Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Let there be snark.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

People are complicated. Love is not.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Failed Supreme Court Nominee Robert Bork dead at 85

Reader Interactions

228Comments

  3. 3.

    kindness

    Who do I contact to find out if I can get the beer concession at his gravesite? I know a bunch of people that want to have full bladders to pay their ‘respects’ to him.

  8. 8.

    Kane

    On the one hand, if Robert Bork had served on the court, President Obama would now have a vacany to fill. On the other hand, we also would not have the handful of decisions where Anthony Kennedy decided with those on the left.

  9. 9.

    Triassic Sands

    I don’t generally cheer the deaths of people. At least not publicly. And I won’t make an exception for Robert Bork.

    My sincere condolences to those who loved and cared about him.

    Now, the sooner everyone else can forget Bork ever lived, the better off we’ll all be. A Bork America would have been a truly horrible place.

  10. 10.

    jl

    OK, he was honest about his nutty beliefs at his hearing.

    Whether he would have been so, had he been nominated later, and he had known the consequences of having nutty beliefs, well, that is an unknown.

  12. 12.

    Brachiator

    There’s a saying that if you can’t say anything nice about somebody, don’t say anything at all.

    I prefer the witticism offered by Alice Roosevelt Longworth.

    “If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.”

    Bork the Cox Sacker, and erstwhile Supreme Court nominee. Republicans are still trying to get even over his rejection to be elevated to the Court.

  13. 13.

    Machine-Gun Preacher (formerly Ben Franklin)

    I’m sure he was loathe to carry out Nixon’s firing of Archie Cox.

    That is all……..

  14. 14.

    Cacti

    Aside from being a stooge for Nixon’s criminality, here’s an example of the judicial philosophy Bork would have brought to the SCOTUS bench.

    Censorship as an enhancement of liberty may seem paradoxical. Yet it should be obvious, to all but dogmatic First Amendment absolutists, that people forced to live in an increasingly brutalized culture are, in a very real sense, not wholly free.”

    The guy would have made Scalia look like Earl Warren.

  15. 15.

    poco

    Did I miss it? If so, apologies, and would like a link, but why are the front pagers totally silent about the hell the right wingers are giving Erik Loomis of LGM?

  18. 18.

    biff diggerence

    There’s a saying that if you can’t say anything nice about somebody, don’t say anything at all.

    (which, in itself, is not a very nice thing to say)

  21. 21.

    Cacti

    @biff diggerence:

    There’s a saying that if you can’t say anything nice about somebody, don’t say anything at all

    It’s NICE that Robert Bork never sat on the Supreme Court.

  26. 26.

    Joshua Norton

    I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.

    – Clarence Darrow

  28. 28.

    handsmile

    @Kane:

    “If Robert Bork had served on the Court,” I rather suspect Barack Obama would not have been elected as a US Senator, much less President. Voting rights protections having been rendered “quaint” and all that.

    Also too, I’d say it’s debatable whether any current members of the Supreme Court are on “the left.”

    As for the departed jurist, Elvis Costello’s “Tramp the Dirt Down” comes to mind as an appropriate funeral dirge.

  29. 29.

    Soonergrunt

    @poco: We’re not all seeing, and sometimes we get wrapped around our own axles.
    But what is happening to Erik is standard wingnut fare, and in that respect not all that remarkable. The intensity however is something new.

  31. 31.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: And I believe there was a second guy in between who was derailed for having smoked a joint in college?

    Ginsberg[burg?]

    ETA: there was a fun SNL skit about him in which he insisted all the law students he was teaching call him “Captain Toke.”

  32. 32.

    Mnemosyne

    I think Elizabelle said in the other thread that he was always polite in person, unlike a lot of the entitled wingnuts she’s met.

    So there’s that.

  34. 34.

    Jay C

    De mortuis nil nisi bonum

    and all that…..

    BUT:

    In my considered opinion (unchanged for 35 years) the nation dodged a seriously dangerous bullet when Robert Bork’s SCOTUS nomination was defeated. However much conservatives have spent all this intervening time whining about the evil effects of “borking”, and the supposed disgrace of “putting ideology over ability”, the fact remains that Judge Bork brought his own defeat on himself: by making it abundantly clear that his rigid ideology would inflexibly rule his legal decision-making.
    And that, more than the whining gripes of “politics of personal destruction” (i.e. right-speak for “Ted Kennedy was correct”) was what sank his nomination. To everyone’s benefit….

    RIP in any case.

    @poco:

    I’m sure at least one of the gang stable gaggle esteemed group of BJ frontpagers will get around to commenting on it, but I think the Erik Loomis flap is really too much of “inside bloggery” to be a major post (though I could be wrong!). Of course, it doesn’t help that the critiques of Loomis’ post are pathetically lame attempts at deflection over the gun-nut aspects of the Sandy Hook Massacre…

  35. 35.

    ? Martin

    Sad that he’s dead. At least if he were alive, there’s a sliver of hope that he would renounce all of his nutty theories. Now, he’s just a martyr to originalism.

  36. 36.

    Cacti

    @SatanicPanic:

    Would he have been better or worse than Harriet Myers?

    Much worse.

    He’d have dragged the court even further to the right, encouraging Rehnquist and Scalia to let their freak flags fly.

    And if his nomination succeeded, Poppy Bush would have been emboldened to nominate another wingnut, rather than a relative unknown like Souter.

  38. 38.

    handsmile

    @SatanicPanic:

    Something rattles around that Bork actually opposed the Miers nomination. If so, perhaps more a matter of chromosomes than qualifications. Oops, there I go saying something not nice….

  39. 39.

    jibeaux

    @Erehwon: I always wondered, in the everyday usage of borked, as in “that link is borked” or “my google nexus charger is borked” which is totally is, dammnit, is that a tribute to Bork too? Yours would seem to be a more specific definition than just “broken.”

  42. 42.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Obama speaks on guns, questions are all gotcha attempts about the budget. Obama is both betraying his base and not reaching out to Boehner enough, in case you were wondering.

  44. 44.

    karen marie

    @Cacti: Censorship Restriction of firearms ownership as an enhancement of liberty may seem paradoxical. Yet it should be obvious, to all but dogmatic First Second Amendment absolutists, that people forced to live in an increasingly brutalized culture are, in a very real sense, not wholly free.”

    Maybe he’s got something there …

    That being said, now we can say that at least two good things happened in 2012.

  46. 46.

    Bokonon

    Robert Bork was a graduate of the same private boarding school that I attended (just many years earlier). Bork was apparently on the wrestling team there. And the quote by his senior year photograph in the yearbook was “Perhaps you would like a nice contusion?!”

    Hah. Nice.

    That said, I had the opportunity to work with Bork some years ago on a legal project – the company I was representing had Bork write an amicus brief in support of our position in some litigation. Bork was actually quite reasonable and personable – in contrast to some other high profile conservative heroes I encountered back when I was a Beltway Bandit. But we were all on the same side. And we were representing a BIG company …

  51. 51.

    Lex

    I can try to say something nice about Bork.

    For most of his career, in most of his writings, he considered it ridiculous that the Second Amendment barred government regulation of gun ownership.

