When a Democrat says Republicans acted like kidnappers, that’s shrill and unserious (via):
For Republican leaders, there was pride in a hand well played. “I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said. “Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming.”
The lesson of the last 20 years of American politics is that political terrorism works. Period.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
Corner Stone
This is a days old quote. And would’ve served to damp down the crazy here.
Why is an FP just now front paging it?
Ol' Dirty DougJ
Better late than never.
Corner Stone
@Ol’ Dirty DougJ: DougJ, this is the essence of what we just went through as a nation. And as Democrats in exile.
But I guess you’re right. Better late.
LosGatosCA
Never take a eunuch to a gun fight.
aisce
@ corner stone
in what way?
let me guess…all obama’s fault! all obama’s fault! all obama’s fault! so endlessly predictable.
Lolis
@LosGatosCA:
I am sick of the sexualized language progressives love to use when referring to President Obama. Grow up.
KG
This quote should be the basis of the first question McConnell gets asked every time he’s on the teevee
Professor
The good old name ‘the USA’ is now in the toilet. You are proud NOT to pay you debts. You get orgasmic excitement when you torture innocent people. You jump with joy when you kill innocent children at parties. Pray tell me what is left of the USA that is decent!
Lolis
I am really terrified of the future. What Democrats have been doing so far is not working against Republicans. We need a paradigm shift in Democratic thinking. I have no idea how that would happen and what that would look iike. I feel like the side that cares most about people is always at the disadvantage in this type of situation.
General Stuck
Yea right. Mcconnell is really looking forward to using the debt ceiling again, being he was the one who came up with the compromise, that ended up turning over the hostage to Obama. Authorizing Obama, on his own, to raise the debt ceiling till the other side of the election. Mcconnell is a blustering buffoon, posturing to protect his sorry ass from tea party pitchforks.
Here is Mitch running for cover, when he first unveiled his plan to turn the debt ceiling hostage over to Obama
wrb
great post title
“When There’s No Future
How Can There Be Sin”
Corner Stone
@Professor:
We make a pretty god damned decent turkey club sandwich.
And I make kickass nachos. But there’s nothing decent about them.
Reality Check
@Professor:
You seem to like pie an awful lot.
boss bitch
@Lolis:
Isn’t that how it is in general? People with no one or nothing to lose usually have the upper hand.
Professor
@Corner Stone: I thought it was SATAN sandwich!
Martin
@KG:
Agreed. Run the clip, follow up with “What are Republicans planning on taking hostage and ransoming next?”
Corner Stone
@Professor: I prefer the bacon.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: The Satan is too gamy?
Mark-NC
The lesson I’ve learned is that, no matter how rotten the Repugnant Ones get, the SCLP will ALWAYS cover for them. There is absolutely NO downside for Republicans to do or say things that would make Satan blush – NONE!
Martin
@Lolis:
It is. Always.
It doesn’t matter what you do, it’s easier to tear down than to build up. That’s why Dems are always disappointed. The GOP wants nothing more than to tear down, and that’s easy – just say no to everything, use every procedural block at your disposal and you win.
Passing legislation is vastly harder than preventing legislation from passing, and so the ‘Bully Pulpit!’ crowd is doing nothing but grading the parties on a curve – asserting that Dems should be just as successful as the GOP at passing their agenda, when their agendas are hardly comparable. Getting any HCR passed at all was a HUGE accomplishment, even if it falls short of what it should have been in an ideal world, and now the Dems have to fight to keep the GOP from tearing that down too.
Dave
If you want a vision of the future, look no further than the South American cone. Neoliberalism was instituted through actual violence there; here it’s just political.
Martin
@Martin: Ok. That was a really weird bug. I replied to that in the previous thread, not this one.
OzoneR
@Mark-NC:
That’d because 46% of the country will still vote for them and another 4-5% can easily be coerced into it.
wrb
@Martin:
I posed here and it ended up there
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Meet this man half-way!
