Reuters hires a climate change denying editor and stories on climate change drop 50%. (h/t reader J)
Rand Paul thinks that the tragedy of Hurricane Sandy is that the money sent to people saying, in his words, “Gimme, gimme, gimme”, means that there’s less money left over for defense spending. This is in response to the fight Chris Christie picked with him by calling Paul weak on national security.
The nice thing about a mudfight is that everyone gets dirty. A special bonus in this one is that the lesser Paul actually thinks he can be President, so he’s far more eager than his father to throw his libertarian principles into the trash as soon as any one of them stands between him and a primary victory.
The Red Pen
Ted Cruz has swooped in to support Rand Paul.
I think the Paul/Cruz wingnut narratives are going to drive Republican primaries in 2014. Good for us? Of course, nothing will stop wingnut infighting at this point:
Cruz/Palin would be awesome.
Botsplainer
OT – possibly the greatest and most disgusting appellate opinion of all time.
http://media.ca1.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/getopn.pl?OPINION=12-1842P.01A
Avoid if you are unamused by destroyed men’s rooms at federal courthouses. And I’m talking 75% floor coverage.
RobertDSC-PowerMac G5 Dual
I don’t know why the President continues to offer things to the wingnuts, but this is ridiculous:
Obama offers to cut corporate tax rates in exchange for “investments” in job creation.
Stupid. Cutting corporate tax rates under the guise of “reform” is the last thing we need, especially with the bunch of fuckups we have on the Rethug side.
Face
But the Royal Baby just had a poopy diaper! Focus, people! FOCUS!
jonas
Rand Paul thinks that the tragedy of Hurricane Sandy is that the money sent to people saying, in his words, “Gimme, gimme, gimme”,
I know! *My* house has been destroyed. *I* have nowhere to live. *My* kids have no food and no clothes. Me, me, me.
Linda Featheringill
They can deny/ignore climate change to their hearts’ content but the ice doesn’t care. It just keeps on melting.
Maybe we could do a song based on Old Man River but insert Greenland’s ice cap. “It just keeps on meltin’, meltin’, meltin’ along.”
Punchy
“Today in Wingnut” requires this mention…
From the article:
So 53/20 = 2.65 hrs/teacher, which includes 2 10 minute coffee breaks. So 2hrs 19 mins. of training for the right to carry a weapon designed to kill in and amongst small children with prying hands, curiosity, and a immature sense of responsibility and reason. Sigh.
Baud
@RobertDSC-PowerMac G5 Dual:
As I understand it, our corporate tax rates are relatively high, but they’re uneven because so many sectors have preferential tax breaks. I’m not sure how you ever get any jobs program past our wingnut House, but this doesn’t strike me as a horrible deal.
Cervantes
So what ever happened to Peak Wingnut?
mistermix
@Botsplainer: The dissenting opinion is an incredible piece of work.
RSA
Given the conspiracy thinking of Tea Party types, I think a worthwhile strategy would be to convince them that hurricanes are likely communists with the goal of destroying their gun collections.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@RobertDSC-PowerMac G5 Dual: Relax. Barack HUSSEIN Obama could offer those bastards ponies, cake and ice cream only to have them reject them all as Communist plants.
Besides that– the guy’s trying to do his job. Have you noticed the tendency to blame him when the creepy-ass crackers in the House are the real problem?
peach flavored shampoo
@Punchy: Since the South is so famous for their Not-Racism and Not-Sexism, I’d love to see the breakdown of how many of those 20 selected are women. I’m guessing none. They like their women going strapless.
And I love how who’s packing is going to be kept a “secret”. Except for the large bulge on their side and strap the around one’s side, yup, no one will know.
