I’ve been waiting to see what direction Bobo would go with Rick Perry. He seems to be leaning towards “I don’t like him but I can see why Applebee-goers do, failure of the establishment blah blah blah”. I believe this will eventually morph into “Perry has some good ideas, libruls aren’t fair to him blah blah blah” though maybe not “Perry is the Burkean, Churchillian genius who will save Western Civilization” (Bobo went there with W).
The events of 2009 and 2010 also concentrated the Republican mind. It used to be that there were many themes in the Republican hymnal. Now there is only one: Government is too big, and it needs to be brought under control. It used to be there were many threats on the horizon. Now there is only one: the interlocking oligarchy of politicians, academics, journalists, consultants and financiers who live along the Acela corridor want to rip America from its traditional moorings.
I’m not sure that’s true, I think Strapping Young Bucks and Hippies Who Spit On Soliders are still grave threats.
But you know who else didn’t like the interlocking oligarchy of politicians, academics, journalists, consultants and financiers?
Brian R.
Christ, what an asshole.
schrodinger's cat
First it was Chunky Bobo and now it is Bobo. The fluffing of Perry by serious conservatives, has begun
Serious conservatives : Those who look serious and don’t froth at the mouth but are just as vile.
Captain Haddock
And by interlocking oligarchy of politicians, academics, journalists, consultants and financiers who live along the Acela corridor I mean myself and everyone I know.
schrodinger's cat
Isn’t Bobo a part of that oligarchy too?
Davis X. Machina
We’re making progress. Fifty years ago that would have been ‘politicians, Jews, Jews, Jews, and Jews’.
Bright side, people.
PeakVT
Now there is only one: the interlocking oligarchy of politicians, academics, journalists, consultants and financiers who live along the Acela corridor want to rip America from its traditional moorings.
Brooks has met the enemy, and he is it.
4tehlulz
So kill yourself Bobo.
David in NY
Didn’t know Bobo had removed to Waco, or somewhere.
Also, bet good money he takes the Acela, unless his expense account and schedule allows one of the air shuttles.
MarkJ
I really don’t see where academics fit in there. They have no real power, make relatively modest incomes, and the one’s that aren’t beholden to the GOP – Kthug most prominently – are certainly not getting their way policy-wise. But no opportunity to impugn academics must go unseized.
And excuse me, but aren’t the financiers and consultants our Galtian Overlords whose motives must never be questioned, and whose taxes must never be raised because JOBS! – so says Rick Perry and everyone else in the GOP?
cleek
Bobo knows which way the “conservative” wind blows. and he aims to stay right smack in the middle of it. cause his job depends on it.
lacp
Sasha Issenberg is about to release a book about Perry and his campaign staff. Issenberg is also the author of this delightful Bobo piece from 2004:
http://www.phillymag.com/articles/booboos_in_paradise/
David Hunt
@4tehlulz:
You misunderstand him slightly. He’s saying that these people being designated as the enemy is bad thing…at least if it’s done indiscriminately enough to make him and his friends the Enemy of his team. I’m sure that he’s rather they move the designation of the Enemy to the people who really deserve it. To the Hippies, Young Bucks, and depraved poor where it should be because blah blah blah bipartisan blah blah blah, Burke, blah.
Culture of Truth
Interesting, since without them the GOP would cease to exist.
PaulB
Oddly enough, I tend to agree with this statement:
But I’m pretty sure that Bobo and I have different things in mind when we think of that “oligarchy,” including Bobo’s role in it.
Ben Cisco
@David Hunt: Yup, this is what I got out of it.
__
Shorter Bobo: “Hey, watch where you’re pointing that thing! You could hit somebody important!”
General Stuck
Bobo can dream on about so called republican unity centering around one of anything. Too soon for that, after Bush. The GOP is just now ramping up for their usual all out civil war, that usually occurs before the being out of power thing, begins to congeal anything like unity for electoral purposes, especially for POTUS elections.
And even then, they need a candidate who is at least marginally acceptable to the bulk of wildly disparate factions that make up the GOP coalition, that often have diametrically opposed priorities, say like business wingers and tea tarders, or religious ones, and so on.
Perry, at first blush, does more than any other candidate in the winger field, fit that bill. But he is also, I suspect, a bit too insane for the needed indie swing voters to win a GE, and likely too crazy for even some moderate wingers, at least right now.
By 2016, however, being out of power for two POTUS cycles, they will be much more willing to get practical toward rallying around a candidate that can actually win a GE, like a Huntsman, for example, or someone more conservative than him, that isn’t insane, or at least can fake not being that. Right now it’s tribal fury in the gooper base, and the tea tards hold the advantage.
kd bart
So I gather that Bobo has nice little spread outside of Omaha these days and works for the local paper.
Elizabelle
Hey, Doug, you read Brooks so that we don’t have to.
I am doing a Bobo-free August, and it’s been wonderfully clarifying.
Letting the GOP politics settle out a bit.
Think of it this way: if someone delivered a fresh pile of dog doo to your front door every morning, would you feel the need to inspect it closely, each and every day?
Whatever happens will happen without me, so I am concentrating on activities with a better return.
