While eating the brown acid:
Some Republicans are starting to have buyer’s remorse over their party’s insistence that a vote to raise the debt limit be tied to a long-term deficit reduction package.
“Maybe the debt ceiling was the wrong place to pick a fight, as it related to trying to get our country’s house in order,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Thursday. “Maybe that was the wrong place to do it.”
The entire GOP is like a bunch of rednecks at a campfire with lots of liquor and explosives taking turns yelling “Hey guys, watch this!”
BTW- has Corker ever admitted that maybe letting GM and Chrysler fail would have also been a bad idea?
Downpuppy
What do you mean “like”?
It is what it is. Best damn description of the 21st century Republican Party I ever saw.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I saw this earlier and, IIANM, he said this on the Senate floor, which astounds me. And he admitted, flat out, without qualification, “We picked a fight”
Can we stop now, O Ghost of David Broder living in the minds of every Villager, pretending that this is the result of “both sides”? /yes, rhetorical, I know.
Jennifer
More to the point, now that he’s admitted they picked a fight, and that it wasn’t a good idea, why don’t they just agree to vote for raising the damn debt ceiling and be done with it?
mr. whipple
I wish I could do shrooms and acid and drink like a fish. It would help me understand the GOP.
stuckinred
mr. whipple
Booze will kill shrooms.
Suffern ACE
@Jennifer:
Unfortunately, Cantor sees an opportunity for himself politically and financially.
Nikki
Their corporate masters must be howling.
BO_Bill
Jennifer hereby demonstrates the Reason that shopping malls had a good run for a couple of decades. And also the reason why fucking Burger King just took down their dollar menu. Don’t get me started about the Nineteenth.
Linda Featheringill
Very nice Senator, but not enough. Although working on “enough” might be next on your agenda.
Still, he came close to admitting that many politicians are putting the whole country in peril in order to win the next election.
jl
Also on TPM today, GOPpers are complaining about the cuts that might occur in the case of a really for reals default in August.
Apparently they want Obama to prioritize the spending to their liking.
copied from previous thread:
We have a new installment of GOP comedy gold.
From TPM blog:
GOP Demand Obama Protect Seniors From Default, Won’t Name What To Cut Instead
TPMDC
Benjy Sarlin | July 14, 2011, 2:46PM
‘ Republican lawmakers are pushing President Obama to put seniors, troops, and bondholders at the front of the line should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling. The rest? Well, that’s up to him.
“We’re just calling on the president to assume the role of CEO and prioritize accordingly,” Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR) said at a press conference on the issue. Participants repeatedly accused Obama of trying to “scare seniors” by suggesting Social Security payments might be suspended in the wake of a default crisis.
One reporter shouted a question as to whether things like, say, keeping criminals in federal prisons or securing the border might also be added to the list.
“They’re all priorities,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX). “As our colleagues here have said, we need to keep our promises and the money is there to do that.” ‘
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/gop-demand-obama-protect-seniors-from-default-wont-name-what-to-cut-instead.php
I was so astonished by this that I almost (note the word ALMOST) emailed some BJ front page posters about this, but decided not to risk the possible resulting public humiliation.
Edit: forgot to say that some commenters, particularly martin, gave some good explanations about the mechanics of paying out that Social Security money. which may come in handy if anyone has raging teabaggers complaining about scare tactics and plots.
Baud
The tie that binds the GOP is sticking it to Democrats. The problem they have is that they can’t find a way to spin any result from all this as a victory against the Dems.
jfxgillis
John:
Ha! It just occurred to me that these last few days help answer the age-old and seemingly unanswerable “Evil or Stupid?” Question.
Corker & McMegan, for example–Evil, because they just showed that they weren’t stupid enough to keep going with this.
Erick the Redstate and Ron Paul–Stupid because they still don’t get their side already caved.
baldheadeddork
Looks like they picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
beltane
Isn’t Corker supposed to be one of the less crazy ones? Is this his way of alerting us to the fact that the Canotr caucus needs to be put in straight-jackets for their own safety?
Ah yes, the drunk rednecks and their explosives. It’s all fun and games until someone’s brother-in-law has his family jewels blown up. Good times.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
Eric Cantor: Hey! Hey, guys! I just got a bunch of M-80’s at the Indian reservation! Watch what happens when I set one off in my pocket!
(BOOM!)
(Silence.)
John Boehner: Dude! You just blew off your dick!
(Suddenly, the entire caucus erupts in guffaws.)
.