RobertDSC-iPhone 4
@Baud:
If anything, the rate needs to be raised across all sectors. There are myriad corps out there that pay nothing. And you hit on the crux of the problem: the domestic terrorists in the House won’t vote for anything like this. So why bargain? Why deal with fuckups who can’t tie their shoes, let alone vote for sane policy, which this isn’t? It’s fucking frustrating.
gogol's wife
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
You’re right. But I was amazed to read an op-ed by Bill Keller in which he asked, why is it Obama’s responsibility to do all the discussion about race? It was called something like “The Profiling of the President.” I haven’t agreed with Bill Keller about anything for very long, but it was a great piece.
Botsplainer
@mistermix:
There’s nothing quite so fun for a clerk as writing reams of esoterica on a topic so gross.
RobertDSC-iPhone 4
Yes. And he should point that out at every opportunity. Go with a real job creation plan, which is all spending, no tax breaks/credits paid for with higher taxes on the wealthy, banks, and corporations. Instead, we get weak garbage like this.
Shakezula
Really? His “Fuck you Jack, I got mine,” attitude seemed to be fully intact the last time I heard from the poorly toupeed weasel.
jonas
@Cervantes: Using advanced conservative technology, new heretofore untapped deep reservoirs of Krazy are now accessible. But each deeper layer of Krazy is more costly to develop than the one above it, leading to a point when the last extractable drop — advocating the re-introduction of slavery and the abolition of the entire Constitution except for the 2nd amendment — will cost the GOP every last electoral vote.
Chris
I was mad for a second, and then was like, wait, two of the GOP’s current stars tearing each other apart? Pass the popcorn.
Baud
@RobertDSC-iPhone 4:
I think that confuses two different things. The base rate of 35% is high by world standards (or so I’ve read, happy to be corrected). Some corps. pay that rate, but some have special tax breaks so pay a lot less. I agree with making things more even across the board, but I don’t see why you should raise the base rate if it puts U.S. companies at a severe economic disadvantage.
It is frustrating, but it’s his job. Outside of blogs, almost no one is going to support Obama just taking the next year and a half off to see how the November 2014 elections turn out.
Suffern ACE
@RSA: too hard to sell. Hurricanes have more in common with hordes of sharia-toting islamolatinos than communists. The weather is their weapon of choice.
Shakezula
@Face: You want poopies? Read Botsplainer’s link.
Corner Stone
@Baud:
I haven’t read all the details as of yet but this part sounds like one of the most foolish things said in quite some time.
If I’m seeing this correctly, the tax cut funds will be funneled to more scam private companies for “job training” or some such?
Because I think we all know damn good and well that no one is going to allow it to go to infrastructure projects.
Baud
@RobertDSC-iPhone 4:
He did that (or something similar). Remember the American Jobs Act? It was met with a collective yawn.
Corner Stone
@Baud:
When war profiteers like GE pay essentially zero taxes, I doubt the effective corporate rate is too high.
Tone in DC
I always shake my head when I read the breakdown wingnut = sociopath. There’s a definite overstatement factor in such analysis, IMHO, maybe a bit of lazy writing, as well.
Thing is, these teabaggers keep proving that analysis correct.
Baud
@Corner Stone:
I don’t know the details either, but I thought the plan would result in a short-term infusion of tax revenue, which would go towards a jobs bill, in exchange for lower tax rates long-term. If that’s wrong, I’m happy to reassess.
Baud
@Corner Stone:
Right. That’s why I said taxes were uneven.
RobertDSC-iPhone 4
But giving people a concrete vision to vote for is important. Tax cuts/credits don’t build bridges, roads, high speed internet or wi-fi across the country, maintain GPS/NOAA satellites, send astronauts to the ISS/Moon/Mars, or build craft that can explore the Solar System.
Baud
@RobertDSC-iPhone 4:
So is looking like you’re working to get things done. “Concrete vision” unfortunately looks to (and is portrayed by) many like “partisan grandstanding,” especially when a Democrat is doing it.
MattF
It’s just amazing how ugly the wingers have gotten. And it’s just even more amazinger how they all obviously believe they’re the pick of the litter. I’ll only make an obligatory allusion to cognitive dissonance here– go read “When Prophecy Fails” if you haven’t already.
