This is just sad, because I really like D-Day:
We now have an innovation in executive power. During the Bush Administration, mid-level functionaries would be found to write legal justifications for waging war, committing acts of torture, or what have you. Now, during the Obama Administration, the top lawyers are free to give their considered opinion on these issues. But the President will simply overrule them, as Charlie Savage writes today:
So what did Charlie Savage actually say:
Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.
But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.
In other words, he got conflicting legal advice, and went with Koh and Bauer over Johnson and Krass. Personally, I think it is ridiculous that what we are doing doesn’t amount to hostilities, and have said as much. If Mexico were occasionally launching drone attacks across our border and helping China bomb us by providing radar-jamming and surveillance, I imagine we would have a far less nuanced idea of what “hostilities” means. But still, there is no reason to simply lie about what happened in order to compare Obama to Bush. Obama didn’t “ignore” their advice. This is in no way comparable to having low level hacks just make shit up as Bush did. He had conflicting advice, and he went in a different direction. This happens every single day with every single decision the President makes.
But I guess that isn’t breathless enough for some circles, where you have outright lunatics writing things like this:
Based on these reassuring words, the response is supposed to be, “well, gosh, the alternative is worse, so I guess we should still vote for Obama.”
No. Just no. You’ve had your chance to prove you are indeed different, and you’ve failed on every front. Even though I have often decried the intolerant, inhumane, radical extremism, nuttiness and willful ignorance of what the Tea-GOP has become, I no longer believe that President Obama is meaningly different from what President Mitt Romney would be or indeed would have been.
And as I could never vote for the unprincipled moral chameleon Romney, I cannot vote again for a faux Democrat whose policies and moral sentiments now seem little different from Romney’s.
I defy any Obama spokesperson to point out any meaningful difference between what Obama has done and what a President Romney would have done.
Justices Kagan and Sotomayor.
ACA
Lily Ledbetter
DADT
Do I need to go on? Fucking idiots. Some days I think these guys truly deserve to live under a President Palin.
Daddy-O
Please DO go on, John Cole…because if that short list is all you have, then I’m afraid it comes up short for me.
I don’t understand why you get so mad when someone expresses an opinion…an INFORMED opinion. Obama is far too conservative and mimics George W. Bush far too much for me.
What in the world is wrong with thinking that, and why do you have to call people who do fucking idiots?
Davis X. Machina
If you were actually in the veal pen, you wouldn’t be so dismissive.
John Cole
Daddy-O: Then vote for Romney, it’s America and you are free to be as stupid as you want.
J
co-sign this one, John. Well said.
I mean, one can be disappointed and angry about this idiotic war/non-hostilities situation in Libya, but still recognize Obama and Romney are vastly, vastly different figures. I thought we all learned that after the bogus Tweedle-dee/Tweedle-dumb description of the 2000 election.
Matt
Bailing out the auto industry–and saving tons of jobs–would be another pretty obvious distinction.
gizmo
John,
You seem to be making the case that Obama’s policies are better than what Romney might give us. If that’s your point, I wouldn’t argue. But that’s an incredibly low bar– comparing a supposedly progressive Democratic President to a dipshit like Romney is bound to make Obama look better. I would suggest that there is a better metric– how about we compare Obama’s actual performance to the bill of goods he sold us during his ’08 campaign?
Genghis
Here’s what I want to see before I contribute again:
1. Appoint Elizabeth Warren to the CFPB.
2. Wind down the wars.
3. Close Guantanamo.
I’m going to vote for him; then again, I may vote Elizabeth Warren via write-in.
Best…H
cmorenc
I seem to recall that Nader voters (particularly in Florida) claimed that there was little meaningful difference between Bush and Gore, that Gore held so many positions little better than Bush that it would make no difference who won.
Let’s see just how well you really like a Romney (or Bachman) presidency instead of Obama from 2012 through 2016. I agree Obama has proven to be a much more compromised and flawed President than I had hoped. But still he’s light-years better than the disaster any GOP president would be, given the current overwhelmingly destructive mindset of the GOP. Face it: under the current electoral system (and electorate composition) there is no better choice C) even remotely practically available. All a third-party vote or stay-at-home will produce is: an immensely more disastrous GOP presidency than even the most flawed imaginable Obama second term.
BDR
Kagan and Sotomayor were swaps for like. Obama spent no political capital or displayed any political courage. How great would it be if Alito or Roberts or Scalia or Thomas suddenly resigned at the beginning of 2012. Then I think you’d have your obamapostasy, though one way or the other he’s gonna make you have it whether you want to or not.
mcd410x
We just had more layoffs at work last week. 20 percent un/underemployment in these parts.
People are scared, and no blog post is going to change that.
Jeff Spender
I’ll second that, John. I’m getting sick of these moronic pricks (as embodied here by asswipes like Daddy-O).
Look, one of the things you’re supposed to learn in life is that it isn’t perfect. You win some, you lose some. You can’t simply reduce everything to a zero-sum game in which you’re continually waging war against everyone and everything.
When you vote for Obama, you’re voting for the liberal and Democratic platform. For that to actually work, though, they have to have support from us and others, and the ability to work in all branches of government.
I was out today registering people to vote and getting them involved with the Obama campaign. It was great meeting people and discussing important issues with them. Some had reservations, but ultimately they know that sometimes–life isn’t fucking fair.
Get over yourself, Daddy-O.
J
Daddy-O — the list should also include every lower court Judge Obama has had confirmed, as well as the hundreds of appointments and hires to various regulatory bodies and commissions. Think FEMA, for example. No “heckuva job, Brownie” in Obama’s administration. Instead, FEMA’s performance has been widely praised for its outstanding work in recent disasters.
The entire Executive Branch is enormous, and the capacity for doing good/wrecking the country through hundreds of unnoticed appointments and hiring decisions is huge — recall Bush’s oil buddies snorting coke and whatnot in that agency tasked with reviewing safety of drilling etc, and the wonderful situation in the Gulf of Mexico to which it helped lead. You could be sure that a President Romney would appoint dozens of his corporate cronies whose view of their agencies would be that they should not exist and would go about hamstringing them and gutting regulations and oversight. And we all know private enterprise and the free market needs no oversight or regulation at all, right? If you eat tainted meat, you learn and punish that producer the next time you visit the grocery store. If you live, that is.
Brian R.
They’d deserve that fate, but they still wouldn’t learn anything from it.
Eight years under President Same-As-Gore didn’t teach them a fucking thing, now, did it?
cleek
a politician over-sold during a campaign? get the fuck out.
next you’ll tell me that opening a Bud Lite won’t cause me to be surrounded by bikini models!
Justin
You go to bat with the candidates you have, not the candidates you WISH you had. I’m all for more and better democrats, but to actually believe that Obama is no different from Romney is not only incorrect, it’s suicidal.
What are they smoking over there at FDL?
Mac G
Are people paying attention to the destruction GOP Governors are doing? They will do the same thing on the National level but I guess Obama should have became KING and ruled that way.
Dave
Genghis: Obama tried to close Gitmo but Congress blocked him. That includes Progressive Hero Bernie Sanders, who voted AGAINST funding to close Gitmo. Blame that one firmly on Congressional Democrats.
Daddy-O: How about enacting policies that kept the country out of a depression and kept the auto industry alive. Do you think a McCain presidency (or a Romney one today) would have done either of those things?
The Dangerman
Hate purity tests, Left or Right.
What people don’t seem to get is Obama can only sign what can pass the Congress; as long as there are enough Republicans and/or Blue Dogs to fuck things up, Obama will fail some Purity test or other along the way. I wish people would grow the fuck up.
Brian R.
@BDR
And if President Romney had been in charge, they wouldn’t have been. You would’ve gotten another Alito and Scalia in there.
Why is this so fucking hard for some people to understand?
Lit3Bolt
Let’s take the firebaggers to the logical extreme, shall we? If Obama = Bush, and the country’s elite have most influence in national elections, then what is there left to do, twiddle our thumbs and wait for the late Imperial Roman Collapse?
Fuck all of you. You may have given up on the Democrats, on Obama, and on this country, but I haven’t. Go form an atheist organic farm collective in Canada if you’re so tired of fighting, so disappointed in politicians being fucking politicians, and not getting your way 24/7.
Go ahead. Fucking vote for Nader. I hope your principles keep you fucking warm at night.
Skippy-san
Obama is in the wrong on Libya. He made the same mistake that George Bush made , he thought it would all be over with quickly. If he were a better student of history he would know that no-fly zones do not accomplish anything. And that if you are going to go to war-it should be done with the full might of the American war specifically for the purpose of making it nasty and brutish (on the Libyans) and short.
Obama brought this mess on himself.
Genghis
The problem isn’t so much Democrat vs. Republican candidates. It’s the control exerted over them by the banks and the corporations. I thought Obama would make a difference (and appointing two women to the Supreme Court is huge), but he simply hasn’t delivered on the ideals expressed in his campaign. My suspicions are the deals he’s had to make with his biggest donors.
Best…H
Davis X. Machina
It’s a case of ‘The worse, the better’. It just brings the Revolution closer. As does, say, defaulting on the national debt. Different Revolution, same mechanism.
Narodniki on the left, narodniki on the right….
Brien Jackson
@6
Okay, that’s not unreasonable at all. But we are going to grade it on a curve based on actions of members of Congress and not pretend that Obama was elected monarch to do whatever he pleased for 4 years, right?
Dennis SGMM
Now that the administration has decided that blowing people up, and helping others to do so, doesn’t constitute hostilities the war in Afghanistan is bound to be over soon. The administration will simply decree that our troops there are no longer fighting a war; they’re just engaging in kinetic democratization.
Brian S
@gizmo “comparing a supposedly progressive Democratic President”
How many times do we have to beat this zombie horse to death. Obama has never been a progressive and never sold himself as one. He was always a moderate, on the campaign trail and in the Oval Office. People who saw him as the great progressive savior saw only what they wanted to see, not what he was selling himself as.
Josie
@gizmo: It may be a low bar, but in the real world it’s the only choice we have. If not Romney, then it could be someone even worse than Romney. You have to deal with reality. Not voting or voting green, which would be other possible choices are the same as voting for Romney (or someone worse). 2000 already showed us the results of that sort of thinking.
boss bitch
@Daddy-O: the list much much longer than that. you know this. all his left critics know it. it is much longer and much better than what any of their current liberal heroes could ever get. just admit that you don’t give a shit about the other stuff and get on with it.
Bill H.
So when I murder my wife, I can just tell the judge that it’s okay because I gave $6 million to a charity, and that I’m a “Big Brother” and the I built a hospital wing, and that I donated money to hungry children in Africa. He’ll let me right off, right?
Because starting illegal wars is okay if you appoint liberal judges, and pass “health care reform” and…
Roger Moore
@Ghengis:
Talk to your Congresscritter. Obama has tried to shut down Guantanamo but has been blocked at every turn by the chickenhearted shits in Congress. Unless you think he can shut down Guantanamo when he’s been specifically denied the ability to do so- and I’d love to see just how that’s supposed to work- then you’re barking up the wrong tree.
General Stuck
If you took a broad enough definition on what constitutes America being involved in “hostilities” of some foreign war, it could mean things like warring factions using weapons bought with American cash, or any type of foreign aid that is military in some way.
I think both sides have a valid argument as to whether The War Powers act applies at this stage, or not. My own view is that so long as Americans are not pulling triggers, then it is dubious about the WPA applying, especially after the initial 60 day requirement to cease “hostilities”.
To be consistent, like I said yesterday, if the US is actively using drones, then we are pulling triggers and engaged in “hostilities”. But then there is the UN side of the argument that I fall on, with Obama authorized via our being a signatory to that body, and the fact that our role is very limited. Though at some point, if Obama chooses to escalate our involvement then he will need to involve the congress for funding that escalation.
As far as legalities go, also like I and others said yesterday, the congress is not being circumvented here and fully possesses the power to put a complete stop to our participation in the UN mission in Libya, any time they want to stop all funding with taxpayer dollars.
I am not even going to comment on the FDL nonsense.
Amanda in the South Bay
I’ve never had any problem with severe criticism of Obama or the Dems in Congress, up to the point where you start saying stuff like it makes no difference if the Republicans are in charge, or there’s no difference between the parties. That is fucking crazy-its as if the Republicans aren’t the only ones who forgot who was president prior to Obama.
I tend to get pissed off at such sentiments in my neck of the woods-in the SF Bay Area-where I think quite a few people who say stuff like that are comfortably affluent and professional and could very well move to another country. Or, conversely, if people are stupid enough to think there’s no difference between the parties, quit your job and move to the south.
Jeff Spender
@ Bill H.
Specious argument is specious.
Brian R.
Daddy-O:
Do you think a Republican would’ve passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? Or rescinded the global gag rule on abortion? Or reversed Bush’s ban on stem cell research? Or instituted major reforms on Wall Street and the credit card industry? Pushed for CFPB in the first place, much less put Warren in charge? Passed the Shepherd and Byrd Hate Crimes laws? Increased funding for environmental protection and water conservation? Pursued green jobs with a passion? Passed a massive stimulus aimed at infrastructure and transportation?
Because if you do think a Republican would’ve done all those things he actually did, then, yes, you are a fucking idiot.
Amanda in the South Bay
@ 21:
You’re a fucking idiot if you think Libya is as much of a quagmire as Iraq.
Mac G
The Senate voted like 98-0 to cut off funds from Obama moving Gitmo prisoners to Illinois and close Gitmo. These are the facts. I feel like screaming when people complain about Obama on Gitmo. He was trying to do the correct thing and those aholes in Congress knee capped but I guess he could made a speech & pounded the megaphone.
The comments over at the FDL, just make me sad for the Dem team because it is nothing but misplaced hate and destruction.
Rhoda
I honestly thought people would wake up after seeing the Democratic party blown out at the state and federal level in 2010. I thought that a Gov. Walker, a Gov. Kasich, a Gov. Christie, a Gov.Corbett, and a Gov. Scott would make it clear that it CAN get worst. That living with a Speaker Boehner would make one long for the logjams a Democratic senate had and living with the blue dogs.
But no, some people are just beyond the fucking beyond and I’ve given up trying to understand them.
Brian R.
Christ, that is some weak shit, Bill H.
existential fish
@Roger Moore
This is especially ridiculous when you consider that someone is complaining about not superceding Congressional orders to not close Gitmo in a thread about people complaining about Obama overriding Congressional silence on Libya.
cleek
because Obama is no better than a Republican, Paul Ryan’s budget is now the law of the land. right?
Chyron HR
I defy any Obama spokesperson to point out any meaningful difference between what Obama has done and murdering your wife.
Genghis
On Guantanamo; he’s got no options? His executive order pen out of ink? Even with no other options, living conditions could be improved, instruct the base to allow journalists and attorneys access on a daily basis. Really, there’s nothing he can do? Guantanamo is a cancer. Best…H
boss bitch
I don’t feel like going through this argument today. Anyone who thinks an Obama presidency or a Democratic presidency is no different from a President Romney is either a complete fucking idiot, or is living a life so fucking good that it doesn’t matter who’s president. I have to wonder if any of these people even live in America.
Why this guy isn’t quoted more often I will never know:
– PM Carpenter
Brachiator
This is tiresome, uninformed nonsense. Obama’s appointments have been stalled or rejected. And even Chief Justice Roberts has noted the negative impact of lower level court vacancies.
The idea is to get more Democrats into Congress, and the president re-elected.
I think that some progressives want a Romney victory. Perversely, if they can’t have their perfect world, they are willing to bring about a nastier world that they can then complain about.
Citizen Alan
Really?!? I’ll grant you the rest of the list, and I freely admit that Obama has been better than any actual Republican (as opposed to a DLC-Third Way-Reagan Democrat, which is what Obama actually is) would have been. But do you really think a President Romney, who would have won in 2008 on a moderate-centrist platform and who would have had to deal with huge Dem majorities in the House and Senate, would have balked at passing a health care reform bill modeled on Romneycare from Massachusetts (his only significant achievement as governor)?
If anything, ACA might have come out better under a President Romney. He would have been in a unique position for a “Nixon goes to China” moment, and his involvement would have given cover for Republican moderates to have voted for ACA, thereby eliminating the necessity of relying on backstabbing douchebags like Nelson, Lieberman and Bayh. And certainly, no one on the right would have called the mandate “soshulism” if it had been proposed by a Republican President.
Not to say I’d have preferred a President Romney, of course. He’s a loathsome parody of a human being, and he’d have been worse than Obama in many ways, but he would have been uniquely situated to have passed some form of ACA that would have been at least as good as what we got and possibly somewhat better.
CT Voter
What’s that phrase that Sully uses to describe conversation on the right? Epistemic closure? For an example of that on the left, go to that post at FDL.
Davis X. Machina
@ cleek:
In this vale of tears, you don’t even get the bull terrier.
jaywillie
Daddy-O: He could go on…and on and on and on. But, see, folks like you play this game whereby no one can actually point out what has been accomplished, because that would actually be having an informed opinion. And since he didn’t ushering in a Naderite socialist utopia on Day One, obviously nothing is good enough. Of course, no one is stopping you from expressing an informed opinion, though it would probably help if you had one to begin with.
Own-ry
Oh good, the anti-Nader fight. LOL didn’t we bury the Progressive champion of the middle class as our scapegoat to avoid unpleasant truths about the Democratic Party? How much more do we have to sacrifice? Here take Spitzer, take Grayson, take Feingold, take Weiner …
We KNOW Gore would have never done any of the things the Dem Congress let Bush do because … because we KNOW it, deep down where it counts, in our gut. Yes it is an inconvenient truth that Gore’s VP pick *was* Lieberman. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
So what if more registered Dems voted for Bush than Nader got votes in Florida Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
So what if destroying Nader destroyed the Progressive movement Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! and set the pattern of attacking and destroying anyone standing up for the middle class Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
Sad to say it doesn’t matter, the cement is set. Scapegoating is dangerous. You can lose your society over it, if you’re wrong …
stuckinred
Amanda in the South Bay
Um, just what’s your point about the “south”. Fucking Duncan Hunter and Dana Rohrbach aren’t from Athens.
Genghis
Good point regarding Congress and the two issues of Libya and Guantanamo. Best…H
existential fish
BTW, people use the phrase “illegal wars” as if that’s supposed to mean anything on its own.
Not to mention the argument is whether the US is involved in hostilities in Libya, not a war. No one thinks it’s risen to that level.
cleek
his executive order pen closed it!
the problem is that congress won’t let him implement his order.
Liberty60
Politics is always a matter of choosing this or that.
It is never a magic pony versus evil incarnate.
for a lot of people, politics is a parlor game of smugness and righteousness, masquerading as principle.
But its about real actions that affect real lives. People I know are being laid off in Costa Mesa by Republican sociopaths, people I know are having their unemployment benefits, their only way of avoiding homelessness, being held hostage by Republicans.
I recall reading a while back about the French Communists during the 1930’s, who were so bitterly opposed to the French military and government, that when Hitler invaded, some of them actually supported the Nazis, on the principle that they were “the same” as the dreaded French capitalists.
Dunno if the story is true or a legend, but I think of that whenever I recall Jane Hamsher making a pact with Grover Norquist.
Linda Featheringill
Even though I am an avowed pacifist, I understand why the president and other leaders are supporting the rebels in Libya.
IF the world can nurture/protect the Arab Spring, perhaps whole swaths of people can become self-determining and maybe they can tackle their real problems instead of picking out scapegoats to dump on [US, Israel, The West in general, etc.]
I can see a hope that assisting in this rebellion/revolution would result in peace in the not-too-distant future.
Do I think this is the best way? I’m really conflicted about that question.
But my inner turmoil doesn’t make the US involvement legal or illegal. The two aren’t connected.
IANAL and I’m sure there are aspects to the War Powers Act that I don’t understand. Maybe I should study up on that. But I’d feel more comfortable about fussing at Obama if somebody explained to me why the Republicans are pushing this so hard. It seems so out of character for them.
John: Perhaps you could explain the War Powers Act to us, or find somebody to do that. Then perhaps you can explain why we should come down on the same side as the Republicans on this issue. There might be really good reasons for doing so but I’d like to see these reasons.
Me, shorter: John, you make a good speech but I’m not convinced. More data and analysis, please.
KG
This actually happens every day that someone gets conflicting legal advice. You get the information and then make a decision
neill
DDay side = they are all sociopaths. And yes they are. I don’t think they won’t fucking screw us at every turn. If they let the vast unemployed and the vast screwed-by-banksters languish for years… yuh think they wont end medicare with vouchers? yuh think they wont cut back social security? yuh think they wont drone bomb anybody they fucking want to? yuh think they wont spy on any citizen they fucking want to?
John Cole side = at least Obama and them sound halfway decent, like sometimes, maybe they’re off their corporate-sociopath meds and just can’t take the evil anymore…and do something righteous. and they have…some more half-assed and compromised than others… but still…
oh yes, we’re so screwed, but the last dim glimmer of hope is still with the hopey-changey corporation…
Amanda in the South Bay
@ Citizen Alan:
You’re assuming that if Romney had gotten elected in 2008, that the Dems would’ve won their same majorities, or had held onto their 2006 gains. If history is fudged enough that Romney wins, then I seriously doubt Congress would look the same.
See, you’re just like those one issue anti-abortion voters. See, President Romney would’ve done horrible things (and he sure as fuck wasn’t running as a moderate in 08) and the Dems probably wouldn’t have had their historical majorities, but SINGLE PAYER RAR!
MD Rackham
Nice selective quoting of D-Day, John. He does go on to point out exactly what you do in your second blockquote, namely that Obama chose a different legal opinion than the OLC offered.
But what D-Day points out that you ignore is that the OLC is considered the “last word” legally in the exec branch and is very rarely overruled. So Obama’s decision is at the very least rather unusual, and, as you yourself point out, rather strained.
Choosing to overrule the people who are considered the “last word” in favor of a “hostilities that aren’t hostilities” argument is certainly worth criticizing Obama over. I mean, no doubt he can always find some lawyer down at the corner strip mall (i.e., a John Yoo equivalent) to give him some bogus legal opinion he can choose over “conflicting legal opinion.”
Amanda in the South Bay
@ stuckinred:
True, but at the same time the GOP and conservative religion in general hold a greater sway over the former Confederacy than they do over CA or any other blue state.
My apologies if I went overboard in making a point.
jheartney
John’s main point is well-taken; there’s plenty not to like about the current administration (Libya, Afghanistan, tepid stimulus featuring way too many tax cuts, abysmal civil liberties record, limpid response to GOP obstructionism), but it’s not even in the same universe as what we would have got (and not got) out of a McCain/Palin presidency.
What all this points up, however, is how disastrous it is for the country and the world that one of our major political parties has been taken over by theocratic-authoritarian fanatics. We are absolutely stuck with whatever the sane party decides to do, even if it’s bad, because the alternative is so much worse.
Brien Jackson
@44
Let’s not get too carried away here. Obama was slow to appoint a number of judges and has been loathe to use his recess appointment power. Additionally they’ve done pretty much nothing to go to bat for their Fed nominees, suggesting they really don’t understand how important that is, or how important unemployment is. And, of course, Obama chose to re-appoint conservative Republican Ben Bernanke to head the Federal Reserve, something that’s probably as much to blame for job stagnation as anything else as Bernanke pretty much refuses to pursue any sort of expansionary policies even as inflation has consistenly been belo
Frankensteinbeck
I would like to point out that Obama has kept his promise beautifully about Iraq. For anybody who still thinks we’re in a permanent war there, when was the last time an American soldier died? Near as I can tell (it’s hard to find non-information), January.
I don’t care how many troops are there – less than in Germany. If they ain’t fightin’ and dyin’, it ain’t a ‘war’. We’re drawing down on schedule and non-combat troops turned out to actually be non-combat troops. Man lives up to his damn promises and may not be a pure dove, but he’s not a hawk either.
Not to mention that Obama’s ‘bad record on civil rights’ is a narrative built entirely out of ludicrous misrepresentations and outright lies. He stopped torture, his lawyers use the same executive power arguments presidents always have, and the man’s bent over backwards trying to find ways around Congress ordering him 90-8 to never try anyone in Guantanamo.
I might give you that he’s a ‘moderate’ and not a ‘liberal’, since I actually like moderates. A moderate got the ACA passed and gave us 2000 pages of desperately needed regulations on the insurance and medical industries as well as extra coverage for the poor.
I swear I do not know why this man cannot get any credit.
Brian R.
We know it because we’re not fucking idiots.
Do you really think Gore would’ve reversed course on the Clinton approach to the economy and enacted the biggest tax cut for the wealthy after campaigning against the idea?
Do you think the author of Earth in the Balance would’ve put 24-year-old Heritage Foundation dolts in NOAA to censor the scientists?
If so, you’re a moron. You know this in your gut.
Genghis
And wtf on Elizabeth Warren? Why is Obama backing away from her? The only answer I come up with is that he’s beholden to the banks. So I should contribute? I should vote for him again?
Obama’s half-measures, from health care to stimulus to war, have left us facing a close election with clowns as candidates. I don’t want a Republican President. But Obama has repeatedly given up ground before the policy debate even begins. I’ve seen enough of that. Best…H
RickD
There’s a fairly meaningful difference between the Office of Legal Counsel, the White House Counsel and some lawyer at the State Department.
The Office of Legal Counsel is tasked with independently understanding the law. The White House Counsel is Obama’s lawyer and is always going to embrace whatever point-of-view Obama wants him to embrace.
And let’s look exactly at what this opinion is: the US is not “engaged in hostilities” with Libya. To be blunt, this is a farcical opinion to hold.
Obama is making an unconstitutional power grab, and I’m sorry if I’m not willing to play “bad or worse” as way to find a justification for what he’s doing. I’m sick and tired of the race to the bottom, where every abuse by Democrats is tolerated simply because some of the Republicans are bat-shit crazy.
To get a good government, we have to actually demand a good government. We cannot accept a crappy government out of a fear of a worse one.
It’s not like I can point to Obama’s beneficent domestic policy to justify tolerate his awful foreign policy. He’s crapping the bed on both accounts.
Mary Jane
I think they’d actually prefer to. They thrive in a state of constant drama and outrage. In general, their “activism” consists of pounding the keyboard. When it comes to the heavy lifting, meh.
