I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach about the debt ceiling negotiations, that we’ll see some terrible “grand bargain” where the social safety net is gutted in return for some tiny amount of tax cuts increases. It’s not that I think Obama and his advisers are crypto-Republicans, it’s just that DC life has got them in its sway; all the Beltway institutions, all the Serious People, from the think tanks to the Post, are aligned in favor of such a “bargain”, and it’s also possible that some in the White House have come to believe the hype.
It’s times like these when I envy wingers their delusions a bit. Jimmy P thinks that Boehner is now the second coming of Ronaldus Maximus:
So in the end, it was bit of a Ronald Reagan moment for John Boehner on Saturday. Just as the U.S. president walked away from a bad arms control agreement with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986, the House speaker passed on President Barack Obama’s mega-debt reduction deal in Washington.
In both case, the asking price was just too high. For Reagan, it was lethal limitations on his Strategic Defense Initiative. For Boehner, it was a trillion-dollar tax distraction from America’s true fiscal threat: spending run amok…
Granted Jimmy P is particularly dense, even for a winger — here he is link-failing the ICYMI that he once won on Jeopardy — but the right has an amazing ability to turn everything and anything into some kind of a heroic Reagan or Churchill moment.
Scott P.
No. That’s not going to happen. If by some chance it did happen, it would never pass the Senate.
That is all.
wvng
I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach about everything these days. Like Armageddon coming and everyone is going to lose. It doesn’t help knowing that the people who are willfully and enthusiastically bringing it on will lose too.
Napoleon
In addition to the financial damage this will do to me if there is a default on August 2nd there is the added bonus that I am scheduled to spend August 4th and 5th in a national park as part of the first week long traveling vacation I have taken in about 12 years.
FlipYrWhig
My prediction is that there is an agreement that involves cuts _to providers_ in the social-service programs, not to beneficiaries; then that the leading lights of the blogosphere fasten onto the word “cuts” and caterwaul about it for twenty solid years.
4tehlulz
That would mean Nancy SMASH signed on, and she would never betray us.
boss bitch
I think the manic progressive blogosphere has you in its sway.
cleek
happily, that song is on my iPod right now.
burnspbesq
If you believe Ezra, the most important takeaway from yesterday’s meeting is that it’s now clear that Boehner is a eunuch, and Cantor is the decision-maker.
Origuy
@Napoleon: I’m going to be in Britain on the 2nd, and for two weeks after. I’m wondering how much money I should have on hand in case the dollar crashes. At least my flight home is prepaid.
murbella
hey, DougJ, thought you might like to see Sully is pimping BOTH EDK and de Bore this morning.
Still wanna tell me Kain is a liberal?
was the last reacharound as good for you as it was for Cole?
Comrade Javamanphil
It seems far more likely to me that we are going to default and have to listen to an endless stream of nonsense about how black guys never pay their bills, carefully encoded in the approved racist code words of the day. It’s a nice gig, if you can get it. Let the white frat boy run up the credit card bills endlessly and then put the first minority to break the glass ceiling in charge when the debt collectors start calling.
middlewest
Godammit, does makoto have another new name? How the hell is a lurker supposed to keep up?
Dennis SGMM
@FlipYrWhig
Just how many providers do you think will continue to be providers if their payouts are further cut? Try finding a doctor who will take Medicare patients now, let alone if/when payment rates are lowered. The effects of cuts, whether they’re enacted on providers or beneficiaries, are pretty much the same; decreased access to services. The only difference is that cuts to providers give the administration a bit more cover.
Montysano
@wvng:
Once you get your head around the insanity that is our money-created-through-debt system, it seems inevitable that it will crash.
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” — Albert Bartlett, Prof. of Physics, Univ. of Colorado at Boulder
Han's Solo
Wow, you think Congress will approve gutting the safety net for more tax cuts? You are even more cynical than I.
We should all remember that any deal will have to pass Congress, and Congress won’t allow the social safety net to be gutted.
Really, I think much of this is planned. During the campaign Obama said he wanted to reform entitlements. He has something in mind, and I bet he has for some time. Obama can’t just say what he wants though; if he did the Republicans would decide that what Obama wanted was the worst thing in the world. So how do you make changes if you can’t even suggest changes?
As far as taxes go I think the important thing is closing “loopholes” (they aren’t actually loop holes). Why? Because tax rates will change themselves if we do nothing. If we can get rid of the special giveaways to hedge fund managers and things like that, when the Bush tax cuts are close to expiration we can come back and adjust the rates.
Citizen_X
Dude, you have got to get out of this Rolling Stones lyric obsession you’ve been stuck in. You got to scrape that shit right off your AAAGGHHH!
What the fuck does that mean? How would spending be a fiscal threat if we’re raising more revenue? It’s not like our taxes are high historically, or in comparison to the rest of the world; they’re low in both senses.