.
Capitulate in good faith to this man!
.
Be a Bipartisan Brother with this man!
.
Compliment this savvy businessman!
.
.
General Stuck
@Martin:
Not to mention The Stimulus, that was by a large margin the biggest discretionary spending bill in history, laden with tens of billions for research for a number of prog causes, such as alternate energy.
But all we here is it was too small, according to some columnist at the NYT’s. Whereas that spending bill ranks second only to HCR on the wingnuts hate list of Obama accomplishments, of things they had blocked successfully for decades and decades.
Same thing with extending the Bush tax cuts, that kept a lot of money in the economy as stimulus, and was increased even more for stimulus by various tax cuts to the middle class in addition.
Wingnuts love it when dems are at each others throats, and no more than when it is over items Obama got past them, that they hate.
arguingwithsignposts
@General Stuck:
heh
Reality Check
The lesson from Clinton is this: don’t nominate what amounts to a lying scumbag used car salesman from the trailer park for your Presidential nominee.
Clinton is trailer trash with a degree from Yale. If you had nominated Jerry Brown in ’92 you could of avoided the whole thing.
General Stuck
@arguingwithsignposts:
teehee, fixed it, thanks
beltane
Sometimes Reality Check is good at trolling. Other times, e.g. his last comment, I think he is really Atrios coming over here to mess with people.
Hungry Joe
Who says it’s going to get better?
jwb
@Martin: Not just tearing down but there is theatrical aspect as well. I think a lot of progressives would actually be happier if Obama had taken hard stances, made a series of stemwinder speeches but didn’t get HCR passed, didn’t get DADT repealed, had the country default, etc, etc, etc. because they would at least have seen their ideas represented in the great political theater. We would then really be looking at a failed presidency, but at least progressives could feel good that their principles had been defended.
beltane
This is somewhat OT, but I’m reading that the ECB might not go through with its plan to buy Italian and Spanish bonds. We can all take comfort in the fact that we are not alone when it comes to swirling the bowl.
The Guardian says a statement will be issued shortly.
beltane
@jwb: There are people I know who really wanted an Abbie Hoffman style presidency. I’m not personally into the glorious defeat thing myself, but it does hold a certain attraction for people all across the political spectrum.
Villago Delenda Est
@Unreality Check:
The lesson from Bush is this: don’t nominate (and then get five Supreme Court justices to install into the Presidency, obliterating their oaths of office in the process) a cowardly, deserting sack of fratboy shit who destroyed several enterprises with his MBA chops AND made the classic mistake of trading away Sammy Sosa.
Bush (and all his equally vile siblings) is the product of a warped blue blood breeding experiment with bought and paid for degrees from Yale and Harvard. If the GOP had nominated John McCain in 2000, they would have avoided fucking up nearly as bad.
OzoneR
@jwb:
you’re kidding right. Progressives would be bitching he didn’t fight hard enough because those things didn’t pass, or have you not been listening to immigration reform or climate change advocates?
Also, we’d be hearing about pie-in-the-sky unrealistic things he can do unilaterally because someone once suggested looking into it on a blog.
Lojasmo
@Reality Check:
You are describing Reagan, but without the benefit of education.
gogol's wife
@beltane:
Yes and I find it amusing that he’s now using the pie filter on other people.
beltane
@gogol’s wife: Reality Check is a sensitive troll.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
I’m generally one of the first to point out that Republicans have been this way since Taft or Harding.
But when it comes to terrorism working for them, I think that’s something a little newer. I would date the widescale practice of it to the ’94 Congressional elections, which resulted in Gingrich — previously a back-bench bomb-thrower — becoming Speaker of the House.
I don’t think it really became successful for them until Fox News came on line as a major propaganda and disinformation outlet for the GOP in ’96. Even then, the Clinton impeachment failed: it didn’t end in conviction, and it didn’t keep Gore from winning the popular vote in 2000.
