.
From the Washington Post:
CHICAGO — First lady Michelle Obama, with tears in her eyes and her voice cracking, spoke out for the first time here Wednesday about the gun violence afflicting young people in cities across the nation…
“These reforms deserve a vote in Congress,” she said, drawing loud applause from hundreds of Chicago’s business executives and civic leaders who were gathered at a luncheon to raise money for a new anti-violence initiative.
“As I visited with the Pendleton family at Hadiya’s funeral, I couldn’t get over how familiar they felt to me, because what I realized was Hadiya’s family was just like my family,” the first lady said. “Hadiya Pendleton was me, and I was her. But I got to grow up and go to Princeton and Harvard Law School and have a career and a family, and the most blessed life I could ever imagine. And Hadiya — well, we know that story.”…
In advance of Wednesday’s speech, aides said, Obama did not plan to specifically mention gun-control legislation or call on Congress to do anything. In the end, however, the first lady decided to engage fully in the political debate.
After calling on Congress to vote on gun bills, she echoed the president, saying, “We can’t stop all of the violence in the world, but if there is even one thing we can do, even one step we can take to save another child or another parent from the grief that’s visited families like Hadiya’s, and so many others here today, then don’t we have an obligation to try?”
Mnemosyne
In the thread below, zmulls linked to a video of her friend Francine Wheeler doing this week’s video address from the White House about her child who was murdered at Newtown:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/130413/newtown-francine-wheeler-obama-gun-control
But we can’t talk about murdered children when it comes to gun regulation because that would be too emotional. We can only debate whether regulating guns is merely immoral and therefore impossible or whether it’s a sign of jackbooted thugs coming to your house to confiscate your weapons.
Xecky Gilchrist
…and then she received an avalanche of illiterate paranoid death threats.
Another one, that is.
aimai
Its moments like this that I despair of DailyKos. There are a ton of commenters there who are enraged with the President and his team for trying so hard with the slogan “they deserve a vote”–these people think that the President can just wave a wand and make gun control happen. They don’t seem to grasp just how complicated our political and legislative system is and to grasp that we can’t even get shit down onto the floor of the Senate and House to start the debate. And, what is worse, they have so turned against the President over other dissapointments (like chained CPI) that they are willing to believe that he doesn’t want what he obviously wants–like gun control. Is it really possible to believe that just because you are dissapointed in one aspect of the President’s fiscal policy that it is also necessary to believe he’s the greatest monster in history and is totally unmmoved by the murder of all these children?
Comrade Mary
I’m just started listening to the fabulous Backstory podcast (highly, highly recommended — think Radiolab for American history without rapid-fire editing and sound effects).
Their podcast on the history of gun regulation in the States was an eye-opener for this Canuck. (Also fascinating: war and rules of engagement.)
GregB
I haven’t been able to formulate my thoughts into coherent words yet, but it is strange that the ‘9/11 changed everything’ crowd are almost a carbon copy of the ‘Newtown changes nothing’ crowd.
The reaction to 9/11 was often centered on their feelings about the perpetrators and what depraved people they were for acting in such a horrific manner.
Whereas Newton apparently reflects nothing on the gun obsessed culture they belong to.
gogol's wife
I was looking forward to a debate between the president of the NRA and Josh Horwitz of the Coalition To Stop Gun Violence, but surprise, surprise, the NRA guy dropped out:
“It looks like National Rifle Association (NRA) president David Keene got cold feet. I just learned that he has bowed out of our debate on Monday, April 15th at 8:00 PM at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. The debate is being hosted by the president of Goucher College and was supposed to include Colleen Barry of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Jeffrey Swanson, a professor in psychiatry at Duke University; Keene; and myself.
Stepping in for Keene will be Gayle Trotter, the general counsel of the far-right-wing Independent Women’s Forum. Trotter made national headlines in late January when she declared in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, ‘guns make women safer.’ She also opined that mothers need assault rifles equipped with high-capacity ammunition magazines in order to ‘protect’ their children in the home.
I’m as disappointed as you are that Keene has cancelled. I was looking forward to a robust and thought-provoking conversation with the leader of the NRA on the critical issue of gun violence. But I guess explaining his organization’s lobbying to average Americans wasn’t on his agenda.”
hildebrand
@efgoldman: Indeed. I would bet significant money that Michele is more liberal than her husband, who is clearly far more liberal than Hillary (oops, likely shouldn’t say that, as many folks seems to think Hillary is some deliciously liberal paragon).
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Me too. I admire her lavishly, for a whole lot of reasons. Her smarts, her passion and compassion, her great kids, her style, her humor, her husband….
But I must be wrong, because according to Limpballs her statement shows that FLOTUS “has a chip on her shoulder about this country.”
Right. She’s the one with the chip. Riiiiiiight.
SiubhanDuinne
@GregB:
Excellent point!
Mustang Bobby
I’m just waiting for Peggy Noonan or Laura Ingraham to remind us all that it used to be that First Ladies never got involved in politics and never took sides and that Michelle Obama does not seem to know her place in the way things work in Washington.
