Sullivan is mad because of this comment last night:
The fundamental thing you need to understand when talking to deficit hawks is that when they say something is painful or that cuts will hurt people, you need to recognize that what they really mean is that the cuts will be painful TO SOMEONE ELSE and hurt people THEY DON’T KNOW AND WILL NEVER MEET. That’s why it’s so easy to be a condescending asshole about the budget. That’s why it takes nothing to suggest raising the retirement age for Social Security. That’s why, after taking a month off from writing on the internet to recover from a cold, he can tell people who work back-breaking manual labor every day of their god damned lives for much less money than he or McMegan earn that they should “contribute” more to their health care costs.
Three weeks, actually. Cole adds his own personal touch to attacking me for being lazy rather than sick. I haven’t given every single detail of my own bout of illness for what small shred is left of my privacy. But when you are HIV-positive for 17 years and have a triple viral, bacterial and fungal infection in your already asthmatic lungs, are attached to a nebulizer because you cannot breathe even when stationary, and lose half your t-cells in a month, you’re not just “recovering from a cold”. Yes, I am lucky to have an employer’s health insurance. That’s why I backed a law that makes it possible for everyone to have access to such insurance. But just because I believe that the debt will kill us unless we tackle defense, revenues and Medicare, I am a heartless, insulated, lying asshole. Really: you have to resort to this kind of nastiness to make a point?
I do regret claiming he just had a cold, because with the additional information, it is a cheap shot. For that, I am sorry, and Sullivan, more than anyone, knows the dangers in hasty and hot-headed blogging. I apologize, Andrew.
However, Sullivan still doesn’t get it- the austerity measures he is advocating would be a personal attack on millions of people. Millions of people who do not have the kind of health insurance, job security, or line of work that would afford them the luxuries Andrew has. Let’s look at how he now states he wants to deal with our financial problems:
Actually, my own position – that we should focus future cuts on the wealthier elderly (by means-testing, higher premiums based on income, etc), that sending social security checks to Warren Buffet is unaffordable, that the Bush tax cuts on those earning over $250,000 should go because of the fiscal crisis, that defense should be on the table – doesn’t seem like an attack on the poor. If I live long and prosper, I’d be the one getting taxed at much higher rates, getting much less social security and paying bigger premiums and bigger co-pays for Medicare.
Really? That’s it? Because I really don’t have any problem with any of that, although means testing social security in that manner won’t account for much money at all, which Krugman has pointed out repeatedly. I know, I know- when you get all your financial analysis from McMegan, it requires ignoring or mocking Krugman. But even then, what he proposes would be an inconvenience for him at some later date, but for others with fewer financial means, they would be disastrous.
Let’s continue on and examine Sullivan’s posting the past few days to see where he makes these assertions and see if these issues come up. Here he quotes Chris Christie (serious Republican), at length:
“Let me suggest to you that what game is being played down here is irresponsible and it’s dangerous. We need to say these things and we need to say them out loud. When we say we’re cutting spending, when we say everything is on the table, when we say we mean entitlement programs, we should be specific. And let me tell you what is the truth. What’s the truth that no one is talking about? Here is the truth that no one is talking about: you’re going to have to raise the retirement age for social security. Oh I just said it and I’m still standing here! I did not vaporize into the carpeting and I said it.
We have to reform Medicare because it costs too much and it is going to bankrupt us. Once again lightning did not come through the windows and strike me dead. And we have to fix Medicaid because it’s not only bankrupting the federal government, it’s bankrupting every state government. There you go. If we’re not honest about these things, on the state level about pensions and benefits and on the federal level about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, we are on the path to ruin,” – governor Chris Christie.
Oddly enough, no mention of increasing revenues or means testing Social Security. Lots of pain for everyone else, though, including going after pensions. Here’s a post about the budget crisis in California:
The Golden State’s legislature is deeply beholden to public employee unions, so reformers are looking to Governor Jerry Brown for answers. And like his analogues at the national level, making good policy for the people will require him to go against his political interests.
No mention of additional revenue, and more pain for the masses. Here’s another, urging Obama to attack entitlements:
This is as plausible as the arguments that it’s a political loser for Obama to propose entitlement cuts. Even so, the most compelling reason to put forth a budget that actually addresses the fiscal issues plaguing the United States is that it’s the right thing to do. Partisans can always fool themselves into the proposition that public policy is served better in the long run by doing the politically expedient thing in the short term.
But here’s the thing: for pols who focus on short term expedience, the long term never arrives. There’s always a theory that explains why serious reforms are best pursued during the next session of Congress, or after the next election.
Notice anything missing? Here’s the snide post that started it all, and finally, a mention of tax increases:
The current math simply demands either massive tax hikes or massive benefit cuts in the future. Adjusting now will make the future, relative suffering less rather than more painful. And like Megan, I’d like to see the cuts focus on those who are most able to afford it. To use the obvious example: why should we be sending Warren Buffet a social security check?
But my worry is that not only will acting now make the pain more bearable later, but not acting now may precipitate a financial collapse of confidence in the US that would mean far worse misery than the government actually balancing its books. Borrowing to help people now – at the great expense of people later – is not a responsible policy. And financial panics and crises tend to happen with little warning.
Alas, the tax increases are not suggested as a remedy, even though the Bush (and now Obama) tax cuts, the former of which Sullivan and I both foolishly supported are one of the biggest holes in the budget. But again, this is not a proposal, but a threat of future tax increases. The inconsequential means testing of social security does get a mention, though. Perhaps if he stopped outsourcing to McMegan, he’d know how little this means in the big picture.
And even in this post, when DeBoer takes great pains to point out the actual pain this action would cause, Sullivan’s response is “No shit” and then to simply state it needs to be done to avoid future pain. It’s flabbergasting that someone like me, who reads everything Sullivan writes would come to the conclusion that “you need to recognize that what they really mean is that the cuts will be painful TO SOMEONE ELSE and hurt people THEY DON’T KNOW AND WILL NEVER MEET. ” It’s a real mystery why I would come to that conclusion, isn’t it? And I’m someone who has spent the last decade giving him the benefit of the doubt.
And finally, with the added information, I concur that claiming he had “just a cold” is a nasty personal attack. But why is it acceptable for Andrew to launch what amount to personal attacks on millions of people every single day? Because he doesn’t know their names or illness or line of work and won’t hear about it if and when the pain caucus and austerity now brigades, in the form of Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie, or the union bashing goons in the form of Scott Walker, all people Sullivan is defending, get their way? Is that what makes it different? Because when you tell millions of people they no longer deserve the pension they are counting on, and tell millions of people to eat a bag of dicks because Megan’s math demands something, trust me, it is a personal attack.
And it is one that matters beyond a flippant “No shit.”
BTW- I have no idea what sick blogger he is talking about (although it did inspire the title of this post), unless he is confused about the mention of Tunch’s anal glands, which would be amusing on several levels.
cathyx
I thought I read that if the tax rate was restored to Clinton era rates, then no cuts would even be needed.
dmsilev
Blogfight!
I’ll make the popcorn. I assume butter and a pinch of salt is OK with everyone?
dms
Allen
“… even though the Bush (and now Obama) tax increases, the former of which Sullivan and I both foolishly supported are one of the biggest holes in the budget.”
I assume you meant tax cuts?
cathyx
@dmsilev: Blog fights are more fun when they happen right here in the comment section.
jwb
We all know that Tunch is the real blogger on this site.
piratedan
Gee if we’re talking about economic shared pain, how about a little bit for all those people currently making above 200K a year versus kicking poor people of the public health rolls, I’m looking at you Jan “Cactus Barbie” Brewer. Austerity is all well and good for those folks that “already got theirs”, its the same old shtick promoted by the same old crew, zero sun economics, only so much wealth to go around. the only tax these well heeled yahoos support is a sales tax and hey, if you already got yours then there is no need to buy anything is there?
Mark S.
But, Warren Buffet, social security check.
How many times has he fucked that chicken this week?
Valdivia
Hurray. Also too–Sulli is fawning over deficit peacocks not real hawks. They could not care less about the deficit, cause if they did (and if he did) they would credit Obama for trying to adress the major source of it health care. Please Mitch Daniels who he has been fellating non stop was Bush’s budget guy, he is making the health spending situation worse in IN and is pure peacock all the way cause he wants the taxes to be cut or eliminated. Ugh. Hypocrites and idiots who lack basic knowledge of how economics works.