Napoleon
Origuy @9
Maybe convert them to Euros today. Maybe you can even profit from it when you convert what is left over back.
Librarian
Yes, and Pelosi and the congressional Democrats won’t like it, but they will be browbeaten into voting for it by the White House, the media, the beltway establishment and the other Serious people. We’ve seen this movie before.
wyliecoat
I don’t know how it will work out for the economy..can’t believe the Prez will let it go down the toilet..we’ll see.
BUT…the headline in my local newspaper today was “OBAMA GOES BIG ON DEFICIT REDUCTION WHILE GOP SEEKS MORE MODEST PROPOSAL”
Think about that for a minute. The foreign policy mantle has already been taken away from the Republicans after the OBL assassination and the Libyan offensive. Now one of their other pillars, deficit reduction, has also crashed. What’s left for the GOP now? Just social issues, which is why you have crazies like Michelle Bachmann gaining ascendance, and an insane fealty towards lower tax rates, which the entire country is rebelling against.
The cynical way of looking at this is that Obama is behaving like a Republican of the 90s. But with his supreme court appointments, his quiet directive to the EPA to go after polluters,health care proposals, repeal of DADT, that would be a very unfair criticism. I prefer to think that this is the long game, where the Republican Party is completely decimated during his second term, so he can undertake the serious changes he wants to bring about.
I just hope the economy survives this experiment.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
This is what my bracing fear is based out of. It’s not that I think Obama is purposely malicious or selfish or intentionally sabotaging things. It’s that he, like far, far, far too many of our fucking Dems, have fetishized compromise and bipartisanship at the expense of everything else. Combined with those Dems who are essentially Republicans in the first place, and make no attempts at hiding their gleeful backhanding of the Democratic Party on such issues, and we’ve pretty much already fucking lost.
Oh, and as OzoneR tends to remind us, this is the way it will always fucking be because God and America hates hippies too fucking much, and we’ll never be able to drag anyone leftward because the left is inherently a failed ideology in America since no one wants to listen to us.
Corner Stone
From an overall hilarious Reuters article of July 2010:
Geez. Who could have ever guessed a year later we’d be talking about spending?
Analysis: Obama’s recovery summer can’t shake discontent
cat48
Pat Buchanan said this a.m. on MoJo that Boner would be gone in 2 wks for dealing w/Obama & daring to put taxes on the table! I think he would be missed as Cantor is truly “Dick”!
Also, on the show; a reporter from cnbc said the Markets were attacking Italy (bond vigilantes?) & Spain could be next? All b/c of Greece’s bailout.
alwhite
I wish I were as confident as some of the commenters here. I believe it is entirely possible that there will be a ‘grand bargain’ that fucks over SS in ways that may not crush it right away but will kill it eventually, never paying back all the money already pre-paid into it in exchange for some minor tax changes. Of course some Dems will yell about it but the beltway wisdom will be that they are radical lefties with no common sense and the truly courageous ones will vote with the serious Republicans.
Jim C.
I’ve been worried about the same Doug.
My one consolation has been the firm and consistent pushback from folks like Pelosi and Sanders. These types are definitely NOT on board with gutting entitlements just to help Obama buff his “moderate” credentials.
I can’t help but wonder whether or not Obama really DOES want to have some sort of grand bargain wherein he pretends that he’s trying to put cuts to these programs on the table, but has to run it by the “bosses” of the House/Senate in the next room who say no. (Good guy/bad guy negotiating strategy…straight out of used car dealerships.)
I think the worry and wonder is that Obama has definitely seemed to have compromising instincts in the past and has sometimes appeared to “preemptively” compromise. (For example, on Health Care rather than starting out with a Singlepayer proposal and letting Republicans/Blue Dogs bargain him down to the Public Option, he preemptively took Singlepayer off the table as an unasked for concession. Current deficit ceiling talks are another example. 85% cuts 15% taxes? Please. Extending the Bush tax cuts another example.)
Obama likes appearing to be moderate and reasonable, the proverbial “grown up in the room”. And frankly, this has served him well. His polling numbers are pretty damn amazing given all the attacks he’s gone through and how much change he’s managed in such a short time combined with the pathetic economy for main street.
The problem is that I think the jury is still out on whether he’s got the same “I’m going to draw a line in the sand and face people down” chops to him that someone like Nancy Pelosi has.
In other words, people don’t know if he’s really working WITH Pelosi as part of a play to make Republicans look like the unreasonable and unwilling to compromise ones by his continually appearing to be willing to put everything on the table and her playing the “bad cop” being unwilling to budge, or if they really ARE working at cross purposes and he really DOES want to cut Entitlements and Pelosi’s stopping him from doing so. The leaks on Social Security for instance, sure looked to me like trial balloons floated by the White House.
Now, it is entirely possible that a grand strategy exists that we haven’t yet seen and when the dust settles, we’re going to see things in a far different light. I know a lot of folks will say that Obama has earned the benefit of the doubt.
