that got that free ride. It’s perfectly fair even if you aren’t going there.

    But the thing that has pissed me off is that I took my job believing in the “social contract” idea that was put forth by mistermix (I think, too lazy too look) in another thread.

    Less pay, better security. No one is coming after my job, but I am tired of douchebags painting govt employees as the enemy.

  110. 110.

    JPL

    I have a question, actually a simple question.. The Governor of Wisconsin tanked the budget by his tax cuts supposedly to create 250,000 jobs. If he is in fact going to create that many jobs, wouldn’t the revenue pay for teachers salaries?
    Shouldn’t this be the question being asked?
    Maybe I’m naive or my math is faulty because I was educated partly by public schools.

  111. 111.

    BGinCHI

    @khead: I wasn’t sniping at you. Your post just reminded me of that detail of Walker’s proposal. It’s simple union-busting stuff.

    And I agree with your assessment of why we work for the people and that the social contract is hugely important.

    After they’re done with us public employees, who’s next? Who’s left to attack so that the rich can have 12-car garages?

    Where’s my motherfucking pitchfork?

  112. 112.

    Martin

    Maddow has it right. This isn’t about budgets or pensions. This is phase 2 in the Citizens United big money takeover of American politics. Any discussion outside of that realm is just a distraction, and is what the GOP wants to have happen.

  114. 114.

    khead

    @BGinCHI:

    I didn’t think so – just admitting that I would deserve it. I should’ve joined long ago. One of my grandfathers – a union member who worked in the WV coal mines – would be proud.

  116. 116.

    p.a.

    @General Stuck: I’ve said nice things about Sullivan. I know about but had not visited his site during the ‘5th column’ era, and know he has apologized. And he has been outstanding on torture and Palin. And I bought into his ‘we need a rebirth of reasonable conservatism’ schtick. Which is what it now seems to be, as he has absolutely gone off the deep end on budget issues. You are right about him. And all he has to do to see how wrong he is is to look at what’s going on in his native land; does he really want us going down that path?

  118. 118.

    Mike in NC

    @jfxgillis:

    Didn’t someone [cough] tell you privately months ago what direction his politics would go once the policy he most desperately wanted from Obama, DADT repeal, was achieved?

    Which naturally begs the question: How will Andrew Sullivan react when his GOP buddies in the House attempt to reinstate DADT?

    You know it’s on their “to do” list, right after the abortion-banning and union-busting are done.

  121. 121.

    Martin

    @Mike in NC:

    How will Andrew Sullivan react when his GOP buddies in the House attempt to reinstate DADT?

    They won’t try. They might make a show of it for the culture warriors, but everyone including the GOP leadership (and Sully) will know its full of shit.

  123. 123.

    Mike in NC

    @khead:

    I am tired of douchebags painting govt employees as the enemy.

    We can mostly thank Saint Reagan, who, incidentally, is still worshiped by many of the federal government employees I knew back in the DC area.

  124. 124.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Mnemosyne:

    Maybe we ought to go Red State Trike Farce on them and have everyone here send them both a calculator.

    Just be sure to include the instructions. Not saying they are intelligent enough to comprehend them but at least we give them a chance, right?

  125. 125.

    Warren Terra

    @p.a.:

    I’ve said nice things about Sullivan. I know about but had not visited his site during the ‘5th column’ era, and know he has apologized

    Yeah, not really. He expressed some regrets in some fashion, in some mealymouthed way, but didn’t make much of it, didn’t address his apologies to specific people he’d named, etcetera. More to the point, he never changed his ways. Andrew Sullivan is a deeply shallow, profoundly self-centered moral idiot. He is given to highly irrational embraces of unexamined positions for no defensible reason, and he will then fight to the death for them. Sometimes this is good (his opposition to Torture, his backing Obama), sometimes it’s mixed (his kitchen-sink opposition to Palin, where he negated much of his good work by being equally enthusiastic about the dumbest anti-Palin stuff), and often it’s highly destructive. And sometimes it’s just pathetic (the whole Gay Catholic, Gay Conservative thing, and his embrace of Marijuana For The Middle Class). But the main thing is that Whatever Makes Andrew Feel Good Is Good, Andrew Is Always Right, and god forbid he ever actually think about something for more than two seconds. He has prospered in stream-of-consciousness blogging for the same reason that he was a pernicious influence as a magazine editor and for the same reason that he embraced first George Dubya Bush and now Mitch Daniels.

  127. 127.

    Catsy

    @DS:

    Despite his laudable efforts in condemning torture and support for gay rights, Sullivan is simply a classic British Tory class warrior.

    This.

