Hey, it’s better than Joan Walsh’s favorite term: Obamalovers
Keep your eye on Firedoglake, people. That ship is sinking fast. Jane Hamsher is suffering stage 5 Obama Derangement Syndrome. It’s so bad that she is now ignoring what Democratic aides have reported regarding Obama’s meeting with Cantor, and is sucking the milk from Cantor’s teat:
For the record I don’t think it’s a big deal if Obama has to take sole responsibility for raising the debt limit. But he does.
It undermines his intention to run in 2012 as the “fiscally responsible” guy who closed the deficit, and that’s why he is cussing mad. Well, that and the fact that he has to undergo ritual humiliation at the hands of the GOP every 2 months to get what he wants.
The irony is that the Obamabots are so out of touch with who Obama is and what he wants they don’t realize that by cheering for the McConnell deal, and his prowess in making McConnell “blink,” it amounts to twisting the knife for him. It makes it impossible for him to reject the deal the end — which empowers the GOP to hold out.
Cantor offered a temporary extension three times last night, and by both Democratic and GOP accounts, that’s what made Obama snap. He wouldn’t be rejecting it “even if it brings my presidency down,” and taking his case to the American people, if he thought he had scored some big victory.
You gotta feel sorry for the guy. His most ardent supporters are the dumbest motherfuckers in the world, and they don’t realize he thinks they are digging his political grave.
At this point, Jane Hamsher is a parody of herself. She spews whatever brain jizz happens to be coagulating in her mind directly into the faces of her sycophants, and they lap that shit up like their only dream in life is to play the role of Hamsher PermaFluffer. I mean, it’s downright comical.
Obama raises 86 million bucks much to the chagrin of firebaggers everywhere and he’s got rock solid support from his base, and Hamsher obviously cannot stand it. (For fuck’s sake, how will she ever help Ron Paul get elected with the Obama Juggernaut running roughshod over everything in its path?)
In short, Obama is driving Hamsher fucking nuts, and it’s really fun to watch.
Jane, you are a mindless twit. You are wrong about everything, like, ALL THE TIME. Your blog posts are where facts go to die. And now, having no recourse, you are parroting Tea Party talking points. Obama is exploiting rightwing fears of the CRAY CRAY NEGRO, knowing that the Teabagger-mind is an addled one indeed. And you fell for it. And now you have taken sides with Cantor against liberals.
But that’s not unusual, for you, is it? You are quite familiar with working with Tea Party activists to bring down this President.
Hear that sound, Jane? That’s the sound of your own irrelevancy.
You better send out another fundraising email, sweetcakes. I’m sure there’s a drooling idiot somewhere who has a buffalo nickel for ya.
[via Politics USA; via Mother Jones; via Firebaglake]
[cross-posted][grabs popcorn]
beltane
All that time spent with Grover in his bathtub must have dried up her brains.
John Cole
People on twitter are claiming she is positioning herself to support Ron Paul, which will be really funny to watch.
Brian R.
A dumb motherfucker? Isn’t that what you call a self-styled liberal who makes common cause with Grover Norquist, the spawn of Satan?
Rhoda
Wow, that is Hillaryis44 level motherfucking cuckoo.
beltane
Leave Jane alone. She is so pretty, and she is the only one who speaks the truth.
Bulworth
Also, too: Jane is cussing mad.
Jennifer
You have to wonder at what point Mr. Bogg will exit the sinking ship. You might offer him a gig here, Cole.
srv
Don’t call my bluff, Eric.
Lolis
Her whole analysis here is so bizzare. It does not make any sense. I was actually shocked reading the comments because nobody pointed out the obvious flaws in her post for as long as I read the comments. Those comments gave new meaning to the term “dumb motherfuckers.”
General Stuck
A Ron Paul/Alan Grayson ticket could fuse a lot of the nuts from both side into a large black hole of comedy.
yeahyeahwhatevs (Studly Pantload, once upon a time)
Hamsher is a cancer survivor. Not sure about the optics of the “stage 5” reference. Just sayin’.
Han's Solo
Jeebus, who taught her to write, Sarah Palin?
I’m sorry, but that is some poorly written prose. I don’t think anyone who writes like that has the standing to impugn the intelligence of anyone.
Bob
Silly question:
Is there any proof that this Hamsher lady was ever a Democrat?
RandyH
Since Obama came into office I have wondered just what problem it is that Jane is suffering from. I think I know now. It’s simple. She’s just a really nasty-mean person who hates anyone in power. Does she ever have ANYTHING nice to say about anyone anymore? Did she ever?
I stopped reading her toxic bile long ago. I think the only person over there that I actually like its TBogg.
blahblahblah
I completely agree with what Hamsher wrote.
stuckinred
beltane
Damn, beat me to it!
gocart mozart
Jennifer Johnson is right.
jwb
Lolis: Her analysis makes a lot more sense if you treat it the same way you’d treat a wingnut pundit and presume projection.
Rick Taylor
It’s so reassuring to know that as Republicans prepare to bring about a new global depression, we liberals still have time to fling spit balls and chewing gum at each other.
stuckinred
RandyH
She began to go south during her breast cancer treatment. Coincidink? Maybe yes maybe no.
beltane
@Lolis
If it is indeed true that Lady Jane is supporting Ron Paul, it is only fitting that her analyses make no sense. That is one fine Paultard rant if I must say so myself. Also, as a Paultard, Hamsher will enjoy greater freedom to single out Jews and African-Americans for her ire.
pragmatism
please recruit TBOGG. he needs a good home.
Han's Solo
@RandyH:
She’d shoot her parents for a chance to lick Hillary Clinton’s thong.
Fucking PUMAs.
I sometimes wonder if she isn’t Mark Penn’s hand puppet.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I read something about Alan Grayson yesterday, it sounded like he was threatening a primary run against Obama, but I can’t remember where I saw it.
stuckinred
Rick Taylor
She’s no fucking liberal.
The Moar You Know
Nothing new for Jane. Her If you didn’t understand that she was a ratfucker extraordinaire after the Lieberman in blackface photo, or if you missed that but caught the episode wheere she made an alliance with Grover Norquist, you simply didn’t want to know.
She hates liberals and hates black folk even more.
NonyNony
@jennifer
Marcy Wheeler announced she’s leaving at the end of the week. She didn’t really say why other than what she’s doing is really fatiguing – so she’s going to be doing it at a new URL and “changing how she’s doing things” to focus on less “manic reactive rhythm” and more on longer form stuff. And she’s bringing bmaz with her to the new site. Why she can’t make that shift while staying at FDL is left unstated.
So yeah. I’m wondering what’s coming down the pike. If it’s this:
@John Cole
It will actually be fucking hilarious. As the Jane Hamsher of the Left goes so far to the Left she ends up out the other side.
Frank
Well I guess I’m a dumb mother fucker. Meh. Still the sharpest billiard ball in the drawer.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I would trace it back to the Blackface Lieberman incident, which I think came first, no?
Han's Solo
@Rick Taylor:
Objection! Assuming facts not in evidence. Why do you assume she is a liberal?
eemom
stuckinred and I have been calling this one since like forever ago.
We watched Lady Jane grow up, you see — from a has-been Hollywood reject turned unknown blogger into the D-list Washington whore she is today.
Ripley
Bob@13: Remove her shoes and check for bullet-hole scars.
kd bart
Recruit T Bogg. We need Bassett photos.
Chyron HR
Don’t you know that reading things on the front page of prominent political blogs is NUTPICKING?! It was probably a “diary” also, too.
stuckinred
eemom
I thought Manon of the Spring was ok.
beltane
@The Moar You Know
Glad you noticed that her Top Enemies list seems to be devoid of WASPs. Her targeting of Joe Lieberman’s wife was particularly creepy.
She’ll fit right in with the Ron Paul supporters.
Brian R.
Stranger things have happened. Some of the founders of National Review were former Marxists.
Bruce S
Also, Hamsher appears to be driving some folks here nuts – and it’s pretty much a waste of time.
Hamsher is one of those fuck-head “progressives” who thought John Edwards was the “real thing” in ProgressiveLand. Meanwhile, there are real concerns and issues related to the implications of at least aspects of Obama’s “brinksmanship” and “Grand Bargaining” that most of the people who will parade their “fee fees” – isn’t that the term of art? – in this comments thread over the latest BS at Hamsher’s website haven’t shown much competence in discussing rationally or with any depth, other than slinging, cheap, easy ad hominem shit a la Hamsher.
I really wish the fact that I don’t take Hamsher seriously could provide the necessary antidote to the harder work of thinking critically about the complexities of current Democratic party politics..and weakness. Maybe I need to up my dose of time spent surfing the internet for peripheral outrages, profanity, etc. What bliss… Or maybe that actually would just make me an even dumber-ass motherfucker than I admittedly can be at times. (I do love the word…)
cyntax
Wait… what? That’s some really tortured syntax she’s got going there. Like violating Geneva Conventions bad… what is she talking about?
Cat Lady
She’s jonesing for even the liberal Mara Liasson’s Democrat concern troll spot on Fox Sunday, or maybe Gloria Borger’s contract at CNN is up.
jl
I’m neither an Obama hater, nor an Obama lover. Which is a problem, being neither a lover nor a hater,with some standard avenues of bar pick up conversation.
Best to be indifferent to these people, they are all, even Obama, in their political capacity, mere tools to get stuff done.
Given the consequences of a default, I have mixed feelings about temporary extensions, and do not understand how a hard stand against them plays into Obama’s clear attempts to be Mr. Reasonable.
Obama knows more that is going on than I do. If he has information that the GOP has been bluffing and that Cantor will be the last to fold, might be best to stand firm.
Maybe GOP is in true disarray, Cantor was asking for more time to get his faction in the GOP together, then I might take it, since I think I, as president, could use that extra time with the Democrats, to more advantage than the GOP could.
But, too bad a fricken genius like my humble self is not there on the scene to judge the situation rightly. (that is self snark)
We will see where this leads. While I generally support Obama, I disagree with how he does some of his political business, and have given up trying to figure out how he thinks about some things.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Maybe she’s doin’ it with Cantor. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Wiesman
I came here to post something about hoping TBogg leaves there soon. Sigh. One day I’ll have an idea before anyone else. Sure, it’ll be a bad idea, but I’ll be first!
NonyNony
@Rick Taylor
Oh come on now – the “barroom argument by a bunch of rubes who have no real political power but all know EXACTLY how to fix the world” is just how things roll. We’ve moved the barroom to the internet, and the inevitable drunken brawl is more namecalling and less punch-throwing, but it’s still the same thing. And that’s all this, and FDL and pretty much any other blog with a comment section is – a 21st century barroom that we can brawl in.
The meltdown that the GOPers are going through in Congress right now though – that’s something different. That’s less ballroom brawl and more … I don’t even know what a good analogy might be. A mess.
Omnes Omnibus
@ stuckinred: What did Hamsher have to do with “Manon of the Spring”? FWIW virtually anything with Emmanuelle Beart is going to be at least ok.
merrinc
RandyH is right. Hamsher is the blogger equivalent of Maureen Dowd. Everything they write can be distilled down its basic essence which is: LOOK AT ME!
mb
Why would I want to do that?
Peter J
There’s nothing fun about mental illness. I hope that she seeks help.
japa21
Reminds me of David Sirota. I heard him on the radio saying how Obama deliberately and knowingly lied to people during the campaign making promises he had no attention to keeping and how he won only because he lied. I sent him an email asking for specifics as to what promises he made that he knew were lies and told them anyway. (Note: there is no assumption there that David was wrong, I was just looking for specifics).
His response was that I was “one of those people who are willfully and intentionally ignorant and stupid and not worth having a discussion with.”
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@ crABLegs
I can see you are once again a day late and a dollar short. Here is the real inside dope, I.D. –
OMG, did you hear what that Jane Hamsher said about the President Obama BJ Syndicate today? She said, and I quote –
Can you believe that? Everybody knows Republicans are the dumbest motherfuckers in the world, while balloonbaggers are only the second dumbest motherfuckers in the world. Someone gag this ugly Jane bitch and shut her up! She has no right to speak or have dishonest opinions like this!
.
.
stuckinred
Omnes Omnibus
eemom was telling me she didn’t like it a couple of days ago. I don’t pay any attention to this topic bullshit.
dave
Why do I hate ABL’s posts with a fiery passion even when I agree with them?
David Dickinson
This would be embarrassing to Hamsher if it wasn’t for the fact that she is 100% correct.
eemom
@ stuckinred
I just thought it didn’t measure up to its predecessor. Jean de Florette was actually tragic, whereas Manon was just melodrama.
Do check out Germinal if you haven’t already.
middlewest
Who cares what Al-Jazeera’s Republican pundit thinks about anything?
jl
Though, at this point what goes on in Jane Hamsher’s head is more mysterious than Obama’s. I have to admit that.
Good for all of us that what she says makes exactly zero difference as far I can tell.
Still a few good and informative FDL posters though.
eemom
@ Bruce S 38
bullshit. She was shilling for Hillary from the get-go, and calling Edwards — as well as everyone else in the world who didn’t kiss her and Hillary’s ass, in that order — a misogynist.
stuckinred
eemom
in the Q if I don’t dump netflix!
Pangloss
Just imagine the cabinet members and Supreme Court nominees in a Ron Paul/Alan Grayson administration.
Beth in VA
I know you’ll get grief for this Obamabot, Hamsher-centered post but thank you thank you from a long-term progressive, liberal-peace-loving Democrat! By the mindless stereotype of the so-called lefty media, I should be in Hamsher’s camp based on my socialist, commie, demographic earth-mother background, but have never been able to stomach her negative energy. Thanks so much ABL, and John Cole for running this blog with what I think of as “radically sane reasonableness”.
ruemara
ABL, hornet’s nest poker.
I listened to Grayson on SMS this morning and he predicts Obama will lose FL, Obama is doing terrible in polls, the UE is up (no mention of Rick Scott’s invisible hand in that) and generally how terrible and hard an Obama re-election will be with difficult races that Obama is barely leading in. I could see Grayson positioning himself for a primary challenge, he’s singing the opening notes to the Kennedy in 80 serenade. I find it rather funny that he knows he needs Obama on the ballot to win back his seat, yet he’s hitting all the concerned liberal notes.
Han's Solo
@cyntax:
Exactly. If this was a comment on a blog, fine. Sometimes people rush and don’t proofread when online. But this is the front page of her blog. Either she has no pride in her work, considers her readers stupid enough not to notice, or she just needs to go back to school.
Dinah
I won’t read TBogg anymore because he is on that awful site. But I miss him like crazy. If anybody actually knows him, tell him to get his butt out of there and start writing with someone who is not head injury crazy.
ruemara
HALP! I R IN MODERATION! Not sure why, tho.
Bruce S
eemon @ 56
My bad. I made that assumption because most of the hard-core lefty “progressives” I’m aware of were taken in by Edwards as some sort of Progressive Wunderkind. If Hamsher was shilling for Hillary, that’s almost as dumb. So she’s still a dumb motherfucker IMHO.
Omnes Omnibus
@ stuckinred: She is wrong; the movie has Emmanuelle Beart, ’nuff said.
eemom
hey, why are folks blaming Jane for something SHE wrote on the front page of HER blog??
I mean that’s EXACTLY like saying John Cole is responsible for every idiot comment that gets posted here.
Console
I’m a federal government employee. There’s no way in hell I’d vote for a republican executive. I don’t think people realize how deep that rot goes.
Political actors get to boo hoo over things like the employee free choice act and claim obama is screwing workers over. Meanwhile those of us actually in unions know what it’s really like to be screwed over by a president. Shit, my union’s contract was thrown out until Obama got into office. And god forbid you tried to get a labor dispute through the Bush admin.
Then there’s things like pretending a public option that would really only effect a small part of middle class people were the main points of negotiation for the healthcare debate. The millions of poor people that now can get medicaid be damned right? Schip… obviously that was for suckers.
Now it’s the debt negotiations… the Hamshers of the world do realize that the last time we got a republican president, he fucking tried to privatize social security? Yet i’m supposed to pretend like there’s no difference in my quality of life if Obama loses the next election?
NR
Right. Let’s just ignore the fact that Obama is pushing fiscal austerity at a time when the exact opposite is called for, a move that will not only hurt tens of millions of people, but will also damage Democratic electoral prospects in 2012 across the board. Let’s just ignore all of that, because someone posted something on a blog that no one reads except for people who have a pathological need to attack it over. And over. And over again.
Christ. If Jane Hamsher didn’t exist, Obama supporters would have to invent her.
Ash Can
Jane Hamsher really is Grover Norquist’s pet, isn’t she? Ron Paul, hell — if she comes out in support of Michele Bachmann, for the sole reasons that she’s female and white, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Han's Solo
@Bruce S: Yeah, she’s Mark Penn without the toad like appearance.
Mark D
Great post, NonyNony (and I’m right there with ya).
As far as this goes:
While “Wingularity” would be nice, not sure it’s to that level yet.
Perhaps “Rich-And/Or-Bigoted-White-Guy-Created Clusterfuck That Will Take The Rest Of Us Down With It” seems like an apt description.
Not great for a bumper sticker, but accurate.
agrippa
so what?
DonkeyKong
99.9% of the country doesnt know who Jane Hamsher is. Christ, when I was five years old and pretended I was “flying” a packing box I had enough good sense to know it wasnt a frickin airplane.