The problem with that line of thinking is that pressure DURING the negotiations matters. If all Obama feels is pressure to move to the right and go towards the Republican side, if there’s no liberals screaming their heads off that he can NOT gut Entitlements for some token tax increases from Republicans, then maybe he’ll be convinced that is the right play. (If he isn’t already.)
Once the deal is done, it will be awfully hard to UNDO any major cuts and the like. So it will be a little too late to start screaming then.
Call people who are worried and expressing those worries to be emo ninnies if you want, but I don’t think those of us who think like this are without a point in suggesting that Obama has definite conciliatory tendencies and, while a general rule of thumb that is a good thing, when you’re dealing with sociopaths who take any concession as a sign of weakness it can and WILL get you killed if you don’t have a willingness to go to the mattresses in you even if it means things getting REALLY ugly.
Trollenschlongen
Lord, Doug, your excuse-making for Obama just gets more and more transparent and pathetic. Those poor folks in the white house; just so easily manipulated and influenced by peer pressure. Poor things, they really mean well at heart…
Lolis
@Dennis SGMM:
Well this is our problem with health care. It is too damn expensive. The best place to cut is the provider side. Obviously the best approach is getting prescription drugs at a reasonable price but that may take an act of god.
Like many here, I think there is no way Nancy will allow anything that bad to happen here. I am beginning to think Dems have a strategy. Contrary to what the firebaggers claim, Dems are still pushing for revenue as part of any deal, even a small one. If Democrats were really smart they would include stimulus and unemployment extensions in any deal that would last at least two years.
Corner Stone
@wyliecoat:
That’s certainly one way of looking at it.
Scott P.
Sullivan is on vacation, those are his fill-ins.
The valid complaints about Sullivan’s blind spots have to be tempered with the awareness of just how far the quality of his blog plummets when he is away.
coloradoblue
So, the 1986 Arms limitation deal would have put “lethal limits” on SDI. The SDI that, 25 years and billions later, still doesn’t fucking work.
Kinda like almost all Rethug ideas don’t work.
AAA Bonds
THIS AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTY IS MUCH LIKE THE SOVIET UNION
Scott P.
It’s been said before, but it’s worth repeating: that’s not how negotiating works. Everyone knew single payer wasn’t going to pass, so starting from that position just indicates you’re not negotiating in good faith. I don’t get a better deal from the used car dealership by starting my offer at $1 than I do if I start at $10,000.
Lolis
@Jim C.:
My goodness, Obama did not run on single payer health care. He said he was against it during the campaign. He ran on everyone keeping the same insurance they already have or having the same as members of Congress (who all have private plans.) He can’t do a big bait and switch after he wins.
Amir_Khalid
@middlewest:
She’s had this new nym for quite a few weeks now. Remember, she’s pretty easy to spot. Just look for
— an obsession with the blog posts of ED Kain, who doesn’t even blog here any more, and of his colleagues at LoOG
— vanity over her high IQ
— the use of the exclamation “wallah”, and of curious acronyms like WEC and WAI and MENA
— weird factual errors like thinking Pakistan is an Arab country
— idiosyncratic misspellings like “bullshytt” for … well, you know
Yes, I know I’m baiting her.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i thought reagan walked away because he couldn’t remember who was calling who’s bluff.
Corner Stone
@alwhite:
The hilarious irony in that is all these years rightwingers have been trying to convince everyone that, “everyone knows SS won’t be there when it’s my time”.
Looks like they may be proven right after all.
AAA Bonds
@burnspbesq:
Pfffffffffffff ahahahahahhaah
AAA Bonds
(Maureen Dowd) – (university degree) = Ezra Klein
Jim C.
@Lolis
Of course he can. Politicians do it all the time. Particularly if where you want to end up is what you campaigned on, it doesn’t do you any good to START there as a negotiating tactic.
Basic negotiating strategy. Start with an extreme position, get the other person to come up first. If he wanted to end up with a public option (and I suspect he did…if I remember right he DID campaign on that) then he needed to start further to the left to leave negotiating room.
I work in a sales support role for a Fortune 100 company, and one of the things that I learned early on is never expect the first offer you put on the table to be the one that signs. ALWAYS expect the other side to throw up all over it and negotiate you down.
wyliecoat
I suggest you listen to the press conference going on right now..illuminating.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@coloradoblue #29:
And funny thing is that just like just like every other failed GOP plan, not only is SDI not shelved and discarded, or significantly altered to actually work, like you’d think most bad plans and ideas would, they’re actually doubled down upon until it’s considered the only ‘sane’ policy to pursue in Washington. Mind, SDI isn’t quite so bad about this as say….trickle-down economics, but still, the fact that our SALT discussions were partially contingent on this shit is just….guyhhhghhhh….
Maude
@Amir_Khalid:
Just want to say that it’s good to see you here.