Lysana
“Monitor and mock as needed.”
Seriously, Sully’s off the deep end. Has been for a long time. His place on the main blogroll is as confusing to me as Dan Savage’s, considering the volume of hate that man spews at bisexuals, trans people, and fat people.
patrick II
Evidently he was pretty sick. And he takes it personally that you didn’t care. Poor people get sick too, and I take it personally that he doesn’t care. He rationalizes it better than most, but in the end we either do what it takes for healthcare for everyone, or as he demonstrate, regardless of his rather nifty rationalizations, we don’t.
You figured it out awhile ago, Ed figured it out more recently, but good ol’ Sullivan is too proud of his own cleverness which he cares a lot more about what happens to himself than the less important people in the world.
dmsilev
@cathyx: True, but sadly Sullivan doesn’t do comments even on his own site, never mind on someone else’s.
dms
Reks
Sully regrets the use of “no shit”. He actually meant to say “so be it”.
Left Coast Tom
@dmsilev:
Pink Himalayan Sea Salt, please. It’s important to follow the Austerity example of the Atlantic’s bloggers.
JenJen
Ha!! Thanks for the first good laugh I’ve had in days, re: Tunch, of course.
I didn’t understand his closing paragraph at all, so that’s as good an explanation as any.
MattF
And so, ‘fiscal conservatism’ turns out to be an elusive concept. It’s not just innumeracy, but only approaches, asymptotically.
Scanner Lightly
Maybe Sullivan’s reference to the “sick blogger” was his dismay at heartlessness from your crack about his cold. Or, Tunch. I guess.
It’s pretty amusing that cutting “Warren Buffet’s Social Security check” is being waved around as a defense. Hooray! His implicit premise mentioning that is no one sacrifices when Buffet’s check gets cut, but that’s supposed to be one of the great myriad ways he’d have the rich sacrifice! “I won’t order the filet mignon anymore” *is* a sacrifice, but when you support making people unemployed, forgive me if I’m not impressed by the magnitude of shared frugality.
JGabriel
Sully:
I guess I have to respond to this here, since Sully doesn’t allow comments:
Sully attacks the benefits of people who don’t have much, and, when counter-attacked, whines, “It’s all they seem to have”?
Yeah, it’s all they have — because the politicians and capitalists you support take everything else from them, you fucking jackass.
(Credit where credit is due: at least Sully names names and provides links back here, unlike his passive aggressive blogging assistant. Yes, Friedersdorf, that means you.)
.
Phil Perspective
Cole:
Sully saw the light, more or less, on foreign policy a while back. He still loves Thatcher’s economic policies. I wrote him an email a week ago and asked if he liked the mess Cameron is making of the British economy. He hasn’t answered. I think that says it all.
sherifffruitfly
Well, so sick – I’d be curious to know what kind of insurance he has. I have a sneaking suspicion that a whole bunch of other Americans would like to have that insurance, too.
edit: And I recommend you do NOT fall for the oh-im-sick-INSTAARGUMENTWINBUTTON ploy.
cyntax
It’s really too bad that Sully has fallen hook, line, and sinker for the austerity BS, but it is cloaked in the mantle of serious authority and if he’s got a weakness, that’s it.
Ksmiami
Thank you Cole for being fundamentally decent in the face of pure elitist idiocy. And you did not throw a cheap shot at sullys illness you only asked him to reflect on the right wing policy prescriptions and how they hurtthe people who are the weakest in our society.but as burrs have said sully lacks empathy and is a preening narcissist who has never had to make the choice betweenfood or a sick child’s medicine
Citizen_X
Honestly, for Chris Christie, that’s a lot of fucking vaporization. I mean, you’d empty a whole phaser pack trying to make that guy disappear.
I know, I’m being flippant, fat-shaming and trivial. I apologize. So here’s a serious comment for Gov. Loudmouth: go spend a couple of years working construction before you go talking about raising the SS retirement age, or STFU.
Just Some Fuckhead
He was talking about you. He has no idea your injury has since healed.
Doc Marten
Aww. Poor Andrew. That tool can dish it out, but when someone calls him on his bullshit, he sure can’t take it.
gbear
Great post. This gay bear believes that Sully absolutely deserves every word you’ve written. Thanks.
Church Lady
Every thirty or forty year old that has been paying into Social Security and Medicare since they graduated from high school or college deserves to get the retirement benefits they’ve been promised too. Unfortunately, unless something is done, and soon, to rein in entitlements, they won’t see shit.
Citizen_X
@Scanner Lightly: I’ll point out the irony in Sully’s use of Warren Buffet as an example: what does Mr. Buffet, himself, suggest in regards to our budget problems? RAISING HIS TAX RATES, that’s what.
Observer
Andrew Sullivan writes interesting things but lets his ideology lead him to advocate for bad things that eventually he feels sorry for once it becomes apparent to him how horrible the outcomes of his stances are.
But Cole, let’s be get real here, Andrew isn’t the one signing legislation.
And shit rolls downhill so if you could take your passion and aim it at Obama and his bullshit conservadem ways, that would be better.
Whatever faults Andrew has, he didn’t cause Obama to equivocate and allow a too small stimulus back in 2009.
And Andrew didn’t cause immeasurable harm by enabling 2+ years of 9% unemployment and then followed that up with closed door White House meetings to continue tax cuts for millionaires while raising taxes on the lower class.
And Andrew doesn’t have a chief of staff responsible for steering a trillion dollar budget who just told the Republicans that the race is on to cut spending.
So sure, Andrew might be harsh on the poor and unfortunate, but he didn’t negotiate with Grover Norquist behind your back and he didn’t decide to freeze the pay of hundreds of thousands of people.
And finally, Andrew didn’t tell the “professional left” to get stuffed when they saw clear as day this nightmare train wreck which we’re now in the middle of.
Just trying to put things in perspective.
Anya
It’s been said many times, but its worth repeating. Sullivan is a self absorbed, insufferable, obnoxious and conceited ass who supports issues, only, when they affect him personally. I sometimes read his blog because he’s a talented writer and he chronicles the grifter Palin’s little lies perfectly.
John Cole
Which is why you supported the tax cuts to give away the “surplus,” which was actually social security receipts.
Just Some Fuckhead
Fuck the apology. Sully has the one job you can do in an oxygen tent and his interns are doing all the heavy lifting anyway.
asiangrrlMN
You hurt Sully’s feelings, Cole. Why can’t you be more civil?
I, too, don’t understand why Sully isn’t under the blogs you mock. He is what he is.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve been skimming Sullivan’s posts on Obama’s great budget betrayal, and he keeps scolding BO for not adopting Bowles-Simpson. I won’t pretend to have read that BS report, but IIANM they actually call for further income tax cuts– never mind reinstating pre-Bush rates as Sullivan seems to be doing, sometimes, when he’s not not doing that– and a lot of unspecified cuts, the “magic asteriks” that Krugman and others have cited, that will in the end only lead to increased unemployment.
I took JC’s comment on Sullivan’s time off to get over a cold to be an intentionally glib counter to Sully and Bowles and Simpson glibly calling for an increase in the retirement age. Easy to say if you’re a professional sitter-on-your-ass, not so much for coal miners, waitresses, truck drivers, etc.
Three-nineteen
How does raising the retirement age for Social Security help solve the budget “crisis” when Social Security has its own revenue stream that the payouts use? Am I missing something?
lllphd
what i find particularly interesting is the fact that sully is refusing to post ANYthing about wisconsin!
his first notes were cursory and deferring to joke line (of all people), and calling the state dem senators “pathetic” for bolting.
now, what’s curious about this, and consistent with the poor man’s penchant for contradictions and hypocrisies, is that he has been such a vocal and valiant promoter for all the protests in the middle east! it comes home, and suddenly he’s talking about making the math work? hello??? and calling those supporting the protesters pathetic?
last night he posted three readers trashing his “pathetic” post, which speaks to his potential courage, but now, he’s gone all day without even a peep on the topic. instead, we get a huffy and defensive self-defense post against bjuice, and a dancing goat.