[Dang. And that might put me in Applebee Americans territory. Ah well.]
cleek
@MarkJ:
pretty clever trick, ain’t it? populists in the service of the oligarchs. gotta admire the way the message masters have managed to get the rubes to embrace that little bit of doublethink.
MikeJ
@David in NY: For DC/NY it doesn’t matter how much the air shuttles cost, there’s no way I’d ever use them. Acela is soooo much faster for downtown to downtown. Hell, I’d prefer the metroliner over flying post 9/11.
Yutsano
I hope Perry is at least polite enough to say thank you after that knob slobbing.
And if anyone thinks Bobo’s logic is anything beyond get that damn nigra out of the White House I got a bridge on oceanfront property in Colorado to sell them.
Big Baby DougJ
@Davis X. Machina:
Exactly
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Yeah. Call me crazy, but I’m willing to bet that if the average teabaghist ever heard about the Acela Corridor he’d think it was some sort of Islahomoliberal code for anal sex. Shit, I LIVE really close to one end of the dreaded AC and even I had to think about what he meant for a second.
But don’t tell Bobo that the ReaLAMEricans he writes about are just as happily ignorant of his world as he is of theirs. The shock might kill him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MarkJ:
THEY turn YOUR CHILDREN into THEM! or at least THEM! lovers, or THEM! symps
Except at University of Chicago, where they read Reinhold Niebuhr and Leo Strauss, so that’s cool.
beltane
You’ve got to give David Brooks some credit. He is by far the best contortionist there is among the conservative pundits, only rarely losing his balance by saying things like “Sarah Palin is lethal tumor” in the Republican party. Most days, he is so adept at sticking his head up his ass while simultaneously licking his balls and doing a one-arm handstand that he makes it look like child’s play. And he does this with a smile on his face. That’s why he makes the big bucks.
rlrr
@MarkJ:
Academics are evil because they don’t universally venerate St. Ronald Reagan and the baby Jesus.
Culture of Truth
Acela is shut down this weekend, thus proving god sent Irene and is a tea partier.
gnomedad
OT, The Onion fills in the details:
PayPal Founder To Create Island
Dennis SGMM
If it hadn’t been written by a Very Serious Person, Bobo’s screed would be a laff riot.
The bit that DougJ quoted was a nugget all right. Here’s another one from the end of the piece:
Does Bobo really want the president to break America into little pieces and then sell off the pieces to the highest bidder? That was the innovation-based way that Romney made his fortune.
What a piece of work is Bobo.
ericblair
@PaulB:
Projection like an IMAX theater, baby. All those evildoers might work together fine for the right, Bobo comfortably nestled among them. But how you’d think they would agree on anything on the left, including lunch reservations, is a mystery. Lefty journalists cooperating with Dem politicians getting along with lefty academics in cahoots with, er, lefty financiers? Really?
qwerty42
Jon Chait’s take on the same column.
Elizabelle
@MarkJ:
There’s a Stanford economist, John Taylor, who’s often alone in declaring that the stimulus didn’t work.
GOP ideology depends on academicians, even if they’re out of the mainstream, not very factual, and their results don’t stand up. Rightwing money props up a lot of think tanks and university programs.
What was Arthur Laffer? Where did supply side economics come from? Some taxi driver?
LittlePig
Had to look up “Acela corridor”, but I can’t tell from Brooks lousy writing whether that’s a positive or a negative for my scorecard.
At any rate, Bobo is ass-backwards (yeah, I know, water wet, sky blue). America *is* going back to its traditional moorings – Robber Baronage – so I’m not real clear on what his problem is, other than it’s a White People Problem.
Elizabelle
@lacp:
Thank you! Bookmarked it. Looks like a fun read.
wrb
Romney’s toast.
He looks too much like what a lot of America now considers the enemy.
I hadn’t thought about it that way before- figured Mormonism was his greatest weakness, but the elite/establishment vibe he projects might be more damaging in this climate.
This also changes my thinking about their relative strength against Obama. Obama’s and Romney’s elite vibes neutralize each other while against Perry, Obama’s are a liability.
Bulworth
Acela corridor? That’s a new one.
MikeBoyScout
I’m not getting this.
How many “only one“-s are there?
Is BoBo telling us that Republicans can’t handle more than one thing at a time because of some mental deficiency associated to participating in Republican politics?
Is this why chewing gum sales are plummeting?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@wrb:
I hope so. My fear is that if Romney the Mormon can survive the primaries, he will become Romney the Private Sector Job Creator in the general. People buy into that shit, and the media will be selling it hard.
Jewish Steel
Wait, wait! I know this one!
Jesus?
Dennis SGMM
@Bulworth:
Not to worry; as Perrymentum builds Bobo will switch to blaming those along the Arugula corridor for America’s woes.
jibeaux
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve overheard, at the Applebee’s salad bar, the phrase “interlocking oligarchy.”
LittlePig
If Romney’s toast then the GOP is screwed, because Pastor Perry doesn’t stand a chance in hell against *Candidate* Obama.
President Obama, yeah, he could be beaten, because he’s a lousy president, but BHO hasn’t even begun to openly campaign; that’s still six months out. Once he hits the stump at full steam (about a year out), Governor Goodhair is toast.
Yeah, yeah, unemployment, shumemployment – stupid people are going to vote GOP anyway, but unemployed people with two wits to rub together know that another Texas governor in charge will just be doubling-down on stupid.