GregB
I am so tired of these moochers who think the job of the government is to remove rubble from the road and get the utilities working again after a hurricane.
Don’t these parasites know that using that lifting yourself up by your bootstraps is empowering?
Scott S.
@Shakezula: That woman needs a raise.
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: I liked that piece too.
the Conster
I get the sense that as the climate inexorably changes all around us so that the skeptics look more and more ridiculous with every passing season, all climate change coverage will decrease. What can be done to stop it or reverse it in the current domestic and foreign political environment, when countries are in a resource competition to the death? How many articles can be written that either warn us or describe to us what’s already under all of our noses? The biggest story of our time, and no one wants to hear that it’s too late to do anything about it because we’ve all contributed to the problem. Besides, there are minorities to hate on, women who must be prevented from controlling their own bodies and gays who must be denied basic civil rights. Priorities, bitchez.
Mike in NC
@Chris: Just wait until Santorum and Paul start going after one another.
p.a.
@Cervantes: it’s like infinity. There are an infinite number of integers, and an infinite number of even integers. But the first infinity is larger than the second infinity. There’s Peak Wingnut, and 2(Peak Wingnut), etc.
MattF
@p.a.: BZZZT! The number of even integers is exactly equal to the number of integers. See “Axiom of Infinity.”
Another Halocene Human
@RobertDSC-iPhone 4: Baiting the plutocrats into heightening the contradictions so your party is more motivated to vote is brilliant, though.
Eat your heart out, Nader. Barack just showed you how it’s done.
As Marina Sirtis says in “Face of the Enemy”, “Watch, and learn.”
Chris
@Tone in DC:
Ditto. It took me years and years to finally throw up my hands and say “wingnut = sociopath,” and it happened primarily because I just couldn’t find one that wasn’t.
Another Halocene Human
So apparently McConnell’s feelings are hurt:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/mitch-mcconnell-chuck-schumer_n_3670000.html
And he asked if McCain and Schumer love each other so much they should just get married.
Stephanie Miller and our friend from #TWIB were hilarious on this issue this morning. Elon needs to repost his Yertle impression :DDD
piratedan
@Corner Stone: he’s doing anything he can to get more people back to work and considering the laser like focus of the folks in Congress, this may be the best he can do to guarantee that at least some of the money that these folks are attempting to procure actually goes to someone doing something. A better scenario than when the banks got their bailouts and their securities and then invested fuck all and just sat on the money.
Imperfect, yes, but perhaps this is the long view, if there’s retraining possible for folks and the Congress flips next year to the Dem side, then perhaps we have people ready to go to work if a more reasonable Congress is around to invest in the infrastructure projects sorely needed and there more of a trained workforce for it…If not for this President, then maybe the next one who wouldn’t suffer from so much of the dreaded melanin issue.
CONGRATUALATIONS!
Paul had best not get into a shit fight with Christie. The fat man has proven again and again that he is far better at it.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Paul had best not get into a shit fight with Christie. The fat man has proven again and again that he is far better at it.
Another Halocene Human
@Chris: It’s an easy mistake to make. My guide on this is The Authoritarians. Fear turns them into tribalistic assholes which means that they act like sociopaths to anyone outside their in-group. The core of sociopathy is anger and hatred stemming from childhood trauma so it’s easy to see why at some level the behaviors are indistinguishable to an outsider. But just keep in mind, wingnuts have an ingroup, meaning that they have two personas, one for the ingroup, and one for the outgroup. Sociopaths can’t accept or give love because they don’t trust ANYONE. (Eventually, it becomes a functionally unbreakable mental habit.)