Hope you feel well and are staying safe. I read your comment on what is going on.
Anya
Oh, DougG! They got you. The perpetually betrayed by Obama crowd got you. Why do you think President Obama will preside over the dismantling of SS and Medicare? What will he gain, well unless he’s a manchurian president?
Citizen_X
I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the Supreme Court installed W in the White House. I sometimes wonder if it’ll ever go away.
Culture of Truth
Hell making a bad a actor a hero was an amazing in itself
Culture of Truth
Obama: America it’s time to pull of that band damm aid off and eat your damm peas! I’m sick and tired of dealing with all your shit white people!
kay
The abstract starts: “there have been a number of stories in the media…”
So, we thought we’d actually look at numbers, right?
Chris
@ Amir,
And the Sarah Palin winks as a substitute for all other forms of punctuation. Don’t forget the Sarah Palin winks.
PurpleGirl
middlewest @ 12: Yes, she has changed her user name yet again but there is a remarkable degree of consistency to her comments.
Amir_Khalid
@Maude:
Thanks for the kind wishes.
Culture of Truth
Obama: “no one’s talking about raising your damm taxes! chill the fuck out people!”
Hugh
@Lolis
A simplistic cut in payments to providers is probably more destructive than helpful. Cutting payment rates to providers just pushes them off provider panels or causes them to see so many patients they become factories with little time to provide true attention. I’m a mental health provider for many insurance panels. Medicare already doesn’t pay very much and requires a pretty high client co-pay. If they lower payments more I’ll need to either see more clients per week (I already see a lot, enough that I sometimes find my ability to be fully present in a session is compromised) or see fewer Medicare clients.
Changing incentives to providers makes more sense so providers don’t feel they have to order every test there is. This applies more to MDs than to folks like me though. Hard to know exactly what to do regarding psychotherapy. Limiting sessions doesn’t make therapy go faster for example.
burnspbesq
@AAA Bonds:
I’m not surprised to see you denigrate Ezra. He has something you’ll never have: a clue.
Culture of Truth
Obama: “bring me the damm heat! I’ll take it! I’ll compromise, but the tea party has got to pull their heads outta their asses and get a deal done! Damm crackers!”
Linnaeus
I think you should be at least a little worried, DougJ. Shows you’re paying attention. It’s possible that this could all turn out halfway decently, but given the radical direction of the Republican Party these days, it’s perfectly understandable to be concerned.
cleek
@alwhite:
SS is not a savings account. what you get out of it is proportional to what you put in (as compared to all other earners), but it is not equal.
Chris
@ Snarxist,
Ironically, SDI was one of the few things the Bush administration came into office supporting – their foreign policy was based on great-power relations with Russia and China (our “strategic competitors”) that included missile defense as one of the few well-defined centerpieces.
Too bad there was no attention paid to those messy little things like international terrorism, third world conflicts, the rise of Salafist movements, etc.
El Cid
As Obama just said, the ‘vast majority’ of Democrats in the Congress are just ‘not serious’ about reforming entitlements, nor are they ‘serious’ about reducing the deficit and debt. [I.e., ‘trimming benefits’ and increasing revenues.]
[However, SS is not part of the deficit problem, and the only reason to be discussing SS now is that if you’re going to have a vote on tough decisions, you should make such reforms now as to strengthen SS.]
FlipYrWhig
That is only “basic negotiating strategy” if both sides are in pursuit of the same thing. I want widgets, you have widgets, let’s settle on a price. If I don’t want the fucking things at all, do you still open by telling me I need a million of them because then by the Jedi mind trick of “basic negotiating strategy” I’ll surely end up with 500,000?
aisce
yeah, yeah, whatever, dougj. you’ll be going back on this post by dinnertime. and then going back on that by tomorrow. and then going back on that going back on that going back…
fuck washington. fuck all of them, and their anti-transparent lies and bullshit. the debt ceiling was supposed to be raised two months ago. two months.
i’m pulling for the damn meteor. there, i said it. go meteor.
Nemesis
Hans Solo:
There is no liberal wing of the Dem party anymore.
Congress will pass the Americans Eat Shit Sandwiches bill because the default clock will be ticking. Ya see, its Congress that will be conveniently on the hook for avoiding that cataclysmic event. So, the bill will be passed much to the chagrin of all involved (wink, wink).
Congress prefers to be in the position of saying “we hate the bill but had to pass it to save our country” bullshit. Congress is totally dysfunctional. But they are great actors.
Its all kabuki.
catclub
Lolis @ 32 “He can’t do a big bait and switch after he wins.”
That is why the GOP house is all jobs bills all the time now.
Bait and switch would be bad.
Rick Taylor
__
The alternatives are awful too. The debt ceiling isn’t raised, and either the government shuts down and defaults on its obligations, or the administration ignores the debt ceiling and the right wing becomes even more outraged than we’ve seen until now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
From TPM’s live-blog of the press conference
It doesn’t say if he’s using a bully podium, or a regular one.