ABL, deep cuts are going to be made to the budget that will hurt many more people, a so called “victory” for democrats. Black unemployment is double the national average. I doubt we’ll get through the next 5 years without the banks blowing up.
So enjoy your juicy nothingburger with a side of Jane Hamsher (I totally agree she’s a parody. but then again so are you) while it lasts.
Culture of Truth
I don’t think that word means what she thinks it means.
NR
When Bush tried to privatize Social Security, he got smacked down. Hard. The left rose up and said no way, no how is this going to happen.
But now, Obama is talking about cutting Social Security, and his supporters are saying, “Sure, no problem. A cut is fine as long as it isn’t a slash!”
You’re right–there is a difference. Social Security is now in more danger than it’s ever been, with a Democrat in office.
agrippa
brilliant post donkeykong!
well played!
You certainly told her off!
taylormattd
My favorite is when firebaggers show up to say “so what? nobody cares who Jane Hamsher is”
aisce
@ jim, foolish literalist
or he’s running for congress again in orlando. same diff.
if you don’t know what you’re talking about, shut up. there is no primary, little blog warriors of the interwebz. there is no primary. you won’t get to “show how tough you are” and “how mighty your numbers are” until the general election. which, for some reason, disappoints you greatly.
me? i wish nov. 2012 would just get here already, so we can reelect the president, let the man get back to governing, and move on with our lives.
someguy
Man. It’s gettin’ to be like a Bizarro Red State circa 2007 around here.
Joel
@ bullshit. She was shilling for Hillary from the get-go, and calling Edwards—as well as everyone else in the world who didn’t kiss her and Hillary’s ass, in that order—a misogynist.
To be fair, she was pretty much right about Edwards, if for the wrong reasons.
daveNYC
An ABL post on FDL, time to get out the popcorn.
Stan of the Sawgrass
Calling what Hamsher is spewing “brain-jizz” is an insult to brains everywhere.
Jizz, too.
But yeah, aside from that caveat, I agree. When Jane started sidling up to Norquist, it was a sure sign of O.D.S. Licking Cantor’s butt too indicates that her condition is now terminal.
Marcy Wheeler’s gone. TBogg should just pull the plug and move on.
different church-lady
I have no love for Miss Jane, but doesn’t this kinda qualify as “tit for tat” for a lot of people around these parts?
mwm341
She started to go sour when it became apparent that Barack Obama was going to get the nomination, and Hillary Clinton was not.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Time for a drink? Go for a walk? Rub one out? It’s a blog. Simmer down, Donnie.
Moonbatman
I prefer being called a Obama Fluffer
Peace Out. The Power is Yours. Free Crystal Mangum
Georgia Pig
Because it’s clear now that the House Republicans are acting in bad faith and trying to do an end run around separation of powers by taking hostages, an unethical bargaining position because it threatens everyone’s interests. It’s telling how the Senate has been largely left out of this, and some of the remarks by various senators indicate they’re not too happy with that.
He originally wanted and still wants a clean debt ceiling bill. He never has agreed to bargain for the debt ceiling extension in return for cuts. The Republicans kept pressing him for big cuts because they keep saying the deficit is an issue. He wants to work on long term deficit issues, they say they do, too, so he says, “OK, I’ll listen to you, especially if it helps me talk you off the constitutional crisis ledge you seem intent of walking out on to.” You have crazy fucks in the House actually advocating not meeting obligations that have already been made and cannot be reversed without going through due process in all three branches of the government.
He offers a deal that gives them some big long term cuts in return for some relatively modest revenue increases. Their failure to bite indicates that they were negotiating in bad faith (or are completely fucking insane, same difference), which has turned this negotiation into a hostage taking. Now, he has to protect the perogatives of the Presidency, because he can’t let the debt ceiling be used as a hostage. Accepting a temporary extension on the debt ceiling is not possible unless he receives some assurance that they’re willing to deal in a manner that doesn’t involve taking hostages. The McConnell deal actually could meet those requirements, because it takes default off the table.
Culture of Truth
So you’re a dumb mf if you are a progessive and have blog and ever undermine Obama.
Hmmmm……
ohsuzanna
A-f**king-men, ABL.
Han's Solo
@taylormattd:
Exactly.
Personally, I couldn’t care less about her if she would stop pretending to represent people who share my political views. She is not liberal, the most gracious explanation I can come up with is that she is a huge opportunist who doesn’t care a bit about what she says, as long as she is getting paid to say it.
Jim C.
I wonder what portion of her page views comes from people from this site? Never even heard of her or her site prior to my exposure from this one.
Given that she appears to be a moron, I’d be happy to never hear from her again either.
kc
Bruce S, which Dem primary candidate should a non-dumb motherfucker have supported?
different church-lady
Obama chose a switchblade. And Eric got a cold meat pie.
Rick Taylor
__
How dare people pontificate about stuff they know nothing about on a blog called “balloon juice”!
Dr. Squid
WTF is a temporary extension, anyway? Will that be an extra X billion added to the debt limit only to be yanked back 3 months later?
How fucking stupid is Jane anyway to think that’s a great idea and how dare that Obama turn down poor little Cantor?
martha
“Your blog posts are where facts go to die.”
ABL, I’m so stealing that line!
And John, another plea for you to offer TBOGG the moon, sun, stars and the keys to the back door…thanks!
Poopyman
Tortured English indeed.
“The guy” could just as well be referring to Cantor as to Obama here. Actually makes more sense, although my guess is that she really is referring to the pres.
I dunno. I just dunno about Ms. Hamsher.
And IIRC, she’s either a two time or three time cancer survivor. She’s had some pretty bitter fights with it over the past 5-10 years. Not sure if that’s relevant, but some folks upthread mentioned it.
Trollenschlongen
How is this any worse than half the shit ABL writes about FDL and Glenn Greenwald and people who don’t worship Obama?
I find it refreshing.
Julie Raffety
There is one grownup in the negotiations and he’s the President. The mess is Jane Hamsher, not to mention her pals.
The Other Chuck
I did too. Slick salesman and all. Honest mistake. In fact, lying weasel or not, I suspect he’s still more progressive than the whole DLC put together. I’d still put him in the Oval Office over any blue dog, let alone a damned Republican — shit, I’d vote for Traficant over any Republican.
But yeah, Dean was a better wagon to hitch to than Edwards ever was.
Dr. Squid
SLAP!
God you haven’t followed one thing, have you? Deals don’t exist until everyone agrees. You really think that because Obama said it that means it’s necessarily going to happen?
This is why we think that you firebaggers are too stupid to live. We need to remind you to blink and breathe. Now cool off – those cuts just ain’t happening, brainless blunder.
Just Some Fuckhead
Alexa rankings:
Firedoglake: 19493
Balloon-Juice: 58443
angryblacklady: 262002
different church-lady
@ Trollenschlongen: I think you’ve hit it — everyone is a dumb motherfucker.
Yes, who wouldn’t find acknowledging that refreshing?
Erik Vanderhoff
Who is Jane Hamsher, what is Firedoglake, and why the fuck am I supposed to care?
Trurl
Methinks the (Angry Black) Lady doth protest too much.
Sorry if it hurts your fee-fees, ma’am, but “dumb motherfucker” is a kind to describe someone who still supports Obama.
NR
Um, I said that Obama was pushing fiscal austerity. Learn to read and comprehend.
Omnes Omnibus
Yippee! Trurl is here!
handy
@taylormattd:
So what? Nobody cares who Jane Hamsher is.
Ty Lookwell
It’s so weird the way people get riled up over perceived political apostasy, the way specific heretics get fixated on.
Han's Solo
She is a ratfucker that pretends to be a liberal.
It’s her blog, where she always, always attacks Obama. No matter what, she attacks Obama.
If you are a liberal you don’t want someone on TV that claims to be a liberal, then misrepresents everything in manner most likely to please wingnuts.
Martin
Give us some numbers, because I think you’re full of shit.
Omnes Omnibus
@ NR: Pushing or posturing? It makes a difference.
Ripley
Erik@106:
1) A crazy lady.
2) A lake of fire full of dogs.
3) Because America is counting on you to care. Just not about this.
Bruce S
Dr. Squid – “we think that you firebaggers are too stupid to live”
Go fuck yourself if that’s the best you’ve got when folks point to the dangers inherent in certain elements that have been – at least if one can believe Jay “Cuts” Carney – introduced into the White House “Grand Bargaining.”
Based on that line, IMHO you’re a reprehensible piece of shit. But, of course, you’re more than welcome to continue to live as such. “Eliminationist” rhetoric is a bridge too far IMHO, but you clowns seem to revel in it.
dogwood
Lot’s of people on this board defend Hampsher’s positions all the time. They love her rhetoric and refuse to separate the message from the messenger That’s a big mistake in politics. Anyone who didn’t understand who Jane Hampsher was after the Leiberman/Blackface stuff is ignorant or actually likes that kind of crap. FDL is a place where the Dem. version of the Tea Party has a home. A place where angry, ideological purists can gather and stoke their rage. Hey, a little racism isn’t such a bad thing if it serves some bullshiit higher purpose that these sanctimonious purists believe in. Liberals would crucify any wingnut who pulled that Lieberman shit, but Jane gets a pass. Wheeler and TBogg must be ok with all this or else they would have left long ago.
LTMidnight
As long as Mistress Jane gets to go on TV and act like she speaks for “The Base”, it is our duty for the true 86% to call her out.
I’m assuming this little hissy fit of hers is because of the news of Obama’s grassroots raising $86 million in the last quarter. Kinda shout the whole “he’s losing his base” argument she’s been making for the past 2 years straight to hell now doesn’t it?
Jane is looking like a paper tiger right now and she’s not taking it well.
Monala
How could Ron Paul and Alan Grayson possibly serve together? I know that was suggested in jest, but it sounds like some consider it in the realm of possibility. I mean, yeah they agree on the Fed, the war(s), and legalizing drugs. But Alan Grayson came to national attention because of his “don’t get sick or die quickly” speech, indicating how important the social safety net is to Grayson. Could he seriously work with someone like Paul, who could give a flying *%$ about those in need? Or do you think Grayson is more akin to Greenwald, where civil liberties issues trumps all other concerns?
Just Some Fuckhead
Kudos to Obama for turning the mushy political center into raging partisans. This hasn’t happened since Dwight “I fucking like Ike, motherfuckers!” Eisenhower.
Comrade Luke
Look, there are a lot of things that I’ve been frustrated about wrt Obama. A LOT.
That said, how can any living organism watch what’s happening with the debt ceiling and not admit that the biggest issue we’re facing as a nation is that we have two parties, and one is completely off the rails and incapable of governing?
PIck any Democratic president in all of our nation’s history, put him in office today, and tell me that he’d be able to accomplish anything, let alone whatever he accomplished back when he was actually president.
Our government is a complete disaster, and saying the President is the main issue is seriously delusional.
aisce
@ fuckhead
and two and a half men is the number one comedy on tv. unlike those little watched cable shitshows, archer and louie, dontcha know?
also, too, the 2.5 men lead went crazy and now it stars ashton kutcher instead.
there’s some sort of connection in all of this.
superfly
The dumb mother fuckers are the one who keep rooting for their team, when it’s obvious the game is rigged.
Elizabelle
Wow.
She should claim someone hacked into her account.
Didn’t work for Weiner, but this is. Just. Clinical.
Don’t read her crapola, anyhow.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Bruce S: That’s some Breitbart-level selective quoting there, chief.
Monala
@ ruemara @ 5:24 pm: Grayson hinted that he might primary Obama on SMS? That’s weird, given how big an Obama fan Stephanie Miller is.
NR
Here you go:
That’s from Ezra Klein. I guess he’s a firebagger now, too.
LTMidnight
Let the record show that Trurl just called 91% of African Americans “dumb motherfuckers”.
Now let’s see if this little booger-eater has the nuts to say this in public.
General Stuck
I do hope, Incertus, that whatever is causing your complete meltdown on this blog, is resolved soon. Sad to see it.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Firebaggers for Paul 2012: Restoring the Democratic Party to the (18)60’s
JPL
As much as I disliked Bush, it would never occur to me to call friends and acquaintances dumb motherfuckers. It’s immature. Her support of Cantor is odd because Cantor’s numbers don’t add up.
I haven’t read Jane since Christy left and feel the wiser for it but my information is dated. When she had additional treatment in CA, she stayed with TBogg, if memory serves me. He might feel some loyalty. The only thing I can think of is that Jane is trying to become relevant again. The progressive blog that hates Obama..
The Sheriff's A Ni-
General Stuck:
Uh, General, Incertus was a Brian, not a Bruce.
Peter
@Dr. Squid: What they mean by ‘temporary extension’ is one that will only cover the next three months or so, rather than one that will cover the debt for years. Technically speaking all debt ceiling increases are temporary, but the point is that Obama won’t settle for an extension that will put them right back in the same position three months later.
stuckinred
This broad has a lot of “Choot-Spa”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9_mWlXvKnq8
whatever
OK, when FDL goes down who will ABL turn her wrath on? Black Agenda Report? (Or has she already done that?)
BO_Bill
Obama is very smart.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
75% approval rating among all Democrats. So I guess all the smart folk are independents and Republicans now?
General Stuck
Shit, that’s right. Sorry incertus. Thanks for the correction.
DonkeyKong
The current cuts Obama wants to make are to the right of your average republican voter.
Fuck Jane Hamsher, my real anti-hero is lil Eric Cantor that saved us (in the real world, not here in blogatopia) by stomping his lil feet and sayin NO!
Go read Nat Silvers break down of the deal Obama offered.
Forget FDL. Reading FDL is like pulling dead skin of your feet, we know you do it, but keep for the love of Christ keep it to yourself.
Trurl
No, first he’s a purveyor of not-credible sources. Later, after it’s proved true, then he becomes a firebagger.
As for this 91% business, nothing exposes the Obot’s desperation like their playing the race card.
Joel
I am not well-versed in troll, but who the fuck is Moonbatman? Serious question.
agrippa
Dogwood may be right.
Hamsher and FDL may be exactly what Dogwood says that it is.
Karen
I hate Jane Hamsher more than I hated Bush or Cheney.
At least with Bush or Cheney or even the Teacrazies and GOP, I expect they’ll be hateful wastes of space the earth would be better without.
Jane Hamsher drapes herself in the liberal flag and tries to hijack the Democratic party yet she sees nothing wrong with schtupping Grover Norquist who is hijacking the GOP.
And by supporting Ron Paul to run against Obama that shows her true colors and the reason I hate the psychobitch. She’d rather scorch the Democratic earth than have a Democratic President that won’t kiss her ring.
General Stuck
How about a link there chief. I was not aware that any deal, as in a formal offer on paper was ever proffered by Obama, which was one reason the wingnuts went batshit. The anonymous sourced rumor that he offered to up the retirement age to 67, is just another Huffpo yarn until somebody official puts their name on it. And goes against everything Obama has been saying in public about not touching benefits.
I don’t know what’s worse, the wingnuts, or progressives making shit up. The latter pisses me off more though.
Danny
Just Some Fuckhead @ 104
Now a confirmed and proud Jane Hamsher fan? You should be embarassed…
Did you follow the link in ABLs post above?
It describes how Lady Jane was feeding Teaparty leaders with info on Nancy Pelocys whip counts in the runup to the PPACA vote, referring to it as “union thuggery”. Does that sound like a “progressive” to you? It’s not like teaming up with Nordqvist (you know the guy that got all the repubs to sign those pledges that are about to destroy the country) isn’t part of a confirmed M.O. by now.
Peddling Eric Cantors talking points pretty much verbatim, and calling Obama supporters (consistently 80-90% of self identified liberal democrats in Gallup polling) “the dumbest motherfuckers”.
Do you support that, Fuckhead?
Is that why you’re defending Hamsher by arguing that her website has more visitors than balloon-juice.com so therefore her behavior is excusable?
That woman needs to be kicked out of the movement, fast.
Georgia Pig
The more this goes on, the more I sense that people don’t have a fucking clue as to what is going on in this negotiation. Obama is not seeking “fiscal austerity”; he’s seeking long-term deficit reduction and near-term revenue gains and, secondarily, some short-term stimulus in the form of extended unemployment benies and payroll tax cuts. Part of the price he has to pay is some immediate cuts, but that is not what he’s seeking. Regarding Hamsher’s idiotic analysis of the Cantor “offer”, a couple of days ago Cantor finally admitted he was seeking budget cuts in exchange for increasing the debt ceiling. Then, the behavior of Cantor and Boehner over that last few days made it start looking like Cantor, not Boehner, was representing the House Republicans, which led to Obama’s questioning of Cantor as to who he was supposed to be negotiating with. Once it became Cantor who was doing all the talking, and considering that Cantor was already on record as stating he was holding the debt ceiling hostage, any offer by Cantor to provide a temporary increase of the ceiling became unacceptable. Before that, what Cantor said was irrelevant, because Obama was negotiating with Boehner, who I don’t recall ever making such a threat. In fact, Boehner made pains of explaining how important raising the debt ceiling was, but explained that he had some problems raising votes for that. Cantor fucked up by making it look like he was trying to trade the debt ceiling directly for cuts. That is a no no.
Martin
Break down the $4T. I know what the breakdown is, but you don’t. Do you know that $990B of the $4T is in reduced interest payments on the debt over current CBO forecasts? How’s that going to kill the economy?
Tell me what your biggest objection is in the spending cuts? Is it the $400B in defense cuts? The reduction in agriculture subsidies? The $230B in prescription drug payments by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices directly?