Dennis SGMM
@LittlePig:
The long-term unemployed may decide that Anyone Else is worth a shot.
Violet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The media will be pushing it for sure. But Romney looks like the CEO at the company that just laid you and your co-workers off and got a million dollar bonus for doing so. And guess what! He is that guy! Not sure how well that’ll play in this climate.
catclub
Chait said something about ‘the GOP thought Romney was too squishy four years ago.’
Nonetheless, I am pretty sure that 4 years ago Rush Limbaugh favored Romney over both Huckabee and McCain — which shows that Rush is by no means the only authority in the GOP.
Wny isn’t Rush big on Romney now? Or is he?
Elizabelle
@Jewish Steel:
If we could relabel that crew “The Pharisees” ….
Oh. I guess that might be Perry’s strategy?
Comrade Javamanphil
@MarkJ:
Bobo has seen the demographic projections and realizes there is but one way for the GOP to continue winning elections: keep the populace as stupid as possible. Besides, everybody hates those egghead scientists (and bureaucrats!) Don’t you watch movies?
catclub
@Violet: I hate to tell you, but any prosperous looking man can get tarred with the ‘looks like the guy who just laid you off’ blame — including Obama. Remember Gantt versus Helms. I would be amazed if that ad did not come back in 2012 in some form where the GOP is telling you that Obama cost you your job.
Violet
@Dennis SGMM:
They may. But Americans still blame Bush for the recession. And the Tea Party practically sent the US into default and people weren’t very happy with them for it. And here Perry comes, looking like Bush 2.0 with better hair and more good ol’ boy, saying how the Tea Party has the right idea. I dunno. The American people may not want that Anyone Else to be Better Hair Bush. The Republicans might make him their candidate, but the whole country votes.
catclub
@jibeaux: lol
Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
I’m pretty sure Brooks has no idea what an oligarchy actually is. That’s quite the diverse cabal he’s got there.
ericblair
@Dennis SGMM:
Maybe, but complicating that, he’s not Anyone Else: he’s Dubya 2: The Knuckledragging. Maybe if there was some born-again Silicon Valley billionaire or someone who could repolish the gooper turd in a new way, but we’re getting something we’ve seen before and didn’t end up liking it then. Even then, I think it’s pretty much impossible for a gooper candidate to thread the needle between the primaries and the general anymore: the sanity gap is too great.
LittlePig
@Dennis SGMM:
I think Romney could pull that, but not Perry. He’s a full-on religious whack-job. Since our media concentrates on whackjobbery, there’s a perception that a majority of the people in the country are cool with that, but I just don’t believe it. The insane make better copy, but there is a difference between watching crazy people and voting them to be President. Sarah Palin is the archetypical example here – she gets major coverage, but polls repeatedly show there is no way in hell she could be elected. Perry’s going to have the same thing once his penchant for playing dress-up George Armstrong Custer-style gets out, much less his extreme theological – and theocratical – views are public knowledge.
Obama’s problem will be to get out the vote. Apathy will be his opponent in the general election, not another blithering Texas idiot.
protected static
@MarkJ: …like ‘financier,’ ‘academic’ is code for ‘rootless, cosmopolitan Jew.’ Unlike ‘financier,’ it also carries the possible connotations of ‘fag’ and ‘Red menace.’ Any combination thereof is acceptable.
After all, who else wants to ‘rip America from its traditional moorings?’
grandpajohn
@LittlePig:
yep, training camp has officially opened getting ready for the season. a bit of news for the naysayers out there from TWM
President Obama’s re-election team unveiled “Project Vote” yesterday, a voter-outreach drive intended to “combine grassroots organizing with digital outreach and voter registration to ‘expand the electorate’ and ‘maximize participation from crucial constituencies.’”
JPL
@LittlePig:
True
Kyle
Note he deliberately left out corporations and the military-industrial complex. These are, of course, cottage industries compared to the America-destroying power of being an adjunct lecturer at a junior college.
Brooks is highly paid and flattered to be stupid and clueless in specific ways, and is cunning enough to know how and why his bread is buttered.
Jewish Steel
@Elizabelle: Ha! Look for that in a Facebook update from Alaska soon.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Comrade Javamanphil:
Obama is also an academic.
wrb
@Violet:
I think both Obama and Romnet coming off as representative of thepoliticians, academics, journalists, consultants and financiers who live along the Acela corridor want to rip America from its traditional moorings.
So I don’t see this giving Obama a big advantage over Romney.
Advantage Perry.
However, his wackjobity will work against him in some places.
JGabriel
Everyone who knows more than us must die!
.
harlana
Why do I have the feeling that “Acela corridor” is going to end up being a new tag?
Mike G
Fixed.
catclub
@grandpajohn: I am hoping for side by side pictures of Perry and Bush. There was one of them as pilots — with all the swagger of a 22 year old fighter pilot Texan. The next should be side by side cheerleader pictures.
http://twitpic.com/6aqyaa
Steve M.
Oh, he’ll go there with Perry, right after Perry delivers his Major Foreign Policy Speech at West Point or the Naval War College or wherever, vetted by Doug Feith and destined to moisten right-wing and Village panties from coast to coast.
