.
Per the NYTimes:
… One day after Republicans rolled out a detailed proposal aimed at eliminating the federal deficit through steep cuts and repealing many of the president’s accomplishments, Mr. Obama told them pointedly in a rare visit that their highest fiscal priority was not his.
“Our biggest problems in the next 10 years are not deficits,” the president said, according to accounts from the meeting, bluntly rejecting an idea that has become Republican fiscal dogma…
The hourlong discussion at the Capitol, and the release of a new budget by Senate Democrats on Wednesday that adds $100 billion in new stimulus spending and would impose higher taxes on large corporations and wealthy Americans, illustrated anew just how difficult it will be to resolve the issues that have split the Congress for years and created a perpetual cycle of deadline-driven short-term fiscal policy. Given the gap in the budget approaches, the president conceded as much in an interview with ABC News that ran on Wednesday before he went to the Capitol for the second consecutive day.
“Ultimately, it may be that the differences are just too wide,” said Mr. Obama, who will meet Thursday with Senate Republicans and House Democrats. “It may be that ideologically, if their position is, ‘We can’t do any revenue,’ or, ‘We can only do revenue if we gut Medicare or gut Social Security or gut Medicaid,’ if that’s the position, then we’re probably not going to be able to get a deal.” ….
Per Dave Weigel, from whom I swiped the embed at the top:
Disgruntled Republicans Livetweet Obama’s Closed-Door Speech
The typical way to report on a House Republican conference meeting is to wait until the off-the-record affair is over and prod members for details. That was less useful today. Members, reacting to the president’s offer of a Q&A, livetweeted the whole thing. It started as they walked in….
They really are a bunch of spoilt, angry teenagers, aren’t they? President Mean Dad keeps insisting the family’s summer vacation will be a week at a rented timeshare at the lake, because that’s “affordable”, when there are, like, tens of thousands of dollars in that 401K thing that could totally pay for a real trip to Cancun or somewhere kewl! Well, maybe the GOPTeens can’t force Mom & Dad to take everyone on a reality-tv- style trip, but they can most definitely bitch, whine, complain, snark and make sure that nobody enjoys their stupid condo at the boring lake!…
Oh, and of course they’ll still have their hands out at the lakeshore arcade, per Time:
“Even in this new age of austerity, sequestration and budget cutting rhetoric, powerful members of Congress are having their way, defending favorite programs and finding money for pet projects…”
Mart
Told my daughter I am seriously thinking of retiring before 62. She was seriously concerned that would have a negative impact on my 401k and her inheritance. I’ve spawned a Republican in the making. Oh, the shame.
rda909
And the overwhelming majority of the debt that these Republicans claim to be concerned about was caused by…..Republicans! And Democrats are the only ones in recent decades to slow down, or reverse the Republican-caused trend. Of course, the mainstream media is careful to never point that out though, so these childish Republican tantrums continue unabated.
John Revolta
Damn, it’s good to hear anybody in DC say that anymore, let alone the Prez.
I may sleep a little better tonight.
Yutsano
And almost all of them will get re-elected because of saving teh bebehs or Jeebus. Ignore the pig behind the curtain!
? Martin
@Mart: Inheritance, eh? My kids said that word once. I told them “There will be no inheritance even if we win the lottery. We will send you to good schools and give you a bigger head start in life than most people in this country gets, and you’re going to earn your way from there. We’ll be happy to spoil our grandchildren rotten and let you choose the charity to receive our wealth.”
61 is my target. 17 years. I don’t take it as a positive sign that I’m already counting down.
Yutsano
FYWP.
@rda909: All debt and deficits are, have been, and will be forever caused by the blah man in the White House. I know this is true because Fox News said so. And they’re fair an balanced.
srv
@? Martin: Look, all you SS & Medicare leaches are all going to move to the south anyway, so why don’t you suck it up and take one for the gipper?
amk
@Yutsano: Yup. The bane of american voter stupidity.
Hill Dweller
@Yutsano: The deficit is shrinking at the fastest rate since WWII, but the Village never mentions it.
The wingnuts have made a subtle shift to talking about debt now, as opposed to the deficit, conceding the reduction in the deficits, but, again, the Village refuses to notice.
Carney has literally resorted to bringing huge charts to the WH press briefing. He school one of the hacks on the deficit Wednesday.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Watch this (Mel Brooks) as an antidote to all of the Pope-a-rama today. Thanks to Marc Cooper for pointing it out.
Spaghetti Lee
“Ultimately, it may be that the differences are just too wide,”
Music to my ears. I personally may have replaced ‘the differences are just too wide’ with ‘you’re all blithering idiots’, but, well, that’s why I’m not the prez.
Yutsano
@Hill Dweller: BOOOOORING!! New Pope = next bright shiny object! Plus the White House Press Corpse isn’t there to be schooled by no uppity White House Press Secretary! They want niblets they can throw to the wingnuts so they can suck on weenies at Sally’s next party. That’s all they really care about.