Or is it the $1T in tax increases? Maybe it’s the added funding to unemployment insurance, or making it illegal for drug companies to pay generic drug manufacturers to not bring a product to market, thereby driving up Medicare’s costs?
Come on, give us some details, because I still think you’re full of shit.
les
@NR:
fucking comprehension, how does it work?
“Cuts” does not equal “benefit cuts.” Fuck yeah there are going to be cuts to entitlement programs–if healthcare spending ain’t reined in, we’ll be bankrupt for real and there’ll be no benefit programs at all. Fuck, the ACA made some pretty huge Medicare cuts; you probably didn’t notice through your tears of fear and rage, but they were all on the supply side. You wonder why people bag on firebaggers and discount their concerns? Bunch of emo WATB’s flying off the handle with no information, no comprehension and no discrimination. Come back when you see a legislative proposal significantly effecting benefits, not your private monster in the closet nightmares.
Amir_Khalid
@stuckinred:
I used to pronounce Utah “Ooh-tah!” People would point out that the correct pronunciation is “you-taa” with no exclamation point, I’d reply: “My pronunciation is more exciting!”
I await Michele Bachmann’s creative explanation for “choot-spa”.
dr. bloor
@pangloss:
Shakes the Alcoholic Clown would be a magnificent Secretary of Defense.
General Stuck
Does an Amoeba support the Petri dish?
Just Some Fuckhead
Yes.. lolz.
I am red.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
The only reason we care about Jane here is because she gets to be on TV claiming to be a liberal, but spewing the same anti-Obama stuff that a lot of wingers do. If she didn’t show up on TV, John would just mock her.
Bruce S
“kc – July 14, 2011 | 5:40 pm · Link
“Bruce S, which Dem primary candidate should a non-dumb motherfucker have supported?”
Obama – I worked my ass off for him. Now I reserve the right to not kiss his as President. In fact, he told me and a bunch of others not to, way back in ’07! I happen to admire the guy enormously and have a lot of affection for him and his beautiful family. But given that he’s President, I don’t expect us to agree a lot of the time, we have rather drastically different roles as Democrats (lucky for me because I’m pretty much a dumb motherfucker compared to him), and I assume he’s at least as much of an adult as I am and can handle the changes that have taken place in our relationship now that he’s merely in charge of running the country under godawful circumstances. My attitude about Obama is that if the people at the grassroots simply wait and see what he ends up doing, rather than do their best to aggressively uphold a liberal Democratic agenda – and most important push for a stronger Congress – the box he’s inevitably in as President becomes even more constricted. If I don’t speak up against bullshit like shrinking Medicare eligibility – even if he’s only suggesting it as part of some Machiavellian strategy to walk out of the room with Eric Cantor’s nuts in his pocket – who the hell will? Obviously not “Angry” Black Lady – who mostly seems angry about anyone staking out any political turf that doesn’t already have Obama’s signature on it.
Incidentally, anyone walking into our kitchen and seeing all of the Obama pix and memorabilia stuck to our refrigerator would assume I was a total “Obamabot.” On an emotional level, I am to some degree although I never saw him as liberal tribune so much as a guy who could likely best absorb the center (back when there…uh…WAS a bit more of center.) I also was drawn to his intellect and his personal integrity. And I liked the idea of young kids in my neighborhood being able to look to a black guy as President. You can scoff at that, but it mattered to me.
As I said – deep affection and respect for the man who has to face us as “President Obama” each and every day. But I also know the constraints of the office, the political pig-fuck that a largely successful “Tea Party” noise machine has generated, and I have a brain that is not controlled by Jay Carney’s talking points du jour. And as much as I enjoy a good Lawrence O’Donnell rant, I know from the sly grin on his face he’s spinning it. He usually has a good “pie in the GOP’s face” approach to the tactical game, but there’s a bigger picture his daily takes aren’t dealing with. Not the “Last Word”, no matter how much fun his angle happens to be as an antidote to that queasy feeling that the entire context of this “debt ceiling” brouhaha has been on terms largely set by the Tea Party. In another era, what Obama has proposed as his Grand Bargain would have been the position of a conservative shit like Bob Dole. Pretty fucking sad…
Sleeper
Hahaha! Sorry, but you’ve got to admit that’s a little funny coming from you.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Why be exclusionary when she’s busy showing her own self the door?
pluege
obama’s record speaks for itself – from a liberal/progressive viewpoint: IT SUCKS!!! hard to imagine a worse record. In fact obama has made a progressive agenda COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. Its not mentioned in any conversation. Evidence:
* Congressional progressive caucus comes up with a progressive solution to budget woes and its completely panned.
* obama eliminates universal healthcare from all discussions. republicans don’t have to lift a finger and the public doesn’t even get to hear what it is.
* obama worse4 than bush on civil rights: black site, military commisisons, Patriot Act, all the bush trappings, and, AND takes out an assassination hit on a US citizen.
* complete extra-constitutional actions on Libya military acts
* escalates Afghanistan
* extends bush tax cuts for wealth, and, AND further reduces Estate tax, and, AND puts a hit on social security with 2% payroll tax reduction that he will soon make permanent
* turns economy and unemployment disaster over to Goldmen Sachs
* throws women under the bus to buy his crap healthcare boondoggle giveaway to insurance companies
* did nothing to support Wisconsin and Ohio unions, not even moral support
* and on and on and on
for progressives, obama is a Trojan Horse – he is a complete disaster. The only thing positive you can say about him is DADT ended on his watch, more in spite of him then because of him.
anyone supporting obama hasn’t a clue what it means to be liberal, or progressive.
LTMidnight
You dealt the hand, kid. Don’t try to walk it back now. Own what you said.
dr. bloor
@Amir_Khalid:
That’s how Paul Revere pronounced it.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
I was going to post this before, but this thread seems a good place to link it as any.
NR
Yay, someone else who doesn’t know how to read. It’s right there in the article:
But Jane Hamsher is a bitch, so none of this actually matters.
Cat Lady
Jeebus this shit gets old. I used to wish Palin would just go away, but my favorite BJ threads since I started coming here every day (mid 2008) was compiling the lexicon and the piling on Palin threads. Jane Hamsher is nobody doing nothing.
LTMidnight
How the hell is that Obama’s fault?
Which he promised since 2007 to do. But please name me the fantasy liberal president who didn’t take us into military action.
Trumka says hi, kid. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/trumka-obama-very-helpful-in-wisconsin-fight/
General Stuck
Goddam, somebody left the portal to troll hell open, again.
les
@pluege:
Gee, I remember a dude named Bush; and tried to imagine Prez McCain. Your utter failure of imagination does you no credit; you need to get out of the vacuum of your mind, and look around every now and then. Stomping your tiny feet and screaming “utter failure, couldn’t be worse” really aren’t persuasive.
NR
Yes, yes, I know that the rally-round-the-flag message right now is “If we shift over to a chained CPI and wave our hands a lot, we can reduce the amount of money you get in the future without actually cutting your benefits! Cool, huh?”
All I can say is–good luck selling that to voters next year.
Danny
pluege @ 157
….MORANS!
80-90% of self identified liberal democrats hasn’t a clue what it means to be liberal, or progressive?
aisce
so given that hamsher is a thoroughly odious, parasitic, two-faced little con artist and grifter…what exactly does anybody suggest be done about it beyond the perpetual outraged blog post?
…oh wait, you haven’t made it that far yet? oh. well, give it time i guess.
see, me on the other hand, i don’t care about her, her site, or how she makes her money. life is short. and there are actually important and capable people in the world who do far more damage than jane hamsher.
but that’s just me. whatever. enjoy the perpetual outrage.
les
@NR:
Again, fucking comprehension, how does it work? What categories of discretionary spending? What time frame? What compensating revenues? You don’t know jack shit; go have your coronary quietly in the corner, please.
General Stuck
Hey sleeper, still dumb as spit. I’m still here every day, and wouldn’t mind melting down on your stupid ass. So keep talking.
Joel
@161
Usually I don’t comment on these kinds of things, but the irony is delicious here:
You realize that the post you’re quoting actually explains what the discretionary spending means, right?
Trurl
With pleasure…
ANYONE WHO STILL SUPPORTS OBAMA IS A DUMB MOTHERFUCKER
If you think the color of their skin matters, that’s your problem.
El Tiburon
For fuck’s sake, grow the fuck up already. I’ve been ignoring ABL posts for a while, but the sheer stupidity of it all.
OH NOES JANE SAID SOME SHIZNITT Y’ALL!!!! LET’S PILE ON SOME MORE!!!!
Let it go. Let it go. We get it; YOU HATE JANE HAMSHER. Most everyone here hates Jane Hamsher. But I like how you pull this out like you caught her with the red arrow and all.
Fuck.
General Stuck
No one is asking you to. But you don’t get to make shit up, or use made up shit to spam one thread after another attacking Obama with the unverified and anonymous bullshit from a story in the progosphere. So bring some real evidence Obama offered to the wingers a raise in the retirement age, or any other offer of cutting benefits for medicare. Or, if not, then shut yer fucking flyhole with the made up bullshit.
les
@NR:
Ah, chained CPI, your one slim reed of “fact.” SS says, you get a benefit and it will keep up with inflation. Chained CPI doesn’t change or break that promise. It’s interesting how far you’ll go to cling to your betrayal, worst progressive prez ever fantasy; keep trying to be the leftish equivalent of the teabaggers. Fortunately, you nimrods have vastly less influence than you pretend to.
Martin
No it’s not you moron. The $400B in defense spending cuts is part of the $1.2T in discretionary cuts. So is the agriculture subsidies. So are cuts to DHS. Tell me specifically what cuts you’re objecting to – or are you saying you’re opposed to defense cuts?
$0 in saving to Social Security in the $4T proposal. He’s proposed no changes to SS as part of the $4T proposal.
Come on guys, do you have anything but talking points to contribute?
gex
@147
I heart this post.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Firebaggers for Ron Paul 2012: Because who else would self-proclaimed ‘intellectually superior’ hipster douchebags support?
eemom
@ aisce 168
ah, that explains why you’ve spent the last two hours on this post and the last one railing about people on blogs who TALK about Jane Hamsher.
General Stuck
Jeebus ABL, I used to think I had the patent around here for bringing the craziest sumbitches out of the woodwork. But you got me beat by a mile. You even managed to wake up El Tiburon during daylight hours, for a extra spurt of stupid.
Dumb Motherfu*ker
As a long time Politicus reader, I suggest sending Tbogg to PoliticusUSA. The owner and editor has a masters degree in public policy. Maybe they will appreciate his grasp of reality more.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
pluege
Once again, people like you fail to see how Congress actually works, especially with one party willing to destroy the country in order to regain power. The last time a president tried to pass an agenda as liberal as Obama’s, LBJ had supermajorities to the point where the Republican’s couldn’t even block bathroom breaks. Forget 60% of Congress, try 75+%. With that size, people like Nelson, Landrieu, Lieberman, etc., were rendered irrelevent.
Big O’s got some pretty impressive accomplishments anyway. The problem is, the only measuring stick you are using is the I-helped-elect-a-Democrat-and-he-hasn’t-solved-every-problem stick. Well, I think you need to reread your history, and start doing things like comparing this Congress to its true equal, the Congress right before the Civil War.
Danny
aisce @ 168
Traitors and ratfuckers that soil the Liberal/Progressive brand on FoxNews should be called out and ostracized, of course.
Are you against that?
les
@Martin:
Perhaps a little too obviously rhetorical, my man. Although subtlety is probably wasted here…
Martin
ABL still wins, but I think I’ve caught you Stuck. You need to up your game.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
She’s doing a fine enough job of ostracizing herself.
Its all well and good to whack at the pinata, but some of y’all are starting to spook me a bit here.
El Tiburon
Self-awareness not your strong point. I mean, at this ,you are the ying to her yang. You can’t exist without Hamsher. You need her to give yourself purpose. She is the super-villain; you are the super-hero.
Perhaps it would be BJ-frontpage worthy if Hamsher’s comments were making a big splash across the country. But they are not. Your posts on Hamsher simply show your unhealthy obsession with this woman.
She is driving you absolutely batshit crazy and it is getting worn. You done jumped the shark about twenty Happy Days ago.
LTMidnight
Don’t have a problem with it, kid. Just putting it on record.
Good luck support Ron Paul.
General Stuck
I’m trying to evolve to a more enlightened state of asshole
ruemara
Monala @ 126
He’s not proposing himself as a primary challenger, he’s just doing the dance of “Obama can’t win…” Nothing you haven’t seen before and I just found it funny, considering he needs an Obama ticket to regain his seat. If he was offered a primary run by outside interests, it would flatter the old boy tremedously. But I have no doubt that he’s shrewd enough to turn it down. This is, in essence, a grift. It’s an appeal to the base. He will probably go no further than the House, possibly the Senate if he can retain his seat in an off year election, but it will keep those support checks for a run coming in.
joeyess
I said that six months ago….. I would love to have Tbogg writing here. Then this joint would truly be my one-stop blogeteria.
LTMidnight
@El Tiburon
Don’t worry, kid. When the day comes that Jane goes on TV and it’s perfectly clear she isn’t representing anyone but herself, I think you find a lot of people leaving her alone.
But until then, bombs away.
Kathy in St. Louis
Half the comments I read on here seem to miss the point that the economic meltdown we had in 2008, just before Obama’s election, wasn’t just some little pebble in life’s road. That mess is stil reverberating around the world and it doesn’t appear as if most of the o people in Washington are willing to share what a huge mess we’re in, or treat us like grownups and tell us what serious crap we’re going to have to do to sorta, kinda, get this country back on track in my kids’ lifetimes. So, we, the sensible liberals of the world still seem to think that if Obama would just get up off his butt and do lots of nice liberal things everything would be just fine again. He just happens to be trying to keep the country’s head above water while the biggest collection of total assholes in the history of this country work against him 24/7. I don’t like a lot of the stands he has and hasn’t taken, either. But I’m guessing that if we all actually knew how screwed this country is right now, we’d be at the bank in the morning, drawing out every dime we have and hiding it in the sock drawer. He may not be much, but when you look at the rest of the cast of clowns, he’s at least trying. I can’t say as much for the loyal opposition.
Davis X. Machina
Only 188 posts .. and it’s happy hour.
Pikers. A picture of Tunch’s fat ass is good for 110, at least.
les
@General Stuck:
There’s probably some way to figger out if this is more scary or admirable, but damned if I know what it is.
Danny
I’m not talking exile or summary execution here, but rather no invitations to netroots nation or anything else and progressives being vocal with the fact that JH is not one of us. As long as she manages to insert herself into the discourse and get booked on TV.
NR
Talk about moving the goalposts! Cuts to Social Security are now okay so long as they don’t “change or break the promise” of SS. That’s downright Orwellian of you. It doesn’t matter that you’re taking away $100 a month from people in their 80s and 90s making less than $15,000 a year–no, what really matters is the promise.
You’re pathetic.
dogwood
The Other Chuck @ 102:
What would make you suspect that? Edward’s career in the Senate defined bluedogism.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@General Stuck:
Judging by the crazy fuckers that FDL is populated with, I think Calamity Jane used a Thayer-Martin agar plate to attract
her supportersthe Raging Ass Hamsters of the Apocalypse. I really hope she goes full metal Paul on everyone. That would be the cherry on top of the shit-pile of stupid that Calamity Jane has built for herself.Tbogg needs a new home. It already looks like Marcy has decided a new home is in order for herself.
Martin
I’m serious. I see this whining bullshit nonstop here and it turns out these guys don’t know a goddamn thing. If they have a serious objection to what’s in the proposal I’d be happy to hear them out on it, but they don’t even fucking know and don’t even care to find out. It could be $4T in defense spending cuts and they’d still bitch about it because all they do is run around trying to rationalize their “ZOMG, NOBAMA IS TEH EVIL!” mindset.
And I’ll admit that the proposal isn’t all kittens and blowjobs, but the bits that are lost really aren’t worth fighting desperately for given that there are actual gains in there as well. There’s a lot of restructuring how the Medicaid and CHIP state matching formula works, and stuff like that which is expected to generate savings. It’s worth doing even if the savings don’t come because the current formulas cause a lot of the red states to provide shitty benefits in exchange for the maximum federal contribution and that needs to be address, but I think in some of those cases the savings are a bit wishful.
aisce
@ danny
let me know how your calling out and ostracizing campaign works out, ok? i’ll be over here not giving a shit what is said on cable news or on firedoglake, while the president continues to enjoy more than adequate approval ratings on his way to certain reelection.
i guess i just don’t care enough about the liberal/progressive brand getting spoiled. chuckle.
Bruce S
General Stuck – Sam Stein’s report said this: “According to five separate sources with knowledge of negotiations — including both Republicans and Democrats — the president offered an increase in the eligibility age for Medicare, from 65 to 67, in exchange for Republican movement on increasing tax revenues.”
That was several days ago. WH spokesman Jay Carney said “cuts” to Medicare (as opposed to “slash.”) Since there have been several days of reports that shrinking Medicare eligibility and changing SS cost-of-living was put out there as bait by Obama, at this point it’s up to the White House to clarify if this is all total bullshit that’s been made up. It would seem incumbent upon them to rely on something more reliable than your fat mouth to dispute what is now assumed to be accurate reporting. I hope I’m wrong. Of course, maybe the folks you should be cursing are those here who raised a defense of this shit proposal – in the event, of course, that it was verified beyond a shadow of doubt. That’s the “tell” that many of the folks going “emo” against anyone who is vocal in opposing any such suggestion or plan will stand for anything, and thus stand for nothing.