Linda Featheringill
I am still in favor of a bigger bill that addresses some of our economic problems as well as the debt limit. Give us some cuts and give us some more revenue. And give us a debt limit that will last for two years.
Mike Kay (Team America)
Lindsey Graham said basically the same thing yesterday.
Mike Kay (Team America)
The road side is littered with people who have underestimated the black guy in the white house. Just ask bin Laden. Ooops, you can’t he’s at the bottom of the ocean.
Linnaeus
My guess is that he doesn’t think that would have been a bad idea. The GOP saw the bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler as an opportunity to clear the UAW out of the way, given that the auto industry is one of the few (non-government) sectors of the economy that still has a substantially unionized workforce.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
As time goes on, without discounting genuine evil in our political and social structures, I am more and more persuaded that Stupid is the answer. For instance, I believe John Boehner sincerely believes what he’s saying when he says “we have to cut spending to create jobs!”. I can’t imagine a sentence that justifies this belief in a coherent, logical way, but these people have been preaching this Reaganism to themselves for forty years. Dem stupids (’cause I’m bipartisan): Evan Bayh and Dianne “Antoinette” Feinstein. I don’t know Corker well, but from what I’ve seen, I’d put him in the “idiot who thinks he’s smart category”.
cthulhu
Unfortunately for Corker (and EVERYONE else), it’s going to be hard at this point to slam on the brakes when there’s still plenty of feet on the accelerator…
jl
martin’s explanation about Social Security payments tied to debt limit and default.
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/07/14/whos-the-man-3/#comment-2671782
Martin’s links to some reports on topic
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/07/14/whos-the-man-3/#comment-2671813
Mike Kay (Team America)
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the gingrich-goverment-shut-down-debacle are condemned to repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot.
mr. whipple
stuckinred: I just want enough of the edge off to not freak too much when Palin’s face starts melting.
DonkeyKong
The fact is the GOP will come out of this just fine and pull this trench warfare crazy shit next year. The President budget is to the right of the Gingrich congress of the 90’s.
“In an interview with The Huffington Post, former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (D) aired his concern that the fiscal “belt-tightening” President Obama and many Democrats have pursued has effectively diminished the party’s brand. Democrats, he argued, have “allowed the center of the political debate to be shifted so far to the right that we find ourselves debating on their territory and using Republican language.”
“It’s very troubling,” he said.
Removed from office after a bruising re-election campaign, Strickland has largely avoided the political spotlight, choosing, instead, to help to build Democratic infrastructure in Ohio. But the debt ceiling debate has piqued his interest and drawn him back into the national conversation — in large part, he said, because he’s worried that his party is unnecessarily folding its superior hand.”
Maybe Strickland can start posting at FDL and we can all call him a “firebagger” That would be fun.
gbear
Or you could do even worse, like this guy in Fargo ND.
Cantor, indeedy.
stuckinred
mr. whipple
That’ll do it, just a couple of brews. I was once at this wedding with a belly dancer on a persian rug when the sillyscieben kicked in. . .
Mike Kay (Team America)
The Face of the Agony of Defeat.
http://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Mitch+McConnell+McConnell+Heads+White+House+0xxLCdVJn1xl.jpg
jl
Links to martin’s explanation of SS payment mechanics and links in moderation, and Cole dropped a hint that he will be by now blasted on booze and ‘shrooms. so go look at comments in DougJ’s ‘Who’s the Man? post earlier today.
stuckinred
DonkeyKong
Well I guess the two of you should just hold hands and jump of the fucking Golden Gate Bridge then.
JPL
The Republicans still want tax breaks for the wealthy. Although common sense tells you that it’s not that the wealthy don’t have money to create jobs, no one has the money to buy anything. What ever happened to demand side economics?
I read that studies say common sense is overblown but gee…
We have a demand problem.
beltane
@gbear
That one wins a Darwin award. I blame the city of Fargo for its nanny state ban on professional grade fireworks. The state so infringed upon this gentleman’s freedoms that he lost his head over it.
jl
Well, more and more of the serious daddy school of GOP is caving, and providing nice material for ads.
Let’s hope it keeps up and this is a replay of Gingrich in the 90s, except short of an actual shutdown, or default.
DonkeyKong
Wow stuck, did your legs fall asleep while hatching that one?
Elizabelle
They can’t put the monster back in the box.
And they were too slow realizing it.
Mike Kay (Team America)
DonkeyKong,
you are aware that strickland is fervently anti-choice. What’s that you say, you didn’t know that. Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
HE DOES.