But Fox News was vital in pushing the false meme that Bush won the 2000 election and pushing the narrative that conservatives and Republicans would riot if Gore was seated.
So the first time terrorism worked for the GOP was the 2000 election. The takeaway seems to be:
In order for terrorism to work, you need a media outlet with national reach pushing your framing and agenda. That function has been performed for the Republican Party by Fox News since its inception in 1996 — which probably wouldn’t have been possible without Reagan’s abolishment of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.
.
PeakVT
@beltane: It’s hard to believe that a central bank could be more wrong than the FRB, but the ECB outdoes ours by a good distance.
WereBear
“The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.”
— Maya Angelou
Posey
It was a game of chicken, pure and simple (and some things are). Republicans knew Obama wouldn’t let the country go into default. Obama knew they would (and blame it on him).
jwb
@OzoneR: It goes without saying that progressives would be bitching, because we are what we are, but—and here I divorce myself from the progressive line—they’d be bitching that Obama was incompetent not the Obama has sold us out. And I’m convinced they’d nevertheless feel generally happier because Obama was regularly dog whistling even if it was a long-term political disaster for progressives.
MikeBoyScout
Your optimism is sweet, but there is no guarantee that anything shall get better, and quite a few facts which could lead a reasonable person to the conclusion it shall only get worse.
To make it better will likely require action on the part of the many which has seldom been seen in the course of history.
But, like I said, your optimism is sweet.
jwb
@beltane: I wonder if Reality Check will start trolling the pie comments.
Lolis
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
So what is your plan Uncle Clarence? I would love to hear it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Martin:
@wrb:
I had a comment disappear on an earlier thread. It probably ended up on some totally unrelated post.
Aristophanes
Senator McConnell is the perfect moral argument for abortion. Representative Cantor is the perfect moral argument for infanticide.
OzoneR
@jwb:
I’m convinced they’d be throwing around theories that Obama sold them out and everything he was saying was just words to placate them and make them think he’s fighting for them.
Linda Featheringill
@jwb: #32
That’s because we are that way: We don’t hesitate to speak up, we don’t compromise, we don’t negotiate, and we don’t win.
JasonF
@General Stuck: The reason McConnell wanted to hand the debt ceiling over to the White House was so that Republicans could scream about Obama getting us further into debt without having to face the consequences of either also supporting a debt increase or allowing the country to default. It was basically an attempt to simultaneously abdicate responsibility and to generate a ready-made attack on the President.
cleek
@OzoneR:
that’d be a nice change
Martin
@jwb:
Yeah, there are some guys who put more energy into their end-zone dance than they do into actually getting the ball down the field.
JGabriel
@General Stuck:
Does that matter? Whether the GOP extremists form a minority or majority of the caucus (and I suspect it’s a majority), the fact is: the extremists control the caucus. Republcan leaders aren’t trying to appease their moderate flanks, they’re tyring to appease the far right.
And when they take extreme actions like ransoming the debt ceiling, they have either become the extreme right themselves, or, at the least, have conceded that the extremists are in control.
.
General Stuck
@JasonF:
Did you not read my quote of Mcconnell when he first submitted his plan. He wanted to take the debt ceiling raising off the table because repubs would get blamed if we had actually defaulted. And I am certain his plutocrat backers were happy with this idea as well. Doesn’t mean they won’t take other hostages in the near future, but none that could cause the end of civilization as we’ve known it.
And of course the wingnuts are gonna demagogue Obama as a “tax and spend liberal” like they do every democrat, always. But Obama can now say he did sign on to long term deficit reduction with the certain cuts, and whatever happens with the committee.
The overall idea of these cuts being good or bad at this time is debatable, I think. But in pure political terms, Obama won the fight with some cuts that shouldn’t and won’t affect entitlement benefits, and he has control of the debt ceiling for raising. That short circuits the crazy motherfuckers in the House from playing chicken with it again.