What it boils down to is you’ve got nothing, other than to go into abusive mode – and you also happen to be a flaming asshole with little to nothing to say that doesn’t sound “drunk at the end of the bar” at best.
So fuck off…just to put it in terms you can comprehend.
NR
Right. $1.2 trillion in waste, fraud, and abuse. We can cut that–no problem. Only a fool would think otherwise.
Bruce S
Also what NR said at 196 in response to blatant-while-denying-it defense of cutting Social Security benefits via a change in the inflation index. As I said, the “tell” here is the denials that Obama proposed any such things COUPLED to assertions that if he did, it’s okay.
Pretty rancid shit…
lllphd
wow. fascinating passions here.
fwiw, jane’s histrionics alienated me long before the last general election, and when she went off the rails for hillary, i called it complete quits. what is the need for such slash and burn?? still regularly visit tbogg (i tagged him directly, so don’t have to go thru the main page), and tried to keep up with marcy (hate to admit that, but who can, really?). too sad for jane; whoever said the word ‘clinical’ here, nailed it; and i’m speaking as a professional.
as for how obama has played these negotiations, those of you who have swallowed the leaked crap about his ‘plan’ offering more than the republicans asked for, do pay attention, pray. the rules of negotiations distill to ‘nothing is agreed to until it’s all agreed to.’ hence the need to keep everything behind closed doors and secret, so everyone can remain flex and operating in good faith till it’s done.
obama put on the table more than they asked for precisely because he knew damn good and well they would reject it because it was his offer; it was risky (look at the heat he’s taking from his own constituents!), but it worked. he knows this about them; they will not give him a damn thing. so sorry to say it, but it’s a racist thang; it sticks in their collective craw and they just can’t give him anything. so he can now say to them, look how far backward i bent to compromise with you, and you rejected even more than you asked for! where is that at?? what is this negotiation for if you’re not coming to the table in good faith?
take a look at o’donnell’s assessment of all this; it’s spot on. obama really does know how to play 11 dimensional chess; he can read these idiots like a book, and plays them like a fiddle. just like last december on the budget deal, he made out like a bandit, and they thought they’d won!
so obama took seriously their clear aversion to work with him or even show him respect, and used that very sentiment to expose their bad faith. what has become quite clear is that cantor has been leaking everything that obama has floated, begging him to carve it in stone, demanding he give them the paper, literally. again, nothing’s agreed till it’s all agreed; cantor was breaking the rules in order to demand everything and give nothing; yes, a political tantrum. all obama had to do was feed them enough rope to hang themselves. and it worked. when the business community chimed in (and the maine women rejected entitlement cuts), obama knew he had them and was ready to put his foot down. repeatedly, cantor did not get it. he kept at obama for the goods that he thought he’d won that were only floated, but for the purpose of cantor’s own suicide, as it turns out. but he is just too dense to see that.
this is what reid was getting at when he praised cantor’s ‘honesty;’ it was harry’s very delicate way of warning him to be careful of being swallowed by his own candor, as it only betrayed a stubborn ideology and unwillingness to actually govern for the sake of the country.
and, please note, cantor has now openly apologized to the president for any perception of being disrespectful. the man has been sat down and read the riot act, this is most certain. and not just by his party leaders, but by their daddies, the folk holding the purse strings, all those business folk who sent each and every congress person letters on monday telling them to get this the hell done.
we can only pity the likes of cantor and hamsher, and even norquist (did he really endorse mcconnell!!??), not because they are careering into irrelevance – we should be so lucky! – but because they’re so damaging, and thus will ultimately be reviled and humiliated. i’m just glad marcy is getting out, and applaud her grace in not making a personal fuss over the chaotic nightmare jane has made of the enterprise; i just hope tbogg can relocate (ahem; nudgenudge) immediately.
and oh yeah; in addition to the 75% approval among his own constituents, obama raised more money than all the republicans combined last quarter, 50% more than targeted; utterly record-breaking. and something like 98% from individuals under $250. i don’t mind saying how much i admire and, yes, love the man. not only is his integrity impeccable, but he is utterly brilliant at working this thing. who here pointed out that few if any previous presidents could navigate these fox-fueled waters so masterfully? no kidding; give the man his due, dammit. i’d go to him for advice on maneuvering anything, from kids to professional decisions. he’s grossly UNDER-rated, precisely because he will not brag about what he does so well. he just does it.
and then, of course, there is cantor’s bet against the strength of US bonds; the man’s personal finances stand to gain if we default, for chrissake!!
oh my; i could go on, but have too long already! sorry; this is all just beyond absurd. ABL, luvsya, hon; keep it up!
Martin
You’re evading the question. You’re the one that characterized it as ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’, not me. What in there do you object to?
Mind you, I don’t think the proposal will actually result in $1.2T in reduced discretionary spending as presented, but that should only make the plan more palatable to you since you don’t want any cuts.
So again, what do you object to?
Danny
@ aisce
How it works? If you think someone is a fucking asshole you say so: in your living room, at the workplace, at the bar, at netroots nations or in the comments on BJ. That’s all.
…while continuing to give ample shit about whatever is written about Jane Hamsher on balloon-juice.com.
Every frontpage post about JH you’re there in the comments section, posting again and again that we all ought to leave Jane alone. But shouldn’t you just conserve your energy for something more deserving of your attention, really?
pragmatism
what lllphd said. i don’t understand the whinging about the process. i’m more interested in results.
General Stuck
Teehee, this is the circular logic that is trademark to your commentary. I’ve seen it before, but can’t place it just yet.
It is you that have nothing, but apparent baited rumors by the pro left fools, followed with demands that Obama verify or refute those bullshit stories. Manipulative bullshit from clowns peddling the kind of mendacious drek that the wingnuts peddle in. Pulling out phrases and quotes not in any context and assigning your own suspicious meanings to them.
Maybe you should stop and listen to what Obama has consistently stated in clear unequivocal terms that he won’t agree to tampering with medicare or SS benefits at this time. If you want to palm read he is, or could be lying, then go to hell and do not pass go, or produce named sources.
This president has earned the right to be trusted to do what he says he will do, if it is possible to do. You may not agree with it, but on the big issues, he has been pretty straight with us, as presidents go.
Again, you have nothing, but a big mouth. With a trail of wordy driveling comments all trolling the same nonsense.
Odie Hugh Manatee
“anyone supporting obama hasn’t a clue what it means to be liberal, or progressive.”
I’m not a liberal or a progressive, nor am I a conservative. I’m not even a libertarian. Ask any of those groups about my political stances and they will all deny that I’m one of them. Each would point at another and say that I’m of that political bent. This happens because these groups have these purists who like to dismiss anyone who isn’t pure and 110% for The Cause.
They’re right, I’m not one of them. Unlike them, I am a mix of positions. I live in a world of many colors, many possibilities, and not the black and white one that purists embrace. I can disagree with the president and yet still support and vote for him. I can do this because there is no real, adult option for me, the other political party has gone collectively insane.
Striving for purity means that you embrace failure until you reach purity. That’s just stupid.
Sko Hayes
You know, people that support Obama aren’t dumb, nor are those on the “other” side.
The elephant in the room is that the Republicans own (as in huge majority) the House, where any agreement will have to be written and passed.
People seem to think that Obama has a choice in these negotiations, and he can just blithely offer no cuts to spending, no reforms for Medicare (even though there are several options that would not affect benefits) in exchange for the Republicans in the House raising the debt ceiling. Forget that the one goal of the GOP is to make Obama a one term president. Forget that we’ve had the most obstructionist Republican Senate in the history of the US. Forget the Tea Party and Citizens United.
But because so many people listened to the negative drumbeat issued from our side and stayed home (at least that is what many claimed they would do) in 2010, we lost the House, and lost our majority.
Do you honestly think we would even be having this discussion if we had retained the majority in the House, Blue Dogs and all?
JC
On the back and forth on the Obama numbers, les, Bruce S, HR:
I appreciate the actual numbers in discussion, with the actual analysis of backed up points.
There are DEFINITELY enough Obama quotes, to be concerned, and to raise the alarm, and not be ‘Obama’s got this’. We have a right to be concerned, given the ‘quoted numbers’.
It is ALSO the case, that ‘the deal isn’t a deal until it is agreed to’.
So HR, Bruce S, we don’t know that Obama is going to sell out SS, but les, Stuck, being concerned doesn’t make one a Firebagger.
Last time I looked, Bush cuts were still active, and that is NOT a liberal position. Maybe the best of bad options, but something to be livid about WRT income distribution in this country.
OK?
kc
Bruce S, I wasn’t scoffing, just genuinely curious. I voted for Edwards in the primary, which probably does make me a dumb motherfucker. I happily voted for Obama in the general election.
General Stuck
Prove it asshole, or stfu, if you can’t back up your accusations.
neil
But it really was great when she got Scooter Libby thrown in jail, you have to admit.
Dr. Squid
“Eliminationist” rhetoricSLAP!
How am I “eliminating” you dumb fucks. I am, after all, reminding you to breathe.
metricpenny
ABL, keep doing your thing girl!
John Cole, thanks for hipping me to ABL!!
Jane Hamsher, you’ll find your “dumb motherfuckers” at your home address!!!
General Stuck
What the fuck does this mean? And I will repeat, if you or Bruce S has quotes by Obama that indicate he is offering to change SS or medicare benefits, then let’s see them. Otherwise, you are being a concern troll wanker. Put up, or shut up time.
Martin
FWIW, that’s not in Obama’s $4T proposal either. No cuts to Medicare benefits – only reductions in payments to care providers, that kind of stuff. It’s mainly the proposal to let Medicare negotiate drug prices that results in the savings.
I’m not denying he said it, I’m denying he means it based on it not being in the $4T proposal that was put in writing.
As to the ‘it’d be okay’, that’s a separate issue because I don’t know how anyone solves the long term problem that I previously documented to you without one of 5 things:
1) Means-testing benefits (which everyone says is bad, and I agree)
2) Raising the cap on contributions, which is just a different kind of means-testing, and should align with 1) above.
3) bringing COLA more in line with actual inflation as I’ve documented that it’s currently higher than inflation (so outputs are increasing faster than inputs relative to inflation)
4) incrementally increasing employee/employer contribution percentages to offset the COLA (basically, declaring that both inputs and outputs should increase, which I’m actually fine with, but which nobody has proposed)
5) Reducing total payouts by either steadily raising the SS age or capping benefits.
We don’t do these things smoothly, so we let the system run for a few decades, and then make an adjustment like what happened in the 80s which was basically a combination of a number of the things above. We can keep doing that, but that seems more disruptive to seniors than doing something which is more stable, and COLA is the most stable.
As to the part of SS which is in the worst shape, Disability Insurance, I think increasing the payroll cap is the best way to address that specific issue. It’s not a defined benefits program like OASI is and we don’t need to be as sensitive to the means-testing issue there.
Danny
Yes, also when she passed DADT repeal.
Lojasmo
At one point she must have snorted syphilitic puss after mistaking it for cocaine. Hell of a drug, syphilis.
JC
Stuck,
There isn’t proof. But what isn’t in doubt is:
a. There are many stories quoting floating the option of moving to a Chained CPI.
b. There is analysis that, in most scenarios, a move to Chained CPI would lower benefits.
To be concerned about this, and commenting on it, is not being a Firebagger.
Norwonk
Jane Hamsher has endorsed a Ron Paul/James Grayson ticket, Grayson is going to primary Obama (while simultaneously running as Paul’s VP), Obama never really offered Republicans any massive cuts, it’s just a lie that he talked about cutting Social Security and raising the Medicare eligibility age…
Reading ABL’s threads feel more and more like a trip to one of those Creationist museums. If Hamsher ever mentions the moon landings, you guys will be forced to conclude that they never took place.
JC
Stuck,
If possible, stop being a child. Not every response that doesn’t agree with you is worth cursing at.
1. It WOULD BE BAD and is of concern if Obama is floating moving from 65 to 67 for SS benefits.
2. It WOULD BE BAD if moving to a chained CPI, lowers benefits.
Those are not hard things to grasp.
Bruce S
Great response, General Stuck. Good to see you sticking with the vapidity and manufactured outrage as that’s your strong suit and you have no evidence that these reports are false – other than strength of love of your own opinion. There has not been a single “counter-leak” or denial about either the Medicare or SS issues. I am likely more eager than you for evidence that I’m blowing smoke and this is a false concern – because I actually care deeply about the issues.
Of course, Jay Carney’s comments back up your…oh…wait a minute. “Cuts to Medicare” – maybe you should be yelling at Carney to STFU. Makes your ravings look like some pretty weak shit.
You’d make “asshole” on a good day…if you’re lucky.
JC
Martin,
Good comment, appreciated. I’m glad someone is engaging in some analysis, along with Balloon Juicing up the comment section.
neil
Grayson is going to primary Obama (while simultaneously running as Paul’s VP)
Simultaneously? When has any candidate selected a VP before the primaries are over, i.e. before being nominated?
karen marie
ruemara — How’s the kitteh? When do we get pictures?
Danny
@JC
Is it really correct saying something “lowers benefits” if it causes benefits to be continually adjusted to real increase in cost of living rather than slightly faster?
Maybe I missed something in your and Stuck:s exchange, but that doesn’t seem to be a fair characterization…
General Stuck
Don’t believe I have used that term in this thread. As far as the CPI story, that is bullshit, because Obama is not stupid enough to offer something he could not deliver, that the Senate dems would stop dead in its tracks. Especially, since entitlement recipients have had zero COLA increases the past two years, and seniors are pissed, and dems have been trying to pass one anyway.
As far as the 67 raise to retirement age, that is something that is possible at some point, but won’t happen until we get closer to the time of insolvency for medicare and SS, which is years away.
So, I repeat, there is nothing factual to counter that Obama is telling the truth that any deal will not affect the basic benefits for SS and medicare.
aisce
@ danny
leave her alone? no, i’m saying do something about it then you whiny, gabby bitches. fucking do something about it. less talk, more action. for all your tough talk, you can’t bring down one widdle website?
or aren’t you to the organizing phase of your plan yet? just milking the perpetual poutrage perhaps? lol.
you’re nearly as bad as the fucking firebaggers themselves at this point. 65-70% of the way, i’d say. fuck this shit. fuck the blogosphere. bunch of fucking napoleons squabbling like hens 24/7.
Lolis
We were all cheering when Obama cut Medicare as part of the ACA because he did it while being able to add services to Medicare including an annual wellness exam and more drug coverage. Carney saying cuts to Medicare doesnt mean jackshit.
General Stuck
LOL, you have nothing, but exortations that I prove your lack of having something like real evidence is false. Now go freshen up your clown face, and say something you can back up.
JC
Danny,
Well, here is Yglesias. Over time, the impact is large, if SS is your sole means of support.
But really, medical care issues swamp quality of life issues at this point, for most people.
I do have two great-aunts though, that – luckily – are in awesome health at age 85, and do rely on their SS.
STUCK,
ON CPI proof, look at the link above, it’s relevant.
neil
Two steps forward and one step back is a lot better than just one step back.
Lojasmo
@the sheriff #137
Only the baggers are smart, because only the baggers oppose nobama 100%
This blog is the best blog ever.
Hamster needs a brain MRI.
Trurl
Ask any of the guys in Guantanamo. (In between force feedings, that is.) They’ll tell you.
Bruce S
Martin – Medicare is the most cost-effective medical insurance plan we have in this country (outside of VA hospitals.”)
It is totally wack to isolate Medicare as a “problem.” It isn’t. It’s saving the country money within the actually existing health care system. Unless the problem of health care costs are addressed system-wide, the best thing we can do is support Medicare. The health care system needs to deal with costs as a whole or we’re fucked even more than we already are – precisely because the overall system isn’t MORE like Medicare. Isolating Medicare as a discrete “problem” is dangerous nonsense, to some extent based on total ignorance of Medicare’s relative cost-effectiveness and is taking the discussion totally in the wrong direction. Ultimately, it validates bullshit like Paul Ryan’s destructive agenda. I know that’s not your intent, but frankly, I refuse to engage in a discussion of controlling health care costs that’s centered on Medicare and certainly not one that includes the possibility of shrinking the eligibility. Just as I refuse to address a “spending crisis.” If you get in the wrong argument, you have already lost it. Whenever I discuss this stuff with folks, I widen the scope and put these issues in context. It’s not that hard. What is hard is accepting a bullshit assumption and trying to make something of it that isn’t bullshit.
Martin
Bruce and I have hashed that out quite throughly, and I agree with you. I take the attitude that it’s a benefit cut only if you would also take the position that an expiring temporary tax cut is a ‘tax increase’. Restoring the intended status quo should trump continuing a policy that takes us out of compliance with what was intended.
But I do take Bruce’s point as well. Would it be better for seniors to not do the COLA change? Of course. But that’s not fair to my 25 year old employees that would likely get hit with whatever alternate change had to be made to SS, that would almost certainly have to be more costly to the program. And I think he accepts that – he just doesn’t like the characterization that the COLA change has no impact on seniors.
JC
Stuck,
As well as the above, here is a referring article on the CPI move.
Again, obviously, this may all be Kabuki Theater, this is all through ‘sources’, with their own agendas, etc.