President Romney or Bachmann would be a source of great inspiration. Each new day would bring a treasure trove of reasons to bitch and moan rather than having to invent them.
Mark Field
John, I’ve never commented here before, but I wanted to draw your attention to this post by Jack Balkin which explains why Obama’s decision is not defensible as “choosing among conflicting advisors”.
This is not to say that your conclusion about who to vote for is wrong, but only that your comments on the merits of the WPR are leaving out some key points.
OzoneR
Because it’s not a factual opinion.
Genghis
“his executive order pen closed it!
the problem is that congress won’t let him implement his order.”
So, I guess if you try once and fail, give up? There’s truly nothing else he can do? Find a way to make it part of the US legal system and it’s over. Best..H
Frankensteinbeck
Statements like this continue to baffle me. The man’s domestic policy is great. He’s got an aggressive and far reaching clean energy policy. He publicly supports further job stimulus. He publicly supports rebuilding and expanding our infrastructure. He puts all of these things into every budget proposal. Since there’s no way in Hell he can get these things right now, he’s merely handed the GOP a humiliating defeat when they demanded 30+ billion in government cuts and he gave them accounting tricks.
In terms of what he can do without congress, he’s apparently a demon for reorganizing, strengthening, and upgrading the standards of our regulatory organizations. You don’t ever hear about that unless you deal with them personally, of course.
amk
@ Bill H. You win the stupidest analogy of the day award.
OzoneR
uh, yeah. National politics is different than Massachusetts politics.
Gravenstone
BDR –
Are you actually arguing Obama would replace one of the four hard right Justices with one who shares their ideology? Really? because I’ll have whatever the fuck you’re smoking if you believe that idiocy.
Linda Featheringill
Genghis @ #65:
I’ve heard some low-level whispering about Elizabeth running for political office, Representative or Senate. Maybe there’s something to it?
Susan of Texas
Why? Because he wanted to continue bombing without Congressional approval, which is against the law.
If Obama is doing something wrong, which you acknowledge that he is, he should be held accountable.
You’re right. He did not ignore the correct advice, he chose to not follow it. Obama doesn’t need a lawyer to tell him if it’s legal to ignore the War Powers Act. He needed a lawyer who will give him permission (in the public’s eye) to do what he wants.
Yes, it is. The only difference is that Bush wouldn’t even let a lawyer who would disagree with him into the door. Both Bush and Obama made the same decision to ignore the law.
For a reason; in this case the reason was because he wanted to bomb Libya without getting Congress’s approval, which is against the law.
Now you have to ask why, and there is only one answer to that: oil.
Corner Stone
@Frankensteinbeck
Over 30 US KIA’s in Iraq so far this year. Most recent was June 16th:
“Spc. Marcos A. Cintron, 32, of Orlando, Fla., died June 16 at a medical facility in Boston, Mass., of wounds suffered June 6 at Baghdad, Iraq, when insurgents attacked his unit with indirect fire. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 7th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan.”
Jeff Spender
@ Genghis
I get it. You live in a land of fantasy and dragons where the magical spell “melon” opens every single door on your quest.
Must be great to live in that fantasy of yours.
OzoneR
you wait until the country gives you a Congress to help implement it.
But they didn’t.
Corner Stone
Um, yeah. One side told him that killing people did not amount to hostilities, as you yourself have been derisive of, and the other side told him it was not the best decision.
He chose his own WH counsel over an independent legal analysis.
Corner Stone
I also really love the way you bury the lede by citing some comment from my.FDL.
Yeah, the president chose the legal decision that says hostilities are not *really* hostilities(tm)…but look over there! A bright shiny squirrel at FDL said something!!
burnspbesq
They do, but the problem is that if they get what they deserve, the rest of us will get it in the ass.
Alex S.
SirPartyMan, the wars are winding down. The Iraq War is more or less over. The Afghanistan War is in its last legs. The troops will leave soon, not even the negotiations with the Taliban are causing Republican outrage.
Obama did appoint Ms. Warren to set up the consumer protection bureau. And last month, the Republicans used procedural tricks to prevent Obama from making any recess appointments, especially Warren.
Obama did sign an executive order to close down Guantanamo, but Congress refused to accept it. So where should these people go? And just maybe, some of them might actually be terrorists.
All those refusing to vote for Obama should support a primary campaign and see how it goes. But in the end, if Obama wins that primary, they should vote for him (or his democratic challenger). I cannot recall any republican operative making threats like ‘If Bush doesn’t privatize Social Security I will not vote for him’. What they do is pushing their ideas. The democratic base, well, the netroots, just likes to make unconstructive threats. The netroots have not developed a way to formulate their ideas and to compare them favorably to conservative ideas.
Frankensteinbeck
Incidentally, if anyone brings up ‘messaging’ I agree with you he’s terrible at controlling the message. He got up and gave a speech on national television where he told everyone that ‘shared sacrifice’ meant ‘the rich need to pay more taxes’. It feels like it might as well not have happened, though, since all I hear anyone discussing is how he supports austerity. That’s definitely a huge messaging problem.
Joey Maloney
@Citizen Alan: If you’re wishing for a President Romney in 2008, why not go whole hog and wish for a purple unicorn that farts rainbows and single-payer health care? Your choice in 2008 wasn’t Obama or Romney; it was Obama and McCain, the vindictive, unstable, septuagenarian cancer survivor with Palin waiting in the wings.
And the Romney who’s now running for 2012 is only different from Palin by external genitalia and better speechwriters.
existential fish
With President Romney, Specter stays in the GOP and any health care reform dies in committee.
Whether you like it or not is a different story. But Romney isn’t expanding political capital on it.
hamletta
Gee, according to all my civics education, that generally involves Congress.
Moron.
Steaming Pile
I’m waiting for the Firebagger primary challenger (LOL). I would say if they’re ready to go that route, they’d better get a move on.
gwangung
Well, I dunno. Do you have suggestions?
Otherwise, you’re operating under the Green Lantern mode of politics—which is how Bush and Cheney operated.
Roger Moore
@Mary Jane:
No, what they really like is getting something close to their way while still having some things they can use to play purer than thou media whore. If they had to deal with President Palin, their lives would actually be worse and they’d have to compete for the lefty spotlight with all the elected Democrats who would be much more effective in pointing out the stupidity of the Palin Administration. That would be the worst of both worlds.
Davis X. Machina
@ Corner Stone.
In defense of Frankensteibeck, it has been, up until mid-June, the quietest Iraq had ever been since the invasion — 21 coalition deaths from hostile action. Should be zero, but still…
Gravenstone
#68 – Genghis
/facepalm
Really? You’re arguing that repeating an Executive Order, the funding for implementation of which was pointedly blocked by Congress, in the face of an even more conservative Congress than acted on the first EO incarnation will somehow turn out differently? I think you and BDR are smoking the same shit. Share.
Rhoda
@RickD: It’s not unconstitutional. The President receives this advice from his lawyers (and they’re all his lawyers and a part of the executive branch) and he makes his decision.
Genghis
“asswipes”
“Some days I think these guys truly deserve to live under a President Palin.”
“I think they’d actually prefer to. They thrive in a state of constant drama and outrage. In general, their “activism” consists of pounding the keyboard. When it comes to the heavy lifting, meh.”
Enough with the insults and making straw man arguments for those you disagree with. You have a point to make, make it.
There’s much more at stake here than whether or not Obama gets re-elected. The corporations, the banks, the military security industrial complex are far more powerful than the government. It wasn’t always this way, or at least not to this extreme. I’m looking for the candidate that will take on the corporations, and there are none on the horizon from either party. Best…H
OzoneR
How do you get to decide it’s against the law if there were lawyers who told him it wasn’t?
You’d have more credibility if he decided to go against advice unanimously given to him, and that’s not the case.
and BTW, you progressive champions of the world, THIS is the guy whose advice he TOOK
http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/03/23/it-was-against-the-law/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/05/02/727221/-Harold-Koh-for-Supreme-Court
and here’s St. Glenn or Rio telling us how Koh should be ON SCOTUS
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/09/stevens
PS
Pace Brecht, it’s time for the government to dissolve the lefty opposition and appoint a new one.
NR
John, this attitude is exactly why things will never get any better for the working class in this country.
It’s all about leverage. The banks, the oil companies, the insurance companies, the defense contractors understand this. That’s why they donate to both parties. Because the cash gives them leverage. If a politician does something they don’t like, they can then use that leverage and withhold that cash to get what they want.
Well, we progressives have leverage too. That leverage is our vote. But, we’re told we can’t use that leverage. Sarah Palin might win. And so what do we get? Ignored.
Why should any Democrat take “The People’s Budget” seriously? What is going to happen if they don’t? Well, if you have your way, nothing.
Why should the Democrats pass the Employee Free Choice Act? What is going to happen if they don’t? Again, if you have your way, nothing.
Let’s take the issue you’ve been writing about a lot lately–the wars. Why should Obama get us out of Afghanistan, Libya, etc.? What is going to happen if he doesn’t? Once again, if you have your way, nothing.
Why should any Democrat ever listen to a single thing you say? You are going to vote for them no matter what they do.
Leverage is the only way we are going to defeat the corporate monopoly on power. And that means that we have to be willing to lose in the short term in order to win in the long term.
And I’m sorry, but the Sarah Palin threat just makes me laugh. A Palin presidency would do more to swing this country back to the left than anything else I can think of. Which, of course, is exactly why the plutocrats will never let it happen.
No, what the plutocrats need most right now is a Republican in Democrats’ clothing. And that’s exactly what they’ve got in Obama.
OzoneR
Maybe Harold Koh should run!
Oh wait
Susan of Texas
Argument from authority. Address the legal issue. Better yet, ask yourself how you’d feel if Bush did it.
Alex S.
I am not surprised that the unilateral arm of foreign policy, the Pentagon, declares the war illegal while the multilateral arm, the State Department, doesn’t.
NR
You do realize that this is exactly the same argument that the Bush administration used to justify torture, right? “The lawyers said it was okay!”
amk
Knee-capping their own is their only skill set. Teabaggers, all said & done, were more successful in getting their agenda done in two short years, while the nutroots couldn’t get even one dog-catcher elected. Clueless clucking headless chickens.
PS
A Palin presidency would do more to swing this country back to the left than anything else I can think of.
There is an interesting case study in Wisconsin right now. It is indeed quite possible that the Rep overreach there will swing the state back to the Dems, but it will take years to restore the status quo ante 2010, and it may never happen. Be careful what you wish for.
General Stuck
Goddam, who left the FDL gate open? I got better things to do than argue with idiots.
Susan of Texas
Power is given, not taken.
stuckinred
Amanda in the South Bay
Not necessary, I just think it important to know that this bullshit doesn’t recognize state lines and suhc.
Davis X. Machina
@steaming pie:
They keep self-destructing — Grayson lost his re-election bid, Feingold, ditto — though I’d love to see him back in the Senate. Weiner, in spectacular fashion. That plus flat-out refusals to be considered from Dean and Kucinich [i]inter alios[/i] has left them flirting with the likes of Warren Mosler.
OzoneR
Yes, it is, that’s usually how things administrations do are justified, by their lawyers sayings its ok, then a court can decide…funny how one of the prime legal scholars who didn’t say it was ok to torture is the same guy who told Obama he can join an attack on Libya without Congressional approval. Funny that.
existential fish
@OS
Exactly. The people who say that just assume that there will be no permanent cost to Republican rule. The last 30 years (as well as Wisconsin) are a pretty damn compelling argument against that.
amk
@ OzoneR : Oh, the sweetest schadenfreude. It’s their own dahling who did it.
Corner Stone
@Davis X #89
With no defense of Frankensteinbeck, we’re averaging over 1 KIA per week in Iraq. With 2 seconds of teh googs he could’ve got that rather than saying “they ain’t a fightin’ no damn war as they’uns ain’t a’ dyin’!”
Alex S.
Obama is better than Clinton, from an ideological point of view. And Obama doesn’t have a good economy to support him. And people forget that the 2010 elections were a pretty hard blow to Obama’s agenda. His record in the 2008-2010 period was very impressive, and if it had not been for Lieberman, the medicare age would have been lowered to 55. It is foolish to think that votes don’t matter.
The highest item on the progressive agenda has to be the repeal of Citizens United. And this item needs a democratic senate and a democratic president.
Corner Stone
@amk #100
teabaggers cost the GOP the Senate, or at least 3 more seats there.
The House was always going to flip to R, though maybe not the wave it did, if teabagger fury didn’t propel some CD’s.
Genghis
“Really? You’re arguing that repeating an Executive Order, the funding for implementation of which was pointedly blocked by Congress, in the face of an even more conservative Congress than acted on the first EO incarnation will somehow turn out differently? I think you and BDR are smoking the same shit. Share.”
I’m arguing that if there were a will to close Guantanamo, it would be in process. There’s more than one way to do it, and getting a case before the Supreme Court might be such a way. The problem is a lack of will. This may be a calculated choice, but it’s the reality. Obama has priorities higher than closing the base.
Guantanamo may be a minor issue here , but it exemplifies Obama’s unwillingness to confront a determined opposition. They will continue to push the blade in until they find steel.
Again, the insults weaken your argument.
Best…H
Corner Stone
U3 will not be below 8.5% come election time. There just doesn’t seem to be any mechanism to force it down, even if the decision making was moving that way.
The D’s have always been a loose coalition of fractious and independent minded groups. President Obama is going to need every last one of them to be re-elected in 2012.
IMO, choosing bombing as not hostilities(tm) is but another small chink in the wall. Where is the pay off, politically?
Corner Stone
@Alex S
Don’t we have both of those ?
Brien Jackson
@93
Don’t bother, the is the Krugman Conundrum; they love to trumpet progressive experts if and only if said experts agree with them. If not then they just don’t count.
existential fish
@Alex S
Slight disagreement. The highest items on the progressive agenda have to be, in some order: climate change, protecting the existing welfare state and making it sustainable (read: NOT CUTTING IT), citizens united, and decreasing the bloated size of the military.
I don’t see how a President Romney helps on any of those fronts, unless he plans to go to Al Gore the way Nixon went to China.
Genghis
“The highest item on the progressive agenda has to be the repeal of Citizens United. And this item needs a democratic senate and a democratic president.”
I agree. And I will vote for Obama. He’s not as bad as whoever the other party runs, regardless how disappointed I am in him. Best…H
Brien Jackson
@99
No, no it’s not. But you have succeeded in making the most common fallacious accusation of a fallacy, so well done.
Craig Pennington
John, Bachmann is running and Palin isn’t. Please update your “Clap louder or ZOMG! President SCARY!” script accordingly.
Now perhaps I was too optimistic. I’d say that my top, #1, get me motivated set of issues is civil liberties and the rule of law. Obama lawyer shopped on this. Yeah, not as bad as Bush. But we’re still killing folks in 5 majority Muslim nations right now. And Drake was pursued for whistle blowing to the press like he was a goddamned spy working for an enemy. The DOJ still abuses the State Secrets privilege to avoid accountability. In 2008, I voted FOR Obama (naively optimistic before the FISA vote, still hopeful after it.) In 2012 I will be voting AGAINST President SCARY!
Yes, Obama has done some good things. He’s still better than anyone on corporate team R. But the biggest thing he’s got going for him is the people running against him. Um, yay.
Susan of Texas
The biggest mistake people can make is focusing on the elections. Voting has very little effect on the balance of power in this country–that is why we all feel so helpless and frustrated.
You have to go where our power is–numbers. That’s the only thing we have going for us, which the power elite know damn well. Our electoral process is nothing but a coliseum game our emperors put on to keep us amused while they steal us blind. They pit us against each other so we ignore them, they inflame our hatred of each other so we don’t hate them; they set us to attack each other so we don’t attack them.
We donate to Democrats instead of building a network to help the poor, organize them (and us of course) and thereby form a cohesive force that can use their numbers to take back power. The only thing our masters fear is revolution. Our revolution might be peaceful and passive or angry and violent; they don’t care. Either way they lose power and therefore money.
The most dangerous thing in the world is hope. Once people give up hope that things will get better they start to fight back.
Linda Featheringill
#111
Corner:
Now, now.
Alex S.
@ Corner Stone:
Yes, but what we don’t have is a dead or retiring conservative Supreme Court Justice.
res ipsa loquitur
“Progressives for Romney” ?
I need a drink.
amk
@ Corner Stone – What price WI, OH, FL and MI ? The teabaggers did it while the fucking firebaggers aided them by kneecapping their own.
Susan of Texas
How is citing the bona fides of an authority not an argument from authority? Does Obama need a lawyer to tell him if it’s okay to ignore the War Powers Act?
Trurl
In a nearby parallel universe…
President John McCain recently summoned his Attorney General, his Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, and Department of Defense General Counsel to a private meeting. He asked them whether it would be OK, in the now 90-day long absence of Congressional authorization, to indefinitely continue his controversial drone bombing campaign against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities.
The Attorney General and the General Counsel agreed that it would be a clear violation of the War Powers Act. Neither felt it necessary to add that, as such, it would be an impeachable offense. But they pointed out that the OLC Chief had always been the “Supreme Court” in such decisions. His was the only opinion that counted.
OLC concurred. There was just no wiggle room on this.
McCain curtly dismissed them. He sat alone in the Oval Office for several minutes. Then he called the private cell number of the man who had been general counsel of his successful election campaign. After a few pleasantries, the President explained what he needed.
After some thought, his old friend suggested a bold plan. Why not claim that drone bombing doesn’t rise to the level of hostilities as defined by the WPA? Think of the benefits. Under this theory, the President is able to bomb whoever he wants, for however long he wants – without even having to ask Congress to pay for it.
“So our position is that it doesn’t count as a war unless there are ground troops?” McCain asked nervously. “Will people really swallow that?”
Genghis
“Yes, Obama has done some good things. He’s still better than anyone on corporate team R. But the biggest thing he’s got going for him is the people running against him. Um, yay.”
Well said. Best…H
Corner Stone
@Susan of Texas #122
If or when, people on the left side actually accomplished that, we would see establishment D officials banding with R’s to challenge their standing to vote, and cry to the heaven’s about voter fraud.
Brien Jackson
“How is citing the bona fides of an authority not an argument from authority?”
An argument from authority as an argument that something *has* to be true because of the person making it. For example, if I said that the Laffer Curve must be sound economic theory because Laffer is an economist and he says it is and no other evidence is needed, that’s would be an argument from authroity.
The general argument that the opinion of a lawyer on legal questions is more valid than the opinion of a non-lawyer is a recognition that there is such a thing as learned expertise or differing levels of knowledge. It’s not an example of the argument from authority fallacy.
Corner Stone
@amk #126
In what way? Where’s the evidence of your assertion?
Ed Schultz or Jane Hamsher saying something something mumble?
Brien Jackson
@128
Was the campaign approved and authroized by the United Nations?
dogwood
There’s always a flank of the left that takes pride in hating Democratic presidents. They are as impervious to facts and reality as any wingnut who gets all his information from Fox and talk radio. In the fantasy land inhabited by the FDL crowd, Obama would have gone down fighting for more stimulus and got nothing, held out for single payer and got nothing, held out for stricter financial regs and come up empty handed. He would have held his breath until the Dream Act was passed and then simply passed out when guys like Tester said drop dead. If he had any balls he’d have let the banks fail and the Bush tax cuts expire right along with extended unemployment benefits. This is what a real progressive would do. And if he had done what the baggers wanted, the middle class would be in great shape right now. If he had just spent all his time prosecuting the crimes of the Bush administration then Jane Hampsher and Glenn Greenwald would be happy, because they don’t care about much of anything but the little empire they control and keeping their sanctimonious minions happy.
amk
@ corner stone
Oh, please. Didn’t Ed tell the dems to take their balls home ? Didn’t that firebagger dame openly advocate lining up with grover fucking norquist and the teabaggers ?
PS
The only thing our masters fear is revolution.
There is empirical support for this observation. It’s what got us the GI Bill, inter alia. Which in turn was arguably the engine for about 20 years of simultaneously increasingly prosperity and lessening inequality.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Mr. Cole is smugly satisfied that if President Obama is anything more than 1 percent better than Mr. Romney or Mr. McCain or Ms. Palin then that is acceptable, nay, wonderfully worship-worthy.
Some days I think balloonbaggers truly deserve to live under a President Obama.
.
.
jheartney
Come the Revolution! We have nothing to lose but our chains! Etc. etc.
Meanwhile in the real world, for the week of May 30, the top TV shows are NBA Finals and America’s Got Talent. On Cable, it’s Pawn Stars, Spongebob and WWE. Yeah, this looks like a population spoiling to hit the barricades.
NR
Or maybe, just maybe, they’d be happy because justice was served and the rule of law was upheld.
I realize that Obama supporters don’t care about justice or the rule of law, but understand that not everyone feels the same way that you do.
Chyron HR
Yes, and as previously referenced, they also like to murder their wives. And it goes without saying that they demonize anyone who disagrees with their political views.
Observer
always late to the party.
Looking at of these arguments, Cole’s, Stuck’s, everyone, misses the point.
the evaluation should be two-fold, each on their own merits:
1) has the POTUS done a good job
2) if you think the POTUS has done a bad job, are there extenuating circumstances
3) in 2012 do we expect that the POTUS will do a better job than his opponents for the 4 years following.
Answering question #1 has nothing to do Republicans, Congress, etc; it needs to be evaluated on its own. E.g. how we rate the job done. If this were a criminal court, the question is did the accused commit the crime.
Problem with Cole, Stuck and commenters is that they never evaluate #1 without some reference to #2 or #3. I.e. you can never pin them down on just a simple question.
The answer to #1 is “the POTUS has done a bad job”. This is because of the unemployment rate.
If you argue opposite then you are arguing that 2+ years of 9% unemployment is okay with you. It doesn’t matter much if you have health care if you’re dirt poor. If you argue well it’s Bush’s fault you’re just arguing extenuating circumstances and avoiding the question.
In and of itself persistent 9% unemployment should be completely unacceptable. If you can’t bear to agree to that then the question is why even vote then if there’s no standards of unacceptable economic performance for the world’s largest economy and richest country and you’re saying you are unwilling to hold the POTUS to any standard at all.
After no for #1, the argument could be yes for extenuating circumstances and yes for #3.
But anyone who thinks 9% unemployment is okay for 2+ years may as well vote Republican. That’s my problem with all the Firebagger bashers like Stuck & Cole.
Objectively Obama is doing a bad job and 9% unemployment completely outweighs everything else combined. If you can’t just acknowledge that then what’s the point of your brand of politics.
Keith G
@ Rick D (#65)
I do not agree with all of this, but I do with a lot.
We needed Obama to be an active counter to the unitary executive. Unfortunately, he has not been. The next Republican president will be sorely tempted to pick up where the last GOP administration left off. I was counting on Obama to do more to make that a bit more difficult.
There is a decent chance that Obama will be defeated next year. Unfortuately a mantra of, “Things might be worse with them” will not be that helpful in inspiring electoral enthusiasm.
Calling folks names does nothing to bolster the pro Obama case.
Corner Stone
@amk #135
Ok, he averages 261,000 viewers in key demos. She has a website that is ranked 19,785th of all sites by traffic.
Get a fucking grip on yourself.
NR
This one is more true than you would like to admit. You need look no further than the comment I was responding to for proof of that.
Corner Stone
@jheartney
Our revolutionary masterminds told us to turn our TV’s to those channels based on random drawings. Then we all snuck out and met in that underground warehouse type thingy. And plotted.
Trurl
I think that every day.
Pro Tip, Mr. Cole: When “conflicting advice” is coming from the Chief of Office of Legal Counsel [And the Attorney General. And the DoD.] on the one hand and the general counsel of your presidential election campaign on the other, you don’t side with the latter unless you are very dishonest or very stupid.
And we’re always told what an intelligent man Obama is.
Alex S.
@ Observer:
Wrong, wrong, wrong. It’s wrong to say that one is happy with 9% unemployment without looking at the circumstances. 9% alone doesn’t mean anything, unemployment might come down from 15%, for example. It is VERY wrong to say that health care doesn’t matter when you’re poor, on the contrary. It’s wrong to say that one is avoiding the question. The government is more than just Obama.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@Corner Stone #143
That is what balloonbaggers do best.
.
.
Elie
Morons like Daddy-O and others have NO IDEA!!!
Federal agencies like HHS were virtually destroyed of competent leadership during the Bush years. Yeah, the agencies that regulate Medicare, Medicaid and many aspects of health contain burrowed in nitwits. And that is just HHS. You already know about FEMA and FDA and a host of others. IF FOR NO OTHER REASON — you do not want any admnistration that explicitly hates government taking this over again, do you MORON?????
I am sick to death of these frauds and traitors. They call themselves the vanguard of the “correct” progressive viewpoint, but they are just ignorant and destructive assholes. I hate ’em more than right wing blowhards and they are even more destructive. I would even say, some are probably paid to be traitors.
scav
Query. What’s the (is there) an operatic call with a meaning opposite to that of “Encore! Encore!”? I need to memorize it because I’m increasingly convinced this badly aging diva of a nation needs to get off the stage. Pronto. “Apoptosis! Apoptosis!” is as close as I’ve gotten.
Lavocat
D-Day is right on the money. Always has been. Always will be. Furthermore, if an alleged constitutional “scholar” is going to parse the law to his liking whenever it is inconvenient to abide by the clear letter of the law, then, hell yeah, I won’t be voting for him again either.
eemom
The cult of Jane Hamsher has zero tolerance for inconvenient truth, so I don’t know why this would surprise you. Nobody who blogs at that cesspool ever deviates one zillionth of a iota from her jihadist agenda, in case you hadn’t noticed.
Susan of Texas
Corner Stone @ 130
Ignore the elections. The only type of power that counts here is economic power, not voting power.
amk
@ Corner Stone – Get a fucking grip yourself. These nutters depressed the voter enthusiasm and let the rethugs/teabaggers win in 2010 by thin margins both in the congress and the state houses. These assholes are not even useful idiots.
OzoneR
That’s like saying the Yankees played bad because they lost 1-0 when the game was called due to rain in the 3rd inning.
Did Roosevelt do a bad job because the unemployment rate was still 16% in 1936, and roughly the same in 1940? I mean Huey Long seemed to think so, but this ignores all the other circumstances including state budget cuts, private sector freak outs, the Euro crisis, Japan, Haiti, and the Republican takeover of Congress, some of which he has no control over.