Jamie
What is it with the GOP and cheerleaders?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuQ35q7aEgU
sukabi
@wrb: don’t think Romney has the advantage here… he can’t connect with anybody… he’s laughably out of touch with the ‘average joe’, and the rich don’t like him / don’t trust him because he’s a windsock and quite frankly isn’t that bright and the teabillies don’t trust his religion… the only thing he’s got going for him is his complexion…
and I see on rereading your comment that I NEED ANOTHER CUP OF COFFEE….
but I don’t think Perry’s going to last very long, right now he’s got the novelty, but the turd isn’t going to stay polished… the media doesn’t have that much shinola this time around, plus the old GOP guard won’t get behind Perry, he’s too much of a free-wheeling idiot to be trusted with the party nomination…
Elie
I dunno. Guys like bobo I just see as putting their knees under a desk to fulfil their job requirements. It would not surprise me if he had NO real choice or significant values or principles — beyond being a national columnist and hobnobbing with the Kook Kids, whoever they are at any point in time. Emptiness is what I read and what he communicates. I take his potential for negative influence, but not too deeply… I am more concerned with how to reach the true middle of the roaders in every day life — and how to most importantly, manage the negativity from the professional left, which feeds this guy and engenders its own apathy. Apathy is our worst danger… Rick Perry will show himself as he truly is…we have to use what he will give us and it will be a treasure trove (though I prefer Mittens as an opponent)
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Self trolling DougJ?
RP
If Perry wins the nom, Obama might want to borrow a page from Nixon and start talking explicitly about the “silenty majority.” It might be a good way to peel off some of the non-crazy republicans and independents.
vanya
“But you know who else didn’t like the interlocking oligarchy of politicians, academics, journalists, consultants and financiers?”
Ooh, ooh, I know this one! Adolf Hitler!
beltane
@Elie: Well said. David Brooks as a person does not matter. He is merely an actor hired to play a role. A such, his ideas are not really his own, they are merely his version of a script written by someone else. This is why it is a waste of time to go after the actors while letting the directors and script writers off the hook.
Amir Khalid
(I saw the post headline, and now I’m wondering: where can I get some of this “brain bleach” I keep hearing about?)
Every time The Bobos, Smooth and Chunky, herald the coming of the Hot New Republican candidate, it should be accompanied by this mighty Richard Strauss fanfare.
Rick Perry’s as shallow and stupid and willfully ignorant as any of the other Tea Party panderers. So let them talk him up to their hearts’ content. After all, like calls to like.
wrb
@sukabi:
rereading your comment that I NEED ANOTHER CUP OF COFFEE
I screwed up the Quote and WP declined my request to edit, sorry
Elie
@beltane:
almost no one reads their shit anymore anyway… the blogs have broken a lot of their influence but not sure that our candidates know best how to use that break yet… I truly think that this is why we have so much traffic from the trolls and other leftie set ups who come here — they have to use that influence more and more as the population fragments more and more (anyway, just my thoughts)
Judas Escargot
“Interlocking Oligarchy” would be a great band name. Somewhere.
jl
Brooks like to throw out vague almost meaningless verbal formulations that function as empty vessels that the reader can fill in, and Brooks can fill in as needed, to get the right emotional and ideological resonances going.
“interlocking oligarchy of politicians, academics, journalists, consultants and financiers who live along the Acela corridor want to rip America from its traditional moorings.”
What the heck does that mean? But it sets up vague associations that do the real subconscious work that determines voting behavior among some people. So, maybe, something like
The nonsensical and ahistorical self contradictory complex of ‘traditional moorings’ Brooks has sketched is the very humble, very self reliant, very rugged, very ambitious and imaginative self starter, who dives optimistically into rugged individualistic capitalist endeavor, while having a very deep rooted sense of community, and will altruistically help out deserving friends, family and neighbors who fall on rough times.
I guess people like this exist in cowboy movies, but where else? Maybe, for Brooks, America’s traditional moorings are rooted in cowboy movies (at least old school cowboy movies).
This ‘oligarchy’ could include Krugman and Stiglitz, too big to fail bankers who give to Obama, the Obama crowd, ex GOP and now moderate policy wonks. And surely all these people agree on everything, right?
Brooks conveniently leaves corporations with lots of money out of his vague cloudy vaporous oligopoly. And given the evidence of pay to play in the TX Perry administration, that is a good tactical move on Brooks story.
Perry was certainly upholding good old traditional American values when he tried to mandate HPV immunization, which conveniently helped out his friends, and a corporate buddy.
The HPV Vaccine: Rick Perry Was For The ‘Mandate’ Before He Was Against It
By Igor Volsky on Aug 15, 2011, Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/08/15/295838/the-hpv-vaccine-rick-perry-was-for-the-mandate-before-he-was-against-it/
BTW, I support the use of HPV, but rushing through a mandatory policy without adequate study and without reasonable public buy in, and then doing a flip flop as soon as it is convenient is not a good approach to public health policy. At least I don’t think so.