Hill Dweller
@amk:
The WaPo poll that was released yesterday had all sorts of bad news for the wingnuts, with one exception: the President only had a 4 point lead on Republicans for who the public trusted on the economy. After 30+ years of failed Republican economics, the public still refuses to wake the fuck up.
Of course, the Village focused on Obama’s approval rating in that WaPo poll, which dropped to 50%. Conversely, they refused to talk about congressional Republicans having a 29% approval rating, including 81% disapproval from moderates.
Redshift
Perhaps the most obnoxious thing about Rohrabacher’s tweet is that “blowing smoke” is what the Village and Republicans have been demanding that Obama do, and just the opposite of what he actually did. Asshat can’t even use his condescending expressions correctly.
Hill Dweller
@Yutsano: The Village has gone from BENGHAZI! to WHITE HOUSE TOURS!.
The bulk of today’s WH press briefing was about stopping WH tours(and Obama’s golf costs). Nothing about all the other devastating effects of the sequester.
opie jeanne
@? Martin: You’re retiring then or you don’t think you’ll live past that age? I hope the former because you’re one of my favorite posters here.
I inherited some money for which I am grateful (as well as astonished by how much was left), but I’d rather have both of my parents. A bit of the money will go into a new roof for our house, we gave each adult child $10k, and the rest will go into savings in case those bastard Republicans manage to take away any of our retirement.
Ok, maybe we’ll go to Europe again, but as things stand we can do that on our own.
There are a couple of charities that may get a nice gift from us this year, and not because we need a write-off.
I’m watching my sibling clutch every nickel tightly to her chest (she has been unemployed for a couple of years and needs the money), while her eldest child (an adult) asks too many questions about the money. This week there has been drama because of a pile of old Hollywood photos that may be worth a couple thou, or ten times that much depending on who you’re talking to. We’re having them appraised and the first thing out of this child’s mouth was a breathless, “ARE YOU GOING TO SELL THEM????” If my kids were like that child I’d do what you’ve promised to do, but I’m not sure they’d get to pick the charity.
I’m thinking about buying out my sister’s share and donating them to a local museum, but not sure I can afford to yet. I have no grandchildren and the way things are going there will be none, and I’m 63. These photos are part of my grandfather’s work and I feel that a place like that would be able to maintain them correctly, better than I can.
Our cousin has the other half of Grandpa’s photos, expecting no grandchildren, and the photos are in plastic sleeves in a big box on the kitchen floor. I might buy those as well and include them in the collection. I’m just really worried that the appraisals will come back too high to be practical.
Yutsano
@Hill Dweller: Since I’m on the bad effects of the sequester (and I think the IRS is making a huge mistake by delaying our furloughs until after filing season) I already know what’s about to happen. I’ll be lucky if I can keep a place to live not to mention my car. But nope, totes doesn’t matter to the Village. Just White House tours and ZOMG LAZY BLACK MAN IN WHITE HOUSE PLAYING GOLF ALL THE TIME!!
piratedan
yeah these fuckers are only fiscal conservatives when the OTHER party is in power trying to figure out ways to pay for the spending that was put on the future credit card by those oh so frugal folks of the heartland.
Don’t want to imply that Dems are pork free, but at least their jobs go to shit like research grants and cops and docs and roads instead of Gun Manufacturers and oil companies.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@piratedan: They are FCINOs, to quote the Demon Sheep ad. Or something.
? Martin
@srv: Move to the south? If I go much more south I’ll be in Mexico.
Pap Finn
Calling them pouting teenagers is a little too kind, if you ask me. The Republican party and its base have degenerated into a mob of brain-damaged, bigoted, Neo-Confederate savages who don’t deserve to even live in a free society, much less govern one.
rda909
@Pap Finn: Was going to fix that accuracy, then realized it was 100% accurate already.
Debbie(aussie)
@? Martin:
This!
My parents are still alive (71&76) and I have told them that I have absolutely no expectations of an inheritance. I want them to enjoy the rest of their lives. I had told my kids(30&26) that they can expect the same.
Opie_jeanne
@Debbie(aussie): I told my parents much the same back when they had a nice little pile of it but I thought Dad had little money left after buying a house five years ago. I was surprised when his broker showed me the assets.
I’d still rather have Dad back, as well as Mom before the Alzheimer’s.
? Martin
@opie jeanne:
Thank you for saying that. Well, in 9 months I’ll have a teenager daughter. I’m not sure I’ll live past that day. Yeah, I’m one of those dads. Boyfriends may get introduced to my favorite shovel. I love this shovel. It’s very well balanced and I keep the blade really sharp so it can cut through thick tree roots. I can dig a deep hole even in this hard clay in nothing flat.