I would argue that because unemployment is at 9%, down from 10% 18 months earlier, he’s done a GOOD job, because that’s the trajectory we want it to go in.
This is just the anti-establishment talking, whatever “the establishment” does can never be deemed good enough. Even if unemployment dropped to 4%, we’d be hearing “are we happy with the low-paying jobs that were created” (that was the reaction even when we were creating 200,000 jobs a month). It’s like Dan Choi getting what he wants, then moving the goalposts, it will never be enough, there will always be some evil you will latch on to to justify your anti-establishment, anarchist attitude.
Brien Jackson
Can we please just retire the phrase “unitary executive” since no one uses it correctly anyway?
Alex S.
@ Susan of Texas:
Just out of interest, you are a communist, aren’t you?
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Its moments like these that make me hopeful Bachmann (or pretty much anyone but Romney) wins the nomination. The Firebagger threads will be glorious.
OzoneR
I’m not under any illusion they’re gonna vote for him. I have no interest in begging them to since they don’t matter.
I don’t really want people this stupid to be part of a progressive movement anyway, they’ll just fuck it up
Martin
I think it may flip back in 2012. If the new CD map in CA holds (it probably won’t, but I expect it won’t look too different), I expect the GOP will lose at least 2 seats here. The new districts are pretty brutal on some of the long-held R seats in SoCal. CA 44, 46, and 50 may all flip (46 is Rohrabacher, 50 is Bilbray). Up north of us, two R seats look like tossups and 37 also looks like it should flip R->D. All of the D seats remain lean or strong D areas. Worse case for the GOP is 6 seats flip. That’s 1/4 of what’s needed to flip the House.
There’s pretty much no way the new map can look better for the GOP here – the demographics just aren’t there.
Freddie deBoer
The binary strikes again.
Corner Stone
Uncle Clarence Thomas,
You’re wise in the ways of the world. Do you believe it is President Obama’s fierce love of the United States that drove him to ignore independent legal analysis from the OLC, and fiercely accept his WH counsel’s decision that killing people did not amount to hostilities(tm) ?
Lurleen
@74
Really? Libya has relatively little oil. If you are talking about France and Italy worrying about the oil in Libya, then make your case.
Just curious, had the UN not acted and Benghazi slaughtered, would you be screaming that it was another Rwanda?
Brien Jackson
@155
This is where I get off the bus. The administration has failed horribly w/r/t unemployment because…well because they’ve failed. They’ve made a number of bad decisions, but tangible and in terms of messaging, and ultimately they really don’t have any clue what they’re doing in terms of jobs. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate other things, but just because they passed the ACA and repealed DADT doesn’t mean they didn’t badly mishandle the need for economic stimulus and make a catastrophic error in re-appointing Bernanke to head the Federal Reserve.
Trurl
I eagerly await Mr. Cole’s blistering post blaming Obama’s loss to Romney on the malign influence of FDL. (As opposed to Obama’s having mired us in a fourth war while real unemployment is 20%.)
“We create our own reality.”
amk
@ Observer – Since pl often cites FDR, just could you tell us the unemployment numbers during his terms ? Assuming that, of course, you know them.
PS
@amk 154: That’s a valid point about depressing enthusiasm. Mind you, I’m not in favor of pernicious euphoria either.
@SoT 153: The economic power issue is worth a lot more investigation. A lot of folks who benefited hugely from the Clinton-era boom (and lost a lot from the W collapses) vote solidly against their financial interests. I’m not just talking about fairly poor people, but fairly rich ones. The mega-rich, well, they are a very different story. The mega-rich are, in a sense, the real enemy; but the fairly rich are probably an even bigger obstacle. I’m just musing here, and suggesting that there is a much longer discussion to be had.
Brien Jackson
@Corner Stone
When was Koh transferred to the WH Counsel’s office?
Corner Stone
@amk #154
Beyond your feverish fapping sessions, what actual evidence do you have that a guy who avgs 261K viewers and a lady with a website ranked 20,000 contributed in any way to election outcomes across the nation?
OzoneR
When “real” unemployment is 15.8%, down .3% this year and .1% in a month, who is creating their own reality?
Trurl
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/06/king.html
Roger Moore
@Observer:
I’m sorry, but you’re the one who has it wrong. If you are going to judge how well the President is doing, you have to limit your evaluation to things that are within the President’s control. You can’t evaluate the President based on things that are or aren’t done by people who aren’t either the President or appointed by the President. Pointing out that the number one thing that prevented useful stuff from getting done in 2009-2010 was a disfunctional Senate is not finding an excuse to let Obama off the hook, it’s an accurate analysis of what was happening during that time. And making an accurate analysis of what was actually happening is the first step in getting things done in the future.
Keith G
@ 156 Brien J: Would imperial presidency be better?
@ Corner:
I hear that he plays long ball. I wonder what opporunity cost was so significant that led the West Wing to go all neocon. Or, were they just so incompetent as to risk so much on a hope that Libya would be neatly wrapped up in 60 days of feckless military adventure.
Corner Stone
@Brien Jackson #168
Last I checked, Robert Bauer was WH counsel. I’m pretty sure I never mentioned Koh. Are you confused about something Brien?
“including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.””
Cate
Dogwood,
I love what you said. It is true, true, true.
As for me, I work in Wisconsin (live in Minnesota) and am seeing first hand what happens when voters do not realize that Republicans are much, much different than Democrats.
OzoneR
What no wide-eyed lefty can tell me is how appointing a new head of the Fed, who probably couldn’t even get confirmed, would solve the unemployment problem.
Hell, even “we need a trillion dollar stimulus” Krugman thought Bernanke should be reappointed.
Again, just anti-establishment nonsense.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Not letting Benghazi go up in flames, for starters. There’s also the Mediterranean Dialogue.
amk
Corner Stone – I see that you’re that quintessential clueless firebagger, who knows jacksquat about winning/losing elections and the consequences. Not wasting my time anymore.
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore #172
For good or ill, the president will pay the price for the economy. It’s been the R’s gameplan the whole time. But WTS, the position is a figurehead and proxy for the economy.
Observer
@amk
The unemployment rate in the 1930s during FDR term1 was in the 20s and teens. But that is *exactly* my point.
EVERYONE acknowledged that this was unacceptable. So point #1 for FDR would be “bad job”. But point #2 answer for FDR would be the extenuating “but every year we have decreased the unemployment rate and now in 1936 it is 8 points lower at 16% then it was when I came into office”. And answer #3 for FDR would be “Your g-damn right I’d do a better job than those Republican SOBs”.
This is the problem with the Obama supporters. No one, and I mean no one, acknowledges what everybody else not connected to politics knows: 2+ years of 9% unemployment is unacceptably high. If the Obama supporters would just acknowledge that then there’s be 80% less arguments and antagonistic feuds between the two camps.
Brien Jackson
@174
No, of course not. But again you’re being dense in pretending to not understand my point about your rather obvious mischaracterization of the legal advice.
Corner Stone
amk – And I see you have nothing in the way of actual persuasive evidence to present here to bolster your argument.
You can squee to the Gods(tm) all you want that firebaggers et al caused the elections in tight locations to swing to the R’s.
It’s just actual facts and or evidence you lack to back it up.
Susan of Texas
Alex S. @157
Of course not. Does saying “help the poor and maybe they’ll help you” make me a communist? Or that “our politicians do what the superrich elite want and ignore our wants”?
We can’t out-buy/out-donate the rich, and the middle class is getting poorer and poorer. We can’t fight the elite; they control the people who control military. We can’t vote them out; if that were possible we wouldn’t be at this point. But they are few and we are many, and that is our only source of power.
The problem is that it’s far too late to get back our power before the second leg of the recession/depression hits. So we should concentrate on helping each other survive, which will earn the loyalty we will need to grab back our electoral system when we are strong enough.
Corner Stone
@Brien Jackson
Who’s being willfully obtuse here? You asked me about Koh, someone I never mentioned. I have stated President Obama took advice from his WH Counsel over the weight of an independent OLC.
Who’s doing what here?
John Cole
What is wrong with you? Why are you eagerly awaiting a Romney win?
You’re sick.
JPL
Corner Stone..
The problem is not with Jane, it’s the headlines she tries to generate in MSM.. Progressives disgruntled with Obama, what’s the point of voting…
Personally, I don’t believe Jane really cares about progressive issues as much as she cares about writing negative posts in order to increase site hits. I used to read FDL a lot and I can’t remember many positive posts over there. I enjoyed reading Christie’s legal analysis and education posts but that’s about it. Jane goes by the motto that bitching sells and it doesn’t matter who is in office.
Glenn at least has been honest that he believes in the rule of law and is a libertarian.
BTW..I’m not thrilled with the President’s analysis about the War Powers Act but in no way do I think he is the same as Bush or the rest of the whackos. I for one do not wish to live in an evangelical country.
BTW…John Cole did not really express his personal opinion about the War Powers Act..he stated correctly imo, that the President did receive advice and that the President is better than the repubs.
Observer
@amk
And the reason the Obama supporters can’t acknowledge that is because then you really can’t support the actions of the POTUS and his rhetoric and specific lack of action on things entirely within his control such as the HAMP program.
And then it becomes harder to argue their favorite #2 extenuating reason “but Congress has tied his hands” and then it only makes sense to argue #3 if you think Obama will change in his second term.
The logic is obvious to anyone and I really shouldn’t have to be the one to point this out.
Mike in NC
No problem, President Romney has big plans to turn that around with massive tax cuts for the rich, and by enacting Vice President Ryan’s austerity budget. Never mind that while Romney was governor of Massachusetts, the state ranked 47th in terms of job creation. But the Villagers know he’s a “successful businessman”, and everything else will fall into place.
Brien Jackson
@175
Me, anti-establishment? Ha! I’m rather openly sympathetic to the core of Yglesian style neo-liberal social democracy.
As for Krugman, well I guess we disagree then, because I fail to see how a Democratic President appointing a conservative Republican to head the most important lever of economic policy in the world was ever a good idea. and what exactly is your contention? That the Federal Reserve can’t do anything to stimulate the economy and help un-employment?
dogwood
You would be a bit more convincing if you could explain what the president could do without Congress to reduce unemployment. Last time I checked the president didn’t have the power to appropriate funds for a jobs program or a small business stimulus or robust retraining program for displaced workers. But maybe I’m wrong and the high unemployment rates are an effect of his poor job performance. I guess I missed the part where the Congress sent stimulus packages and jobs legislation to his desk and he vetoed them.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
Where can I find the proposed redistricting maps? I’m curious, especially about the State Legislature versions. Is there any hope the new districts will give us a 2/3 Democratic majority in both houses? Because being able to tell the Republican rump to FOADIAF would be fucking awesome.
Alex S.
@ Observer:
You are so wrong in everything you say. You are trying to make a logical argument but you already fail at formulating the premises.
OzoneR
Oh for Chrissakes, Cramdown.
Trurl
Oh, I’m sure the President will be the first to agree with you. He’ll sound genuinely moved as he acknowledges their hardships.
He’s quite good at that.
Corner Stone
@Keith G #173
If the reporting is accurate, then the question has to be asked. Why did President Obama choose the legal advice he did?
Brien Jackson
@184
Oh bugger off. You brought up the WH counsel to imply that it was somehow inappropriate for Obama to listen to other legal advisers over the OLC. You don’t want to talk about Koh because he’s a well respected legal scholar of international law and has been praised by progressives prior to this, so acknowledging his position makes the notion that Obama has to listen to the OLC just because rather obviously absurd.
FormerSwingVoter
What the fuck is wrong with firebaggers?
I mean, I get it – progress is frustratingly slow. Campaign promises have been ignored or explicitly broken. But to declare that Obama has been terrible on LGBT issues specifically? That’s not just a falsifiable statement that has been falsified – it’s an explicit rejection of objective reality. A lie. A bald-faced lie.
Yes, we need to continue pushing him to go further to the left. But if we’re going to openly reject reality, we’re no better than the teabaggers.
Keith G
@ 177 Sheriff: That’s a false choice. He could have helped Benghazi and the rest and came back to Congress to fulfill the spirt of the WPA.
Trurl
It was equally obvious to any but the True Believers that Obama’s strategy of pissing on the left every chance he could was not going to yield electoral fruits in 2010.
But you must never underestimate the amount of reality a good Party man can shut out.
stormhit
You stupid firebagging fucks are ruining the country. Michigan is not better off right now after Republicans swept all branches of government last fall due to low Democratic turnout thanks to you moronic cretins and your constant irrational whining.
Now Michigan will be down a Democratic Rep. thanks to the gerrymandered districts the new majority Republican congress passed. Thanks assholes!
amk
@ Observer – So let me this straight. FDR had 20% when he took over and it took him two terms to bring it under control and yet here you are whining that 9% is “unacceptably high” after just two years in an economy that is no way comparable to that of FDR’s (all manufacturing jobs exported even before Obama took office and they ain’t coming back; the kinda manufacturing done in 30’s to 50’s is being done by automated machines now etc.). And finally, the lie that Obama has not anything at job front at all. That’s why professional left is a laughing stock
OzoneR
Well lets ask the oracle of economics then
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aK3wlrRdMC38
Observer
@Alex s.
No, Alex the point stands by itself. First diagnose then determine the circumstances. Establish the facts and then deal with the excuses/rationalizations. Just like in court. Did the defendant do it? yes/no. Does the defendant have a good excuse. Two different questions.
Persisent high unemployment at 9% is unacceptably high and it doesn’t matter who the POTUS is at the time or how it got there.
And universal health care doesn’t matter much if you’re dirt poor. It’s like you’re saying it’s better to be dirt poor in universal health care Pakistan than middle class in non-universal health care US. Just no.
Life expectancy when you’re dirt poor will decrease regardless of access to health care.
Trurl
What you don’t seem to have gotten yet is that we’re now way past “He lied about wanting a public option”…
This is important, so please pay attention:
HE IS NOW IN KNOWING VIOLATION OF THE WAR POWERS ACT. THIS IS AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE.
You want me to vote for him anyway because the Awful Other is even worse? Then at least have the decency to be apologetic about what a shit choice you’re offering.
Tom in TN
I’m not sure why everyone is assuming the Republicans have suddenly found True Love with the War Powers Act. They’ve simply found Libya to be a convenient way to try to make Obama looks weak versus Congress, so as to gain an upper hand in the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations.
Obama’s reply was essentially calling them out on their lack of any real interest in Libya and their attempt inject foreign policy into domestic affairs. 10-to-1 the Reps don’t push this any further, because in fact they don’t give a rip.
There is less to this kerfuffle than it seems.
OzoneR
Ummmmmmmmmmmm, I’m not even sure where to go with this, it may have broke my brain.
Isn’t the point of universal health care to ensure everyone has health care whether you’re super rich or dirt poor?
I think progressives seem to have different priorities.
Corner Stone
@Brien Jackson #196
Oh, ok I get it. You want to argue something different than what I’ve been stating here. And you’d like me to somehow defend an argument I never made or hinted at.
Go on my good man, go on.
Observer
@amk
I now have to assume that you’re really thick. Unemployment rate in 1932 was 24%. In 1936 it was 16%. That’s a decrease of one third. So the situational assessment is “WHAT WE’RE DOING IS WORKING” so let’s keep on doing it. And again, since you are reading challenged, EVERYBODY AT THE TIME AGREED THAT UNEMPLOYMENT WAS TOO HIGH. You idiot.
Today unemployment is higher than when Obama took over, so he’s going backwards. And also, NO ONE IN THE WHITE HOUSE agrees that this is the most pressing thing.
I don’t know how to explain concepts such as MOVEMENT to a simpleton but I’ll try:
FDR “there’s a shark in the water but don’t worry, I’m pulling you further away from it”.
OBAMA “there’s a shark in the water and I’ve been trying for 2 years and it’s getting closer but you know, I’m actually more concerning about how much we’re spending to trying to pull away”.
God, you’re thick.
OzoneR
took him more than two terms. Unemployment was still at 16% when he was reelected to his THIRD term.
Thank God for war!
The Sheriff's A Ni-
The spirit of the WPA is running up against a GOP House that would pull the rug out from under NATO’s Libya operations just to spite Obama.
To be honest, though, I do think Obama and Koh are weaseling out with defining what the meaning of ‘hostilities’ is, when they can just say ‘we’re fufilling our treaty obligation to NATO and the UN’.
Susan of Texas
Michigan General Election Voter Registration/Turnout Statistics
1970 51.6%
1974 44.0%
1978 46.6%
1982 47.8%
1986 37.0%
1990 38.6%
1994 45.5%
1998 43.5%
2002 43.5%
2006 50.7%
2010 42.9%
FormerSwingVoter
EDIT: Please disregard – thought I was posting in a different thread.
AhabTRuler
Seems to me that this is the more important paragraph to pull out:
Then of course the question becomes: what is another recent example of this occurring, and what was your position in regards to that example?
Observer
@OzoneR
Look at life expectancy tables.
OzoneR
So why wouldn’t 10.1% unemployment in 2009 vs. say 8%-8.5% unemployment in 2012 merit the same argument, “what we’re doing is working?” Or is 1/4 losing while 1/3 wins you all but two states?
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Darrell Issa, is that you?
Xenos
Yeah, he could have, but he did not have to, so he did not.
Whether that is a good idea or not is a separate question – we get into all sorts of complex issues, like what happens now that we AT LAST get some European countries to take the lead on this issues, are we going to let some orange asshole in the house exercise veto power over strategic NATO issues?
Fuck that. If Beohner and Kucinich win their lawsuit, and get to vote on it, then fine. By the time that happens the issue will be moot (‘nchAllah). But make those crackpots earn their authority, please.
amk
@ Observer – I see that you know jacksquat about manufacturing, jobs and the economy. You got your “9%” bone and you keep gnawing at it. Enjoy your bitchfest.
OzoneR
???? Now the 2012 election is going to be about life expectancy?
Trakker
Crap, I must have forgot rule #6 in the Democratic Party, no one can ever, EVER, criticize “Glorious Leader,” regardless of how he/she performs. Democrats are always superior to all other life forms. Failure to follow the party line will make you an asshole.
BTW, AMK, When Obama took office in 2009 he had the most energized, excited base in memory. It was Obama, not a bunch of disappointed supporters, who dampened the voter’s enthusiasm. If you recall most of us worked hard in 2010 to GOTV, but too many Democratic voters felt their President had turned his back on the changes he promised, and stayed home.
FlipYrWhig
@ dogwood / 134
If anything, it’d be _worse_ than that.
Think of what happened when DADT repeal got stymied briefly, because they actually held a vote, refused to sever DADT from the defense budget, took a stand… and didn’t get it. Did the blogosphere had out credit for trying, or for going down swinging? Fuck no. The blogosphere exploded with rage about what a terrible fuckup it had been.
So what _really_ would have happened in your scenario is that Obama would draw lines, refuse to compromise, go down swinging, get nothing passed in order to clarify his ideals and the distinctions between competing ideologies… and _still_ get pummeled by FDL and Kos diarists and Aravosis and Greenwald for not doing it _properly_. Because if he had just done it properly, it would have worked. They claim they’d be satisfied by fighting hard. They aren’t. They’re not even satisfied when they actually get what they want. They’re temperamentally dissatisfied, because being dissatisfied feels authentic, and rage is either the way they feel alive at all, or the guise they adopt to impress their friends.
But they sure are noisy.
Observer
@OzoneR
Paul Krugman will tell you that after succesfully bringing down unemployment to 16% in 1936, FDR foolishly listened to people who told him to focus on deficit reduction and then it spiked back up again and it took him more time to realize his mistake and correct course.
The argument for Obama in 2012 rests on either a) just ignoring persistent high unemployment and saying Republicans will be worse
or
b) hoping like FDR in 1937 he’ll realize he made a mistake.
Xenos
If there is a grey area in the law, I expect Obama to operate in it. Why shouldn’t he?
This is entirely different from W manufacturing ridiculous legal opinions to give him cover for war crimes. Obama knows what he is doing, and if he loses this lawsuit I expect him to follow the newly clear letter of the law. This is how the law works, people.
amk
@ Trakker – “Why is he not that into you” ? yeah, yeah, we all saw that clown show at nutroots. Buncha juvenile brats.
Observer
@amk
it’s not a bitchfest. I’m not bitching. I’m pointing out something.
Two questions:
1) what percentage point unemployment rate would be unacceptable to you?
2) what’s the point of political theory if you do nothing when a large number of people’s lives are being ruined?
FlipYrWhig
@ Trakker:
False. You had nothing to do with it. Old people turned out much more than ever before, and swung the vote hard right. Liberal disappointment, even if it existed, had fuck-all to do with it. Stop claiming to be “The Base.” It’s like Ron Paul people passing themselves off as the Republican “base.” A weird niche that all believes crackpot theories about politics and talks themselves into believing that because there are a lot of them online they’re a real live political movement.
OzoneR
But FDR still ran in 1940 with unemployment higher than what it was 1936, and he won, so I don’t see your point. You seem to be arguing that he took steps to lower unemployment from three years earlier, therefore people saw progress, but unemployment will be lower next year than in 2009, how will people not also see progress?
If the unemployment RATE is what matters, if unemployment is lower next year than it is now, which everyone pretty much expects sans a default on the debt ceiling, than what difference does it make if he “corrected his mistake?”
Trurl
Won’t you trust in the wisdom of The Leader?
Surely he knows more about his legal power to wage war than the Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, the Attorney General, and the Department of Defense General Counsel.
Cassidy
Fucking idiot.
AhabTRuler
FlipYrWhig:
Sure, I’ll grant you this point. But don’t you think you should also direct this at the people in this thread who have argued that liberal disaffection did play a part, and that it was the “Firebaggers” were most responsible for that disaffection?
JPL
Roger @ 191 Many states have not submitted plans yet. The NYTimes had an interesting article that said states that are conservative are having a difficult time coming up with maps that will add more conservatives to their roles. Conservative states have redistricted earlier and there are only so many ways to add more whackos to their cause.
Texas did come up with a new map though that defies the NYTimes article. I think Burnt Orange has it. GA has not redistricted yet.
FlipYrWhig
@ Observer / 222:
Obviously doing more would be better. How does it actually happen, with determined and dogmatic Republican opposition in the house of Congress where such things originate? Kind of an issue. Unless Obama gets a power ring, he’s not going to be able to wish things into existence. What’s the strategy? And please don’t say “bully pulpit” or “find a way.”
Cassidy
Fixed for you.
NR
Ah, disaffected liberals. A group that is simultaneously completely irrelevant and so dangerous to Democratic electoral prospects that they must be attacked nonstop.
eemom
@ Tom in TN
Thank you for pointing this out. It seems to me one rather obvious point that’s been lost in all this manufactured OMG he’s just like Bush! nonsense is the fact that Obama rather neatly managed to stick it to No-Boner and the rest of them with their reeking hypocrisy on this issue.
OzoneR
Nope, because by getting nothing, they would’ve argued he didn’t fight hard enough or didn’t really want it and cherry picked news reports to prove it (see: cramdown, tax cuts for the rich) And even if they had prosecuted Bush administration officials, a lot of them would have gotten off, which would’ve led Jane Hamsher and Greenwald to say “the Obama DOJ didn’t try hard enough/secretly wanted these acquittals”
Obama will never win with these people, simply because he won the election and was no longer “outside the Beltway”
The Democrats have to learn to either win without them, or don’t, either way the country is better off.
OzoneR
I agree, I don’t think liberal dissatisfaction played a lick of difference in an election where Democratic turnout was the same as 2006.
amk
@ Observer – Whatever you’ve ‘pointed out’ has been discredited. So let that bone go. It’s not really about those ‘think of the poor unemployed’ with you, it’s all about Obama, isn’t it ?
Xenos
Trurl –
he is the client in this relationship. He makes the final call, he takes the final responsibility if it turns out to be illegal. I think there is a 50-50 chance he is right on this – the WPA is really not very clear in a situation like this.
Contrast that to the W. administration. Consider their enforcement of dogma, discipline, and the manufacturing of a cartoonish legal reality.
If the various lawyers who disagree with Obama don’t like his decision, they are free to say so. If they can’t honestly defend this position in court I doubt he is going to force them to do so, or drive them out of their position, or seek to destroy them and their families for their apostasy.
Burns put it well earlier (paraphrasing):’client decides not to follow legal advice. BFD’ This may be brilliant, or this may be stupid, but it is not criminal, unethical, improper or wrong in and of itself.
FlipYrWhig
@ Ahab / 230:
Yes, I agree that the effect of “liberal disaffection” in 2010 is vastly oversold on all sides, and, as a subset of that claim, the idea that liberal = base = blogosphere is catastrophically wrong. I think it’s absurd to assign either credit or blame there. It’d be like deciding that some other fan base, like anime people or Parrotheads, was responsible for large shifts in electoral outcomes.
OzoneR
What about Harold Koh, suddenly he’s not such a progressive legal scholar anymore, huh?
Funny how you guys won’t even acknowledge him in this, very telling, very, very telling.
Trurl
‘How can I help it?’ he blubbered. ‘How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.’
‘Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.’
JR
John, you really shouldn’t be glib about this. The OLC opinion is taken as the gold standard for a reason: the purpose is to keep the President from cherry-picking the lawyers he turns to for cover. The reason why Yoo and Bybee are remembered as such turds isn’t just because they gave crappy legal advice to the President (he could have just asked Miers or Gonzo or any of Cheney’s attorneys–some of whom I know personally–to give him cover). They’re remembered as turds because they sold out the OLC to provide the President what he wanted to hear, not fair analysis.
And the thing that D-Day understands that you’re ignoring is that, in this instance, Koh and Bauer are wrong and OLC and the Pentagon were right. In my last year of law school I did three papers on the subject of Presidential/Congressional war power allocations, and whether you want to look to the Constitution or the WPR, what President Obama did in not going to Congress for authorization was, at best, a censurable offense. Presidents don’t get to start wars without Congress’s permission. Not even wars done entirely with uber-expensive missiles we have to pay for or bombs we have to drop. For that matter, states and private citizens can’t start wars without Congress’s permission, either–this is all in Article I (§§8 and 10). Congress declares war, makes rules for captures on land and sea, grants letters of marque and reprisal, permits states to keep troops and ships of war, provides for organizing, arming and disciplining the state militias, ratifies international alliances that can lead to war, and makes the rules governing the military and militia.