Whereupon the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt arose from the rose garden at Hyde Park and beat the daylights out of her with a large sock filled with horse manure while Edith Wilson stood at her side and applauded.
aimai
@GregB:
I’ve been working on a post about this but I’m not getting very far. Here’s what I think. The thread that ties together right wing attitudes towards crime/9-11 and guns is this:
They refuse to believe that the world isn’t divided into good people and bad people. They can’t believe that good people, among whom they number themselves, can do bad things and this leads them on the one hand to deny that the things good people do are bad (“we don’t torture, we enhance interrogations!) and also to deny that people who do things they don’t like are good.
Take, for example, the “jersey girls” who were the 9-11 widows. When they were victims and could be used, speechlessly, as icons they were beloved and honored. When they moved out of that assigned role and began taking political initiative and challenging the government they were demoted to enemies, attention whores, even real prostitutes who used their husband’s deaths to gain wealth (per Ann Coulter). The same thing is happening to the parents of the slain children–as soon as they moved from mute mourners to demanding political action they will be traduced and insulted and smeared. No longer “good people” they will be transformed into “bad people” because bad people are people who do things that the right wing doesn’t want them to do, or have opinions that run contrary to right wing ideology.
On the specific gun issue I think a lot of liberals look at the problem of guns and say “you know, this isn’t a question of merely keeping guns out of the hands of criminals (bad people). Anyone can make a mistake. Anyone can forget to lock up their gun and have it used in a crime, or have it kill someone by accident. Look at the statistics! We need laws that respect the fact that guns kill people regardless of the intentions of the people involved.” Conservatives keep talking as though the person’s intentions determine how we are to understand the deaths they cause. Just this week two children killed two other people because of obvious negligence on the part of the adults who owned the guns. Gun background checks would, indeed, have been useless in preventing these deaths because the guns were owned legally by people who had bought them legally. the NRA would argue that as a result no further action needs be taken. A sane person would say “we need to write new gun regulations which take into account that people get killed because of improper storage, negligence and general inattention.” Background checks prevent “bad people” from getting and holding guns but “good people” also need help in handling guns over a long period of time–the line between a “good person and a bad person” is not like a wall–its just a tiny sliver of time or an incident which separate the two.
SiubhanDuinne
@gogol’s wife:
Let’s hope Gayle Trotter acquits herself as well with Josh Horwitz as she did with Lawrence O’Donnell back in January.
raven
“No longer “good people” they will be transformed into “bad people” because bad people are people who do things that the right wing doesn’t want them to do, or have opinions that run contrary to right wing ideology.”
Reminds me of us “heroes” that went to Vietnam and the traitors we became when we spoke against it. Big Wheel Keep on Turnin!
raven
By the way, Pat Lang said gun legislation was just another way for you “scumbags” to spit on him. And yet his link remains.
Marc
@aimai:
Kos is a cesspool. A community that has been repeatedly wrong and that does not learn isn’t a community worth doing things in.
Arm The Homeless
@efgoldman: I find political dynasties to be an affront to the notion of meritocracy. But with that said, I would crawl through broken glass and knock on every door in South Carolina for a Michelle Obama candidacy.
My usually apolitical mother loves her. She will take any opportunity she can to tell me about Mrs. Obama had said that she agrees with. She is a natural born, empathetic personality. If she were my mother, I would have probably eaten my broccoli more often growing up.
Suffern ACE
@efgoldman: ok. But I don’t think she likes Washington that much and she’d be very unhappy in a position where shed have to stay there.
pete
@Mustang Bobby: Right on, Mustang!
aimai
@efgoldman:
Yeah, that’s my point. But the problem we are having is that we are negotiating with people who have an entirely black and white version of reality. Its like talking to someone who is incapable of rational thinking. We are having a conversation about goals and the best means for achieving them. They are having a conversation about religious dogma.
Down in the comment thread today over at Paul Krugman’s NYT article is a perfect example. Commenter explains that he was arguing about the value of gold to a goldbugger
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
Yep. The best I was ever able to achieve with my dad was getting him to admit that, though there are bad people in the world, the bad ones who are born poor become drug dealers and the bad ones who are born rich go to Harvard and work for Enron.
However, he was a huge proponent of gun safety because he at least understood that accidents can happen even to good people and are not some kind of divine punishment or judgement, so it’s better to try and prevent them.
ricky
@aimai:
It is not only possible, it is also likely that people possessed with such belief are also enraged at the suggestion that their outrage is as irrational as folks
on the other side of the spectrum with whom they share only
their obsession with both the inflated power of the Presidency and the imagined malevolence of the person holding the office.
rikyrah
our First Lady is a class act.
RobertDSC-PowerMac 466
Good on FLOTUS.
Tonal Crow
Another installment in “if we outlaw guns, murderers’ll just use hubcaps instead”:
—
http://news.yahoo.com/three-people-found-shot-dead-house-topeka-kansas-161750886.html
KANSAS CITY, Kansas (Reuters) – Three people have been found hubcapped dead at a house in Topeka, Kansas, in a suspected murder-suicide, police said on Saturday.