But my plan is to retire at 61. I’ll have 35 years in with my employer and pension + SS will be ballpark 100% of my salary. I see no point to working past that point. Someone else will surely need my job. I can actually retire in 6 years, and if pushed could probably afford it as my dad did (he retired at 50 – I think it literally came down to retiring or blowing his brains out – he despised his job and employer) but he retired to a barely habitable double wide and coasted for a decade and a half until Medicare/SS kicked in. That was last year and he’s living large now. Pretty sure Ms Martin isn’t down with that shit (she’s not demanding, but needs her comforts as is her want), but dad did pretty well by it. But I might throw in sooner. We have other retirement savings, and a mountain of equity in the house (SoCal real estate). Who knows. But I’m a planner to the end, so it’ll probably go that way barring some unforseen event. I really have trouble being at peace with it. I grew up poor, and while my parents worked their way out of that, growing up poor really hangs on some people. The rainy day fund will never feel like its enough – I can always envision a way for it to vanish in a week.
I feel really fortunate for our situation. There were a lot of good decisions along the way, but a lot of things just fell the right way for us too. And we don’t take any chances. Not the most interesting life as a result, but we rarely find ourselves in interesting times either. It’s really hard for me to read about the struggles of many people here. It really bothers me that Yutsy is making the right decisions and not having things fall his way because some assholes in DC simply want to make a point – he deserves better. Everyone does. I’m not good at expressing it – it usually kind of overwhelms me, and I spend much of my day going through this kind of stuff with my students as well. I’ve been doing this for a decade and a half and I still ache at the end of almost every day. But that’s part of the job, I guess.
You remind me I need to get back to scanning the family photos. We’ve become the repository of them all and have been digitizing and annotating them to share with the family. Slow-ass process, but they go back to the 1860s, and those are really damn cool to look at and research. But there’s thousands. Maybe 10s of thousands. It seems endless… It’s probably time to hire the girl to help. I pay $7.50/hr. Not a bad allowance when you’re 12, but you gotta work for it.
Debbie(aussie)
@Opie_jeanne:
Oh yes! I hate to think of my parents not being here, especially Mum, we are very close. I can only imagine your pain & grief ((hugs)).
? Martin
@Debbie(aussie): My mom has some money now, but her husband has a degenerative disease. She kind of tiptoed into a discussion of how much help we needed for college for the kids and I cut her off – use it all to get as many years for him as you can. We’re fire. Sell the cars, sell the house. Even though she’s a number of years older than him, I expect she’ll outlive him. So, we’re saving for that eventuality as well. I’m an only child and need to look out for them.
Opie_jeanne
@? Martin: you have photos back farther than most people. Was there a professional photographer in the family a couple of generations ago? We had two generations of them, my grandpa and his father. I think our oldest photos are about 1850.
My great grandfather claimed to have worked for Matthew Brady, as did one of his brothers. We don’t know if it’s true, there’s no record, and he was a teller of tall tales. Until he died my dad wondered if the old boy really did own oil property in Texas, or a gold mine in Arizona. After a family tragedy he worked as a traveling salesmen in photographic supplies. My grandfather worked as a still photographer in Hollywood between 1909 and 1932, and we have a large number of stills. He had his own portrait studio and he followed his wife and kids around with a camera. We saw a Very Serious photography display at the Getty a few years ago that was all praise for a portrait of a dog ca. 1905, which was a new idea. We have a number of similar portraits predating that one. The family portraits number in the thousands and I have spent many years figuring out who those people are because so few had names on them.
And now I’m worried that there will be no grandchildren, no one to tell the stories to, no one to giggle at the women’s funny hair and the strange stovepipe hats on the men.
andy
Off topic, but, Fla. Politician Resigns, 57 Charged In Scandal
Grifters gots to grift. Brazen, and so very very sloppy about it. They’re the kings of the world all right…
? Martin
@Opie_jeanne:
No. The oldest few are daguerrotypes/ferrotypes taken of my ancestors before they left Ireland, just before the outbreak of the US Civl War. Great x I forget Grandfather. We have a proper photo of him a few years later in his Union uniform after arriving in NYC. It had been a very tight-knit family. We settled in Brooklyn in the 1860 and proceeded to build out our own little neighborhood, buying brownstones along the same street, intermarrying with other Irish Catholic families until we owned the better part of an entire street (of one relative or another). Almost nobody left until WWII, other than one of my great, great uncles who went to Nebraska to help Father Flanagan at Boys Town (I really need to learn the story of how he got hooked up in that). Anyway, items like the photos never got scattered for a full century until the family started to break up in the late 60s. We’ve rounded up everything (including on my wife’s side) that we could find. My aunt has most of what we don’t and we share back and forth as we find time to work on things, but that collection will likely be left to me as she has no grandkids (my cousin has been living HIV+ and has a partner but they have no plans for kids). One other cousin is still in college, and the 3rd quite unexpectedly got married as he was a priest for a number of years until he gave that up not able to find a congregation and support himself. The church is not as well off here in the US as people would have you believe. So, the family name and the next generation currently reside entirely in my hands. And that’s a bit unnerving from an Irish Catholic family where having single digit numbers of kids left people wondering what was wrong with you.