Launching an attack against a state that hasn’t attacked us using US military personnel wielding US materiel is unconstitutional without Congressional approval, period. The only cover he could have would have to come from the WPR, and the administration’s throwing that statute in the trash. And the worst part is that this isn’t a situation where Congress wouldn’t approve limited military action: he just has to do his constitutional duty and ask them for permission. If you have a problem with that, take it up with James Madison.
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
+1 zillion. They might as well be playing King Gama from Princess Ida:
Observer
@amk
Let’s just agree that you’re really thick.
The path to voting for Obama would be “well he’s really sucked on the economy but if he can be persuaded to change his mind then he’ll be better than the Republicans in his second term and thus we should vote for him”.
But your path for voting for Obama is “I hate Republicans and they’re way worse than Obama on everything else but the current economic reality so I’ll just look the other way on that and vote for him”.
If you’re a partisan that might work for you but if you’re just a regular joe that doesn’t do it and it would be better if the path for voting for Obama was
“Obama inherited a really bad situation from that idiot Bush but we can see that things are slowly getting better so we should vote for him.”
But that’s not happening is it?
One can vote for Obama without pretending he’s done a bang up job.
Trurl
Gee, when you put it that way, it sounds like Obama isn’t even primarily interested in what happens in Libya – he’s mostly concerned about the President having unchecked power to wage war.
That doesn’t seem like the genial fellow I remember from the 2008 campaign ads.
Something’s not right here.
Corner Stone
@Xenos #223
How is this different? He found WH Counsel’s interpretation that killing people did not amount to hostilities(tm) to be the riding decision. President Obama affirmatively chose this interpretation. Killing people is not hostilities(tm).
The rest of your post delves into 11-D chess and I’m not getting into that right now.
OzoneR
I’ll go even further, I think the entire War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional, but seeing as it doesn’t appear to be, I’m willing to at least accept that the President took legal advice from someone he put in the administration to give him legal advice.
Call me when he ignores all his lawyers, fires the ones who disagreed, or when the WPR is finally overturned.
FlipYrWhig
@ NR / 234:
How about irrelevant, harmless, yet unbelievably smug and irritating? Not to mention, vastly more prevalent online than in tangible reality. But then here we are, online, fighting internecine online fights. So it’s not surprising that, given the context, it’s a topic that’s going to come up and be combustible.
Nonetheless, this is a very, very small group of people, and it’s not “the base,” and it’s not “liberals.” We’re talking about people who position themselves not only left of the mainstream of the Democratic party but also who profess to be unwilling to strike a coalition with people to their right. They’re so dissatisfied, they say, that they’d rather withhold their support and even their votes. How many total people can that possibly be? Is there any way that it’s more than the number of people who are still fans of Taylor Hicks?
AhabTRuler
Roger Moore: Sure, you’re right. They’re unhinged, but also unimportant. So why are you so het up about it?
FlipYrWhig:
A fight that I believe John Cole @ top started, right?
Trakker
Amazing! Half the commentors here claim “firebaggers” are just a tiny group of malcontents who will never be satisfied, and really don’t matter, and then turn around and blame them for throwing the 2010 elections to the GOP! Which is it?
The truth is, winning elections is one of the responsibilities of the party and their leaders, up to and including the President. The truth is, the Dems and Obama blew it in 2010! If there were THAT many disappointed former supporters out there damping enthusiasm, you don’t fricken’ ignore them, you do what it takes to get them on board. It’s called politics. I’m also astonished what a free ride some of you give the President. All his failings are everyone else’s fault: “firebaggers,” Congress, Blue Dogs, tea partiers, etc. etc.
deweynet
Where’s my unicorn damn it?
Marc
#220: Firebagger rule #1 is that they get to be obnoxious flaming assholes to their fellow democrats, but whenever anyone calls them on their horseshit then they get to act all wounded.
Xenos
Speaking of 11D chess, what happens if Obama loses in court? What is not to like about such a situation?
‘Please don’t throw me in that briar patch, bre’r Boehner!’
Roger Moore
@Observer:
FTFY.
Keith G
@ JR(#243): But, but, but Reupblicans are evil, lying bastards so it is more important that Obama “stick it to No-Boner and the rest of them with their reeking hypocrisy on this issue”.
Cassidy
What a small minority of people who frequent blogs call their emo-ness to make themselves feel like a larger group.
Susan of Texas
The only possible response here is to tell us why the president does not have to follow the War Powers Act. Convince us and you’ll win.
OzoneR
Yes it is happening. The country has created over 1 million jobs in a year. How can you not argue that’s “slowly getting better?”
I really don’t understand you people
amk
@ Observer – Avoiding the points I raised shows it’s all about Obama for ya. Heh, whatever floats your boat.
Corner Stone
@Xenos
I just want to clarify. Is it your opinion that President Obama is looking forward to the situation you outline?
Marc
Being an adult, I’m capable of both disagreeing with Obama on this and recognizing that he’s different from the stone-cold crazy opposition that he has.
That’s why you firebaggers are getting so much flack: even if people agree on item A, disagreeing on item B is idiocy of the first order for anyone not on the extreme right.
OzoneR
Then he loses in court, that happens.
Maybe they’ll overturn the entire WPR.
Cassidy
Because they’re whiny little shits who didn’t get their pet project bumped to the front of the line after breathlessly posting comments in his favor for the 2008 election. They weren’t paid back!
eemom
@ Flip
also too, the fifteen minutes of fame they got in the emmessemm yesterday is gonna be ancient history come Monday and the next bright shiny Wiener dick scandal that comes along.
Corner Stone
@AhabTRuler
Too true amigo. He most beautifully contra-posted both D-Day’s analysis and a blurb from a my.fdl diary.
So he’d get max constituencies into this maelstrom.
the fenian
If, during the upcoming campaign, someone will post a link to, or a video of, the Obama campaign commercial in which he treats the ACA as a stepping-stone to universal coverage, and to a system in which the insurance industry is no longer the principal player, or any indication that his second-term will be more progressive than his first, I’d be thrilled.
Xenos
Obama does have to follow the War Powers Act. Possibly not in this instance, though, because a mostly supporting role in a NATO run campaign and within authority granted by the UN Security Council is possibly outside the scope of the WPA. There are some other good-faith legal arguments, but I won’t pretend to be an expert on them.
Either way, I am thrilled that a justiciable case regarding this issue will be going to court. Since the Republicans consistently claim the WPA is unconstitutional when they hold the presidency I am very happy to see them try to get it enforced. I can’t find a downside here.
I am less concerned with the ultimate truth of the matter than seeing this open issue get resolved.
OzoneR
What also makes me guffaw about the left is how they care about jobs even as they try to push policies that will, in the short term, COST jobs.
“Lets fix climate change by shutting down factories or closing coal mines in already-economically distressed Applachia. It’s already, if they need jobs, they can work at a wind farm in California in a few years”
Or
“Let’s fix healtcare by closing the entire insurance industry. It’s already, the people employed by Aetna will find jobs somewhere else, eventually”
It’s not that i disagree with those ideas, it’s that we at least have to acknowledge that people’s livelihoods depend on insurance and dirty energy and we have to respond to those needs before we tell them “we need jobs, but not yours, it’s not acceptable.”
Trakker
Sigh… Actually, I didn’t get the President I voted for. [“Fixed for you.” should be in the blockquote. Not sure why it isn’t]
eemom
@ Keith G
I didn’t say anything about what’s “more important.” I was just noting that that’s a point that has gotten lost in all of this.
Now that you mention it, though, yes, I think this whole argument is ridiculously overblown. I haven’t studied the legal issue, but I very much doubt that it’s as clear cut as Drama Queen Greenwald is making it out to be.
Also, in practical terms it has ZERO impact on what we do in Libya, unless you people honestly think the republicans in Congress are gonna go all anti-war on Obama’s ass.
Cassidy
Then you didn’t pay attention to the year before the election.
Eliminate the space between the two lines.
gwangung
Actually, what annoys me about some progressives is that they’re not realizing that this difference of opinion exists in their own party, not among politicians, but among voters. And they’re not themselves grappling that that difference at the grassroots level.
OzoneR
That too bad, pay more attention next time.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
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TL;DR – didn’t have to. Every question that begins this way must be answered by noting that President Obama’s fierce (although short-sticked) loving of the United States of America is the First Cause of all of His Actions. Also too, anyone who does not accept this unarguable Reality is a racist firebagger, even when diametrically opposed legal judgements are proffered. (See Yoo, John.)
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Trurl
“Because he’s a Democrat” isn’t good enough for you?
Cuz I’m afraid that’s all they’ve got.
Xenos
As for Obama, I am sure he wants to win, because he is trying to give cover to Sarkozy, who Obama wants to owe him some favors. Limited US involvement keeps the whole campaign afloat, and Sarkozy will be fucked if the US pulls out and Khadafi stays in power.
We have allies involved here, and Obama is looking out for the NATO pact, trying to keep it healthy, so it can be an effective fig leaf for our actions in Afghanistan. Getting French support for whatever we need to do could be damned useful.
This much is obvious, right? Any firebaggers out there thinking about how this shit works in terms of international diplomacy?
OzoneR
He did, at least from two of his lawyer’s points of view
Cassidy
*snort*….that almost had beer all over my laptop…
Corner Stone
“It’s OK when it’s your guy doing it.”
Susan of Texas
So your response is that if he can get a lawyer to say it’s okay then he does not have to follow the War Powers Act.
Trakker
#226 FlipYrWhig:
I was responding to AMK who claimed “These nutters depressed the voter enthusiasm and let the rethugs/teabaggers win in 2010 by thin margins both in the congress and the state houses. These assholes are not even useful idiots.” Sounds like your argument is with him/her.
I consider myself part of Obama’s 2008 base. Sorry, you don’t have the right to throw me out.
Corner Stone
Uncle Clarence Thomas, you’re much wiser than I had previously believed. Not only did you not waste time reading my whole comment, you struck right to the heart of the contested claims here. It’s no wonder you say so little from the bench.
Of course it is His fierce love(tm) for us that is the First Cause for all decisions made when OLC gives one analysis and WH Counsel another.
OzoneR
Well we can’t throw you out of something you were never in.
Mike M
The dispute over the War Powers Act is a pissing match between Congress and the Executive branch. It is political and the courts are unlikely to touch it. The fact is that Congress could at any time explicitly authorize our involvement in Libya or cut it off. Congress instead prefers non-binding resolutions. Similarly, the president could ask Congress to authorize his actions, and suffer the political humiliation when the House fails to pass it.
While presidents have sent reports to Congress “consistent with” the WPA, no president has ever acted “pursuant to” the WPA or asked Congress for explicit authorization under those rules.
Congress has always liked the automatic provisions of the WPA, so they wouldn’t have to take a vote to end a war explicitly. Presidents don’t.
I know, I know, it’s the principle of the thing. Yeah, right. If they really want to end a war, how about Afghanistan.
gwangung
Hm. I think more people should take that to heart when we start fussin’ and fightin’.
OzoneR
If he has a lawyer that says its ok, it means he can do it, and it would be up to a court to say he wasn’t following the act or he is, not you.
Martin
I’ve been using the redistricting maps at the SacBee (McClatchy FTW)
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/06/california-redistricting-draft-assembly-senatearty-registratio.html
and an analysis at WaPo isn’t bad, just shallow as always:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/incumbents-lose-democrats-win-with-california-redistricting-proposal/2011/06/10/AGYXoIPH_blog.HTML
Some of the seats should be easy wins for Dems being open seats, others will be harder. Rohrabacher has a much less favorable district, but the guy is going to be hard to unseat, insane as he may be.
Martin
I would also note that the definition of a war is getting more and more broad all the time.
For example, remember when Clinton declared war on Sudan and Afghanistan?
Observer
@FlipYrWhig
It may be heresy on at this blog to write this but…Obama what’s good for Obama isn’t necessarily good for Dems or good for the country. He *knows* his likability factor is sky high and generally people vote for people they like. Just like Repubs, he always talks about tax cuts, so to many he seems like he cares. And if the unemployment rate is still sky high in 2012 you should *totally* expect him to still win. So for Obama, why rock the boat anyways? He’s going to be re-elected regardless; he’s likable. Your generic Dem…not so much.
So I don’t think there’s a solution because I don’t think there’s a problem, per se, for Obama. There’s nothing for him to do differently because the high unemployment rate won’t affect him at the polls.
I personally totally and completely expect Obama to win in 2012. And I also totally and completely expect Dems to get hammered in both the House and Senate races.
And they should. This unemployment rate has been too high for too long.
Citizen Alan
Joey @ 1:13
Are you illiterate? John posed a hypothetical President Romney in the post itself and suggested that we wouldn’t have gotten ACA from him. I disagreed with that one specific point because what we actually got was based largely on Romneycare and Romney circa 2009 would for various reasons have a strong inclination to pass health care reform along the lines that Republicans ostensibly supported as late as the Spring of ’08. I’ve always thought that the only real objection that Republicans have to Obamacare is the fact that Obama passed it and that they’d have no problem with it if it had been signed by a Republican.
Literacy. It’s not just for kids anymore.
Marc
Romney didn’t win the nomination in 2008; McCain wouldn’t have done anything on health care reform. If you add enough qualifiers to fantasy scenarios you get pleasant fantasies; well and good.
In reality I’d like to see a model of A) something that national republicans passed when they controlled things (2000-2006) which B) was anything but awful. That would be, you know, evidence – as opposed to “not a dime’s worth of different” Naderite nonsense.
cleek
fucking politics ! always preventing my imaginary president from enacting my ideal policies!
pluege
what people have to understand is that under the screwed up US political system they just do not have the luxury of being outraged about anything. The system gives you 2 choices and only two choices:
1) vote for an A-Hole
2) vote for a bigger A-Hole
That’s it. Not voting is STILL VOTING – its voting for the Bigger A-Hole.
people who think they’re being holier than thou because they can’t bring themselves to vote for the A-Hole are delusional. Not voting is STILL VOTING and its voting for the bigger of two A-Holes!
Now if people want to fix the system, the system would allow voters to vote FOR the A-Hole OR vote AGAINST the Bigger A-Hole. All those sick to death of obama’s spineless duplicity could participate productively by voting against romney instead of for obama. (The only concern would be whether either A-Hole get a positive tally.)
Xenos
Sigh.
That is not what I said. If the War Powers Act is determined to apply here, I am sure Obama will follow it. If he then does not follow it, then all sorts of unpleasantness will follow. I will be the first to condemn him, mkay?
But until a court decides this issue it is not decided. If I am so far off base on this issue then this should not take more than a few days to sort out.
Edit – look at Sullivan for this sort of nonsense. You would think this was all an abstract issue of American unilateralism and imperial presidency here, rather than a matter of NATO politics and there being any larger issues at hand here.
Martin
I would further note that Boehner disagrees with a lot of you guys over Obama’s compliance with the War Powers Act:
Everyone is walking a fine line on this. He’ll admit that the WH has provided everything required. It’s up to Congress to approve or disapprove, not the WH. And Boehner wants to make Obama look bad, but he supports what’s happening in Libya. Obama doesn’t want to force Dems into a vote that will get the left pissed off at them, so he’s trying to claim that a vote isn’t needed, and in support of that position, Obama stopped sending in planes and cruise missiles a month ago, but NATO requested we put drones overhead instead, which Obama agreed to because it’s a unique capability of ours, but I can’t find any evidence of drone strikes since we pulled out planes. So the question before Congress is really: do surveillance drones constitute war activity? I wouldn’t think so given that we’ve been doing that over almost every nation for half a century now.
Corner Stone
@cleek #293
as usual cleek, you’re really stabbing into the dark heart of it all there. Kudos.
cleek
these aren’t “surveillance” drones. they are armed and are carrying-out attacks.
daveNYC
How stupid can you be to look at the recent 5-4 supreme court rulings and then say that Obama vs Romney would make no difference?
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@295 Xenos:
You have the right idea here – kill first, then ask questions. I am sure President Obama will be willing to resurrect all these murdered people if he is ordered to by a co-equal branch of government. Why, the man doesn’t have a non-resurrecting bone in his body.
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Corner Stone
@Martin
Boehner wants to bash Obama but retain the Executive authority for his next R president.
I’m not very inclined to look for succor and comfort from Speaker Boehner.
WereBear
You can’t win if you don’t play.
Chuck Butcher
When DADT and START were held hostage to BushCo tax cuts everybody with two live brain cells knew the deficit would increase by extending them (except GOPers). Everybody knew the GOP was screaming about the deficit and knew what they’d want to cut. Now we get to balance the number of soldiers affected against the number of other citizens affected by cuts that Democrats will go along with.
The fact that Democrats are not nearly as bad as GOPers is one thing, being satisfied with that and not pushing is another. To act as though what Democrats are up to is satisfactory because the GOP sucks so badly is to guarantee the continuation of that slide.
The idea that anything is going to happen regarding the dislocation and concentration of wealth with only the left pushing at it is silly. What level of pain it will take for that “middle” to pay attention is open to question.
Xenos
Actually, Khadafi was the one who fired artillery at peaceful marchers, resulting in a civil war breaking out. Is it more moral to stay out of the fight or to fight on behalf of the rebels? Damned if I know. I am very happy that such questions are above my paygrade.
Glen Tomkins
Heightening the contradictions
That’s pretty much what these folks are tending to. The idea being that we need a President Palin to hit bottom and have a moment of national clarity. But I would say, only tending to, because D-Day is unclear on whether he’s into full-bore heighten the contradictions, vs the less radical idea that we might as well have an R as a D if we’re settling for a lion-tamer, someone who’s just in the WH to control the worst excesses of the loonies.
I actually don’t think that either version is an obviously foolish or wrong perspective.
Take the idea of letting an R in to replace O as the lion-tamer first. The list of nice-to-haves that John comes up with is indeed nicer than the alternative. Lion-tamers do useful work. But these marginal benefits have been purchased at the price of no effort at all, encouragement even, away from national need-to-haves and towards the same cliff the teahadists are aiming for. I don’t think we should despise marginal benefits, not when the stakes are so high. But O has given us such marginal benefits, that I think that D-Day’s actual position (please don’t misrepresent him as wishing for Plain to be president) that Romney might actually do marginally better in this role of slightly-better-alternative-to-Palin than O has done. It was Nixon who could go to China, to make an analogy, because he was an R. Romney might be much more effective as a pragmatic check on the loonies, just because he’s an R.
As for the heightening the contradictions rationale for giving up on O, it has this against it, that it assumes that we are headed for a crack-up, that it is too late for minor course corrections to keep us from plunging over the cliff. John’s list does indeed not provide much comfort that O is making even slight course corrections to avoid the cliff. That either isn’t a goal he can see clearly, or that isn’t the sort of thing he can do in the present political climate. So, yes, we get marginally less disastrous choices on many fronts from O, but nothing at the leading edge of the march towards the cliff, we get an even faster march for the lip. Let’s not have the Ds lead that march as it reaches the cliff, seems a not unreasonable idea, let’s stand back and let the Rs be at the wheel for the plunge.
Personally, I still plan to work to get Ds elected. Perhaps we are headed for the cliff. But if we are to have a revolution in this country, it really has to be the other side’s doing. The downtrodden don’t revolt in successful societies. That’s left to the privileged, who, in successful societies, face neither internal nor external opposition sufficient to have ever needed to accept limits on themselves, and who therefore end up pushing for radical change despite being already coddled in privilege. That’s exactly what we’re seeing right now, the privileged classes of the most successful society in history positively frothing for revolution because what they have is not quite a perfect enough deal, not quite entirely free of limitations.
The elite don’t need our help in heightening the contradictions. They’re doing a bang-up job all on their own.
Just Some Fuckhead
When did Sully stop championing permawar? Seems he was all for it all the way up through the Iran “green revolution”, insisting even then we should somehow weigh in.
Uriel
observer
Guessing you’ve never been dirt poor, have you?
Corner Stone
@Xenos
Is this actually true? Do you have a link, please?
Because to this day I have been unable to determine what, if anything, sparked the civil war protests against Gaddafi.
Martin
I know they’re armed. Can you find a report of a strike since mid-May though? I haven’t been able to. I would argue that our participation in hostilities ended then, since I can’t find a single report of US ordinance entering Libya since then. As far as I’ve been able to find, we’re just providing intel at this point.
Marc
#308: I guess blind hatred of Obama really does lead one into some pretty strange places. The international criminal court is setting up a prosecution.
What sparked the unrest in Libya is the same thing that sparked it all across the Mideast: people disgusted with their local dictators.
Martin
Which is why I didn’t leave my comment there. But since we don’t know what’s been submitted to Congress and how Congressional leadership has been briefed on what’s happening, and he does, and he’s the Speaker, I think you have to take his words at face value whether or not Obama is violating Congress, especially since Boehner should have no problem attacking Obama on this issue and simultaneously arguing that the next R president doesn’t need to heed the same law. They do that shit constantly. Why would this be any different?
Corner Stone
@Martin
May be too busy in Yemen.
Corner Stone
@Marc #310
Asking for links re: Gaddafi is hardly an indictment.
Fuck you.
Corner Stone
So you’re saying mumble mumble something something or other?
Corner Stone
@Martin
I rarely base my analysis on what elected Republican officials do or do not do.
ETA, that’s not accurate. I take their actions in to consideration, of course. I just weigh them appropriately from my bias.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
Ooh, those maps look like good news. We might have to deal with a functional state government as soon as 2013. I wait with bated breath to see what kind of initiatives we can pass to restore the state to its normal level of disfunction.
Tim, Interrupted
Oh my: The Cole-Troll striketh again.
John, you have become an expert on how to generate 300+ comment threads and the attendant site hits. I congratulate you on your finesse.
As for the content of your post, it is of course ridiculous. And nothing illustrates the weakness of your Obot argument than the speed with which you and your trusty BJ Obot Brigade resort to name calling and profanity: If one finds Obama wanting one is: Fucking stupid! Douchebag! Asshole! Moron! Idiot! Purity troll! and on and on and on…hahaha.
Obama shall not have my vote until he earns it, nor shall any other candidate for that matter, and that is the way it should be.
Frankly, if what it takes for this country to achieve critical mass and begin to balance itself out again is the far right madness of a Sarah Palin presidency, I say bring it. We survived the moronic Bush Boy; we can survive Sarah too.
I would much rather be fucked over by insane right wingers than by Reagan Republicans like Obama pretending to be Progressive Democrats.
Thank you. That is all.
Marc
You’re too pure to vote, Holy Tim. No one cares what you think.
Martin
This is pretty dishonest.
The spark point within Libya appears to have been the prison massacre 15 years ago when 1000+ prisoners were killed, most of whom apparently were from the east of the country. Fathi Terbil, he lawyer who was representing the families was arrested on Feb 15. This lead to a protest outside the police station in Behghazi where he was being held.
The protests spread to other cities and grew in size. Libyan police tried to break up the protests leading to injuries, which led to more protests. The uprising in Egypt and Tunisia certainly inspired folks in Libya. On the 16th, 6 people died during protests. On the 17th, the protestors called for a ‘Day of Revolt’ and up to 20 protesters were shot, some reportedly from helicopters and snipers. Human Rights watch put the death toll at 104 by the 19th. By the 21st, it was reported that naval ships had begun firing into protest areas, and Libyan army units had turned against the state police. On the 22nd Libya’s ambassador to India resigned saying that Gaddafi was using fighter planes to attack protestors and that he had brought in mercenaries from other nations to attack protestors.
Gaddafi was retaking cities using tanks by the 27th. We got involved on March 15th, almost 3 weeks later. So yeah, it’s actually true.
opal
@ John Cole
Not likely. They’re still waiting for someone pure enough to channel the Ralph Nader ideal of unwavering existential confidence.
Corner Stone
@T,I
As opposed to the MeMeMe sledgehammer that is the Ban-She.
Martin
So that would be a ‘no, no strikes in Libya’ which would suggest that the US ended hostile action there about a month ago. Thank you.
I’ve raised the contradiction with Yemen before, particularly wondering why Congress is bothered about Libya and not Yemen. The best answer I’ve gotten is that Congress cares about al Qaeda terrorists and not Gaddafi the terrorist, which is pretty weak.
Corner Stone
@Martin
How is it dishonest to ask for more info?
eemom
aw, say it ain’t so, timmeh. I can never get enough of your preening pontifications.
Martin
Gaddafi rolling tanks into cities prior to us getting involved was very widely reported, including here. I don’t blame you for not knowing what sparked the uprising, but thousands of people were killed in Libya before the west got involved. A link really shouldn’t have been needed.
Xenos
A cite for the Benghazi story:
Corner Stone
No Martin, don’t conflate. Xenos said Gaddafi shelled people and that started the civil war.
eemom
@ Martin
I would like to take this opportunity to commend you on your intelligent, thoughtful, non-simplistic commentary on these complex matters to which there IS no simple answer.
That simple fact — that there IS no simple answer — seems to elude an awful lot of otherwise smart people on this blog.
That is actually all I had in mind the other night when cleek got all mad at me for calling people “bots.”
Corner Stone
You’re hiding behind “NATO strikes” now.
Martin
Ok, that’s fair. Sorry, the lack of reply tracking makes it harder to follow things.
I would argue that Gaddafi turning heavy arms against the protesters is what escalated this from protests to a full uprising, but yeah, that was all early information and not widely reported.
Allan
Oh my, 330 comments and counting.
Good post, John.
One tiny quibble: if Mexico were doing those things to the United States because the United Nations had voted to carry out a humanitarian intervention against the US, then your anger at Mexico would rightly be directed at the UN.
Otherwise, spot on.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone
What happened was armed rebels began overtaking cities in the eastern half of the country. The recognized government of Libya began fighting to retake these areas. Then we decided in the sort of brilliant logic that put the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, forgetting of course that Gaddafi was our newest BFF in the middle east, a situation credited to the raging success of our neocon-inspired all-expenses-paid-by-oil invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Republicans, who never saw a war against brown people they couldn’t cheer-lead safely from the sidelines while using as a political cudgel against Democrats, leaned heavily on the Obama administration to intervene in Libya. The Obama administration, peopled chiefly by the sorts of neo-liberals that 1) are terrified of looking weak in front of manly Democrats and 2) hopelessly enamored of their capacity to alleviate imagined suffering through the use of munitions, capitulated.