General Stuck
I’m going to cut myself
Benny
@lllphd: Actually, he did post about Wisconsin. But he obviously decided he didn’t need to do the homework and quoted Joe Klein, who also decided not to do his homework.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Three-nineteen:
Yes. We are essentially saying we won’t be able to pay Social Security back for all the money we borrowed in order to give Church Lady a fat tax refund so now everyone is going to have to suck it up for her.
Martin
I would like to hear from Sully what exactly he envisions entitlement reform will look like. He mentions it a lot, and he’s mentioned means testing as an acceptable reform, but he doesn’t seem to distinguish between the various issues different entitlement programs face.
What most pernicious about the entitlement situation is at the time that you are drawing the greatest benefits out of the pool, it’s receiving the fewest contributions. At that moment, it looks wholly unsustainable. If we added an orthogonal revenue source (a smaller tax on foreign corporate profits, for example) then as unemployment or other benefits had to pay out, there’s a chance that this other revenue stream might actually be increasing as well. What we have isn’t a failing of the entitlement state, just a failing of how it’s paid for and how politicians use that as a cudgel against it.
SGEW
Well done.
Martin
@lllphd: I noticed that as well. He’s all for democratic activities outside of his residential country, but not for inside?
I don’t expect he would come down cleanly on one side or another, but that’s no reason to not report on it at all.
Alex S.
I don’t understand what people mean when they want me to suck a bag of dicks.
Just Some Fuckhead
I believe the next rhetorical flourish will be Sully clutching his chest and slumping over in mock illness.
Elia
John, you hit on all the arguments I made my girlfriend listen to after reading Andrew’s response. I think he needs to understand that when he calls Democrats “pathetic,” he’s inviting an inflammatory response in turn. It’s not really fair for him to act as if he isn’t throwing rhetorical haymakers around, too.
Also he hasn’t done a good job clarifying his position, as he did there. And it remains somewhat perplexing that he holds so steadfast to it consider there is data, as you cited, which seriously complicates the narrative he’s subscribed to. The whole thing is rather curious.
Ash Can
Sullivan will write something decent and sensible, then he’ll go off the rails for a while. Then he’ll turn up all sensible again, out of the blue. I give him credit for the stuff he comes up with when his head’s on straight, but overall I can’t be bothered with keeping up with his mood swings.
PeakVT
The current math simply demands either massive tax hikes or massive benefit cuts in the future.
I posted something about this in the last thread. It’s bullshit, and reflective of his level of knowledge of the entire budget/economy subject area.
NobodySpecial
If I wanted to sound like a Republican, I’d ask why any of my money should go towards treating his HIV positive ass, since obviously he didn’t get it from a bad blood transfusion. Actions have consequences, you know, and his deviant lifestyle was no doubt the reason his bloodstream is impurified so much that a mere cold puts him out for weeks at a time.
He’s obviously unproductive at best now, so why waste my precious money on him? He should just go to an emergency room next time and get the best health care in the world.
And if Sullivan or anyone else on his side of the aisle doesn’t like it, then you realize why us lefties get so fucking tired of hearing the Sullivans of this world push this tripe every day for their entire adult lives.
kdaug
Hot damn, just got home from a stupid meet-n-greet conference, and this is what’s waiting for me?
Intertrons, you are too good to me.
Pooh
To use one of Sully’s greatest hits, I think it’s fair to say he’s objectively pro-human suffering.
Shock Trooper in the War on Christmas
@Lysana:
At least the fat ones had it coming.
Napoleon
I see the Church Lady has shown up to prove what a completely clueless know nothing she is.
Hey Church Lady, it is beyond dispute that if absolutely nothing is done to “fix” SS that payouts will still managed to rise until some several decades in the future at which time they will still be paid out until the end of time at a level above todays.
No one disputes that except know nothing internet posters like you.
Go away you hack.
John Cole
No. I actually thought he had a cold and took three weeks off. Remember, just a couple days back I posted this:
Then he came back and made some post about recharging and what not, and I thought he just was recovering idly from a cold. Not having HIV or asthma, and him not really talking about it, I had no idea he was near death.
maya
I’m interested in knowing what the threshold for Sulli’s new love interest: the Social Security means test, will be. It can’t be anywhere above $250k per year because, you know, that was an insufficient income to bear the tax repeal that Obama wanted, remember? So what would it be? Huh? Any ideas Sulli?
different church-lady
Dude, you guys are completely in Sully’s head. No way he makes a shot for the rest of this game.
Three-nineteen
@Just Some Fuckhead: Ah, got it now. BTW, wasn’t it funny how Al Gore just kept saying the word “LOCKBOX” over and over again in the 2000 presidential debates? How pathetic.
LOCKBOX! Ha ha ha ha.
Just Some Fuckhead
Sully will live a long and happy life in no small part to the THREE BILLION DOLLARS the US Government spends on AIDS research every year.
General Stuck
Nothing like the intuitiveness of having a wonkie debate over economic nuance of US domestic safety net tribulations with a fucking foreigner wingnut from a pensioner socialistic country as compared to ours. Sully is mostly fretting about the possibility of entitlement for Queen Sarah the First, coming from moose laden peasant stock, dragging a passel of illegitimate snot nosed cracker babies named after tree parts into the American castle of his nightmares. It would offend his paternalistic tory brit sensibilities to no end. British wingers have their standards, ummph!
moron
I do regret claiming he just had a cold, because with the additional information, it is a cheap shot. For that, I am sorry, and Sullivan, more than anyone, knows the dangers in hasty and hot-headed blogging. I apologize, Andrew.
You shouldn’t. Sullivan claimed last week his illness wasn’t HIV-related and you took him at his word.
He can’t have it both ways — if he wants to minimize his HIV so that people won’t give him a hard time about getting his
LT
His response was basically, “My position: I like puppies.” It had nothing to do with the subject at hand.
lllphd
@Martin:
i actually suspect that it’s too much of cognitive dissonance for him. how would he, after all, explain the contradiction? can he really say egypt was a good cause, and these working americans are not? and in light of the facts about walker’s setting this whole thing up, plus his refusal to accept the union’s agreement to lose the money but keep the rights, these force him to look more deeply at how sinister it all is.
cameron is simultaneously exploding his precious thatcher-world, so he’s got to be doing some serious scowling; not clear if it will lead to any soul-searching, but we’ll see. i keep hoping, as it can happen…..
batgirl
@Mark S.: The minute social security is means-tested, the program is dead. Sullivan is too smart to not know that. Fuck him.
lllphd
@Benny:
i said that!! joke line, joe klein, whatever….
Benjamin Cisco
@General Stuck:
That was awfully understated, Stuck. You sure you feeling OK?
Napoleon
By the way, as alluring that means testing may sound it is political suicide to go down that path. If we do it now for the top 2%, then 10 years from now it will be the top 25%, the before you know it it will be a program only “those” people and the moochers off of society and therefore eliminated.
Also I have not read Sully for at least 2 years. He is terrible. I can not help feeling though that means he will be around 30 years from now since the village will love him for it.
Citizen Alan
Honestly, my impression of Sullivan has always been that as a small child, he decided that winning this competition was the goal to which he would devote his miserable life.
LT
I believe it’d be fair to add that you asked, in a worried tone, about Sullivan’s health while he was out.
John W.
Sullivan’s like the Robert Evans of the internet by now.
Gozer
I still haven’t forgiven Sullivan for his unrepentant support of Charles Murray at TNR.
Ruckus
@NobodySpecial:
Agree 100%
Alex S.
@lllphd:
That’s probably why he insists that all these revolutions are caused by Twitter and Facebook, not by angry working people.
General Stuck
@Benjamin Cisco:
Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully, Scully,
Feeling better now. Thanks!
PurpleGirl
Re Warren Buffet’s check:
According to the SSA the maximum check is $2,346 a month ($28,152 a year). The AVERAGE check is $1,153 a month ($13,836 a year).
If we means test it, it becomes a welfare program and much easier to kill off completely.
moron
I do regret claiming he just had a cold, because with the additional information, it is a cheap shot. For that, I am sorry, and Sullivan, more than anyone, knows the dangers in hasty and hot-headed blogging. I apologize, Andrew.