But Hollywood photos from the silent era? How fucking cool is that?
raven
@? Martin: I have a disc with a couple of hundred family photos that a cousin sent me. There not worth anything but it’s great to have them. Check out Venus Thornsberry.
raven
And Laura with her dolls.
Baud
After hearing months of complaining that Democrats aren’t talking about job-creating stimulus, it was nice to see all the liberal blogs explode with story after story in support of the Senate Democrat’s budget…
Oh wait…
Honestly, our side is not much better than the MSM.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Mart:
Told my daughter I am seriously thinking of retiring before 62. She was seriously concerned that would have a negative impact on my 401k and her inheritance. I’ve spawned a Republican in the making. Oh, the shame.
Just tell her that, in line with the principles of Republicanism, you’ve decided to look after yourself, and f**k leaving anything of value to her.
Keith G
@John Revolta:
That line from the President needs to be on a loop. As a whole, USA citizens are as self satisfied and ignorant as they come. They believe deficits are the biggest problem because the explanations of the real problems can take a handful of long sentences and some higher level reasoning skills to understand.
It’s tough work, but the President and his team must continue to market in the simplest terms possible what the actual threats are and where our immediate focus needs to be.
Patricia Kayden
Thank goodness that President Obama has been so blunt about not gutting entitlement programs. I know a lot of progressives were very worried that he’d cave just to get some kind of deal.
Stay strong, President Obama. The polls show that the majority of Americans don’t want to gut entitlements to put more money in the pockets of Koch/Adelson and their ilk.
Patricia Kayden
@Hill Dweller: 50% is not bad. I’d heard that his approval had dropped down into the mid 40s.
Debbie(aussie)
@? Martin:
You are a wonderful(& lucky) man. My parents are better off than I and my hubby, tho we are ok. I had to give up work and have not been able to return. Very lucky to live in Aus, get a disability pension. No money (income too high) but get cheap scripts and discounts on rates, water and electricity. Have bought a house with our son & d-I-l, downsized to share & renting previous house. Will be our retirement fund :)
bemused
@Pap Finn:
Worse than pouting teenagers. They don’t wait until the parents are gone for the weekend to have a party and trash the house. They hogtie and gag the parents, have a wild party demolishing the house top to bottom with the powerless parents watching while getting taunted, doused with beer and peed on.
Linda Featheringill
Good morning. Interesting thread.
I also made serious plans when I was your age. :-) Still, I’d like to throw in a couple of points.
Life is funny. You never really know what’s gonna happen. You just have to do the best you can in the circumstances you land in. The best laid plans, etc.
Through the years, I’ve gained my greatest comfort from my admittedly imperfect understanding that all things are temporary. In the end, of course, life itself is also temporary. And so is intelligence.
Being human is great, ain’t it?
Linda Featheringill
Damn. Looks like I killed the thread. Hmmm.
You guys have a good day, anyway.
kay
So funny in that piece that House Republicans have been mad for 6 months over Obama not calling Boehner 1st on election night when Obama actually DID call Boehner 1st, but Boehner was asleep.
Asleep, passed out, whatever. Which Boehner then admitted.
They’ve been insulted for 6 months over something that didn’t happen.
I don’t think Obama is the one with a communication problem here. Sounds like Boehner doesn’t talk to House Republicans.
raven
@Linda Featheringill: It’s just a shift change.
scav
@kay: that’s one of the handy things about invisable presidents in chairs: they can be utterly insulting in invisible ways. (and I doubt even Boehner talking to the would have slowed the snit).
And huzzah for past obsessions! Operation Weeting has been off arresting people again over phone hacking. Sunday Mirror-based this time. TGOC. Have to go re-boot those neurons.
kay
@scav:
It’s helpful, though, because at least you find out how this bullshit starts and is spread.
House Republicans then complain to reporters, and we’re off to the races.
The weak link in the communication chain is Boehner. It’s not Obama’s job to correct House Republican myths.
Didn’t something like this just happen on the Senate side? We foubd out GOP Senators never “saw” his proposal?
There’s fewer than 50 of them. Leadership couldn’t manage to relay that info to 50 people?
I don’t care that much. My hope is they get nothing done and ALLOW tge economy to recover. I just want them to stay out of the way.
JPL
@Yutsano: During the first term, Obama was criticized for playing to much basketball and now it’s golf. I wish these folks would make up their minds.
Fred
My favorite all time bumper sticker: “We’re spending our kids’ inheritance” on the back of a Winabago.