Wingnuts also display narcissistic behaviors. Anyone under enough pressure will start to feel like a victim and revert to a self-centered set of behaviors just to protect themselves, while narcissists, as if in perpetual adolescence, are stuck there all the time. Wingnut ideology attracts narcissists like shit attracts flies. It heavily encourages these patterns of thought. The constant fearmongering often makes individuals caught in the movement feel like they’re under attack, pushing them into this behavior, but the leaders of the movement are the worst offenders by far. NPDs are would-be social dominators who are highly motivated to try to get themselves into positions of power, and wingnuts are so dumb (because of fear–fear is the mindkiller) that the unscrupulous NPD person has no trouble striking the right pose to get these idiots to follow them.
Another Halocene Human
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Paul is a weenie. He couldn’t even kidnap and torture a classmate right. All hail aquabuddha. These midwestern types love to go on and on about Easterners. It’s easy pickings in their echo chamber. Hurr hurr. It’s always hilarious when they come face to face with their strawman and the Easterner destroys them. Welcome to school!
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
They are white supremacist fuckwits; and it’s just not in their worldview to believe a Negro could possibly be smarter, more focused, and just harder working than they are. IT MUST BE A TRICK!
Just Some Fuckhead
Chris Christie is a rough and tough larger-than-life Republican in the mold of William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt. The slim and effeminate Rand Paul will never be able to answer to the voter’s satisfaction the simple question “Is that two first names or two last names?”
It would be easier for Christie if he would accept Jesus Christ as his personal Savior but in lieu of that, being a monster dildo should allow him to mop up the Republican field.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
As O’Donnell pointed out last night, NJ (IIRC) gets 77 cents for every dollar in federal taxes paid, Kentucky, $1.56.
It’s interesting to see Christie line up so clearly with the old guard, right down to “national security”. I still think he has a lot better shot at the nomination than Rand Paul, but he just made it a lot harder for himself.
Boudica
Awesome story on NPR (let tomato-throwing commence) on Montana’s new health clinic in Helena for govt employees and family. Visits are Free!! And it’s saving the state over $1.5M on healthcare costs. Suck it, Repubs.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Fat Timmy “The Laundryman” Dolan disagrees with the Infallible
Baud
@Boudica:
I hope Montana remembers that when it comes time to selecting their next Senator.
Corner Stone
@piratedan:
The only thing it would actually do, if it were to ever be enacted which I believe it will not be, is to shove more money to private companies and strip more funds out of the commonweal.
The whole “job re/training” schtick is a scam of the highest order. It takes public funds and hands them to unaccountable private shell companies that are usually subsidiaries of Fortune 200 companies.
Our issue is not lack of qualified applicants (by and large). Our issue is there are no damn jobs and no one pumping money into the system.
The two years of “deficit” framing did more damage to job creation than just about anything else. Now we’re going to cut corporate taxes and do it on the backs of people depending on the social safety net?
Not much of a bargain, IMO.
Corner Stone
I apologize but I’m just not at the point where I’m accepting the tried and true Grand Bargain = 11-D Chess.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Corner Stone: Just what “grand bargain” has the Prez actually struck that offends you so, O Stone of the Corner?
Or are you just reiterating that you’re certainly smarter than he could possibly be?
Roger Moore
@p.a.:
Actually no. The number of even integers is the same size of infinity as the number of all integers, because you can create a 1:1 mapping of integers to even integers (multiplication by 2). But there are more irrational numbers than integers because you can’t create a 1:1 mapping between integers and irrational numbers.
Tone in DC
@Chris:
Sad, ain’t it?
Rational persuasion and logic aren’t working, but that stands to reason, given the subjects. Maybe the cast of “Law & Order SVU” can de-program some of these teabaggers.
piratedan
@Corner Stone: maybe everything you say is exactly correct, feel free to offer me another solution with this Congress to get any kind of federally backed jobs program into the system. Unsure how this would mean less money for the safety net, since this particular flavor of Congress isn’t going to be spending one red cent more into those services as they currently stand unless you believe that any corporate welfare automatically comes at the expense of those programs, which I don’t see as automatic as you do.