The three bodies were found on Friday night at a house in a neighborhood of single family homes, said Lieutenant Shane Lind of the Topeka Police Department.
Police said in a statement it appeared the suspect had killed two people at the home and then committed suicide.
Police declined to immediately release further details of the killings or the ages and genders of the dead, saying family members would first have to be informed.
—
Yep, beat hisself dead with a hubcap. Gotta ban those things.
Tonal Crow
@efgoldman: Lalalalala I can’t hear you. /wingnut
David Koch
@aimai:
wait. Dailykos still exists?
they haven’t produced anything readable in years. The only function they had left was as a news aggregate, but then twitter and facebook came and took that away.
seriously, DKos is a fringe site. Their 2008 straw poll proves it. 48% supported Edwards and only 8% supported Clinton. yet in New Hampshire, Hillary won with 39% of the vote and Edwards got a meeker 17% of the vote. That’s a 62% gap btwn actual voters and their site’s voters. if such a wide gap doesn’t prove fringe then nothing does.
if we had only listened to Dkos, then today, we’d have a classy First Lady like Reille Hunter.
Yutsano
@ricky: lolwut?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
MyDD has apparently folded its tent, to the lament of no one. I suspect Armstrong is somewhere in a cabin keeping his urine and fingernail clippings in jars and keeping a diary about birds he thinks might be spies sent by Obama. That place was a boiling pot of crazy during the Great Primary Wars.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
What if you changed the metaphor?
There is right and wrong. The world is a binary place. Anything you take from citizens(taxes) never does any good. Life is a zero sum process.
/wingnut
I haven’t used the white hat/black hat imagery for years because of exactly what you said. You and I are both old enough that this was part of the vernacular and understood to mean right and wrong but when we started to think about it we realized that it is a racist framing. I like the monochrome idea, that they see only one idea, they are not open to possibilities. That they may be wrong or that the world can change.
I’ll stop rambling now.
S. Holland
@GregB: Perfectly stated!
Ruckus
@Tonal Crow:
Beat hisself dead with a hubcap.
WTF
How the hell do you do that? It’s like holding your breath till you die, pretty damn hard to do.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@GregB: Apparently Mrs Dan Senor has been jabbering about the violent culture created by video games, approving cited by Tweety last night. I think it was Charlie Pierce who pointed out that the media that Mrs Lanza was paying attention to came from the likes of Glenn Beck and other people who encourage that kind of cultural paranoia.
Kristen Gillbrand said something the other day along the lines of “I don’t want to talk about video games”, which sent a small thrill up my leg.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus:
Takes a lot of willpower.
FlyingToaster
@Ruckus: Pretty sure that was snark.
Actual story here.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
No shit.
Ruckus
@FlyingToaster:
There’s a sucker born every minute.
My minute was just a long time ago.
S. Holland
@Mustang Bobby: Ooohhh, to witness that I’d give up a great deal!
JPL
Where in the second amendment does it say you have the right to carry concealed weapons. If I’m out having coffee at Starbucks, isn’t it my right to know if someone has a weapon?
Alison
I really admire and like her so very much. She’s like that mom of a good friend who you secretly wish was your own mom, and when you’re over at their house you daydream about what it would be like to be adopted by them :P
I’ve also noticed, in a similar vein to the Kos fuckers and others who hold the president to some ridiculously high purity standard, Michelle gets some of that bullshit treatment too. I’ve seen a handful of liberal sites that don’t like her childhood obesity focus because they think it’s too focused on looks and too reliant on “fat always = bad” thinking (which, there is some truth to the notion that that concept is not accurate)…and so because of that they never point out all the good and amazing things she does, like this speech, like her work for veterans, etc. She says not nice things about fat people, so fuck her we don’t like her, wah wah. Bugs me.
? Martin
@Ruckus: I know the story of a guy who committed suicide by repeatedly throwing himself down the stairs. I’m sure someone is creative enough to do it by way of a hubcap.
Suffern ACE
@Ruckus: well it is kind of believable if you’ve been trained in the art of hubcapping. There was a guy this week who went into a Home Depot and tried to kill himself by sawing off his own arms. He survived, but the news article said he was in critical condition (you don’t say). I’d probably take my chances with the hubcaps.
f space that
@raven: He’s a real Southern gentleman!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I just read a comment thread that included the observation that Obama is playing golf for the third weekend in a row, which proves he has always wanted to shred Social Security. I stopped reading.
Tonal Crow
@Ruckus:
Near impossible, I’d say. My post was satirizing guntards.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
I didn’t either till the 60’s. Then I started to see that we didn’t intend it that way but in our culture with it’s long history of slavery and racism it isn’t what I intend or what is in generally understood usage, it’s what people hear. I’d bet a black person hearing white hat/black hat – right/wrong would hear that as racist. Adding the color doesn’t enhance the concept of right/wrong it changes the meaning to the stereotype of white=right/black=wrong.
Just my 2 cents.
lojasmo
I really think FLOTUS is the bee’s knees.
Xecky Gilchrist
@efgoldman: Wow! Straight out of The Music Man.