Rick Taylor
Unless of course the cynics are right, and the Republicans will pass anything, even a clean debt ceiling bill, when their corporate masters tell them to. I’m not convinced, but would be happy to be proven wrong.
Nutella
Has everyone here sent a fax to Obama, Pelosi, and your congressman to tell them we are counting on them to protect the social and economic wellbeing of the US? No? Get busy and do it now!
They need to get a huge howl of outrage every time killing Social Security is mentioned, just like the one they get from the NRA every time gun control is mentioned.
It worked in the UK: The reason Murdoch is in trouble there is a huge pushback from the public who sent 150,000 comments on his television deal and got news stands and advertisers to drop News of the World.
Amir_Khalid
@Citizen_X:
He knows it’s only rock’n’roll but he likes it, yes he does.
Xecky Gilchrist
Is this post missing the “Fretful Handwringing” tag or is that just assumed these days?
MikeJ
I hope the post title is a Big Star shout out. (Mod Lang for the unhip.)
Paris
Thanks God for SDI. It has saved our ass how many times now? Zero? Oh – never mind.
someguy
Weep not, children.
Just send a half dozen $350 bottles of wine over to the Republicans with a hand written note to Git R Done! and this thing will be resolved in a New York Minute. Er, a South Georgia Minute.
ABL
You’re wandering off the res, DougJ. Not gonna happen. Come back. We have cookies.
ABL
You’re wandering off the res, DougJ. Not gonna happen. Come back. We have cookies.
RalfW
What an insane blowjob of Boehner it is to try and equate St. Ronnie pushing back form the Reykjavik table with Boehner running crying to daddy Grover.
Egahds they’ll try and plant any idiot notion they can to spin this.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Wasn’t it at Reykjavik (as fun to type as it is to say!) that Reagan remembered what it was like when he was with the troops who liberated Auschwitz?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
“If you don’t do the revenues, then to get the same amount of savings, you’ve got to have more cuts,” Obama said. “Which means, it’s seniors, or it’s poor kids, or it’s medical researchers or it’s our infrastructure that suffers.”
Lol
Nothing says strong negotiating position like trying to starting from a position that not even a quarter of your own party supports.
It’s like the PL has no experience negotiating with people who are perfectly fine with the status quo.
MBunge
Here’s a couple of reminders.
1. Some adjustments need to be made to Social Security or the program is only going to be able to pay 80% of promised benefits.
2. More serious changes need to be made to Medicare to prevent the program from destroying the country like Godzilla on a bad day.
3. If Tip O’Neill hadn’t made a deal with Ronald Reagan in 1983, Social Security would be in much worse shape than it is today.
Mike
Judas Escargot
FTFY. HTH.
I was a big fan of young Ezra up until about a year ago… but IMO he’s been soaking in the DC Koolaid a little too long now. Ever since ACA (his domain-specific specialty) passed, it’s just All Common Wisdom, All the Time.
Luke Russert with a bigger vocabulary.
Sad_Dem
CNN this morning: newscaster makes false equivalency “both sides” argument, followed by “expert” whose first words are “The Republicans want to make a deal….”
We’re doomed.
drkrick
Hurry, time waits for no one.
dogwood
Anyone who’s paying close attention is perfectly justified in having a sick feeling. I have no idea how this debt ceiling resolves itself, but the situation makes it pretty clear what a serious threat the Reps are to the republic. Republicans know that the public doesn’t pay much attention to the politics of things. “Both sides do it” is an article of faith. Republicans might want to destroy the social safety net for us, but they have their own built in safety net that stops them from ever being completely discredited. It’s called the Democratic party. If Romney is elected and the Senate switches, the talk of deficits by Reps will be over. The dems will trade deeper tax cuts in return for saving what’s left of programs that are fundamental to the country. We will let them govern because we think government matters. They’ll laugh and cash in. That’s what’s so frustrating about these Obama wars within the democratic blogoshpere. No matter who we elect the story would be the same. You only have to look at the sorry lot of republican presidential candidates each cycle to see that the GOP gets this. Anyone is good enough for them as long as he’s electable and won’t raise taxes.
gogol's wife
#12 and #33: I was going to explain that now you have to recognize her by stylistic analysis, but I see Amir_Khalid beat me to it, superbly.
Villago Delenda Est
@33 Amir_Khalid:
You left our her constant assertions that it is impossible to proselytize an adherent of Islam due to built in features of that faith, which explains why the Saudi religious police are constantly on the lookout for Christian proselytizers.
Lol
Medicare isn’t the problem, health care costs are the problem. ACA was at least a step towards fixing that though obviouls unprecedented needs to be done to build on that.
RalfW
Sad_Dem points to a major symptom of the illness: the insatiable urge of “journalists” to indulge the both sides do it bullshit.