Look, folks, I worked in the Senate (a African-American Democratic kid working for Strom Thurmond, no less!) as a page in the 80’s. They believed it then, guys! They believe this 100% — to them, this is just trying to fix a decades-long problem. That a handful cynically manipulate doesn’t distract for the people who honestly believe all this bollicks, to the core — and think it’s the best thing for poor people!
They doesn’t think they’re the villains, no matter how they act. That so many of us insist on treating them like ones is part of why they can deflect attacks amongst their own people so readily — and why they attack Obama so brutally (besides, of course, the sin of Presidenting While Black — which they don’t see as such, but that’s an issue about racism for a larger debate…)
4tehlulz
All this buyer’s remorse means it’s probably too late.
beltane
Mike Kay’s photo needs a caption. Here’s mine: “Woe is me. My beloved party of crooks and grifters was taken over by nuts who really believed our conman lies. How can they be this stupid.”
By the way, Happy Bastille Day.
DonkeyKong
Mike Kay (Team America, maybe Strickland is antichoice, wears a toupee and like a good reacharound after church. What does that have to do with what he said?
jl
@31: what is weird is to listen to the media, which I try to avoid, except kind of inconvenient when trying to catch traffic reports on days when I drive to work.
You want to listen to respected corporate media talking heads spout commie Keynesianism? Just wait for a business report, and hope that the anchor asks the reporter if they can precisely identify exactly what the problem is with the recovery.
And more often than not, the reporter gives a 30 second summary of a Krugman or DeLong blog post about the balance sheet demand side recession theory.
(who says you can’t say anything in 30 seconds?)
Then a few minutes later a political analyst hack of some sort will be on spouting Very Serious Person non sequitur nonsense.
I wonder how many confused people listening notice the difference?
Mike Kay (Team America)
“What does that have to do with what he said?”
because you can’t be a true progressive if you oppose women’s reproductive rights. So he’s the wrong choice to use in making an appeal to authority argument. I mean, really, you need to go a local community college and enroll in their remedial courses on logic and forensics.
Georgia Pig
Maybe that’s how it works in WV, but I see it a bit differently. See, you have this party down at the lake with a roast pig, 10 cases of Meisterbrau and some girls who don’t sweat too much, with a dime bag stashed in a knothole in a nearby treetrunk to take the edge off. Your buddy Bubba is there, who you think is an ok guy because all you know about his is from grabbassing at the construction site. Yeah, he says some questionable shit from time to time, but you don’t think it means anything. So, as the party goes forward, Bubba gets a higher than Georgia pine and gets in a shouting match about a girl with some guy from Alabama who turns out to an Auburn fan. Bubba gets pissed, storms over to his GTO and pulls out a Colt Python from his glove box, thus royally fucking up what, up til then, had been a pretty ok party.
SIA
@ stuckinred. Hell yeah! All my shroom days took place in your neck of the woods. Hunting for Cow Pies in the fields around Athens was an favorite DFH activity in those days. I had to relinquish the drink and drugs, so unfortunately there’s no psychic buffer these days watching the circus unfold.
Re Corker, as one of the least insane GOP senators, I have to think even he at times feels a little squirming discomfort in his conscience. McConnell, not so much.
DonkeyKong
“So he’s the wrong choice to use in making an appeal to authority argument. I mean, really, you need to enroll in at a local community college and take a remedial course in logic and forensics.”
Is this a joke?
artem1s
@Mike Kay (Team America):
wrong strickland. Ted not Tony. OH not CA. Ted is pro-choice.
James E. Powell
So what we need now is for every elected Democrat other than the president to give an interview to his or her local news regarding the debt ceiling and say “leading Republicans have already admitted that creating this false crisis was a mistake. It’s time for them to vote on a clean bill. Now. Tomorrow. Let’s do it, then get back to work on the economy.”
DonkeyKong
Regardless of what Strickland is, he makes an argument that we are celebrating this “debt fight” in the rightwings endzone.
merrinc
Damn, Balloon Juice is a busy place these days. I can’t keep up! Last night TaMara (BHF) posted a link to an amazing video I believe she said was created by a friend of hers. I didn’t see any discussion of it (maybe because I can’t live here like some of you) so just in case…
Check out Gandalf Freeing the GOP. It’s fucking brilliant.
If you’ve already seen and discussed it, apologies.
ruemara
it’s better to create a safe space for them to come down. Sort of like this.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I would think the man who lost to John Kasich would know how effective the Republicans can be at distorting discourse, might be able to think of an example of how Republicans campaign (Jobs Jobs Jobs) and how they govern, maybe he could use his platform to talk about Republican dishonesty and toadying for corporate interests against the middle and working classes. Maybe that might be more effective.