You shouldn’t. Sullivan claimed last week his illness wasn’t HIV-related and you took him at his word.
He can’t have it both ways — if he wants to minimize his HIV so that people won’t give him a hard time about getting his irrigated , he shouldn’t turn around and use his condition in an appeal to pity in order to avoid addressing your perfectly valid criticism that he lacks any sympathetic understanding for the working conditions of the vast majority of American workers — many of whom would be bankrupt or dead if they had to deal with Sullivan’s HIV related illness on their inadequate salary and benefits.
Benz
@Valdivia: Indeed. Mitch Daniels is a Budget Arsonist
LT
“I believe it’d be fair to add that you asked, in a worried tone, about Sullivan’s health while he was out.:
Oh – you already posted that.
Sly
You don’t pursue a fiscal contraction during a liquidity trap and deleveraging crisis because that only provides further incentive against investment and makes the long-term budget position worse. It’s the best example in macroeconomics of fighting fire with gasoline.
If Sully wants to avoid the moral arguments for austerity and focus on the practical ones, then he still has to get around this basic fact: Austerity is just as impractical as it is immoral, if not more so. You’re not only hurting people. You’re hurting people for no fucking reason.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
You know what, I know several people living with HIV and they aren’t selfish, self-centered tool. What’s Sully’s excuse.
Oh yes, he’s a selfish, self-centered tool who happens to have HIV.
General Stuck
There is only one way to fix our entitlement problem, that is basically a Medicare problem. And that is to RAISE TAXES ON RICH PEOPLE mostly, and other people as well. Starting with lifting the cap on FICA. The other thing that needs doing is forming a Truman Commission on Pentagon waste fraud and abuse.
Then we can raid Dick Cheney’s piggy bank for walking around money.
edit – and do single payer healthcare sometime before the Apocalypse.
catpal
are Sullivan and those sudden Deficit Hawks like him willing to see a little less in Big Pharma CEO salaries by significantly Decreasing Medicare Costs by letting Medicare Negotiate Pharma Drug prices like the VA does.
my example again. why One Medicare paid asthma inhaler in the US cost = $320, but is only $90 in Canada.
though I am somewhat sympathetic to his health issues he is lucky to have health insurance unlike still too many, and is He going to condemn the Repugs who want to Remove Funding for the Affordable Care Act, or he is still going to be Go Free Market!
fasteddie9318
You SHOULD have a problem with means-testing Social Security, Cole, and not just because it’s a stupid way to save a pittance of money. Part of the reason Social Security is so beloved in this country while, say, welfare is reviled, is because EVERYONE pays into it and EVERYONE takes out of it when the time comes. If you cut benefits to the rich folks, it becomes welfare. Once it becomes welfare, it’s only a matter of time before it gets cut back to the point of meaninglessness.
Of course, I’d never suggest that a
disingenuous hacksaintly do-gooder who is totally thoughtful and well-meaning like Andy Sullivan knows this and is pimping means testing for that reason. No sir, not me.John Cole
@moron: I don’t think it matters what he said or didn’t say. Even though I didn’t know he was that ill, I still feel bad for stating he just had a cold when he was actually very seriously ill. It’s not a matter of what he actually told us or what I knew, it’s a matter of how I feel now that I know all the facts. And I feel bad I said it, and I apologize.
That’s all I can do- deal with the shit I say and do and handle things on my end.
Lit3Bolt
Sullivan played the HIV card. Harsh! You have to have sympathy for a gay man that refused to use condoms.
BGinCHI
@Valdivia: From way up thread, I love the phrase “deficit peacocks.”
Not sure who coined it, but it’s a perfect description of looking like something you’re not.
Plus it’s kind of like calling them cocks.
inkadu
@Lit3Bolt: What an odd thing to say.
Benz
@Citizen_X: in Fairness to Sullivan, he was for not extending the Bush Tax Cuts. But he sure didn’t raise a fuss about it. At least not as much as Simpson Bowles, and other right-wing fixes.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@BGinCHI: Makes a good companion to “chicken hawk.”
BGinCHI
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): And for the women you get “budget peahen.”
Benz
@patrick II: but then again, that’s what conservatism is, in purely technical terms.
eemom
Awesome. Full out war with the asshole. Now there will be no other topic of discussion for the next 36 hours.
What part of “We don’t give a shit about Andrew Sullivan” do you FPers not GET?
Oh well. It’s Cole’s blog. But I agree with fast eddie from the earlier thread, you oughta just fucking rename it something along the lines of “Weird Obsession With Expat British Drama Queen Juice.”
tkogrumpy
@catpal: The reason why it’s $90 in Canada IS because it’s $320 in the U.S.We are the top dollar payer We can’t negotiate them down with out them raising prices somewhere else.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@BGinCHI:
The collective noun. I shit you not. How perfect is that?
thevole
I feel like I can take credit for starting this awesomeness because I emailed Sullivan the link to Cole’s earlier post (re: the cold that wasn’t a cold) this morning and told him it was harsh but that he deserved it. I also advised him, simply, to stop being a jerk.
Anyway, my email and John’s post obviously touched a nerve because he wrote back right away with some very hurt feelings and a few minutes later, the post in question went up.
Your applause is not necessary. I would however, care for some popcorn. And Junior Mints.
Note: I’m usually a big fan of The Daily Dish. Andrew’s a great writer and even when I disagree with him, I usually learn something. But ever since he’s gotten on this Bowles-Simpson kick, he’s been insufferable. The kicker was when he started lionizing Mitch F’ing Daniels as some kind of budget sage.
JWL
I was exceptionally pissed-off by November of 2004. I still am, politically speaking, and I’m a reasonable guy where those things are concerned. Nonetheless, I was persuaded to vote for Kerry by the late, great Steve Gilliard.
He pointed out that government matters for people out of my sight.
And while I’ll always regret that vote, Gilliard’s point was well taken.
It a political dilemma that I’ve dealt with my entire life. Never more so than nowadays. Or so it seems.
Ailuridae
@Napoleon:
This. Medicare and Social Security both work because they are “everyone” systems. Medicaid and welfare are less popular because they are perceived to be problems for poor darkly complected people.
To the point of the entitlement program. There is no serious problem with Social Security.
Medicare and Medicaid do have serious long term problems. But those problems are just part of the larger health care cost issues that are bankrupting the country. And that health care criss is nearly wholly explained by two factors: doctor compensation and provider profits. Until Democrats (and leftist\progressive bloggers) get straight about this they aren’t really serious about the deficit either (although a lot more serious than the GOP and Sullivan)
And, yes, I repeat this in every one of the threads because, well, it is the truth.
Ailuridae
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
An ostentation of peacocks
I can’t believe you beat me to that.
Cacti
He never actually addresses the point about the budget cuts hurting people he doesn’t know and will never meet.
So, yep, still an asshole.
Arundel
@catpal- Speaking of Big Pharma, let’s not forget Andrew’s scandal ten years ago. When he was aggressively attacking critics of Big Pharma (especially in regards to the exorbitant costs of HIV medications), defending their rights to their profits, without disclosing that he had accepted money from that lobby. It embarrassed the TNR and the NYT where he had been writing about this very issue. They had to apologize to their readers, and Sullivan returned the money, but he never apologized for keeping the conflict of interest a secret, and vociferously attacked his critics in the most petulant way. His contempt for the poor ( or say, his fellow gay men who couldn’t afford the 100k+ cost of life-sustaining HIV drugs like he could) and sympathy for corporations goes back a long way.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/07/12/sullivan/index.html
maya
Yeah, this “means test” is a great idea, but; will it involve the numeber of socks and bras you own? Property valuations,(by whom)? Bank account holdings? All assets + income level?
They’ll all be happy campers lining up for those MT forms every January in Sun City.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Ailuridae: Just barely beat you, looks like.
Your repetition is working on at least one person because I started thinking “doctor compensation” as I began reading your post and wondered where I’d heard it in the first place. From you, obvs.
NobodySpecial
@eemom: Matthew 7:5.
Alex S.
@Arundel:
Thanks, again.
Maude
Sully has had health care all of those 17 years.
Citizen_X
@Benz: But he keeps pushing the Simpson-Bowles fake-committee non-report, and criticizing Obama for not implementing its wonderfulness. See Jim, Foolish Literalist‘s comment above.