“Does he memorize jokes from Cap’n Billy’s Whiz Bang?”
mouse tolliver
The First Lady should be careful what she says about gun violence. Because Sarah Palin might start shooting children from helicopters just to spite her.
arguingwithsignposts
If we outlaw hubcaps, only outlaws will have hubcaps!
I’m glad the administration has been pushing on this. I figured it would die down by now, no pun intended.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@mouse tolliver:
At which point tea-baggers will declare shooting children from helicopters is a God given right.
Ruckus
@Tonal Crow:
I am suitably humbled and ashamed that I immediately assumed that it was possible and probable that someone beat 2 people to death with a hubcap(it was only one, yes?) and then was able to take his own life.
I bow down to your story that you took me in.
The sound you don’t hear is clapping.
lojasmo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Best news I’ve heard all day. Pretty sure some of the more obtuse posters from MyDD hang out here.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Same page for sure.
arguingwithsignposts
@lojasmo: That would explain some things, for sure.
And another thing...
@Tonal Crow: Remember Tonya Harding? She got in trouble for beating up her man at breakfast with a hubcap. And we’re going huh? hubcap? breakfast? Don Imus used to call her “that white trash, trailer park tramp.”
dollared
@aimai: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: No, you guys are pretty much full of shit.
The world is seriously, perhaps irredeemably fucked up. The US is so much worse a country than it was 30 years ago. It is a bankrupt, murderous, nationalist, heedless country controlled by an unaccountable elite that flat refuses to do the will of the people, and a government that considers itself simply a facilitator to the S&P 500 while it fucks the population.
Oh, and Europe is totally fucked, with the Elites driving a depression because a monopoly on power is more important than national health. And Canada is slipping into wingnutry.
AND OBAMA IS HELPING THEM MAKE IT WORSE.
FCC rules that facilitate media consolidation. Failure to prosecute banksters. Propping up the banks and doing nothign to stop foreclosures. Hiding the misdeeds of banksters. Cutting Social Security. Putting private insurers in charge of our health care, forever. Killing EPA regulatory processes. Hiring Monsanto lobbyists to run FDA. Increasing the power of the security state to crush opposition. The massive 2010 midterm failure, which has led to permanent Republican minority control of the House and 30 states where it will take a 55-60% majority to overturn Republican control.
Look, this isn’t even a close thing. Obama was possibly the last hope of this democracy to avoid a return to Bushian neofascism. And what – he wants a gold star for closing the gun show loophole but not closing the private sale loophole/
Fuck him. He sold us on Change. He is at best a bit of pain relief as we slide down the slippery slope. And yet he expects our loyalty and you tools provide it.
Of course we hold our nose and vote for the asshole. But are you surprised when smart people get pissed that he loves to punch the hippies that elected him?
gogol's wife
@efgoldman:
I INHALED Mad Magazine starting at age 6. I went on to get a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures.
I have no interest in video games, but the idea that they are to blame for the INSANE gun violence in this country is ridiculous.
Tonal Crow
@And another thing…:
Really? I thought it was a tire iron, which would be much more suitable.
gogol's wife
@efgoldman:
No, that’s a different one. She’s a bit more literate.
Ruckus
@Suffern ACE:
I once had to just about beat a young guy worked for me that he had to use a push stick with the bandsaw to keep from sawing his fingers. My question to him was – This machine cuts 8 inch thick metal like butter, what the fuck do you think it will do to your hand?
Yeah I’ll take my chances with hubcaps, as long as they aren’t still on the car.
arguingwithsignposts
@dollared:
The Gilded Age would like a word with you.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tonal Crow: the tire iron was used on Nancy Keating (?), her opponent in skating.
dollared
@arguingwithsignposts: Good point. But now, what’s your point? Should we aspire to be somewhere in between Camelot and the Great Depresion of 1893, and leave it at that?
David Koch
@dollared: and yet you stay here instead of moving to your beloved Cuba.
And another thing...
@Tonal Crow: the Domestic Violence hubcap incident was years after the kneecapping.
arguingwithsignposts
@dollared: no, my point is that you’re making an ahistorical rant that might make you feel good, but is ultimately nothing but bitching, and wrong on several points.
arguingwithsignposts
@efgoldman: Thanks. I knew it was with a K, but couldn’t recall it exactly, and too lazy to google.
debbie
@aimai:
Maybe the focus should be on consequences. Accidents and recklessness are constants, while these mass shootings, thankfully, are rare. I say if one of these Rambo Cowboys pulls out a gun to stand his ground or to play savior and they also happen to wound bystanders, even slightly, they risk spending their lives as a felon. Then they can’t vote and they can’t keep their precious guns.
Ruckus
@dollared:
That would be 1983.
We were just coming out of a big recession.
We had just ended a major war a few years ago.(as bad as the last 10 have been Vietnam saw a lot more deaths and long term injuries)
We had just elected a rethuglican talking head as president.
We had interest rates of 15-20% on home loans, if you could get one.
We had much worse racism, the major civil rights act was less than 20 yrs old.