The Red Pen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The Conservative Catholics on Free Republic were mounting a spirited defense of Francis against the evangelicals essentially calling him Pope of the Pride Parade.
Poor RCC Freepers were already deflated by Francis’ rollback on the Latin Mass — return of this relic of paleo-Catholicism was a great victory for Catholics who are still unconvinced concerning that Galileo fellow. Now Francis has restricted the conducting of the Latin Mass to a very orthodox sect of Franciscans. It’s kinda like Perry’s abortion law — it’s still legal, but good luck finding a place that’s authorized to do it. Needless to say, the RCC Freepers has a sad.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: I think Corner Stone may actually be smarter than the President but I’d have to know what criteria you are using to make such a determination. GPA? SAT’s? Being a good campaigner? Giving a good speech?
Chris
@Another Halocene Human:
It’s a common conceit in the heartland: heartlanders are tough, rugged backwoodsmen descended from Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, and people who live in the cities, away from the rough untamed country, get soft and weak and wimpy.
Case of self image overriding common sense; most of the heartlanders who think that are middle class suburbanites whose homes are really not too different from my old neighborhood in the DC/Maryland area; whether or not their ancestors grew up wrestling grizzly bears, that’s sure as hell not their lifestyle now.
(I don’t think my people are tougher than them, but finding out that we’re not weaker either is, for some reason, always a shock to them).
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Halocene Human:
Nader can’t learn. He’s the white knight in shining armor.
His ego drives everything about him, and his fawning followers only reinforce the problem.
Similar to Ron Paul in that way.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
Alas, this is absolute truth.
They can’t believe a ni*CLANG* is besting them without some sort of trick involved. It just can’t be!
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Just Some Fuckhead: How about simply that he has the certain knowledge that he could do a better job of Presidentin’ than That One?
feebog
Virtually no business pays a tax rate of 35%. That being said, large corporations can and do lobby for tax breaks and loopholes that often bring their effective tax liability to zero in a given year. Small businesses do not have that advantage and so they pay a higher rate. I would be all for cutting the top to 25-30% if a minimum alternative tax for corporations was part of the bill. In other words, no matter how many loopholes and tax credits a corporation earns, it is going to pay some level of taxes each year.
Chyron HR
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
Hey, it doesn’t matter what Obama DOES, what matters is what he SAYS.
(Only on odd-numbered days. On even-numbered ones, it’s the other way around.)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Punchy: I love this bit from that article
“He’s got a gun,” one of them shouted as Dougan approached with his pistol drawn. Inside, he found one student holding another at gunpoint. Dougan aimed and fired three rounds at the gunman.
This idiots really thing these things are that clear cut? But here is the real reason
Participants in the program are given a one-time $1,100 stipend to purchase a handgun and holster. Hopkins said the district is paying about $50,000 for ammunition and for training by Nighthawk Custom Training Academy, a private training facility in northwest Arkansas.
so who wants to bet one of the School Board’s spouses is an owner of Nighthawk?
Walker
@p.a.:
Change this to 2^(PEAK WIGNUT) and you can get the math pedants off your back.
Villago Delenda Est
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
All their experience in these situations are in the form of scripted entertainment, be it movies or television.
So, naturally, it’s that clear cut. BECAUSE IT’S CLEAR CUT BY DESIGN.
Idiots.
Corner Stone
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: This is an amusing reply, comrade.
I guess I’m supposed to admit he’s black and so that issue is therefore pretty cut and dried, nyet?
However, the comment you replied to was altogether more about those that attempt to explain away the actions or offers as some kind of Oz-like activity where we shouldn’t look behind the curtain because he’s got this.
I disagree with the president on many decisions, policies and actions. If you can find any comment I have ever made here denigrating him as a man, either in intellect or anything else of the sort, I would greatly appreciate you quoting it or them here.
The issue here is that a disagreement with President Obama simply can’t be about a difference in approach or opinion or desired outcome. It has to be something else. Has to be.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@RobertDSC-PowerMac G5 Dual: Because now the wingnuts will be against corporate tax cuts now that Obama is for it.