Bubblegum Tate
What the hell happened to Hamsher to send her so far off the rails, anyway? She’s damn near pulling a David Horowitz.
Bruce S
General Stuck: “say something you can back up”
Jay Carney said it for me. “Cuts.”
Go have a drink. Your comments make you sound like a totally ignorant, unhinged jerk unless you at least have a bit of whiskey on your breath.
Kiril
230. General Stuck: I don’t know how old you are, but my retirement age is already 67. Many older people are not aware of this because their retirement age is still 65. Here is a primer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States)#Normal_retirement_age
Danny
JC @ 234
And here’s Drum spending a lot more space on the subject than Yglesias.
Not pretending to grasp all the details myself, but the gist of Drum’s take as I understand it is that chained-CPI is a better measure for keeping benefits in line with cost of living, for the typical benificiary – but the transition should not only apply to SS, and any change is going to have winners and losers relative to the current system because any measure is an approximation and will be more or less correct depending on which group of benificiaries we’re looking at.
It doesnt seem fair to me to characterize that as “benefit cuts”.
kay
I can’t speak for Wisconsin, but I am the county contact for the SB5 repeal effort in Ohio, and you really don’t understand that effort. Ohio has 88 counties, and I live in a rural, conservative county, so maybe it was different elsewhere, but I don’t think so.
This is what I learned in the course of the petition signing campaign (which was very successful, incidentally, we gathered more than a million signatures).
Unions polled on SB5 repeal, and made a careful strategic choice to make it non-partisan. I was told that by the national AFL-CIO contact who spent 4 weeks in-county. We were all told that. They picked up ten points in polling support if they left off a partisan label. There was no Democratic label anywhere near SB5, and that was deliberate. The theme or hook they use is “fairness”.
I’m actually familiar with this (union) strategy because they used the same approach when putting an increase of the minimum wage on the ballot. It polled wonderfully (80%) as a “fairness” issue but we lost support when it was labeled as a partisan effort. I was not directly involved in that signature collection effort, but I was at meetings and such and that was the strategy.
In addition. The state Democratic Party was heavily involved in Ohio, but, again, not as the “public face”. That’s deliberate. Ohio is a 50/50 state and the thinking is we’ll pick up all Democrats, most independents, and swing a substantial number of union-member Republicans who were burned by the law. Just from what I’m hearing here, I think that’s what might happen (although we won’t know until it’s on the ballot).
Anyway, that’s what happened. That’s what I saw and that’s what I heard.
Bruce S
Martin – re 238 – I’m not intending to be rude to you. I just hear so much stuff in the context of this “deficit” framework that drives me nuts and is essentially ignoring context that I feel very, very strongly about it.
General Stuck
Relevant, yes. to the general debate on entitlements, but irrelevant unless you can provide some direct evidence that Obama is offering it to the wingnuts at this time in conjunction with the debt ceiling raise, we are dealing with here.
It is really kind of low, and is where I part with folks who project fear onto Obama of betrayal when there is no evidence to support it. Except random stories and rumors. It shows a lack of basic respect for a president who has done nothing to warrant unverified suspicions, with accusations that run directly counter to his specific statements on the matter. If you folks want to worry, just do it without the projection of the vapors of impending betrayal, and I will shut up about it.
West of the Cascades
ABL means AWESOME Black Lady!! This post made my afternoon. I sooo hope Hamsher comes out in support of Ron Paul – what better way to underscore her irrelevance?
Also, too, where can we sign a petition for TBOGG to move to BJ?
General Stuck
Then spell it out asshole. Here is your chance to become credible. A. provide the link and quote of Carney, and its relationship to whatever you claim Obama offered up to the wingers on SS and Medicare. B. If you can’t or won’t, shut the fuck up, all over again. Due to being a bloviating clown peddling gossip and innuendo. I’ll be here the rest of the night. Take your time, sparky.
MikeMc
Alan Grayson is going to primary Pres. Obama!? Are you fucking kidding me? He’s a one term congressman. Who only got elected because of Obama. Grayson looks awful. His voice is dog-shit. And why is his hair constantly greasy? That dude rubs!
JC
Danny,
That’s a good article, actually. Thanks.
Even Drum acknowledges that the ELDEST among us, under one version of CPI, would get benefits cuts.
The devil is in the details, of course. Simply raising the age where SS money is taken out, is one easy fix to SS.
harlana
yeahyeahwhatevs (Studly Pantload, once upon a time):
That struck me immediately, being one such “survivor” – I don’t feel comfortable using that term myself because what I went through was nothing compared to what Hamsher and so many other women have endured in that regard. I remember relating to her when she had her last surgery (was it her 3rd? and i think she had the mastectomy then) because it was right around the time I had mine which, again, was nothing by comparison.
But now, i’m sorry to say, she appears to have gone mad
Danny
Martin @ 239
Thanks for the rundown!
Fair enough, but if working as intended the impact would be (mean) benefits keeping the same over time realative to (mean) cost of living, rather than increasing slightly faster?
Thats not a “cut” but rather cancelling a scheduled benefit hike, right?
Bruce S
kiril – “Many older people are not aware of this because their retirement age is still 65.”
I’m just a month short of 65 and my retirement age isn’t 65. It’s 66. That’s been the case for about three years. Hasn’t been a flat 65 for almost ten years. (I am very glad, though that I’ve got Medicare to look forward to on my birthday. Luckily, I have no need to retire and don’t plan to until I’m at the least 70, assuming I stay in very good health. If I didn’t have work I enjoy but I’d been working in a poultry plant or some shit like that, I’d no doubt be ready to jump at retirement and would probably be feeling like the walking dead. A lot of these discussions get very class-bound, by the way. Retirement is a vastly different issue for folks in different circumstances as well as different levels of health.)
Stillwater
@General Stuck:
You gotta work on your punctuation, Stuck. But I fixed it for ya.
Danny
Sure, and the question then becomes: is there any reason to assume bad faith or cluelessness from the president wrt getting chained-CPI right?
mr. whipple
Isn’t the the funniest fucking thing you’ve ever read? Jeebus, the firebaggers are nutters.
Bruce S
Martin – in a political ad, a change in the SS cost-of-living index could be fairly characterized as “cuts” and it would have impact. That’s at least one bottom line in the sense of this thing.
JC
Stuck,
I understand that point, however:
I think we went around about this back before ‘the deal’ which kept Bush tax cuts as well. I was afraid that these cuts would stay in, and was sometimes commenting on my concern, sometimes going into fear/freakout/typical BJ mode, and at that time, you said things similar, I believe – no way the Bush tax cuts stay in, at the same level.
And they did.
Yes, Obama got all this other stuff FOR them. He got the best deal he could get from the Rethuglicans.
But I was right to be concerned on the rumors, in the end.
Martin
Indeed it is. Unfortunately is is not as cost-effective as it needs to be, and that is a problem. There are things that need to be addressed with Medicare without Medicare being a bad program. I’m sorry, but I think dumbing down the conversation to avoid being caught in some ‘frame’ or another is worse than simply educating voters.
Seriously, nobody in this country is going to dismantle Medicare. Even the GOP isn’t going to do that. There is a quite predictable long-term arc on health care and it always bends toward single payer. Always. In every nation on earth. It may periodically spasm away from that goal, but it will soon return back to the old trajectory.
I think I’ve made clear repeatedly in the past that one of the best ways to make Medicare more cost-effective is to have a mechanism to bring eligibility in line with eligibility with SS. And in that context and by skipping over some massively important details, I could see some confusion over a proposal by Obama. There are two major problems with how SS/Medicare aren’t tied:
1) Seniors are confused. They can become eligible for one program sooner than the other, and in some years, full eligibility for SS will come after Medicare eligibility. Those should be brought into some reasonable alignment just to help with retirement planning.
2) Medicare is incurring quite serious additional costs due to seniors retiring early (as SS allows) and then going without healthcare for several years, hoping to ‘coast’ to 65, then signing up for Medicare, and then getting all of their untreated conditions taken care of, when all the cost (and health) benefits of preventative care have been wasted. 65 year-olds use more services than 66 year-olds and 67 year-olds because of this, which quite simply should never happen in a properly functioning system.
It couldn’t be a straight-up eligibility move from 65 to 61 because there isn’t the money in the program to do that, but there could be a sliding-scale premium surcharge or something similar that allowed seniors to ‘buy in’ for early eligibility and would be good for those seniors that have pensions or other retirement income. It’d make the system somewhat less confusing, quite a bit more flexible, and it’d reduce costs for Medicare (and improve health) at the same time. Given that we’re going to put a health insurance mandate on those individuals in a few years anyway, that’d be a decent trade-off, and in the spirit of keeping it joined to SS, I could see some consideration of making that ‘buy-in’ surcharge not vanish until 67 for those individuals that have 67 as a minimum age for full SS benefits. That’s not a perfect outcome, but I’d be willing to trade the ability to buy into Medicare at 61 (at a reasonable cost) in exchange for a small cost to those entering the program between 65 and 67, and that might also allow the buy-in for 61-65 year-old be a little cheaper.
General Stuck
I still have a few years before reaching 65, so I’m not all that up on the applied status of folks actually at that age. It does make me wonder what the big deal is, if the retirement age is not really 65, but maybe 67, or 66. Did I fall into a wormhole, where Obama gets accused of doing stuff that is already the case. The shining intelect that is Bruce s , tells us so.
General Stuck
As per the rumors. Obama was steadfast that he expected, and would sign any bill the congress passed with the low end tax cuts extended, that he promised. He never wavered from this . It was congress waffling around every which way. And the wingers refused to separate them. If all of them had expired, that would be a huge chunk of stimulus money taken out of the economy overnight. A bitter pill to swallow letting the rich get by for another 2 years, but there are other benefits to keeping them in place right now with a slow economy.
Martin
I think that’s a fair way to characterize it. Further, it’s canceling an unknown benefit hike. Nobody knows what the COLA is going to be until it happens, so nobody can claim to have factored it into their planning. I’m pretty sensitive to that – don’t fuck with things that they may already be counting on, but nobody can count on COLA to do anything than keep pace with inflation. Nobody is budgeting around an extra $XX next year – or at least they shouldn’t be, because that’s not part of the program. There was no COLA last year because inflation was 0%.
JC
Danny,
Well, the conversation is already pushed so far from what I’d like to see (I still want single payer, after all.), I don’t ASSUME, but I raise concerns . Also, then I get educated, such as this conversation about different modes of CPI.
Kiril
261 Stuck: Nope, it’s just one of those things I feel the need to compulsively correct whenever I see it. Probably because I work outside and when I come home from a day working in 100+ degree heat, sunburned and exhausted and not at all ready to start doing my daily paperwork, I worry about being able to work until I’m 67. And so I just want everyone to be aware that when people talk of raising the retirement age, for me that means until I’m pushing 70. But I’m not blaming Obama. Or you, actually. I see it on the news all the time and I just want people to use the right numbers.
Sad Iron
I have absolutely no idea why anybody would care about this post.
Danny
Bruce S @ 258
Well here, at last, is a fair objection: “it could be demagogued”.
And what then might Obama’s outlook on that be?
I’d say he’s thinking goes like this:
Bruce S
General Stuck – “Obama gets accused of doing stuff that is already the case. The shining intelect that is Bruce s , tells us so.”
Okay – now I get it. You can’t read so you don’t even minimally understand what’s being discussed or what “Bruce s tells us.”
mikefromArlington
Hamsher is the Sarah Palin of the left.
Martin
Yeah, but no policy is going to hit 100%. The cure to the COLA change is to rein in out-of-pocket health care costs – because that’s what’s going to break the policy. And that should be a goal anyway, so why not combine the two? Change COLA which will result in slower SS benefit growth, and pass a number of health care reforms that will reduce health care cost for seniors, since that’s the part of the CPI index that will cause problem.
Oh, hey – some that’s in Obama’s $4T plan! Part of the reforms he’s proposing is to help lower costs for long-term and nursing home care and to somewhat unfuckup the dual eligibility situation (those eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid, who would be the ones most impacted by a SS COLA change).
So that’s already being worked toward.
Martin
They say whatever the hell they want in political ads. Can’t get too worked up about that unless they’re using video of you saying ‘cuts’.
pluege
LTMidnight – July 14, 2011 | 6:26 pm · Link
Congressional progressive caucus comes up with a progressive solution to budget woes and its completely panned.
How the hell is that Obama’s fault?
don’t tell me you’re serious?
1) why wasn’t obama’s budget at least neutral instead of being ; heaven forbid obama start out on a negotiable topic moderately left so when he invariably moves right the end result isn’t quite extreme right.
2) ever hear of the bully pulpit? Its one of the main advantages of having “your” party in the WH. If obama ever used it for progressive purposes instead of promoting republican talking points like comparing the federal budget to family budgets, having to work on deficit reduction in a prolonged recession, etc. conditions in the US could be far, far better than they are.
JC
To follow up on how skewed our dialogue is, we need:
a. A brand new eletrical grid
b. Supermassive investments in modernized transportation infrastructure. I’m thinking China level supertrains.
c. A way to deal with global warming
d. Single payer/universal Medicare
e. Much much better financial regulations, the ones we are putting in place, are already being neutered.
e. A tax structure that deals with huge corporations and their tax breaks that allow them not to pay taxes
f. Legislation – unions, employee check care, but I’m open to other solutions – that deals with the haves grabbing all the productivity and money gains, while the middle and lower classes stand still.
Obama is the mode of pushing the above – very progressive, yet very practical for a country to embrace the current century.
ACA was progress. Infrastructure bank is progress. Nothing on global warming. Small movements towards better finance regulations, but PATHETIC given the 2008 meltdown. NOthing to deal with chasm between haves/have nots.
General Stuck
I understand the worry for folks like you, but I just wish people could get their heads around just how vital SS and medicare are in this society, and aside from all the blathering and posturing, ALL the sane politicians on both sides are loathe to make basic changes to the benefit structure of these programs, UNTIL it is an emergency, or nearly so. SS is not in this cat, but medicare is, mostly due to it being tied to rising health care costs, country wide. Dems in the congress, and Obama, have gone out of their ways in recent months, really since Obama’s SOTU speech, to circle the wagons and draw some deep lines in the sand, on the tea tard assault on the New Deal, largely prompted by the ACA passing, which they fear and loathe.
So in short, basic changes in SS and medicare, are near total off limits at this time, other than maybe some tinkering with the delivery systems of the benefits, but not the bennies themselves. I don’t know how many times Obama and others have to declare this before it is believed.
Bruce S
Danny – just to note that whenever there have been efforts to “strengthen” Social Security, whatever additional revenues become available have gone to finance GOP tax cuts. This is a historical and political fact, and the reasons it’s so have gotten more extreme and worse, not better. Also, someone has to explain to me why the hell we would even want to discuss any changes to Social Security in this context at all. As Nancy Pelosi – who I think is an insane contributor to FireDogLake or some such…anyway she’s important and influential among “progressives – has emphatically state, these discussions of Medicare or Social Security long-term are on a “different table.” It’s a fools errand and a trap to even bring those central issues into discussion in the context of this absurd debt-ceiling tantrum. One thing to haggle over spending cuts in general funds, etc. vs. raising revenue, but these are discrete programs that have absolutely nothing to do with current deficits – other than providing loans to the general fund that have helped paper over the insanity of the religion of tax cuts.
JC
Martin,
Stop confusing me with facts!
Actually, don’t – I do appreciate the info.
If what you are saying is true, it’s a nice inversion by Obama. Adopt the Beltway framing, while also objectively making things better for seniors.
Bruce S
“I don’t know how many times Obama and others have to declare this before it is believed.”
Yeah, Jay Carney really emphasized how crazy the notion of cuts to Medicare was in the current climate…this is so obvious that only an idiot like Bruce S…or Ezra Klein or Paul Krugman or Brad DeLong or Mark Thoma or _____ might suggest there was cause for concern. Fuck those firebaggers…
General Stuck
Still waiting for those links and evidence to back up your bullshit. I just hope you won’t leave us empty handed, after all the wanking how Obama could be selling us out. That would look bad on you.
Danny
JC @ 264
Fair enough, and I’m the first to sign on to concern, attention and finding out the facts being healthy.
But someone like Jane Hamsher is not content with being concerned and finding out the facts – she is instead occupied with demagogueing people into assuming bad faith from and cluelessness of the president.
That’s not the behavior of a champion of progressive interests, or even of a concerned citizen. That’s the behavior of – at best – someone building their own platform to our collective detriment, or – at worst – a ratfucker.
Bruce S
Martin – “Can’t get too worked up about that unless they’re using video of you saying ‘cuts’.”
Carney gave that to them already…
Georgia Pig
Martin @70
And Obama was able to pitch that with revenue increases that could break Grover Norquist’s Svengali hold on the Republican caucus and the majority of the political establishment thought it was a reasonable deal. It seems like some progressives have a tribal dislike of deficit reduction that borders on the irrationality teatards exhibit about taxes. Clowns like Hamsher and Grayson are irrelevant because they don’t have any seats.
General Stuck
Links links links. Or stop making shit up.
Bruce S
General Stuck – you’ve gotten more than you deserved from me. Piss off…
If you don’t even follow the news enough to have seen Carney’s comments in a WH press conference, it’s pretty pathetic to show your ignorant ass here with stupid taunts.
Midnight Marauder
No, it is not relevant.
Plenty of people have survived breast cancer without turning into a repugnant, ratfucking human being.