Not saying that today is a lot better but to say that 1983 was a lot better is not to recognize history at all.
evil is evil
Dear Ms. Obama,
May I send you some photos of the children murdered this week by your beloved husband?
debbie
@Ruckus:
Proof is that Flashdance came out that year.
dollared
@Ruckus: Wow, you couldn’t be more wrong. In 1983, everybody except the top 10% had a higher standard of living. Workplace dignity was much higher. 25% of workers were in unions. Professors had tenure. 30% of workers had pensions. And this was after the shocks of 1978-1982. I know. I was there.
Civil rights were being enforced. Antitrust laws were being enforced. Real estate prices were low. Hedge fund managers didn’t exist. CEOs went to prison for securities fraud – I know, I was defending some of them.
The performance of the government under Reagan is dramatically higher and less corrupt than it is today. Ask Charles Keating – people went to jail after the S&L debacle. You can even compare the murder of innocent civilians in foreign countries – by most estimates, we only killed $250k in Central America, but we killed 500k in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ít’s not hard to make a case that Reagan was a better, more liberal president than Obama – just on policy and results. Perhaps Reagan was pushed left and Obama pushed right, but the results are more right wing today.
Baud
@David Koch:
I’m sad about dkos. The community there got me hooked on blogs. (It’s how I found this place.). I know there are still a lot of good people there, but that place just symbolizes lost potential to me.
Ruckus
@Ruckus:
When I was a kid I was sick a lot and spent most of my time around adults. I remember hearing the same arguments then as I do now. The past was so much better, the music was good-this is crap, people knew their place – now they have no respect. Which brings up a saying I was quite used to hearing – Respect your elders. My question was – Why, when they have so obviously little respect for me.
Is there something about the human condition that stops most of us from hearing, learning and understanding history?
Suffern ACE
@evil is evil: it couldn’t hurt. I would not be opposed to the idea of asking to speed up the withdrawal from Afghanistan and asking how often they lose sleep when that happens.
arguingwithsignposts
@dollared:
Ok, now you’re just trolling.
lojasmo
@dollared:
Assuming facts not in evidence.
David Koch
@dollared: show us on the doll, where obummer touched you
Villago Delenda Est
@SiubhanDuinne:
Projection.
It’s what these motherfuckers do.
arguingwithsignposts
@efgoldman: Yes, and yet Reagan traded arms for hostages, appointed Antonin Scalia to SCOTUS and tried to put Bork on the bench, broke the air traffic controllers’ union, and had all these asshats in his cabinet. Remember James Watt at EPA? Edwin Meese? Bill Bennett?
Pinkamena Panic
And another thread goes to hell because of the Obsess-o-trons.
Southern Beale
In case you hadn’t heard, Eden Foods (the organic foods company) is the latest right-wing freak show to sue the Obama Administration over the birth control mandate.
They are dead to me.
arguingwithsignposts
This thread has been up for a long time. I expect that happens any time a thread goes stale.
dollared
@efgoldman: So you are excited that your consumer goods are so much better today. Even though your children can’t find jobs and have $100k in college debt.
Be happy with your opiates.
JPL
@Pinkamena Panic: thisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthis
also,too fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck
there are trolls that feed the trolls…
Suffern ACE
@arguingwithsignposts: for now, there is no equivalent to the HUD scandal in this administration. It wasn’t just that they have HUD contracts to donors, but that the funds then disappeared and weren’t used for housing.
That said, I can understand the impatience with this administration and the dems on a lot of issues. While change may be slow, is it really supposed to be this slow?
Ruckus
@dollared:
And you are wrong. I was there as well.
You remind me of a man in a meeting I had to run once. I had to tell a group of customers of the company that I worked for that we had to raise prices. It was the first time in about 20 years and it was about 10%. The first man to speak was about 20 years older than me and started off by saying that when he was young gas was $.25/gal and therefore prices shouldn’t go up, $.25 was enough 40 years before it should be the same.
But it isn’t the same and to be honest I don’t give a shit if you think it was better than 30 years ago. It is shit today and Obama didn’t get us here. Hell W didn’t get us all the way here. Where we are has been decades in the making but if you think it was a lot better 30 years ago, you are wrong. And this is from a person who a little less than a year ago had no job and $200 to his name, with not much more than that now. Yes on the surface I was better off 30 years ago, but things were not a whole lot better then nor are they a whole lot worse today.
Maude
@Suffern ACE:
#105
Answer: Republicans in Congress. That’s why it’s so slow.
Alison
@Southern Beale: I wish some militant lesbian running a big company would demand that she not have to offer health plans that cover V1agra.
Edited to fix the naughty word and see if that helps get out of mod.
dollared
@David Koch: Thanks for your substantive response. Is there an ascii symbol for lalalalalalallalalala?
Shawn in ShowMe
@Ruckus:
1983 was a lot better time for watching TV sitcoms or attending rock concerts. For getting a home loan or calling long distance, not so much.
Seriously though, the most drastic change in the lives of the masses since 1983 is the dismantling of unions and skyrocketing cost of education.
Hill Dweller
Reagan should have been impeached for Iran-Contra.
dollared
@Ruckus: You just don’t know. 25% of the population – 75M people – have moved from comfortable in 1983 to at or near poverty in 2013. Blacks in particular have had a massive wipeout of the net worth growth they accumulated from 1960 to 2007.