Tone in DC
A lot of folks on blogs think they could do a better job as president than Obama. Thing is, these folks will never be president.
That’s probably a good thing.
I don’t see a lot of the brilliant critics of the Democratic party in general, or Obama in particular, ever running for office. Not even for dog catcher. Quite a few of them feel no need to vote (even for Nader, LaRouche or the ghost of Eugene Debs).
There are people on this blog in the trenches. Poll workers, GOTV volunteers, local planning commissions. They are doing something, not just going on about their intellectual prowess.
I voted for the Kenyan islamocommunist usurper. I did that much.
Folks on this blog who are smarter than BHO… do something.
gene108
@Punchy:
Favorite parts from the article:
WTF is it with folks in rural areas to get so damned panicky about some shit that goes down that is nowhere near them. These are the morans who re-elected Bush, Jr. in 2004 because they thought Osama was going after their town next.
With the money the’ve spent on training, ammo and guns they could’ve hired someone.
I just think the idea of walking around with a gun just makes people feel better about themselves. Period. It servers no other purpose than that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
No, what’s important is what Purity Bloggers think he really WANTS! Everyone who doesn’t accept the fact that Barack Obama is really to the right of Ronald Reagan (an argument made here last week and at Eschaton just the other day) is a deluded Obot.
Villago Delenda Est
@gene108:
The scam is on.
gene108
@RobertDSC-iPhone 4:
Nope.
Like 47% of Americans, these corporations do not pay federal income tax, they still pay their portion of Social Security and Medicare payments for their employees, as well as state and local taxes.
Either require a flat federal income tax that everyone has to pay or accept the fact the tax code can work to the advantage of different groups of people in reducing or eliminating their federal tax liability.
patroclus
I’m more interested in stories about the effectiveness of efforts to combat climate change than on stories about climate change per se. How well have California’s new regulations worked? They imposed a whole bunch of new requirements for building construction which are supposed to vastly increase energy conservation and encourage the use of renewable resources and this was the basis for the Waxman-sponsored bill which passed the House in 2010 (prior to the wingnuts taking control). How well have other countries been doing and what is the progress towards meeting the goals of Kyoto? The science of climate change is more or less undisputed – I think new stories should focus more on how we can potentially slow its impact.
catclub
@gene108: “With the money the’ve spent on training, ammo and guns they could’ve hired someone.”
You mean only buy one gun? Rather than 50? That way lies madness.
Corner Stone
@gene108:
1. Damn!
2. I wonder how the school will enforce them bringing the firearm to school?
patroclus
Oh sorry – I thought this thread was about climate change. Because I hadn’t read the comments yet, I didn’t realize that Corner Stone had been here and instead the thread is (as usual) now about his personal criticisms of Obama.
kc
@Botsplainer:
The dissent is absolutely right in that case.
gene108
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Christie has accepted Jesus as his savior, as well as being staunchly anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage. He vetoed a bill to legalize gay marriage in New Jersey and most folks here don’t care if gays can legally marry, as civil unions are legally recognized in the state.
Christie just doesn’t wear his inner Jesus freak on his sleeve, because it isn’t the sort of thing that will get him elected in New Jersey. Trust me, if letting his social conservative freak flag fly would play well with the folks in NJ, he’d be all over shutting down abortion clinics, like Gov. Perry is doing in Texas.
Also, too just because he has a Muslim friend, does not make Christie a social liberal.
lol
@Baud:
If Obama really wanted the American Jobs Act to pass, he would’ve used his Green Lantern ring to do so.
Corner Stone
@patroclus: God. Just shut up you boring little ankle biter.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
What is it about the job of President that you feel no one is more capable of doing than That One, specifically? Is there something in particular that you feel the President is kicking ass at? Is that something relevant to the criticisms offered by Corner Stone?
Just Some Fuckhead
@gene108: lolwut
Christie is a papist.