MBunge
Basic negotiating strategy. Start with an extreme position, get the other person to come up first.
Yes, because unions typically go into their bargaining sessions and demand 100% increase in salaries, 200% increases in benefits and triple the vacation time. It’s also why the U.S. always started all negotiations with the Soviet Union by insisting they abolish Communism and hold democratic elections as a prerequisite before anything else.
Mike
Lolis
@catclub:
Unfortunately Democrats and Republicans are held to different standards when it comes to accountability in the media. Also, Republicans are in danger of losing the House according to Charlie Cook. I don’t think their shenanigans are being rewarded by voters. My overall point though was it is annoying when liberals criticize Obama for starting off at a moderate position when those were the very things he campaigned on.
Maude
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
If it was a bully podium, there would be a teleprompter to the right side of it.
It would be on the left, except the Left knows that Obama has sold them out and so everything is on the right.
I know it’s nonsense, but so is the perpetual he sold us out.
Citizen_X
But it is on my side.
Catsy
@Amir_Khalid:
It’s worth noting that this is not an invention of she-who-insists-on-being-named. It’s a Neal Stephenson reference.
But yes, the rest of that is pretty spot-on. She also seems to have an obsession with naming herself after lesser-known characters from the Dune novels.
For what it’s worth, anyone who tacks “-chan” or other Japanese honorifics onto the end of their pseudonym immediately loses a few notches of credibility for clueless pretentiousness.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I heard a radio DJ (this guy’s the antithesis of a shock jock) this morning say he’s tired of all the posturing “on both sides”. This guy is not an opinion maker or a political commentator, but it just shows how deep this shit has seeped into our culture. Also, too, the Very Serious simply aren’t that bright, as the recent elevation of Ruth Marcus to the Big Table shows.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I heard a radio DJ (this guy’s the antithesis of a shock jock) this morning say he’s tired of all the posturing “on both sides”. This guy is not an opinion maker or a political commentator, but it just shows how deep this shit has seeped into our culture. Also, too, the Very Serious simply aren’t that bright, as the recent elevation of Ruth Marcus to the Big Table shows.
Linda Featheringill
Hi, everybody. I was planning on jumping into the fray but I looked around and it is so damn peaceful in my house today. I don’t want to spoil that. Maybe I’ll hide for a while longer.
OT, I stepped outside into the back yard and listened to the sounds of summer. Humans are pretty quiet today so it was only the insects and birds and leaves rustling in the trees. It really, really sounded like summer sounds of my younger days, many, many decades ago. The significant thing about this story is that I experienced those summers a good deal south of where I am now. Do you think that the South is creeping up north?
drkrick
That kind of negotiating strategy has the same relationship to something that would actually work that Econ 101 inspired policies have to something that would actually work. A useful way to get a general sense of what’s going on, but a lousy way to put together a detailed action plan.
kay
It’s a horrible time to talk about SS, though. People are scared. They don’t need a stern lecture on frugality, on that issue.
I disagree with him. It’s NOT a good time for SS adjustments. It’s the worse possible time, both perceptually and substantively, not in terms of where DC is, but in terms of where the public is.
I don’t know that it matters. He made the entitlement deal hinge on a tax increase deal, and there ain’t no way Eric Cantor and Grover Norquist are allowing Boehner to raise taxes.
drkrick
@93 – do you mean in terms of climate or in terms of politics and economics? Not that it changes the answer.
aisce
@ mbunge
that same deal allowed for an unprecedented hidden debt expansion brought on by unrestrained tax giveaways to the rich, blew up income inequality, and ensured that benefit cuts will transpire this century anyway.
truly, one our nation’s most glorious hours…
Dennis SGMM
@Catsy
Particularly in her case because “chan” is a diminuitive.
aisce
@ jim, foolish literalist
you know what? he’s fucking right. both sides are guilty. this is complete bullshit, it’s been bullshit for months, and it’s completely indefensible.
somehow, a hostage situation has blown up into a full on mexican standoff, where the only one that doesn’t have a gun is the american people. we’re completely at their mercy.
congress and the president ignored the real crisis, invented a fake one, and then can’t even pretend to solve the fiction.
Linda Featheringill
drkrick #96
I had in mind climate creep. But you definitely have a point about politics and economics.
:-)
aimai
I wish people wouldn’t blather on about bargaining as if they knew anything about it. There are all kinds of bargaining and negotiating strategies. The strategies can involve everything from the first bid, to the size of the table, to trash talking the refs/buyers, to talking up the goods at issue and to talking them down. I recently had the pleasure of going through two rounds of serious bargaining for rugs in Turkey. And it is a pleasure. Its a complicated dance. Its trivially true that I couldn’t begin my bargaining with a 0 dollar bid for a rug that I wanted. But it is also the case that good bargaining involves bringing the other side around to needing to make the sale more than you need to make the purchase, having a good idea of where your end point is, being able and willing to walk away, and lots of other things.