General Stuck
@JGabriel:
It only matters with regard to what is accessible to them for more extreme brinkmanship. And the debt ceiling was far too dangerous a chip to play with, for the old guard wingers, at least.
The House will remain a right wing loony bin of true believers for the time being, but likely the worst they could cause now, would be shutting down the federal government, which is way way less dangerous than playing around with defaulting our debts.
But as time goes on, I suspect a number of the tea tards will begin getting with the broader program of the GOP, and more sane tactics. Not all of them though, probly not most of them, but some.
srv
@Lolis:
Start with the last couple of posts here: http://www.stiftungleostrauss.com/bunker/
Or buy a gun.
JGabriel
@General Stuck:
Stuck, I think you’re a little off today. It’s not just Krugman who says the stimulus was too small.
It’s also several of Obama’s former economic advisers, several other Nobel prize winning economists, and a set of economic formulas crafted to tell us how large a stimulus program should be given a particular set of conditions — and according to those formulas, for the conditions in the 2008 crash, the stimulus response should have been in the 1.25-1.5 trillion dollar range focused on spending, not the $.75 trillion focused on tax cuts that we got instead.
.
JGabriel
@General Stuck:
Maybe. It’s a plausible point, but I think the old guard is the pre-Fox generation. I don’t see the new Republicans changing their tune, at least not while Roger Ailes still lives.
Edited to Add: I’m beginning to think that Ailes really is the evil genius everyone said Karl Rove was.
.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@Lolis:
I’m glad you asked me that, Lolis. However, my plan is covered by the State Secrets Doctrine as implemented by the current administration. Perhaps President Obama will instantly declassify it when it becomes necessary to his re-election, and I’ll sing like a little birdie.
.
Also too, SUPER COKE! – it’s not just a Plan, it’s also a Can!
.
.
Emma
The stimulus was too small. And it was the only stimulus he was going to get passed through Congress, since the Blue Dogs weren’t going to vote for a bigger one.
Uriel
@Lolis:
UCT plans to continue ducking in here from time to time when it’s bored, uttering some mind numbingly trite but suitably inflammatory gibberish- that may or may not any have relevance to the topic at hand (but probably not)- and surrounding it with dots. He /she will then duck back out to snigger behind it’s fist when someone makes the mistake of taking anything it types seriously, while jerking itself raw over what big, bad Internet warrior he/she is.
it’ a plan fiendish in it’s simplicity.
General Stuck
@JGabriel:
My point is politically, it was the largest ever bill like it, and the largest Obama and dems could hope to get enough votes to pass. I have no doubt that Obama would have liked to get a bigger bill. But there has been a bevy of extra spending tacked onto other bills afterward for additional stimulus, as well as Obama’s extending the Bush tax cuts, and adding even more stimulus onto that. All of it together exceeds Krugman’s demands, after he changed it to be more than what it looked like could get passed.
Krugman has acknowledged the political problems Obama and dems face in getting even more fed spending, in mea culpa pieces he’s written, after unfairly hammering Obama for those pol realities.
Krugman is a smart person, he is also a die hard Clintonista, and has a following of people hostile to Barack Obama;s presidency, that sounds to me at times like feedings of red meat to those folks.
And the last article “The President Surrenders” he is dead to me, and can go to hell with his half baked pol attacks on Obama. You can think what you want. That is just how it is.
And my broader point, that I have made here many time, that passes thru progressives heads with nary a notice, is that The Stimulus Bill was more than just for stimulus, short term stimulus, it was a foundational funding on long term progressive goals and policies, that get no mention in the nutroot fever swamps. That pisses me off some.
JasonF
@General Stuck: Well, that’s the point — or half of it anyway. McConnell is a lot of things, but he’s not stupid. He knows that if the debt ceiling doesn’t get raised, the economy crashes. And he can sell his base on a lot of stupid shit, but I don’t think that if the economy crashes after a failure to raise the debt ceiling, he’ll be able to sell his base on the idea that the black guy in the White House caused it. Add to that the Wall Street Republicans who will abandon the party in droves if the Republican Party ever actually did stop a debt ceiling increase, and McConnell recognizes that it will destroy the party if he allows us to actually hit the ceiling.