Mike in NC
“Nighthawk Custom Training Academy”
I wonder how many ex-Blackwater employees work there?
ruemara
@Just Some Fuckhead: More like if you could do so much better, then why aren’t you? Run for office. Go for it. You have all the solutions, you feel you understand how to make the winning arguments. Go do it. The world is waiting for you.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
Maybe these people know more about their neighbors than you do, and they’re right to be worried about a repeat of Sandy Hook in their local school.
patroclus
@Corner Stone: Yet another pithy topical comment from Corner Stone. Thanks to the front-pagers for at least trying to foster constuctive conversation!
wenchacha
I’m thinking of when I imagine the Christie/Paul the Lesser slagging each other for the nomination. It makes me glad.
The only sad part is the gator, and I think they are not endangered at the moment.
p.a.
@Walker: had it coming…never made it past differential equations.
wenchacha
This is what I was trying to link. I still don’t do it right, and I can’t edit to see how to fit it. Oh well. Christie is fat.
chopper
@patroclus:
hey now! you’re not looking to get your comment deleted now, are you?
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Corner Stone: I asked a simple question– what has he DONE that upsets you? What “grand bargain” has he actuallly struck that leaves you feeling this way?
You could avoid the immediate defensive white man syndrome and simply tell me why you’re concerned, considering that NOTHING this man has EVER offered to the disloyal opposition has been accepted, tovarisch.
Corner Stone
@patroclus: Oh you poor little yappy chihuahua you. No one is preventing poor little you from discussing climate change. But I do feel your pain so. It hurts. God, the pain!
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Considering I haven’t seen any alternatives that take into account the political reality “on the ground,” as it were, well, yeah.
Considering that a simple answering of the question would have sufficed, well, hell yeah.
Oh, and I think the President is kicking ass as much as any human person could possibly do, ESPECIALLY considering the white-man butthurt that accompanies any goddamn thing the man says or does; along with the continuing assertions of high school graduates who are certain that they could do a better job.
wenchacha
http://blogs.herald.com/photos/uncategorized/gator.JPG
Corner Stone
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: I’m not being defensive about anything. I’ll have you know some of my best friends are black. So I’ve got a pretty darn good grasp on this whole urban hippity hop hop thang. Ya feel me?
And again, because you continue to want to make this about something the comment was not about, the 11-D Chess remark is about those who engage in mythical thinking. They are the ones putting themselves in the mind of the president, not myself. The fact, to me personally and in my own little brain pan:
is a true statement does not make me very happy. Am I not allowed to consider that I do not like the parts of this “grand bargain” that is being offered, even if I believe it will never be accepted or enacted? I can’t say I think this deal stinks? I’m not allowed to say I do not like muddled messages about policies I happen to consider important?
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Corner Stone: My dear boy, you may say anything you like. Hell, on occasion, I may even agree with you. However– you’ve STILL not answered my simple question.
Oh, and as black as I am, I DON’T get that hippity-hoppity thing, so you can fuck right off with that.
Tone in DC
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
I like it.
Corner Stone
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: Dammit, I meant to throw in a “dawg” or two but now the edit time is up.
Your question is stupid. It is stupidly irrelevant to my comment. It is magnificently so stupidly irrelevant to my comment that the response you are looking for will never, ever arrive.
As I have said for I think maybe the third time now, the comment was about others “who are not the president”. Your intent is clear and it’s been amusing but I have no desire to argue some case I have never stated.
Corner Stone
This whole “Counting Cars” show has to be faked. Otherwise I have no idea how they have not been shot yet.
A couple of scruffy looking dudes all tatted up and in full outlaw biker looking clothes lifting themselves up to look over a gated fence to see a tricked out hot rod. In some really not excellent parts of Las Vegas.
furlyfly
Did wr0ng w@y Cole jump on that “Rand Paul is awesome because he said he doesn’t like drones” bandwagon. I’m pretty sure he did. He is like those people you read about that have messed up wiring in their brains. Where one side cannot talk to the other. They are completely functional in society and yet they are absolutely retarded in certain ways.