    Unfortunately, he flip-flopped on that in filing his amicus brief in the Heller case, the one in which a SCOTUS majority decided that the American public, with its 88 firearms per 100 people and all its dysfunctions and mythos and gun fetishism and untreated mental illness, in effect constituted a “well-regulated militia.”

    OK. I tried to say something nice. I really did. But I got nothin’ else.

  52. 52.

    Cacti

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Obama is both betraying his base and not reaching out to Boehner enough, in case you were wondering.

    I swung by DU(mb) as I do from time to time. And sure enough, the president has betrayed us all (“all” meaning emogressives).

  53. 53.

    gene108

    @Jay C:

    However much conservatives have spent all this intervening time whining about the evil effects of “borking”, and the supposed disgrace of “putting ideology over ability”,

    I believe they spent all this time out organizing the hell out of the Left, with far more discipline and better funding, which is why Susan Rice was defeated as Sec. of State and Democrats can’t get anyone, who isn’t middle of the road confirmed for any position, let alone the Supreme Court.

  55. 55.

    Schlemizel

    @Mr. Longform:

    Let me stand in a school doorway with a semi auto .223 & 20 round mag while you & 10 buddys bum rush me. Picture that. I’m in the doorway – exactly how many of you can approach me at one time? Meanwhile every round I fire goes through 2 or 3 people. I give you a less than 10% chance of even getting a living hand on me.

    Outr in the open? mayb?

  56. 56.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Keep in mind that this guy was supposedly a great fan of tort reform as a means to keep the masses down, but he sued his own club for some supposed injury he suffered at a lecturn.

    I’m going to sit by Alice Roosevelt Longworth and we can discuss how we’re going to talk about the fascist shitstain Scalia.

  58. 58.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Cacti: I couldn’t identify the guy who asked the first question and used the word “betray”, but I think it’s a safe bet that he cares (and knows) as much about chained CPI as I do about the world cricket matches.

  59. 59.

    ? Martin

    @SatanicPanic: Myers probably would have looked a lot like Thomas, hanging back and voting with the crowd but not moving judicial theories. My sense is that much of what sank her is that she had no judicial vision. She might have been a perfectly competent representative of the law, but wasn’t cut out to chart any new territory. By definition, SCOTUS gets no easy cases.

    Bork definitely would have looked like Scalia, inventing brand new bonkers ideas for the right to embrace.

    I think Bork would have done more harm, even if both of them voted the same way.

  61. 61.

    JPL

    @Schlemizel: From the time police were dispatched, four minutes passed. The police heard the final few bullets. Add on a minute for the 911 call and you can understand how high powered magazines can kill a lot of people in a few minutes.

  63. 63.

    Cermet

    Why do I need to say something nice or else nothing that all relative to a vile low life? Oh well, I’ll try: Glad he is adding minerals to the soil and the world is a better place now that he is composting – there, I said two nice things.

  64. 64.

    Brachiator

    @handsmile:

    Something rattles around that Bork actually opposed the Miers nomination. If so, perhaps more a matter of chromosomes than qualifications. Oops, there I go saying something not nice….

    Bork was unhappy with Miers for lots of reasons, including a bit of gender and gender diversity.

    [Tucker] CARLSON: Why? Explain the levels on which it’s a disaster.
    __
    BORK: Well, the first one is, that this is a woman who’s undoubtedly as wonderful a person as they say she is, but so far as anyone can tell she has no experience with constitutional law whatever. Now it’s a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you’re on the court already. So that—I’m afraid she’s likely to be influenced by factors, such as personal sympathies and so forth, that she shouldn’t be influenced by. I don’t expect that she can be, as the president says, a great justice.
    __
    But the other level is more worrisome, in a way: it’s kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who’ve been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years. There’s all kinds of people, now, on the federal bench and some in the law schools who have worked out consistent philosophies of sticking with the original principles of the Constitution. And all of those people have been overlooked. And I think one of the messages here is, don’t write, don’t say anything controversial before you’re nominated….
    __
    BORK: No, I think not having been a judge is all right. A lot of justices hadn’t been judges before. But I think this idea that it’s important to have a woman’s perspective, or something of that sort, begins to treat the Supreme Court like a legislature, in which everybody has to be—all groups have to be represented in some way. And that’s exactly the wrong message to send.

    What a Bork.

  66. 66.

    Maude

    I couldn’t hear the last question clearly, but the reporter was whiny and almost blamed Newtown on Obama. It was not a question but more of an accusation.
    The fiscal cliff questions were for ginning up a fight.

  67. 67.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    The Miers nomination was one of the many episodes of the Bush II presidency that didn’t get the attention it deserved. Like a sixteenth century monarch making his drinking buddy Admiral of All The Seas. I guess by then his unfitness for the office was an unspoken but broadly accepted bit of conventional wisdom, but the fact that we’ve collectively forgotten what a disaster he was is poisoning our government all over again, as people who voted to cut taxes as we went to war are blandly referred to as “fiscal conservatives”.

    And yet, we probably would have been better off if she’d gotten the job. I don’t I’ve ever lost perspective on the Bush years, but just thinking about Alito burns me up all over again.

  69. 69.

    Chris

    @Cacti:

    Censorship Gun control as an enhancement of liberty may seem paradoxical to some. Yet it should be obvious, to all but dogmatic First Second Amendment absolutists, that people forced to live in an increasingly brutalized culture are, in a very real sense, not wholly free.”

    FTFY.

  72. 72.

    Hill Dweller

    @Maude: It was Tapper. He has already blamed Obama for the Newtown shooting on ABC’s nightly news.

    Tapper is a small, petulant man who is upset with the WH for not giving him the deference he thinks is deserved. It colors everything he does.

  73. 73.

    Brachiator

    @? Martin:

    She might have been a perfectly competent representative of the law

    I don’t get that at all. Miers was no more competent to be nominated to the Supreme Court than Brownie was competent to be the head of FEMA.

  79. 79.

    zoot

    my concern is…
    when a person dies, what happens to the evil they possess? Does it die with them or is released to be re-manifest elsewhere?

  80. 80.

    askew

    Am I the only one in shock over how quickly DailyKos and most of the left media has gone full-on firebagger since Obama’s re-election? Does it help their bottomline to trash the president’s character and spend all-day hair on fire screaming “Obama is a sellout”?

    I only hope that BJ frontpagers will keep the posts coming so I still have one political blog to visit as I can’t take DK any longer.

  82. 82.

    eemom

    FFS people, it is absolutely ridiculous to compare Harriet Miers to Bork. Hate Bork’s ideology all you will, but the man was a federal judge, law professor, Constitutional scholar. Harriet Miers was a hack Texas lawyer, and no one but a president of W-level stoopid would ever in a million years have thought of appointing her to the SCt.

    Not the same ballpark, not even the same motherfuckin GAME.

  84. 84.

    japa21

    @Brachiator: Apparently it is because, although the President has called for a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban several times, he did not actually go to Congress and hold them at gun point until they passed the legislation which would have prevented Newtown from happening.

  86. 86.

    Southern Beale

    Some of the comments on that story are pretty horrendous.

    Well, one good thing about the Republicans being the party of old, white men is that old, white men carry an expiration date.

  87. 87.

    Southern Beale

    @Brachiator:

    Miers was no more competent to be nominated to the Supreme Court than Brownie was competent to be the head of FEMA.