So that’s the first half of the equation — he knows Republicans will be hurt if they stand in the way of raising the debt ceiling. But the other half is that there is a sizable chunk of the Republican base that wants the GOP to stand in the way of raising the debt ceiling. Moreover, there is a big chunk of swing voters who aren’t sophisticated enough to think beyond “debt=bad,” and he wants to placate that fringe and woo that detached base by painting a narrative of “Democrats drove us further into the hole.”
So how does he square that circle? The way he tried to do it is by setting up a situation where he could remove all traces of accountability from Republicans in Congress by thrusting it into the hands of the White House. By giving the White House unilateral authority to raise the debt ceiling, subject to a two-thirds override in Congress, he set up a situation where every Republican could safely stand on their soap box and scream about how the debt ceiling should not be raised, but not have to face the economic consequences. It was a classic attempt to allow the Republicans to have their cake (an economy that hadn’t imploded due to treasury default) and eat it too (the ability to run against the debt-increasing Democrats).
Southern Beale
And this morning on David Brooks John McCain got weepy-eyed about how the big, fat, mean Democrats called Republicans “terrorists.” OH MY!!!!!
wrb
I think this is true, and find it even possible to sympathize, in case of the failing (for it is a failing) on the part of an academic like Krugman. Academics are immersed in a contest that is not congruent to the one over what happens in the near term to lives in the outer world. Careers depend on whether your ideas triumph or are marginalized. It would be hard to live in such a world without this infecting your priorities. It may explain why Krugman gets so angry when Obama doesn’t make the most vigorous case for the theoretical best, even when making it would do little to increase the chances of passing a real bill, and might decrease them.
General Stuck
@JasonF:
Like I already said, republicans are going to stand on their soap boxes and preach the evils of tax and spend liberals, regardless of anything else that happens. But that is trumped by the certainty of what we have gone through with actual hostage taking with the debt ceiling, will not happen in Obama’s first term. And my point was with this thread, that Mcconnells rantings about how great the hostage taking was, is belied by the fact he returned the hostage to Obama, and in a way that precluded the same thing happening again.
The wingers are going to demagogue what they demagogue, and dems have their right wing boogymen to trot out as well for some of their own demagoguing. The trick is in a pol campaign is to have ammunition to shoot down those memes. And Obama can rightly claim he is on board for cutting spending and lowering the debt. That I am sure trumps the one or two times Obama will need to raise the debt ceiling before the election, and congress takes meaningless votes to bitch about it, with the added irony, them bitching about something they were bragging about taking hostages, that they surrendered to Obama, for some spending cuts, but nothing like their original demand that medicare must have deep cuts to benefits, or the debt ceiling won’t get raised. They lost that fight. Pure and simple.
Stranger
@Southern Beale:
And this morning on David Brooks John McCain got weepy-eyed about how the big, fat, mean Democrats called Republicans “terrorists.” OH MY!!
Sca-rew them.
I’ve been calling out the Teabaggers all weekend on Facebook, and it’s amazing to me how many people have jumped in to chide me for not ‘respecting those you disagree with.’
That particular cow got out of the barn and died of old age a few years ago, but I’m getting a laugh out of telling them to cry me a river.
JGabriel
@Emma:
From a political perspective, yes, anything over a trillion was always going to be next to impossible to sell. I concede that. But I think we probably could have gotten $900 billion focused on spending, instead of $750b focused on tax cuts, if we had disregarded the GOP.
After all, it was Obama’s efforts to get GOP votes that knocked the bill down to 750 billion, not the Blue Dogs. Strategically, I think that was a bad choice — because the stimulus bill was a one time deal, not a continuing program.