Rick Perry’s vulnerabilities with the right
By National Journal Posts By National Journal | Exclusive Tue, Aug 16, 2011, in Yahoo News
news dot yahoo dot com/blogs/exclusive/rick-perry-vulnerabilities-145436433.html
Also see
Rick Perry Stonewalls ETF Scandal
by: Libby Shaw
Thu Oct 07, 2010 at 10:24:12 AM CDT
www dot texaskaos dot com/diary/6756/rick-perry-stonewalls-etf-scandal
URLs edited to escape the. Moderation Man.
Nutella
@lacp:
Good article on Brooks. Thanks for recommending it. I like the part where the author calls Brooks to ask him about the ‘facts’ he got wrong. Here’s Bobo’s defense:
So making things up is both ‘just a joke’ and ethical, while challenging false factoids is unethical in Bobo’s universe (aka the Acela corridor).
Comrade Javamanphil
@Judas Escargot: Interlocking Oligarhy is the name of my Beck cover band.
ericblair
@Judas Escargot:
I like “Rootless Cosmopolitans” myself, but it’s a little old-school these days.
Elizabelle
Political p orn no one wants to see.
David Brooks: Fellating for the masses, since the 1980s.
The Ancient Randonneur
DougJ you better quite messing with Bobo and Perry. The East Coast has already had an earthquake, with a hurricane on the way! You think Bobo is stroking himself now, just wait until Perry holds another day of prayer to fend off the locusts and plague.
Elie
For all those who think that the dysfunctional lefties and PUMAS don’t have influence, I just listened to a call in commenter on NPR flogging the notion that Obama is not using the bully pulpit and that he “lost” the debt ceiling debacle.
Do not kid yourselves. Our own leftie poison pill/s are quite effective, even perhaps more effective than the typical MSM idiots or rabid right wingers.
If you doubt me, ask some of your leftie progressive friends about what they think of what the President is doing and you will hear the same shit coming from their mouths.
Again, our opposition is greatly supported and indeed facilitated by our leftie/progressive critics. They are giving the MSM its talking points and frames about Obama..
What are we going to do about THAT? THAT to me is the more fundamental problem — not the flaccid and empty rhetoric of this guy…
NR
@Elie: Under what kind of objective standard could Obama be said to have “won” the debt ceiling confrontation?
Downpuppy
@Elie: The reason lefty rhetoric is effective is that it’s valid. Isn’t the fact that we’re in a depression a little more fundamental problem than the fact that somebody on a message board dares mention that we’re in a fucking depression & Obama is doing squat about it?
NR
@Downpuppy: Don’t be silly. If we just don’t talk about it, no one will notice that we have huge unemployment and a shitty economy. Just shut up until after the election and everything will be FINE.
lacp
@Elie: I wish I could think of an answer to that, and I say that as both a lefty non-Democrat and an Obama non-fan. I can understand this sort of slagging coming from lefties who aren’t Democrats: that’s what we’re supposed to do, although I think our criticisms are more systemic than simple ad hominem attacks on the President.
But it is a mystery to me why any lefty/liberal/progressive Democrat would do it. It seems they’re trying to pretend that the problem is somehow intrinsic to Obama himself rather than more generally to a money-corrupted political system that requires an ever larger chunk of corporate ownership from candidates the higher the office they seek. If one accepts the system as it is, one should realize that Obama is about the best (and most realistically electable) person that system will hork up. Changing the rules of the game (and, yes, you have to start at the local level) might get you more left/liberal candidates who are actually electable. Mounting ridiculous primary challenges, or threatening to do so, to the sitting president will get you a bag of dogshit.
Barry
Brooks: “It used to be there were many threats on the horizon. Now there is only one: the interlocking oligarchy of politicians, academics, journalists, consultants and financiers who live along the Acela corridor want to rip America from its traditional moorings.”
Barry’s iron law of the right strikes again: the right can *never* accuse the left of doing something, unless the right is already doing it, and probably 10x as muc.
That ‘interlocking oligarchy’ of which Brooks a member is working against *us*, and for the right and the GOP.
Corner Stone
@Elie:
Did the thought occur to you that the individual caller simply took a look around his/her environment and made up their own minds to the state of things?
Or did the caller prequalify his comments in some way to lead you to conclude he had been poisoned by traitorous traitors?
bk
Please, I beg of you (and the other front page posters) – stop linking to NY Times stuff. After 20 links per month, per their new on line rules, we have to pay for it, and I really don’t want to pay for this type of swill. Seriously
wrb
@NR:
The obvious one:
In a situation in which he held little if any leverage, and a lot of the opponents wanted a default- in order to do maximum damage to the country and Democrats election chances- he prevented a default and negotiated a trigger that shoots only Republican priorities: military spending and payments to Medicare PROVIDERS.
Amazing.
A triumph
Nutella
@bk:
You don’t have to pay if you don’t want to. If you go to a link like this
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/08/26/world/100000001018924/the-road-to-tripoli.html?ref=world&gwh=8F9D9504903E54E6EE161BD4253E2502
You’ll get the ‘over the monthly limit’ message. All you have to do to get around it is remove the last gwh term and you’re there without paying. That is, go to the address bar where the link is, remove the “&gwh=8F9D9504903E54E6EE161BD4253E2502” part at the end, then hit return.
NR
@wrb: And the $1 trillion in domestic spending cuts, that’s also part of this amazing triumph?
Also: As for your vaunted trigger, Obama’s own defense secretary is already laying the groundwork to make sure those defense cuts never actually happen. So I wouldn’t be counting chickens on that just yet.