The Pale Scot
Frack him, a well educated sophisticated man gets ill from having unprotected sex, indeed even after being diagnosed with HIV he sought out unprotected sex and we’re all suppose to cut him some slack. FU!. Spend thirty years in demolition or roofing and still go to work every day in your fifties and see what that’s like.
Can’t we use this anti-immigration psychosis to at least rid ourselves of media twits who couldn’t make a buck in their own country ’cause there’s no wingnut welfare to be had and the population is too savvy to put up with it.
At the least we could round them up and put them to useful work, say get mcCurdle removing shingles on a 4th story roof with a 50˚ cant on a wet November day
I went straight to the comments after reading the 1st 4 paragraphs, I’m sure I’m repeating someone.
Three-nineteen
@NobodySpecial: LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE
catpal
@tkogrumpy: uh no.
So Sullivan and Repugs and “New Deficit Hawks” can either change the Medicare Part D law to negotiate prices OR STFU about Medicare “running out of money” Blah Blah Blah.
srv
E.D. Kain is an outlier. Sully has never seen the light on any issue until a lot more suffering has occurred.
Liberty60
yeah, I am sympathetic to Sully’s conditons, because I am a FUCKING BLEEDING HEART LIBERAL.
But unlike Sully or his defenders, my heart also bleeds for the waitresses and gardeners and ordinary working people who are also HIV positive and don’t have insurance, and rely on any of the social welfare programs that are currently being spat upon.
My heart does NOT bleed for the beneficiaries of the massive tax cuts that caused the deficit that will- what was it again? Oh yeah, KILL US ALL!!!
I lump Sully in with Joe Klein or McCardle or any of the other alleged moderates, who fret and pearl clutch over the lazy good fer nuthin unions- these people are all yuppies, and although they pay lip service to social equality, the fact is their worldview is much more in line with the Koch Bros, than the working people.
Emma
The man is a Tory with nanny issues, no matter how much he can make it sound purty with his highfalutin’ talk about the Bell curve, and fifth columnists, and all that stuff HE NEVER REALLY APOLOGIZED FOR.
He’s the moral equivalent of the stuff that floats on top of the Hudson; let him be washed out with the tide.
SGEW
@John Cole:
Hey, it’s that civility thing I keep hearing about. Human decency and rational discourse and all that. Hooray!
Tim
Wow, JC, it seems like you are beginning to get it when it comes to the Sully.
It only matters if HE has a cold. Otherwise colds don’t matter.
daveNYC
So calling what he was dealing with ‘a cold’ was cheap. Fine, that still doesn’t negate the fact that that fucker took a month off (paid), got great freaking health care, and had his job waiting for him when he got back. And the second he gets back, he starts calling for other people to suck it up and take a hit to their health care.
Rusty pitchfork time it is.
Sirkowski
Sullivan pretty much caught AIDS on purpose. He gets no sympathy from me.
Bob In Pacifica
@Lysana: Is it Sullivan or Savage who hates transfats?
Benz
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You’re absolutely right.
I sent this to Cole. I’ll post it here:
Sullivan has made arguments against the Bush Tax Cuts all year but right during the fight, he sided with the Rahm/DLC argument and lambasted Pelosi and Krugman, really mercilessly, calling it “cold blooded pragmatism” when Obama ended up extending the tax cuts.
He picks and chooses which moments in politics are Obama’s so-called “MEEP MEEP” moments. It’s all on a whim.
I fully expect Sullivan to abandon Obama for Mitch Daniels, that deficit arsonist.
via Media Matters: “[Sullivan] supported Clinton, who dramatically reduced the deficit in his first term, and then abandoned him for Dole. Then, after Clinton balanced the budget in his second term, Sullivan supported Bush the Second. “
Bob In Pacifica
@Mark S.: If there were a hundred million Warren Buffets maybe we’d have a problem.
Judas Escargot
@Arundel:
Kind of irrelevant, but from the originating article (July 9, 2001):
.
Mickey Kaus had a me-zine! Shame the format never caught on.
And also, surprisingly, the basement-pajama-blogger meme predates 9/11.
Brachiator
@John Cole: Here is my problem with Sullivan. He says:
He wants to be able to pick and choose entitlements. If he has one, then everybody can have the same one. Pseudo-Galt at its finest.
Luck has nothing to do with his having health insurance. He is unable to admit that if the insurance companies had their way, they would shed Sullivan from their roles in a nanosecond, as they would most gay males for being potentially too risky to insure.
He fought hard for himself. Too bad he is not willing to fight as hard for others with respect to health care issues.
Allan
@Citizen_X: You know who else criticizes Obama for not pushing Simpson-Bowles, don’t you?
No, not Hitler, Paul Ryan.
Who was on the commission and voted No on the final report.
Teak111
Did Sully get paid for his three weeks off? Did he? Does he get sick time, plenty of workers don’t including me. Why does Sully care more about rioting in the ME then marches Wisconsin. Because he’s a fucking elitist, that’s why. Easy to talk cuts when your at the top of the food chain. What if his insurance suddenly said, no more AIDs drugs, then would he pay attention to Wisconsin?
Arundel
@Judas Escargot: “me-zine” is indeed hilarious. Information superhighway! And yeah, that “pajamas” meme has quite a history, it seems. Which is pretty funny.
El Cid
Does Sullivan give a shit about California’s budget situation? Did public sector unions trap California into having to have a 2/3rd legislative vote for any tax increases?
And who fucking broke the budget, dumbass? Public sector unions?
No, it was Arnie’s anti-fee populism which almost doubled the state’s budget deficit.
Why don’t you blame public sector unions for that, you Tory moron? (Toron?)
Asshole. Why people pay as much attention to this fucking clown (oh! he writes well! oh, he opposed torture, like 8 billion fucking other bloggers!) I’m not sure, except our media’s so filled with these conservative nimrods I guess you have to read some of them.
Mark S.
@Bob In Pacifica:
It sure would. Inflation would go through the roof!
tbogg
Cole ButtHurts Sully…film at eleven.
The Pale Scot
@cyntax:
” It’s really too bad that Sully has fallen hook, line, and sinker for the austerity BS, but it is cloaked in the mantle of serious authority and if he’s got a weakness, that’s it.”
OHhhh… OK… it’s that whole leather and Nazi regalia thing; spot on K
Rick
I have had two strokes, was fired from my middle-class job (because of the strokes), and I’m not getting ANY government money.
My name is Rick, Andrew.
Give me a call.
Violet
Righteous! Thanks, Cole.
Turgid Jacobian
John Cole, I has a man crush on you. Normally I save that for physicists, musicians, and futbal stars.
mclaren
Why don’t we just cut 80% of the 1.4 trillion dollars per year America currently pisses away on our military?
It’s not like the U.S. military is worth anything — the U.S. army can’t even win a war against barefooted 15-year-old kids who fight with bolt-action rifles.
Cut 80% of the 1.4 trillion dollars a year we currently waste on the useless worthless impotent American military, and there you go — deficit gone. Deficit problem solved.
What’s the problem?
Keith G
@Brachiator:
His feelings can be sussed out from comments such as this from March 2006:
Funny how the last bit indicates that Democrats actually try to pay the bills.
The Pale Scot
@Citizen Alan:
back in the day the family moved from Bayonne NJ to some prod suburb “for the schools”. This was the first MPFC episode I saw a few months after, it explained so much.
Villago Delenda Est
You know, what needs to to be taxed until he screams.
For vermin like him, that means a fifty cents increase.
Fuck this maggot sideways with a rusty chainsaw.
Anne Laurie
@Reks:
You may not win an entire internet, but I vote you won this thread.
tomvox1
Well, the only thing I would add to this well-earned takedown, John (other than to note that Sully bringing in the whole “I have AIDS and was really, really sick, Cole!” is pretty damn passive-aggressive, sympathy-begging and LAME) is:
It’s about fucking time you realized that a guy you used to respect but whose main solution to the USA’s economic problems is essentially “Let the bottom 98% eat catfood” is at his core a selfish capital-A Asshole no matter what his “good points” are on any given blogging day.
That is all.