    The fact that he is sane on some issues is largely because most British conservatives aren’t quite as sheep-dipped in lunacy and beaten about the head with a cricket bat of frozen stupid as the contemporary GOP. When you break it all down, he’s still a Thatcherite asshole.

    I don’t get why people still treat him as if he has any credibility at all.

  128. 128.

    MattR

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: I still have about half a dozen calculators sitting in a drawer that I accumulated through high school and college. Not sure the last time I used any of them so I would be happy to donate them to the cause.

    @JPL: So we need to re-nickname Brooks “Bibo”?

  129. 129.

    JPL

    @BGinCHI: Two phrases that I would like the site to add…The Math demands it and bullshit in bullshit out. The second should be for Brooks..

  130. 130.

    Mnemosyne

    @Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):

    Are you trying to claim that the correct pronunciation is not “Diss Planes”?

    Here in my adopted hometown of Los Angeles, you can differentiate locals from tourists by finding out what they call the harbor: San PEE-dro or San PAY-dro? It’s actually the one closer to the Spanish pronunciation that marks you as an outsider.

  132. 132.

    jl

    Maybe Cole can ask Brooks or Will to do a few guest posts, so this miserable lefty blog can have some balance.

    That would be fun.

    Could give them some BJ Pet Swag if they won’t do it for free.

  133. 133.

    MattR

    @jl:

    Could give them some BJ Pet Swag if they won’t do it for free.

    Speaking of, is there a “My other car is a big white cat” bumpersticker available for sale?

  135. 135.

    shortstop

    @Catsy:

    sheep-dipped in lunacy and beaten about the head with a cricket bat of frozen stupid

    Too long for a tag? This thread is gold.

  137. 137.

    Turgidson

    @shortstop:

    Out of curiosity, hwo do Chicagoans pronounce this street name?

    Honore Ave? My local friend once pronounced it like the word honor, then tacked on an “ee” at the end. I said that to a cab driver a couple days later and he looked at me like I was speaking Swahili.

  141. 141.

    slag

    He then outsources his response to McArdle who commences in arguing for cuts in pensions and healthcare services because she doesn’t want to see cuts in pensions and healthcare services.

    Nicely done! This sentence was Cole-worthy.

  145. 145.

    Donut

    I am kinda stunned at the, “boy, Sully sure has lost it!” tone of some of the comments.

    The dude outsources writing his shit to his staff fer fuck’s sake. In my book, that makes him a bonafide hack. End of story. No need to pay attention because the blog is not really Sullivan’s when someone else is really writing it.

    Why anyone bothers reading him knowing that his toadies actually do most of the work on the blog for him is beyond me.

    Just my two cents. Of course your mileage may vary. Doesn’t make you wrong if you disagree with me, just silly. :)

  146. 146.

    Martin

    Missing from Sully’s protest adorations about Bahrain (that some experts say, if successful, would likely result in Saudi Arabia invading) is what is to come of the F1 race scheduled there for less than 3 weeks from now? Can we have a 2nd Spa race please?

  151. 151.

    shortstop

    @Turgidson: I think I’ve heard most people say it like your friend does. If the cab driver’s from Haiti or Burkina Faso I’d make the effort to pronounce it correctly!

    @Tattoosydney: We have coriander seeds and dried coriander (ground leaves). We do mostly call the fresh stuff cilantro, but a few people here say coriander leaves.

  153. 153.

    matoko_chan

    @Donut: why do any of you bother reading EDK?
    he was a civil libertarian at Culture 11 two years ago, and hes still a civil libertarian.
    i dont see that either EDK or Conor have changed a hair in their incipient comb-overs..
    Conor bashes Palin and Levin, EDK bashes charter schools and tax-jihadis.
    big whup.
    do you membah EDK’s BEEG POST on Gary Johnson?
    the guy wears a fucking toupe.
    mitch daniels is 5’3″, chris christie is FAT, and Gary Johnson has terminal MBP.
    romney and huntsman are mormons.
    jeezus get the clown suits– all those retards are profoundly unelectable.

  154. 154.

    Tattoosydney

    @Martin:

    Oh well, I’ll just have to comfort myself with remembering our handy socia1ised medical system, effective and engaged unions with a major role in government, and increasingly ignored and ineffectual religious right wing.

    Such is life.

  156. 156.

    sukabi

    @Evinfuilt: well when young and before it flowers, cilantro leaves have a distinctly different flavor than after it produces flowers… and the seeds taste really different as well…

    so cilantro is best for salsas and other mexican food and coriander is better in others.

  157. 157.

    Yutsano

    @Martin: Oh trust me, we have had the coriander/cilantro debate between us. It’s now at the level of a cold peace. He’s a stubborn chile, that one.