    But she dotted her “i”s with little hearts. That would have made her opinions infinitely more interesting to read.

  89. 89.

    Hill Dweller

    @Brachiator: Tapper thinks Obama’s lack of action on gun control in his first term makes him culpable. He did a report on ABC’s Monday evening broadcast which, aside from attacking Obama, contained video of him asking Carney a question in the WH daily briefing. It was a vanity piece.

  90. 90.

    Death Panel Truck

    “He was very embittered by the experience,” said lawyer Andrew Frey, a longtime friend who worked for Bork in the solicitor general’s office. “He was not well treated, and partly as a result of that he did become more conservative.”

    Shorter Bork: “I didn’t get the nomination, so I’m going to double down on the crazy. That’ll show ’em!”

    At Yale, two of his constitutional law students were Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham. “I no longer say they were students,” Bork joked long afterward. “I say they were in the room.”

    What an bitter old bastard. Hey, Bork…Hell called. Your room is ready. You’ll be bunking with Tricky Dick.

  91. 91.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Hill Dweller: Rachel Maddow, also on Monday, ran a montage of Obama talking about gun control several times over the last two years, and not always in response to these major events. As Luther might say to NarJakiccus, ‘you motherfuckers won’t LISS-ten!”

  92. 92.

    jacy

    Since I have nothing nice to say about Robert Bork — let me point out that Sully has taken the bait and published DougJ’s sock puppet letter in which he purports to be a gun safety consultant for the Danish government and praises the Nordic countries’ long tradition of rushing shooters.

    Let the pointless contrarianism commence!

  93. 93.

    Brachiator

    @zoot:

    when a person dies, what happens to the evil they possess? Does it die with them or is released to be re-manifest elsewhere?

    The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones

    Marc Antony, Act 3, scene ii of Julius Caesar

  95. 95.

    Legalize

    Well, not saying nice things about the son of a bitch makes it ok for reich wingers to be shitty little fucks toward Obama. But they were always going to do that.

    So, Fuck Robert Bork.

  96. 96.

    AxelFoley

    @askew:

    Am I the only one in shock over how quickly DailyKos and most of the left media has gone full-on firebagger since Obama’s re-election? Does it help their bottomline to trash the president’s character and spend all-day hair on fire screaming “Obama is a sellout”?

    You’re surprised at how quickly they’ve lost their shit? Where’ve you been the last four years? I’m surprised it took them this long.

  97. 97.

    askew

    @SatanicPanic:

    I am genuinely shocked that they went full-on firebagger so quickly and am wondering if people have theories on why it happened. Maybe I am the only one that wonders, but I find it odd that the entire left media/blogs seem to have this almost visceral hatred of Obama.

  101. 101.

    ? Martin

    @Brachiator:

    I don’t get that at all. Miers was no more competent to be nominated to the Supreme Court than Brownie was competent to be the head of FEMA.

    I didn’t mean it that way. Think of it along the lines of Bloom’s taxonomy – Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create.

    SCOTUS members needs to be up there very strongly in the Evaluate/Create category, but you can be a very competent, successful individual down in the Apply category. Myers may have been a great lawyer when it came to applying the law, but not up to the task of evaluating/establishing new law. In that, she could be highly competent as a representative lawyer, but not qualified for the bench. A bit like how great players sometimes make horrific coaches. Same game, but different skillsets.

    I’m not sure Brownie was competent at anything.

  102. 102.

    tominwv

    On the death of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis reportedly said “My mother said if you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything. Joan Crawford is dead: Good!”

    Robert Bork is dead: Good!

  103. 103.

    JPL

    @zoot: that’s a question for fox and friends. I read that Gretchen wants to know if the children who died remember the shooting in heaven… ugh

  105. 105.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Hill Dweller: I will say, at least Tapper’s question statement was about guns, which was what Obama was talking about. The first two couldn’t wait to get some blurbs for their “Both Sides” mad libs on the budget, which was when I hit mute.

  106. 106.

    Thor Heyerdahl

    @askew: I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way. DK is a mess right now, but it always is after elections.

  108. 108.

    MikeJ

    @JPL:

    I read that Gretchen wants to know if the children who died remember the shooting in heaven

    Do they discuss it with all the fertilized eggs that failed to implant, like 4 out of 5 naturally do?

  110. 110.

    SatanicPanic

    @askew: The biggest shriekers get the most attention is what I assume is at work. And the usual suspects (Digby, Charlie Pierce) have always been fairly unimpressed with O.

  111. 111.

    PsiFighter37

    @askew: I wouldn’t say it’s firebagger, it’s that people don’t want Obama to agree to shitty compromises and negotiate with himself ahead of time. Shit, I supported the hell out of him in the election, but lets not pretend he’s the greatest negotiator / employer of the bully pulpit. LBJ he has proven to be not so far – and he needs a lot more ‘Treatment’ and spine at this particular time.

  112. 112.

    David in NY

    @AxelFoley: @askew: “in shock over how quickly DailyKos and most of the left media has gone full-on firebagger since Obama’s re-election”

    You guys are easily shocked. If Obama’s going to be the first Democrat who cuts Social Security benefits, he ought to get crap from real Democrats. It’s a terrible precedent, and it’s wrong to imply that SS is related to the current deficit.

    Aside from that bad judgment, DK has been in strong support of him, however, I don’t understand your sudden case of the vapors.

  113. 113.

    PaulW

    I remember a bit from Bloom County, ages ago:

    “He could spit 50 paces.”
    “FOR WHICH WE LOVED HIM LIKE A BROTHER!”

    There’s something about an Irish wake…

  114. 114.

    askew

    @ranchandsyrup:

    It seems like more than that to me. They seem to accept a lot less from other politicans or pundits. Some of it is people who are sure that Hillary would have done better. What I don’t understand is why lunatics like Jane Hamsher who is so smalltime get to set the talking points for all of the left that they echo with no thought.

  118. 118.

    Mnemosyne

    @David in NY:

    It always amazes me how this has become received wisdom. Do you not have any memory whatsoever of the debt ceiling negotiations, where it turned out that Boehner got maybe 10 percent of what he demanded and everything else was smoke and mirrors with “cuts” to programs that were already slated to be cut, like the Census data-gathering operation?

  119. 119.

    Brachiator

    @? Martin:

    In that, she could be highly competent as a representative lawyer, but not qualified for the bench.

    I recall following the nomination. There was not much to Miers background to suggest that she was “highly competent” as a lawyer. As with Condi Rice, her loyalty to Dubya seemed to be her main selling point. That, along with some vague assurances that she would vote “the right way” on abortion cases.

    And unlike David Souter, who didn’t have much of a legal trail before he was elevated to the bench, nothing Miers wrote or said suggested any reasonable judicial temperament.

    Miers looked weak even compared with an earlier “crony nominee,” Byron “Whizzer” White, who was appointed by JFK in 1962.

  120. 120.

    Bago

    Note to McCardle: Zombie swarm techniques work because zombies are already dead.
    The only place in school where you have a husky team of men armored up and ready to tackle at a moments notice is 4 and 4:30 in the locker room.

  122. 122.

    burnspbesq

    @poco:

    Did I miss it? If so, apologies, and would like a link, but why are the front pagers totally silent about the hell the right wingers are giving Erik Loomis of LGM?