So we had the perfect storm of Republicans bent on forcing political outcomes through bombing with Democrats bent on hopeful humanitarian outcomes through bombing. The WPR kerfluffle has nothing to do with our actions in Libya – that’s a given under the circumstances noted above; everyone loves a good war for various reasons.
The WPR kerfluffle is simply the executive branch holding on to power it has grabbed while Republicans try to make a crass cynical political play.
ETA: See how easy it is to see a situation clearly when you aren’t in the tank for one outcome or the other?
El Cid
As much as I hate to have to admit it, there are apparently Constitutionally-supported reasons (i.e., arguments from the early years of the republic and a number of Sup Ct decisions and Congressional actions) for limiting not just the War Powers Act, but on the applicability of the Congressional power to declare war.
Dennis Kucinich stated very clearly that one purpose of the lawsuit he & others launched was to determine the boundaries of Art 1 Sec 8 as well as the War Powers Act.
There’s a good discussion of this in a recent Democracy Now! between Kucinich and former Reagan administration atty and “opponent of the War Powers Act”.
So there’s obviously a whole debate over what in legal and Constitutional terms a “war” means, and apparently now a lot of people like Turner only define that as meaning a war of aggression.
With that view, I guess anything justified as a humanitarian action, and either backed by the UN or NATO (citing the UN, I guess), or maybe even just citing UN Charter principles and/or resolutions is not a war.
And presumably would apply to any nation.
Cat Lady
@ Tim,Interrupted
T,I;dr
Marc
Nah, it couldn’t be that some European and US leaders actually cared about what was happening to civilians. Or that some were afraid of a wave of refugees. It’s all about domestic US politics, with the particular hobbyhorses of left-wing blog commentators.
The idiocy here is the conceit that European politics are irrelevant and that everything is done for purely cynical reasons.
Of course, posting crap about how “armed rebels starting taking over cities in the east” while ignoring the prior “machine-gunning unarmed protestors” part is pretty obnoxious.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@304 Xenos
Actually, it was that apezoid depicted in 2001 – A Space Odyssey who first discovered he could use murder to resolve a dispute – he started all this. He didn’t ask for permission either, so I will assume you approve of his behavior as well.
So are the answers, but that doesn’t keep you from unfruitfully loudmouthing about them and condoning President Obama’s murderous actions, now does it?
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Martin
@ eemom
Thank you.
My general rule of thumb is that if you think there’s a simple answer to a large, complex problem (all social problems are large and complex), then you don’t understand the problem or the capacity to solve it. Staying out of Libya only solved the United States’ problem, not the Libyan’s problem. Maybe we’re just not supposed to care about them, but I think Obama has given a good answer to that: The UN is important and if the UN says that intervention is warranted, then they need to be able to follow up on that. If all of the leading nations say ‘fuck that’, then the UN becomes irrelevant. The only way for the UN to be a credible agency (or NATO, etc.) is that when they call for action, for the members of those organizations to act.
What many people here are calling for is pretty much what John Bolton would have called for – by refusing to participate in UN actions, we kill the UN. By stepping up, the UN gains authority.
Cerberus
The ACA was a complete failure. A good friend of mine is dying and desperately scrambling to raised thousands of dollars because she was recised from her insurance company because it would have been “too expensive” to treat her cancer which is still at a treatable stage now (and cancer is incredibly time-sensitive).
Recision was the last one good thing that ACA was supposed to have done. Sure, it didn’t give us a public option. Sure, it didn’t actually perform any real checks and balances on offering health insurance that didn’t pay out and selling that to companies and consumers and sure it amounted to a huge give-away to the insurance companies.
But it was still a win, because at least recision was gone for good, right?
And a good woman, a brilliant mind who is a famous local poet and a truly beautiful soul gets to die because even the bare minimum of fixing our broken fucked up system was “too much to ask for”.
No, fuck the ACA and fuck anyone who would bring it up as if it was a rain of angels and as if it did fuck all in reforming our broken broken health care system.
That all said.
Yes to the rest of the list. A lot of bad has been done during the Obama administration, but a Republican administration would have been worse and we wouldn’t have had those bills and we may very well have had monstrosities like the Ryan plan for Medicare instead.
And I’d add on to that the banking reforms. They were tiny, but unlike the health care reforms, some actually have done something. The destruction of loopholes on transparency for banks on credit cards has the banks scrambling to trick their clients into forgoing their legally guaranteed rights in new accounts and “deals”.
Obviously lacking that ability to nickel and dime their customers is hurting exactly the sort of people who should be hurt and they are struggling to adapt to a world without that graft, so I’ll add that win in place of the ACA.
Cause fuck that rancid failure. Too many fuckers cheering something that literally did nothing, because it “looked like doing something” about a grave problem. That is the grave problem, too much attention paid to “looking like doing something” and not enough paid to “actually doing something”. Same reason we’re bombing Libya and negotiating over how much to cut the budget during a depression. Because everyone wants to look like they’re doing something without having to actually do what is necessary.
myiq2xu
Just out of curiosity, John, but is there ANY point at which you would quit supporting Obama?
Trurl
No. What there obviously is is a Democratic President in knowing violation of the War Powers Act, an impeachable offense – thus forcing Democratic Party loyalists such as yourself to suddenly pretend that whether bombing a country to kill its leader constitutes “hostilities” or not is a profoundly complicated legal question.
Just like the Republican Party loyalists you used to sneer at for suddenly having discovered all kinds of “nuance” in the question of whether or not waterboarding is torture.
Bush had his 22%-ers. And Obama has your ilk.
Just like Bush’s partisan hacks
Allan
@Timmus Interruptus
Q.E.D.
Trurl
Of course. The moment Obama stops being a Democrat.
At that moment, Mr. Cole will fearlessly repudiate that Constitution-shredding, drone-bombing war criminal.
After all, he’s a man of principles.
Martin
@ JSF
Ah yes. Those could also be called ‘citizens’.
The real shift seems to have been on 2/21 when several military groups who were ordered to fire on protesters refused and turned on Libyan police and Gaddafi’s tribal fighters. So you’re arguing that Gaddafi should be able to send military forces against civilians? That’s considered a crime against humanity.
ABL
actually, fuck YOU. i am a currently uninsured former attorney who made the big bucks and had the fancy health insurance. now i’m working at a nonprofit temporarily, making a quarter of what i made before, and waiting for my COBRA payment (which is a quarter of my current salary) to clear and for my insurance to retroactively kick in. meanwhile, i’m a week overdue on my tumor meds ($115 for 4 fucking pills), several days overdue on other prescriptions that i need, i feel like shit, and i’m trying to schedule surgery to have this mass removed from my head before my insurance runs out.
if for some reason i can’t get approved or scheduled to have the surgery and i have to go out and buy insurance on my own to cover the costs of the surgery (plus the MRIs i have to get twice a year), i will be able to do so whereas before i wouldn’t.
your experience is NOT representative of everybody’s, and you and your ilk need to fucking recognize that. i’m sick of your selfish fucking bullshit.
so again, fuck you, sir.
ETA: i am sincerely sorry about your friend, but my original point stands. i skimmed your comment at first and the part about your friend fighting cancer didn’t register. still, my point remains. experience varies. ACA is helping people. you cannot ignore that.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Cerberus:
Sorry about your friend. We found out how useless ACA was when my wife’s company was forced to drop coverage due to the enormity of health insurance premiums. There is nothing available out there except rapacious individual coverage until the magical 2014. But Medicaid, Medicaid, Medicaid, and now even that is up for grabs.
These sorts of useless half-measures are what you get when you concede that only Republican ideas can see the light of day, and even Republicans don’t want to see their own shit passed.
BTW, having said that, I have to acknowledge that Republican HSA w/high deductible is looking quite attractive nowadays. Sorry for the folks that can’t afford the twelve grand down payment.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Martin:
Explain to me what happens here in the gold ol’ USA when armed citizens form rebel armies and begin taking over cities.
Allan
myiq=32Just out of curiosity, is there any point at which you would stop advocating for the face-rape of teenage girls?
ABL
Please tell that to a poor woman who needs the health services that Planned Parenthood offers, but who won’t be able to access such services when Palin defunds PP.
Tell that to a young gay soldier who wants to join the military, but who won’t be able to when Palin repeals DADT.
Tell that to lower and middle class families who will find themselves drinking chromium-laced drinking water.
Tell that to your daughter, sister, female friend who survives a rape but finds herself pregnancy, but can’t get an abortion to terminate that pregnancy.
Need I go on?
At a certain point, the talking points must cede to pragmatism. I expect that many of you will realize that, eventually and 18 months of hyperbolic screaming about Obama being no worse than Bush will be for naught when you punch the card for Obama in 2012 because how will you fucking look at your fellow countrypeople in the eye if you don’t. The rest of you are pissing into the wind right into the faces of minority, LGBTQ, lower class, middle class, blue collar, union workers.
Michelle Bachmann wants to teach intelligent design to your children. But hey — Let’s help her win!
jesus, people.
Just Some Fuckhead
@ABL
What the fuck are you talking about? COBRA was already in place before ACA.
Martin
I’m very sorry to hear about your friend.
It was. But it’s not magical. It still requires employing the legal system to enforce. Depending on your state, you may or may not have an insurance commissioner willing to do that, or you may have to do it on your own.
Companies are going to break the law. Take it as a given. And if it’s not the insurer doing it, it’ll be the hospital or the doctor or the drug company.
There are a lot of folks here in CA pretty happy that the state and feds were finally able to intervene and stop the 39% Anthem rate hike.
Lit3Bolt
@ 342
Of all the sanctimonious shit on this thread, this one might take the cake.
I wish we could tap into self-righteousness as an energy source.
ABL
COBRA benefits aren’t forever. pre-ACA, my preexisting condition and i would be SOL.
Just Some Fuckhead
@ABL:
There’s no guarantee you will be able to get (affordable) health insurance if you let yer COBRA lapse. Nothing’s changed.
ABL
these debates are infinitely circular.
you’re fear mongering!
same as bush!
sarah palin! what’s the difference?
round and round we go.
opal
@ myiq2xu
Just out of curiosity myiq2xu, is there ANY point at which you would admit that the 2008 primaries are over and decided?
ruemara
Genghis You sir, have split my sides. There’s dumb and then there’s this. Thank you.
ABL
i guarantee i could NOT have gotten affordable insurance absent ACA. i’ll take my chances on a shot at not dying b/c i can’t afford healthcare. if you don’t mind. i mean, if your beef is that people with preexisting conditions should fuck off and die b/c ACA DIDN’T GO FAR ENOUGH AND WE NEED A DO-OVER, then you are a jerk.
ABL
stop fucking gambling with my life.
Just Some Fuckhead
@ABL:
Well, yeah, a hope and a prayer is better than a hope alone.
Martin
@ JSF
I don’t know. What do we do when aliens land and do it? Call me when it happens. But we’ve deployed National Guard in protective duties in the US – not on offensive duties. I think Kent State is the only incident when that went wrong.
ABL
thank you for saying so.
(i will take your wry message in the spirit which you likely did not intend.)
Cerberus
ABL @344
It’s fuck me, ma’am, ABL.
“your experience is NOT representative of everybody’s, and you and your ilk need to fucking recognize that. i’m sick of your selfish fucking bullshit.”
No shit? Really?
Hey, you know your experience? How you won’t be able to get insurance for another couple of months when things start kicking in?
Yeah, me too. I was so ecstatic for the ACA when it passed. I got a whole extra year on my parent’s health insurance. Wonderful, right? Oh, wait, it turns out my parent’s health insurance is an open fraud. They don’t pay for even simple procedures and their “network of doctors” is at least 20 years out of date (the one doctor I have in my area (yeah, Bay Area, one doctor) hadn’t been in business for over 18 years and the address had been abandoned for over 15, other doctors hadn’t heard of the insurance company at all).
That was supposed to have been fixed, it wasn’t.
What I’m now waiting for is for this shitty waiting period to end so I can get on a local insurance program for the uninsured so I can do things like get necessary medication for my transition.
And you are saying fuck me and my life experiences because you are counting on a promise that you’ll get health insurance in a little while and you assume that it’ll be actual meaningful insurance instead of the shit sandwich that is allowed to be called insurance today, the type that refuses to pay out for anything and will cut you off any payment for procedures or just cut you off entirely if you get something really bad.
And I’m the “selfish” one. I’m the one who can’t see past their own life experiences. Because I dare talk about my experiences with things that ACA promised to fix in the short term and didn’t. Because I dare talk about what wasn’t produced that was claimed to have been produced immediately rather than in the near future.
I wanted to love ACA. I actually cheered it when it first appeared, I was so happy. And yet…well, it failed those close to me. Badly.
So yeah, I take a little umbrage that you would seek to eliminate my life experiences because it doesn’t speak well of a dream you have when you finally have health insurance again.
While I am taking umbrage, I would however like to say I respect you, a lot. I was a big fan of yours since back when you just had your own site and I love how you have blown through all the racism in both the liberal and conservative camps both here and other places. You are a bit of a hero of mine and it made my day for weeks when your site linked one of my posts a while back. You do a great job and it sucks that I so strenuously disagree on this one topic, but I have my lived experiences of pain and betrayals and you have yours and the hopes and dreams that follow.
And frankly…
I hope you are right. If ACA suddenly became awesome in 2012, like so many are counting on, then that would be something special and I would love to see the end of the suffering.
I complain about the failures to fix because they were claimed in ACA and didn’t materialize at all. As such, I have little hope that any other promises, bigger promises that were unlikely by the structure of the health care (I spent a long time studying health care in America) outlined. These are not ACA’s fault or Obama’s fault. They are failures because they fail to fix anything meaningful, not because Obama or the ACA created them out of whole cloth.
The real enemies are of course the Insurance companies who feel perfectly justified sentencing someone to death because they run it like a casino or a scam.
But as so many insist on arguing it has success, basing it on nothing but promises, and failed deliveries in the short run, well…
I hope you can see my pain and disillusionment.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@Angry Black LINO
Bravo, another installment of ABL Masterpiece Theater! Only ABL could render the following monologue –
i am
now i’m
what i made
my COBRA
my current
my insurance
meanwhile, i’m
my tumor
i need,
i feel like
i’m trying
my head
my insurance
i can’t get
i have
my own
i have to
i will be
i wouldn’t.
…and then follow up all those self allusions with this stunning coup de grace –
i’m sick of your selfish fucking bullshit.
Encore! Encore!
.
.
Just Some Fuckhead
@ABL:
No, I meant it. We gave up a lot to get a little possible peace of mind.
Just Some Fuckhead
Fail.
opal
@ Just Some Fuckhead
Sounds scary, Boss.
Martin
Forced? Really, ACA forced them to drop employee insurance?
And you guys haven’t checked to see if there are other avenues to get into a group policy? There are a number of co-ops that you can join and get onto a group policy, and a lot of other organizations including many professional groups offer that as well.
General Stuck
I wish our progs would just get honest and start sporting “Don’t Tread On Me” tea shirts and flags. Obama maintains record approval from all the other dems in his party. The truth will set you free Ambassador Fuckhead of Clownistan.
The ACA gets more popular every day, and neither left nor right wing tea tards can stop it. You can make shit up on the internet, like the wingnuts do. But you can’t stop folks feeling good about keeping their college son or daughter on their parents policy until 26 years old.
Just Some Fuckhead
It doesn’t take a lot of research to figure out what we do in the case of rebellion. We’ve had a few here: they all ended the same way- crimes against humanity.
eemom
wtf is wrong with you fuckhead? Even you can’t be this stupid. Yes, most of the benefits of ACA won’t begin until 2014, and that sucks when you’re sick in 2011.
That doesn’t make the fact that things WILL get better in 2014 worthless, for fuck’s sake.
ABL
you’re such a dumbass, i don’t even know why i’m going to explain what is obvious to everyone with any reading comprehension skills:
Your Firebagging Fraternity would kill ACA thereby fucking all of us. Your Firebagging Fraternity would be happy with a Republican presidency, thereby fucking all of us.
Comparatively, viewing ACA as a stepping stone is — well — the only rational viewpoint here, and in order to explain that point, I used my personal situation as a counterweight to Cerebrus’ statement that the ACA doesn’t help anybody.
Get it? Probably not, because you’re a fucking idiot.
You really ought to get that syphilis checked out before it further rots your brain. You can thank Obama when you can afford to see an STD specialist. Don’t forget to mention your penchant for Coke-related pubic hair. It probably is relevant.
ABL
again. stop gambling with my fucking life.
please and thank you.
Just Some Fuckhead
@ABL:
Explain to me what is the difference between what you choose to ban over and what you are doing here? As a mostly fan, I’m curious.
opal
Uncle Clarence Thomas and his dots:
Worst.troll.affectation.ever.
Just Some Fuckhead
@ABL:
I’m not the one gambling; you are.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Martin:
I didn’t say ACA forced them to drop coverage. ACA certainly didn’t help by doing nothing to contain coverage costs.
Tim, Interrupted
@eesmarm #324:
Fuck you, you bitter, hypocritical dried up ancient of days douche bag.
Thank you. that is all.
Cerberus
Weird, my second comment is in moderation. WP is saying my third post was posted, but it hasn’t appeared.
…
I’m going to go with a FYWP on this one.
eemom
timmeh, I do believe we’ve established that you’re at least as ancient as I am.
You’ll need to come up with a new schtick. Take your time; I wouldn’t want your itty bitty brain to ‘splode.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Martin:
Not only did we exhaust all avenues, I specifically posted in a “health care” thread here, detailing the situation and asking for suggestions. I believe you replied with some version of “Sucks to be you, wait til 2014.”
ABL
what an incredibly stupid statement. look, far be it from me to say you can’t continue your impotent obama rage if you like. but doing so in this context, in this debate with me while ignoring facts makes you seem irrational.
If it’s not too much of a bother for you, I’ll take being able to buy insurance in 2014 over your plan which is —
what is your plan exactly? From where I’m sitting, it’s the Republican “Just die already” plan.
How liberal of you.
Cerberus
Clarence Thomas-
Fuck off racist troll and don’t you fucking dare piggy-back on my disagreement to smear that shit on ABL. There is no place for dishonest trolls in this debate.
ABL-
Since my other comments trying to respond are lost in time and space, let me say I agree on ending the deaths of people by our stupid broken system.
That’s why I’m disappointed (I really wanted to love ACA and I lowered my expectations considerably and even noted the things that seemed like wins when it was new).
Sadly, the short-term solutions enacted by ACA, the stuff that went into affect immediately…didn’t. At all. And good close friends as well as myself are suffering for that. A lot.
I don’t want to occur.
I don’t care if the solution is a replacement or an expansion or an update. I just want our broken system fixed. I want people to stop dying because a bunch of scam artists has found a way to get free money only at the expense of sentencing large number of people to death.
Maybe everything will be sunshine and rainbows come 2014. It’d be great if it was, but the failure to do anything it claimed to do in the short-term greatly lowers my beliefs in the long-term promises.
Doesn’t mean I’m going to join in the wingnut arguments for repeal, but it means I’m not going to cheer ACA as a success when the things everyone claimed it would do in the short-term and are still claiming to this day it did simply Did. Not. Happen.
Hopefully my other posts make it out of limbo and this post does as well.
Alan in SF
Justices Kagan and Sotomayor.
ACA
Lily Ledbetter
DADT (still in force)
vs.
Six wars
World’s highest incarceration rate
Drug war
More “gun rights”
DOMA
Catfood Commission, Alan Simpson appointment
No action on climate change
No action on immigration reform, more money for enforcement and fences
Bush/Obama tax cuts
Lobbyist-approved response to for-profit college fraud
Lobbyist-approved financial “reform”
Health care “reform” written by Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, and secret meetings with health care industry lobbyists, leaving U.S. with the most expensive, dysfunctional health care system in the world
Double Bush’s rate of raids on medical marijuana providers
President’s right to start war without Congressional approval
President’s right to kill American citizens withoiut charges, review, or accountability
Military commissions
Guantanamo
Permanent detention without trial.
FBI right to investigate people not suspected of any crime
Raids/investigations on peace activists
Secret interpretation of Patriot Act
Telecom immunity
Bankster immunity
Murderer/Torturer immunity
NSA spying on all Americans
Expanded oil drilling and coal development
Shirley Sherrod, Van Jones, Dawn Johnson
Deliberate sabotage of HAMP program
Refusal to propose adequate stimulus program
“Pivot” to deficit concern
8.8% unemployment
I could go on, but it’s getting depressing.
Just Some Fuckhead
@eetroll:
I understand there could be some tangible benefit in the future, if ACA stands in the face of about a third of the states suing to overturn it, and if those states do in fact then offer an exchange in a timely fashion.
This doesn’t actually make things better now and it’s also no guarantee things will be better then.
LT
I don’t get you, John. The fact that he went witth the UTTER FUCKING RIDICULOUS OPINION that these aren’t hostilities – and that well, fuck Congress! – you just wants to point out that there was a disagreement among the legal team! So it’s unfair to say he ignored someone. And not only that, that’s the most important part of the story now?
Jesus.
Just Some Fuckhead
As I indicated earlier, I’m currently benefiting from the HSA plan Republicans passed some years back. That would normally tell rational folks Democrats came up mostly empty-handed on health care but it very well could be the impotent Obama rage derailing me.
Cerberus
ABL @380
The options are “love the Obama plan and claim it does things it doesn’t so we have no ability to address those problems in the future with future legislation” or “join the teabaggers on their quest to repeal the ACA, repeal Medicare, and generally tear it all down”?
Perhaps. I mean, the political possibilities are low and in the meantime, keeping the ACA and hoping we can actually do meaningful health care reform (the kind deserving the term “historic”) sometime down the line seems what we are stuck with for the short, possibly moderate time and that sucks.
Ideally, we’d join the first-world and follow any one of the many successful policies enacted in Europe. Ideally the Scandanavian models, because they rocked.
But since that is fantasy, I guess we’ll take what we got.
But I think there is a difference in acknowledging what we have and joining with the teabag fuckwits who just want to make life worse for people while creating a “loss” for Obama at any cost.
We need to be making a fuss about those still suffering recision because it’s still happening. We need to be making a fuss about insurance companies that do nothing and let their clients die even though said clients paid them for insurance, because it’s still happening.
I’m sorry that’s not convenient to Obama, but he could have actually fought harder to make sure those at the very very least were actually in the ACA and the rest of us?
We’re dying out here.
You’re dying out here.
I too want it all to go away. And I’ve got much worse problems that insurance companies are even less likely to give a fuck about. Transition while broke? Well…yeah.
And damn I wish my moderated comment would post, because it says a lot of good things that these follow-ups aren’t quite reaching.
eemom
@ Cerberus
I am sorry about your friend. But the situation as it exists now isn’t the FAULT of ACA — it is the fault of the status quo that ACA was enacted to change.
And I don’t think it is true that ACA didn’t do “the things everyone claimed it would do in the short-term and are still claiming to this day it did.” I don’t recall anyone ever claiming it would do anything in the short term beyond the provision about kids staying on their parent’s policies to age 26.
Contrary to justice, change delayed is NOT change denied.
opal
@ Just Some Fuckhead
Much of the ACA doesn’t come into play for a while.
I know a few anecdotes that will be lucky to live through the delay, and most of them vote Republican.
General Stuck
Jeebus dude. That’s quite a list of fail. Does the RNC know of your existence on the internet? You could make some real cash ratfucking for the wingers in the election run up. Fucking impressive and shaky, but that’s what makes the coconuts fall on yer head. AmIrite?
Just Some Fuckhead
@opal:
That’s a little good news, I guess.
eemom
fuckwad at 382:
Again, it is not the FAULT of ACA that teatard scum in however many states are filing frivolous lawsuits to overturn it; nor that the moronic electorate gave us a republican House majority that wants to repeal it. Which, it is worth noting, will go nowhere as long as Obama is president.
GOD you’re an idiot.
Just Some Fuckhead
@eetroll:
Bear with me, as I’m an idiot. If you pass a bill which doesn’t do any of the things it claims to do absent implementation and oversight of the states that do not wish to do it, and have the recourse to sue or stall or ignore, then yes, it is a failure of the bill.
Did you follow that?
Marc
@381: yup, Obama’s inability to change everything that you don’t like about the USA clearly means that there is no difference between him and Palin. Even items that he couldn’t get the votes for make your fantasy list.
God, the stupid is strong with the firebaggers.
Martin
@JSF:
But the big question is whether the armed rebellion happens after or before the crimes against humanity. In the case of Libya, the evidence appears to be after. The scenario you painted doesn’t match that. In the situation that Libya presented, we would still be dealing with it with police and had we called on the military to fire on protesters along with the police, I imagine you’d have had the same outcome – either the military or the police would have revolted against that order and turned to protect the civilians. Look how large Kent state still looms in this country after 40 years, and only 4 people died there.
General Stuck
Just so you and whoever else knows, if you are going to claim our participation in the UN Libya action is governed by the War Powers Act, then you concede legality of what we did up to the 60 or 90 day limit.
The conflict of legal opinions that we are discussing here, is whether or not Obama can continue on with what we are doing now, which may or may not include Drone attacks, and that would be about it to actually hold up as conducting “hostilities”. So using this dispute of legal theory in the Obama administration as a way to pass judgment, is a tacit approval the action falls under the WPA from the git go.
I don’t know why the Obama administration is defending itself via the WPA, as I and others think it is covered fully under the UN sec council res, so long as everything we do passes through the command and control process as prescribed by the UN, and the same for the mil org carrying out the policy, or NATO
Chuck Butcher
A person could hope that WI, OH, Fl, & etc will have something to do with the thinking of the so-called middle. I will work to re-elect Pres. Obama and while doing so I’ll put my qualms in my hip pocket. The second that re-election occurs I’ll start pushing again. I’m not anything like satisfied with “the best we can do” being in the same place for … eons (?).
ABL@396
I tried using I with you and you didn’t like it – a lot.
Cerberus
eemon @387
For months on end this very blog has been very loud about how ACA had ended recision and reformed health insurance to prevent it cutting off people with pre-existing conditions and other reforms and provided extensions for children to remain on parent’s health insurance until 25 or less.
Those according to this blog and others were enacted immediately while the substantial majority of reforms (the exchanges and the idea that no one would ever go without health insurance because of them) would enact in 2014.