As to the GOPers, they’re doubling down on the stoopid because all the non suckers already know so why da [email protected]#k not?
scav
@kay: That’s a part of the change/problem though, isn’t it? Significant chunks of the republicans not listening to the leaders automatically, if not getting
brownietea points for doing so, and a generation of upper level rebubs who learned their trade when the rank and file just did as they were told without much back-talk. Why else did nobody want Boehner’s position even while they’ve not shown a lot of respect for his leadership. They’re just primed for snit, especially when it gets them camera time and tweets.I’m basically with you though.
danielx
I would enjoy – truly enjoy – having NANCY SMASH read into the record the names of every Republican who voted for the “supplemental appropriations” – you know, those off-budget things – used to pay for George and Dick’s Excellent Adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Add to that reading another of every Republican who voted for the Medicare D expansion without ever questioning how it was to be paid for, and never mind the deliberate understating of the cost of the program.
Republican concern with deficits started about 45 seconds after Obama’s first inauguration.
Kay
@scav:
The great recession was difficult. We took this huge hit. The two lawyers here had to take a cut in pay so we wouldn’t have to lay off or cut hours for the two support staff. I think the only reason we survived was because we paid off the building debt prior to the crash, not because we anticipated the crash but because the two things just happened to coincide.
I wish Republicans would just leave us alone,”out here”. They’ve made it clear they don’t want to help, so just fucking shut up and sit down and let us recover. Can’t they work on some abortion restrictions or something? They’re godammned disasters on the “real” economy. The best thing they can do is nothing.
Chyron HR
What a concidence–as the conclave of vile old pederasts was assembled at the Vatican, a congress of vile old pederasts was in session on Capitol Hill.
WereBear
Inheritance?
Hahahahahahahaha!
We can’t even come up with something to put into savings at the end of the month. And at least we make it to the end of the month.
Damn Republicans.
JGabriel
Anne Laurie @ Top:
Wait, snark? I don’t think Republicans really do snark.
They try. But it always comes out like exaggerated propagandizing to a deluded choir.
I chalk it down to the Conservative lack of wit and feck.
.
Kay
@scav:
And, really. White House tours? THIS is the grave and pressing issue we’re going to focus on? I get it, politically. Media and conservatives have decided they’re going to focus on Obama’s “politicizing” White House tours. I got it the first 5 minutes. Their point. Put one up on the scoreboard! Big win against Obummer. He’s politicizing White House tours.
Who cares?
Why am I supposed to take any of these people seriously, again?
TR
During the debt limit bullshit, I liked to call them the Dine and Dash Republicans — they ordered an expensive meal; they gobbled it up; and as soon as the waitress came with the bill, they ran right out if the restaurant. And then set it on fire.
SenyorDave
It’s amazing that after four years, we still have to hear large elements of progressives whining about:
1. Obama giving away the store to the conservatives
2. Obama should ram things down the throats of Congress
If the hard left had supported Obama in 2010 and not acted like a bunch of spoiled 4 year olds (sorry for the insult 4 year olds), I suspect politically he would have had a lot more options
In their own way, they are as assinine as the Villagers with their, “Obama just had to invite the Republicans out to dinner and stop being mean to them”, forgetting that:
1. The GOP spends a large part of their time trying to de-legitimize the scary black Muslim in the White House, culminating in years of accepting and/or endorsing birtherism as a main tenet of Republican belief
2. He tried, and was rebuffed. He invited Boehner to the White House when Kentucky basketball team was honored and was refused. He routinely invites GOP Congresspeople to watch the Super Bowl, and they never show. THEY HATE HIM.
scav
@Kay: Don’t look at me! This is just some sort of intensely private moment between the Politicos and the Media Villagers. They don’t really need to worry about what mere people actually think until the next election day (possibly a little during sweeps). They’re no doubt working on a way to CGI such crowd scenes in order to cut costs and improve relability.
Opie_jeanne
@raven: wow! That’s a lot of dolls. Cool photos.
OzoneR
@Kay:
because half the country does
some guy
stupidity truly is bipartisan
Kay
@scav:
I feel as if media and conservatives have determined that White House Tours are “mainstreet” (of interest to someone outside them) so it’s this completely safe fight they can pick. It shows they’re advocates for regular people AND it doesn’t piss off anyone wealthy, it’s easy to explain, etc.. It’s a great place to take a principled stand. “We demand the resumption of White House tours for the little people!”
In some ways they’re more repulsive when they try for a populist tone, because it’s always so patronizing and stupid.
OzoneR
@SenyorDave:
yes, the issue is everyone from the media to even some progressive blame him for them hating him.
It’s like that kid who’s different and people saying “Why can’t you just be like everyone else?”
Bruce S
@John Revolta:
Ditto – the Prez must have finally read one of Paul Krugman’s columns. I hated it when he bent his rhetoric to mirror the phony, painfully ignorant deficit scolds.
hal
The medias reaction so far has been that Obama tried to scare everyone over the sequester even though the cuts haven’t kicked in yet. When they do and shit hits the fan aren’t all the Republicans and media folks going to look like chumps?