    Erik’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.

    And not to put too fine a point on it, but do you really think that a sudden outbreak of leftblogistan solidarity would cause those jackalopes to stop what they’re doing?

  123. 123.

    askew

    @Thor Heyerdahl:

    That’s an excellent point. I just thought they would have learned from the healthcare debacle when they actually let paid posters from FDL set the entire site’s agenda. I guess not.

  126. 126.

    Schlemizel

    @PsiFighter37:

    Thats true – also I think DK feels they need to be the left wing. That is they need to be the voice calling for more Democratic behavior & no compromise. Without that leftward tug we are left with the gutless DLC defining what the left edge of possible is. They have always supported Obama but are always trying to drag the window to the left – gawd bless ’em for that.

    That it makes you uncomfortable because they are not singing hosanna’s to the President is too bad their goals go well beyond this administration and are aimed at changing the national conversation in the same way the wingnuts have done over the last 30 years.

  128. 128.

    askew

    @Mnemosyne:

    It always amazes me how this has become received wisdom. Do you not have any memory whatsoever of the debt ceiling negotiations, where it turned out that Boehner got maybe 10 percent of what he demanded and everything else was smoke and mirrors with “cuts” to programs that were already slated to be cut, like the Census data-gathering operation?

    It amazes me as well. It has become CW that Obama is a horrible negotiator and has gotten rolled during all his deals, which just isn’t true. His 2010 lameduck deal allowed him to get DADT repeal, START treaty, an extension of the UI benefits and payroll taxes in exchange for a 2-year extension of the Bush tax cuts. In the debt ceiling negotiations, Boehner got almost nothing in that deal. Yet, over and over again we hear that Obama has lost all of these negotiations.

  129. 129.

    ranchandsyrup

    @askew: I agree that it sprawls out, but the unreasonable expectation or belief of what would happen if X were there are the underpinnings. The Jane Hamsher of the Left is just positioning herself for the Hil-dog administration.

  130. 130.

    Hill Dweller

    @PsiFighter37: LBJ faced one filibuster during his Presidency. Obama would look like Lincoln if he hadn’t faced any Republican filibusters.

    The current Republican party is fucking crazy. They are willing to bring down the country without as much as batting an eye.

    I think Obama knows Boehner can’t deliver his caucus, and is trying to inoculate himself from blame when we go over the cliff by leaking details of compromises that will never happen.

  131. 131.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    They just want Obama to stop giving away the farm in the so-called “negotiations.”

    @David in NY: Proving the stunning ignorance of the internet.

    Obama could offer to personally pitchfork every poor person in America into a meatgrinder, hand out AK-47s to white people and declare it “Nigger Hunting Day”, and fellate Boehner live on C-Span, and the Republicans will reject that offer too.

    Fiscal cliff will happen, everyone knows it, and the only meaningful negotiations will be the ones that happen after January 1st.

    I think Obama knows Boehner can’t deliver his caucus, and is trying to inoculate himself from blame when we go over the cliff by leaking details of compromises that will never happen.

    This, if you like your explanations simpler.

  132. 132.

    shortstop

    Which event is more emblematic of how Robert Bork lived his life?

    A. Eagerly agrees to carry out Saturday Night Massacre.
    B. After serving as poster boy for tort reform, sues Yale Club for a cool million after he falls off a dais.

  133. 133.

    ? Martin

    @Schlemizel:

    They have always supported Obama but are always trying to drag the window to the left – gawd bless ‘em for that.
    That it makes you uncomfortable because they are not singing hosanna’s to the President is too bad their goals go well beyond this administration and are aimed at changing the national conversation in the same way the wingnuts have done over the last 30 years.

    Shorter Schlemizel: A liberal Tea Party will fix everything!

  134. 134.

    PsiFighter37

    @Schlemizel: It doesn’t make me uncomfortable – we should be holding his feet to the fire. If he doesn’t get people to vote in 2014, the last 2 years in the White House will be render him virtually irrelevant.

    Obama has gotta stop pissing off the base. And if he’s not being told he’s a shitty negotiator, Axelrod or Jarrett need to tell him to wake the fuck up.

  135. 135.

    AxelFoley

    @David in NY:

    You guys are easily shocked. If Obama’s going to be the first Democrat who cuts Social Security benefits, he ought to get crap from real Democrats. It’s a terrible precedent, and it’s wrong to imply that SS is related to the current deficit.

    Aside from that bad judgment, DK has been in strong support of him, however, I don’t understand your sudden case of the vapors.

    Bullshit. DKos kneecaps Obama any chance they get. They’ve done it for the last four years. And everytime someone quotes some “source” about Obama negotiating with the GOP, they always–ALWAYS–assume the worst about his intent. He always “sold us out” according to them.

    Fuck them and fuck you for defending that bullshit.

  136. 136.

    Elizabelle

    Putting up my comment again, edited

    OK, so PBO is Time magazine’s Man of the Year.

    Nate Silver is Out magazine’s Person of the Year. He has a bit to say about the “journalists” he’s observed.

    And what’s on his plate, upcoming.

    found link via Washington Monthly

    (And gotta say — much prefer looking at the buff young guys in pop-up underwear ads in Out to the guns and weapons ads now on Balloon Juice.)

  137. 137.

    Brachiator

    @David in NY:

    They just want Obama to stop giving away the farm in the so-called “negotiations.”

    This might be understandable if these boneheads had any idea of what actually has to be negotiated. But they seem to think that it’s just about tax rates for the rich vs Social Security, and that nothing much would happen if things were delayed into next year and a new Congress.

    If only.

  138. 138.

    AxelFoley

    @Mnemosyne:

    It always amazes me how this has become received wisdom. Do you not have any memory whatsoever of the debt ceiling negotiations, where it turned out that Boehner got maybe 10 percent of what he demanded and everything else was smoke and mirrors with “cuts” to programs that were already slated to be cut, like the Census data-gathering operation?

    Thank you. This emoprog freakout is fucking old. Tired of their shit.

  140. 140.

    AxelFoley

    @askew:

    It amazes me as well. It has become CW that Obama is a horrible negotiator and has gotten rolled during all his deals, which just isn’t true. His 2010 lameduck deal allowed him to get DADT repeal, START treaty, an extension of the UI benefits and payroll taxes in exchange for a 2-year extension of the Bush tax cuts. In the debt ceiling negotiations, Boehner got almost nothing in that deal. Yet, over and over again we hear that Obama has lost all of these negotiations.

    Bingo.

  141. 141.

    askew

    @Schlemizel:

    But, DK isn’t changing the conversation and their personal attacks on Obama and other Dems just shrinks the number of people who are interested in listening to their shrieks. There is a way to have an intelligent conversation about proposals or possible solutions and what they and most of the left media aren’t doing it. I am very liberal and I have concerns about this proposal (even though we don’t have all the details) and would love to discuss how this proposal rates vs going off the cliff. But, all the left media/blogs can seem to do is scream is sellout and jump off the cliff, while ignoring the millions of people who will be hurt if the fiscal cliff happens. Is it really true that more people will be hurt by the proposal than going off the cliff? If the chained CPI exempts veterans and the poorest of seniors, then I think that proposal will be better than going off the cliff.