Thus there would be a system of minor tweaks of sucking less followed by major tweaks of sucking less.
The minor tweaks didn’t happen. Oh, okay, kids whose parent’s had insurance worth a shit benefitted a little and that is awesome, but the end of recision and pre-existing condition excuses didn’t.
And if you think that’s going to be solved later because “free market”, then I have to admit to not being a believer on that.
As to the first paragraph.
Yes.
I’m not a troll. Honestly I’m not.
These are not problems that the ACA created. They are not even Obama’s fault. I don’t view him or ACA as a villain. I view them as very close to worthless.
Most of my problem is with the large number of front-pagers and commenters who have been telling me for endless months how ACA was a huge big deal, that it “fixed healthcare”, that I shouldn’t mourn the lack of public care, because it fixed big problems like recision and the denial of care for arbitrary money-based reasons and playing keep-away with patients.
And now, I can see with my own eyes that that isn’t true and you’re claiming that these claims haven’t been being made for months now?
This upsets me because I don’t care about whether Democrats win the daily battle of messaging. I want to see good policy enacted and understand that Democrats are the bulwark against the storm of Republican insanity. As such, I recognize that these problems, contrary to popular claim, haven’t gone away, the short-term solutions have not shown up and these problems still need to be addressed.
And I worry that if we’re too busy clapping ourselves on the back about how we solved recision that we’re going to get into a bad place where there isn’t as strong of a public will to fix what is so very very broken and worse yet, where the more privileged left-leaning Democrats will just start ignoring and seeking to minimize the life experiences of those suffering from the problem because “we already fixed that”.
Especially since I see that being the exact attitude with regards to the economy. We “fixed that” with the stimulus so we’re free now to debate how much we should cut to fix the deficit even though we never actually existed the Depression.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Martin:
No, it doesn’t really matter who can spin the best story of being wronged. When citizens form armies and rebel, government mobilizes to quell. I rhymed it so you could remember it easily. In the case of Libya, the majority of citizens seem to be on the pro-government side, as evidenced by weak support for the rebellion.
I know that’s unpopular to say but there’s no evidence it isn’t true. Why should the majority have their country torn about by a small few?
eemom
Dumb ass, the states will HAVE to implement it, unless they win their bullshit lawsuits in the Supreme Court, which — notwithstanding the disagreement of legal scholars such as Cole and yourself — I still think they won’t.
When that is decided they will not have the option of stalling or ignoring any more — and I have read that most states are, in fact, preparing for the inevitable implementation.
And here’s what YOU, amazingly, can’t follow: the GOOD act of passing a GOOD law does not become a “failure” even if (God forbid) the forces of EVIL succeed in undoing it. That’s like saying that the rescuer of a drowning person “failed” because someone else came along and shot that person in the head.
Martin
It helped here, and I gave a specific example. States have to go along though. If your state wants you get fucked, you’re going to get fucked. And have you considered that the HSA account, which may be your only recourse, actually contributed to the problem by letting legislators behave as though there was a solution when in fact there wasn’t?
(Personally I like HSAs for known, non-critical care. They’re actually a pretty good solution for that over standard insurance, but because you lose what you put in if you don’t use it, you have to know exactly what’s coming up. Kid’s going to get braces? Dump all of your payment money into a HSA first, take the tax deduction, and pay it back out again. For unknown expenses, they suck because you can’t accumulate savings over long periods, which, is at least part of the point of insurance, to spread out costs.)
There’s a lot of blame to go around for why health care is so fucked.
opal
@ Just Some Fuckhead
Not really, but have fun storming the castle anyway.
eemom
Cerberus: I never saw anyone saying that the rescission/preexisting condition aspects were supposed to come into place before 2014 — and if they did, they were just wrong. For fuck’s sake, the law says what it says.
Yutsano
@Cereberus:
No country has ever gone from private insurance to single payer overnight. Ever. The current speed record is Taiwan, and they accomplished their conversion in a mere fifteen years. Along the way they passed patchwork reforms (which is all ACA is) until finally they arrived at a single payer system. ACA is a start, not an end. But we had to at least get a START. That was never going to happen under a Republican administration. Ever.
Just Some Fuckhead
No, it’s more like someone decided to save a drowning person by choosing someone else to do it three years from now and then said keep treading water while we teach this reluctant motherfucker to swim. You can do it, baby!
Just Some Fuckhead
@Martin:
lolwut?
ACA didn’t do anything to bring down their health insurance coverage. It went up the usual 20%, just as if ACA hadn’t ever happened.
General Stuck
You come here with a single case of ACA failure regarding a single case of recision, and we are supposed to take your word for it being that, apparently in violation of the law, and further to then condemn the ACA as a failure, and whine about being lied to that the law would solve all the problems of health care, based on one case, but you don’t want to be considered a troll. sorry, nocando
Cerberus
eemon @399
Well, leaving aside Fuckhead’s example, which is as you state, weak sauce, we do have the actual failures of actual failed reforms relating to recision, making sure that having insurance means you actually get care, and preventing end of care when care is needed owing to excuses like pre-existing conditions or other flakes from contracted duties by loophole technicality.
The closing of loopholes and these reforms were a large bulk of the supposed good of ACA and that has measurably failed to appear.
Perhaps the 2014 reforms will be so unbelievably amazing that they will make this bill truly worthy of historic status and frankly I’d love to believe that, but my experience in what hasn’t been fixed combined with my knowledge of health care systems makes it highly unlikely for me to see how.
It’s a failure of a bill because what it has produced has failed to change the status quo in the ways it has promised and end wrongs.
Doesn’t mean repeal, doesn’t mean joining the teabaggers, it means it’s a garbage bill and we should seek to build popular support in actually addressing the problem for real and in the numbers necessary that the 27% are as swamped by negative response as they are when they push their “kill medicare” bills.
And right now, I see a lot of people who want to declare victory and want to smash anyone down who says, “no, I’m still suffering, in the same exact ways”.
eemom
LT at 383:
As for “utterly ridiculous opinion,” go read El Cid’s comment at 333.
It is you who are ridiculous.
Cerberus
General @406
You know me.
You also know that is a horrendous misrepresentation of my position.
I’ll repeat. You know me.
And I know you.
Do you really think I’m a troll? Based on my long history here? Or are you caught up in the argument and engaging in your usual tactics?
Cause I don’t think you do.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@Cerebellum Empty
That’s a good balloonbagger – always resort to the “racist troll” accusation when confronted by a critic. Why shouldn’t I call you a “racist troll” for disagreeing with me?
There was no smear, tenth-wit. There were quotes. Unless you believe in the Newt Gingrich school of dynamic debate, that’s perfectly fair and honest. Also too, where eagles dare and whatnot.
Agreed, and let me point out that I was not dishonest, but you were. Now imagine me having the poor taste to say something ABL would say.
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Marc McKenzie
@J 4:
“I thought we all learned that after the bogus Tweedle-dee/Tweedle-dumb description of the 2000 election.”
Nope. Doesn’t seem that way, I’m afraid….
opal
@ Just Some Fuckhead
Why are you doing this?
kay
You’re wrong, Fuckhead.
For ABL, she can get coverage 6 months from the last day of COBRA coverage, for 200 or less a month.
That’s the average price for 34 year olds and younger. The PPACA allocated 5 billion towards this, and it’s a stop-gap provision until 2014.
These are the conditions:
US citizen, w/out coverage for 6 months, preexisting condition OR denied coverage because of a health condition.
It’s good insurance, too. She’ll be subsidized by the federal government, thru the PPACA until 2014.
It’s exactly what you said it wasn’t. A guarantee.
http://www.pcip.gov
Even Wendell Potter likes it :)
Alex S.
@ Trurl at 340:
You do not even engage in any kind of debate. You have highly qualified lawyers in disagreement, you have one of the most liberal members of Congress in need of clarification, you even have John Boehner with a ‘technically yes, but not really’ kind of answer. And yet, your twisted one-sided logic is the only one that counts for you. I question your motives.
eemom
@ fuckhead
ok. This may sound strange, but it is only now that I am absolutely convinced of how stupid you are.
The law was ENACTED. It WILL go into effect unless the Supreme Court stops it.
It was not practically POSSIBLE to effectuate a change of that magnitude and make it effective immediately. It would be like passing a law requiring a new city to be built tomorrow.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Cerebus:
Yes, and children remaining on their parent’s coverage doesn’t start until 2012 and only if they don’t have access to shitty coverage with their shitty minimum wage job.
Medicaid – 30 million new people covered! – was a big one too. Now we’re talking about how many less will be covered when the Grand Bargain is implemented. (That doesn’t even take into consideration that states have their own rules for Medicaid eligibility. In my state, you can only qualify for Medicaid if you have dependent children.)
We got sold a bill of goods, prolly took a large beating in no small part over this in the 2010 elections and we got jack to show for it. But just you wait.. It will all come up roses someday.
LT
eemom
I hope you take that up with Cole, too.
Martin
@JSF:
But that’s not what happened. I agree with the statement, but you can’t just make shit up about what happened in Libya to fit your hypothetical.
Police were responding with force to protesters. The military was called into support that response of force. Segments of the military refused the orders and turned on the police and on the military that supported the crackdown. The citizens didn’t form an army – portions of the army turned on the government. You think the rebels raised an army in 4 days and took over half the country in 10? Seriously? The crimes against humanity took place on day 4 of the uprising when Gaddafi ordered the military to fire on civilians using fighter planes and naval ships. There was no ‘rebel army’ then, any more than the Canucks launched their ‘rebel army’ against the city of Vancouver the other day.
LT
And how is “ignored TOP lawyers” a lie? Isn’t that what happened? Isn’t that exactly what Savage said happened?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Kay:
Thanks for the correction. I hope it works that way.
ABL
i understand that the divide between “he should have fought harder” and “that’s silly” may never be bridged. but what’s done is done.
going forward, we have, on the one hand, Republican candidates who are running on a platform of “Repeal Obamacare” so much so that Romney is doing mental donuts in his brain parking lot to get away from his policies in Massachusetts. On the other hand we have Obama and ACA, a stepping stone towards single payer. I don’t know what the number is, but maybe 10-15% of “progressives” want to primary Obama with I don’t know who, nobody reasonably believes such an endeavor is anything but pissing into the wind.
I really do not understand what we are arguing about here. Yes, I would have loved single payer or a public option. But we don’t have one. Why are we still arguing about it?
JSF is up there essentially telling me that my very real story of how this bill will help me is either irrelevant or banworthy.
I mean, I don’t know what is going on in this thread. It’s comical and sad.
Allan
@Cerberus:
I’m also confident you’re not a troll. However, when you declare a massive, sweeping, multi-faceted law that mostly takes effect in 2014 a “complete failure” based on a single example in 2011, you don’t do yourself any favors.
And, tragically, despite the passage of the ACA, even after 2014 people will still die due to deficiencies in the US health care delivery system. It appears as if fewer of them will die under that program, which is a good thing.
ABL
JSF- you are advocating for nothing instead of something and want to continue to argue the past.
I do not understand that logic nor do I understand what the point is.
General Stuck
My usual tactic is a low threshold for bullshit, up to that point, I am actually a very mellow dude. Your comments often are heavy handed in judgment, and like in this case, possessing a paucity of evidence supporting those judgments.
Maybe if you practiced a little perspective and emo restraint relative the measure of the proof you present, to what it actually proves, then I wouldn’t consider you a troll. Go back and read your initial diatribe bashing the ACA, based on one case.
kay
I’m surprised at you, Fuckhead. The PPACA says 133% of poverty. States can’t restrict around that. That’s the new floor.
That’s precisely what all the fuss is about, and the reason your nutjob AG is suing.
ABL
I guess someone will tell me why this is bad news.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@Angry Black Cow
No, you used your personal situation to emphasize to one and and all that his friend’s selfishness should never get in the way of your own selfishness. ‘Cuz that’s the way you roll, baby.
I did appreciate all the various misrepresentations and lies you made about the positions of myself, President Obama, firebaggers, balloonbaggers, and virtually everyone else on earth, because it let me identify immediately that it was indeed you making the comment. Thank you for the encore as requested.
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Cerberus
eemon @402
Then you have never read this blog.
And since I know you have, you are deliberately lying to me.
To be fair, I think it is because you are lying to yourself, because the ACA was such a big deal and was such a huge political win for the Democratic Party that it feels like it should be a bigger win for us.
Yutsano @403
Okay, I fully acknowledge that this community does get enough Firebagging trolls that these arguments do involve a lot of cross-chatter on old tired pathways. I’m sorry if I’m triggering that.
However, I’ll repeat.
I’m not in the repeal crowd. I think the teabaggers are looking for a shallow political victory. I think that Republicans in general are the scum of the Earth. Every day is a personal battle not to strap 40 pounds of Semtex to my chest and walk into the RNC national headquarters. I think that Obama is trying best he can in an environment that has gone bugfuck insane because Obama is black.
I’m not in the repeal crowd.
An expansion? Sure, great. Let’s get started.
Now.
Let’s get started in public movements in making the problems retain the spotlight, in getting our officials to care, swaying the “mushy middle” and leaving the 27%ers stranded in their 27% so that it becomes political suicide to go against further reform.
This is what we can do.
And yes, I’m admittedly worried. I’m seeing a lot of good honest activists looking to jump ship. Wanting to say, ACA fixed it and run. We can delay this debate to 2014 or we can start laying in the foundations to actually fix the crippling problems we are facing.
And right now, there is a lot of experienced pain that is being denied, covered up.
Apropos of General Stuck’s accusation earlier, I didn’t just go, hey one thing wrong, burn Obama at the stake.
I was skeptical but happy at first. There seemed to be good happening. But over and over the same bad blood. Things that were supposed to have been the “easy” part, the part of reforms that had nothing to do with the hard part of setting up exchanges. After all, they were just shutting off loopholes in contracts, the same shutting off of loopholes that were so successful in credit card reform.
My parents have been screwed, my partner screwed, I’ve been screwed, and now someone close to me may very well die and people like you are trying to erase her suffering because it’s not politically expedient or they want to retain hope for 2014 when the pink unicorns will make it all better.
And if it does, I will be so ecstatic. Oh, I will weep and say, you’re right, I shouldn’t have doubted, this was historic and I’m so sorry I was worried. Hell, I’m still going to vote straight democratic and vote for Obama. I’m going to play them up to friends and family and walk the streets for him and counter all the racist and stupid reasons for opposing him.
But at the moment?
Me and ACA got a lot of beef.
Fuck the teabaggers, fuck repeal, fuck all of that horseshit, but this isn’t a good bill, it needs to be fixed with further legislation and if we pretend it’s all fixed, that simply isn’t going to happen and in fact, will only get worse.
ABL
kay @412. thank you. i was about to go off and do research.
ABL
on this, we agree.
i don’t know of any liberal who has ever said that the bill is perfect as is.
kay
It’s existing fuckhead. It’s not a matter of “if it works”. It’s federal money and 27 states are using the federal mechanism and the rest are using the state mechanism, but it’s really not a question of “works” for this program. It’s a straight-up federal subsidy.
I just went to seminar on it, here at the NN. The former Missouri insurance commissioner was there, so star-studded and action-packed.
I’m genuinely surprised you don’t understand the Medicaid part. Fuckhead, if they could simply opt out of expanding Medicaid, they wouldn’t be suing.
ABL
Oh, we’re back to the Angry Black Cow, bullshit, eh?
You syphilitic brain-rotted idiot.
Anyone reading my comment and Cerebrus’s knows that you’re full of shit. Even Cerebrus has told you to fuck off, essentially, so why don’t you do everyone here a favor and do exactly that?
By the way, pubic hair doubles well as dental floss, but I’m sure you already know that, dontcha, sweetie?
Just Some Fuckhead
There’s been a lot of bullshit thrown around in an effort to justify our presence there. It’s been “innocent civilians” whenever the government tries to retake areas that have miraculously fallen to rebel non-armies.
For a few weeks, the permawar crowd was saying “mercs”, “mercs”, “mercs” every chance in an effort to make it look like Gaddafi didn’t have the will of the people.
Your fundamental conundrum here is how unorganized and unarmed innocent civilians can take over cities while remaining innocent and unarmed. If such a thing were possible, there would be no reason to use firepower against them to take back captured areas. Further, there were no mass slaughters of innocents when the recognized Libyan government retook captured areas. In the meantime, we’ve been bombing every possible place Gaddafi might be sleeping.
It doesn’t look good for your side: moving goalposts, stretched rationalizations, exceeding the UN mandate, etc.
opal
@Just Some Fuckhead
This could quite possibly be the most inane comment I’ve ever read on Balloon Juice.
General Stuck
OOps! Time for another little vacation for Uncle Clarence. I hear Hell is a great getaway and reasonably priced, also too.
Corner Stone
I’m looking forward to 2014 when all this comes into play. Allah be praised.
Corner Stone
I doubt it opal. Have you ever read anything you’ve posted here?
kay
Sure. I just got back from Wendell Potter/administration lecture on this.
The guy from HHS (unfortunately) sounded like a used car salesman, but I don’t think that detracts from the pcip.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Kay:
I’m surprised at me too Kay. Maybe I’ve got options available to me I didn’t even realize, despite searching and asking. So yer saying I can theoretically apply to get Medicaid right now based on my income being less than 133% of poverty level and get it?
Because when I checked our state’s Medicaid eligibility rules, that wasn’t there.
Trurl
Cue WHY DON’T YOU VOTE FOR NADER THEN! squealing.
El Cid
Trurl:
No. You didn’t read it.
It’s not about the fucking Democratic Party nature of the President.
No one’s asking you if there’s an issue. Whatever you or I might think of it, if there’s a legal question about the Constitutionality of this or that interpretation of Art II Sec 8, it will be done in the fucking courts if that’s where it goes.
Did you see? The Democrat who is suing the Democratic President said he wanted the suit to help make guidelines about both Art II Sec 8 and the War Powers Act.
I can make a rational argument about what things appear to really mean. It isn’t how things will be settled. I didn’t quote that piece to justify the Obama / Bush Jr. / Eisenhower’s Congress view of Congress’ role in declaring war.
So if you’re going to bark that it’s Obama when yes, in fact things that lots of people would call a “war” have been waged without Congressional approval, then it’s pretty obvious that the power structure has refused to allow “war” to be defined in such a way as to limit Executive power to wage it.
If the courts have not interpreted the scope and meaning of those 3 factors — Art II Sec 8, War Powers Act, and what “war” means — then short of impeachment what would be done to halt some military attack (i.e., war by another name)?
Congress which apparently has never given much of a shit about either Art II Sec 8 or the War Powers Act?
Just Some Fuckhead
@opal:
You clearly don’t read enough here then.
Martin
He always does this. Everything that is wrong with healthcare for the last 200 years is all Obama’s fault for not signing the imaginary bill that Dems couldn’t get other Dems to agree to in the Senate.
And as long as his situation remains shitty (and I think we all agree that it is shitty) he will refuse to accept that someone else’s situation may have gotten better, because the only thing that matters is him. I happen to live in a state that has taken ACA and expanded on it in a number of ways. He apparently doesn’t. And because he lives in a state with shitty representation, that’s Obama’s fault too.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@offal
Do you really think you should be handing out undeserved superlatives like that? Oh, you’re a balloonbagger – that explains it.
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opal
I read everything Corner Stone.
I’m JSF’s alter ego.
ABL
i’m having fun watching him make an ass of himself, actually.
ABL
i look forward to your post on it! it’s good to have some facts to beat back the misinformation.
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead
What’s the problem? 2014 is right around the corner. Can’t you hang til then?
Corner Stone
@opal
Didn’t you mean to say something about cankles in there?
Cerberus
ABL @421
No, I get that. Honestly, I’m not really even in that divide. I’m disappointed at what is considered political reality and while i phrased it wrong there (hey, look admission of fault, something I’m sure was shocking to the idiots who fucking well know me but are pretending I’m just some teabagger troll), I don’t really think Obama has any real culpability here for “not trying harder”.
And yeah, I think we are coming from very similar places. We would have more, we’ll settle for less, we think that the teabagger “repeal Obamacare movement” is stupid, evil, wrong. We think that the “progressives” who want to primary Obama are idiots and we both think JSF’s and UCT’s bullshit was uncalled-for crap.
I think that’s it. We’re coming from similar places. I am disillusioned and pained by where ACA has personally failed me and those close to me in the short-term, you remain hopeful for the long-term and brightened and uplifted by the promises which if fulfilled, will bring such a smile to my lips as well, believe me.
You don’t want your life experiences invalidated by those who just see this as the best excuse to dump on Obama. I don’t want mine invalidated and erased because it’s not politically convenient. The problems are still here and I want them to go away for real.
It sucks that this somehow means we are arguing. My moderation post noted how I have been a long time fan of yours, since way back before you started doing stuff with Alas, A Blog. The day one of your cobloggers linked to one of my posts on your site made my day for weeks. Your posts on racism and calling out those who criticize Obama over racist and privileged grounds have been incredible and I strongly appreciate the uphill climb you have on this blog and your strength for staying in that fight.
And by the way, it was ma’am. Not that it mattered. On top of my pain has been the lengthened delay on my transition. My waited for solution will be a local solution. What is blocking earlier adoption is waiting for an ironic twist to end (ACA extended how long I could stay on my parent’s insurance, so I have to wait for it to end so I can switch to a local plan).
And yes, fuck the teabaggers and fuck the repeal movement. Unless the repeal is “Medicare for all and we took one hell of a razor blade to all the loopholes”, and that’s part of the bill being passed, then that whole racist, openly political maneuver of right-wing tantrum throwing can fuck right off.
Clarence Thomas @427
Fuck off again!
Seriously, I already warned you off using me as an example in your racist attacks on ABL.
I’m a fan of ABL, ABL knows what she’s talking about, especially with regards to race and racism and your attempts to piggy-back on my disagreement to sell your hate is both ghoulish and offensive and I refuse to be party to it.
So FUCK OFF!
eemom
@ Cerberus
Here’s what you need to do: go READ the fucking law.
Then come back here and tell me how important it is what you read on this — or any — blog, about what the law does or doesn’t do.
Because right now, I am in grave danger of thinking you’re even stupider than fuckhead.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Martin:
Jesus, you Obots have a visceral and infantile need to reduce everything to a strike against The Man. I’m not here as a wonk or a cheerleader. I’m one of the folks that lost coverage and looked for a solution and found none in ACA.
I get that we can find someone somewhere that may benefit now or later. That doesn’t as a whole mean it’s a success. If I can, as Kay sez, get Medicaid coverage right now as she described despite no evidence of this in the state’s eligibility rules, great. If, OTOH, it isn’t actually available for whatever reason, or if I’m 134% over poverty, am I supposed to cheer louder?
Corner Stone
@Martin
Too true. I would’ve linked to you a dozen more times by now, calling you for the douchebag you are. But it’s too much work. I come here for the entertainment. And the sputtering ABL meltdowns. But I repeat myself.
General Stuck
your call, I’ve long since trained my eyeballs to jump right over the demented scratchings of Uncle Clarence, but the highlighted link caught my eye this time.
Allan
I second the call for an informative post about the ACA from kay, since this post about the applicability of the WPA to the UN intervention in Libya has gotten totally hijacked because John dared to mention the ACA tangentially.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@Angry Black Malady
Oh, we’re back to the syphilitic brain-rotted idiot bullshit, eh?
Anyone reading my comment and Cerebrus’s and a book knows that you’re full of shit.
Even Cerebrus has told you to fuck off, essentially, so why don’t you do everyone here a favor and do exactly that?
By the way, pubic hair doubles well as dental floss, but I’m sure you already know that, dontcha, sweetie?
Also too, thanks for writing my comment for me – with but a few word substitutions – again. Your pure self-exaltation combined with your complete lack of self-awareness is truly fascinating.
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Just Some Fuckhead
@Cerberus:
I am too. I’m just rightly skeptical about “rules for me and rules for thee.”
Trurl
But there isn’t a legal question. That dodge isn’t fooling anyone.
The Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel told the President: It’s a violation of the War Powers Act. The Attorney General and the Department of Defense General Counsel told him the same thing. Fucking unanimous.
It didn’t become a “question” until Obama then found someone – the general counsel of his presidential campaign, as it turned out – shameless enough to advance the ludicrous claim that directing American bombs to kill the leader of the foreign country does not constitute “hostilities”. (Somewhere John Yoo is smirking.)
You know perfectly well that if it had been McCain ignoring an OLC finding to continue an illegal drone bombing campaign against Iran, every Democratic blog in existence would be screaming for his impeachment right now.
You and Mr. Cole and ABL would all be quite passionate on the subject, I’m sure.
Cerberus
ABL @431
Sadly, I have.
We really do agree on a lot. Pretty much, it’s all about our remaining emotions about ACA and our response to specific triggers.
I’m disappointed and suffering and responding to triggers of “hey, it’s wonderful, and it’s politically impossible to do anything for X years so shut up about the problems”.
You’re hopeful and responding to triggers of “ha, ha, I iz smarter than Obama, repeal ACA, teabagger and firebaggers united, because it is failure like Obama”.
I get that. I wish I were still hopeful for 2014. It would be so nice if ACA turned out to do some good. Your brief link earlier did give me the spark of something.
I really hope things change or that we can follow up with meaningful change.
Hell, with hope, I dream that someday in the not-too-distant future that by some combination of dramatic legislation or slow creep of piecemeal policies that we can wake up in the kind of medical society that Denmark takes for granted.
It’d be nice.
I’m just so tired of people suffering needlessly, callously, and cruelly.
opal
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@Uncle Clarence Thomas
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NR
Oh my god, I think this is the most unintentionally hilarious thing I have ever read on this blog.
Yeah, just keep waiting for single-payer, I’m sure the Democrats will implement it really soon now.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Martin:
We all agree now it’s mostly shitty but remember what you were saying when it passed?
Corner Stone
Ouch.
Allan
@NR
There’s something called state waivers that allow states to do better than the ACA. A little place called Vermont is going single-payer, and we’re hard at work in California to do likewise.
Or I could do like Cerberus and go to sleep and dream of having a better healthcare delivery system instead of actually organizing people to make one happen.