Bruce S
@SenyorDave:
You really believe there is a “hard left” in America that is undermining President Obama? And they could have delivered more “options” to the President in the midterms? What planet do you live on. Frankly, the handful of people who have delivered “more options” to the President in this context – judging from his taking a clear stand on the issue of “deficits” where he’s often been fuzzy – are those folks who have consistently criticized the phony “deficit” hysterics. Without people outside the administration pushing hard on that issue, the options would be even more bleak.
If there’s anything childish I’ve read here, it’s this bizarre analysis of the spectrum of US politics as encompassing a “hard left” that’s “as asinine” as the GOPer reactionaries. There is barely a “moderate left” in this country – and to the degree any variation on “Left” exists (not center-left Dems who would be “conservatives” based on their articulated policy positions in most European countries) it obviously can’t mobilize people to the degree that the Tea Party crazies could. If there actually were a more coherent left with some populist potential, we’d all be better off on the Democratic side because President Obama wouldn’t be operating in such an absurdly skewed-right political space. That’s what’s cramping his options, not some phantom “hard left.”
Del
@Bruce S: Any populist leftist movement in this country quickly gets strangled in it’s crib by the media. Their bosses are all plutocrats and most of them are courtiers/stenographers, all of whom are directly threatened by anybody to the left of Ayn Rand.
scav
@Bruce S: The hard left in this nation is imagined the same way the Southern Continent once was and Dark Matter still is. It’s needed to make the world balence and the equations balence. if ever discovered (ahem, regenerated), it probably won’t match the fevered imaginatings.
cmorenc
@SenyorDave:
I have an otherwise nice friend who, when discussions turn to politics, requires enormous self-restraint from giving in to the urge to strangle and thrash the shit out of him. “Obama is just as bad as Bush”…gives you a fair sample of his firebaggery. BTW: he was also explicitly among those refusing to vote for any congressional democrat in the 2010 election because they were “just as bad as the republicans” in refusing to vote for genuine single-payer health care”, and “the democrats will never be genuinely progressive unless we refuse to support the ones who aren’t” (as in, who don’t pass his stringent purity test).
bemused
This is good news. Chris Hayes will take Ed Schultz’s weeknight slot. Love that whip smart, adorable young man. No news on Hayes’ weekend shows. Doing both shows would be a very heavy schedule even for a young person.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay:
Mitt Romney in pressed blue jeans talking to black kids about about letting the dogs out.
Bruce S
@cmorenc:
What percentage of the American electorate does this anecdotal friend represent? Come up with an approximation, estimate or whatever and compare it to the percentage of the electorate that completely crazy people on the far right have been able to mobilize and the number of actual congresscritters they have succeeded in electing to spew their insanity on the House (and Senate) floors. The “far left” is pretty much confined to blog comments and imagined “threats” by the kind of people on Balloon Juice literally obsessed with “Firebaggers” and crank hysterics on the Right who equate this phantom concept (at least within the effective US political spectrum) with our President who – largely because our political spectrum is so skewed to the Right – governs as a very moderate liberal-to-centrist on economic issues. It’s just asinine to furrow one’s brow over “the hard left” given the actual political terrain we are dealing with. It’s – at best – anecdotal “both sides do it” bullshit in the David Broder mold. At worst, it’s a lame excuse for political weakness by generically “liberal” Democrats who don’t have the balls to engage in serious issue-oriented politics at the grassroots level but love to pontificate.
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
@Mart: Inheritance? What’s that?
Liberty60
@hal:
As if the GOP and Villagers will remember what they said even a week ago.
As if they ever see any problem with contradicting what they said last night.
Hell, the more talented ones can contradict themselves even within the same sentence.
Petorado
Shorter Republican Congressionals: The President won’t swallow our poison pill and commit political suicide, therefore he’s being unreasonable.
feebog
Pushback on Social Media. I don’t do twitter, but I have many conservative “friends” on Facebook, mainly because of my many and various community activities. I used to let it pass when one of them posted some rightwing bullshit, now I shoot back, usually with a chart or two. My favorite expression is “facts, they have a well known liberal bias”. I know a lot of people think this is a useless exercise, and you never change anyone’s mind, but I think there are a lot of low information folks out there who need to hear it.
Mnemosyne
@Opie_jeanne:
Actually, the Getty would probably be very interested in your collection if you contacted them about it. They’ve been focusing on photography because they have a really big endowment but not a lot of places to spend it because the fine art market is pretty saturated.
There unfortunately isn’t really a “Hollywood” museum, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences could also potentially be interested, especially if you have production photos that show the sets and not just portraits.