General Stuck
President Carney said the word “cuts” and Obama is selling out medicare. Yikes, that’s out there man, way way out there.
dogwood
I’m getting confused now. Why would people who don’t support the president care about the impact of negative political ad?. Its like Grayson saying the pres. can’t win Florida. Last time I checked Florida wasn’t the bastion of progressive politics. For true believers, “any true Scotsman” should see losing Florida a a badge of honor.
General Stuck
Which is exactly nothing. Stop creating Obama fail memes you can’t back up, and posting them on this blog, and I will piss off. Otherwise, not so much.
JC
Here is Jay Carney on cuts.
He ‘used the word’ cuts many times, but clearly, in the context of a holistic package:
“The President insists that a substantial agreement that involves substantial deficit reduction has to include all the things that drive our deficits and debt, and that has a balanced approach that includes cuts in entitlement spending as well as cuts in discretionary spending as well as cuts in defense spending as well as cuts in tax code spending.”
When you see ‘cuts in entitlement spending’, you DO have to say ‘hmmm’. But taking JUST THAT would be to take the quote out of context, when there is clearly quite a lot of wiggle room, depending on the details.
As pointed out in some of the great comments by Martin here.
Joel
I think ABL needs an FYM tag.
General Stuck
And how many times has Obama answered specific questions if he plans to cut SS and Medicare BENEFITS and has answered with an emphatic NO NO NO. And yes, martin, as always, fills in the details for this stuff. I just prepare the Obot cannon fire. READY, AIM, SNARK
Danny
@Bruce S
Blaming Obama for past republican sins. But it would be non sequitur to conclude that we can never aim to strengthen social security because the republicans will try to weaken it, don’t you agree?
The “strengthening” proposed here is a remedy to a real flaw – benefits rising slightly faster than the cost of living – and dems holding the presidency and the senate means they’ll have some power to make sure savings really strengthen Social Security and nothing else.
It’s only a drawback to discuss them now if you buy that the republicans hostage strategy gives them leverage.
I don’t think that’s true; I think the opposite is true. We offer what we want to do and call it “spending cuts” and republicans can choose to reject it (giving us austerity cred and making them look unserious) or accept it (and then we get what we want with bipartisan cover and republicans get civil war with the tea party over revenue).
karen marie
pluege: He’s still better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Brian R.
Come on, that’s easy.
Choot Spa was one of the Founding Fathers, even though he was only 9 years old.
Bruce S
“It seems like some progressives have a tribal dislike of deficit reduction that borders on the irrationality teatards exhibit about taxes”
This is totally a-historical. Comparing the critique of Tea Party-induced hysteria over “deficits” to those who oppose deficit reduction as a major focus in the middle of a jobs crisis and with no indication that deficits are even close a level that impacts our ability to do the borrowing that is necessary right now is just stunningly obtuse.
The reason for the current deficits is a combination of tax-cuts and the steep unemployment – i.e. loss of revenues. Martin Wolf at Financial Times had a good piece on this recently. There is not a “spending crisis” – there’s a revenue “crisis” and the only way out of it is to get the economy moving with many hundreds of thousands more jobs every month than we’ve seen, and to increase taxes sensibly once the economy ticks up. Health care costs are a discrete issue and have nothing to do with Medicare – which controls cost in a relatively perverse system better than any other insurer.
No “progressives” were supportive of the Bush tax cuts which pushed us back into a revenue crunch, so far as I know. The GOP demagogued the surplus in order to rationalize their disastrous cuts. Some of the same creeps who are allied with the know-nothings of theTea Party. Not “progressives.” Every “progressive” economist I’m aware of suggests that a modest % of GDP as deficit is always tolerable but that over time we need relative balance – precisely to whether terrible times such as we currently are experiencing. Deficits are neither good nor bad, of themselves. It’s context. Attacking deficits as a problem right now is absolutely counterproductive. And it’s absolutely essential that we understand – and explain such as we can – that the Reagan and Bush deficits were created deliberately in order to undermine the government and “starve” social programs over the long term. They are trying to close the deal on that – using cranks and crazies as the shock troops. Of course, cranks and crazies can also bite you in the ass, as we see in this debt ceiling tantrum that the GOP establishment can’t control.
This assertion comparing liberals who oppose deficit reduction in the context of this economy and this Tea Party-induced “debate” to the Tea Partiers themselves is a stunning bit of false equivalence and lack of comprehension of what the bigger economic and revenue picture – as opposed to rhetoric du jour – actually is and has been.
Nellie
I was a very early FDL reader and am still grateful for Christy Hardin Smith and Marcy Wheeler. But even quite early on, Jane would occasionally just unload with venom and rage on some commentor, totally out of proportion. I learned to be wary of her…and those who were constantly raving over her beauty. The reactions she cultivated were entirely different in scope and kind than the other two women mentioned. When Smith left, the humane voice was gone and then that was it for me.
harlana
Grover Norquist, the spawn of Satan?;
Norquist is a Mooslum.
heavens to betsy, Larry is bitchslapping little Eric, my tender feelings!
Bruce S
Danny – the strengthening that Social Security needs is to treat all salaries the same. Trying to mess with the way benefits are increased over time is not even close to a sensible “solution” to what is actually a very minor problem. And as I keep saying, even discussing Social Security in the context of this debt-ceiling tantrum is playing a GOP card. Makes no sense – I don’t care how good Obama is at eleventy-seventy dimensional chess. If that’s what our political discourse and Democratic agenda gets reduced to, we might as well just declare ourselves the Sane Republican Party and get it over with. I’m sure that would give both David Brooks AND Thomas Friedman a leg tingle. Maybe Evan Bayh would deign to come back and play…
Mike Kay (Team America)
What a beautiful post.
But ya know what, Jane Hamsher is a useful idiot.
She only serves to inflame obama supporters into making more and larger contributions. She’s the electricity that runs the ATM machine of donations.
If hamsher didn’t exist, David Axelrod would have to invent her.
JC
Danny,
That sounds GREAT. But, compare it to this from Ezra Klein:
The part I’m interested in, is that ‘the $4 trillion deal that the White House offered Boehner was 3:1 spending cuts to tax increases.’
I’m no mathematician, but it seems to me that your statement and the 3 to 1 ratio are at odds.
Can we REALLY ‘offer what we want to do’ (where this means progressive/democratic priorities), at a 3 to 1 spending to revenue ratio?
That would require Jesus level powers, wouldn’t it?:
“Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
“We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.
“Bring them here to me,” he said.
And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.
Bruce S
Combine Carney’s clear words – even in context – with the lack of any rebuttal to what Sam Stein has reported and, frankly, it’s nothing but slander to reduce to “Firebagger” any response or concern with the clarity of, say, Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders. This is why Democrats are always fighting on GOP turf, more often than not with GOP “plans” from ten years ago (or maybe weeks) being put forward as the liberal “alternative.”
It like some bizarre liberal self-hatred combined with worship of “The Leader” as the guy who is going to pull everything out of the fire at the last minute. Glad that it works for some…
Danny
@Bruce S, Re: Liberals and deficit reduction
I feel that some otherwise solid netroot bloggers – e.g. Steve Benen – sometimes are a bit lazy about always making clear that Keynesians such as me, him and Obama doesnt want big cuts right now in the middle of a recession, but we do want long term deficit reduction.
This is a bit dangerous because it muddles the “progressive position” to at times sound like “deficits dont matter” when it’s really “deficits dont matter as much right now as some other things, but they do matter long term”.
I believe Obamas actions are perfectly in line with the latter sentiment. There’s no reason progressives should resist a long term deficit deal that is fairly in line with progressive policies – but with some concessions we can stomach – as long as we get stuff done we want done anyway and it doesn’t put the recovery in jeopardy.
JC
Is Ezra right?
I know some of this is litigated above, but what is up with the rise in Medicare eligibility?
Is the pro-Obama position that this ‘won’t be in the deal”? or the pro-Obama position that this is a GOOD thing?
General Stuck
Nope, it’s simple. You were peddling bullshit all over this blog today, and got called on it. No harm no foul. Just expect to be challenged to back up your allegations, is all. It’s a BJ tradition. Tomorrow is another day.
jaleh
Who is Jan Hamsher?
Steaming Pile
What I want to know is whether they would support the idea of a primary challenge. Not from some pipsqueak like Dennis Kucinich, a serious candidate. Then I want to know how they expect to convince said serious candidate to run.
The choice in ’12 is between Barack Obama and some right-wing nutjob yet to be determined. If the GOP were smart (the jury’s still out on that), they’d pick Romney, but they’d have to properly lobotomize him first. Either way, you’re getting someone who would make George W. Bush look like a super genius.
I don’t know about the firebaggers (I think they’re infiltrators myself), but of those two choices, I’d gladly pull the lever for four more years of Barack Obama, if for no other reason but to make the teabaggers froth at the mouth some more.
Bruce S
Stuck – digging a deeper hole, I see. You’ve got nothing. Have had no response to to my comments that even borders on rationality – just taunts and admissions of ignorance. You will ignore what you want to ignore and make up shit to fill in the gaps. When I said “piss off” it really wasn’t necessary to piss on yourself one more time…
General Stuck
I doubt Ezra knows the details anymore than anyone else. But as has been stated, it was pre known that such a large grand bargain type proposal was a dead fish from the git go with the requirement of tax increases attached. Anyone who follows politics even a little knows, or should know, that is a giant poison pill for any republican to agree to, no matter the rest of the deal. Ezra is doing what a lot of others are doing, irresponsibly reporting stuff not properly sourced or verified. And reporting it as a deal the administration put out in good faith. It was not. It was a trap that trapped the weasels pushing all this nonsense.
Obama set out to expose the wingnuts for their duplicity about caring for the deficit, as opposed to getting more cash transferred to the plutocrats. Looks like mission accomplished to me. but ymmv.
Cain
@149 Amid_Khalid
I assume you know the meaning of “choot”? :)
cain
General Stuck
Bruce S
YAWN
Jay
Because, I suppose, I have a far – off hope that one more message might help to convince our fearless leader to recruit him for this site, I’d like to add my voice to those asking Cole to make a pitch for TBogg’s services. :-)
Caz
What you wrote about her applies exactly to this site. Exactly. Except I tend to see asshole more than dumb motherfucker on here, but that’s a minor distinction.
CaliCat
Jane and her ilk are losers and they know it. I’m not surprised that she would resort to name calling – sad little woman that she is.
Danny
@Bruce
This is actually quite unresponsive to what I wrote, frankly.
You don’t adress why it’s a good thing that SS benefits rise slightly faster than cost of living (without benificiaries knowing about it). You don’t adress my point that whether it’s good to negotiate it now depends on if we have leverage or not.
You bring up irrelevant stuff – e.g. start talking about “eleven dimentional chess” etc; i wasnt bloviating about Obama as strategic genius, I was suggesting specific stuff that you can agree with or disagree with.
Changing the subject looks like a copout. You have to decide whether you’re more interested in discussing facts and reality, or clinging to your suspicions about the reliability of Obama as progressive stalwart.
As of now, you’re bordering on wasting my time.
The thing i’m sensing you’re trying to get at that has most substance though is the old chestnut about accepting or not accepting the framing that “deficits” and “spending” are urgent problems (rather than e.g. “jobs”, “the economy” and “revenue”).
Trying to adress that quickly:
– The republicans won the midterms +70 in the house, +7 in the senate. Deficits and spending were at the core of the teaparty movement. That, and conservative Village clout and messaging infrastructure means they have a good shot at setting the agenda after the midterms.
– 1 Trillion $+ deficits / yr means that full frontal assault by bully pulpit pushing the message that “deficits aren’t a big problem” would be perilous. Democrats ran on Bush deficits just a couple of years ago. Polling shows that a large majority do want something done.
– Polling also shows that a plurality thinks that jobs are more important than deficits. But Obama cant get any jobs legislation passed whatsoever without the house signing on. Which means that he cant actually create a single job. Thats the consequence of the midterms. Of losing. Of too many democratic voters staying home.
Shade Tail
Bruce S.:
…writes the person who conspicuously refused to actually provide any evidence when challenged…
Bruce S
Danny – I have a serious problem with linking “deficit reduction” to a discussion of Social Security or Medicare. They have nothing to do with the deficits. It really is that simple. And, frankly, the issue of deficit reduction needs push back, not acquiesence IN THIS ECONOMY. Sometimes Obama is good on that, sometimes not so good. Most of his spokes people tend not to be very good. If Krugman, et al aren’t going to hammer this fundamental point home – in the face of a “conventional wisdom” debate that is driven by sheer hysterics and demagogy re: taxes and deficits – who the hell is. It would be lazy NOT to keep at this fundamental of sane economic policy. Frankly, the jobs numbers are so bad, that harsh reality is going to trump any more complicated discussions if it doesn’t change. But it points to just how bad and near-insane any suggestions that “deficit reduction” are an issue actually are. And you’re aware that there is no significant deficit over ten years of budgets UNLESS CONGRESS CREATES IT by extending the tax cuts and legislating increases in Medicare payments. As Ezra K has noted, this is not necessarily across the board the best budget plan on Congress part, but most people don’t even have a clue that this is the case. Overt action to extend tax cuts is assumed, when in fact that is a vote for deficits.
I don’t think the laziness is coming from Krugman, et al. The debate is already muddied with tax-cut religion and lies coming from the TeaParyized GOP. It may not be easy to “unmuddy” but I can’t seen any point in a critique of push back on the deficit hysterics. We’re in a deep crisis – even assuming that Wall St, et al discipline their bad children and we get over this debt ceiling BS. There is no “eleven dimensional chess” that can create at least a hundred and fifty thousand jobs a month, which is what we need to even begin to climb out of the hole we’re in. Only sound economic policy. And “deficit reduction” isn’t it.
It’s like worrying about leaky plumbing when your house is on fire.
JC
Stuck,
that statement may be true, and is basically what O’donnell has been giving a discourse on for the last week.
but I doubt this:
That statement is an assertion, not backed up by evidence. Lots of other reporters are saying the same thing. Seems the offer was verified.
But as you say, could be in the context of getting A LOT of other stuff in the ‘budget deal’. Which we’ve never had the full context for, and isn’t a deal until the deal is inked.
Bruce S
“…writes the person who conspicuously refused to actually provide any evidence when challenged…”
General Struck proved himself incapable of any respectable challenge. Meanwhile JC provided the Carney quotes about “cuts to entitlement spending” and you can google Sam Stein’s article that used four or five anonymous sources. I have no evidence from Sam Stein’s reporting not to take him as a reasonably credible source. It may well be that the White House wanted this leaked in that form as part of the ninety-seven dimension chess that is saving the Democratic Party. I have no idea. I do no that Carney made a clear reference to cutting entitlement spending in the context of this debt ceiling bluffery, which is not a good thing for reasons I shouldn’t have to explain to an intelligent person, and there was no denial coming from the White House regarding the “anon” reports. If in that context, I – or Bernie Sanders – becomes a “firebagger or whatever other lame shit this little jerk General Stuck pulls out of his ass because we start to make noise in opposition to the very idea of shrinking Medicare and reducing SS benefits (relative to scheduled cost of living adjustments – which if they are cost of living aren’t really “increases” except nominally), I’m just too fucking sorry.
Meanwhile, enjoy your complacency and the General’s dishonesty.
General Stuck
regardless of my characterizations, the fact remains it is Ezra who needs to verify his claims, not I . He is making the assertions of substance on the issue. I am just stating an impression I have, due to the lack of verification of their sources from Ezra and others.
There was a time, when i would accept unnamed sourcing from a lot of reporters and pundits, as likely true. Not anymore, and with all the bullshit floating around these days, I;m surprised any one does.
Just Some Fuckhead
He’s not a real general, FWIW.
Bruce S
Danny “we offer what we want to do”
It’s sure as hell not what I want to do – not even close. Any worries about increase of Social Security benefits over cost of living when we’re not even taxing upper levels of income for SS at all, while middle and lower income folks take a full hit, is demagogy over the widow’s mite. I’m happy if many of those folks are getting a little bit more. That’s not what’s created the current deficits. Not even close. Deal with the revenue end and then we can talk. Until then, good for Grandma. Maybe she can have a meal out with friends occasionally. (As for “means testing”, I’d say only at the very top ends – but it would be better just to hit those folks when they’re earners by raising the salary baseline to include the really big incomes. Means testing opens another door we would be better off just keeping shut unless absolutely necessary at some future date.) All of these schemes that work on the benefits end are also crappy politics – because they are ripe for blurring the Democrats’ commitment to the programs.
eemom
@ 319
but you’re a real fuckhead. fwiw.
Danny
JC @ 299
But that assumes once again that everything we brand as “cuts” can’t also at the same time be solid progressive policy.
But as established numerous times by now “cuts” can be defense cuts, lower medicare supplier reimbursement rates, chained CPI, and other things progressives would love to pass at any time.
So a focus on “cut”/”revenue” breakdown is simplistic.
But I do think focus on that very breakdown is exactly what Obama wanted! in fact, he himself established that very framing in his april deficit reduction speech. Did you hear Ezra or anyone else talk these breakdowns before that?
His reason should be crystal clear by now: he wanted his really rather progressive negotiating bids to appear to be much more centrist than they really were in order to make the republicans intransigence crystal clear to the electorate.
Not saying there were never concessions offered – only that thinking that Obama’s bid is aptly characterized as republicans get 3, democrats get 1 is likely way off target.