LT
You’re going to hate this, John. Balkin:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/06/george-w-obama-and-olc.html
Corner Stone
If I had made middle six figures for years I think I would’ve taken care of some shit.
kay
That isn’t what I said. Sorry for the misunderstanding. You said “the Medicaid expansion is great (paraphrasing, JSF) but my state limits Medicaid to people with children”.
That won’t be true in 2014. Your state, and every state, will have a floor at 133% of poverty level. That’s where the 30 million comes from. If it was still subject to onerous state restrictions, the number wouldn’t be 30 million.
I said ABL could get coverage six months from COBRA expire, with a specific program under the PPACA.
I didn’t realize we were talking about your immediate needs too.
My personal opinion is that the PPACA is a political fire-wall against Medicaid austerity measures, because Democrats paid for passage dearly, and they aren’t going to allow the defunding of the largest part of the program they lost the House over.
I think Medicaid is safer than Medicare, right now, because Medicaid is integral to the PPACA.
Corner Stone
@Allan
Damn son. You’re snapping one off on Cerberus now?
Corner Stone
Thank the Gods for 2014!!
General Stuck
Not moi, so long as it remained under the auspices of the UN Sec Council. I can’t speak for all the morons on blogs, there are just too many of them, and so little time.
Corner Stone
@LT
He was opinion shopping then.
Cerberus
eemon @452
I did. It looked like a piece of shit that actually made things worse by an understanding of health policy. However, I’m not a lawyer and reading opinions of lawyers whose opinions I respect, I’m reserving judgment on that.
Based on the parts of the law that enacted immediately (the reforms to contract law), the promises haven’t surfaced. I’m bummed by that and it makes me suspicious that future promises are going to play out like promised, but I’m waiting to see if I’m wrong.
Some aspects I do know are in play because I took advantage of them. Sadly they were invalidated by other problems.
I cite the statements here because you asked a specific question about who was claiming certain things were solved “Now” and I responded, it was here, it was people like you who are now scrambling and lying about it.
Bob in fucking Himmel, I remember why I stopped posting here. You are so obsessed with your pure progressive versus career democrat endless circular firing squad that so many have abandoned honesty or are locked in endless battles against demons and patterns.
So locked that you’ve forgotten how to interact as anything other than warring tribes.
And it just makes you all look like a bunch of over-privileged middle-class white male douchebags in the world’s largest dick-measuring contest.
It would be cute if Rome wasn’t burning.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Kay:
Christ in a wheelchair, Kay. I’ll have the Promised Land of Exchanges in 2014. Sorry for the misunderstanding too. You said “stopgap now” in relation to ABL’s particular issue and I just assumed..
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
Sucks the world is ending in 2012. We coulda really had something special.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@Cerebellum Empty
As Anita Hill once told me, “No means no.” Understood?
And just as seriously, I warned you off your racist attacks on me.
I’m not; she doesn’t (and neither do you); that’s not what I’m doing, obviously; and you have no choice in the matter, because, as ABL herself likes to say, “What’s done is done.” So let the hate fly out of your heart now and sheepily accept The Way Things Are as she does.
Again, NO! It means NO!
.
.
opal
@Corner Stone
I might have mentioned cankles in the heat of battle.
If I did, I’m not proud of it.
LT
Regarding my last comment – maybe Balkin has already been thrown into the “Firebagger” bin? So this can be easily scoffed at?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Cerberus:
Right? I thought (despite Cerberus taking a swipe at me) she was making a good faith effort to placate the feefees of the Obots while making her larger points. Lord knows what we have to do to prove our devotion and loyalty while expressing a degree of dissatisfaction..
Allan
@Corner Stone:
I’m sorry, are you feeling ignored? I take issue with Cerberus’ comments because I intuit there’s a decent human being with actual concern for the well-being of others behind his overheated rhetoric.
Trurl
You might even say the facts were being fixed around the policy.
And has been pointed out elsewhere, absolutely none of this was necessary. Congress would have gladly rubberstamped his war for him. So clearly, continuing to bomb the shit out of Libya – whatever that’s supposed to accomplish – isn’t even the main goal.
The main goal can only be to claim for the Executive completely unchecked power to wage drone warfare.
Just Some Fuckhead
@opal:
:)
I made more than a few “cankles” remarks myself back in the day and I’m not ashamed of it. I’m not especially proud of it, but I’m not ashamed of it.
kay
I’ll write it after I get back from the Daily Kos party. It’s hysterical to write that (true) sentence, I want you to know :)
I think people are going to figure out the PPACA on a per-person basis, little by little. They don’t have to know the whole thing. They just have to understand any applicable provision, as it comes on-line. That’s what they’ll do.
I never thought any health care reform was going to be a political winner, because something like 94% of college educated people have employer-provided health insurance or Medicare. They vote, that group, and they set political priorities in media and punditry because media and punditry are college-educated.
There’s no political pay-off for insuring people under 133% of poverty level. There was never going to be. Chuck Schumer said it, and he’s right.
Corner Stone
Hilarious.
Cerberus
Clarence Thomas @457
Oh, fuck no.
Fuck no, you weasel mouth pile of racist shit. I don’t care if this is a persona, if you are serious and if you are then you might as well call yourself Uncle Ruckus, because I don’t think you could have picked a more obvious racist pun for your name if you tried.
But you are going to cease using me as a means of attacking ABL. You want to be a tired racist asshole, trying to give your pathetic life meaning now that your wife has left and all your kids stopped calling? Fine, as long as she’s willing to tolerate it, I guess it’s your perogative you abusive bully fuck.
But me? I’m not a part of your sick crusade. I don’t agree with you. I never will agree with you and frankly, I’m about in the right mental state that if I knew where your house was, well, someone would have to take the matches off me.
I may disagree on our impressions with the ACA so far, but fuck if I’m ever going to allow you to use that as an attack.
ABL is great. ABL is awesome. She has to deal with racist overprivileged whiny pukes like you every damn day of her life in this steaming pile of over-privileged donkey-scat and that takes so many more ovaries than you will ever have.
You are a pathetic coward trying to bully out someone using the power of numbers, ABL goes into the lion’s den and actually makes a difference against the soft racism that is endemic in too many, including well-meaning liberal people.
You will never be able to accomplish anything even remotely similar in your entire pathetic life and you know what?
You know that.
That’s why you’re trying to attack her here in these lazy weak-assed ways. Because it hurts to be reminded of how much less you are than some little black woman.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
Did you catch that? Allan only beats on those he loves.
General Stuck
Which of course means, everything I say after this is pure bullshit. There is no comparison to be made with the Bushies pre staffing the OLC office persons they knew would fall on swords for them and approve whatever they wanted to do.
In this case, apparently some lawyers had some opinions and other lawyers had other ones. The only point of raising an eyebrow is the loose tradition of the OLC being the most important arbiter on advising the president on legality of his actions. But certainly not the only opinion presidents consider, and certainly not binding on him.
And “those actions” are limited to whether using drones to launch attacks after the 90 day grace period requires congressional approval. I suspect we will find out more about this story, that will show there is more to it than first reported, as is almost always the case these days.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Trurl:
I said that.
*blush*
kay
I know you hate the PPACA, but it is a plan, Fuckhead. It’s not accidental or arbitrary that they came up with a stop-gap for preexisting condition people.
It’s not going to have a political pay-off because there aren’t enough of them (people with a preexisting condition who are not covered under the two public plans=medicare, medicaid or an employer plan).
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead
I’m strong. I’ve been in a MeMeMe violence centered relationship before. I can take his abusive hate-love.
One day we’ll get there. Together.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Kay:
We aren’t actually making things better now for the majority of the folks ACA was supposed to help. And with the Austerity Patrol out in full force, we’re currently talking about who gets the shaft now on Medicaid coverage, 2014 be damned.
Maybe Balloon Juice can set up a countdown timer to 2014 and we can have a party with balloons and stuff on that magical day.
General Stuck
Well yea, you moron. That is what good presidents do, to get as many diverse opinions as possible to consider before making his decision as president. None of those lawyers are elected officials. The POTUS is.
What a stupid comment. Even for you
Corner Stone
So kay, 2014 then?
Trurl
That’s right.
Bush at least felt a need to jury-rig a thumbs-up from the OLC before committing a war crime. Obama got a thumbs down and proceeded with his war crime anyway.
Change you can believe in!
Just Some Fuckhead
@Kay:
lolz.
This is my favorite part of the health care debate. 60%+ of physicians wanted a single-payer-type system. 60%+ of those polled wanted a single-payer-type system. But all we could manage to do was what was incredibly unpopular with most people.
Wrap yer head around that.
Trurl
[[ Dear Hon. Sen. Cantwell,
It is with extraordinary sadness that I write you today requesting that you institute impeachment proceedings against Pres. Barack Obama. I voted for Pres. Obama. I desperately wanted to see him succeed but have found only disillusion and bitterness in the policies he has pursued. Now, in open defiance of our Constitution and the War Powers Act, he pursues illegal military action in Libya (and Yemen). Turning language upside down, in a manner George Orwell foresaw all too clearly, Pres. Obama, ignoring his own lawyers, denies that firing missiles from Predator drones constitutes “hostilities”. He is spitting in the face of Congress, the American people, and logic itself. If you let this pass, this egregious expansion of executive power, then we take one step closer to an unspeakable fascism.
I know I am asking the impossible of you. But you have shown courage before, whether in your call for re-instating the Glass-Steagall Act or your vote against reauthorizing the Patriot Act (thank you).The Libyan War is wildly unpopular except with Big Oil. The President’s actions are not only inexcusable, they are unpardonable. You took an oath of office to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of these United States” I call you to that oath today.
Sadly,
James Housel ]]
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2011/06/18/libya/permalink/c706f5a5b71497a2eb7e3df0053414e2.html
General Stuck
The GOP is losing out on a rich reserve of ratfucking power found on liberal blogs these days. But More like rats wearing a donkey cape.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
The non-OLC opinion also came from Harold Koh, who last I checked wasn’t a Scooter Libby or Lionel Hutz.
Cerberus
Allan @465 and 480
It’s her, thank you very much.
And what do you think my comments are. Do you people really think I’m some firebagger troll who’s just making comments because hey, trolling is something worth doing, ever (seriously, I don’t get trolling, well, I get trolling, but you know what I mean)?
I’m actually arguing that the attempts to sweep under the rug of problems now, which were to be addressed by now isn’t conducive to us dealing with these problems and is conducive to sweeping things under the rug in order to make a political win seem even bigger than it was.
Most of Obama’s victories rest on further action, on mediocre bills becoming better by future action.
These things don’t just happen. There needs to be public outpouring and a series of personal stories about our experiences with the broken system as is.
This builds public support. This is how “we need to do something about health care” became such a HUGE part of the 2008-2009 debates and arguments. From there we need to bring over so many that the 27% aren’t able to just muscle and lie out of actually dealing with the problem as they have done so frequently.
This is the part of politics we can do something about and this is how we can push our candidates to be more of the type of candidates we are proud of.
I thought it was necessary. I thought my life experiences, what the suffering of these people proves about the inadequacies of what we got and the need for more reforms in the future to complete what was started in closing those loopholes or if political environment allows it, replacing it with something much better.
This is the beginning of the next fight.
JSF @479
Apparently nothing, even though I think this o-bot versus firebagger shit is tiring, stupid and overly trollish so often.
Maybe there’s just too much bad blood for anything else to break through. Too much pain and fight and blood spilled.
If so, that really does suck, but it’s one of the things that makes me respect ABL and admire her. She really does go into the viper’s den.
UCT @ 476
I’m going to bet that you’re used to taunting girls who tell you to stop doing things, aren’t you?
You’re just revealing all sorts of positive personal traits today, aren’t you?
kay
Yeah. The next hurdle that’s going to come up is waivers, on the Medicaid part. Chris Christie is leading the pack.
Arizona was an outlier, because Arizona’s whole Medicaid program IS a waiver, so HHS were in the position of trying to find legal authority to force Arizona to demand a waiver, which they don’t have the power to do.
But Christie is under ordinary Medicaid rules, so that will be a big battle.
Corner Stone
@Sheriff
Great. And?
opal
@Corner Stone
All you had, you gave.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Nothing says Neocon Imperial Presidency ™ and War Crimes like a UN resolution, dropping a few bombs on Libyan C&C centers, keeping casualties to a minimum, and then turning everything but the occasional drone mission over to the Europeans.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
And Koh should know a few things about law and the constitution?
Alex S.
@ Trurl, 495:
This person is wrong. Big Oil does not like this war. They liked Ghadafi very much. Also, the continuation of the war might be illegal, but not unconstitutional. In fact, some even say that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional. And well, the rest of the letter is the sound of a spoiled drama queen.
kay
I don’t know if 60% of physicians “wanted it”, but physicians (or their lobbyists) killed Medicare at 55.
Leiberman did the deed, but it wasn’t insurance companies who killed it.
Leiberman actually heald a press conference with the crowing AMA CEO the day after he killed it, which was completely ignored because everyone heard “Leiberman” and immediately thought “doing the bidding of insurers”.
They’d love to palm off the people who use services on the federal government, and keep the healthy under-55 market.
Medicare pays doctors less than private insurance. They didn’t want to expand that. In this instance, Joe Leiberman was doing the bidding of doctors, and if “60% of doctors” don’t know what their lobbyists do, they had better start paying attention.
Allan
@Cerberus, thanks for correcting my misunderstanding of your gender.
We agree, which is why I would find it preferable if you didn’t preface comments with
when your goal is to make it better, rather than give aid and comfort to those who are actually happy your friend may die for want of adequate health care.
ETA: PS, nice work on UCT. He’s getting increasingly enraged and incoherent with each new comment, and will likely work himself up into a banning before midnight tonight.
Trurl
There is no UN resolution authorizing the assassination of Gaddafi – which NATO has been clumsily trying to do for several months now.
Nor does the wording of the War Powers Act contain any exceptions for an “occasional drone mission”.
The intellectual dishonesty of the Obot is truly a wonder to behold sometimes.
Cerberus
JSF @491
I’d actually love that. You’d probably love that. If 2014 rolls around, the exchanges operate, work for awhile and actually cover what they are claimed by much smarter than me legal minds to do what they are supposed to do, then w00t. I mean, it still would need so very much more in future bills and I’m not sure if I would call it historic, but life getting better for so many people, we’d be happy.
And that’s what I don’t understand. I get that many are used to bad-faith trolls who are just looking for “Obama bad”, but there are a number of progressives out there, the majority out there I would say, who are scared and suffering and disappointed and cynical.
They want to be wrong, they crave being wrong. They like cheering good news. They like to cry tears of joy over tears in frustration. They like it when Team Good Guy wins.
It amazes me that so many seem to take it as an article of faith that they wouldn’t. So some aren’t as excited as you or want more.
Good.
They’ll be the filthy hippies who start the next big fight for more. The number who’d really jump ship to Team Palin are in fact a) idiots and b) worth every bit of mockery you can give them, but they definitely aren’t the majority of the progressive movement. They are trying to push the Democrats left, change what is seen as politically possible. Begin the fights as it were.
They are good things, people.
JSF @495
Oh yeah, the disconnect between our culture and what is seen as and in fact “is” politically possible is a really dangerous factor that the circular firing squad is only an example of.
What we support and what our politicians support makes many feel alienated and unconnected to the political process, powerless against the machine, and in time that will lead to violent conflict if it is not addressed peacefully.
I’ve begun to study the Progressives of old to see how exactly they overcame similar circumstances without violence.
Yutsano
Answer me one question, then I’ll take you seriously: when was the last US led mission into Libya?
General Stuck
NO shit, some of these fuckers change like the weather, to justify bashing something or someone on any given day. Once was, the UN was a valued liberal institution. Not so much mow, it appears. When that org finally gets off its ass and does something to protect civilians about to get slaughtered by a brutal dictator, protestors, that only days before had good progressives hailing their brave stand against tyranny, ala via fruits of the Wikileaks labor of love, now turned to shit and let the saps die before the more hated US military acts to maybe save them. fucking clowns, welcome to the circus.
LT
General Stuck –
That comment wasn’t meant for me? Right? Because I didn’t say it, it was sent to me.
opal
Cankles. You heard me.
Hillary Clinton has fat ankles.
General Stuck
No, it was meant for cornerstone, drat the loss of no reply.
Alex S.
@ Trurl, 507:
You are wrong. The resolution calls for an end to the violence against civilians caused by Ghadafi’s troops ‘by all necessary means’ except for ground troops. And that includes Ghadafi’s assassination by missiles. And just so that we are clear, Ghadafi continues to attack Libyans.
LT
Stuck:
Well yea, you moron. That is what good presidents do, to get as many diverse opinions as possible to consider before making his decision as president.
Brien Jackson
@202
Well there you go. Yes, Bernanke did a fantastic job of stabilizing the financial asset market. Really, he was awesome. And then he decided that that was basically all he cared to do to stimulate the economy.
So let that be your lesson. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and a Democratic President should never appoint a conservative Republican to head the Federal Reserve.
Cerberus
Allan @507
Perhaps, but I do have my triggers.
Also, I wasn’t aware this was a wingnut blog where the wingnuts were getting their talking points.
And frankly if it were, I’d be glad to tell them repeatedly and frequently that ACA is shit because it is not nearly liberal enough. That we will need and will eventually get better further examples of teh commie. I will tell them that it must keep them up at night having such a hole in their soul where they are willing to argue on behalf of the continued death and suffering of their fellow ma.
Furthermore, I would tell them, what I already tell them, that our health care system is broken, that our insurance industry is evil and must be eliminated and if they really cared about the jobs, they’d let us actually address the issue with proven successful strategies or allow a no-fault no-end welfare system to accommodate all unemployed, no exceptions, no loopholes. And since they don’t, fuck them and their crocodile tears over jobs.
And I would tell them as I already do, that their war on public policies, proven successful, cheaper policies is because they are proven marks for corporations who frankly want them to die and if they really want to strike back at who is really screwing them, then it isn’t their taxes, but the huge giveaways to large corporations who use them to shore up profit margins.
Repeal Obamacare is stupid, childish and a naked political ploy oblivious to suffering, made intending suffering to score a cheap political victory.
You’re right, I’m right on the frontlines on that bullshit, but ACA is severely disappointing and needs big fixes and honestly, in a perfect world, I’d love to scrap it entirely and just expand medicare instead.
Since it’s the real world, I’ll get started on the next fight and part of it isn’t resting on our laurels. Of all the stopgap, incremental solutions passed, Obama has yet to return to any of them and continue them.
I understand this is Congress and the Republicans’ faults, but that’s why we need to be hammering this shit home.
NobodySpecial
And the certain crowd will tell you “Fuck them, they don’t exist, if they do exist their numbers are meaningless, they have no power, and they say mean things, and are just like the GOP.”
Oh yeah, and then they’ll tell you that those progressives are the worst thing since bowel cancer and singlehandedly stopped all forward progress on anything by being mean and allowing the GOP to win a wave election in 2010, despite exit polls showing that liberals came out and voted and their idealized centrists stayed on their ass at home. And now is not the time for primaries or yelling, but the only way things get done are by pushing for what you want, which is what they claim progressives aren’t doing.
The dissonance could be mindboggling, if I thought they could keep two thoughts running in their heads at the same time.
Corner Stone
@Sheriff #504
Yep. So should our ConLaw Prof President.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
No, the resolution authorizes neutralizing Gaddafi’s ability to overrun his own civilians by all neccessary means save ground forces. If he parks himself near a command and control center, well, that’s not our problem, is it?
If the Imperial President(tm) really wanted Gaddafi dead, then just ask Osama Bin Laden how that would have gone. Or Saddam Hussein.
Depends on your definition of ‘hostilities.’
When all else fails cite ‘intellectual dishonesty’. Where? Where’s the intellectual dishonesty?
Trurl
There is no wording in the War Powers Act about “leading” hostilities – but of course you know that.
The last mission into Libya in which the US took part was yesterday, it looks like.
kay
Wrap your head around this. Little tiny Vermont is going to be inundated with health care and health insurance lobbyists. They’re going to pour money in there. Because if one state falls, and (good Lord) CALIFORNIA follows, it’s panic time.
What I would like to see, Mr. Fuckhead, is half the time and energy spent on defending the Vermont governor and Vermont legislators as is spent on attacking the PPACA. Because if you want single payer, that’s the key. One state.
Just half. We’d win with half. And we don’t need Barack Obama or Joe Leiberman’s permission to do it.
Corner Stone
@Allan #507
You’re all about that, eh?
Thank the Gods this isn’t your blog. Even though ABL keeps trying to make it such.
Yutsano
This is where I think we will eventually end up, but there was no way it was going to happen overnight or even quickly. All single payer systems started in fits and starts and were changed and improved over time. I wish your friend had the luxury of time. And if you wanted to start a bleg for her I’d be down with that, and would gladly chip in.
Alex S.
@ Corner Stone, 520:
I agree. Luckily, Koh and Obama are of the same mind on this. Just one thing, Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review, not ConLaw.
General Stuck
Teehee. Well played sir!!
Corner Stone
@Alex S
I keep hearing he was a ConLaw Prof at UC. No?
Alex S.
@ Trurl, 522:
The article only mentions NATO airplanes, not US planes, there are other countries with airplanes, too…
LT
Stuck:
Sorry, that comment was not finished. I meant to say that that comment does not speak to going against OLC being, as Savage says, “extraordinarily rare.”
Alex S.
@ Corner Stone, 528:
No, you are mistaken there.
Just Some Fuckhead
Elites’ fear of communism. Period. There is no fear from the left anymore. We’ll get crumbs and there’ll always be a willing constituent to tell us how awesome the crumbs are.
Corner Stone
Hmmm. Well I’ll be damned.
“He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.”
Just Some Fuckhead
@The Sheriff is a Person of Color:
Yeah, when we spent two years debating the meaning of the word “is”, it was a real win for Democrats.
Cerberus
Yutsano @525
I’d have to ask. All she had setup was an email to friends and family asking to send money via paypal to her email address and I’m not sure on the etiquette on publishing something like that on a bleg rather than just a straight paypal bleg link.
So, I’ll ask her.
DPirate
More cats, food and music videos.
Less self-aggrandizing justifications for personal investments.
Allan
@Cerberus:
No, this isn’t a wingnut blog, per se, though it is widely read by a large number of people, including some who get paid big bucks to appear on ABC News to convey the message that Democrats are in disarray and “progressives” hate Obamacare.
And your fellow progressives are better served by spending less time wallowing in the insufficiences of legislation that failed to fix everything that is wrong with the US health care system; and more time advocating, as kay suggests, in favor of state efforts to take advantage of the mechanisms included in the ACA for states to do better than the ACA requires, such as implementing single-payer programs.
That’s my advice, and you’re welcome to take it or leave it. And thanks for the valuable insights you have offered.
Yutsano
@Cereberus: You might think about dropping a front pager the details and see what we can get set up. We can be some generous folk round these parts sometimes.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Kay:
I don’t live in Vermont and am powerless to affect the outcome there. I’d caution you against doing a victory lap before the victory. We’ve done that with nearly every damn thing since.. for awhile now.
Alex S.
@ Corner Stone, 533:
Ah, then I misunderstood you. I thought you meant ConLaw as in to con=duping someone (I think it would have been a relatively clever joke, actually – And I’m not a lawyer.). I couldn’t tell with the mood you’re in today.
Just Some Fuckhead
@NobodySpecial:
Wasn’t it the Utes, people of color and Obama “Independents” that failed us in 2010?
Allan
There seem to be a few mosquitoes buzzing about my ankles in this room, though fortunately, since they’re male, they’re incapable of drawing blood.
Brien Jackson
@533
Which, erm, would suggest he knows a thing or two more about the Constitution than you, no?
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@Cerebellum Empty
You are going to cease using me as a means of praising ABL. You want to be a tired racist asshole, trying to give your pathetic life meaning now that your wife has left and all your kids stopped calling? Fine, as long as she’s willing to tolerate it, I guess it’s your perogative you abusive bully fuck.
See how that works, C-word? All I need do to effectively reply to you is replace one word in your own indecent comment. You’ve supplied the lies, illogic and hatred, ready-mixed. If you think it sounds stupid – it does.
So, as a champion of ABL, you feel very comfortable murdering me for my blog comments, even going so far as to advertise the threat in public. You and she must be very proud of each other, and, indeed, all balloonbaggers. I’m not sure President Obama would condone your contemplated actions, although I’m not sure he wouldn’t, either.
Now, what can we do to put you in “the right mental state”?
.
.
General Stuck
It is also extraordinarily rare for a US president to involve this country in a UN military combat operation and take a secondary role, after a given point. And let that international body live up to its expectations as a world policeman, with us in the background. Something to me sounds very favorable in an imperfect world.
It is equally rare to have a president who is a constitutional scholar in his own rite, and have another top legal mind in Harold Koh to agree with the opinion Libya does not at this point fall under the WPA/
There is a valid point of contention to be made regarding the OLC, but also a number of other factors that do not make this pass the extra judicial threshold. imo. And comparisons with Bush and Iraq and Yoo and torture is just utter horseshit.
Maybe Obama will cease the drone attacks, if they are happening. There are other countries with somewhat similar capabilities. And then there would be little doubt the situation does not fall under the WPA. right?
Cerberus
JSF @532
Well, then there’s our answer.
I’ve definitely been willing to call myself a so(BEEP)ist and a communist even though I’m not 100% because I believe it needs more play. My generation is more open to soBEEPist as a concept, more hostile to capitalism as we’ve experienced it in America, more hostile to CEOs and upper financial management in general and more supportive of more left-wing solutions (by American standards).
If I focus more on that, standing up for more, bringing attention to the big problems and continue as an activist and in private to further link economic justice issues with social justice issues as is already occurring thanks to fantastic work by intersectionalists, then hopefully by the time I’m dead we’ll be somewhere.
Possibly sooner as the Fall of the Berlin Wall gets further and further away and those who freaked out in the 50s through 80s at the first word of communism get older and older.
Funny thing about “politically possible”, it doesn’t apply to what we do on the ground. If that’s the mark, the fear of communism, then we’ll actually have an easier road because the face of so(BEEP)ism right now is nice. USSR and China make good bad guys, less so Sweden and Denmark.
kay
They can take the statehouse and overturn the law. They can stall on the waiver and force the wait until 2012 when (maybe) a Republican takes the WH and appoints HHS. Then they can’t put it in place until 2017.