And local museums do love a Hollywood connection. There’s an exhibition of George Hurrell’s work at the Laguna Art Museum right now because he retired there after his Hollywood work.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
700k could lose WIC, women, infants and children-Cheerios and milk and baby formula-and they’re babbling about White House tours.
I’ll give them the win. They got him on the tours issue. Put one up on the board and move on.
scav
@Bruce S: I’d say the anecdotal friend isn’t an example of the ‘hard’ left, but rather of the ‘dramatic’ left. Hard left gets more practical, pugnacious and direct. Note I did not say pragmatic, the hard left probably takes bigger bites with actual teeth noises. Less concerned with frightning the horses. Meets mob with mob (cf London with the Mosley & the anti-fascists + Communists in Cable Street).
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: Both in GOP and in the Village, there is a focus on superficial appearances. The right messenger, the Luntzian phrase. Once those are found the GOP policies will be adopted and loved. You and I know they are polishing a turd, and I think the public is noticing as well.
Villago Delenda Est
@kay:
They have a lot of problems with things that didn’t happen. For example, the expected Rmoney VICTORY! that didn’t happen due to their own stupidity.
Every last one of them is a bawling three year old. They need to be put in a corner, or sent to bed without supper, or tossed out of a speeding SUV onto the side of the freeway.
craigie
Pure awesome.
Tonal Crow
The article really captures Republicans’ character:
They take offense at tiny stuff like this? And they can’t even bother to determine whether the tiny stuff they’re taking offense at actually happened? Please Republicans, don’t stop now: you’re about to overtake the roadrunner.
Frankensteinbeck
Look, the national media journalists as a group treat Republican economic proposals as serious because they AGREE with the Republicans. They’re mostly rich white older men who formed their political opinions during the Reagan era, and the ones that aren’t were hired by rich white older men because they felt chummy together and shared points of view. They listen and nod at Brokaw’s wisdom when he says that the safety net needs to be gutted because that will help the poor by making the poor better people. They don’t treat this opinion as political. It’s an obvious truth to them. That they don’t like Obama and do like Republicans personally just nails the point home.
StringOnAStick
@scav: The “hard left” stuff isn’t anecdotal; I know a few myself. One is basically an anarchist who vowed in the 1980’s to never vote for a D again, and has voted for R’s ever since. We had a large argument over his glee at voting for Sarah Palin via McCain, because he was sure that her ending up as Pres would guarantee the collapse needed to bring about the revolution and the worker’s paradise. He’s 56 years old and a part-time CC instructor.
The other one I tried to “instruct” in a more gentle fashion is my yoga teacher, who by reading so much Alternet and GOS was sure that Obama was no better than Rmoney. He came around and actually got interested in the election, especially after the “47%” video got out there. I know several other new agey types who just plain refuse to vote, say it means nothing, etc. All of them are poor or just barely making it, and refuse to get involved with the messiness of politics. Drives me insane, especially since every low-info winger I know votes like their life depends on it (and really, it is just their membership in Rush’s club thats on th eline).
ruemara
@feebog: I think it’s worthwhile. It’s not to change their minds, it’s to establish that there is a counter argument. Most of my conservative friends have learned to shut up.
@StringOnAStick: It seems “hard left” is mutable as long as it serves to ignore the point that there is a large amount of people who consider themselves to hold left position, yet fail to be active politically except in disseminating what they’ve learned from reading op eds.
scav
@StringOnAStick: Sorry I was confusing, I used anecdotal as an echo of the earlier comment. I know they exist, I was laying out my reasons for considering them the dramatic left, not the hard left — the critical difference being are they merely abstractly dreaming and making small, personal, gestures of their ideals or being hard-headed and hard-hitting practical agents of change. Both sets may have similar rankings on their desire for nationalized health care, infrastructure or whatever.
SensesFail
@Tonal Crow:
Of course they do; tiny minds and all that… which is why they will scream about funding for PBS but never consider looking at defense spending.
Tone in DC
@Villago Delenda Est:
Put the tantrum throwing brats on top of the speeding SUV, dude. That’s what OvenMitt did to his dog.
Tone in DC
@Tonal Crow:
This is what a US representative brings up at an important meeting with the Prez??
WTF?? I regularly abuse sarcasm, to paraphrase J. Whedon. These guys are past insulting, with such landfill as Lankford’s.
ranchandsyrup
Blowing smoke = not completely giving in to GOPer demands. Good to know, Dana. Ya smarmy Orange County fuck.
opie jeanne
@Mnemosyne: There is a small Hollywood museum in the Lasky barn across the street from the Hollywood Bowl called The Hollywood Heritage Museum. They would like us to donate all of the photos to them.
We met one appraiser there, and he gave us rough values for most of the pictures individually.
We have another appraiser coming to the house tomorrow, and he works as an auctioneer for a Fine Arts auction house in Calabasas.