Mike Kay (Team America)
Yup. just look at the celebration: http://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Mitch+McConnell+McConnell+Heads+White+House+0xxLCdVJn1xl.jpg
Really, bloggin from your mom’s basement day and night has addled whatever brain you had.
Brachiator
This shit is too funny. Funnier still is how the Tea Party People refuse to back down, even after the bond rating companies try to warn them about the dire consequences if the debt ceiling is not raised.
I just hope that Obama continues to let these clowns self destruct.
Mike Kay (Team America)
it never fails. geeks who have never had a long term relationship with a woman, time after time, display their inability to relate to women and their basic human rights.
DonkeyKong
Mike Kay (Team America), you crack me up…….am I a big fat doo doo face?
Elizabelle
JGabriel: thank you for comment 15. Still laughing.
kay
I love Strickland, but he’s acting as an advocate here, not a political actor with responsibility. His actual record as governor of a swing state doesn’t really reflect his advice to Obama. He cut the budget in Ohio, with lots of “belt-tightening” talk, which precipitated all kinds of angst and anger among his more-liberal supporters. He played to the middle himself. I heard all about it. Over and over and over… :)
I don’t have any problem with what he’s doing, good for him, yell loud, but I don’t know that you should read as much discord or division into it as you seem to be.
On the other side, the actual policy side, I think it’s safe to say that the midwestern Democratic Senators will go to the mat on SSI changes. Midwesterners are OLD :)
Sherrod Brown is already there. But that’s a good and proper role for a liberal Senator, right? President moves, and Senator pushes back. I just don’t see that as the end of the world, or evidence of a deep split, or anything. It’s how this works, when it works.
Citizen Alan
I have not seen that merrinc. Thanks!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
McCaskill? I have a bad feeling her great hope in life is for Obama to give her something she can triangulate.
Another Bob
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hell, that’s amost verbatim what Obama himself has been saying:
I still can’t see how all of Obama’s talk about deficit reduction, the Catfood Commission and all, has helped. It’s gone way too far to validate what is essentially right-wing bullshit. This entire budget-ceiling fiasco is disorienting in its stupidity and irrationality. I hope it turns out OK, but I can’t say I’m reassured by even what I hear from the Democrats.
DonkeyKong
“On the other side, the actual policy side, I think it’s safe to say that the midwestern Democratic Senators will go to the mat on SSI changes. Midwesterners are OLD :)”
I hope your right kay. I just don’t like assuming motives and being satisfied with that.
FlipYrWhig
@ DK:
Strickland is probably right about the politics, insofar as “belt-tightening” and “deficit reduction” have been Republican priorities, and insofar as putting on the table things that can be demagogued as “cuts” was a fiasco in HCR.
On the other hand, notice where the quotation marks begin and end. Did Strickland say “belt-tightening”? Doesn’t look like it. What did HuffPo’s interviewer say that has been characterized as a statement about belt-tightening? Unclear. Is Strickland reacting to “cuts,” to “benefit cuts,” to something else?
Also, note that Strickland is purely talking about language and not at all about policy. Are there kinds of deficit reduction that could be deemed “belt-tightening” (because they are “cuts”) that nonetheless uphold Democratic priorities? Assuredly so. HCR had a slew of these things, like the independent Medicare advisory board.
It sounds to me like Strickland is weighing in on the subject of whether discussing deficits and spending is at all useful or appropriate right now, and saying no, it’s not. I would agree with that in a perfect world: we should be talking about getting the economy moving in the short term. But _if_ there’s going to be a discussion of deficits and spending, and a House Republican majority has forced the issue, the way it’s being talked about is OK by me: what can be done to reduce the deficit over the long term without jeopardizing the economy? Democrats should bend that conversation to their advantage, and IMHO Obama has done a fairly solid job of that.
Rommie
@merrinc #49: That’s an awesome video, thanks for the link! Gandalf the Liberal in 2016!
handsmile
Maybe I’m having flashbacks from all those tabs of youth, or maybe I just dozed off for a while there and had this amazing dream, because all this couldn’t possibly have happened today:
-Rupert Murdoch was summoned to appear before Parliament, and he agreed;
-The FBI announced the launch of a probe into allegations of phone-hacking of 9/11 victims by Murdoch “journalists”;
-Eric Cantor, yes that Eric Cantor, called the man who said this 75 days ago, “I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden..” “an amateur”;
-John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and their band of jackals have begun to devour each other. Publicly.