Cacti
@mclaren:
Because our bloated, oversized military gives Republicans a boner.
SIA
You’ve never written anything better, or more true, than this.
E.D. Kain
Excellent response, John. The only bit of Andrew’s critique I can appreciate is the jab at the big ad at the top in the center column. It is a little obtrusive.
It’s interesting Sullivan didn’t respond to any of the other posts critiquing his sudden relapse of fiscal conservatism. Such a personal response, so thin on substance.
JGabriel
@Phil Perspective:
Was he still sick? Sully might have wiped out the e-mail he couldn’t get to while ill, and that might be why he didn’t respond.
.
matoko_chan
@E.D. Kain: but sully has the EXACT same problem you do, EDK.
he cant bring himself to admit that conservatism is a dead paradigm.
the difference between you is only cosmetic.
you are the McArdle of the balloonjuice circle jerk.
Valdivia
@BGinCHI:
I think it ws the younger Klein, Ezra who I saw it use it first.
Benz–yep arsonist indeed!
matoko_chan
/salutes John Cole with respect
more of this, please.
thank you for fighting, Sir.
Feudalism: Serf's up
Sullivan may be an ass but can we lay off the whole thinking he “deserves” to have HIV. The whole HIV as punishment is offensive and has no place here. Not to mention the casual slide into homophobic comments. It has nothing to do with his complete lack of consideration of the effects of cuts and his lack of compassion.
parsimon
@Lit3Bolt:
To this as well as @Sirkowski:
And similar comments: Oh for fuck’s sake.
Look, more generally, we don’t want to be defining workplace benefits down. To argue that since a lot of people don’t have the benefit of health insurance coverage if they have a chronic condition, nobody should, is to play into the hands of the well-off who are doing a damned good job of pitting the people against each other.
rikyrah
That was a righteous takedown.
I’m part of the President’s base, and I’ll say it again – I don’t give a shyt about the deficit, and until you cut the shyt out of the military budget and increase taxes on the wealthy, don’t open up your mouth about how entitlements need to be ‘reformed’.
Petorado
@ brachiator
I thought that was a particularly odious comment as well. Health care is a basic human need. Why should luck play such a significant part in a person’s ability to access it? The fact that he mentions luck as a factor should tell Mr. Sullivan that if not for the grace of the FSM he’d very well be six feet under by now. That’s some serious cognitive dissonance. The debt won’t “kill us,” but being a not- wealthy person and cutting the social programs that can help will very effectively do so to a large number of Americans.
Zach
It’s truly a mark of seriousness to pretend that means testing social security and medicare is (1) more politically feasible than the many other options of addressing the long-term deficit and (2) remotely a large enough maneuver to significantly impact the long-term deficit.
Addressing health care costs above and beyond what’s in Obamacare is required unless you want revenues of 30% GDP or denying medical services to the poor and elderly. There’s a perfectly reasonable and proven way of doing this: nationalized healthcare. Sullivan’s been an opponent of this from the beginning (and still is, despite some support for Obamacare). To a man, the folks he’s highlighted as reasoned voices on the deficit (Christie, Coburn, McArdle, etc) have lined up against any health reform that doesn’t begin and end with cutting public health benefits.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Sully, petulant? You shock me.
Jamey
@Scanner Lightly: I’d rather sacrifice Paris Hilton’s tax cuts than Warren Buffett’s Social Security check.
Any discussion of cutting benefits has to start with the here and now. Let’s see how the most active voting bloc (seniors) feels about having the likes of Gov. Sandwiches calling the shots for them.
Jamey
@Benz: And, trust me, when it comes to arson, you get what you pay for …
Zach
Additionally, if you look at analysis by the Tax Policy Center you’ll see that many/most of the Bowles-Simpson plans (Sullivan says we need to adopt their plan post haste, but there’s like ten possible plans in those documents) impact the bottom few quintiles as much or more than the rich. And that’s only accounting for after-tax income and not social security, medicare, and medicaid cuts, requiring contributions for care in the VA, etc that are very regressive.
Tim
@NobodySpecial:
Um…totally.
4tehlulz
@srv:
FTFY. He’ll change his tune once the HIV research budgets get zeroed out.
snarkyspice
I can’t believe I’m the only person who know that ABL is the sick blogger he’s talking about. She’s written about her issues several times recently.
LT
@Sirkowski:
That right there is reason enough for a change in the no-banning policy.
parsimon
@LT: I don’t know about banning, but I’d like to see some serious push-back to that kind of shit, yes.
El Cid
When 3rd world governments had a financial crisis, the IMF and its US and Western leaders sent in the troops to push austerity, also known as “structural adjustment”.
In the Asian financial crisis of 1997, it was the same.
Indonesia didn’t have a big budget deficit, it wasn’t a current accounts problem, and so on.
It was currency speculation and foreign debts by private investors.
Obviously, the answer is to attack government spending and subsidies and make them agree to ‘market oriented’ reform, right then, right there.
Make them trim back their budgets and impose austerity. (In this case Tim Geithner was the IMF guy in charge of its Indonesia policies, but he wasn’t doing anything other than the same policies the IMF & WB did during that period until Argentina kicked their asses in 2002).
Make them raise fuel prices. Cut price controls on food and cut down food subsidies. Break up the huge clove and palm oil concentrations, because the best time to do that is in a crisis.
Whocoodanode?
Gas rose over 70% and kerosene over 25%. This sparked student and protest riots, which ended up overthrowing the government.
(Egypt anyone? A huge motivation for protesters was increased poverty and suffering after Western-advised ‘market oriented’ reforms.)
Of course, in the end it turned out to be a clever plan by the IMF to cause such outrage at the Suharto dictatorship (the US-beloved and CIA-assisted slaughter of a million Indonesians in taking power) that he lost his tyranny and Indonesian democracy began.
Never fear, though!
After all, there may have been some pain and difficulties and whining from protesters and other luddite types, the tough, no-nonsense IMF & World Bank austerity / “shock therapy” / structural adjustment programs worked, right?
Hey, Wisconsin! Follow Republican advice!
Welcome to your hole! Look forward to a glorious TeaTard future of “low investment, reduced social spending, reduced consumption, and low output interacted to create a vicious cycle of decline and stagnation“!
But at least you won’t have all those nasty public sector unions!
Steeplejack
@Alex S.:
Eat, not suck. There’s your problem right there.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: It is my understanding that they should be salted as well.
Silver
@Omnes Omnibus:
I like to take the dicks out of the bag and salt em up like a margarita glass, myself.
Ija
Oh please, Sully specifically said earlier that his illness is not AIDS-related (which I found implausible, but whatever, that’s what he claimed). Now that he is being attacked, all of a sudden he’s all, wa wa wa, I have AIDS, how dare you make fun of me, you sick and twisted blogger. As someone else mentioned upthread, he can’t have it both ways.
Blake C Himsl Hunter
I vaguely remember reading Sullivan posting during his absence that it was a sinus infection and he downplayed his illness being AIDS related. When I read his post today I just decided to take a break from his blog for awhile, he doesn’t get it this time around.
Jeffro
It’s amazing, isn’t it, how this has been dropped from the national discussion and found no champion? From the feds to the individual states, it is all cuts and no talk of where the easy money – from those who’ve had it better and better for three decades now – is to be found.
The left in this country is on its heels because of distractions like the ACORN framing and now the Planned Parenthood framing and on and on (including getting the middle class to divide and turn on itself, like in Wisconsin). They are bogging us down with tactics in order to win the grand strategy: a new Gilded Age.
Rove laughs.
Omnes Omnibus
@Silver: To each his own, I guess.
parsimon
@Ija: He’s HIV+, but as far as I know he doesn’t have AIDS, though developing it is obviously a concern.
Why not just lay off the whole sick-leave thing altogether? Lay off whether he deserved to take 3 weeks off, whether he deserves to have health insurance or a job. Take issue with his stated political positions. There’s plenty of material for dissent there.
Mark S.
@snarkyspice:
I don’t think so, unless he thinks Angry Black Lady is a guy.
Facebones
Just to add a comment to the “Warren Buffett getting SS!” straw man Sully is batting around.
So long as Buffett has paid into SS, I have zero problem with him getting SS benefits. That’s the whole point of the system. Everybody pays in, everybody benefits.