Sad_Dem
So when will the rebel technicals be doing raids on the Acela corridor?
boss bitch
@Downpuppy:
so the same reasoning can apply to right wing rhetoric, yes?
boss bitch
@wrb:
to plenty on the left, a default would have been winning because winning means not caving – no matter the consequences.
Matt
@Davis X. Machina:
That’s *still* pretty much what it is – they’ve just figured out that it’s impolite to SAY it out loud when the press is looking. See also the Southern Strategery.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elie:
“There’s no difference between Gore and Bush”
Elie
@NR:
There is no justice.
I apologize for my delay in responding to your comment. I had something to take care of first.
I am in so upset that people of intelligence and awareness have such horrible points of view…
The most obvious benefit of the debt ceiling debate was the use of the Congress again in its rightful role without requiring the President to use untested Constitutional test that would have muddied the outcome further through impeachment of interventions by the Court. I know it was popular with some, but it would have been a dreadful mistake making Obama further the issue.
We “kicked the can down the road” – spreading any cuts to the future and requiring a negotiated process to undertake
The tax cuts will expire in Nov, providing revenue that will help mitigate the revenue picture
Our country emerged bruised, but still the economic leader of the world with China not yet ready and the European monetary and governmental systems unable to eclipse our importance in any way. S&P has been largely ignored.
The system worked and he was not the issue. That may not look like victory to you, but then NR, what do you know about anything that I care about.
Nothing.
You instead get to demoralize and drag down from positive and from getting things done. You will celebrate the election of a republican that you and others like you seem so happy to bring about.
I feel powerless to figure out how to separate the fate of progressivism that is well served by this President from destructive energy of so called progressive nay sayers — those who enjoy crippling our own progress and success. And for what? What do you get out of your success in damaging this President and his tenure two years in and after a raft of successes that are sadly unacknowledged by you and your cronies?
I cannot explain people like you. I am still getting over the betrayal of a dear friend, and though you are not anyone I know or would like to know, you pose as someone with the values and sensibilities that I would support — progressive, generally liberal with interest in social justice. I find myself without understanding your goal exept to accomplish destroying this Presidency. And to be replaced by what exactly?
If I have to leave this country, it will be the left that drives me away. I will never trust your motives again.
Downpuppy
@boss bitch: Truth is a nice feature in rhetoric, but there are plenty of substitutes. Some stuff works through simplicity, repetition, and base appeals to tribalism.
Elie
I will add this as well: the left was split and the split exploited by republicans after the Vietnam War when the more conservative Democrats who supported the war and other issues were split off. It hurt the Democrats badly and helped destroy the unions which became unprotectd by their new friends on the right.
You have to be mindful of our “coalition”. Destroying Obama for some of you may seem like a means to your end, but all it will do is further embolden and empower the crazy right. Obama supporters should not be your enemy, but somehow you spend your whole time attacking him and his policies and not our most obvious opponents to everything wee stand for. Why??? Why.
FlipYrWhig
@lacp:
To show that he or she is much cleverer than the president and has figured everything out and it would totally work, too, but the president is just too stupid and/or inflexible and/or too much of a sellout to do it. Democrats do it from the right, and they do it from the left. It appears to be programmed into their DNA.
Elie
@lacp:
Thank you! I share your question/s.
Death Panel Truck
Satan?
Now, isn’t that special!
Punchy
A bit from this article made me laff…
Because….as we all know….amendments start with the executive branch, completely bypass Congress, and go right to the states. Or something. Talk about fighting a battle (gay marriage) that’s already so lost….
RP
We on the left always complain about our side’s terrible “messaging” and the fact that the media always frames the issues in terms of “GOP strong/Dems weak.” But then when some on the left suggest that maybe we should tout victories as HUGE success stories, even when we didn’t get everything we wanted, or tout our modest losses as modest successes, they’re shouted down as propagandists and told that the TRUTH should prevail. We’ve never managed to learn that the truth can be, and must be, shaped by us.
The debt ceiling deal could have been spun as a modest victory for us for the reasons mentioned in post 91, but instead many on the left happily bought into Boehner’s spin that he got everything and brought home a huge victory. Of course, the white house and congress deserve a large part of the blame for this phenomenon as well.
lacp
@FlipYrWhig: Ah, Scooby Doo political theory: it all would have worked except for that darned Obama and his meddling executive branch!
Bill Arnold
@lacp:
In a two party system, if you primarily slag one party, then you are objectively furthering the goals of the other party. Just saying. Balanced slagging is fine.
Better to spend effort on making > 2 parties viable, IMO. Two national parties is the only stable state with winner-takes-all voting, I believe, especially with institutional obstacles against other parties baked into the system at the state and local level.
lacp
@Bill Arnold: Indeed – state and local level isn’t sexy, though, just effective.
NR
@Elie:
And this sums up the problem you are having–you are fundamentally disconnected from reality.
I am not destroying this presidency. The left is not destroying this presidency. Obama is destroying his presidency. He is destroying it by advancing conservative policy that is wholly inadequate to fix the problems the country is facing and, in many cases, actually makes the situation worse.