Either it’s a dream, or drugs, or maybe we better start wearing heavy shoes, because gravity and the other laws of physics may be a-changin’. Hey, I just saw a neutrino!
DonkeyKong
@ FlipYrWhig
I can only assume that he means the democrats have SS and medicare back as their issue with the upstate pickup in New York.
Don’t fuckin blow that with “Grand Bargain” talks that muddy the water going into next year would be my take.
James E. Powell
@DonkeyKong:
I think that it’s been demonstrated here and everywhere that every debate on economic policy is conducted on Republican territory using Republican language. This has been going on for years (see, e.g., Bill Clinton, the era of big government is over).
To my surprise, the clear and undeniable failure of Republican economic policies during the Bush/Cheney Junta have done almost nothing to change this. I didn’t expect revolution, but I expected some new language, some new way of talking about millions of people more or less permanently unemployed or underemployed.
While it’s true that Obama has not use his bully pulpit in a vigorous effort to change this, a fair-minded person has to acknowledge that his ability to do so with so many Blue Dogs chairing senate and house committees was rather limited.
We didn’t get to this place in a short time and we are not going to get out of it in a short time. For Obama, the current situation is more the hand he was dealt than anything else.
kay
Ohio, Minnesota and Michigan. It has to get by them. I think Franken and Brown have real potential to be great ‘n powerful liberal Senators, but they just haven’t been there that long. Brown was at the state level and in the House so it’s not that he doesn’t know his shit, he’s just not completely “national” yet. But he will be. He’s a talented politician, and he gets invited to tv!
So we have to keep him.
FlipYrWhig
@ Another Bob:
But there are “deficit hawks” in the Democratic party who have laid claim to this suite of issues for about 20 years. The right-wing bullshit came pre-validated. So IMHO, like I said before, if we’re going to have to have a conversation about spending, revenues, and deficits, I’d like to see that conversation take place as far left as possible, even if the conversation itself is somewhere on the right. I think Obama’s trying to make the case for something like a “progressive deficit reduction,” as Clinton did before him. I mean, you’re right, the whole thing is tremendously misplaced, but once it’s been placed, let’s hope we see it handled as well as possible.
(I think I’d say something similar about Iraq. It was a stupid idea and an obvious waste of time, but once it’s underway, the bed is shit and the toothpaste’s out of the tube, the conversation has to shift to become how to handle the mess with a modicum of responsibility.)
Suffern ACE
I am confused. Don’t you defend your end zone and score when you are in the other team’s end zone? Wouldn’t you usually celebrate in the other team’s end zone?
DonkeyKong
@ James E Powell and kay
So I’m not the only one that’s nervous about how this will end.
During the 90’s it was great to see Big Dog slap the Gingrich congress around, We were fat and happy. No wars and the credit bubble was thick. Kinda like the War of the Roses, with an indifferent countryside.
This feels more like the Thirty Years War. Plague, famine and the music sucks!
these da
Elizabelle
@ handsmile:
I think we’re at a turning point too.
However, remember how happy and optimistic most of us were in November 2008 as we watched Barack Obama and his gracious family celebrate his win before supporters in Grant Park.
Fast forward to the absolute sh*tstorm the GOP has wreaked on him personally and on all of us who were hoping our votes and hard work had gotten us past the malfeasance of the Bush-Cheney years.
Cannot take anything for granted.
Cannot even imagine how it would have felt to be an adult watching the 1960s assassinations, one after the other.
Tonal Crow
merrinc: Your URL is broken. It’s at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w65menUWLIY . What an excellent spoof!
moe99
OT: WVU is number one! In unruly fans.
Sly
No. Bob Corker follows the dictates of his conscience, a characteristic for which we should all applaud the Junior Senator from
Nissan CorporationTennessee.Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yeah, and I wish here weren’t saying that, but Obama goes on to make the case for infrastructure spending to create jobs.
Pat
Corker’s portfolio must be losing money already. He should give Cantor’s hedge fund manager a call.
El Cid
__
This is a completely insulting and inappropriate characterization of what would happen in this situation in the South.
They would say “y’all” instead of “guys”.
Outright liberal smears.
JohnR
Usually hindsight is 20:20. Probably not in this case, though. These guys won’t admit that poking the dragon with a pointed stick is a stupid idea until it has not just eaten, but digested them, and is now defecating their remains. That’s when you hear the disembodied voice say “I’m starting to think that maybe we shouldn’t have done that; what do you think, Mitch?”