    @Tattoosydney: Hey, to be absolutely fair, you DO have a private medical system. The fact that yours is layered on top of a public doorstop so at least everyone is covered is, well, damn cool.

    Hi hon. I sound like I’m fucking going through puberty again my voice is cracking so much.

  158. 158.

    Evolved Deep Southerner

    I swear to God DAMN y’all are all a little obsessed with Sullivan and McCardle and them. I don’t visit Sullivan nearly as often as I visit this place, but I do visit him some, and, yeah, it pisses me off some times, but so do you.

    I’ve really got no sense of where all the writers and blogs fit in the constellations of the blogosphere, but are they just really so fucking popular that every utterance and error of theirs gets to be a topic here?

    Shit, broaden your horizons. They must be doing something right if y’all just can’t quit them.

  160. 160.

    Martin

    @Tattoosydney: Proper tacos beats proper health care any day of the week. And you might have a social safety net, but in America anyone can look, dress, and act like a cheap hooker and land a spot on Jersey Shore.

  161. 161.

    Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)

    Call it what you will, it’s repulsive. I’m pretty sure I have that gene that makes coriander/cilantro taste like soap.

    @Mnemosyne: Or a Minutemen fan. We all know it’s PEE-dro.

  162. 162.

    minachica

    @Martin: Also missing from Sully’s “protest adorations about Bahrain”:

    A representative from the Bahraini teachers’ union has declared Sunday a national protest day, calling for all teachers to stay at home and for parents not to send their kids to school.

  163. 163.

    Tattoosydney

    @Yutsano:

    cold peace

    Nuh-uh.

    You’re wrong. It’s a coriander plant with coriander leaves and coriander seeds, and ain’t nothing going to make me call any part of it anything but “coriander”, fucker.

    ETA: Unless I’m speaking Portuguese, of course. I don’t mind “coentro”.

  166. 166.

    Donut

    @matoko_chan:

    You are asking me why I am reading ED Kain’s post … in a comment thread on an ED Kain post.

    Forreal?

    I mean, really? Really?

    Okay.

    PS – Kain actually writes his own stuff. You sorta seem to have missed that point in my earlier comment. Maybe. Actually, I don’t think so, but whatever. You’re funny.

  171. 171.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @khead:

    BTW, thanks for the kind words from some of you folks.

    Not me, but I’m a hugger if you ever need one of those.

  172. 172.

    Yutsano

    @Tattoosydney: Heh. Don’t make me throw “culantro” into all of this. Puerto Rico has enough issues to deal with as it is. And it’s a totally different plant anyway. Tastes very similar though.

    But if you’re interested in getting directed to the spice aisle as opposed to the produce department, by all means continue in your error.

    EDIT: We done need a new thread don’t we?

  173. 173.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Dan:

    part of sullivan’s problem is that he feels the need to comment on every controversy regardless of whether he knows anything about it.
     
    When he’s talking about stuff that he does know, he can be pretty insightful. He doesn’t know shit about wisconsin, though.

    Fix’t dat fer ya.

    I find that cleaning the cat box is more informative than reading Andy the Sullivan. More productive too!

  174. 174.

    JPL

    In order to balance the budget last year the state of GA made several small changes. One having to do with taxing hospital stays, well, duh, they can blame that one on Obama but the other one had to do with the poor. A friend of mine works with the elderly poor doing their taxes. This year they found out they out 82 dollars more. That might not mean much to you and me but 82 dollars for someone living on 5 to 6 thousand a year is a lot. We are talking about folks that can’t afford canned tuna. When will it stop?

  175. 175.

    matoko_chan

    @Tattoosydney: im am a sufi/quellist hypersapient. we have been over that.
    @Donut: i have declared kanly on EDK.
    it is my geas to ruin his threads by pointing out who he really is.

  181. 181.

    Tattoosydney

    @matoko_chan:

    Yeah, I get that, but you keep talking about “civil libertarians” as if people who believe in individual freedoms for everyone (i.e. civil libertarians like, say, the ACLU) are exactly congruent with “libertarians” (i.e. people who live in their mum’s basement and masturbate over Ayn Rand and believe in freedoms only for themselves and the very rich).

    /edited slightly after posting

    ETA: Mind you, I think you are DougJ anyway, so wilful misunderstanding is almost certainly an integral part of your “persona”.

  182. 182.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @matoko_chan:

    Shhh! Everyone is the enemy! Remember, loose lips sink ships.

    Now have another slice of cudlip pie. Toss a bit of your whipped up froth on top to add some zest to it.