We are not facing 9.8% unemployment because liberals are criticizing Obama’s economic policies. It baffles me that you don’t seem to understand this simple fact.
Elie
@NR:
No — I completely disagree. I am not disconnected from reality. YOU are. And you are disconnected and will not accept responsibility for YOUR damage and lack of acknowledging progress. YOU never never do that. YOU lie all the time and distort.YOU are offering the frames and support for the right’s and the MSM talking points – not the administration
The SELLOUT is YOU.
Elie
I will also add this: the right wing doesnt get its divisions played up on the media and blogs like the left liberals do. You can be assured, all you “critics’ that your criticisms will be dutifully transmitted and amplified by the media — UNLIKE the right. They can fight day and night, and none of that gets reported. Just listen in on the national news, on NPR, pick up any magazine, and your destructive frames are repeated and exaggerated over and over. You are not only destroying this administration, but the progressive movement — a movement that should be characterized by optimism and strngth of purpose and character is trivialized by a bunch of petty naysayers who couldnt figure out how to build anything good or lasting — except division and demoralization.
AA+ Bonds
The fix is in for Bachmann. Front page of FoxNews.com today:
Bachmann Told to Cut the ‘Obama Rock Star’ Routine –
Following her straw poll victory, Bachmann faces criticism about her high-profile campaign in Iowa
If you’re wondering, the two weeks before Pawlenty dropped out saw a bunch of stories from Fox News about how he was “struggling”. I knew then that his campaign was over.
It looks like Fox wants to hurry up and force a Perry-Romney race, which makes strategic sense for them as an arm of the Republicans.
So long, Michele!
Jenny
Doug,
At some point, you have to get over Bobo.
It’s far past time for you to consult a therapist.
This is a nice blog until the shit about Bobo, McMeagan, and Sully pop up. It’s like the PUMAs who constantly whine about Hillary. It’s time to move on.
NR
@<a h@Elie: Put up or shut up. Post one single example of a time I have lied, about anything.
Oh, that’s right. You can’t. Because you’re full of shit.
Get it in your thick head: Liberals aren’t doing damage to Obama. Obama is doing damage to himself. He is not at 38% approval because liberals are criticizing his economic policies. He is at 38% approval because his economic policies suck and they are hurting American voters.
But I guess you’d rather live in a fantasy world where people get laid off from their jobs because liberals said mean things about Obama. That’s your prerogative, but don’t expect me to indulge you.
FlipYrWhig
I’d like to think there’s a difference between a complaint like, “I think Obama should be doing things differently because what he’s doing now is not adequate” and a complaint like “Obama isn’t even trying to do things differently because he’s an inept loser sellout.” And both of those are apart from the other long-running arguments in the blogosphere about (1) the degree to which Obama is constrained by circumstance, (2) the degree to which Obama should use a different rhetorical style. IMHO we can have a robust and even nasty argument about what he could/should do without devolving into dismissive leftier-than-thou one-upmanship.
grandpajohn
@NR I think that most of us here are disconnected from your concept of reality in the alternative universe you seem to live in
NR
@grandpajohn: And what alternate universe would that be? The one in which, if liberals would just stop criticizing Obama, people would magically forget that they’re out of work and can’t make their mortgage payments? Because that’s the one that people around here prefer to inhabit.
NR
@FlipYrWhig: It’s not about one-upmanship, it’s about having a clear understanding of why we’re in the situation we’re in.
The simple fact is that Obama is to the right of Nixon when it comes to the most important issue of our time: Economic power, and who should have it. Obama is a corporatist to the bone.
It’s blindingly obvious by now that Obama is a Third Wayer who won’t initiate any change without the approval of Wall Street and the corporate fat cats. He has completely accepted that they are in charge, and he has no problem with this whatsoever.
So it’s stupid to talk about constraints. It’s stupid to blame the Republican House. We had solid majorities in both houses of Congress for two years, and Obama still moved us to the right.
The simple fact is that when the leader of a party routinely reinforces and gives credence to the other party’s ideas and talking points, instead of standing boldly behind the ideals of the grassroots of his own party, all it does is help the Republicans drive us over the cliff.
Well, guess what? We’re going over the cliff. We need someone to change direction and move us away from that cliff, and nothing that happens in 2012 will result in the “circumstance” you seem to think is necessary for that to happen. Obama has to move, and he’s proven completely unwilling to do so. Every week he adopts another Republican meme as his own. Last week it was “public employees need to make more sacrifice.” What will it be next week? My money is on “Excessive regulation is getting in the way of job creation.”
Walking P
Is NR a republican?
gogol's wife
@NR:
You need to read the Brothers Karamazov.
You need to be responsible for what comes out of YOUR mouth. Every little thing you say affects the world. Stop trying to shirk responsibility for it. This goes for all the so-called “progressives” who constantly work against the true cause.
gogol's wife
@Walking P:
Might as well be. He/she is working for them.
catclub
@AA+ Bonds: “It looks like Fox wants to hurry up and force a Perry-Romney race, which makes strategic sense for them as an arm of the Republicans.”
So who do you think Fox ( Roger Ailes) favors? Perry or Romney?
To the extent Ailes is an ally of Karl Rove, he should favor Romney and oppose Perry. Is that the case?