Its very clear that in Obama’s negotiations about health care he failed to bargainin/negotiate effectively with a number of partners–for example the vaunted prior agreements and givebacks from pharma were roundly dissed by Pelosi who pointed out that what was on the table was far less than she would have settled for. She was right. This is also the case with Single Payer–single payer didn’t need to be a real possibility exactly, or even to be on the table, to have been a major negotiating point to getting to a public option. Just because (some) people said they would never accept it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t have been used as a club to make the public option more acceptable. Parties and negotiators have lots of public and privatge positions at the start of a negotiation that are different after negotiation. The people who excuse Obama and his negotiators over this point act as though all positions are fixed and known and immovable from the get go. That’s not true. Some are, some aren’t. I’d say the ones people bitch about the most publicly are often the very ones that they will climb down from to get to their real goal.
aimai
artem1s
exactly like it how?
In that Obama is just like a commie dictator? Or Boehner is completely willing to keep shoveling money into another failed GOP concept (don’t cut the military) at the risk of bankrupting the whole country?
oh and.also.too. W couldn’t do anything to dismantle SS when the market was flush and it looked like the sky was the limit. no way its happening now.
cat48
Shorter Obama: Bring it! Time to eat our peas!
Stern president today.
Jay B.
MBunge – July 11, 2011 | 11:54 am · Link
Here’s a couple of reminders.
Likewise, you will die at some point in the future.
You realize how fucking idiotic your 80% payout line is right? You want to put a date to that, sluggo? 2037. That’s as of right now, based on current projections. You want to panic everyone 40 and up? Parrot that bullshit spoon fed to you by Pete Peterson and the GOP for the past decade and, oh whatever. Just another clueless “Democrat” who thinks there’s never a good time to do anything progressive. Just a good time to help the GOP in their decades-long quest to kill people.
God. 2037. And this is your concern. With corporatist Democrats and the GOP running the agenda, there’s no fucking way we’ll be around in 2037 anyway.
PeakVT
Some adjustments need to be made to Social Security or the program is only going to be able to pay 80% of promised benefits.
Yes, in 2037. And the best adjustment to make is to the cap on income subject to taxation for SS, not cutting benefits by fiddling with COLA calculations or raising the retirement age.
More serious changes need to be made to Medicare to prevent the program from destroying the country like Godzilla on a bad day.
Wrong. Serious changes need to be made to our entire health care system. Skyrocketing costs for Medicare are simply a reflection of skyrocketing costs for everyone.
Yutsano
And you should NEVER use it on yourself. That’s true of virtually any Japanese honorific.
Corner Stone
@MBunge: 1. True. In about 25 or so years.
2. Doctors are going to have to agree to cuts or nothing else really matters.
3. You really want to praise the 1983 SS deal? Because you really should not want to.
Bulworth
Well, I guess I’m relieved that Boner’s refusal to compromise has prevented nuke bombs falling on the Heartland.
DougJ in Damascus
The title was a Muddy Waters lyrics reference, I didn’t know the Stones covered it til now.
kay
Reimbursement to providers is going to go down or stay even. It’s already happening on the private side. I don’t think it’s a result of any 11 dimensional wrangling or brilliant negotiations, either. I think it’s a result of reality. Prospective (privately insured) “patients” are tapped out- they can’t pick up any more share of /insurance medical costs, and employers aren’t going to pick it up, so that leaves providers. It couldn’t go up every two years, forever.
Sentient Puddle
@AAA Bonds:
On what planet do you spend most of your time?
Presumably some of you people value the opinion of Paul Krugman.
Jay B.
This, of course, has been his problem from day 1. The first thing you do, is lead and have a vision. People rally around that. Instead, he sought consensus and held out for bipartisanship. This in the wake of significant Democratic momentum. Then, in a complete non-surprise, the GOP obstructs and kills what it doesn’t poison, Obama doubles-down on his “flexibility” and takes the rationale out of even having a Democratic Majority. Now he’s prepping Democrats for significant disappointments? Ha! The only idiots who’ll be surprised are a small fraction of the “moderates” who’ve reflexively supported his every utterance as some deep game. $4 trillion in deficit reduction. That’s his vision. We. Are. Fucked.
Suffern ACE
Well, if you’re sick now, at least you have the hard deadline to look forward to. The results should come rather quickly.
Then we can do this again October 1 when the spending resolutions for FY12 are due.
And probably at two or three more times before the elections. By the time the great government shutdown of 2012 ends, you will have an ulcer.
Catsy
To be fair, some Japanese girls and women do refer to themselves conversationally in the third person using -chan, but it is generally considered very childish or cutesy.
Josie
@Amir_Khalid: You left out pornographic descriptions of “reach around” politics.
Bostondreams
If Boehner were really Reagan, he would have raised taxes. But that wouldn’t fit the wingnut narrative about Ron.