History shows programs that pass with bipartisan support are more robust and tend to last longer. On that basis, I don’t fault Obama for trying to get, for example, GOP votes for his health care plan. That’s a choice that made long-term strategic sense.
The stimulus bill, though, was intended to be a short term program to get the economy going again. We didn’t need Republican buy-in for it to be successful, we just needed to improve the economy. And while the stimulus program that passed may have put the brakes on our economic free-fall, it didn’t make things better — it just halted them where they were. So pursuing GOP support for the stimulus was a mistake, IMO.
.
jwb
@Linda Featheringill: Apparently we do hesitate to speak up—at least to our elected representatives. The teabaggers clobber us on that count every fucking time. We wonder why Washington is wired for Republicans. Well, there are a lot of reasons, most of which we can’t control, but this is something we could actually do something about.
JGabriel
General Stuck:
That’s a reasonable pre-rebuttal to my points about strategy in comment 70, but the main thrust of the bill was stimulus; the cuts to the bill were to primarily court Republicans, not Blue Dogs, IIRC; and it failed to get any GOP votes in the House.
We got what we got. It could have been worse, and it was Obama’s first major negotiation with the GOP. Obviously, I still support Obama. That doesn’t mean we can’t identify a strategic error for future reference, and I think that was: Don’t pursue opposition votes for short term progams when you control both houses.
Granted, that has no applicability for the current Congress. One of our goals has to be that we do our best to make sure it’s applicable to the next.
.
FlipYrWhig
@JGabriel:
The way I remember it, Ben Nelson, at least one of the Republican Mainers, and Arlen Specter (before the switch to D) insisted on a smaller stimulus before they’d support it. Without “pursuing GOP support,” how would it have passed?
Dollared
@jwb: Where is the link to the statistic about the calls running 2:1 teabagger?
RinaX
We didn’t have 60 dems at that point, and at least one Republican vote was needed in the Senate to end the filibuster. It wasn’t possible to disregard the GOP. And that still doesn’t take into account the Blue Dog senators who were just as eager for the tax cuts as the few moderate Republican votes that were still available in early 2009.
FlipYrWhig
@wrb:
I’ve said this a lot, but, indulge me again. I think it’s true that academic _research_ is about proving to have the best ideas, and when you’re right, you win. And politics isn’t like that, because it all comes down to power and votes regardless of who’s right.
But another distinguishing factor of academic life is the committee meeting. And in that setting, you can have a brilliant idea and still see it get shot down for no reason or a pseudo reason like, “Well, we’ve always done it this way, so we don’t want to change.” Paul Krugman _has_ to have had that experience. And yet he doesn’t view at all sympathetically the idea that what Obama wants might not be the same as what he can get from hostile or cowardly partners in the decision-making process, _regardless_ of how he talks, or how right he is.
wrb
@FlipYrWhig:
Very true, and I find it very disappointing, as I think very highly of almost all of the rest that he puts out.
FlipYrWhig
@RinaX:
+1. Far too few people realize that a huge chunk — IMHO a clear majority — of Democratic senators are moderate-to-conservative, and that the politics and economics involved in bringing _them_ around to liberal priorities resemble what would be involved in courting actual Republicans. Obama has to court support from non-liberals in his party’s own caucus and then pick off as many Republicans as possible. That pushes him to the right twice. Even if he were a leftist firebrand in terms of beliefs, and spoke accordingly, he’d still have to do that.
JGabriel
@FlipYrWhig:
We only needed 60 votes, and we had 60 Dems in the Senate at the time. Ben Nelson of course was one of them, but we could have pursued whichever of those votes was cheapest instead of cutting the program by one-sixth, $150b.
Maybe I’m wrong and that was the cheapest way to do it. I find that hard to believe, though — $150B is a hell of a price tag.
.
Lol
FFS the stimulus needed and got GOP votes to pass the Senate. It wasn’t bring bipartisan for Broder’s sake, it was so that the bill would actually pass.