Here’s the problem. We can’t point to any photo and say Grandpa shot this because nothing is signed and we don’t have the plates. There is photographic proof that he worked at these various studios but no proof of what he was doing. A lot of the Hunchback shots are someone else’s because he mentioned that in a letter to my grandmother, who was still in Illinois, but we know that he took some of them, probably most of the ones we have because he complains about having to shoot stills at night and we have several. We have photos of him goofing around on the set. All we have besides that are the family stories like the one about the photos from Pickfair, that Mary Pickford would only allow my grandfather to shoot those photos. So yes, I have considered contacting the Getty once we know what we have but I completely forgot about the Academy. Thank you for that. There are production shots of Hunchback and other movies, shots from behind the set of the Hunchback of Notre Dame showing the back of the cathedral set.
opie jeanne
@Mnemosyne: As for a local museum, Grandpa retired to Baldwin Park in 1932, and had an egg ranch so the Hollywood Heritage Museum would probably be the local.
The Moar You Know
Inheritance. The bugaboo of my life at the moment.
With the exception of my wife and my FIL, my wife’s family are a bunch of non-working shitbags who’ve been mooching of my FIL their entire lives. He is to blame for letting them; but they’re scum for doing it.
They smell the gravy train running out and have turned their eyes to the wife and I. Now, my wife has a soft spot for my nephews, the sons of the biggest moocher of them all. I do not. Pointed questions are being starting to be asked about wills. This is crass. I’m only 47.
So, there are three nephews, two on the moocher side and one on mine. I’m setting up a fifty/fifty split, and the kids don’t get any money until at least age 30. That will be administered by a non family member. Challengers get their share donated to the SPCA, no recourse.
And my goal is to spend it all. My wife and I didn’t get shit from our parents, being passed over for “more worthy” family members. Funny how those “more worthy” members decided that not working was the best course of action, while all the while my wife and I amassed a not-inconsiderable real estate portfolio. We did it with no help. They can do the same. I doubt they will.
/angry old man
ranchandsyrup
@The Moar You Know: Ewwwwww sorry to hear about that. You gonna let them know about your plans?
opie jeanne
@The Moar You Know: That totally sucks. i wouldn’t leave them a nickel, but I’m a stingy old thing.
I half expected my parents to leave it all to my sister, because “she needs it, you don’t” or something. There is a streak of dependence that they fostered in her and encouraged all her life, so that they could take care of her; they viewed her as helpless even though she is not, but she is more easily pushed around than I am. She was an extreme premie in 1952, so I get the over-protectiveness.
Mnemosyne
@opie jeanne:
To a certain extent, you don’t need to prove that he shot the photos in order to sell them — it’s just that you would get more money if you could prove that because then you can prove the provenance (and provenance is a really big deal for museums right now). Without that, you’re in the same position that a collector who bought it at a shop on Hollywood Boulevard would be, unfortunately.
If you’re getting appraisals, you may also want to try Bonham’s if you haven’t already — they do a lot of entertainment memorabilia and they are local here in LA.
opie jeanne
@Mnemosyne: Didn’t know about Bonham’s so thanks for that info.
Yeah, I get that about provenance. And there are no signatures. When I was a little kid I asked my grandfather about that and he pointed out that the actors were working when he saw them and didn’t feel it would be appropriate to stop what he and they were doing to ask for an autograph. I think he kept the photos because he liked the people in them, or liked the shots, and to show his family what he was doing.
Grandma told me he stopped going to church with her in California because there was so much anti-movies and anti-Jewish nonsense constantly in the sermons, and the preacher knew damned well what he did for a living and who he worked with. The only time I ever saw him in a church was in our church basement for his 50th wedding anniversary, and he cried when he saw how many people had come because he thought that no one would bother. That was in… 1961?
IowaOldLady
When we lived in an expensive Detroit suburb, there were young couples in very costly houses. I guessed their parents provided the downpayment and maybe more too, and concluded there were people who expected to send their aged parents money and people who expected the parents to fork it over to them. I don’t think the latter is good for the soul.
Mnemosyne
@opie jeanne:
Given what you’d like to do with them, I wouldn’t worry about not having any autographs — autographs make them worth more on the collectors’ market, but museums and archives prefer to have them un-autographed (unless, again, it’s notations of some kind by the artist or photographer that give more detail or background about the photo). It’s really frustrating for an archivist or historian to try and interpret a tiny detail of a photograph that’s been blacked out by some actor’s signature.
Jebediah
@The Moar You Know:
“Anyone asking about my will won’t be in it.”
My sister-in-law was for a while dating a guy who had several brothers who all mooched mightily off of Grandpa. It’s not a very impressive sight.
Bruce s
@scav:
Where are they – can’t see ’em.
opie jeanne
@IowaOldLady: I remember a young couple in a car dealership when I was a small child, probably in 1957, whose parents were buying them a car. A new car.
It’s not a new thing, probably goes back to cavemen, but even that young I thought it was probably a wrong thing to do.