General Stuck
They clearly were proposing letting medicare bargain for lower prices to “cut entitlement” spending. You were and still are pushing the false meme that benefits are on the chopping block, and there is no credible evidence of that. and now you flop around with gibberish, making a fool of yourself. Just call it a night already. Like I said, tomorrow is another day.
General Stuck
Yes, and thank you.
Bruce S
Obama’s bid – so far as the best info I’ve seen from Ezra K and others – was, on paper at least – Republicans 6.7 v. Democrats 1. (87% cuts to 13% revenue – although I’m terrible at math.) Maybe that can be spun or dissected to show a better outcome, but I don’t see that as cause for celebration or much room for a “liberal” agenda that can stimulate eonoomic growth being put forward in the context of 18,000 crummy jobs last month.
All the rest of this stuff is Kabuki – unless that number changes very dramatically and very quickly, we would all do well to start working in the GOP primaries for Michele Bachman ASAP. Because we’re going to need some serious crazy to counter the impact of an economy this bad on an incumbent, no matter how “unfair” or hyped up and “know-nothing” it is to stick him with the blame over the far more culpable GOPers. The theatrics of this debt-ceiling BS will be long forgotten in Nov. ’12.
Danny
Bruce S
Loosing credibility fast. You’re avoiding substance and going for demagoguery.
Without you clearly coming out as a doubter that chained CPI will in fact keep benefits constant relative to cost of living, this makes no sense whatsoever. You havent done that yet. Are you about to? Do it or retract and shut up.
Your M.O. is consistent with wanting to advocate against Obama simply not trusting Obama – but not consistent with actually wanting to discuss on the merits.
CaliCat
Jane is very much like Sarah Palin in that she has a fan base of crusty, older white men (in this case Naderites) who swoon over her. Beyond them and some PUMAs, no one pays much attention to her.
Danny
@Bruce
Anonymous sources, all of which have plenty incentive to spin. Obama with little incentive to deny, given that he wants to appear oh so reasonable. See my post @322.
Marginalized for stating documented facts
Jane Hamsher’s statement is accurate. The comments here prove it.
Bruce S
“Do it or retract or shut up”
Danny – sorry, but if you can’t deal with my comment without going crap on me, you’re the one not capable of discussing merits.
I am dead serious in my comment. If anyone is talking about cutting the index of inflation so that benefits to seniors – relative to what they’ve had built into the schedule for decades – are, yes, CUT! in the context of a bullshit debate over the debt ceiling – or anything related to current deficits, you’ve got a lot of fucking nerve accusing ME of demagogy.
I have made several clear points. One is that this discussion has no place in this bullshit, distorted context of “deb ceiling” negotiations. Two is that we aren’t taxing income equitably, and that is where we should start. And, yes, three is that if Social Security benefits are slightly generous in the context of the particulars of how COI impacts seniors, I truly could care less until we get One and Two out of the way.
If that’s not credible to you, we don’t have the same values. Nor do we share the same experience of politics, since these are the kinds of details that only policy wonks care about. When it comes campaign ad time, if the Dems have fucked with the COI index, lowering anticipated cost-of-living increases, we are toast.
If you can’t recognize any of that as substance, I can’t help you out any further. And I sure as hell don’t want you advising any Dems…
Bruce S
Re Danny 328 – So absolutely everything reported by folks like Ezra Kleiin is bogus. Sure hope you’re right, Danny. Sure hope you’re right. My guess is I hope you’re right even more than you do.
Danny
Sure, real problem. Even worse, Obama cant do jack shit about it without republican help.
Because to few of us voted in 2010.
Contributing to that was in some part netroot bloggers casually joking about silly and stupid teapartiers while yawning or complaining about perceived insufficient democratic accomplishments.
Rather than telling the truth: that the teabaggers were a lethal threat to the recovery and our country and that we all should vote (D) as if our life depended on it.
Food for thought.
Here as well, Jane Hamsher owns a some share of the blame (even if her reach is quite limited).
We progressives have a lot of work to do in getting our institutions to behave in a healthy way; advancing our interests and policy goals at all times.
Mike Kay (Team America)
Exactly. Digby dislikes obama probably more than hamsher. Digby is a better writer, and doesn’t have the Hamsher’s racist baggage. But digby doesn’t get the attention because she’s fat.
here’s a photo of digby and jane in the same frame.
http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/files/bagnews/images/Digby-1a.jpg
you can see why jane gets more attention. blogs have been around for 10 years and they’ve always been like an extension of high school.
Danny
No, I think that when Ezra writes that “anonymous sources says”, then anonymous sources really have said. And then he interprets what that means and perhaps he frames it for the reader.
I offered my interpretation. Solely appealing to authority is rather unconvincing when you also avoid addressing the merits of my full proposition in any way whatsoever.
Danny
The point is that the index was always meant to reflect real increase in cost of living, but it doesnt. That means that benefits increase without benificiaries knowing it. But they arent supposed to increase (without new legislation) they’re supposed to stay the same.
If you want to say: “I don’t believe that chained CPI will mean that seniors will keep todays benefits adjusted to real cost of living”, fine do so. Make an argument for it and support it with facts that shows why you’re right. But if you cant, you should smell the coffee and cut your losses.
AxelFoley
Wow, and I thought Republicans were the ones who loved to project.
Oh, wait…
Bruce S
Danny – here’s how the coffee smells. We’re having a discussion of cutting the cost of living index to Social Security in the context of a debt ceiling debate that has nothing to do with SS in any way, shape or form, and we’re nitpicking details that only an economist or policy wonk could possibly give a shit about without dealing with the revenue issue that is the elephant in the SS room.
That’s the smell of the coffee. If my “losses” need cutting, I’ll decide when. Meanwhile, I’m staring at some pretty large “losses” on your side of this discussion. It’s a “loss” before you even try to “win.” I don’t care about these indexes at this point. It’s that simple. They are not the problem and no one can comprehend this stuff at ground level and IT WILL BE DEMAGOGED to Dems’ detriment if we’re the ones who initiate it as the first chapter in “strengthening” SS.
Having this piece of the discussion on these terms is ingesting a bunch of GOP BS as predicate. You’re not making any coffee. You’re digging a hole.
stinkdaddy
That’s some mighty fine lack of self-awarenessing you’re doing there. “She spews whatever comes to mind,” says the person who wrote the 300 word post to tell us that Jane Hamsher said a mean name.
What stage is your Hamsher Derangement Syndrome at, btw?
Oh and this fundraising thing? I’ve yet to see a single leftie complaining about the fundraising. (But there we go again — maybe I just don’t follow FDL and the like as obsessively as ABL et al.) There’s been some pointing out that the 98% figure the WH is giving isn’t accurate, but other than that it’s entirely Wise Moderates repeating the WH’s take on the numbers verbatim and then going HA HA FUCK YOU FIREBAGGERS. Could you fuckers possibly project more?
Bob Natas
I can’t believe these firebaggers! They make me so mad!
Now I see the wisdom of his master plan! A possible debt downgrade in exchange for a political win, which will be forgotten by next November. He will appear tomorrow at 11 to give some instruction. Remember: “As time runs on, the president’s hand only strengthens!”
So here’s the thing: we are supposed to believe the Larry O story; we are supposed to also think that the GOP is sociopathic. What happens if the GOP calls the bluff? It is Sept 2008 all over again, with no second chances.
Bruce S
“you also avoid addressing the merits of my full proposition in any way whatsoever”
I honestly can’t say I know what your full proposition is. On the SS side of this discussion, it seems to be an obsession with indexing SS as the essence of any discussion about Social Security (a discussion which I will adamantly object to having in the context of debt ceiling BS because it’s a bogus issue and allowing the wrong people to set the wrong parameters, undermining the truth about SS’s relative solvency as well as the fact that it’s relative solvency was used by the GOP to FINANCE TAX CUTS. COI isn’t even close to a sensible talking point.)
As for the larger thing about whether shrinking Medicare eligibility or the cuts in SS COI – which you are defending – were “on the table”, the important point from my perspective is that IF THERE WAS A CHANCE THEY WERE BROUGHT INTO THE “GRAND BARGAIN” – and it seems likely from the reporting, or Obama wanted people to think they were, although it’s obviously not proven absolutely – it doesn’t matter if there is absolute proof. Decent Democrats should loudly object to the idea of them “being put on the table.”
As I’ve said before, if Obama is such a genius chess player, the noise that someone like me or Pelosi or Bernie Sanders makes objecting to such a notion MUST be included in his gaming this thing. “Make me not do it!” perhaps. But I’ll be damned if “Obama is a great chess player and we should wait until he’s actually made whatever compromises might appear unavoidable before we speak up and defend a coherent liberal agenda” strikes me as a plan for anything. That pretty much reduces me to a version of Chuck Todd, babbling about the gamesmanship or who is winning.
I’m about the core issues. I can have very little impact – I’m realistic about that, but simply admiring Obama’s skills and telling anyone passionate about the issues – and frankly Bernie is my man on this one – is no impact at all.
Martin
The analysis I’ve seen of what was distributed in writing to various agencies and the like could in one interpretation be seen as $3 cuts:$1 tax revenue. That’s a good way to spin it to try and win over moderates and republicans, but that’s not really how I’d characterize it. What I’ve seen is more like this:
$1 tax revenues:$1 savings in debt service:$1 in defense cuts/healthcare cost savings:$1 cuts or elimination of subsidies.
When you look at it how the WH is presenting it, it looks like a big concession from Dems. But when you look at the details, however, 3/4 of it is stuff Dems want (revenues, debt service, defense/healthcare) and 1/2 is stuff that Republicans want (debt service, subsidies). Everyone likes paying less interest… Adding that into the ‘deficit reduction’ is a big slippery though. The whole objective of deficit reduction is to knock down debt service, so they’ve moved one of the goals of the effort and counted it as a contribution to the effort. That’s hinkey, but it makes Obama’s plan look much more generous on his part than it really is (not that the GOP wouldn’t do precisely the same thing, so fair is fair).
What’s both funny and annoying about this is that Obama’s plan is supposed to piss off the left – that’s what gives it credibility with the people that don’t pay attention. “Obama offered $4T in cuts and boy are those hippies pissed.” It’s not until it gets passed that he goes up and gives the other presentation, the one that talks about all the stuff he got for Dems – Medicare negotiating prescription drug prices, cuts to defense, and so on. This is EXACTLY what happened during the budget fight in April and EXACTLY the same people fell for it, because (and this is the annoying part) they still don’t pay any damn attention and swallow the pitch that was designed to win over moderates and proceed to pee your pants.
As to the discrepancy in what Ezra reports – I don’t know what he’s looking at, but what was scored by the administration has no Medicare eligibility or benefit changes and no SS changes. But all the other numbers seem to line up perfectly. Maybe he’s got something older or newer than what I’ve seen, which I don’t discount at all, but it looks more like he’s combining what was presented with what Obama is reported to have floated verbally.
I’m not discounting that these things may be discussed in these meetings, but there are no changes to benefits, eligibility, or any of that in the proposal. Nothing at all relative to SS, and for Medicare it’s just giving CMS more power to negotiate drug prices, the ‘pay for delay’ regulation, some health safety stuff (looking like pushing out the MRSA hygene guidelines) that is expected to generate savings, and giving IPAB more power to drive down prices. It’s cost saving without impacting benefits.
I’ll also point out that Obama was supposedly to have proposed raising SS to 70 in the budget negotiations, so I strongly suspect that stuff is getting leaked out there merely to distract and establish a particular narrative.
stinkdaddy
So the BJ consensus seems to be that calling people dumb motherfuckers is way outt’ve line and has no place in blogospheric discourse.
Weird how nobody got upset when Cole called the firebaggies “Clinical” the other day. Saying someone has a mental illness is fine, but saying they’re unintelligent is shocking and horrible and we must sound the alarm. Got it.
A couple minutes scrolling back through recent posts will yield even more examples, but why bother? This blog goes full paroxysm on a daily basis. In general the people here don’t give a shit about internal consistency, they care about shitting on people they don’t like and defending people they do by taking whatever position is necessary to do so at a given moment.
Yeah, I could take out “here” and still have an accurate statement. That’s people in general. But damn you all are showing your hypocritical asses here.
karen marie
The sturm und drang in this thread is impressive.
Lots of peeps with their panties in a twist.
I recommend gin and Izze and then a walk in the park.
I am peeved enough at the Dems that I changed my voter registration from Democrat to unaffiliated after 30 years as a Democrat, but I still will not vote for anyone but a Democrat come November 2012.
CaliCat
Mike Kay – Both Jane and Sarah use their relative good looks to manipulate an older, male fan base. They affirm their political views while playing the fantasy girlfriend role. And irresistible tonic for over-the-hill boomers who probably don’t get laid much anymore.
Bruce S
Martin – you seem to be explaining what the details of the proposal are when…there’s nothing decided and the proposal is akin to vaporware. This is as much speculation on your part as anything else. It’s all talk interpreting whispers. My figures were via Ezra Klein, who I find to be a generally reliable blogger. He was invaluable, at least for me, during the health care wars.
I guess my only point, and you have every right to be tired of it because I am, is that grassroots Democrats are absolutely doing the right thing if they are drawing lines in the sand on core issues like shrinking Medicare eligibility, even if Obama is just using it in some tactical triple-flip jiu-jitsu and Eric Cantor will walk out of this wearing only his underwear. Nobody knows.
But it doesn’t make sense to me to rationalize stuff – including very IMHO dumb linking of certain totally unrelated programs to these particular talks – or simply counsel “trust” and “calm” when there is undeniably cause for concern that they even MIGHT be under negotiation. I don’t discount that Obama is playing all sides – in which case I don’t want to let him down.
wazmo
Wow. I’ve never seen a BJ comment thread go this apeshit ever. Did someone do a silent re-direct from Fox Nation while I wasn’t paying attention?
gwangung
Given Obama’s past MO of counter punching and exploiting his opponents fervent desires, I’m not sure why folks are discounting his playing all sides. He’s certainly more savvy than his opponents give him credit for; I think it’s OK to allow for that possibility even when you think he’s making a big mistake.
Martin
Uh, no, because everyone is peeing the floor over what Obama proposed. I’m telling you precisely what Obama proposed in writing, apparently to Boehner, which he’s publicly gone back to every single time. And the numbers I’m presenting line up perfectly with what everyone else is reporting, and I’m explaining what those numbers constitute. Could it change? Of course. But if you want to know what that $4T is comprised of, I’m telling you based on what the scoring of the proposal reveals. Will it be what we get? Well, certainly not, but that not the discussion either. From the outset, the discussion has been about what Obama has proposed. And from the outset everyone is saying that Obama is backing an austerity plan, selling out entitlements, and so on, and I’m telling you none of those things are in the proposal and it’s reasonable to assume that Obama isn’t about to do the exact opposite of his own proposal.
Danny
@337
Marked in italics are weasel words meant to sound like benefits are being cut. I asked you to clearly state whether you believe that benefits would be cut or whether they’ll stay the same with chained CPI. You – once again – obv elected not to dare take that public stand instead opting for deceptive language.
I say that typical/mean benefits wont be cut if done right; they’ll stay the same as today, more accurately adjusted to real increase of cost of living. I’m asking you to have some f-cking balls and transparently agree or disagree. But if you ain’t got em (balls), what respect do I owe you really?
If the change strengthens Social Security while not cutting benefits, it’s worth doing whether they are related or not, because we can get it through congress with bipartisan cover.
It does not follow that one sensible reform is pointless because there are other, even more sensible reforms.
I’m saying that you should back up your f-cking implied claim that with chained CPI we should be so lucky if maybe granny will get to eat out once in a while.
Sure you can choose not to do so and instead persist in the weasel language hiding in the closet without daring to say whether you think chained CPI will really make granny’s finances worse than it is today or it wont; but if you cant stand up for yourself and argue a position on the merits you lose credibility and respect. In my eyes at least.
That’s the coffee.
Well you shouldn’t talk a good game and then later admit you dont know shit then.
I think I managed to get a fair understanding and I’m no expert. By being interested in facts. Funny that.
Not if they are passed with bipartisan cover. (And shouldnt O. by nutroot logic Obama be able to just use the magical Bully Pulpit to undemagogue it? See below)
It’s political ju-jutsu to take advantage of republican messaging superiority and still get good stuff done.
Your frustration caused by a real problem (FoxNews, Rush Limbaugh, Halperin, Brooks, The Village wired 4 conservative narratives + us loosing 2010 midterms in a landslide) makes you rage at people that are trying to make lemonade out of the lemons they were dealt.
You want the president to use the “Bully Pulpit”, because some blogging know-nothings convinced you that the “Bully Pulpit” is a magical artifact that can be used to set the D.C. agenda to our liking at any time, and make FoxNews, Rush Limbaugh, Halperin, Brooks et al shut up and the 2010 midterm loss disappear.
But in reality what you’re advocating is for the president to risk falling valiantly on his sword and to take our core message with him; To see him go down fighting the good fight, because at least that’s gratifying, if only for a couple of minutes.
If you want an illustration of what can happen in the real world when a message gets shot down – look at Dukakis & the death penalty ’88. It went third rail.
I sympathize, but we got to act smarter. The root cause of your frustration can only be dealt with by getting our own infrastructure – as powerful and working as effectively as conservatives have. That won’t happen over night though, and not in time for the debt ceiling showdown.