But you don’t give a shit about all those people. For some reason it’s all better now.
dollared
@Hill Dweller: yes. And Bush for torture. At least Reagan denied it because he feared accountability, while Bush was proud of it, because accountability had died by then.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t equate Obama with the Dems in Congress, but I agree. And while I think this CCPI is the worst thing Obama has done– I could be forgetting something– on domestic policy, I also lose patience with people who treat it as the undoing of the New Deal. I know he’d been offering it for months, but I assumed when/if he finally made the offer, there would be stronger protections for people who really depend on SS.
And another thing...
@arguingwithsignposts: also, retrograde attitude towards HIV/AIDS,careless management of Marines in Lebanon resulted 200+ deaths, tried to cut health care for poor by block granting Medicaid to states..
Omnes Omnibus
@dollared: And for most of the 30 year period, we had Republicans with power. You want to blame Obama for not fixing it all in four years?
Xecky Gilchrist
Did I really just see a comment saying DR0NZ, therefore we shouldn’t have gun control?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@And another thing…: also, too, Rhenquist and the de facto support of Apartheid and rightwing dictators all around the world. And Obama was absolutely right to say he changed the way we think politically, he didn’t invent the idea that gov’t is the enemy, but he certainly spread and re-inforced it.
Hill Dweller
@dollared: By the end of Reagan’s presidency, 138 members of his administration had been investigated, indicted and/or convicted for crimes.
Reagan was every bit as corrupt as Nixon, but his name is on buildings, airports, roads, etc. around the country.
JPL
@Ruckus: He/she might have been in diapers so the memory of the times could be hazy.
gbear
@Shawn in ShowMe: There was also that ‘aids’ thing that fucking Reagan wouldn’t acknowledge. Thousands of people died without the administration lifting a finger to find the cause.
Shawn in ShowMe
@dollared:
The vast majority that net worth was wiped out between 1960 and 1990. May Reagan and his co-conspirators burn in hell.
Anton Sirius
@dollared:
Explain to me how that’s different than Reagan’s ’80s, exactly. You did say 30 years.
Or has your head been up your ass so long you think the year is still 1998?
Ruckus
@Shawn in ShowMe:
I will for sure agree that things are different and 30 years ago one could get a college education for much less. What one could do with that education? Don’t see a lot of difference, recognizing that we were and still are in a recession(and I don’t care if the government thinks so or not). Hell we are better off today than we were 5 years ago. Less war, lower unemployment, by a slim margin, but still.
This country is stuck in the doldrums, not moving forward in pretty much any way with the exception of income inequality and it has been that way for decades. If you changed the time frame to 50 years ago, no medicare, no civil rights to speak of, we were getting involved in a war that took what ten years and thousands/millions of lives taken or ruined. Employment might have been lower but millions of lives were needlessly affected.
How is that substantially different than today?
Southern Beale
@Hill Dweller:
And yet, Oliver North has a radio show and Chuck Colson is a fucking hero on the right. Oh, as is John Bolton!
So many Iran-Contra people ended up in the Bush Administration. It’s always, always, always IOKIYAR.
But the right still can’t get past Bill Clinton’s blow job…..
eemom
Playing my favorite BJ game, “start at bottom of thread and try to figure out how they got to Obot/firebagger from this topic….”
Corner Stone
@gbear: Let’s make sure we include Cole’s second favorite Uncle Jack Kemp in this heinous bullshit.
Uncle Ronnie and Uncle Jack both caused a fuckton of destruction and chaos in their ethos.
Baud
False nostalgia is a bane for both the right and the left.
Marc
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’re responding to an idiot who claimed that Reagan was more liberal than Obama. Reagan. Apartheid lover. Union buster. Funder of death squads. Opponent of the *existence* of Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s.
Anton Sirius
@Pinkamena Panic: Eh, it had a pretty good run.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Brider and Russert were both on record as saying Blowjobs are worse than Iraq, and I suspect if you sodium pentatholed your average Sabbath Gasbag, Politicobot or Washington Post oped writer (Dionne and Robinson excepted) they’d tell you the same thing. They are morally and intellectually bankrupt.
JPL
@eemom: Let’s change the subject again. I just found this on BBC Other invited guests from around the globe include former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and a representative of Nelson Mandela.
Not sure if the fact that Hillary is going or Mandela is sending a representative, surprises me more.
Ruckus
@dollared:
And you can’t read either.
I didn’t say it was better then or now, it is just different. People are still needlessly suffering, women make less per any measurement than they did(not as much less today but still a lot less).
We haven’t made progress. We were in the shit then and we are in the shit now. Was I better off 30 years ago? Yes I was. Was the country? No it wasn’t.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: yeah, but people used to drive better. And don’t get me started on those crowded grocery store aisles. And kids today!
JPL
@Ruckus: Give it up.. He was in diapers and believed the stories about how Reagan was responsible for Clinton’s economy…
Ruckus
@JPL:
Claims not.