  183. 183.

    matoko_chan

    @nestor: the Major would have spit on EDK. as i do.
    Batou says it best,

    But no matter how far a jackass may travel, it will never return as a horse.

  184. 184.

    Villago Delenda Est

    workers have to vote the union back into existence every single year

    Let’s do this with corporations!

  185. 185.

    bago

    Look around you.
    Look around you.
    Can you guess what we’re talking about?

    Maths.

    (Seriously, go to YouTube and look up “look around you” particularly the maths episode. “

  186. 186.

    Elia

    I think a lot of this is that he gets excited by and puts extreme value in pissing off liberals, especially his liberal readers; it means he’s intellectually courageous and iconoclastic or something or other. It also keeps him in the news.

  187. 187.

    kdaug

    @Catsy:

    I don’t get why people still treat him as if he has any credibility at all.

    We tend to want to believe in the humanity of our fellow, well, humans, I guess, and are looking to grasp onto any shred remaining.

  190. 190.

    Turgidson

    @satby:

    I like that better. That’s more or less what I thought it should be. Not sure why, but “Honor with an ee sound at the end” wasn’t working for me.

  191. 191.

    Fax Paladin

    Welcome to Austin, Texas (where I went to college):

    Guadalupe: GWAD-a-loop
    Manor: MAY-nor
    Manchaca: MAN-shack

  193. 193.

    matoko_chan

    @kdaug:

    We tend to want to believe in the humanity of our fellow, well, humans, I guess, and are looking to grasp onto any shred remaining.

    and they exploit that. that is why Douchebag has an oped on the NYT and why McMegan gets airtime at the Atlantic and Conor gets a slot at the Dish………and why EDK is a frontpager here.

  195. 195.

    Corner Stone

    @kdaug:

    We tend to want to believe in the humanity of our fellow, well, humans, I guess, and are looking to grasp onto any shred remaining.

    Nope.
    Anyone still expecting Sully to tap into his humanity is a god damned fool.

  196. 196.

    Corner Stone

    For fuck’s sake. Anyone still stupid enough to read Sully just needs to read over his recent responses to women who sent him e-mails regarding their pregnancies/abortions/life.

  197. 197.

    Tattoosydney

    @Yutsano:

    Please tell me you’re just bored and using this thing as your new cat toy.

    I’m kind of with Wyldpirate on this one – I think that m_c says useful and interesting stuff some of the time. It’s unfortunate that it’s carefully hidden under all the wah.

  198. 198.

    Tattoosydney

    @matoko_chan:

    Ok. You’re not DougJ.

    Getting back to my point – instead of shouting that ED is a “civil libertarian” and therefore evil, would it not be better to recognise the distinction and make your actual argument which is that ED is still a “libertarian” now pretending to be a progressive?

    (noting that I don’t agree with you on that point – I fully accept that people can change over time and realise that the stupid arguments that they made previously (whether in good faith or not) were, in fact, stupid)

  199. 199.

    kdaug

    @Martin:

    Proper tacos beats proper health care any day of the week

    To paraphrase Tom from an earlier post – tread softly here:

    What, praytell, is your version of a “proper taco”?

    Lived in Austin for a couple decades now, and we tend to take these things seriously.

  200. 200.

    Bob

    Sully is more open to change than most bloggers and admitting it at least. (unlike our lady of the Megs). If you write to him and reason with him about a large number of topics, he’ll at least post other views, which he’s already done with Wisconsin.

    But he has this weird thing where he immediately trusts what pols say without the vaguest inkling of what they actually DO. Which is why you’ve seen him pimping Christie, Daniels, GW Bush, Ryan without actually…well looking at how hollow their actions are. He gets all cheerleader about them without realizing they have gaping flaws that will tank them.

  203. 203.

    sukabi

    @Bob: his “weird thing” might be lust blindness… it’s why some people can’t see that the person they’re madly in love with is a psycho, and everyone around them is like “WTF — he’s a total psycho” and they’re like “no, he’s totally dreamy”\

    anyway that’s my working theory… and it also explains Chris Matthews fawning over GWB {{{{shudder}}}} and other male R’s…

  204. 204.

    jwb

    @Bob: But he only ever trusts a certain kind of pol. He may change his mind for awhile, but then there he is again, right back where he was six months ago and you end up having the same fucking argument all over again.

  206. 206.

    jazzgurl

    What a shame Sully has really lost it. It seems that he actually went to Conservative Rehab while he was away and got ‘sullied’ and has now come back true to the fold. Oh how I long for the Andrew Sullivan I tuned into daily. Sorry Andrew, but you have lost me bigtime. I don’t mind you stating a point as you used to, but when you lower yourself to GOP abuse tactics of personal attacks like coward, weak etc, and pimp ‘nothing much to offer folksies’ as hopefuls,I’m long gone.