General Stuck
@JGabriel:
Seems others have already answered you on the made sausage that was the stimulus bill, while I was walking the dog. And we have been over it before, all the extra stimulus moneys Obama has snuck into and onto other bills, that weren’t named stimulus, but were that for sure. And put the total very near of past what Krugman was calling for, after he changed his mind to one up Obama.
FlipYrWhig
@wrb: IMHO Krugman should concentrate on what would be good policy, even ideal policy, rather than giving his impressions about approaches, rhetoric, and how best to use which levers of the machinery of political power. A lot of pundits seem to slip into the latter mode, even when it’s not Their Thing.
Lol
@79: We didn’t have 60 votes! Look it up – Franken was in court and Specter hadn’t switched.
FlipYrWhig
@JGabriel:
I don’t think that’s correct. IIRC the only stretch of having 60 votes was around the time of HCR, after Franken was seated, and then Ted Kennedy died.
jwb
@Dollared: Here.
JGabriel
@RinaX:
We didn’t? Let me google that…
You’re right. We had 58 Democrats at the time (I forgot that Franken hadn’t been seated yet), we needed Ben Nelson and 2 GOP Senators. As it was, we got both Mainers and Specter.
I guess that makes my argument a lot weaker.
Mea Culpa to Stuck, Emma, Flip, and RinaX.
.
wrb
@FlipYrWhig:
I agree.
FlipYrWhig
@JGabriel:
According to this (caution, PDF), which is the first academicky-looking source I found, there were 58 Democrats including Lieberman and Sanders, and Collins, Snowe, and Specter demanded $110B less as a condition of their support. Their underlying news source is an NYT article by Carl Hulse and David Herszenhorn, 9 Feb 2009.
ETA: Ah, late to the party as usual.
AAA Bonds
This strategy was declared thirteen days after Obama was inaugurated in 2009.
A Mom Anon
@jwb: It’s also REALLY important to note that these calls are not one call per individual. There are little groups of people that gather,as well as individuals that make several calls apiece. It’s not millions of teapartiers vs a few of us. I know they do this,I’ve heard them run their mouths about it. They try to tie up the phones and flood the lines of every office with calls. It’s like one of those little puffer fishes that fills up with (in this case hot)air to make themselves look big. We need to do the same thing.
General Stuck
@JGabriel:
No problemo :-)
JGabriel
@FlipYrWhig:
S’ok. You documented the price tag, which hadn’t been mentioned previously in thread and was useful to (re)learn.
ETA: @General Stuck: Heh. Thanks.
.
.
Hill Dweller
It should also be said that the economic numbers the BEA were giving the Obama transition team were astonishingly bad. They said the economy shrunk in the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2008 at -.5% and -3.8% respectively. We now know the numbers were actually -3.7% in the 3rd and -8.9% in the 4th.
In hindsight, their actions look about right for the numbers they were getting. Unfortunately for the country(and likely Obama’s presidency), the numbers they were getting badly underestimated the crisis, resulting in an inadequate response.
AAA Bonds
THIS, THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS.
JGabriel
@JGabriel: Oops, sorry all about the double period at the end of #92. Should have been a single dot, didn’t catch the typo in time to fix it.
.
NR
@Emma:
We don’t know that, because he didn’t try.
Cat Lady
@Hill Dweller:
I’m too lazy to look, but I’m going to guess the BEA was full of Bush misadministration appointees who were burrowed in and were either stupid or deliberately wrong for ideology’s sake. Regardless, it’s another reason why Bush is the worst president ever, and for all time, amen.
AA+ Bonds
:(
Emma
@JGabriel: If he had disregarded the GOP? How? The Constitution says it’s CONGRESS that must pass revenue bills.
Emma
@NR: Bullfeathers. Jesus, you people have a great fantasy life. Go write the next Harry Potter because reality escapes you.
JGabriel
@Emma:
Emma, see mea culpa above at #86. My argument was flawed by a faulty recollection of our control of the Senate. C’est la vie.