Yeah. You give it the good fight but at some time the last bell rings and you walk out of the ring. And you can’t even win on points.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Get off my lawn..
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Sure, but now you don’t have to walk uphill both ways to get anywhere anymore.
JPL
@Ruckus: The major change in the eighties, imo was the rise of stock options. Executives started caring less about employers and more about the stockholder. Not that I mind stock options since they are the gift that keeps on giving but it changed the way employees were treated.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Ruckus:
There’s a lot to be said for not starting out your life $80,000 in debt. Even if the economy turns around, you’re not going to be eligible for a home loan. And when education costs that damn much, you’re more inclined to go into a “safe” profession, rather than pursuing something you’re actually passionate about.
Today some of our greatest minds are writing spam filters. Kind of hard to innovate our way to job creation with that attitude.
Ruckus
@JPL:
As I said up thread the big change is in income inequality. That has gotten a lot worse and is the driver of why people think today is worse. But 30 years ago so many things were wrong that it is irresponsible to think life was better. How could a person want to go back to that? I want to move forward. On that free pony I’ve been waiting for all my life. I’ll bet it ain’t showing up.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JPL: I’m not at all surprised by Hillary going. Mandela’s (rep) less predictable, but it’s not really a surprise he’s a forgiving sort.
andy
@aimai: The problem with right wingers is they look at everything symbolically. Makes putting everything is B&W terms so much easier- don’t have to think about anything, don’t have to waste time on empathy. So it’s all flags, crosses, and guns every day all the time with them.
Interestingly, I’ve come to see the real Patriotism as making that mental leap where you can feel empathy for groups larger than the 150 people you know well- we’re all in it together. It’s what makes the “patriotism” of the right winger so hollow- for them it’s about falling into line- or else.
Matt McIrvin
Reagan was operating in the world FDR and Lyndon Johnson made. Obama is operating in the world Reagan made.
Todd Dugdale
@aimai: You’ve definitely hit the nail on the head. The Right lives in a weird, black-and-white, comic book world where everyone is either unquestionably good or undeniably evil. If “good” people do something bad, then you just misunderstand them and you should be looking over there at those evil people instead. And, if “evil” people do something good, it’s obvious that they are working an angle and have some kind of devious agenda that won’t fool a smart person like you.
The rules and standards are designed to restrict the “evil” people, so it’s unfair of you to hold the “good” people to those standards. It’s petty and a waste of time to examine the behaviour of “good” people, when there’s so much work to be done beating down the “evil” people. If you can’t understand that, then you’re probably “evil” yourself. You can’t fool me, because I’m too smart for that.
I’ve actually heard conservatives lay this out as “the way it is”, as if they were speaking to a small child unclear about how the world works.
lojasmo
@dollared:
Whatever could have happened in 2007, during the last administration, that could have precipitated such a decline in net worth.
Dollared will never be able to cypher that, I’m sure.
Mr Stagger Lee
Funny during those corrupt Reagan years, you had Wall Street Bastards like Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken convicted for insider trading, and with the Bush Justice department, some of those S&L execs busted. Can this be said today?
David Koch
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
almost correct. Democrat Blowjobs are terrible, GOP blowjobs are okay.
Look at how serious they’re treating Gov Appalachian-Trail and how they immediately began to mock and attack Wiener, even though there was no sex involved with Wiener.
scav
poor dollared.
his Iron Lady is dead dead dead and there’s no saint on Rushmore. No wonder the current world is a barren hellscape. he’s in a sensitive, tender and weepy mode. That’s my guess.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not surprised about Hilary as much as there is no mention of anyone who currently is with the Administration. I don’t mind that but I do expect some interesting Palin tweets, if that is true. I think Reagan’s spirit should go.
dogwood
Lack of progress in this country over the last 30-40 years can be laid at the feet of a Democratic Party that failed to engage effectively at the state and local level. Most of what threatens the future of poor working class and middle class Americans can be attributed to the reactionary policies of state, county, and local governing bodies. In my state it takes 67% to pass a school levy, so my community can’t build a much needed new high school. Thirty years ago when the right wingers took over city and county government they began the degradation of so many good things – civic theater, public golf courses, parks, etc. But, my property taxes went down and we got a Walmart superstore. I have news for all the “smart” people who know so much about politics – Barack Obama can’t fix these local and state problems. State legislature, governorships and city council elections are where the rubber hits the road for most people. Republicans know this.
Mr Stagger Lee
@David Koch: And David Vitter is a model of Republican virtue. I remember hearing a wingnut saying it was alright for a GOP conservative voting against LGBT rights even if the Repuke was in the closet himself, because the Repuke was voting his district’s views.
And another thing...
@aimai: That’s a very useful insight.
Baud
Bring back Dick Nixon!
JPL
@Mr Stagger Lee: and the name for that representative is hypocrite…
ChrisNYC
@Mr Stagger Lee: Actually yes. almost 60 convictions between 2010 and 2012. Operation Perfect Hedge.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/24/news/economy/insider_trading/index.htm
They just announced two more prosecutions last week — the KPMG partner and the brother of Raj Rajaratnam, who himself was convicted in 2011.