  207. 207.

    Sleeping Dog

    For the last couple of years, I couldn’t figure out who the Obama was that Sully had a man crush on. The Obama who is disappointing Sully now is the same one who mismanaged health care, the stimulus and the Wall St. reforms.

    He was an empty suit then and an empty suit now.

  211. 211.

    Gian

    andy s… look, I’ve got low standards for a lor of moral stuff, but the 2001 era stuff about him being HIV positive and advertising for “bareback” sex
    well that kinds bugs me and gives me an overall idea that he’s a selfsish asshole.

    I mean look, I’m willing to risk you getting a really bad disease to get my rocks off bugs the hell out of me as a moral prop.

    I mean really, do the peeps that he has sex with have a right to know?

    to be brit “I’m alright Jack, keep your hand off of my stack”

    google AS and bareback and it’ll come up. look, I’m married to a female, I have kids, I’m not gay, I but really, as a moral issue, if I was HIV positive, I’d tell people and I’d wear a condom.

    That whole bit alone was enough to sour me to AS forever. I’m something of a romantic, I’m more concerned if the folks I fuck contract a life changing disease/death than he seems to be..

    But for me – that lil revalation showed a lot about AS’s character.

    was essentially – I got my rocks off and I don’t care if you get a really expensive and limiting disease… and if you die younger than you should, and given my views on health care…

  212. 212.

    Corner Stone

    @jazzgurl:

    I don’t mind you stating a point as you used to, but when you lower yourself to GOP abuse tactics of personal attacks like coward, weak etc, and pimp ‘nothing much to offer folksies’ as hopefuls,I’m long gone.

    When are you people going to get it?
    This IS who he is!

  213. 213.

    Sad Iron

    Here’s why Sullivan could care less about us folks battling like hell in Wisconsin:

    1. We’re not Middle Eastern or exotic enough to make us valid protesters.

    2. He doesn’t want to ask people to change their browsers to Badger red, which is too hard on the eyes.

    3. Midwestern people using Twitter and Facebook to organize is too easy, whereas it is shocking and uplifting when accomplished by an Iranian or Egyption.

    4. None of this connects to Sarah Palin’s secret children

    5. None of this is on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page

    6. Sullivan respects Sarah Palin’s use of social networking because she’s Sarah Palin, and therefore she does not need to paint her fingers any specific color. We in Wisconsin tried to paint our fingers red, but they weren’t Egyption fingers, so Sully is giving us the finger.

    7. This has nothing to do with The Pet Shop Boys

    8. Pictures from the Capitol building do not qualify for “The View from Your Window” coffetable book.

    9. The signage has been, in some cases, offensive to Sullivan, and signage trumps civil rights–in fact, it earns you a Moore Award nomination.

    10. Did I mention that Sarah Palin is not in Wisconsin?

  214. 214.

    E.D. Kain

    @jfxgillis: Jack – you did tell me, and I didn’t believe you! Because Sully was really pretty good there for a while, and that’s the first I’d read him honestly. I’d never read him back in the war days when he was a warblogger, though I’d heard. I figured he’d changed for the better. Guess not.

  218. 218.

    TenguPhule

    With all due respect to GLBT everywhere, Andrew Sullivan is a Fucking Tory Fag who needs to DIAF.

  219. 219.

    johnny walker

    Whatever twinges of sanity Sullivan shows from time to time will always be secondary to the prime directive, namely sucking the ass of whoever he perceives as the ascendant power in Washington at the time. He probably already has an Obama mea culpa in the can, so the next move is laying down markers for his disillusionment with the next hot candidate, movement or who-knows-what. Poor Andy, people are always disappointing him.

    Btw, how pissed you think he is that he missed a chance to reskin his blog for Egypt?

  220. 220.

    Mike Drew

    Sullivan:
    “But, no, I don’t see it as outrageous that a freshly elected GOP governor and legislature want to renegotiate some deals with public sector unions, and I see no reason why the president should intervene.”

    He really wrote that. This is obviously Joe-Scarborough-level cluelessness. To be fair, the guy’s been out and has a lot to catch up on from before the Madison turning point arrived. But still: he actually thinks it’s the unions who don’t want to negotiate here! What can one even say? I just hope this is a clarifying moment for a lot of his readers.

    Not clarifying that he is a hack, because I still see his ability to change his view on Iraq and his work on torture as valuable, but clarifiying about the kinds of lies about human outcomes and just underlying realities one needs to tell oneself to adopt the institutional attitude of Reaganite economics that still reign supreme in the Village.

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