Yutsano
More childish, but Japanese women are supposed to project that image. I really really should have explored the Japanese concept of kawaiisa more.
Amir_Khalid
@Josie:
Yes I did, on grounds of taste.
Josie
@Amir_Khalid: lol, you’re right, but I’m old and don’t have to be tasteful anymore.
Age can be very liberating.
Thoughtcrime
My obsessions are your possessions
Every piece that I can get
My obsessions are your possessions
Till my mouth is soaking wet
I think I blew it now, confession
MBunge
I love it when people simultaneously acknowledge you’re right about something and still continue to bitch about that thing.
1. Yes, changes need to be made to Social Security and bitch, bitch, bitch.
2. Yes, changes need to be made to Medicare and bitch, bitch, bitch. Or do you imagine there’s some way to control health care costs that DOESN’T involve Medicare.
3. Yes, the 1983 deal did save Social Security but bitch, bitch, bitch.
Mike
Corner Stone
@MBunge: What you’re too dense to understand is that you were right about none of it. You falsely characterized all 3 “reminders”.
Your “reminders” are shit.
FlipYrWhig
But that’s not the kind of bargaining that was going on with HCR. You’re describing a situation where, to some degree, you want a rug, and the rug merchant wants to sell you a rug, and the endgame is a rug at a fair price. With HCR, there was a whole other kind of bargaining to establish the parameters in the first place. It’s as though you sleep in a tree, and have barely any understanding of what a rug is, and the rug merchant has to convince you that you really need one. He’s not going to start with the most beautiful, largest one in the shop.
Catsy
@Yutsano:
Isn’t it kawaisa (with the -sa “-ness” suffix replacing the adjectival -i)?
But yes, kawaisa is deeply embedded in modern Japanese culture–and not just for women. Understanding it makes a lot of the “WTF” moments that non-Japanese have when exposed to (e.g.) Japanese television and media make a lot more sense in context.
murbella
@catsy et al, i appended chan so people would stop assuming i was a guy, just because im aggro and use multisyllabics. i used chan to mean “young lady” in the context of my tribute borrow of Major Kusanagi’s name.
but im heartbroken that im not kawaii enough for you.
@VDE
well, no because christians are not allowed into KSA except on permit. it does explain why the Taliban killed the toothbrush doctors though.
KRK
“I wish people wouldn’t blather on about bargaining as if they knew anything about it.”
Something about “heal thyself” comes to mind.
Catsy
The problem with appending -chan is that instead of people assuming you’re a guy, they assume you’re an idiot.
That is simply not what it means or how it is used. And if you were trying for a GitS reference with “matoko_chan”, it would probably help to spell the character’s name right.
The problem is not that you are insufficiently kawaii, it’s that you are excessively urusai.
rachel
しつこいね, まとこちぁん
And FYI “chan” is also used for little boys and for adult men that the speaker has that kind of relationship with. So you fail on that account, too.
rachel
#128 Not to mention やかましい.
OzoneR
Negotiations don’t work that way. When you buy a house, you start off where the seller wants you to. The seller will just ignore you if you offer too little.
Congress is the seller, not Obama. Congress had to seriously want to consider single payer and they did not. They set the terms, not Obama.
OzoneR
This is a joke, right?
Catsy
@128,129: そのとおりですね（笑）
murbella
@catsy
/sigh
it would have been disrespectful to steal the Major’s name, so i changed it just a bit.
and im sorry, but its very common in anime to append chan. rukia_chan from bleach, winry_chan from full metal alchemist etc.
im just a toon really.
im not nearly as grownup and clever as you juicers, that got rolled by Kain like cheap drunks, and then bent over to let de Bore do you all again.
rachel
くどい!
Catsy
@134:
Oh bullshit; you have no problem lifting names verbatim from the Dune books. Just own your mistakes for once.
And as lame as the “I saw it in anime so it must be true” argument is, you’re still missing the point: of course some people call other people -chan. The point is that you’re not supposed to append it to your own name unless you want people to think you’re either a woman being cutesy or an idiot foreigner who’s seen too much anime.
Oh, well done. That is a truly classic deflection.
murbella
sry, Catsy, it wasn’t a mistake.
it was deliberate.
when I killed off jinnderella, i wanted a nic that was semi-unique. motoko got jillions of hits, matoko not so many. chan came later after i got tired of telling peeps i wasn’t guystyle.
sheesh, ima self-declared weeaboo.
try to keep up.
:)
lol….Holtzman Effect
“In shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack … Attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the attack sinister. The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow kindjal!”
murbella
Let’s close out the thread with some j-pop.
Lovely Mocochang– Sentimental Piggy Romance
I Am the Lion.
murbella
and Catsy,
all in all, matoko was a break with the conservative community that raised me, and a special and particular rebuke to Steven Den Beste.
Heres the post where i planted the seeds, Catsy.