.
gogol's wife
@NR:
God am I sick of this substitute for argument. You have no idea what Obama has had to do during his presidency. The man is completely worn out from “trying.” I am so sick of liberals and so-called progressives. You all deserve what you get, unfortunately I don’t.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: Um, as everything we’ve just been discussing indicates, the whole package was bigger until the gettable Republicans demanded their cut. A/k/a, he tried for more. He couldn’t _get_ it because of the concerted efforts of three specific Republicans. But I’m sure it could have been even bigger if he had done mumble mumble something cough ahem grumble mumble grumble corporatist.
Cat Lady
@NR:
Oh fer fucksakes. I hate that stupid argument “he should have tried!” Tried WHAT exactly? How do you know he didn’t “try”? Do you have Obama’s phone logs from that time? Do you know Rahm didn’t “try” to arm twist the key Senators to get on board? Do you have Joe Biden’s meeting logs? What if Obama’s people, in spite of all outreach efforts, were just told “no”? Would you know anything about that? No. Assuming after all outreach failed, why go into a legislative battle waving your dick around knowing it’s going to be cut off, when it’s the most important legislative initiative for the country and your new administration? What’s the fucking point?
But I’m sure you’re right, he just sat back and didn’t “try”. Fucking manic progressives. Whiny useless back seat drivers that should all just be punched in the neck.
FlipYrWhig
@Cat Lady: The proof that he didn’t try enough is, inevitably, that he didn’t win. Because if you try hard enough, you win! That particular dance is the defining trait of the sloppiest liberal blogosphere criticism of Obama. There are many tighter and more convincing criticisms to reckon with. But the doesn’t try/doesn’t fight one is the most soul-deadening and, alas, the most widespread.
Emma
@JGabriel: Oopsie. Sometimes I don’t read the whole thread before I answer, and I should. All debts settled and we’re friends.
Cat Lady
@FlipYrWhig:
Between the media’s “both sides do it!” FAIL and the manic progressive’s “moar bully pulpit!” and “he didn’t kick the Republicans in the junk to compensate for my Daddy issues waaaaaaaahhhhhhh!”, there’s just too much fucking nonsense to cut through now for this country to survive. Sloppy reality show psychodrama is what the political discourse is now. Obama’s trying to be the president of the whole country, and instead what everyone wants (with the exception of a few of us with healthy psyches here) is catharsis. We Are All Oprah Now.
TenguPhule
Therefore, from this point on Republicans must live in fear for their lives if we are to restore balance to the American Force. The Israeli model of dealing with Palestinians applied at home may be messy, but if it means Boner’s head mounted on a pike in front of the House of Reps, then by the gods it will be worth it.
Uriel
@AA+ Bonds: As tweety would say, “HA!'”
Lol
Obey has talked about how the Obama team started at 1.3 trillion (maybe higher?) and how it got whittled down and by who. They started off at a number that would shock people and then political realities set in.
OzoneR
@NR:
what would “trying” have entailed? Letting the bigger stimulus linger in the Senate while he went on a national campaign to sell it, as the economy gets worse and the needed stimulus gets larger?
Dollared
@gogol’s wife: So you’re not a liberal or progressive. You’re……what? Do you think the Civil Rights Act was too extreme? Perhaps you think unions are a bad idea. Maybe you think corporations are too tightly regulated.
What are your goals for our country?
Dollared
@TenguPhule: No, but Wall Street should live in fear a .25% financial transactions tax. Employers should live in fear of the EEOC finding age discrimination in their layoff patterns. Hedge funds should be forced to publicly reveal their positions. Every college graduate should be either working in their chosen profession, staffing free preschool, or performing home energy audits.
You get the idea. The US progressive movement, of which BJ is a part, is a purely defensive operation, in the most target rich nation on Earth.
bob h
Did you see Joe Nocera’s apology to the tea party for calling them “terrorists”?