  143. 143.

    Elizabelle

    Nate Silver from the Out magazine article:

    “Peggy Noonan is someone who is very, very skilled at making bullshit look like some elegant soufflé,” Silver says. “She’s very good at rhetoric and argument, but it’s still not grounded in the truth—it all falls apart every four years, but I don’t think she’ll be out of a job any time soon.”

  144. 144.

    David in NY

    @Mnemosyne: So, if that was such a success, why is Obama choosing not to replicate it? This time, he says, at least, that he’s not giving anything. Which was never his position in 2011. Josh Marshall and I think he means it this time, which also means to me that he knows he gave up stuff he didn’t have to last time.

  146. 146.

    askew

    @Hill Dweller:

    I think Obama knows Boehner can’t deliver his caucus, and is trying to inoculate himself from blame when we go over the cliff by leaking details of compromises that will never happen.

    I think that argument makes sense. Unfortunately, even if we go over this cliff and a whole new bill is passed, the firebaggers will still bitterly use this floated proposal as proof that Obama is a secret Republican and a sellout.

  147. 147.

    ? Martin

    @Elizabelle:

    (And gotta say — much prefer looking at the buff young guys in pop-up underwear ads in Out to the guns and weapons ads now on Balloon Juice.)

    I just keep getting a t-shirt ad with a young lady that just shows her wallys pointed at me. You can barely even tell that she’s wearing a t-shirt.

    But typically the ads reflect either the content of the page (which is why so many gun ads right now – religion discussions tend to bring out the Filipino Christian dating site ads) or your shopping history, so I get a lot of ads for power tools.

    Go shop around for banana hangers and you’ll get better ads here.

  148. 148.

    Ben Grimm

    @askew:

    Jane Hamsher ceased to be relevant politically the day she teamed up with Grover Norquist. She might as well have moved to Jupiter.

  151. 151.

    shortstop

    @Elizabelle: This is amazingly charitable. Noonan lost her touch for making bullshit look like an elegant souffle years ago. At this point she’s coasting on vodka fumes.

    Glad he’s sticking it to the bad actors, though.

  152. 152.

    Mnemosyne

    @David in NY:

    So, if that was such a success, why is Obama choosing not to replicate it? This time, he says, at least, that he’s not giving anything.

    Wait, I thought you said he was selling us out and making cuts to Social Security. Which is it?

  153. 153.

    David in NY

    @askew: I think they (and other critics) have already changed the conversation. Obama’s attitude toward the debt ceiling situation shows that. This time, he’s not giving anything. He’s daring them to take responsibility for another rating decline if they play hardball. That’s a big change over last time.

  154. 154.

    Brachiator

    @Elizabelle:

    Nate Silver is Out magazine’s Person of the Year.

    Very cool. And well-deserved.

    And congrats to President Obama as well.

    This will feed wingnut anger throughout the holidays.

    To be fair, in the comments on one news story about the sad events in Connecticut recently, it was good to see non-wingnut conservatives note that they had not voted for Obama, but still gave him full props for his sensitivity and leadership.

    The hardcore wingnuts are becoming, I hope, more marginalized.

  155. 155.

    Mnemosyne

    @Schlemizel:

    That it makes you uncomfortable because they are not singing hosanna’s to the President is too bad their goals go well beyond this administration and are aimed at changing the national conversation in the same way the wingnuts have done over the last 30 years.

    I don’t need them to sing hosannas. I need them to stop screeching, “OMG OBAMA SOLD US OUT I TOLD YOU SO I TOLD YOU SO I TOLD YOU SO!” every time Klein or Krugman passes along a rumor that an anonymous legislative aide told them.

  156. 156.

    PsiFighter37

    @askew: Have you been to FDL lately? Outside of TBogg, that site is basically dead. Hamsher’s BS drove it into the ground.

    @AxelFoley: Evidently you were ignoring election season when you made this comment, at the very least.

    @Forum Transmitted Disease: It is not Obama’s job to prevent everyone from seeing that Orange Julius has no clothes. He’s a weak-ass Speaker; the sooner he is exposed, the better.

  157. 157.

    askew

    @David in NY:

    I think the left’s opinions have nothing to do with the way Obama is handling the debt ceiling negotiations. It has to do with Obama being re-elected since the last negotiation and that the public and business community know how badly another holding the debt ceiling hostage will hurt the economy. The media and the business community won’t stand by this time while the GOP tank the economy over the debt ceiling.

  158. 158.

    Schlemizel

    @? Martin:

    Up to a point, yes they will. We have been dragged so far to the right simply because of the constant pressure of the nutbag wing of the GOP. If we can get 20 years of the similar results in the opposite direction I’ll worry about it then. Till that glorious day we cannot allow the DLC to define the left edge of acceptable ideas.

  160. 160.

    askew

    @PsiFighter37:

    I haven’t gone to FDL since I found out about the blackface incident in 2009. That hasn’t stopped DailyKos from linking to FDL frequently though and parroting the usual firebagger talking points that got started in 2009 – Obama is weak; Obama is a Republican; Obama is a naive little boy that only won election because of his “cool” factor and media bias; etc.

    Perhaps I should say professional left instead of firebagger to describe that attitude towards Obama.

  161. 161.

    ? Martin

    @Mnemosyne:

    Wait, I thought you said he was selling us out and making cuts to Social Security. Which is it?

    Obama wants to cut these programs, but Boehner won’t let him.

    The firebagger mantra seems to be that no matter what Obama does, what he really wanted to do was worse, and it was Pelosi, Reid, whoever, that clawed him back.

    It’s a point I tried to make last night about this – I trust that if Obama signs off on something (including CCPI), that it’ll be an acceptable solution because there will be some other jewels in the chest that weren’t leaked to Politico that make it worth taking. The firebaggers don’t. They assume Obama wants roughly the same thing as Boehner but his own caucus prevents him from doing it.

    When I point out that Pelosi has signed off on Obama’s proposal, they instantly shift the debate. They trust Pelosi but not Obama. They trust Reid. They trust Biden. They trust both Clintons. Obama is almost uniquely undeserving of the same trust they would give to other Democrats – and that was true from day one.

  162. 162.

    PsiFighter37

    Boehner literally just had a 1-minute press conference. They’re not even pretending to be serious anymore (not like they ever were, but still).

    Play hardball, Mr. President. You won the election, and you have the mandate.

  163. 163.

    ? Martin

    @PsiFighter37:

    He’s a weak-ass Speaker; the sooner he is exposed, the better.

    That only makes sense if Bohner would be replaced with a better speaker. The runner-up in that race is a teatard, who would unquestionably be worse. The speaker is a powerful position – nothing gets a vote in the House without his say so. Put Cantor or Ryan in charge, and even less will get done.

  164. 164.

    askew

    @Schlemizel:

    The difference is that the lunatics in the GOP have discipline and were led by insiders who know something about winning elections and governing. The lunatics on the left are completely without direction and wouldn’t know how to win an election or govern if their lives depended on it. Look at the two attempts by the professional left to win an election – CT Sen in 2006 and AR Sen primary in 2010. Both were complete disasters. Right now, the professional left is the equivalent to the Ron Paul supporters. Both refuse to deal with facts or the real world and both are completely irrelevant to politics.