As soon as “means testing” is introduced, it becomes a welfare program and people like Sully are beating the drum to cut it. “Why should my hard work be forced to pay for some lazy bum’s retirement?”
Johannes
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): Perfect perfect.
Ija
@parsimon:
Because his stated political positions are obviously the product of all the privileges he has enjoyed. And he doesn’t seem to realize that. I don’t see anything wrong in pointing out, for example, that most people can’t take three weeks off work without any consequence.
asiangrrlMN
@Silver: I like my dicks spotted.
@parsimon: Because he’s a hypocrite. I don’t begrudge him his sick leave and health insurance, but the minute he starts talking about other people not deserving the same thing, then he needs to be called out on his shit. Same as the ‘family values’ conservative who gets caught in a wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide stance in the Minneapolis International Airport.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Mmm…spotted dick. Delicious British confection with an unfortunate name. I think Nigella has a recipe for it somewhere.
Omnes Omnibus
@asiangrrlMN: That reminds me, I saw at least two signs saying “I blame Favre.”
Silver
@parsimon: If Sullivan was treated the way he wants others treated, he would have died homeless in a NY street more than a decade ago. That’s why.
parsimon
@Silver: I understand the point, but it’s not good enough. Some of the comments here suggesting that gay men who are HIV+ brought it on themselves are unacceptable.
It’s fine to address Sullivan’s positions from a public policy perspective. As I said, there’s plenty to take issue with there.
El Cid
@Facebones: Some people apparently never noticed that FDR insisted on this aspect of it so it was never politically vulnerable as charity or a dole.
Speaking with the Committee on Economic Security (the FDR-constructed group which formed the legislative plan for SS) in 1935, some objected to the idea of paying for this social insurance with a payroll tax as a contribution by both employee and employer, due to its requiring funding by even the poorest workers.
Roosevelt backed his choice of a “self-supporting system, financed by contributions and special taxes rather than out of the general tax revenue”.
__
In what were reported to be his words repeating his arguments some years later:
Hopefully that will remain correct for a while.
Silver
@parsimon:
He was the one preaching about how gays need to get married and stop acting like sex fiends while he was busy trolling for bareback anal?
Yeah, my heart weeps.
No one suggested that gay men anything. They suggested Sullivan something. Not the same thing, anyways.
wetcasements
Mr. Cole, will you finally learn your lesson that Sullivan is a pretentious, opportunistic gas-bag and nothing else?
I mean really, when he starts writing love letters to John Thune or Mitch Daniels for the GOP nomination, will that be enough?
That said, talk about employment-for-life at the Atlantic. Three weeks off, with a cadre of grasping libtards to fill in for you at your beck and call? Talk about socialism.
alwhite
Sullivan is a sociopath – oh, I’m sick, I’m hiv +, feel bad for ME!! Hey, other people have problems fuck them, who cares they are on their own. It never occurs to his socipathic “brain” that other people may be hurting too and that fucking them over by further damaging the social safety net is painful for them because it doesn’t affect him.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Church Lady: Yup. We can raise the social security wage base from $106,800 to $180,000 (or even higher if we want some extra cushioning). Problem solved. You’re welcome!
Steeplejack
@Silver:
I hear the pink Himalayan salt is particularly good.
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
There’s a Posh Nosh episode where they make it with Irish soda crackers–“spotted Mick,” of course.
JD_PhD
Sully still treats economics like a philosophy, not a science.* That’s his big problem. You may be inclined to think that a certain political philosophy is superior to another, but if it has economic implications, and you don’t examine those, you don’t have a leg to stand on.
*OK, it’s a dismal science, but as k-thug proves, it’s got some legitimate foundation.
El Cid
@JD_PhD: He and the entire right treat economics as moralizing homilies, not philosophy.
dogwood
@JD_PhD:
Sullivan and his ilk like to say they “believe” in low taxes. They want you to think that their desire to have a small tax burden is part of some grand philosophical pursuit. Thus they don’t have to defend or deal with the consequences of the policies they prefer. Seriously, a tax code is nothing more than a means to an end, and guys like Sullivan don’t want to talk about the end, because then they would have to admit what they really believe.
asiangrrlMN
@Omnes Omnibus: I know! Someone posted a pic over at the Rumper Room. I cannot escape him even after the season is over.
@Yutsano: Never had it. I just like the name.
chopper
yeh, didn’t he swear up and down that his sickness had nothing to do with being hiv+? now he’s calling cole an asshole over it?
yeah, he’s trying to have it both ways. if you’re positive and you’re getting sick, that blows and i feel really bad for you. but don’t minimize it so you can use it as a club on people later.
am
I’m too lazy to read the preceding comments, but I enjoy reading Sullivan sometimes and if he thinks he’s going to get away with playing the privacy card on his health problems after spending YEARS going after Sarah Palin to release the details of her pregnancy with Trig… well, then he should take more time off to recover, because he should be bright enough to see that response coming from miles away.
Chuck Butcher
I’ve never noticed Sully as being anything other than what he shows here. I don’t get why he is taken seriously by any other than the masters he serves (and their fellow travelers). I’ve read plenty of “B-list” blogs that are as well written and contain reasoning a hell of lot less suspect and yet he’s “serious.” Why? Because somebody stuck him on a TV show? Or what exactly?
I don’t give a fuck about Sully’s illness beyond what I’d feel for any human and it bears not a bit on what his posts contain. I can’t see where the world would be $0.02 poorer if his keyboarding fingers fell off and he never posted again.
John W.
If I had HIV, I’d probably be protective of myself to the point of being hypocritical too.
But if I let a life where I made a good healthy living with plenty of benefits sheerly by telling the world the first thing that came to my mind on every subject in the world, I’d probably put a bit more thought into the budgetary discussion of the biggest economy in the history of the world than I did in finding a good picture of random rooftops for people to guess what city in the world it’s in like a third rate carmen sandiego.
He pimps Simpson Bowles for months on end like he’s Ahmadinejad to SImplson-Bowles Khamanei (using this analogy solely to piss him off) even though the commission’s savings are seen through by the likes of super liberal Jon Chait and then to top it off, Sullivan has the gall to say he doesn’t want to do anything but means test? Unbelievable.
No one’s on his side, he’s made horrible mistakes in the past, everyone has to deal with him, but he has no real power. Like I said before, he’s the Robert Evans of the internet.
But stop bringing his HIV into it.
Pococurante
@Alex S.: @Anne Laurie: Agreed. Beat me to it actually.
Pococurante
@John W.: No one brings his HIV into it.
He does.
John W.
@Pococurante: I don’t give a shit if he does, if it’s a character flaw (and I don’t think it is) then it’s one I’m willing to let pass for even my worst enemy, let alone the turd in the internet punch bowl.
Arclite
Wow, when JC gets fired up, he is devastating. So easy to underestimate with the flurry of shorter, snarky posts, dog posts, and geek posts. But this was a tour of force take down of Sully. I knew the initial post would garner a Sully response, and when I read Sully’s response I thought, I never heard him lay down those specifics before. Glad that JC dug up all that shit and laid waste to him, even if the sick comments were out of line.
fuckwit
I thought your “personal attack” analogy was forced and flawed, but then I thought about it some more.
It really is privilege, entitlement, and “let them eat cake” attitude, not tryign to understand people’s difficulties.
I had no idea Sully was HIV+. So attacking him for having a cold seems mean– the privilege and entitlement of a healthy person assuming that someone else’s illness was just laziness, when in fact it was serious.
Sully and Bobo and other chattering rich folk do the same thing: from a position of privilege and entitlement, they assume that everyone else who is working has a similarly cushy-ass job with great bennies.
And it seems mean-spirited once you actually get to know people who are not rich. Your analogy was perfect. You did the exact same (wrong) thing to Sully that he is doing to every working (or formerly-working) American. He should follow your lead apologize too– to us.
Tim
@parsimon:
What is it with these fucking word/thought police on BJ? I would have thought the reckless and entertaining way our Blog Master expresses himself on a regular basis would have chased away all you delicate flowers.
parsimon
@Tim:
Seriously? I suppose I could have said “Fuck you” to, e.g. @Lit3Bolt and @Sirkowski and that wouldn’t have sounded as delicate, but I was trying not to be rude.