Danny
What I was referring to was my propositions:
– that solely looking at cut/revenue breakdown is simplistic, because there are things that can be branded as cuts that are progressive policy goals;
– that anonymous sources have incentives to spin what was offered in negotiations;
– and that Obama doesn’t have very strong incentives to correct inaccurate spin on the record in this particular case.
I made all those points (@322, @328), you responded by not responding, but instead implying that what I said contradicted Ezra’s reporting (not really). That was an appeal to authority with nothing of substance added to it (@331).
Bruce S
FWIW, my “appeal to authority” so anyone is free to dismiss it – but Nate Silver – at FireDogLake? or someplace – is a smarter and generally better informed “firebagger” than I am:
“The average Republican voter, based on this data, wants a mix of 26 percent tax increases to 74 percent spending cuts. The average independent voter prefers a 34-to-66 mix, while the average Democratic voter wants a 46-to-54 mix:
“Now consider the positions of the respective parties to the negotiation. One framework that President Obama has offered, which would reduce the debt by a reported $2 trillion, contains a mix of about 17 percent tax increases to 83 percent spending cuts. Another framework, which would aim for twice the debt reduction, has been variously reported as offering a 20-to-80 or 25-to-75 mix.”
Best case according to this “authority,” Obama’s offering comes out as “average Republican.”
Odie Hugh Manatee
The Prez has done a heck of a job of convincing Repubs that he’s ready to embrace financial Armageddon. You can tell how well by the number of Chicken Littles on the left that are cluck-clucking about the sky falling. That’s the preferred MO of the manic progressive left; when all you expect is fail then everything is fail. To them, perfection is everything and failure is everything else. They believe that if you are going to fail then you should fail spectacularly.
Obama used the cards he had in hand to push the Repubs into disarray and the Hamshers of the left are pissed. At Obama..lol! Until something is on paper and agreed to, nothing changes. Nothing. Obama could promise them anything he wants but until it’s on paper and agreed to, it’s nothing but words. Obama knows how to use words to his advantage and he did so in this situation. No eleven-dimensional chess, no trickery. He used words to make the Repubs an offer that they would refuse and look like fucking idiots for doing so.
Obama made them look so bad that ol’ Senator Mitch the Bitch came out and cried uncle. That Lindsay Graham came out and said that Republicans had only themselves to blame for the debt ceiling renewal being in question. Yeah, Obama sure is fucking things up, that’s for damned sure.
For Republicans. The manic progressive left falling down in a dead faint is just collateral damage. I’d say that they would eventually get over it but I don’t think they are mature enough to do so.
Bruce S
Danny – (quoting me) “I don’t care about these indexes at this point. It’s that simple.”
Danny – Well you shouldn’t talk a good game and then later admit you dont know shit then.
The shit I know is that anyone yammering about indexes in this particular context has their head so far up their ass, they deserve to be ignored.
Also the “bipartisan” cover on any “coffee” that even smells of benefit cuts, will benefit the GOP and only the GOP. This is pretty elementary. Your political instincts are pretty much “blogging know-nothings” personified. Maybe the President will win this one, but it will be forgotten by November ’12 and the notion that “cuts” to Medicare is a useful approach to policy will have been validated.
You think you’re a lot smarter than you are. This is nothing but carefully nuanced bullshit that amounts to apologetics for manifestly bad policy. I don’t want the President to “fall valiantly on a sword.” What I don’t want is even the appearance of taking his sword to seniors in the guise of some chimerical “moderation” that will not be remembered or reported when the chips are down. I’ll stick with Pelosi on this one. I know there are balls and some serious political instincts in her corner. Honestly, when I listen to crap like Gene Sperling’s ruminations on the dangers of deficits undermining biz confidence or Jay Carney’s “cuts” to entitlements, I’m not so sure about the geniuses in the White House.
Danny
@351
Did you notice that Nate reports the 4T$ package to have a reported proposed breakdown of 3:1 or 4:1 cuts/revenue?
Shall we take it that you are now conceding that the cuts Obama offered are mostly progressive policy goals branded as “spending cuts”?
Nate’s analysis is worthwhile to illustrate that republicans are out of step with the mainstream and even their own base wrt tax increases on the rich.
It’s not useful for determining whether Obamas bid is “progressive” or not, because a simple “revenue”/”cut” breakdown won’t show that.
E.g. once again 500 B$ in defense cuts is not a republican policy goal.
Bruce S
Danny – (quoting me) “They are not the problem and no one can comprehend this stuff at ground level”
Danny – “I think I managed to get a fair understanding and I’m no expert. By being interested in facts. Funny that.”
Average voters who matter in elections aren’t “interested in the facts” – they respond to soundbites and “cuts in entitlements” were it ever manifested in lowering seniors expectations regarding COI is NOT a good soundbite.
Further, my essential point about having this half-assed COI discussion, without first dealing with the revenue end, which is unconscionable AND in the context of this stupid debt-ceiling tantrum, is wrong any which way one looks at it. Wrong “solution” at first pass, wrong subject in any discussion about “cutting spending,” much less in an utterly inane tantrum over the debt-ceiling.
My guess is that Wall Street is playing some “3 dimensional chess” with the little pricks they set loose on the country in Congress and it will have at least as much impact on the outcome of this absurd bullshit as Obama’s Jedi Master tactics. And, yes, he’s smart enough to have factored that into his game. Ten times smarter than I am. So what? Does that mean he’s got everybody’s back all the time? When I see the Superman outfit, I’ll negate myself and millions of folks like me as having any relevance to our political impasse.
Frankly, I think that unquestioning adulation or placing him above any criticism is more than a bit of an insult to Obama. Dehumanizing “leader worship” that ultimately isolates him even more than the Presidency already and inevitably has…
Bruce S
Danny – Did you notice …?
Yes, obviously -“… has been variously reported as offering a 20-to-80 or 25-to-75 mix.” That is “average Republican.”
“Shall we take it that you are now conceding that the cuts Obama offered are mostly progressive policy goals branded as “spending cuts”?”
No. Doesn’t the spinning make you dizzy? (On the one hand, it has been noted serially that “no one can know” the implications. On the other hand, you’re endowed with such insight that YOU KNOW!)
Pretty much dead end from here on out, so far as I’m concerned. I’ve said all I have to say. And I’m not impressed with your insistence over obscure details as being the essential points or your political naivete.
Martin
You realize that you’re consistently attributing the following things:
1) $1T in reduced debt service as a ‘spending cut’ that Dems would oppose
2) $400B in defense cuts that Dems would oppose and the GOP would support
3) Almost $400B in Medicare cost cuts such as giving CMS the power to negotiate drug prices, as cuts that Dems would oppose and the GOP would support.
I’m sorry, but you’re moving into willful ignorance category here.
Danny
That’s not where you started out, thats your fallback after going down in flames. Pathetic f-ck. Absense of balls proven then.
There are no benefit cuts wrt chained CPI, as you’ve now been forced to concede. But instead you argue the meta angle – we’re doing a good thing but republicans will hang us for it. Coward shining through once again.
Predicting/wishing for the failure of the progressive president, because you’re a fortune-teller. Conceding that the cuts may be good progressive policy; rooting for defeat still warranted because of wobbly knees over “optics”. Making Medicare more fiscally sustainable by progressive cost savings that dont affect benefits makes the program less vulnerable to future republican attacks, not more.
Boho. I dont give a shit about being smart. I do give a shit about being informed, and I try to make sure by stating my case by the book. Learn to play by the rules and stop whining when you get smacked around.
How come then that you were unable to successfully contend one single fucking point up for discussion so far? Projecting.
Those “optics” you fret about (and leaving aside that you’re left with bitching about optics because you can no longer make a case on substance) are – as pointed out to you by other posters – not based on anything Obama actually has said on the record so far, but rather anonymous sources. Thus at this point a strawman.
Happy trails p—y boy, time for bed.
Danny
That’s not where you started out, thats your fallback after going down in flames. Pathetic f-ck. Absense of balls proven then.
There are no benefit cuts wrt chained CPI, as you’ve now been forced to concede. But instead you argue the meta angle – we’re doing a good thing but republicans will hang us for it. Coward shining through once again.
Predicting/wishing for the failure of the progressive president, because you’re a fortune-teller. Conceding that the cuts may be good progressive policy; rooting for defeat still warranted because of wobbly knees over “optics”. Making Medicare more fiscally sustainable by progressive cost savings that dont affect benefits makes the program less vulnerable to future republican attacks, not more.
Boho. I dont give a sh-t about being smart. I do give a sh-t about being informed, and I try to make sure by stating my case by the book. Learn to play by the rules and stop whining when you get smacked around.
How come then that you were unable to successfully contend one single fucking point up for discussion so far? Projecting.
Those “optics” you fret about (and leaving aside that you’re left with bitching about optics because you can no longer make a case on substance) are – as pointed out to you by other posters – not based on anything Obama actually has said on the record so far, but rather anonymous sources. Thus at this point a strawman.
Happy trails p—y boy, time for bed.
Danny
I made the point in multiple post and challenged you to contend it, and support it with facts. You didn’t; instead you went on with the revenue/cut breakdowns and appeals to authority. That’s not my problem and it aint spin. But you’re welcome to have a go at it; until you do I’ll consider it “no contention”.
Peter
Bruce, the problem a lot of people are having with you – well, one of them, anyway – is that you’re fixating on the big numbers and the proportion of revenue increases to ‘spending cuts’, and holding them up as significant facts in their own right without questioning what they actually mean. What sorts of spending cuts? What sorts of tax increases?
“Spending cuts” is a very broad term. It can mean ‘we don’t want to pay for this service anymore, so we stop offering it/cut it back’. Or it can mean ‘we fired the guy we used to pay to flush 500000 dollars a day down the toilet’. Likewise, there are different types of revenue increases, some progressive and some regressive.
Your argument hinges on the unfounded and factually incorrect assumption that Obama’s proposal contains only spending cuts of type A, and none of type B. It is, in fact a pure straw man. We would all be united in opposition to Obama’s proposal if Obama’s proposal was the one you are describing. It’s not.
Peter
Oh, and I usually love Ezra, but his work on this issue’s been sloppy. I’m not holding it against him, but it’s just not up to his usualy standard.
Tired of Right-Wing-Enabling-Pseudo-Left-Wingers
Obama’s right-wing policies have been obvious to anyone intelligent and honest enough to look at his CHOICES for a very long time.
Obama’s right-wing-policy CHOICES include but aren’t limited to:
TORTURE of Bradley Manning. One word form the Executive and that torture would have ended.
AGGRESSIVE PREEMPTIVE WARS that are creating as much or more backlash then they are quelling. See also Obama’s choices in: EXPANSION of Republican Bush’s pointless wars, Obama’s immediate appointment of Republican Bush’s military adviser Robert Gates to oversee our war department, the appointment of rumored Republican Presidential candidate Petraeus to oversee the CIA…
RIGHT-WING ECONOMICS: Republican Bush’s Fed Chairman reappointed, right-wing economists like Summers and Geithner appointed, the gutting of basic Democratic policies for a slew of right-wing nonsense, the denial of factual evidence supporting ‘liberal’ economics policies, the fluffing of false right-wing economic policies that got US into this ongoing economic disaster….
Right now Obama is trying to butcher Democratic policies that have worked for nearly 80 years and he’s pushing Republican policies that have NOT worked.
TIME TO WAKE UP, and stop drinking from the right-wing-authoritarian kool-aid.
Tired of Right-Wing-Enabling-Pseudo-Left-Wingers
Right-wing-enabling nonsense:
“cuts may be good progressive policy”
The statement is both a denial of “progressive” economics as well as an implicit and delusional fluffing of right-wing economics.
‘Cuts’ hurt many real people immediately and will hurt even more people in the future.
Bonus to right-wingers: Politically they will benefit from Obama doing their dirty work on 17-11 dimensions.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@342 stinkdaddy
So true. I particularly enjoy it when they conclusively prove their moral superiority by wishing that other commenters “die in a fire” – or worse.
.
.
Tired of Right-Wing-Enabling-Pseudo-Left-Wingers
test check
Danny
@363
– Manning: This is a lie. From what is known it is laughable to call Manning’s treatment “torture”, and it’s quite unclear if he was mistreated at all.
A recently leaked probe found that the detention facility erred (by not following the army manual) in keeping him on suicide watch a couple of days after a psychologist found him not suicidal, but apart from that cleared the facility of any wrongdoing.
YMMV but I discussed the Manning case at length @FDL and found that no-one in their community had any actual facts whatsoever it was all poutrage @Obama, just like you’d expect.
My posting in that thread about Manning is what got Jane Hamsher to personally ban me from FDL: accusing me of being a “paid operative from the Department of Defense”, and demanding that i do some “Identity Hardening” (allowing a link to a Facebook account with my real identity information to be publicly published on FireDogLake) in order to keep my “posting privileges”.
– Aggressive Preemptive Wars: There hasn’t been any “preemptive” war started by Obama. The war being “preemptive” implying (if this is supposed to be referring to “preemptive” wars under the Bush Doctrine) that a war is started under the (true or false) pretext of removing a perceived threat.
The only war that Obama started was Libya, and on Libya the President went before the nation and said explicitly that Libya wasnt a big threat to the US but that we should still participate for other reasons (humanitarian reasons; regional stability, etc).
It could plausibly be argued that drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia are “pre-emptive”, if they target Al-Qaeda members that are not confirmed to have been involved in acts of terror against the US.
But we’re not at war with the governments of those countries, so it doesnt stand to reason calling the strikes “pre-emptive wars”. Then it would appear that a drone strike on Awlaki is somehow comparable to the Iraq War. But then we’d have to concede that Bill Clinton sending 67 cruise missiles on Osamas ass (while in Afghanistan) was pretty much the same as Iraq II, which leads to the question of what the hell all of us were bitching about re Iraq II: After all Clinton was just as bad when he went after Osama a couple of years earlier.
I won’t buy that. Iraq II was a travesty: lying the american people into a full blown invasion of a sovereign country by manufacturing a “threat” that everyone involved knew full well was not even close to being as big a threat as they claimed.
Obama hasnt done anything like that, on the countrary, he’s been arguably the most straight and transparent president that I remember in treating the american people as adults when explaining the reasons for intervention.
Re-watch his Libya speech.
Agree in retrospect that this was probably a mistake. But it was done just after Bernanke went big on stimulus with QE so thats why.
Calling Summers and Geitner “right wing” is not credible. Calling them Centrists, New Democrats or something I’d hear you out. And you’d also have to acknowledge all the more kosher Neo Keynesians (from Krugmans POW) that were appointed to his (original) team. It was a mixed team of centrists and moderate leftists; not a rightwing one. And it had to get confirmed by the senate.
What are you referring to here. No existing laws or programs were gutted. You’re probably w-nking on about the P.O. and Single Payer re PPACA. In that case: spare me bro.
When did he do this? My sense is that the President has been a vocal and consistent (albeit smart, which probably is the problem here) proponent of a progressive viewpoint.
This is pretty much an outright lie. Symptomatically the nut-roots often uses Obama coined phrases and framing to attack him which ought to give them a clue of just how effective he is in focusing the debate in a direction that is benificial to the progressive policy perspective:
E.g. “trickle down”; focusing on revenue:cut relative rates. Both were promoted and popularized by Obama.
Danny
@364
So you’re against cuts to defense spending then?
You’re also against the Keynesian maxim of lowering deficits (by cuts or taxes) when the economy is strong?
Joe
I love how Jane Hamsher has become “Grover Norquist’s Pet” while Obama is currently working with republicans to ACTUALLY, you know, drown the government in a bathtub.
300+ comments on this post of mostly stupid substance-free attacks on Hamsher. Does anyone ever bother to respond to the points she’s making? Or do you all just immediately take a shit in your hands and start throwing it?
Tired of Right-Wing-Enabling-Pseudo-Left-Wingers
Danny is a torture apologist.
Right-wing authoritarians typically excuse persecuting perceived enemies, especially when it’s sanctioned by the leader they worship.
Right-wing authoritarians are also those that are emotionally invested in their own race and gender (think: ABL).
September
Amusing that Firebaggers like NR don’t get the “Deficit Reduction” involves raising taxes on the rich…
Tired of Right-Wing-Enabling-Pseudo-Left-Wingers
Obama’s gone FARTHER RIGHT THAN ANY REPUBLICAN proposal out there.
Obamabots’ response: Don’t criticize the leader!
How are Obamabots different than Bushbots?
buermann
It’s the combined capacity of abl and jane to get so fucking whipped up over such a fucking inconsequential episode that really fucking impresses me, motherfuckers.
So like, if there’s an argument to follow amidst all the hyperventilating, Jane’s position is “Obama wants to position himself as a deficit hawk and doesn’t want to own the debt limit, but I think he can’t and he knows it and hence this outburst of frustration”, and ABL thinks “Obama is exploiting racist fears of crazy negros with this rare expression of something resembling emotion, somehow”? Have I got that right?
As someone who often gets incredibly angry over the most trivial hypocrisies I don’t understand how this disagreement is capable of inspiring minor irritation, let alone rage.
Ronbo
Love Jane; she tells the truth. …unlike a lot of people at BJ. Which, is what they do for Obama, the Republican.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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Fortunately, President Obama agrees that the costs for human rights are too expensive, and out of control, and must be put on the table to preserve their integrity and send the right signal.
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Dumb Motherfu*ker
Do you ever get whiplash from your stawmen?