  165. 165.

    Brachiator

    @David in NY:

    Actually, lots of knowledgeable people think not much will happen if it goes over.

    Really? Let’s look at one pending 2012 item. Note, that’s 2012, not 2013.

    Failure to enact AMT patch could push start of tax season to March for millions, IRS warns
    __
    As the end of the year approaches, media attention is focused on the “fiscal cliff,” but a much more immediate result of Congress’s inaction threatens the 2013 filing season: the alternative minimum tax (AMT) patch, which expired at the end of 2011. The IRS warns that the start of tax season could be delayed for millions of taxpayers if the AMT patch is not enacted by the end of the year.
    __
    The problem is serious enough that the acting IRS commissioner, Steven T. Miller, wrote a letter to Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chair of the Senate Finance Committee, on Nov. 13, 2012. The IRS Oversight Board followed up with a second letter on Nov. 19, urging Congress to act and saying, “We do not believe that the IRS has ever faced such a formidable operational risk.”
    __
    Because twice in the past when the AMT patch has expired, it has been reinstated retroactively, the IRS made the decision this year to maintain its tax filing systems “as-is” for the 2013 filing season. As a result, if the AMT patch and tax credit ordering rules are not enacted, the IRS warns of significant delays in the upcoming filing season. The programming changes it would have to make to its processing systems would mean it would have to notify 60 million taxpayers that they may not file a tax return or receive a refund until late in March 2013 and possibly later.

    Of course, proposed legislation has been waiting approval for weeks which could resolve this, but nothing has been done as everyone in Washington play their game of fiscal chicken.

    On the other hand, if Congress just shrugged off the AMT patch, millions of taxpayers would see a tax increase of $3,000 to $5,000 for 2012. As for the others, nobody really needs their tax refund, right?

    And this is just one of many other items that have to be dealt with just in terms of taxes.

    A little more than “not much would happen.”

    The Village, including pundits and the Congress, tend to focus on the macro impact of all this stuff on the economy as a whole, not how it might affect individual people.

    ETA: one commenter suggested earlier that people could just file their returns now, and file an amended return later. As it stands now, until law is approved and tax forms and programming done, returns could not even be filed and held for processing.

    Oh, yeah, and the Tea Party has been hot to cut the IRS budget. Who needs a tax system?

  166. 166.

    askew

    @? Martin:

    When I point out that Pelosi has signed off on Obama’s proposal, they instantly shift the debate. They trust Pelosi but not Obama. They trust Reid. They trust Biden. They trust both Clintons. Obama is almost uniquely undeserving of the same trust they would give to other Democrats – and that was true from day one.

    What all those other people have in common is that they are white. I don’t think all of the professional left’s issues with Obama are race-based but it certainly plays a part. Part of it is that Obama didn’t kiss their asses the way the others have and pretend that he thinks they are very important.

  167. 167.

    West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)

    Perhaps I’m revealing my political ignorance here (wouldn’t be the first time), but Bork was the first nominee I can remember producing so much heated debate. (I was in my early 20’s and pretty unaware politically.) It was sort of a wake-up call to me that politics were actively part of something like a SCOTUS nomination; previously, I had the sort of notion (that we were spoon fed in elementary school/high school) that the Sup Court was above politics, that it was an august body of sage, unbiased gentlemen.

    Hah!

  168. 168.

    beltane

    @askew:

    Look at the two attempts by the professional left to win an election – CT Sen in 2006 and AR Sen primary in 2010

    I think Darcy Burnor deserves some kind of honorable mention here.

  169. 169.

    Rommie

    Since I think the Obama team could enforce a STFU mandate if they wanted to, these “leaks” are intentional. IOW, I totally agree it’s Kabuki Theater, and the reactions are part of the dance.

    If the deal ends up bad, then fine, throw your fruits and veggies and withhold your trust. But if the President is sitting in the Briar Patch at the end of this, perhaps we can maybe give him a LITTLE credit for the rest of his term?

  171. 171.

    Elizabelle

    Love this line about Nate Silver from the article:

    He’s more at home on the outside rattling the cage than on the inside playing with the monkeys.

    He’s thinking on writing a book on why people believe what they do; why did so many people believe in “Rom-mentum” in 2012, in the absence of any evidence?

    I didn’t know he was gay either. More power to him.

    Nate practiced debate ceaselessly in high school — he says 60 hours weekly during season:

    High school debate is a strange thing,” he concedes. “It’s very technical—you’re not up there giving some type of Abe Lincoln speech, you’re reading different types of evidence really fast.”

    That would be really useful preparation for a lot of fields.

  173. 173.

    ? Martin

    @Schlemizel:

    Up to a point, yes they will. We have been dragged so far to the right simply because of the constant pressure of the nutbag wing of the GOP.

    But the result of that dragging to the right isn’t worse policy overall. It’s a worse debate, and gridlock on key issues, but also a larger and stronger Democratic party. The Tea Party is the best thing that could ever happen to Democrats. They’ve dragged their party into fringe territory, and while the inertial political infrastructure keeps giving voice to that fringe position, the reality is that the voters are opposed to it and putting more of their support behind Democrats. The House is only in GOP hands because of gerrymandering – 3 million more votes were cast for House Democrats than for Republicans. Their social policies are tumbling one by one. Their tax position is about to get kicked to the curb. Their gun position may be as well this year. Their drug policy is at least being debated with local changes moving ahead.

    Sure, there’s been losses on things like labor rights, but those are also localized, and you can’t win all battles. The GOP has lost the national debate on almost every topic. They’re fighting at the state and local level as a result. That’s not a sign of strength, but of weakness. You think Michigan is going to go more red or more blue based on what happened in the last month? I think unquestionably more blue. The GOP is simply salting the earth there now. They know they’ve lost.

  180. 180.

    trollhattan

    I suggest somebody tie DougJ to the mast, stat. He’s not going to be able to resist this, but consequences could include an aneurysm.

    Star New York Times columnist and Jay-Z enthusiast David Brooks is taking his talents to New Haven. The Yale Herald’s Bullblog noticed that every liberals’ “favorite conservative” will be teaching a class in the spring titled just plain “Humility.” According to its description, the course promises to explore “The premise that human beings are blessed with many talents but are also burdened by sinfulness, ignorance, and weakness,” as demonstrated by men such as Moses, Homer, and “others,” like maybe Paul Krugman. “I taught at Yale about six or seven years ago and at Duke since and really enjoyed it,” Brooks told Intelligencer, “so I was pleased to be able to do it again. I’m going to commute up Mondays and Tuesdays each week.”

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/12/david-brooks-to-teach-humility-at-yale.html

  181. 181.

    Suffern ACE

    @? Martin: The other part that I can’t understand is the pretending that restoring the collection of payroll taxes is a big cave (were those tax cuts supposed to be permanent? Do the working people wish not to pay taxes for their own program?). Oh, the burden of the social security tax on the working people!

    Why don’t we just privatize it now and get it over with. Cause you know that’s what the Great Disappointer Obummer really wants.

  182. 182.

    askew

    @beltane:

    I think Darcy Burnor deserves some kind of honorable mention here.

    How could I forget Darcy? She’s a 3-time netroots backed loser.

  183. 183.