They can spend millions of dollars making up shit about the law and blaming it for everything from a rate increase to a hangnail, which will probably be media’s role.
I do love California and Vermont, though. They have, um, ACTIVE state activists, and they lead on liberalism all the time.
NobodySpecial
JSF:
Yeah. Liberals came out and voted for Obama in the same numbers. The difference was the non-Liberals and the kids didn’t, which is normal for an off year election. However, the blame is still given freely to other folks, if you get my meaning.
Of course, these are the same folks who think the PUMA’s were an actual gathering of Democrats and not a GOP astroturf event.
Cerberus
Yutsano @538
Do you think I should do that before or after I hear what her response is? I’ll definitely follow up either way. It’d be great if she can get some help.
Allan @537
What do you think we’re doing? We’re doing a lot of right-now activism, we’re also doing a lot of long-term activism. I mean, they were still able to put “single-payer” and medicare for all type solutions off the table owing to lack of political support despite high popular support. This means we need even more popular support, so much that it becomes as toxic to argue against health care for all as it is to argue against medicare.
In many ways, I suspect the clashes are less between troll on troll than two very different types of activists, those seeking compromises now for very small victories they hope will be incremental and who are skilled at the legalese of the last minute and those seeking long-term social and political improvement who are trying to figure out how we can stop being the type of society where people can argue for the mass deaths of others and still hold a political seat.
UCT @544
No, no that doesn’t work at all. And apparently you lack the intelligence to see that which means you are so divorced from reality that I’m amazed you don’t need to use a compass to find your ass.
And frankly, fuck you and your bad-faith bigotry.
I make one request, stop using me to attack ABL. You want to attack ABL on what we’ll laughably call “your merits”? Fine.
But stop using me.
Jeebus Christo, how pathetic is your life that you’ve devoted so much of your life just actively trying to stop one woman posting on one blog about issues you don’t like.
I mean, talk about white person problems.
Brien Jackson
@545 General Stuck
Exactly. I’m not a lawyer, so am in now way qualified to offer up some minute legal analysis. However, the OLC is not the end-all-be-all of executive branch legal analysis, the sitaution as presented is nowhere near the same as the Bush administration actively seeking out bullshit legal opinions by way of Yoo, and Harold Koh is a respected legal mind who certainly knows more about the law than anyone accusing him of idiocy ’round here.
opal
@Uncle Clarence Thomas
Awww, your feelings are hurt…
How can such a cruel universe make it up to you?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
Funny thing, I don’t see UCT getting into a rage. He just comes back with sarcasm. OTOH, someone has an early meltdown and then doubles down.
ETA: Also, his suggestion that UCT was going to get himself banned (presumably by the poster that is lashing out personally, calling names and using profanity) was the cherry on top.
Yutsano
Cereberus:
Oh definitely check with her first. One of the things that seriously ill people feel is a lack of control, and making a decision like this without her input will just heighten that feeling. But if she gives the green light I say we go all in. Let’s help here however we can.
Cerberus
UCT @544
Also you complaining about being “murdered in blog comments” is the cutest thing ever when you realize that you are talking to a member of a minority group that genuinely has to fear for their lives and is murdered in hate crimes at one of the highest percentage rates for a group.
Oh, poor bubby, I might murder you online, liberals are so MEAN!!!
Yeah, an activist in my town was killed last year for being trans. And this is a fairly regular occurrence.
But please, do try and “get us at our hypocrisy” by failing to understand what the fuck we’re talking about.
I’m sure it will be as illuminating and worthwhile as every other one of your comments.
Also, what’s with the dots?
Are you just incompetent at using the internet or are you using it as the equivalent of a blog comment penis extension. Cause, either way it’s hilarious.
Cerberus
Huh, another moderation, wish I knew what second word I was falling prey to.
Yutsano @553
Okay, thanks. Yeah, that would be awesome if so.
EDITED TO ADD: No, seriously, thanks. Big hugs. It’s some really good advice and it would really help.
Man, I hate the American health insurance industry. I know it is what it is, but I can see the appeal of wingnuttery where things you don’t like can just be ignored out of existence.
Yutsano
@Cereberus: If something good and real and tangible and HELPFUL comes out of this discussion, then the 550+ comments of mostly sound and fury signifying nothing won’t be wasted electrons on the Interwebs.
Cerberus
Yutsano @556
Thank you.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Trurl:
I often have this sarcastic thought but then I remember that Obama didn’t even want this slogan in his campaign. And it makes sense, since he is fundamentally change-averse by nature. What he imagined was his strong suit was passing Republican ideas by getting Democrats on board through their personal loyalty to him. He’s been successful with this, by and large.
opal
@Just Some Fuckhead
I guess that’s why he finally passed something progressives have been yapping about since the ’90s.
Idiot.
Just Some Fuckhead
@opal:
What’s that?
opal
The Affordable Fuckhead Act.
It was in all the papers.
Just Some Fuckhead
If you’re talking about ACA, no, progressives haven’t been lobbying since the 90s to have Bob Dole and AHIP’s health insurance plan passed into law.
opal
Then vote for Mitt Romney.
Lurker
Martin, you’re confusing HSAs with FSAs. I have an HSA, and the contributions to my HSA roll over year after year.
That said, I can only contribute to my HSA when I’m covered under HSA-compatible insurance. I trust that anyone with the option of an FSA has much, much better health insurance coverage than HSA-compatible insurance.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@cerberus
If you get the go ahead, drop me a line and I will put up a bleg.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@Cerebellum Empty
Ditto, dittohead.
You’re starting to backpedal more than Randi Rhodes. You didn’t say you might set my online house on fire with your online matches and have me die in an online fire, now did you, killer?
You are not a liberal, so you have balloonbagger street cred there.
I understand you and your hypocrisy as well as your discourteous and potentially real-life stalking threats perfectly – of that there can be no doubt. However, your UCT Derangement Syndrome is not understandable since it is… deranged.
Are you prejudiced against me because of those too? Egads, is there no limit to your racist knavery?
.
.
Keith G
The shooters and the governor were all exhonorated. It looms big only in song. The takeaway in Ohio at the time was that the students should have been in class.
ABL: Its neat how quickly you jump to profanity and personal attack. Are you a teabagger in disguise?
Joel
If only you threw in Greenwald, you might have gotten 1000 responses.
Corner Stone
@Keith G #567
Damn kid. You ready to step it up?
General Stuck
Now that made me laugh out loud. Well done, madam
tkogrumpy
I’m not reading this behemoth there are enough comments here to cover both sides of the Hindenburg before it caught fire.
Corner Stone
@Brien Jackson #543
Yeah, it’s funny how that works, isn’t it amigo? The renowned ConLaw Prof who bypasses all previous precedent and disregards analysis by his OLC to take advice he wants from his WH Counsel.
But I’m sure that fits into the 11-D Chess analysis somehow.
Martin
Can someone, anyone, find me a link to a US strike in Libya since early May? I can’t find anything and I’ve tried pretty hard. I can find evidence of US drones doing surveillance, but no reports of strikes.
Just Some Fuckhead
UCT, god knows I love you like a bro- an uncle but you can’t keep making everyone derail threads, lash out with vitriol, call names and threaten to murder you. Don’t you see the detrimental effect you’re having on the normally effete and subdued Balloon Juice? Before you got here, some other motherfucker was making everyone act out and before him, it was someone else. Before that, it was some other anonymous commenter. I’m begging you, change your evil ways before I stop loving you.
Daddy-O
I’ve been at work all day.
I am a civil person. I don’t call anyone an idiot except the braindead 27%ers. I’m not an idiot, John Cole. But the fact that you IMMEDIATELY resort to calling me one is just ridiculous. You’ll be apologizing for that sooner or later, because I am convinced you are an honorable man who recognizes when he’s made a mistake. That’s all any man can ask another.
You and those who agree with you are so quick to jump to conclusions. When did I say Romney would make a better President than Obama? When did I say I was voting for him? When did I say Obama would even lose that election?
Why is criticizing Obama completely verboten with you? Atrios does it. Brad DeLong does it. Paul Krugman does it.
But when I do it…
I stopped coming to this blog for a while because of this before. I’m sure you’ll never give me a second thought again, but I know one thing for sure: You’ve got some kind of problem with dissent. An authoritarian streak that I never would have guessed until I became the victim of it.
Fuck you, fuck the rest of the assholes calling me names just for having a fairly-informed opinion, and fuck anyone who jumps my shit for said opinions rather than actually rebutting them. If you can’t tell me WHY I’m wrong, fuck you.
Got better things to do. Anytime someone points their fingers at me–with such vehemence–they always forget about the other fingers pointing back at them.
Just Some Fuckhead
Daddy-O must be new here.
Corner Stone
@JSF
No, I think Daddy-O is right. Cole will eventually apologize for his current behavior.
But by then it will be 5 or 6 years too late to do anyone any good.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
Ow.
Corner Stone
@JSF
Was this ever explained? No?
Color me sooprised.
Allan
Daddy-O, Cole rarely reads down to the end of 500+ comment clusterfucks.
If you want to make sure he gets your message, I suggest you send him an email.
That’s why he helpfully provides a link up top. Because he wants your feedback on how to improve his site.
Corner Stone
Good luck there amiga. If it ever sees the light of day and all.
JPL
Cole writes a post about D-Day writing
But the President will simply overrule them, as Charlie Savage writes today:
Cole mentions that Savage actually wrote
But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.
Cole doesn’t give his opinion on the President’s decision except to say, don’t lie and mislead.
If you want to listen to lies and half truths tune in Boortz, Limbaugh or Beck.. This has been a silly thread but that is just my opinion.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Allan:
lol!
Corner Stone
@myiq2xu
Of course there is. Do you know nothing about John Cole?
Corner Stone
@JPL
IMO, you have missed the entire thrust of this thread.
Nobody gives a shit what Cole thinks about the president’s decision. Or the analysis of the WPA or anything else.
President Obama took conflicting advice from his OLC and his WH Counsel. And he went with the WH Counsel.
Nobody is asking Cole for his opinion on the decisions from the OLC or the WH Counsel.
eemom
This thread might very possibly go on forever. It has all the right ingredients.
Yes, even Greenwald. It is he who is leading the collective firebagger orgasm over Obama’s supposed WPR violation.
@Opal 561
I lol’ed too. Though I’m not sure what I’d do with a fuckhead even if I could afford one.
JPL
CornerStone, Now I am totally confused. If Cole hadn’t written the post there would not be close to 600 responses.
Personally, I have trouble with misleading articles, i.e most news outlets are reporting that Reggie Brown was escorted off stage after racist comments…that’s not true. He was escorted after making uncomfortable comments about the repubs.
D-Day did the same thing in his reporting.
I thought that was what the post was about..Sorry..
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@Just Some Fuckhead
So be it. You leave me only one option then – to immediately go thither and sodomize my beloved Ginni. Ta ta.
.
.
Trakker
Yup, all you have to do is express dissatisfaction with Obama here and you are presumed an idiot, who is cheering on the Republicans in 2012. Loved that paragraph.
I read BJ everyday, and link to it frequently on my blog. I rarely comment. I can’t remember the last time I encountered such a closed-minded, authoritarian, profane, insulting crowd. I didn’t expect the: “If you don’t agree with me you are an idiot who wants to fuck America – and me – and you probably beat your kids and are lusting for Sarah Palin to be elected so you can whine and complain about how shitty life is, and did I tell you what an idiot you are for not agreeing that Obama is trying very, very hard but everyone is being mean to him?”
Corner Stone
God damn JSF. Your harsh words for UCT have now forced an outcome everyone here was praying would never happen.
Just Some Fuckhead
@UCT
Thanks for not forcing me to lash out, insult you, call you names and imply banishment. I’m going to put your name in for Balloon Juice Ombudsman.
Allan
@Trakker
Wait, you have a blog? I’d love to subscribe to it.
If you read BJ everyday, then that would have been yesterday.
Corner Stone
Uncle Clarence Thomas,
I, for one, pray you will continue to share your wisdom with us.
And leave Ginni’s unmentionables unmentionable.
Corner Stone
@Trakker
Welcome to Balloon Juice!
Take off your shoes, share some fat cat pics and stay a while!
Jesse
Unkie Clarence and others:
I really can’t stand the sanctimony here. At all.
It must feel good to be able to sit back and call a man a murderer for doing the job his country elected him to do. Our allies wanted us to help them intervene in Libya, and eventually we did. I don’t think we should have. If I were President… but I am not.
This kind of thing is, like it or not, part of the gig. And the difference between this and Iraq? Well, if it comes out that Obama was spoiling for a fight with Libya since Day 1 of his administration, and that he made up a bunch of shit in order to gin up support, then there is no difference, and boy will my face be red.
If Congress passes a binding resolution to end the Libyan war, and Obama defies it, that’s impeachable. Merely quibbling about what hostilities are may be ridiculous. It doesn’t pass the smell test. But it means he hasn’t openly defied the law. It means he’s doing his job.
Presidenting looks pretty hard. I’m glad I don’t have to do it.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
Gah, I’m drinking, out of control and violent. Why does he make us like this? A few minutes ago, I was so stressed out that I took a few minutes to freshen up and I smeared lipstick all over my teeth!
Odie Hugh Manatee
The Republicans are insane and that’s the end of it for now. You either vote for insane or whatever hairball that the Democrats cough up. Sadly, that is where we are today now that the crazies have taken over on the right. You can argue about any other points you want but until this dynamic changes, nothing will. A not-vote is still a vote for the insane, no matter how you try to excuse it that’s pretty much what it is.
On another note:
@GoatBoy:
Holy ratfuck Batman, GoatBoy has reappeared! How’s your racist ass doing Mikey? Ever score on any of that bitter PUMA tail you were chasing at Swampdaughter’s Shithole? I’ve missed having your ass to kick around regularly so please stick around if you can.
You always were one of my favorite corners to piss in.
Corner Stone
@JSF
We already have one Allan, thank the Gods(tm), but thanks for the kind thoughts.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
Seriously? With that attitude of his, he’ll be lucky not to be banned before Stuck crows thrice.
Yutsano
JSF: I find your lack of faith disturbing.
(well not really. I just wanted this thread to get to 600.)
Corner Stone
I thought this blog contained multitudes, bitches!
opal
@Uncle Clarence Thomas
Worst.GBCW.ever.
No one needed to know about cousin Ginni…little man.
Genghis
” Daddy-O: “Fuck you, fuck the rest of the assholes calling me names just for having a fairly-informed opinion, and fuck anyone who jumps my shit for said opinions rather than actually rebutting them. If you can’t tell me WHY I’m wrong, fuck you.”
Yup, all you have to do is express dissatisfaction with Obama here and you are presumed an idiot, who is cheering on the Republicans in 2012. Loved that paragraph.
I read BJ everyday, and link to it frequently on my blog. I rarely comment. I can’t remember the last time I encountered such a closed-minded, authoritarian, profane, insulting crowd.”
And here we have the crux of it all: trump card on BJ is “f*&k you” or some equally hateful variation. That should shut the more thoughtful participants up. Maybe we could have one thread where insults are not acceptable. This will have to start at the top, of course. And no, this is not pearl clutching.
Alternatively, we could continue down the “fuck you” vs. “no, fuck YOU” road.
Best…H
FlipYrWhig
Why isn’t the country as good as I think it should be? Definitely Obama’s fault. Alas, I fully expect that many people are going to come down on me for my brave and creative truth-telling and bold criticisms of Dear Leader, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay. And both of my friends who I split my CSA share with totally agree, so I have a bad feeling Obama’s going to have a lot of trouble in 2012. That’s why I’m voting Sheehan/Choi.
El Cid
Hey, Trurl dumbass. This isn’t a fucking conspiracy.
Get it through your god-damned thick head: I am not citing Kucinich on the role of courts and Art II Sec 8 / WPA / definition of war because something you imagine I’m saying justifies Obama.
It’s because I never knew about those basic arguments by and among the governing elites regarding how no one gives much of a shit about Art II Sec 8 and/or basically refuse to define war in any way which is meaningful.
I thought a lot of things about the invasion and occupation of Iraq as aggression and a crime of war.
But though under Bush Jr., I didn’t think it was “illegal” in the US. When I’d say he waged a “criminal” war, it wasn’t by some jack-ass standard that if it wasn’t illegal under US law then it wouldn’t be criminal.
The reason I never assumed some illegality under US law regarding the Iraq attack was because no force of power ever seems to give a damn about anything related to a US military action being legal or not.
If you think this places me alongside some imaginary conspiracy with other commenters here, pull your head out of your ass.
I mean, if you want to play who’s more revolutionary anti-imperialist, let’s bring it on. I can be just as purely principled and inflexible in my discussions and pronouncements as needed to establish the force of my opposition to US hegemony.
But fuck, Fidel didn’t shoot off at the mouth about US or other policy without first inquiring what the fuck he was talking about. At least, not all the time. Yeah, you had the typical quick intro of state Marxist-Leninism, but he’d go through incidents and quote US newspapers and would be clear that if some crime against Cuba and the Cuban people wasn’t technically illegal under some international legal structure, then he wouldn’t respond by insisting it was, but by then declaring the structure of power which created an international legal system supporting imperialism and colonialism and neo-colonialism as the crime.
Oh, but, sure, this makes me a fucking “O’bot” because I’m not interested in justifying or attempting to persuading people to agree with my view of Obama, particularly as another US President embedded in a US foreign policy establishment structure and ideology and institutional system, one in which despite important variations from Executive to Executive, the American state consistently pursues its same goals over time.
I think you could also find that no one here would suggest that I attempted to bring them to some point of view which we could share blah blah blah. I think you could also find plenty of times in which I just don’t regard the comments sections of blogs, including Balloon-Juice, as significant centers of policy analysis or political organizing or whatever, and I hate it when weirdo dumbasses seem to go on patrol and freaking out if I’m saying something which they don’t find immediately of assistance to their political goal.
As if people here like to imagine that they really are sitting up there in the Big Control Room and they’re about to pull a switch or give the command about this or that subject.
No one here is. Maybe, but it would only be a coincidence.
People are not here making decisions about US policy toward Libya or the WPA, and if I feel curious about aspects like the legal debate, I wouldn’t go try to learn about that here. If I want to learn about what’s going on in Central or South America, I read those papers and listen to those radio stations and visit those blogs. If I’m interested in learning about or discussing Libya on a more scholarly forum or what with people of the region and other activists, I go to those blogs and sources.
I don’t see B-Juice as an important locus of ideological debate in the sense of defining some outlook with effects farther flung than this little blog comments section. So that’s why you’ve no fear of me attempting to make you an “O-bot” or “Anti-O-bot”, because I just don’t give a fuck. I’m here because some of the subjects interest me, sometimes I do feel like throwing out a perspective or new bit of info, or just bitch and moan sarcastically, etc.
And I think it’s pretty damned ridiculous, but on the other hand completely expected and unsurprising, that our government lacks any useful enough definition of war that there was fuck-all citizens and law could do about the use of the military by the President. Any President.
Well, I suppose you could write it in such a way that anything the US did whatsoever was [never]a war and it would all be justified and all of you damned peons keep your nose out of military affairs.
Yutsano
@El Cid-san: I choose to heart this comment with the intensity of the fires of a thousand suns.
Just Some Fuckhead
Can we just go back to the secret wars in Central and South America? Things were much easier then.
Xenos
eemom
took doggie for a walk, watched a movie with my kid, opened the laptop aaaaaand yup. Still going.
This thread is a contender, y’all. It’s not just about us anymore. We owe it to history to carry on.
Xenos
I did think anyone was reading still. I got out of bed, had a cup of coffee, and checked to see if the stupidity was continuing. Yup. Why I feel compelled to add my own ill-informed opinion yet again is a question I don’t much feel like examining. Time to go for a long walk along the Moselle, if it stops raining.
Pat
Bernie Sanders 2012.
Alex S.
JSF – worst troll ever, even worse than Corner Stone. He deserves what happened to him.
AxelFoley
@ Bill H post 29
What illegal wars did Obama start, bitch? Name one. Name it, you lying fuck.
Corner Stone
Alex S., if you were trying to hurt my feelings consider it mission accomplished.
Triassic Sands
Apparently, you’ve never been to RedState (except for the profane part). But it is sad and Daddy-O is right — when you criticize Obama at BJ you should expect to be called names and accused of wanting Karl Rove to be president. Despite the fact that many, if not most, lefty commentators (Reich, Krugman, Meyerson, even E.J. Dionne, and the list goes on and on) have criticized Obama — justifiably in my opinion — when you do it at BJ you should expect to spend the rest of the thread fending off straw men and ridiculous hyperbole. Expect to be called an idiot and a mindless progressive dreamer who will only settle for utter perfection.
John, of all people, shouldn’t be accusing others of wanting Republicans to be elected. After all, he voted for Bush — not once, but twice. The second time was long after it was obvious to anyone with a shred of intelligence (and not besotted with ideological blindness) that Bush was well on his way to being the worst president ever. But for some reason John seems to think that immediately resorting to name-calling and insults is the way to set the tone for the best possible discussion among people (virtually) all of whom are going to vote for Obama next year no matter how unhappy they are with his obvious shortcomings.
Krugman has been very critical of Obama at times. Who is he going to vote for next year? Obama, of course. Ditto Reich. The same for Meyerson. Every liberal/progressive/lefty/Democrat I know (personally) has a serious complaint about Obama and one or more of his policies. Yet, every one of them is going to vote for Obama next year. Not because they think he’s a great or even good president — opinions vary widely on that score — but because the Republican Party is a bunch of lunatics who pose an existential threat to a just, humane society. The name calling here is mostly just immature defensiveness that serves no purpose.
arguingwithsignposts
When you make any defense of Obama against accusations he’s as bad as Bush, you’re called an Obot and a worshipper of “Dear Leader,” so that cuts both ways.
Don’t get out on the intertubes much, do you?
Allan
Good news!
We’ve long relied on the 27% Crazification Factor as a predictor of what percentage of Americans are insane, but that was based on the percentage of people who voted for Alan Keyes over Barack Obama in the 2004 IL Senate race.
Until now, we’ve lacked an equivalent metric to define the parameters of insanity among Progressives.
The good news is, only 7% of Progressives are batshit insane.
Genghis
Wow. 53% of progressives approve “somewhat”. That’s where I fit in. I’m voting for Obama. I’m waiting to see how the Elizabeth Warren debacle plays out before I send money.
That 53% is the majority group inside the progressive tent. Sorry to disappoint the loudest of you here.
Interesting factoid:
Crazification Factor – 27%
Progressives who “strongly” support Obama – 27%
I’m not drawing any conclusions here. Really.
Best…H
Daddy-O
Do you really think Gore would have made as bad a President as George W.?
No.
Do you really think Nader/Kucinich/whatever impossible to win Democrat is the only saviour of our nation?
No.
Do you really think Obama would make a worse President than Romney?
No.
There are a lot of responses on this thread that go straight to those questions. It’s downright boring…
If only somebody’d ASKED instead of ASSUMED that’s what I (and a lot of other Obama critics) were saying. If only they’d ASKED, we could have cleared up this misunderstanding that we are traitors to the Democratic Party and the nation. If only they’d refused to jump to that INSTANT conclusion, maybe they wouldn’t have called me a fucking idiot, etc.
You’re worried that criticisms of Obama will undermine him…you really, really ought to look in the mirror, people, because the way you react to said criticisms by people OTHER than those who you respect is just poisonous vitriol I would expect from RedState and freerepublic, not from a blog of writers I respect and admire.
The Raven
I like Jack Balkin’s analysis: here and here.
For the rest, is it not possible to dislike Obama’s policies without liking McCain/Romney/Palin/etc policies? To vote for the lesser evil while working for the greater good?
After all, personal loyalty to rulers is not a democratic virtue.
Corner Stone
@The Raven
“George W. Obama” ?? From Prof Jack Balkin?
Genghis
Comparing Barack’s actions to GW’s is a bit of hyperbole, but remember: all analogies are flawed. The flaws in that comparison aren’t what concern me – it’s the similarities. Best…H
Yutsano
Europe also had a serious energy interest here. Most of their oil comes from Libya. So a lot of this is ensuring there was little to no supply disruption. And they are happily buying their fix from the Benghazi government now.
Joel
Criticizing Obama is verboten? News to me.
John Cole
I didn’t call you an idiot. Let’s review what happened here. I said, in the post, in response to some lunatic at FDL that “defied” anyone to make a difference between Romney and Obama that basically, “anyone who thinks there is no difference between President Obama and a potential President Romney is a fucking idiot.” It’s right there in the post.
You read this, and immediately conflate what I have said to mean that any criticism of Obama makes a person an idiot in my eyes. You basically ignored what I wrote, made some shit up to feel upset and insulted, and now are demanding an apology from me because you have reading comprehension problems.
I’ll say it again, anyone who can not realize the difference between Obama and Romney and how their Presidencies would differ is a fucking idiot.
General Stuck
These tender flowers need sunshine and lots of fresh rainwater, to let the outrage bloom in all its glory. Why can’t we have a perfect world? I’ll tell you why, because Noah should have dumped all the primates in the drink, and then took the dive his self.
Instead, we get nothin’ but caveats and motherfucking gray areas to work with for making the puzzle make sense. Not to mention being lousy with wingnuts that sometimes get to be president.
I have no problem myself calling anyone an idiot, including myself. Everyone has to pitch in, and belly up to the stupid human bar.
You want to piss in the democrats bed for no really very good reason, then we insist you wear a diaper. Or you can climb in the rack with the goopers, they’ll show you a good time. fer sure fer sure
boss bitch
sigh.
ABL
Holy crap, 626?
Just wanted to pop back in and say I read your comment Cereberus and I am sorry that ACA has personally failed you. I think and hope that we’re at least on the right track so that everyone can get affordable healthcare. I know my medical situation is infuriating. I hope it gets better or at least manageable for you and your friend. I don’t wish this crap on anyone.
And sorry I came out guns blazing, but you know how I do.
:)
cheers.
ABL
oh, and a hearty “fuck you” to whomever requires it. not sure if any of the usual Bros have chimed in with some half-assed insult directed at me or some wonkily punctuated bullshit.
but you know – i wouldn’t want to deflate your already flaccid expectations.
so, fuck you!
:)
ABL
@Cereberus, and thank you for your kind comments, ma’am!
General Stuck
Nuttin holy about it :–)