It is interesting that all the candidates and potential candidates who are also Fox employees are total duds as actual candidates: Palin, Newt, Huckabee. Any others?
General Stuck
@Walking P:
Could be. Could just be a moron that likes to type.
NR
@gogol’s wife: The “true cause.” You sound like a religious fanatic.
I guess Obama supporters have a lot in common with religious fanatics. Neither group tolerates dissent very well.
NR
@gogol’s wife: Actually, I’m the one who’s trying to get Obama to change course before it’s too late.
The people who are cheering Obama on as he pursues policies that will lead to his defeat next year are the ones who are working for the Republicans.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: Yeah, any piece of writing that unironically includes the word “corporatist” is a good example of the kind of thing that’s OK for venting, useless for advocacy.
RP
Where is this 38% approval number coming from? The TPM poll average shows him at 42%.
gogol's wife
@NR:
I feel pretty religious about stopping Perry or any Republican before the election. Sitting around carping at Obama is not the way to do that. I’m not cheering anyone on. Obama is working within unimaginable constraints, and I don’t see anyone else on the horizon who could both get elected president and do any better than he is doing. Or even half as well.
FlipYrWhig
@NR:
I don’t know if a group that revels in denunciations and sniffing out heresies and heterodoxies, as Obama detractors supposedly from the left are wont to do, really wants to get in a pissing match about whose behavior is more fanatical.
NR
@FlipYrWhig: Dismissing a policy-based critique with a vague handwave about a single word used isn’t exactly conducive to advocacy either. Just FYI.
dead existentialist
@NR: Dude, do have any idea what most Presidents do in their second terms when they don’t have to worry about getting re-elected?
Most tend to hop down off the fence and get after what they really want. I remember one recently telling the other side that he had “political capital” and was gonna spend it. And then he bent the country over and had at it ’cause that’s what he really wanted to do.
I don’t see Obama getting quite that extreme. He seems more inclined to spoon.
wrb
@gogol’s wife:
he needs to get with Zosima
Groucho48
@harlana:
New Balloon Juice tag…Hall monitor of the Acela corridor.
Gravenstone
Related to the Perry-itis, perhaps the dumbest thing I’ve seen on the intertrons today. Actual CNN headline: “Perry gets bounce, but race not over”
No fucking shit, Sherlock! The fucking race, she ain’t even started.
/wanders off to slam his head against concrete some more. It’s more productive…
mclaren
@gogol’s wife:
Since essentially everything NR has said is a documented fact, it stands to reason that the kooks and cranks and crackpots who infest this forum will fly into hysteria as a result of his accurate description of objective reality.
Frankensteinbeck
@NR:
Ah, thank you. You were asking for an example of when you departed from fact. You just did. Obama passed finreg. Done fucking deal. Period. If you think Wall Street wanted Elizabeth Warren in charge of anything, ever, especially the construction of a regulation department, I can’t help you. So, no. Obama is not completely in the pocket of big business, and certainly not Wall Street. Given how much HCR and Finreg pissed off both parties and Wall Street legendarily hates his guts, you are making up your own reality entirely here, and have given us a perfect example.
William Hurley
Waiting to see whether Bobo lavishes praise on yet another right-wing retard is the antithesis of “Godot”.
AA+ Bonds
I’d like to rip his dick from its traditional moorings! Hey-oh!
NR
@Frankensteinbeck: Nice try. Finreg was a joke that did absolutely nothing about “Too big to fail.” It wasn’t even close to real reform. Obama doesn’t do real reform.
Yutsano
@RP: An outlier poll that NR accepts as gospel truth.
lacp
@Frankensteinbeck: I don’t know about Wall Street hating his guts. Didn’t WS firms give him a whole lot more money in 2008 than they did to McCain?
Groucho48
@Frankensteinbeck:
The financial regulation bill was incredibly watered down. We can’t really blame Obama for that fact, but, he did virtually nothing to try to prevent that watering down.
And, Obama caved, ensuring Elizabeth Warren will never be in charge of anything in the executive branch. That is almost completely on him.
I think Obama is the best President since LBJ, but, that’s a pretty low bar to exceed.
When he actually enters into direct negotiations with the Right, he generally manages to swindle them out of getting all they want, but, the fact it IS a swindle implies he tricked the Right out of their rightful goals, rather than…he fought for liberal objectives and won a righteous battle.
“Liberals: It wasn’t Republicans, Obama, it was you. Remember that night in the Garden you came down to my dressing room and you said, “Kid, this ain’t your night. We’re going for the price on Wilson.” You remember that? “This ain’t your night”! My night! I coulda taken Wilson apart! So what happens? He gets the title shot outdoors on the ballpark and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palooka-ville! You was my brother, Obama, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda taken care of me just a little bit so I wouldn’t have to take them dives for the short-end money.
Obama: Oh I had some bets down for you. You saw some money.
Liberals: You don’t understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it. It was you, Obama.”
Maybe a bit extreme, but, that’s the gist of the way a lot of us feel. He shouda looked out for us a little bit.
Nickws
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
One of those things doesn’t really belong there in your synopsis of Konservatively Korrect Kulturkampf thinking, brother {cough, ADA, cough}.
Actually, two things don’t belong there—BHO is now the most famous thing to have come from the Rockefeller-created U of Chicago.