    Bobby Thomson

    @AxelFoley: I’m always amused by these comments that attribute monolithic thinking to the GOS. A lot of viewpoints in that stew, including nauseating O-bot worship. My main objection to the site is that too many people seem to be more concerned with process and their own fee fees than policy and results.

  185. 185.

    PsiFighter37

    @beltane: At least we won the CT-Sen primary. Lucky the election was the day it was; the backlash from Hamsher’s blackface made what was looking to be a double-digit smack down to a 4-point win (Lamont going on vacation for a week right after didn’t help).

  187. 187.

    JWL

    Bork wore his bitterness on his sleeve, and reveled in his martyrdom. He spent the last 30 years of his life walking around with Ted Kennedy’s boot hanging out his ass, and being lauded for it by D.C.’s zombie cocktail weenie crowd. May he rest in peace, because he’s served his time in hell.

    Thanks again, Ted.

  188. 188.

    ? Martin

    @askew:

    What all those other people have in common is that they are white. I don’t think all of the professional left’s issues with Obama are race-based but it certainly plays a part. Part of it is that Obama didn’t kiss their asses the way the others have and pretend that he thinks they are very important.

    I agree. I don’t want to go down the race angle, because I think that’s true only for a small subset of Democrats. But the left is no less immune to soft bigotry and I think Obama has to work twice as hard to earn half the credit.

    But I think it’s really that Obama doesn’t play the game. The upshot to the DLC model is that once you get recognizable, you get influence. Political parties tend to be very hierarchical – you bring money, you bring votes, you get power, and you work your way up through the party, getting more prominent positions at think tanks, in appointed positions, party support to run for office, etc. Obama has basically destroyed that. He doesn’t really give a shit what the pundits think, and he’s not going to take your policy paper and sign his name to the bottom of it. He’s going to set his own policy, so the professional left doesn’t get their trophy with him – and that’s really what they’re after. Not better policy, just their policy.

    Nobody really had a honest policy objection to the mandate. The professional left didn’t like it, but they never really refuted the numbers. They mostly didn’t like it because it wasn’t their idea, and the only ideas worth supporting are their ideas – and the professional left can’t have a neutral position on anything – it’s their job to have a strong position one way or the other on EVERYTHING. The mandate was kind of a ‘meh’ thing. It had its upsides and its downsides. It wasn’t awesome, but it should have been acceptable, and yet much of the left went completely bonkers over it, as much as the right did. But once it went before SCOTUS, well, the same people were desperate for the mandate to be upheld. It went from not being their idea = unacceptable, to being their idea = acceptable.

  189. 189.

    Hill Dweller

    @Suffern ACE:

    The other part that I can’t understand is the pretending that restoring the collection of payroll taxes is a big cave (were those tax cuts supposed to be permanent? Do the working people wish not to pay taxes for their own program?). Oh, the burden of the social security tax on the working people!

    It’s even more absurd considering Nancy Smash(and Harry Reid) hates the payroll tax cut. She is the driving force for letting it expire.

  191. 191.

    askew

    @David in NY:

    Considering Klein has been the one pushing all of these rumors about Obama’s proposals, I can’t take anything he says too seriously. Wasn’t it just last week that he was saying Obama was going to raise the Medicare age?

  192. 192.

    Brachiator

    @Librarian:

    He looked like Victor Buono. So there’s that.

    I always thought of Bork when I saw Buono as the bad guy Count Manzeppi in syndicated reruns of The Wild Wild West.

  193. 193.

    Chyron HR

    @askew:

    Wasn’t it just last week that [Klien] was saying Obama was going to raise the Medicare age?

    That was just a distraction so he could slip in and unchain the CSI or whatever we’re supposed to be outraged about now.

  195. 195.

    beltane

    @PsiFighter37: Defeating Lieberman in the primary is probably the netroots greatest achievement as it did prevent Lieberman from being a senator for life as he would have other wise been. Yeah, he got an extra term but now he’s enjoying his last few days as a US senator and the Senate will be a far better place for it.

    I do think it’s not worth listening to the people who think the Clintons were somehow more solidly progressive than Obama. Or maybe they’re right and I was living through a different 1990s than the one they did.

  196. 196.

    Elizabelle

    Don’t know if anyone mentioned it, but I remember Bushmaster from the DC sniper killings about 10 years ago.

    Weapon of choice of John Lee Muhammed (since executed) and juvenile accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo. They generally fired the Bushmaster from a hole in the trunk of an old beater car.

    Did not know that Bushmaster ended up shelling out $2.5 million in total to the victims’ families (and the amount is a pittance; ten dead, three severely wounded.) They ended up culpable because a Washington state gun dealer sold Muhammed the rifle, even though he had a restraining order on him at the time.

  198. 198.

    Schlemizel

    @askew:

    NOW they are insiders but they sure were not 40 years ago after LBJ kicked Goldwaters ass across the continent. You have to think long game here.

    Hopefully we never get to a point where the lefty teabaggers run the party but at this moment in time we need them because they expand the range of debate to the left (actually toward the middle but we are so fucked up that moderately conservative is way left today)

  199. 199.

    Joel

    @Schlemizel: I don’t mind the lefties, even if they are unreasonable. At some point, you need the unreasonables in your midst. They form the pole from which you negotiate from, especially given that the other side is comprised almost entirely of unreasonables.

    I do despise the “lefty” troll-puppets, though. They’re pretty easy to spot, however.

  200. 200.

    askew

    @? Martin:

    I understand their objection to the mandate more than the outcry over the public option not being included in Obamacare. At least the mandate was discussed during the primaries, the public option was never discussed prior to the health care debate and was never part of any liberal health care wish list until it blew up during the 2009 debate. Plus, the public option was basically included through the Sanders amendment allowing states to set-up their own networks.

  201. 201.

    Southern Beale

    That Obsidian Wings post a BJ front pager linked to here that said guns were used to defend masculinity? This item pretty much proves it.

    National Review, whose in-house editorial suggested Newtown was the price of the Second Amendment, published a piece on Wednesday from anti-feminist Charlotte Allen suggesting the reason the shooter was able to kill so many students was because Newtown was a “feminized setting:”

  202. 202.

    ? Martin

    @Corner Stone:

    How do you even type stuff like this?

    Because in aggregate I don’t think it is. There are very few situations now where the public doesn’t support Democratic positions at the national level. If not for the GOP blocking anything that moves, we’d be much farther along on policy, but even with that, Dems have made pretty good ground on social policy (certainly undoing whatever damage built up since 1980) and a bit on fiscal policy (with a lot more work needed here). You have to at least accept that much of what Clinton supported on fiscal policy wasn’t the entirely the GOPs fault – in many cases a majority of Dems signed onto that. We may have fucked up, but it was our policy.

    But what Republican policies do the public support at the national level that the Dems have been blocking? I can’t think of even one right now. At the national level everything is moving in our direction. The setbacks people are noting are at the state level, and while they’re notable setbacks, there seems to be little if any support for them to advance to the national level, and many of them are so over-reaching that we’re now getting national discussions on how to rein them in.

  203. 203.

    jacy

    @ranchandsyrup:

    SAD FACE. Sully got hip to DougJ’s trolling and struck it

    .

    At least Sully’s blog monkeys are earning their peanuts.