Tim
@parsimon:
So if you disagree, why don’t you engage their points as opposed to announcing that they shouldn’t be able to make them? That is what I mean by being a “delicate flower.” People such as you seem to think they have a right to not even read comments by people whose points they disagree with, always announcing that they are “offended,” blah blah blah.
FYI, I am a gay man who takes responsibility for my sexual exploits and precautions or lack of them. Given Sullivan’s tawdry past surrounding this issue (preaching gay marriage and sexual responsibility while trolling for BB sex on the Internet) he deserves every slam he gets. He demands responsibility and accountability and harsh, real world consequences for anyone but himself.
JW
I understand little about macro economics, but I do recall that under the Eisenhower Administration, you know, that time when one parent could support the family, that taxes on the super-wealthy were in the eighty percent range. Do you all see that as coincidence?
parsimon
@Tim:
Ah, I see. I’ll explain that I thought it was obvious, actually, why I found remarks suggesting that HIV+ people somehow deserve it to be indefensible. So I didn’t offer a detailed rebuttal. For what it’s worth, I’m not offended — my feelings aren’t hurt — as much as incensed.
Next time it comes up, if it does, I may be more detailed in my response, but I’ll be honest: it’s going to be a tough haul. A little like trying to patiently explain to someone why Lara Logan didn’t deserve to be attacked in Egypt, say, despite having engaged in risky behavior by even being there while white, foreign, female, blond, pretty, and a journalist.
None of this is to say that all persons shouldn’t minimize risk by engaging in safe sex practices, and I’d agree that it’s irresponsible not to. That said, an awful lot of straight people really seem to think that condoms are optional, and I’d call that irresponsible (if we really have to use that language) as well. People make risk calculations about these things, and they calculate wrongly sometimes: my own brother did, and Sully did.
I can’t speak to the corpus of Sullivan’s statements about homosexuality, sexual responsibility and so on, because I don’t read him regularly. I’m not shocked if he’s being hypocritical, but after that’s been said fifty billion times, I get bored and am more interested in a conversation about his policy positions. Call it personal preference on my part.
Tim
@parsimon:
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I think this thread inside a thread pretty much started with this comment from further up:
I got the vibe that this was an example of taking Sully’s own attitudes toward the behavior of others to a reasonable conclusion and applying the result to him, as he applies it to others. Ergo, hard nosed as this comment is, it doesn’t bother me.
Sullivan is always preaching how the actions of others have consequences, and he doesn’t pretty much give a shit what they are, everyone for themselves, etc. Yet he chased poz loads with his “muscle glutes” on Barebackcity.com even after he knew he was positive himself, a very high risk behavior. Not to get into the details of how he may or may not have contracted HIV to begin with.
So let his own attitudes be turned on him for a change, and see how he likes it, which is what I thought the commenter above was saying.
Either way, I don’t really get telling other commenters what the parameters of a discussion thread should be, what the acceptable boundaries are. I figure anything goes. If I don’t like what someone writes I can fire back or ignore them.
Can’t you do the same?
Tim
@parsimon:
In your estimation, is there ever a point where a proponent of an argument/position/belief system/philosophy/etc. loses the standing to even be in the argument by evidence of their own inability, or even honest attempt to, live by the standards of behavior and thought they are pushing?
For instance, and to take Sully as an example again, his utter wrongness and rabid, foaming at the mouth, arrogant, sneering cheerleading for the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should long ago have disqualified him as a credible participant in the public discourse on those matters. Yet, this being the u.s., where the media is unaccountable, he is still right in the thick of it.
parsimon
@Tim:
Okay. I didn’t realize this. I don’t read Sully regularly (which means, at all, except when he’s linked here on something particularly provocative).
Certainly. If Sully is “always preaching how the actions of others have consequences, and he doesn’t pretty much give a shit what they are, everyone for themselves, etc.” then it’s fair to call him on it. I hear tell that he’s a glibertarian or something. There was sobering news that he outsources his economic policy prescriptions to McMegan.
Well, okay. As I said earlier, when I decide to fire back next time (instead of ignoring), I’ll do so in a more detailed manner, without making assumptions about what’s in and out of bounds. I would ask you, though, to consider whether it’s really the case that nothing’s out of bounds here, and that people who fire back do so in a reasoned and measured manner.
I’m really not your enemy here, Tim.
Tim
@parsimon:
Oh, I don’t feel that you ARE my enemy, Parsimon. If I come off that way to you, I apologize. Not my intent.
No, I suppose SOMETHING (don’t think I’ve seen it here yet) would be out of bounds, but that’s up to Cole, and I don’t concern myself with it. I have seen LOTS of posts that I think are stupid as shit but I have never asked JC to have one removed or to have someone banned, nor have I ever told another commenter their words were somehow unacceptable. That just seems so weak to me.
Oh, and god no, LOTS of firing back is done is an unreasoned and unmeasured manner at BJ; sometimes even by moi. :D But that’s part of the fun; the Wild West atmosphere.
parsimon
@Tim:
I confess! I went to bed last night knowing that my use of the word “unacceptable” was probably going to trigger a response.
Otherwise, comity.
Anne Laurie
Righteous rant, Mr. Cole, and Sullivan deserved every word of it. But I wonder — d’you suppose he’s conflated Glenn Greenwald’s illness (dengue fever) with “some poster on BJ”? It would be sloppy, but not impossible, especially if Sullivan’s relying less on his own reading than on extracted prepared by his underbloggers…
morzer
@Anne Laurie:
The thought of extracts prepared by Sullivan’s under-bloggers conjures up worrying thoughts of Tunch’s anal glands, that’s for sure.
Tim
@morzer:
Perhaps Sullivan’s underbloggers could start a home-crafted line of extracts and potions for glibertarian conservatives.
t1
Cole
Your snide remarks about Sullivan’s illness were some truly despicable chickenshit. Your “apology” above wasn’t much better.
wetcasements
“Your snide remarks about Sullivan’s illness were some truly despicable chickenshit.”
Oh, bullshit. J.C. was simply pointing out that most middle- and working-class Americans don’t have the luxury of taking three weeks off for a cold without the risk of losing their job. To simulataneously declare that it’s the middle- and working-class who have to make the bulk of the sacrifices right now is rank hypocrisy.
Sullivan said at first his cold had nothing to do with his HIV status. Then his fee-fee’s were aching so he played the AIDS card. Boo-fucking-hoo.
J.C. apologized graciously, but he shouldn’t have. Sullivan brought on all the drama by his lonesome.
As for me (and others here, I presume) we just wonder out loud when J.C. will realize there’s nothing “serious” or “intellectual” about the obsequious, pandering drivel that Sullivan constantly pumps out. (“Of no party or clique” my ass.)
I mean, he’s a lot smarter than McCardle (e.g., slightly overweight kid at fat camp) but the M.O. is the same — normalize shitting on the poor and middle class as “sane,” “necessary,” and “vital” activity, provide cover for moves that could potentially send American workers back to the 19th century.
He’s so desperate to maintain his villager creds that he doesn’t even have to take a check from the Koch brothers. I guess that’s an accomplishment.
t1
@wetcasements
You’re the reason why people hate people like you.
vernonlee
209 comments and I can’t believe nobody else mentioned the Sully-vs.-Balloon-Juice slapfest from a bit ago:
Remember this?
To which John answered:
Yeah. That’s some internal coherence, Sully.
You imagine liberals to be not sufficiently fellatial (new coinage?) to our Galtian overlords and This is All Very Important. Whatever the contents of their policy prescriptions, in the hearts of liberals dwells a Secret Snide Self that quietly loathes the accumulation of wealth. Let’s discuss your projection of this immaterial non-fact ad infinitum!
But when you are seized by a fit of (you imagine) brash, moral courage that everyone needs to suck it up and Eat Cake (I prefer this to the venerable “bag of dicks” popular here), and John delivers a worthy smackdown, you’re off in a corner in a fit of self-righteous whining.
Whatever, dude.
wetcasements
“You’re the reason why people hate people like you.”
OK, I admit it — I spent about five minutes of my valuable vacation time trying to parse this. If only I had a stable of brain-dead Randtards to help me out I’m sure it would sting.