David Koch
@Mr Stagger Lee: yeah, they just arrested a senior parnter at KMPG for insider trading this week, a different big hedge fund guy was arrested two weeks ago, it was front page on the dead tree edition of the Times. I mean it was obummer’s DOJ that put Madoff away as well as the notorious Gupta, Kumar, and Rajaratnam. It happens all the time, it just doesn’t get attention on blogs because it doesn’t fit the obummer narrative.
AxelFoley
@aimai:
About 90% of the folks that post at DKos are fucking idiots. For people that think of themselves as intellectuals and savy political experts, they’re pretty damn stupid. That’s all you need to know about that place.
Keith G
I love Michelle. She can do nearly anything. In fact, I’m hoping she can get this place to put a new thread up.
Baud
@efgoldman:
I can see that.
Suffern ACE
@David Koch: well to be fair, Maddoff’s victims were wealthy and semi-wealthy folk, and it would have been difficult to ignore after the thing exploded. The Kpmg thing this week was amateurs thinking no one was looking. I wonder why they thought that?
Unfortunately, what the left left wants is to destroy the big banks and their power. if tgey were smart, they’d go after the PE firms as well. Unfortunately, until the powers that be let someone in who wants to do that, those powers won’t be curtailed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JPL: Pretty sure it’s Graham. Lindsey Graham. Or Dreier.
Omnes Omnibus
@Keith G: I think FLOTUS is a really talented lady as well, but I don’t think has that kind of pull. Unless she happens to have some fresh ahi.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Same thing.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Or mustard.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: I think the request has to be made in LOLCat, out of respect for the true owner of this blog.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: “Can I haz thredd pleez? Kthxbai. U can haz ahi.*”
Like that?
*Not intended to be a factual statement.
David Koch
@Baud:
seriously, you have to be deranged to think things were better in 1983 when unemployment was at 11% and billions were being poured into el salvador and terrorists like the contras, while Rumsfeld gave Saddam all the poison gas he wanted and Ronnie was indiscriminately shelling the bekaa valley. The only thing dollared likes about 1983 is that his hero the homophobe Castro still looked good in a uniform. yes, it’s true, he’s on record here ad nauseum talking about his hero Fidel. And he says that, even though Fidel puts gays in prison, cuz he says gay rights are just a “bone to the base”. That’s the beauty of straight white male privileged–equality for others is just a chew toy.
trollhattan
@Hill Dweller:
Yes. Full stop.
JPL
@trollhattan: There was no dick involved.
gogol's wife
@Keith G:
LOL. I’m with efgoldman — I actually went and had dinner TWICE (once alone and again when my husband got home I sat with him), and the thread’s still up.
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL: Thornburgh?
gogol's wife
Okay, now there’s a John Cole “bomb NK” thread up. I think I’ll go watch Irene Dunne on TCM.
lojasmo
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Not that difficult to get a degree in a usefull, and rewarding profession.
I lucked into chosing a 2 year nursing degree. My son’s aptitude tests suggest he would do well in nursing or nurse anesthesiology. That’s what he’s considering.
It’s an excellent career path.
Mnemosyne
@lojasmo:
I have two male friends who are nurses. One decided that he didn’t really like patient care, so he got his MBA and became a nurse manager/office manager. The other one started off in psychiatric care, but it just became too stressful to watch patients constantly through the revolving door (especially in Los Angeles) so he went to the less stressful cardiac ICU and is much happier.
(Though what does it say about the crappiness of our healthcare system that working with seriously ill and dying patients in the cardiac ICU is less stressful than dealing with psychiatric patients?)
lojasmo
@Baud:
Or she could find a way to peel a goddamned hard boiled egg.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: Teh Tunch abided. All hail His Lord and Tunchness!!
Shawn in ShowMe
David Koch:
America’s foreign policy has been shit ever since the National Security Act was signed so I’ll just speak to the domestic issue. It’s a lot easier to weather unemployment when you’re $1000 in debt rather than $50,000. It’s a lot easier to find someplace to stay when your parents and friends still own their homes. It’s a lot easier to eat healthy when control of the food supply isn’t totally in the hands of corporations.
Domestically the U.S. was on sounder footing but that’s because Reagan and his cronies had not begun looting the country in earnest.
David Koch
♫♫♫Boy the way Pat Benatar played
Songs that made the MTV parade.
Guys like us we had it made,
Those were the days.
And you knew who you were then,
Girls were girls and men were men,
Mister we could use a man
Like Ronnie Reagan again.
Didn’t need no welfare state,
Everybody pulled his weight.
Gee our old DeLoren ran great.
Those were the days.
AxelFoley
@evil is evil:
While you’re at it, send me them, too, with pics of the President killing them.
Douchebag muthafucka.
AxelFoley
@Suffern ACE:
Dude, I’ve seen more positive change in a shorter time under this administration than any other previous administration. And this is with all the bullshit obstruction from the left AND the right. You gotta come off that shit, ACE.
dollared
@David Koch: No, these are not bankers.
They are people stealing from the rich. Those people get prosecuted. Steal from the poor and middle class, no problem!