    And at least the struck comment goes to show how stupid their contrarian bullshit looks up close.

  204. 204.

    askew

    @Schlemizel:

    I’d be fine with the left teaparty if they didn’t dominate all of the left media with their crazy. Outside of Al Sharpton, all of MSNBC repeats their talking points like gospel just like 90% of the left blogs. So, that means their crazy talk drowns out all reasonable discussion and the rational Dems have no media to turn to for discussion of issues.

  205. 205.

    Ruckus

    @Cermet:
    I’ve never understood this either. Respect for the dead? Why does being dead get them something they never gave anyone else in life?
    What the hell can they do with respect now?
    Shouldn’t they have tried to get some while alive?

  206. 206.

    ? Martin

    @Hill Dweller:

    It’s even more absurd considering Nancy Smash(and Harry Reid) hates the payroll tax cut. She is the driving force for letting it expire.

    I think it was implemented wrong. By eliminating workers contribution, it amounted to a gradual form of Bush’s stimulus plan of mailing everyone a check and hoping they treated it like Christmas. If the goal was to create jobs, it was next to useless because a lot of that money didn’t go back into job creation. It would have made more sense to give the employer the holiday on new hires, and give them a temporary tax cut that only applied to hiring.

    As it stands now, part of the screaming for ‘entitlement reform’ is that we’re covering that payroll tax out of the general funds – so it’s suddenly 100% deficit spending. It’s not like SS isn’t getting funded here, so the longer we do this, the more SS/Medicare become welfare programs rather than entitlement programs, because for the last few years, nobody actually paid for their SS benefits – those were gifted to us.

  207. 207.

    ? Martin

    @askew:

    the public option was never discussed prior to the health care debate and was never part of any liberal health care wish list until it blew up during the 2009 debate.

    That was tactical – but the left wouldn’t have it. Obama had insurers as allies on this – he needed at least one ally within the healthcare industry, and insurers were a good one as they’re limited in number, and the government’s goals (reduce costs) align with the insurer’s primary goals. Insurers know that they come out better reducing costs vs raising premiums. It’s the opposite for the care providers – they come out better charging more.

    The public option killed the insurers support for PPACA. That’s what caused things to really get frayed in 2009 – insurers started opposing the plan as Democrats pushed harder for the public option. I watched that happen from the inside.

  208. 208.

    askew

    @? Martin:

    I agree it was tactical. I just never got why the left made the public option the hill to die on. They were ready to kill the entire bill over it even though it was a massive progressive win. That’s when I saw the professional left for what they really are, people making money off of outrage.

  209. 209.

    Brachiator

    @? Martin:

    It would have made more sense to give the employer the holiday on new hires, and give them a temporary tax cut that only applied to hiring.

    There were new hire tax credits in part of the past stimulus packages. As far as I can tell, they didn’t accomplish very much.

    The same is true of most of the other small business credits and deductions. They have helped some, but not had a huge impact on hiring or job creation.

  210. 210.

    Sly

    LA Times–Robert Bork, failed Supreme Court Nominee dead at 85

    So he’s no longer merely slouching towards perdition, but finally arrived. Shame that he lasted longer than Archibald Cox and Elliot Richardson.

    @? Martin:

    The public option killed the insurers support for PPACA.

    There’s every indication that it was the Federation of American Hospitals and the AMA that got the public option killed, not the insurance lobby.

    Also, the private health insurance sector is not monolith. There are for-profit and non-profit corporations. Non-profits gave tepid support for PPACA, mostly because it had stuck the knife in their for-profit competitors with nationwide standards on MLRs and guaranteed issue.

    The only stakeholders in the system that were outright bought off as an entire sector was the pharmaceutical industry, which got more favorable regulation on patents. Everyone else, from DME manufacturers to state regulators, were either co-opted into submission or simply steamrolled.

  211. 211.

    Liberty60

    There’s a saying that if you can’t say anything nice about somebody, don’t say anything at all.

    In other news, Barack Obama is the Time Magazine Person of the Year!

  213. 213.

    ShadeTail

    “It’s wrong to speak ill of the dead!”

    “OK, if you say so. Gosh, Stalin was really efficient, wasn’t he?”

  214. 214.

    Brachiator

    @askew:

    I agree it was tactical. I just never got why the left made the public option the hill to die on. They were ready to kill the entire bill over it even though it was a massive progressive win. That’s when I saw the professional left for what they really are, people making money off of outrage.

    Some on the professional left are insistent that if they cannot have a single payer health plan, right now, today, this instant, then they would rather not have any health plan at all.

    They are also stuck on the idea that all social programs must be entirely government funded and operated, that neither insurance companies nor any other private entity can ever have a role. Because profits are evil. Or something.

    All this, despite the diversity of approach with respect to universal health care plans in the developed nations that have actually implemented them.

  215. 215.

    J. Michael Neal

    @Schlemizel: The lefty teabaggers aren’t going to move anything anywhere with their current tactics. Screaming about being betrayed by the president won’t shift opinion. They need to stop attacking their allies and spend their time attacking Republicans. This is one of the ways in which they are adopting the worst, and least effective, approaches of the righty teabaggers.

  216. 216.

    johnny aquitard

    @? Martin:

    I just keep getting a t-shirt ad with a young lady that just shows her wallys pointed at me. You can barely even tell that she’s wearing a t-shirt.

    Dayum, dude. All I get is an ad of kid with a cleft palate.

    Wonder what I have to shop for to get the young lady and her barely t-shirted wallys to appear…

  217. 217.

    Darkrose

    @Thor Heyerdahl: Nope, not the only one. I just dropped it from my Google Reader feeds after adding it back two weeks ago. I simply can’t handle that level of sustained outrage over things that haven’t actually happened yet.

    Sadly, this also has me reading Charlie Pierce a lot more selectively than I had been. The man’s brilliant, but he’s more of a worst-case-scenarioist than I am, which is saying something.

  219. 219.

    Darkrose

    @burnspbesq:

    Erik’s a big boy. He can take care of himself. And not to put too fine a point on it, but do you really think that a sudden outbreak of leftblogistan solidarity would cause those jackalopes to stop what they’re doing?

    If nothing else, it might be nice for his university president to know that throwing your faculty members under the bus for a misinterpreted metaphor (U SEE WHAT I DID THERE?) is not a good thing.

  222. 222.

    Schlemizel

    @J. Michael Neal:

    Come on Mike – how did the teabaggers get power? The attacked every gooper they deemed not pure enough. Grover is a classic example. It worked. The point remains that we need to have people on the left demanding more because the alternative is that the DLC gets to set the left boundary and that would be a real nightmare

  223. 223.

    Schlemizel

    interesting that my comment is in mod – no curse words, no peeps or va-j-jys and no Bohner pill names either

  225. 225.

    Triassic Sands

    This is a day when we should all pause and take a moment of silence — to thank the 58 senators who voted to deny Robert Bork a seat on the Supreme Court.

    Bork was, as has been frequently noted, on the wrong side of every major controversial constitutional issue of the twentieth century. In the year 2000, he would no doubt have voted to uphold Plessy v Ferguson. He was a voice for reaction and barbarity and he would have been a disaster on the SCOTUS. Thank you, 58 senators.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks