This comment at Gawker made me very upset because it is true:
Let’s say there’s this person called America. Now, there’s a person standing next to America named Gop. Gop is holding a loaded gun to the side of America’s head, and is demanding that you hand over fifty puppies, or he’s going to shoot America in the head.
Like any sensible person, you hand over fifty puppies, because you don’t want to see America get shot in the head. Gop takes the puppies and America lives.
Now, a couple months later, Gop and America are at it again. I guess America is Gop’s mistress or something, I don’t really know. The difference is that this time, Gop has put all the puppies in a cage and wired it with explosives.
Gop is now demanding five hundred puppies. If Gop doesn’t get five hundred puppies, he’s going to shoot America in the head, and blow up the fifty puppies you already gave him.
Now let’s say you get all five hundred puppies and deliver them to Gop, and tell Gop that in exchange for these five hundred puppies, you would really appreciate it if Gop would hand over the detonator for the fifty puppies wired with explosives, and the gun he’s holding to the head of America.
Gop refuses. Gop now has a gun against America’s temple, the hammer is cocked, and he has fifty puppies wired with explosives, with an offer for five hundred more if he’ll just put down the gun and detonator.
The problem is that Gop can’t do that, because Teaparty, his former partner, is holding his wife, Reelection, hostage too. If Gop doesn’t get all the puppies, and keeps the gun and detonator, Teaparty is going to shoot Gop’s wife Reelection in the head.
Now, for this to untangle itself, someone has to die. Either Gop blows up the puppies and shoots America in the head because you won’t give in to their completely unreasonable demands, or America and the puppies live because Gop gave you the gun and detonator, but Teaparty killed Gop’s wife, Reelection.
There is a third and fourth way. Gop turns around and shoots Teaparty, sparing his wife, mistress, and puppies, or Gop shoots himself, thus freeing America and the puppies and leaving Teaparty out in the cold.
So really, it’s a double hostage situation. The Democrats are offering the world to the GOP to keep them from blowing it all up, but the GOP can’t take the deal because if they do, the Tea Party will go fucking nuts and everyone that votes for it will face a primary challenge.
The insane people are running the party, and now morons like David Brooks and the “reasonable Republicans” are like “WTF happened” when they were the ones fluffing the nutters for years. Even assuming there are Republicans left in the house that really are not insane enough to default the government, an assumption I am simply not willing to make, they are terrified they will lose their job like the other tens of millions of people suffering from Republican policies, because the teahadists will primary them.
And anyone who still calls themselves a Republican is just an asshole. Really, you’ve had ample time to figure out your party is run by maniacs. If you’re still sticking around because the “Democrats are worse” or you think the party can turn it around or because you fancy yourself a small “c” conservative or you are a glibertarian or because you hate taxes or you think Dennis Kucinich is weird (he is), you’re just an asshole. And incredibly stupid.
GeneJockey
Well, yeah. Of course.
Just Some Fuckhead
What about Democrats that are cool with killing the smallest puppies or the sickest puppies? At this point, all we’re arguing about is which puppies get killed, and for what reasons.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i love the way this was phrased for the gawker audience, i want to see if it works on conservatives.
the funny part is, most of them only care about puppies when they are talking about mike vick.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Bobo, Dick Cohen, and Frum are freaking out because they’re worried a financial crisis will temporary disrupt subsidies to the IDF.
Just Some Fuckhead
America wants puppies killed, according to Obama:
“Now, I’ve heard reports that there may be some in Congress who want to do just enough to make sure that America avoids defaulting on our debt in the short term, but then wants to kick the can down the road when it comes to solving the larger problem of our deficit. I don’t share that view. I don’t think the American people sent us here to avoid tough problems. That’s, in fact, what drives them nuts about Washington, when both parties simply take the path of least resistance. And I don’t want to do that here.
I believe that right now we’ve got a unique opportunity to do something big — to tackle our deficit in a way that forces our government to live within its means, that puts our economy on a stronger footing for the future, and still allows us to invest in that future.”
redshirt
But the GOP has perfected the art of appealing to people’s base instincts, whatever greed, hate, jealousy, resentment you want to conjure up. And thus, though many people realize the GOP is nuts, they also speak to their unique prejudice, whatever it is. And that issue, and that issue alone, is enough to keep the Tribe in order: Personal bribery of the basest kind.
gbear
I’m going to put that whole blockquote on a bumpersticker and go drive around the MN State Capitol and State Office Building. Maybe I’ll just paint the whole thing onto my car.
DonkeyKong
Gawker forgot to mention this guy named 10%unemployed in the middle of the street dodging car’s because nobody gives a fuck about him.
J. Michael Neal
A couple of people of my acquaintance in three-dimensional space as well as a couple of others here encouraged me to start writing. One of the outside folks even said he’s trying to get a project off the ground that would need a writer or two, and that I should start practicing.
So I have. I’m writing essays on business related topics. So far, one on teaching ethics, one on the way that the only way society can show how much it values someone, at least in our system, is by how much it pays them, and one on the implicit messages corporate executives send.
I send them out to a mailing list of about 20 people. The first one went out about ten days ago. So far, I have received two acknowledgments that the person in question received it, but that they don’t have time to respond. Those were my parents. From everyone else: Nada. Zip. Zero. Nothing. Are the essays any good? I have no idea, because no one seems to be reading them.
My whole life seems to be like this. Job appllications disappear into a black hole. I join a book club and have nothing to say because they don’t want to read books that are at all interesting. I’m volunteering in an afterschool program (all afternoon, twice a week, over the summer), and the kids like me, but I’m not sure what I’m really adding, because the plan I had to teach some extra math vanished into the ether, plus I’m fifteen years older than any of the other staff. I’m working with a coach, and she helped me identify 6-8 people from my past who might be able to help me with leads for a job; I found the best contact information for them that I could and sent messages, but I didn’t hear back from any of them. Not one.
I’ve considered putting the essays on my blog and seeing if that generated any response, but they’re several pages long, and I can’t get the Rest of the Entry button to work. All it does is say, “And here is the rest of it,” followed by the rest of it on the front page.
Bleh. I feel useless.
Brachiator
The Democrats should go on the attack and use this to drive a wedge between the regular GOP and the Tea Party extreme.
I think that one of the things fueling this insanity is that the Tea Party People were totally against the financial bailout and thought that if the federal government did nothing, then the economy would be magically straightened out by the famous Invisible Hand.
To people who believe in the sanctity of the Gold Standard, the concept of a federal default is meaningless. They economic creationists for whom modern economics is an evil imposed on Real Americans by elitists.
Sadly, the GOP regulars are unlikely to try to control these people. They believe that they can use them to their ongoing political advantage because Obama and the Democrats will blink.
Even more sadly, the GOP is probably right that the Democrats will give in and find a way to give the Republicans most of what they want.
Linda Featheringill
Yeah, Dennis Kucinich is a little weird. I like him and have often voted for him but he is a bit weird.
[Of course, we all know that no other state in the union has any weird politicians at all. Nosiree!]
OzoneR
what regular GOP?
Joshua Norton
We don’t need their fucked up ideology in the Dem. party either. We’ve tried that. They turn “independent” and caucus with the Dems but still vote with the Repiggies every time it matters.
GeneJockey
They’ve already got that. Now they’re walking out of the talks because the Democrats are only willing to offer what the GOP asked for.
I think at this point, the hostage negotiators would tell the sniper to look for a clean shot…
Lolis
Yep, this is why I can no longer respect people I find out are Republicans. They are supporting people who are truly mentally ill and out to destroy everything that has made this country decent.
Earl Butz
Where’s Fred/Derf to harsh on “John Galt Cole” and call him an asshole?
Jay B.
Funny. I’m a Democrat, who has had ample time to figure out my party is run by spineless cretins or worse. And I’m still sticking around because the “Republicans are worse” and I’ve held out hope that Democrats can turn it around for some stupid fucking reason and I fancy myself a small “l” liberal and a civil libertarian who might as well believe that unicorns exist for all that people give a shit about civil liberties. So that’s hopeless too, you know.
Linda Featheringill
j. michael:
Give us an email address so we can send you a message asking to be placed on your “mailing list.” Okay?
rb
@J. Michael Neal
Just … christ. You’re in my thoughts brother.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Are there House equivalents to Dick Lugar and Olympia Snowe? Seems like all the old Eisenhowerish Rebuplicans have been driven out or beaten into silence. The consensus seems to be that Boehner is being pulled along by the Tea Baggers, but my sense is that the Boehner, if not as stupid and crazy as Cantor or Louie Goehmert, is 1) an asshole and 2) not very bright. When he talks about “cutting spending to promote job growth”, I really don’t think he gets that “cutting spending” means “firing people”
General Stuck
Obama has dug a line in the sand with a backhoe, that the GOP must raise taxes, as part of any deal. I know Obama knows that such a demand is politically impossible for the wingnuts, lest Grover’s hounds of hell track the gooper lawmakers down one by one with a primary challenge.
It is Obama’s response to the wingnut demanding he do the politically impossible for a dem president, and gut benefits for medicare and and medicaid, and ultimately the ACA.
This is not a scenario that can rationally be expected to work out into puppy love. Obama has a clear statement in the Constitution that states paying our debts is to not be fucked with by stupid republicans. If they want to play hostage with puppies, then do it with funding for the US government, and not drag the world into our bullshit due to our intertwined and dominant role in international finance.
And it sounds to me that Obama is getting fed up with it as well, and is being uncharacteristically terse, and is rejecting a short term “can/kicking/down/road as wingers fiddle around with the doomsday switch. Give the wingers a little more time and rope, and then due his sworn constitutional duty to pay our fucking bills when they are due. Whether that involves borrowing more or not. We can bounce along at current spending levels, and programs, but not let terrorist demands run our lives, short circuiting our normal political processes into a stream of manufactured crisis under the threat of economic violence. Either by Al Quaida or its American counterpart, the GOP.
Linkmeister
Best damned analogy about this mess I’ve seen in weeks.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Suing the taxpayers for a million dollars over an olive pit is weird?
Discussing his close encounter with aliens “who smelled like roses” at Shirley Maclaine’s home is weird?
Blaming the massacre in Syria on the dead demonstrators is weird?
Dragging around his teenage wife everywhere he goes is weird?
You’re too hard, Cole.
Brachiator
@J. Michael Neal:
I would like to take a look at your blog, even though I couldn’t promise fast feedback(it’s getting busy at my day job). But I would also say don’t give up, for what it’s worth.
There’s a lot of stuff on the Internet, and it’s not easy to find the worthwhile stuff. But one thing seems to work. If you post interesting stuff in related places, like here at Balloon Juice, for example, it might help in generating reader interest.
And it also seems as though you need to work on making your blog site work better. I would also suggest avoiding pages and pages of stuff.
Linda Featheringill
Joshua #13
“Repiggies”
:-)
Jim C.
The Dems should just take that little quote and run it in a campaign ad. Someone finally distilled the current political environment down into a message that the average, uninformed, Independent idiot voter could understand.
Regnad Kicn
Proud to be a fluffernutter in Durkee Mower country: http://www.marshmallowfluff.com/pages/history1.html
Oh, wait: nutter fluffer?
Never mind.
Spaghetti Lee
I’ve never been sure how comfortable I am with “everyone who identifies with the GOP is an asshole” given how the mainstream media (the start and finish of “the news” for 90% of the country) considers it their business to obfuscate the differences between the Dems and the GOP and to never challenge any Republican claims that get made on air. I’d definitely say that anyone who is fully aware of what the GOP is doing and supports them is a big ol’ asshole.
Southern Beale
So what you’re saying is we not only have Democrats with no spine, we have not-insane Republicans with no balls.
Apparently if the Democrats would grow a spine and the Republicans would grow some balls we’d all be saved. So in short, what we need is courage.
Ah well, we’re fucked.
sherifffruitfly
Note that every last bit of this scenario, without remainder, is thoroughly explained by the simple fact: the American electorate is So. Fucking. Shitty..
boss bitch
Its pretty clear that we should let America die. Who cares about the couple of hundred million people she leaves behind (they can eat the smashed puppy bits) we can’t let Gop get away with this. Anyone concerned about America is clearly a wuss.
Spaghetti Lee
I think that what needs to be added is that Re-Election is a rotten woman who lies to and steals from everyone she meets just to finance her husband Gop’s dangerous and unethical lifestyle, so it would be better for everyone if she’s the one who ended up dead.
boss bitch
Its pretty clear that we should let America die. Who cares about the couple of hundred million people she leaves behind (they can eat the smashed puppy bits) we can’t let Gop get away with this. Anyone concerned about America is clearly a wuss.
yep.
Jennifer
If the Democrats just refuse to cave, the US Chamber, the banksters & Wall Street will do the dirty work of making the Republicans fall in line to vote in favor of raising the debt ceiling.
That’s what the Dem leadership should be doing right now – communicating to the Chamber, and Wall Street, and the rest of the GOP sugar daddies that it’s up to them to discipline their unruly brats or suffer the consequences. Because for all their tacit support of the teabagger blather, the owners of the GOP have more to lose from a default than anyone else, and they’re really, in the final analysis, the only ones the GOP answers to. So the Dems just need to get the message out to them: “your kids have until date X to shape up – after that it will be too late to pass the legislation in enough time to stave off catastrophe. You broke it, you bought it, so we suggest you get cracking before the clock runs out.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m watching Rachel Maddow’s report on the Yellowstone pipeline rupture, and thinking the good people of Montana might well vote for a Senate candidate who wants to give their tax money to the company that poisoned the river and jacked up their gas prices because Rush told them Jon Tester wants to help Barack Obama take their guns away.
James E. Powell
As redshirt notes, above, the Republicans keep their base motivated by identifying the base voters anger and fears, then fanning the flames to keep them activated. Their targets are the politically weak (blacks, immigrants, gays/lesbians, religious minorities) and that portion of the educated classes who are not right-wing (often misidentified as “the left”). It may be immoral and it may be horrible, but for them it works really well. Can you make an argument, with evidence, that the right-wing has lost any important policy battles in the last thirty years?
Brachiator
But you have to go with the electorate that you have, not the electorate that you wish you had.
MazeDancer
@General Stuck
Hadn’t seen that AP piece you quote where the President says tax increases must be included in any deal.
Hadn’t actually seen that anywhere.
If that’s true, I have renewed hope.
Geithner says: 14th Amendment. So that mens Mr. Obama is not going to let America default because the Republicans are crazy.
So, between Geithner’s hint and read-my-lips-no-deal-without-new-taxes Obama isn’t the President telling the Republicans: You’re screwed, pick your poison? Or to go with the analogy, free the puppies and know that your wife may make a lot of protest, but she doesn’t control all the votes.
UncertaintyVicePrincipal
#10
I know this shouldn’t make me actually laugh out loud at this point but it did.
Yes, and the puppies should become interstellar space Polar bears with wings and devour the Republicans, who would look equally surprised either way.
Jay B.
#31.
No we have a stupid, senselessly cruel elite, an inept, coutier-class media, an uninformed electorate and politicians dicking around about the fucking deficit instead of doing shit about 9.1% unemployment. Eventually, and sooner than later, a populist overreaction will really send shit flying and you’d have to be insane not to think it’ll come from the populist right.
The best case scenario is that Obama gets his piddling tax increases while he agrees to some real cuts while continuing his lecturing on the vital importance of the deficit and we continue along with 9.1 percent unemployment and a shaky economy — all while states from the Midwest to New Jersey get on the austerity bandwagon and strangle the middle class and the poor. That’s the absolute best case going into 2012.
lol
@2:
Meanwhile, the Professional Left is arguing “If you’d just show some spine and let Gop kill America, people would realize what monsters they are and you could hook up with Reelection.”
Luthe
@JSF:
Obama doesn’t want to kill puppies. But he’s a pragmatist who needs the conserva-Dems to win the debt-ceiling fight and they want those little canine sons-of-bitches dead. So Obama has to make some noises about how much he just loves to kill puppies, because otherwise all the puppies are dead.
I mean, look at the budget fight. There was much wailing and gnashing-of-teeth and rending-of-garments over how much Obama and the Dems were willing to cut, but in the end, the effective cuts were much smaller than anyone expected. So yeah, don’t be too worried about the puppies.
burnspbesq
It took the Catholic and Protestant working classes in Ulster 300 years to figure out who the real enemy was. Why would you expect middle-class and working-class Republican supporters to figure it out in 43 years?
Jim C.
@31
You’re kind of missing the point here.
Getting the GOP to spare America this time simply kicks the can down the road. It delays the inevitable. Next time it will be, “Give me 10,000 puppies or I pull the trigger.” and then the time after that “Give me 10,000,000 puppies and everything that remains for Medicare and Social Security.”
There’s no “middle ground” that will make them happy. They won’t be happy until there’s nothing left of America as we know it.
Basically, giving them Czechoslovakia so we can have “Peace for our time” will only encourage these crazy bastards to invade France and Britain next week.
General Stuck
Let’s game this out a little further. As it appears to me, the wingnuts have banked on Obama either folding and handing them The New Deal for a proper burial, or they force him into unilaterally ignoring the debt limit law. I really don’t think at this stage, they think he will, or dems in congress would approve destroying The New Deal, either by privatizing it, or gutting of benefits.
So what happens with the only way out for Obama? He has to pay our debts, most agree on that, as the alternative is unacceptable and unthinkable to sane people.
And immediately, the billboards go up, and right wing talk radio explodes with Dictator Obama talk. And the tards out there, have their paranoia jacked up to 11, and they always buy more guns and ammo when that happens. And stupid white person designs ramp up accordingly with sporadic acts of violence by morons watering the tree of liberty with dufus juice.
Its an all in mindset for the wingnuts, seems to me, more so everyday as they think of crazier shit to say and do, with all of it sending a coded “our way or the highway” message. We aren’t going to play by the same rules as before, when it suits us.
Jay B.
#39.
Shorter lol: “Scraps are too a kind of food!”
We all know the Democrats will be “the adults”. Hell, they’ve ALREADY offered the GOP everything they asked for — the GOP just readjusted their offer and asked for more. I don’t think Fuckhead or any critics of the Democrats from the left think the Democrats have any spine at all. We know they won’t let the U.S. default. And we know they’ll give up anything to make sure that happens. It’ll be a “tough choice”, like big cuts to Medicaid and that kind of thing, but they’ll make it, because, really, who gives a fuck about the poor?
But it’s a hell of a way to run a country. Letting sociopaths destroy a weak safety net while the party of the “left” regretfully signs on in the name of austerity.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@ Earl Butz #16
*shhhhhhhhhhhh* Say his name three times and he appears.
Baud
So what was Gawker’s plan to save the puppies?
Spaghetti Lee
And immediately, the billboards go up, and right wing talk radio explodes with Dictator Obama talk. And the tards out there, have their paranoia jacked up to 11, and they always buy more guns and ammo when that happens. And stupid white person designs ramp up accordingly with sporadic acts of violence by morons watering the tree of liberty with dufus juice.
And that’s different from the first two years of his term, how?
I’m not merely being snarky. Right-wing foaming-at-the-mouth violent ignorant idiocy is a constant in this equation, and would surface no matter what Obama does. It shouldn’t be put on the scale one way or the other to be used as a deciding factor.
pablo
Boner Ponies!
murbella
AND anyone who still calls themselves a LIBERTARIAN.
just fucking say it Cole.
And scrape these asswipes off your blogroll.
James E. Powell
@ Brachiator
This seems like good advice, but I think I found a flaw in the plan. Democrats, by history or by habit, only attack members of their own base.
perplexed
I’m with Jay. Faded. Fucked. Laughed at.
burnspbesq
Wait a sec: why can’t Tony Almeida create a diversion that allows Jack Bauer to get close enough to stick a ballpoint pen into Gop’s carotid artery while Chloe O’Brian remotely unlocks the puppy cage and disables the detonator?
Evolved Deep Southerner
Not to go all that far off topic but, Cole, is there any ETA on the “reply” feature? I mean, are they telling you it’s impossible, or that it’s “on our list?” Either way …
RossInDetroit
We have one party in government that’s there to govern. We have one party that’s there to end every bit of governing that they can. That’s the choice that voters have: People who want to do their jobs and people who want to end their jobs.
Corner Stone
@Luthe
He does? Telling the world that some modicum of dead puppies works for you is the path out of this?
Corner Stone
@Jay B.
“Shared sacrifice.” I think the convenient phrase you’re looking for on the Democratic side is “shared sacrifice”.
Baud
@James K. Powell:
Seems fair. Certain people who consider themselves the Democratic base have, by history or habit, focus all their energies on attacking Democrats.
General Stuck
Matters of degree, and increases thereof. This time it will involve Obama ignoring a federal law that tea tard faithful have counted on to shrink the government they hate, and maybe even destroy it. The apparent conflict with the constitution will be lost on them, as will whatever consequences are realized by the US defaulting on its debts.
So, matters of degree. Which I think such a played out scenario would increase the degree. I was saying Nothing more than that
J. Michael Neal
@Linda Featheringill [Depressed donkey from Pooh] 1968 @ comcast.net
Depressed donkey from Pooh = eeyore, of course.
Jennifer
I still say the Dems ought to push it off on the responsible party – the GOP’s owners – to bring the nutters to heel. Again, they have more to lose than anyone if there’s a default, they know it, and they won’t let it happen. Given the choice between paying a few percent more on their marginal tax rate and losing it all, they’ll whip their servants into shape.
Frankensteinbeck
James E. Powell:
Without even having to look, they got their asses handed to them on the ACA despite going right down to the matt for it.
Halcyan
From one ex-Republican to another…
I quit the GOP the year they nominated G.W. Bush. That was sufficient evidence for me of the total unseriousness of the party of my youth.
I am not in favor of everything that the Dems stand for. But I am in favor of being a sentient being, and the GOP no longer is, it seems.
Bleech.
Frankensteinbeck
Corner Stone:
Ah, yes. ‘Shared Sacrifice’, which Obama defined as ‘Tax the rich more’. Context is VERY important.
PeakVT
@Jim – on your question – no, not really, for two reasons. One, the nature of the House is such that no individual can ever become an independent power center like Senators can. Two, even though you can sort these rankings a number of ways, all Republicans end up to the right of all but a few really shitty Conservadems, and Ron Paul gets ranked as one of the most liberal Republicans. There are no moderates in the Republican caucus.
Brachiator
@James E. Powell:
RE: The Democrats should go on the attack and use this to drive a wedge between the regular GOP and the Tea Party extreme.
Yeah, there is that little problem. It’s too bad that the Democratic Party leadership is so inconsistent when it comes to internal discipline.
Jay B.
@ Corner Stone
Yes, of course. Thankfully, Raytheon won’t feel the pinch.
Just Some Fuckhead
@FrankenBeans:
The context here being the Obama administration gave them every cut they asked for with no guarantee of revenue increases.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman #43:
I’m guessing you didn’t spend a lot of time in Chicago’s western suburbs. My siblings damn near LIVED on fluffernutters. (Not me — I have a real aversion to PB, don’t even like to be in the same room with anyone eating a PBJ sandwich. I ate the marshmallow fluff on its own straight from the jar.)
But funny, you made me realize that it could be one of those regional food things. Never thought of that before.
Southern Beale
I kinda wonder if Tea Party really will kill Reelection. They may threaten to but except in a few cases, won’t they fall in line? No?
Hell what do I know.
Southern Beale
WIN!
Baud
@Just Some Fuckhead
Um, no. No one has given anything unless and until a deal is reached. Right now, it’s just negotiating and posturing for public opinion.
Suffern ACE
Democrats by their nature will attack members of their base who are considered “extreme” and “controversial” in order to attract those boring independents. If those “extremists” (who aren’t really radicals, just slightly peeved middle and upper middle class people) want to be the base, perhaps they should consider convincing those boring middle of the roaders that they should join them as the base. Attacking middle of the road democrats from the wings probably doesn’t accomplish that.
JC
Well, in my cynical moods, I think this is more Kabuki. On cue, here come the ‘serious Republican thinkers’ to give a small scolding to the tea partiers.
This pressure will ramp up in the next two weeks, but around July 20th, there will suddenly be ‘a deal’.
This deal will be 85% ‘reducing future expenditures’, and 15% fake ‘tax increases’.
The chipping away at the social safety net continues, the ‘fast as we can get away with’, pushing of revenue to the top 1% continues apace.
AND – Boehner and Cantor then get feted for ‘prevailing upon their partisans to do the responsible thing’. Just you wait for the glowing column praising Boehner from David Brooks when this happens.
I still think this will end up being a non-event. The sad thing is, the above sketched outcome is the BEST we can hope for. all the other possibilities are even worse news.
Spaghetti Lee
I kinda wonder if Tea Party really will kill Reelection. They may threaten to but except in a few cases, won’t they fall in line? No?
I sometimes wonder what people mean when they say the teatard wing (in a teatard vs. banker dichotomy) will rebel. Who else are they going to vote for? Not the Kenyan Usurper Dhimmicrats. Are they really organized and cognizant enough to make a run for some RW third party as a political statement? Because if they stay in the GOP, the bankers hold all the cards in terms of money, power, media, etc.
Of course, I welcome any and all rancor and disarray within the GOP, but I think the bankers have the power, just like always, until someone proves otherwise.
Davis X. Machina
What do you do when the Ship of State turns out to be the Kobayashi Maru?
John
@Jennifer
Dear Jennifer,
“Because for all their tacit support of the teabagger blather, the owners of the GOP have more to lose from a default than anyone else, and they’re really, in the final analysis, the only ones the GOP answers to”
This might surprise you but one can make money whether the markets go up or down. Almost certainly a significant portion of Wall Street is hoping for default.
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
Actually, it’s not tax the rich more, even though I could go for that. Here’s the facts. Under the Republicans tax rates for upper income taxpayers were cut more than they were for other income groups. You could, for example, be a trust fund baby receiving dividends and pay ZERO income tax. Meanwhile, wage earners did not see meaningful tax cuts while their incomes stagnated and wealthier Americans made out like bandits.
The Republicans promised that their tax cuts would make the economy prosper and help all Americans. They lied. It didn’t happen.
And now the GOP want to cut taxes while cutting government services. Again, they promise that if you do this, the economy will just burst out in prosperity.
But the context is that the GOP has been wrong about every promise, every prediction, every projection.
That’s one heckuva track record.
TooManyJens
@Brachiator:
Or at least, every promise, prediction, and projection they’ve made to the
suckerselectorate, in public.Jay B.
How do you think negotiating works? The Democrats “negotiated” giving the GOP everything they asked for. The GOP then changed their demands.
And if this is posturing for public opinion, it’d be great if the President, instead of agreeing with the premise that the deficit is the most fucking important issue facing America these days, would actually, you know, posture over something that’s a lot more popular. Like jobs. And infrastructure.
But no, I’m sure there’s some brilliance in his “fake” lust for fiscal probity that makes a ton of sense in the War Room.
Jennifer
Who, me? I’m not here.
(crickets)
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Why is anyone even talking about the debt ceiling?
I thought the only thing anyone was allowed to talk about is Obama’s position on gay marriage?
Brachiator
Refuse to accept the no win scenario.
I would love to see Obama go all James T. Kirk on the GOP.
Mr Stagger Lee
Where have you gone Richard M. Nixon?
The GOP turns it’s lonely eyes to you
OOOh OOOh OOOh
What did you say Mrs. Robinson??
Tricky Dick has gone and went away
Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey!
Baud
@Jay B.
I think negotiating works just like this. The GOP’s position on the U.S. is “let it burn.” Do you think Obama could get away with that same tactic? And for all the whining about what issue is really more popular, the fact is that we just had an election in which the Dems had their asses handed to them after the most progressive two years in decades. And I certainly haven’t heard anyone else come up with a more brilliant plan for dealing with the GOP, so until someone does, I’ll stick with the folks who actually have some accomplishments behind them.
Martin
Obama doesn’t need a way out of this – the GOP does. The GOP has two proposals, neither of which the GOP can go with, and the GOP knows this. That’s why they’re asking to punt – to raise the debt limit temporarily, so that they can get a few more months to get their shit together (which they won’t do) and in a few months go through the exercise again.
Obama has indicated he won’t do this. I don’t know if he’ll stick to that, but I suspect so. If he doesn’t, then the GOP is going to piss on his leg for the next year, and that’s going to be intolerable going into an election. I think he’s going to sit tight and let the GOP sweat a while. In 2 weeks they still won’t have a proposal that can pass the House, let alone the Senate, and the Dems will have one that will get just enough GOP support with some tweaks here and there to pass the House and Senate, and that’ll be that.
The left will freak out and say that Obama sold out because they’ve already committed to that narrative enough that they can’t possibly back down. The right will freak out because they didn’t get their gold dildo standard, or whatever the fuck they want, and truly, they’ll be blindsided because they were promised a constitutional amendment and a bag of gold dildos and they’ll get a few trimmings here or there, but the cuts will be from defense and cost savings on Medicare or means testing SS payouts or something like that.
But the GOP can’t vote on, let alone pass, any of the things they’re demanding. And it’s not Dems that are the problem there. Rhetorically, it seems like the Dems are just feeding the GOP into a hole so deep that it’s impossible to get out of. 6:1 cuts to revenues? Even the GOP base won’t tolerate that when you see it implemented because Republican voters are strongly opposed to Medicare/SS cuts and defense. Add in debt service and that’s 75% of the budget. There’s just not enough to cut that Republicans will accept to get anything meaningful, or the cuts will be so shallow (NPR was somehow a major victory for the right, somehow) as to have no impact on the deficit. Either way, they’re fucked.
Linda Featheringill
j. michael
I did it. You should have it by now. If not, speak up and we’ll try again.
:-)
Spaghetti Lee
Jennifer-I agree with you. And while I wouldn’t bet a ton of money on such a thing happening, I think it’s more likely than others here think. You don’t get to be President without sensing such obvious political traps, and knowing how to avoid them. During the Shutdown fight, the actual cuts ended up at about $30 million or so, if I recall, and there was a bunch of talk on the right about who blew the negotiations with Obama and maybe they should try to kick out John Boehner or something. I expect something similar to happen here.
Baud
@Martin
Exactly. Thank you!
aisce
the president can’t take no for an answer.
yes, he can use this newfangled fourteenth amendment theory to abolish the debt limit concept, and so ultimately there’s no real possible route to default, but politically he’ll never pull that trigger.
if he does, he owns the entire deficit. he owns all 14.5T in debt. the republicans, who are responsible for 99% of it, get to skate on it and run with impunity on the issue in 2012. and all the while the rethugs get to call him a dictator who overthrew a duly elected congress so he could spend our children into a debt oblivion to the chinese.
obama’s going all in on a deal. that’s what he said today. but the gop can’t take yes for an answer. they want to destroy the welfare state. they won’t get it. they won’t even get any cuts to current beneficiaries (i saw that there’s talk of changing the way cpi is calculated that could be counted as a future benefit cut to entitlement spending, but who knows with these details what is and isn’t real). both sides have caved already, and both must and will cave further. nobody will be happy with the compromise. the moral of the story is don’t invent fake crises and play chicken for no reason. you end up looking like a jackass, and hurting the country in the process.
BlueDWarrior
I agree with the people who say that Obama should argue from the real left position that the only way to actually solve the budget deficit without taking a chainsaw to every federal program is to increase spending in order to both create jobs outright (by building and repairing stuff) and grease the skids for more private sector jobs (by having more people with cash to spend and thereby driving the demand angle).
I would be more fervent in my profession of that belief if I actually thought the corporate-owned media would actually give actual liberal Democrats the time of fraggin day, or short of that, the Democrats had a messaging arm that could actually hold people’s attention long enough to tell people that.
Sometimes I don’t know where the genesis of our problems, is it A) The Democrats failure at messaging, B) The Corporate Ownership of the Media, or C) the American Public refusing to think more than 30 seconds about any given problem?
Martin
They didn’t just invent primary elections, you know.
Boehners problem is that he’s got just enough freshman teatard Reps that he can’t possibly ignore them, and he’s got enough standard GOP Reps that are terrified they’re going to go the route of Mike Castle or Bob Bennett that they don’t dare ignore the teatard base (reinforced by that small army of freshman reps demanding their gold dildos). Remember, in a House primary, getting a motivated 5% of the electorate in your district will pretty much get you the nomination. Toss in that most states are going to get redistricting before the next election, and even incumbents stand to lose part or most of their loyal voting base on top of that. They’re fucking terrified.
Steaming Pile
@General Stuck – OR, and you’ll agree this is totally awesome, start playing triage with spending priorities. We don’t have to shut down the whole federal government, just carefully selected pieces of it.
Make sure those people in certain people’s districts get their noses rubbed in it by paying those bills with money that might have gone to, say, highway projects in Rep. Soandso’s (R) district. Yeah, we can wait on that extension of I-577 to those gated communities in East Bumfuck while we cover our checks, including those we wrote for Medicaid, whatever we’re calling the food stamp program nowadays, and Pell grants. Make it hurt where it counts, so to speak.
magurakurin
I think the analogy works better if the hostage, America, is actual a Siamese twin and one of the heads (think Rosie Greer and Bruce Dern in the Thing with Two Heads) and one of the heads is actually encouraging the GOP to shoot the other head, seemingly totally unaware that if that happens he will die, too.
Because that’s the nut, really. If the teabaggers have their way, life isn’t going to get better for them or anyone, except the richest 1%.
TooManyJens
@Steaming Pile: I like the way you think.
rikyrah
you speak the truth…thanks.
Linda Featheringill
What I would like to see is a bill/law that includes:
About 6 parts savings from here, there, and yonder, including the military.
About 3 parts increased revenues, even if it reaches down to my level.
And about 1 part funding for what Obama calls “investment” in new companies, new fields of endeavor, training, or whatever.
It can’t hurt to wish.
“Santa, Baby . . . . “
Steaming Pile
This is probably because the GOPers want to raise the debt ceiling just high enough to carry over to about September next year or so, when they hope to score some Nov. ’12 election points with it by whining “aw geez, this shit again?” to whatever camera is handy.
Lawguy
I’d suggest that we start a little sooner then the 50 puppies point of the exchange. When America was given the opportunity to take and keep the gun away from Gop, America gave the gun to Dems and Pres who immediately gave it back to Gop.
Ed Marshall
The democrats were shortsighted for not re-instituting the Gephardt rule when they had control of congress (if you voted for the budget, you voted to raise the debt ceiling). Either way, it’s a for shit policy, and everyone on the planet would be better off if it actually goes the 14th amendment route. It’s really stupid to give the sort of morons we elect to the U.S. House a lever to blow up the world.
eemom
so, Kucinich.
There are many things I don’t like about him but he never quite struck me as crazy before. The Syria thing, however, does indeed seem crazy.
WHAT, please, is his explanation for sucking up to a brutal dictator? Has he offered one?
Or, does anyone have one for him? For the life of me I cannot imagine what it is.
Sharl
You will all no doubt be delighted to learn that Megan Gastritis-Broke-Mah-Calculator McArdle was just on with journalist – and man with dubious taste in guests – Warren Olney. The topic was the debt ceiling.
When queried, she did concede that it wasn’t all the fault of the Demoncraps, so she was uncommonly generous in this forum. It could have only been better if ol’ Warren had invited Amity Shlaes.*
*Shlaes’ Wikipedia entry, an article with “multiple issues”. I’ll just bet there are…
MikeJ
You seem to have missed the 2010 elections.
Rick Taylor
@General Stuck
__
Yes, except I think it will be worse. The right wing response to not getting its way always turns out to be worse than anyone imagined. Plus they will push for impeachment. But I really worry about is that whether the markets are reassured enough to avoid a crises, even if we don’t default. Don’t worry, we won’t default, even if we have to go through a constitutional crises to avoid it. We’re confident the courts we’ll see things our way and that bonds we issue will be honored. Pay no attention to the screaming lunatics threatening to overturn the government, everything will be fine. . .
LosGatosCA
This post could be re-titled ” Morons, the sibling Morons who inappropriately love them, and enabling Morons who live in codependency at the Moron village on the Potomac’
Canadian Shoggoth
The whole scenario outlined makes me think that the
Teaparty is attempting suicide by GOP
murbella
C’mon Cole.
Why is the LoOG still on your blogroll?
Because you dig the reacharound? Or because you are a useful idiot?
aisce
@ eemom
because stupid leftists will always, always side with anybody over the west.
sure, syria’s dictator for life may be slaughtering his own people, but…israel! western hegemony! shah of iran!
except assad or gaddafi aren’t some latin american communist reformers. they’re murderers and terrorists.
fucking leftists are just dumber than shit. pure one-track, ideological idiots who hate the west more than they love the actual oppressed. ostentatious phonies and scam artists, the lot of them.
TooManyJens
@murbella: Because Cole doesn’t give a fuck who you think should be on his blogroll?
newhavenguy
Amen. Except its even worse than that.
When Gawker provides better political coverage than, say Bobo or that Dick Milbank creature for example, I worry that something is very deeply wrong with journalism in the United States. Worse than I had thought before, even. Only 20, 25 years ago one could have a reasonable idea of what was going on by reading the Times, Post or even the WSJ front page a few times a week.
Looking at that last sentence, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Both I think.
Ed Marshall
@110
Yeah, we all just got back from our “fair play for Assad” rally. Really, I’m not sure how I never noticed before that I was a puppet for dictators. Or wait, maybe you are a moron doing battle with people that you are hallucinating about. Maybe Dennis Kucinich *isn’t* the brightest bulb on the planet and was flattered with the personal interest that Assad afforded him in the last few years, and believes his “reformer” schtick that he has been trying to sell since the mid-90’s.
J. Michael Neal
Linda Featheringill: I got your email and replied with my first three essays. However, I finally managed to figure out how to get blogger to do what I wanted. (It would help if they’d made it clear that they had updated their post editing since the last time I used it *and* made it at all easy to find the new form.) So, you can just go to the blog linked to my name if you’d like.
Y’all are welcome any time.
PeakVT
C’mon Cole. Why is the LoOG still on your blogroll?
Because nobody gives a fuck what you think about LoOG.
ETA: LoL. I swear I didn’t see TooManyJens’ comment before hitting submit.
TooManyJens
Great minds think alike!
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Really? You must have missed this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=386JprXXU90
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzBGhjS2uQo
Porlock Junior
On the lighter side, if we’re going to be balancing one group of dead puppies and/or spouses, etc., against another, then it will be good to study up on the works of philosphers who have spent eons of bullshit sessions exploring all variations and have come up with this
ROTFLMAO (if you like this sort of thing) page
suzanne
Holy haboob, Batman.
Scared to go outside.
Martin
Activist judges!
Costa Mesa sent layoff notices to about half of the city employees. One employee committed suicide the day the notices went out. In a quite ballsy move, the Governor appointed the head of the labor association that was fighting the layoffs to the OC Fairground board, so the city is stuck with him now (the fairground is located in Costa Mesa).
Costa Mesa has turned into our local teatard haven, so watching this play out is rather entertaining.
Brachiator
@Suffern ACE:
I’m not sure why you disparage independent voters. They make up the largest bloc of voters in California, for example, having been force to become officially nonpartisan because the entrenched parties refuse to look beyond their most narrow interests.
On the other hand, the notion of “the base” is reductive and outmoded, as is the idea that there can or should be true believers when both parties are willing to sell out the supposed base in order to stay in office or to satisfy whichever special interest pays best.
And this is not to say that independents are uninformed or don’t care. The independents helped the Democrats pretty much spank every Republican in the past statewide elections.
On the other hand, hard core Democrats keep floundering like a punch drunk fighter, promising to finally deliver in the next round of elections, but never following through.
piratedan
@ J Michael Neal….
me too, so let me know if you need another reader, input person
Martin
Agreed. Great messaging doesn’t make things better – actually getting legislation through does. And yeah, independents (I’m one too) are what’s winning the state. Of course, with the GOP barely holding onto their 1/3 of both chambers, they can’t afford to back down on anything, so I don’t think Dems are going to start losing momentum until the GOP is down to Green Party power status. My guess is 2012 pretty much kills them off as a relevant party in the state, at least for a cycle or two.
Sasha
So what’s the 14th Amendment option, going commando and disarming Gop, then using the gun to shoot out the detonator switch?
J. Michael Neal
Nah. The 14th Amendment option involves walking over to the cage, pointing out that the detonator isn’t actually wired to the explosives, and opening the door to let the puppies run free. Gop still has the detonators, still has the explosives and will probably find more puppies to wire them to, but in the meantime, can only throw a first class temper tantrum.
TooManyJens
@Sasha:
Wait, Obama’s going to raise the debt ceiling by going without underwear?
eemom
@ murbella
Time to put your toys away and go to bed, little one. You can play Save The World From Libertarians Superhero again tomorrow.
murbella
@Peak, Jens
so why does Cole have a libertarian vomitorium on his blogroll if glibertarians are BAD?
is he still hoping against hope that Kain will turn liberal?
Kain pranked you retards.
He was always a glibertarian grifter.
Or mebbe Cole just digs the libertarian reacharound, where EDK and freddie diddle him from the front and ream him from the back?
TooManyJens
@murbella: What part of “nobody gives a fuck” don’t you understand?
AlphaLiberal
I love this piece.
murbella
u 2 eemom.
why isnt the LoOG in the mock blogs column?
they are all glibertarians.
what makes them exempt?
is Cole still holding hands with his BFF Kain?
it should be clear to him by now that Kain was just in it for the page clicks.
Kirk Spencer
IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
“We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:
“We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”
(Danegeld — Rudyard Kipling)
murbella
@jens
because i do.
Cole can ban me anytime.
but that would prove im right, dig, and prove he still has feeelings for Kain.
Cole said i should respect him.
/spit
i dont respect libertarian lickers and useful idiots.
;)
Cain
@SouthernBeale
Shit.. so what you’re saying is we need Dorothy to frog march these fucks down a golden sidewalk to some fucker who can dickstab them with what they need?
Brachiator
@Martin:
Republicans in California settled into a happy status quo as a minority party, and with the help of the Democrats, carved out some safe districts. Both parties have fought off every attempt to shake up business as usual. They circumvented term limits by coming up with a system to make it easy for veteran politicians to move onto other positions in government, stopping off at high paying jobs as appointed commissioners. They have corrupted the initiative process. They fight attempts to rationally redo districts.
Then they pretend to be bitter enemies and play to their “bases.”
And even though they got their butts kicked in the last election, I am not sure that they will fade away. There is too much money floating around in California conservative circles. And the Democrats may find a way to fumble the ball.
The California economy is struggling, and I am not sure that voters will approve tax increases, especially as long as both entrenched parties insist on trying to do business as usual.
By the way, I think that Obama could learn something from California governor Jerry Brown. I am not happy with the final California budget, but the Republicans tried to hold out and force the governor’s hand by insisting on cuts and blocking a plan to let voters decide on future tax increases. Meanwhile, the Democrats, without any input from Republicans, submitted a budget that was full of smoke and mirrors. Brown defied his own party by vetoing the first budget.
Like I said, I am not happy with the final outcome. But I like that Brown sent a message that he was not just going to play the old budget game the way it has always been played.
TooManyJens
He has banned you, you complete cessbrain. You just refuse to take the hint and keep coming back under other names. Did you black out and forget that part?
dogwood
@Martin 88
The whole post is great. But this is very much a part of what’s going on. Both the far left and far right are committed to their Obama narratives. You see it in to teapartier who says the president raised her taxes. You could put a copy of her pay stub right in front of her and she’d simply double down. You see it in the far left who believed and still believe that the President wasn’t serious about repealing DADT. For these people it’s more important to be right than anything else. Both of these wings want to see it all go to hell, and if that were to happen, I guarantee they would both declare victory. The right would see the mayhem and declare themselves free of government shackles and insist that the economy was growing by leaps and bounds. The left would survey the damage and say- See we were right; Obama is a lousy president. It’s a big win for both sides.
Steeplejack
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
I will rage about this yet again: The Reply button problem is allegedly a one-line code fix.
h/t Cris (without an H), June 29, 2011.
piratedan
@125
ok, since you got blogger straightened out, I just signed up as a follower for ya and I’ll take a peek later.
Punchy
Can the GOP even shoot the Teatards at this point? Arent they too disorganized to be shot by one bullet?
Martin
That’s exactly my take as well. Hell, I’m a state worker, and this budget is going to hurt, but by-and-large it’s finally done. Aside from that bit of revenue wishful thinking, the state may have finally un-fucked itself. The first budget the Dems passed was shit, I’m glad Brown vetoed it. And I like the solution of giving local governments taxation power – it takes a surprising amount of power out of the GOPs hands.
I think the GOP is going to get wiped out in the redistricting. From all appearances, there’s simply no way to redraw districts to give them seats. Best case they’re probably going to lose just enough to fall below the 1/3 line, and Dems are going to get credit from most voters for actually delivering on the budget.
4jkb4ia
@72:
NYT had a story about this. Some people are like Blake Farenthold and their district will be shored up to be made more Republican, so a tea party/more conservative candidate can win the primary. But the thing is that Tea Party killing Reelection is entirely random. It depends on the scale of the felt betrayal and whether the candidate is good and (this is important) there is only one. In 2010 Dan Burton, for example, survived because the Tea Party challengers knocked each other off. So if you are a Republican freshman who has taken one of their pledges, you could be that random person, even if there are very few.
@Original Post:
Got nothing. When you have scared Megan McArdle, this is evidence of the truth of the scenario.
@J. Michael Neal:
You are not useless. That may be the only help I can offer.
Cain
You know these tea party fuckers are every where. Even in on HOA.. some asshat wanted to run as president and he wanted to just stop all teh fun stuff that we do as a community so that we can keep more of our money. (our HOA is probably on the high end, but I really love our neighborhood and they do harbor a sense of community)
He’s run twice now and failed. Asshole.
stinkdaddy
Bullshit. Obama’s being doing this song and dance for two and a half years now, and every time he caves (or is about to cave) all you fuckers have to say is “Oh man, the GOP’s so mean!” plus some bullshit about how Obama isn’t a dictator, magic wands, show me on the doll, and other ways of showing how good you guys are at channeling your own fear at acknowledging you may have been duped into shitting on people who are ostensibly your allies while simultaneously, of course, accusing those people of trying to tear the Democratic coalition apart and pre-emptively blaming those people for Obama’s 2012 defeat. It’s not the massive capitulation and constant ineptitude, you see, but actually the far-reaching and weighty influence of a blog comment that (will have) pushed it over the edge.
Give me a fucking break, Cole. Obama’s now so desperate to cut a deal that he’s willing to take the *one* issue on which he or the Dems have gotten political traction on (Ryan budget) off the table in in order to get a few hundred million a year in deficit reduction — or in other words, a Democratic President is going to sell a Democratic policy priority up the river in order to secure a Republican policy priority.
If you’re really going to tell me that this is all about the GOP being such brutal practitioners of brinkmanship and nothing to do with Obama being a horribly inept politician and/or actually wanting the policy results we’ve seen, then what you’re really telling me is… well, that Obama is in fact a horribly inept politician, because the fucking GOP was already like this before he ever ran. When they sit down at the negotiating table, it’s their job to get everything they can. After giving away 1/3 of the half-sized stimulus in tax cuts a whole 3 GOP votes, Obama came out and said something to the effect that he wasn’t born yesterday and wasn’t going to keep making concessions when he got nothing in return, but that turned out to be exactly what he did. It’s been two and a half years, and he’s still yet to draw a line in the sand on a single issue.
What possible reason would there be for the GOP to change this behavior? You repeatedly post this type of shit, yet the continual implication is that things would be fine if the GOP would just start acting a little more responsibly. Ok, well, what about the psychological makeup of “Crazy person who kills puppies for fun” leads you to believe that they’re motivated by acting responsibly, and why would you continue to extend the benefit of the doubt to someone who took office knowing that they kill puppies for fun, and not only continues to hand them more puppies but has spent the last year and a half talking about how puppies are an existential threat to the US that must be dealt with immediately? You can keep bullshitting yourself if it’s comforting, but eventually you’re going to have to face facts.
eemom
the hint? OMG, this kid has gotten more warnings than ten thousand two year olds on sugar highs.
4jkb4ia
@94:
Total win, and damn, I wish I had written it.
Steeplejack
@Porlock Junior:
Linky no work. I fix.
murbella
@Jens
Cole said i should respect him.
I just can’t while hes a useful idiot for libertarians.
hes a tool.
Kain rolled him like a cheap drunk and broke his wittle heart.
J. Michael Neal
4jkb4ia: Thanks. The thing is, I know I’m not useless. I just end up feeling useless, because every time I try to be useful, it gets rejected. That’s the world’s problem; I just have to live with the consequences. Once the rest of the world wises up and makes me complete dictator of everything, things are gonna change, dammit.
TooManyJens
Somebody wake me up when there are no more terms from Dune left for the stalker to use.
Martin
You should let him. $50 says he’ll try and turn your association into a sovereign nation, refuse to recognize the US government, and try and organize the summer lifeguards into a makeshift military force to liberate your neighboring association from Barry the Tyrant. It’ll be a mountain of lulz.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Fortunately, President Obama sees no difference between a household budget and the U.S. government’s budget, so we’re at least halfway to Victory already.
.
.
4jkb4ia
@143:
Your own link doesn’t say what you want it to. Cutting Medicare payments to hospitals and killing Medicare-as-we-know-it are two different things.
Citizens can be scared about the cost of entitlements, and sacrifice some but not all of what is coming to them, especially if they are of the species that never wants their taxes to go up, ever. Obama’s putting everything on the table is bowing to this perception. And these payments are not to beneficiaries. The elusive concept, good Democratic messaging, would solve this.
Martin
Well, he wants to be pissed at Obama and nothing is going to stand in his way.
J. Michael Neal
Hey, that reminds me. I need a drink.
pattonbt
murbella – m_c hammer:
Weren’t you the one spouting Libertarian property rights arguments in the fox hunting thread?
Why do you hate yourself so?
Ash Can
God DAMN but I’m sick and tired of matoko-murbella’s demands for attention. She’s as bad as Sarah Fucking Palin.
TooManyJens
Just FYI, when comments come out of moderation it can change the numbering, so it would be useful to refer to more than just a comment number when replying.
jwb
@TooManyJens: Or we could all go Galt on John until he fixes the damned reply button! Then he’d be stuck with comment threads filled with nothing but matako chan and her various aliases.
El Cid
Why would so many high-placed Republicans care more about Tea Party primary success than well-placed board positions from their corporate sponsors?
It’s not like the only reward for being in political power is to continue being in political power.
Not like it matters, because the GOP House is evil, Republican Senators hold the cloture, Kucinich is crazy, the world revolves around what was posted at FDL, and you’re all wasting time blog commenting here when you could be out at neighborhood strategy meetings planning for Democratic turnout, which is why you are all here anyway.
El Cid
@ jwb: But when Muslims are given a chance to vote they vote for Shari’a! Network theory! Crusaders! Average IQ! John posts Libertarians!
Liberty60
@dogwood #137:
Where is this “far left” that you speak of?
And where might a man go to find it?
The Raven
Liberty60, #162: “Where is this “far left” that you speak of?”
Heee. Try. Or maybe. Or even.
AxelFoley
@Davis X. Machina
Cheat. Rig the game in your favor.
Martin
That could be entertaining. I wonder if one of her personas would resort to stalking another one of her personas?
MonkeyBoy
@Steeplejack:
(see the links Steeplejack provides)
Jeez I didn’t realize that the fix was that simple.
The button is there but you can’t see it.
If you install the Stylish for Firefox or Stylish for Chrome extension, and give it the following rule, the the reply button will work. I used it for this post.
@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("www.balloon-juice.com") {li:hover .yarr { visibility:visible !important }
}
MonkeyBoy
@MonkeyBoy:
I’m replying to myself with a WORKING REPLY BUTTON just because I can.
Porlock Junior
@steeplejack
Arrgh! Embarrassing. Thank you.
Cliff in NH
@MonkeyBoy:
Thanks for that!
Working reply button FTW!
Edit: Sweet!
Lysana
@MonkeyBoy: You are like unto a demigod to me right now.
phx
Seriously. You’ve got to get over David Brooks. You morons are missing the point.
Jesus, David Brooks. Of all people to worry about. How foolish is that?
This site will forever be known as the David Brooks stalker site.
DPirate
The democrats are the puppy-procurers in this scenario. I’m thinking along the lines of the wife who entices the girls to the basement for her husband.
murbella
nope. our local hunts all ride on gubmint land.
i was “spouting” what retards the juicers are to be distracted by class warfare and PETA sobsister melodramatics from the real problems– the business class elite that run both the US and the UK, and Factory Farm America.
murbella
Ash Can;
i dont want your attention. i just want Cole to move the LoOG into the mock column.
Like fixing the reply button, it is a reasonable and rational request.
Cole just said “glibertarians are assholes.” The LoOGies are glibertarians.
quod erat demonstrandum.
murbella
@Martin
no, because i only have one at a time.
please note: i didnt stalk EDK. i deconstructed his posts and asked him questions and he ran away. Every time. ppl like ftaghen and Cole tried to defend his weak arguments from me, but they failed.
Kain couldn’t pass for liberal even with you retards coaching him 24/7.
arguingwithsignposts
@MonkeyBoy: Thanks. For some reason it isn’t working in Chrome for me, but it is in Firefox!
Ahasuerus
@MonkeyBoy:
Huzzah! A working Reply Button! A dozen internets for MonkeyBoy!
murbella
El Campeador
nope, mistermix and dougj LINK glibertarians, while Cole badmouths them.
i just want consistancy.
BJ is just the low rent Daily Dish. Sully links Douchehat and McMeghan, BJ links EDK and the LoOG.
John D.
@arguingwithsignposts: It’s even easier to set up in Chrome – make a new style, put
li:hover .yarr { visibility:visible !important }as the only line in the Code box, and apply it to just “URLs on the domain” of “https://balloon-juice.com ” and your Reply button will returncleek
@MonkeyBoy:
yay!!
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@General Stuck
And here we are again. Same as in 1860. “Our way or the highway. Do what we want or we will break the whole thing up.”
Will this Confederate beast never be truly slain?
chopper
i’ve tried both of those bits in stylish and neither works.
it doesn’t help that stylish doesn’t come with any, you know, instructions.
chopper
ah, doesn’t work set to ‘urls of the domain’, but ‘urls starting with’.
4jkb4ia
Since the thread is dead, what exactly did E.D. do now? His blog seems very inoffensive lately.
murbella/m_c also neglects that Elias is over there now, and is a real liberal and a real friend/graduate of this blog, beyond any question. So Team Balloon Juice is in their rights to at least link to him.
Chris
@ Ivan,
I wonder how many Southerners realize what would’ve happened if they’d had their way and been allowed to secede. The real winners would’ve been the British, who’d have played the U.S. and C.S. off against each other and in so doing regained control of the North American continent. IOW, the South wouldn’t have been their own masters for long, if at all.
murbella
lol
Elias Isqueef is the very worst sort of libertarian– a jesushumper libertarian.
The LoOG are all LIBERTARIANS.
LIBERTARIANS ARE BAD.
Can’t you read?
Glen Tomkins
It’s not as bad as you think — it’s worse
There is no default gun to the head of the US of A. That’s because the ceiling, even if respected, would not put us into default on actual debt the US owes anyone.
“All” that respecting the ceiling would do would be to cut out 45% of the money the US is, at the current burn rate, spending every day on everything the US spends money on — payroll, payments to contractors, pensions, social safety net payments, debt service, etc., etc. We’re in deficit spending, almost always have been, which means that we don’t meet daily expenditures entirely out of taxes and other non-borrowing revenue. At present we’re at an especially high borrowing rate, to the point that borrowing supplies 45% of expenditures, because the recession has kicked tax collections in the teeth.
Bumping up onto the ceiling on borrowing just means that we can’t add further to the national debt, beyond the limit imposed by the ceiling. This limit doesn’t have any special effect on that small part of expenditures, less than 10%, devoted to debt service. In fact, if it comes to a crunch and we hit the ceiling, and the ceiling is respected, and the govt has to start picking 45% of its obligations to stop honoring, that 10% debt service is the safest bet to continue being honored scrupulously under all circumstances. Paying off the principle of any debt is ceiling neutral, in that it discharges old debt and makes exactly as much room under the ceiling as was spent, so principle will always be paid. The govt wouldn’t choose to not pay principle because either this, or failing to meet interest payments, debt service, would immediatley worsen the terms under which the US could borrow new money to roll over the US debt that matures every day. This would make the crunch on other obligations even worse, we would quickly have to start stiffing progressively more than the initial 45% of our obligations, so no administration, whatever its values, would choose to do anything with that 55% of money we have form taxes, but scrupulously avoid default on actual debt.
Any administratioin that did choose to obey the ceiling law would have to find that 45% of obligations to stiff from among the many other obligations to spend money that just about every law entails. We would enter a sort of national bankruptcy if the ceiling were observed, yet we have no law governing the order of payment, who gets stiffed vs who gets paid, in this unprecedented national bankruptcy.
And that’s exactly why no administration would choose, could choose, to actually live within the ceiling. Yes, the ceiling law is tha law of the land, and the president is sworn to see that the laws are faithfully executed. But he also is sworn to faithfully execute all the laws that legally obligate spending. On the day we hit the ceiling, these will become contradictory requirements, two legal requirements that cannot both be fulfilled, since observing the ceiling will require not paying out money the US is legally obligated to pay, and paying our obligations will require ignoring the ceiling. No administration would choose anything except the illegal option between these two illegal options, that has the benefit of not also wrecking the economy and not also creating political chaos as the country enters an all-against-all deathmatch over who gets stiffed and who doesn’t in the national bankruptcy.
I can’t imagine any court reading into the debt ceiling law the legislative intent for it to invalidate all other laws obligating spending, and thereby become a sort of self-destruct button for Starship USA, triggered by hitting the ceiling. If they can’t read that intent, the courts will, of course, throw out the ceiling because it creates an irresolvable contradiction in legal requirements with other laws. And that’s even without the 14th.
But in the months to years between the day the president chooses to ignore the ceiling, and the courts get around to throwing out the ceiling, the Rs will be able to claim that the Kenyan Usurper stands revealed as a law-breaker!
That’s what this is about — ginning up a phony but plausible constitutional crisis. That’s the complete power to blackmail that the Rs hold by refusing to raise the ceiling, not that this would cause default or national bankruptcy — it won’t — but that it will create a constitutional crisis, a period of months to years in which Obama will be a law-breaker. They couldn’t deliver the revolution they promised in 2010, but they can deliver Kenyan Usurpation and a constitutional crisis, and they need to in order to stay ahead of the rabble that they have roused.
4jkb4ia
Um, I can read. What I read tells me that Elias appears to be a secular Jew, and not a Jesushumper, and that he consistently describes himself as a liberal, even a high liberal. Every one of his approving links is to a mainstream liberal blog/source.
Donald Douglas
Assholes? takes one to know one, I guess.
John D.
@chopper: Might help if I was not an idiot and unable to actually copy my setup properly. if you omit the http://, it works. Sorry!
murbella
@4jkb4ia
lol. he fooled you, dude.
Isqueef is a western culture chauvinist, a jesushumper libertarian of missionary democracy like that nominally jewish Rubin chick at the Pajamafia.
He is not a liberal, any more than EDK ever was. He just SAYS hes a liberal.
Isqueef is a Mike Konczal fan and a classic libertarian Obama concern troll.
Membah Konczal? He’s the pity-charity-liberalism guy the LoOGies and Yglesias and Freddie all slaver over.
chopper
LIBERTARIANS UNDER THE BED!
murbella
missing your mancrush chopper?
no one gives libertarian reacharound like EDK, do they.
he was really good at it, but its an acquired taste i think.
;)
Corner Stone
@Baud:
Just to be clear, when someone mentions the fact that published U3 is 9.1%, and should have a higher priority for our nation than some phony notion of a deficit…that’s whining?
Caz
“Anyone who still calls themselves a Republican is an asshole.” This is an example of the type of statements that make clear what a joke you and this blog are.
You used to be somewhat logical and professional. What happened to you, dude? What happened in your life to make you such a hateful person?
You really have problems, man, and it’s not republicans.
I think even most of those that agree with you on here (which is pretty much everyone, lol) probably laughs at you behind your confused back a lot, because you have nothing to offer except for hate speech and repeating what your progressive puppet masters tell you to repeat.
When did you become such a hateful idiot?? Do you really think it furthers the political debate in the blogosphere when you consistently call anyone who disagrees with you an asshole and whatever other clever, hateful, insulting names you can come up with?
Perhaps you think it’s witty and edgy to call everyone who disagrees with your twisted points of view assholes, but it really just comes across as you being the asshole.
And your juicetard followers probably wont’t tell you this because they are entertained by your hateful demeanor just as much as they like to hear the progressive talking points repeated as much as possible. But I disagree with pretty mcuh all the bullshit you spew out, so I’ll be honest with you – you really should consider if this is how you want people to remember you when you’re gone.
I can see it now, at your funeral. “John was such a good little progressive puppy, but so hateful. The world is a calmer, kinder place now that he’s gone, but his wild progressive conspiracy theories will be missed.”
Pathetic. The Giffords shooting had some effect on just about everyone in the country except for you it seems. Sad and pathetic.
I actually find it somewhat fascinating to watch you make a fool of yourself on a daily basis while holding yourself out to be some important contributer to the political debate in America.
Have a great day, kind sir!
Monkey Business
I’m the original author of the Gawker piece. Just wanted to stop by, thank everyone for the compliments, and encourage healthy political debate as to what degree of truly fucked we all are.
My personal opinion: we are at Defcon 2 Fucked. Not yet fully Nuclear Fucked, but still pretty fucked.
chopper
chan: Ah, I’m telling you. EDK can’t blog at all. I’m not the type to have a grudge for no reason–
[the camera cuts to a radio studio, where Roy Firestone sits with Sandy Koufax.]
Roy: [he is on the radio] Sir, can I just break in for a moment?
chan: [impatient] Yes, Roy.
Roy: Do you have a question for Sandy Koufax?
chan: Yes. Mr. Koufax, don’t you think EDK is a big jerk?
chopper
somebody get caz a tissue.
les
@MonkeyBoy:
Hot damn; thanks. Can it find my missing edit button?
4jkb4ia
You could say that for a lot of Blogtopia circa 2005 vs. Blogtopia now, and John still has it in him. The apology post was an example of both.
Shorter this post : “I am glad I am not a Republican anymore when I see how insane they are being now”. I am sorry the bad words hurt your feelings, but it’s a legit point.
Hattip
But the GOP has perfected the art of appealing to people’s base instincts, whatever greed, hate, jealousy, resentment you want to conjure up
OR references to The South seceding.
Pure projection. The “art of appealing to people’s base instincts, whatever greed, hate, jealousy, resentment” is just precisely what the democrats do–it is their only real program. The South? Those were Democrats, and being so they were once more on the wrong side of history.
The GOP is prodded by the real, decent, honest and hard working Americas to stand up to the Socialist viper pit that is the Democrat. It is the only avenue they have t stop the destruction of the republc by these radicals.
Default? that s just hysteria. The government is not going to default, and in any event the Democrat that are holding us over our heads. There is plenty to cut. Government debt to commercial paper is something like 7% f federal revenues. Easy enough.
The Democrats could care less about the nation. Raise taxes and cut spending? The Democrats will not keep their word. Theirs is an almost Soviet system of patronage. They cant exist without it. We will be right back here again and it will even worse.
You are like children being caught cheating: you curse the adult world because it knows better.
But it is going to end, your looting of the taxpayer. Sooner or later it must. When it does, the Republicans will be seen as the sane adults that they are.
murbella
is that a baseball metaphor?
AMG snore city.
try not to be so boring chopper.
you could offer me some dessert. ;)
4jkb4ia
m_c, I did not forget you, but my DSL connection conked out.
This is my entire point. Mike Konczal is not a libertarian. He is a mainstream liberal. He is with the Roosevelt Institute, for crying out loud. When Bruce said, “The American dream was about everyone having the right to some decency and some dignity,” that was a liberal position when he said it, and it can be read as a critique of pity charity liberalism. Pity charity liberalism says that we will give you something because your dignity has been taken from you. The allure of the public option was not so much cost as dignity–not being screwed. Also too, the power and appeal of the New Deal was restoring dignity to people.
@200: I am sure Caz is long gone. But if neo-neocon was to write the equivalent of this, it would not be news. The story would be told by who she hangs out with and who she agrees with.
murbella
i do not care what Konczal says he is.
pity-charity-liberalism is a libertarian reacharound. its used to divide unionworkers from liberals while pretending to promote unions.
why dont you ask Isqueef what he is now?
by his actions he is a libertarian.
look where he hangs.
Nutella
OK, I give up. I installed Stylish. I looked at their web page. I looked at everything in Firefox Tools menu. I still don’t see anything at all to tell me where I enter the CSS code Monkey Boy provided.
Is there a link? A menu item? A standard file name/directory? Where does this code go????
TIA.
4jkb4ia
In fact, let’s go to the tape. “Anyone who is still a Republican after eight years of Bush-Cheney is simply a Republican for the rest of their life. Nothing is going to change them.” That was 2009–all we have here is more colorful language and probably more than a little losing temper. That the link was to the League was irresistible.
m_c, to be against pity charity liberalism, you are arguing for stronger unions. It is axiomatic. Stronger unions mean that workers have the power to gain benefits for themselves as a matter of right and dignity. Another kind of organization would not have the ability to engage the workplace, and leaves out a key experience both in people’s lives and sometimes of being subject to arbitrary authority. If you want to say that critiquing pity charity liberalism alienates union workers from union leadership/the Democratic Party you might have something.
4jkb4ia
You are not alienating union workers from liberals. You are alienating them from pity charity liberals, which may have already happened. I suppose this is the same thing as George Wallace who told his people that they could keep the things about the Democratic Party they liked and get rid of the pesky racial equality things they didn’t.
MonkeyBoy
@Nutella:
Did you restart Firefox after you installed Stylish?
There should be a Stylish Icon (a white S in a colorful box)at the top or bottom of your screen that you can click on or you can access stylish through the tools addons menu.
Howevver you access it you want to click on something like “write new style”.
MonkeyBoy
I checked out my Stylish rule in Chrome. One thing that isn’t obvious is that after you install Stylish for Chrome, you need to check the box “Allow in incognito” for this extension which can later be found on the wrench>tools>extensions page.
For Chrome, the rule can just be the text
li:hover .yarr { visibility:visible !important }To add this style Right Click the stylish icon then select “options” then click “Add Style”.
Give the style a name, paste in the above rule text, checkmark “enable”, then click save.
That will make the style change apply to every web page in the world. To make it specific to Balloon Juice, you can click the “specify” box, select from the first dropdown “URLs on the domain”, in the box to the right put in
www.balloon-juice.comand then click “add”. (and then “save”).
MonkeyBoy
@MonkeyBoy:
FYWP. In the above instructions the last “code quote” box is supposed to contain the balloon-juice domain without a preceeding http, but FYWP decided I really meant to include a http so it put it in.
The Other Chuck
Here’s my current style in stylish. Aside from including the reply button fix, it also makes the headers on each post a little bit more visible.
Never mind. WordPress once again wins the battle against useful information.
MonkeyBoy
This is a test to see if I can also restore the “edit” clickable thingy.
MonkeyBoy
this is a test to see if I can also restore the edit clickable thingy. It was there when I first tried this post but made an error in my email addy and got put in moderation.
ADDED IN EDIT. I can edit this one. Why??? I haven’t been able to edit the last few posts I made.
This post was made from a new profile to which I added FireBug so I could see what is going on.
So I have no Idea of under what circumstances me and some other people are not given the opportunity to edit their own posts
MonkeyBoy
A test to see if I have “edit button problems” from this old profile.
MonkeyBoy
@MonkeyBoy: YUP. No edit button displayed from old profile, and since it doesn’t have FireBug (and I don’t want to install FireBug here and reload a 100 or so tabs) I really can’t tell what is hiding the edit button. Using right-click “View Selection Source” it seems that the edit button does exist but is being hidden.
MonkeyBoy
@MonkeyBoy:
Holy Poop! Doing a hard (cache) refresh (contro-Shift-R) makes the “click to Edit” reappear in this old profile.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@ Glen – Excellent post. Very thought-provoking. I’m not sure the Teabaggers have thought that far ahead(, but one never knows).
I’ve felt for a while that they’re just playing it by ear, seeing what gets traction in the MSM echo chamber – then going with that (e.g., one doesn’t hear much more about offsets for disaster assistance), and basically just demanding as much as they think they can get. They don’t expect the limit not to be raised, and they think they’ll get a lot in the process.
CR has thought it is nothing but theater for a long time – http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2011/05/debt-ceiling-farce.html – and if one recalls the federal shutdown drama earlier, it’s hard to bet against that.
But who knows how it will actually turn out, other than the fact that Obama said today that he wants a bill within 2 weeks probably means that it’ll be after July 20 when something happens… :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Corner Stone
@MonkeyBoy:
Fuck the haters! You are a wondrous wonder. Meet me in Fiji and let’s discover bliss together.
Trust me. Bliss.
TenguPhule
‘One of these words is not like the others, one of these words does not belong…’
exhausted white woman
call their bluff, let them exhaust themselves passing spleens and other bodily organs, let them shut down government state by state. unfortunately, a lot of people are going to suffer, it’s just a question of how many, a sad tragic fact, but they insist on it. let the people see the soul of the republican party (*and* their democratic cohorts). they will be responsible for absolutely wrecking this country, running it into the ground and causing the unnecessary deaths of defenseless people.
i heard that state parks and other state run facilities that have been shut down in MN are being trashed and vandalized already
MonkeyBoy
@Corner Stone:
I actually knew enough BLISS at one point to hack someone else’s code. And by “hack” I mean put in such patches un-pleasing to the author’s sensibilities that he refused to further support his code.
Corner Stone
@MonkeyBoy: Hot damn! Sounds fucking dirty. Let’s get it on!
MonkeyBoy
For those with browsers (FireFox & Chrome) who install a Stylish extension, I have created at Userstyles.org Balloon Juice – fix reply button – FireFox and Balloon Juice – fix reply button – non specific.
This means that after Stylish is installed you just have to click one of the above and click install to make the reply button reappear and work.
For other browers (IE, Safari, …) there may be some non official or partial clones of Stylish or GreaseMonkey. You could try them out to see if you can get them to work.
Here is a GreaseMonkey script to fix FYWP BJ broken CSS.
// ==UserScript==// @name bj CSS reply fix
// @namespace ~mb
// @description patches bad CSS in current version of WP that balloon-juice runs that prevents REPLY button from showing
// @include https://balloon-juice.com/*
// ==/UserScript==
var dd = document.createElement('div');
dd.innerHTML = '<span>li:hover .yarr { visibility:visible !important }<span>';
document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(dd.firstChild);
MonkeyBoy
@MonkeyBoy:
FYWP!!!
The above Greasemonkey script is supposed to be creating a “script” wrapped element on the dd.innerHTML line.
However FYWP doesn’t like the word “script” enclosed by brackets and strips it out even in a code quoted sections.
I tried a few ways to sneak the characters in my limited editing period but failed.
The correct code for the dd.innerHTML line should have a “script” enclosed in angle brackets just after the first quote and a “\script” enclosed in brackets just before the last quote.
MonkeyBoy
@MonkeyBoy:
JEEZ FYWP again.
It ate a backslash. The final “script” tag on the line should have a backslash before it and together they should be enclosed in angle brackets.
Hob
@MonkeyBoy: Two problems there: 1. I think you mean “style”, not “script”. 2. Regular slash, not backslash. Why does everyone call slashes backslashes these days? I blame Microsoft.
Felanius Kootea
@MonkeyBoy: Thanks for the Greasemonkey script – beats the hell out of having to copy the comment URI and remember the commenter’s name when trying to reply.