Yatsuno
@furlyfly: Oh Durf. Trying to defeat that John Cole windmill again!
Joel
@kc: How do you get smeared shit all over the walls of a men’s restroom by accident alone?
gene108
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Just sayin’ for folks who think Christie is “fiscally conservative, but socially liberal” that he’s as socially conservative as anyone else in the Republican party (though he does have a Muslim friend). It’s just that the social conservative schtick doesn’t get people elected in NJ.
He’s not like Mitt Romney, who had to walk back socially liberal positions that he took when running for office in MA. Christie has no socially liberal position, other than having a Muslim friend.
EDIT: So is Santorum and he plays well with the Evangelicals.
Tata
@gene108: He vetoed a bill to legalize gay marriage in New Jersey and most folks here don’t care if gays can legally marry, as civil unions are legally recognized in the state.
Civil unions are not marriages and the federal rights are not conferred. There is a very vigorous movement aimed at getting marriage in New Jersey. You are speaking out your ass.
Chris
@The Red Pen:
Oh man, that’s awesome.
I’ve been glued to the facebook page of this Catholic group from college since yesterday waiting to see what the reaction would be (they’re normally so not-shy about expressing their opinions about newsworthy events that touch on this kind of thing) So far, resolute (and, I suspect, stunned) silence from all of them.
On top of the Catch 22 (do you contradict the infallible Pope, or the infallible homophobia?) I think there must be a few of them that do realize that the Church’s position on homosexuality is totally loony… but none of them wants to be the first to out him or herself as a non-homophobe in front of their entire community by approving the Pope’s statements too strongly.
Chris
@Another Halocene Human:
I still haven’t read The Authoritarians (yeah, I know, huge hole in my culture), but yeah, that’s fair, and I accept the correction. Wingnuts (mostly) aren’t that way with everybody – just everybody who’s outside of what they perceive as “their tribe.”
And it certainly explains why so many people went from being totally on board the Democratic train when it was benefiting them, to the Republican train when “society” was expanded to include people outside the tribe.
Trollhattan
Buy that canoe; add that second-story to the casa.
Glug. (Rand Paul said what?)
http://www.news10.net/news/article/252291/2/Study-Sea-level-rise-threatens-1400-US-cities
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Corner Stone:
Perhaps I am mistaken, but the corollary to that statement would seem to be that “He really means to give the Republicans everything they want; he’s not plaing chess or anything else.” Of course, that’s not precisely what you said, but then, if I waited for the Republicans to actually come right out and say “nigger,” I’d be waiting for a long, long time.
Gene108
@Tata:
Huh?
I just said most people in NJ are not opposed to gay marriage. I do not know what advicacy is being done, but there is not the sort of push back to make any legal recognition of gay couples illegal like in some states.
Civil unions are recognized, which was fairly progressive a few years ago.
The legislature passed a bill to make gay marriage legal. Christie vetoed it.
I’m not sure how I am talking out my ass.
Christie is every bit as socially conservative as anyone else in the Republican Party. If he runs for President, Republican primary voters will see he had always been one of them and despite embracing Obama after Sandy none of Obama’s “cooties” rubbed off on him. He will not have as much trouble appealing to the Republican base as people think.
patroclus
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: Corner Stone doesn’t answer questions – he just derails threads with personal criticisms of Obama and invective aimed at other commenters for no apparent reason. His act is very tiresome.
patroclus
@Corner Stone: Your constant egoism and purposeful derailing of threads has prevented any discussion whatsoever of climate change (as you clearly intended). Instead, commenters are merely responding to your invective and personal criticisms of Obama.
Corner Stone
@patroclus: Get over it. I commented at #24 about something that had been discussed in at least 6 other previous comments. The number of comments related to climate change discussion to that point? One comment.
Now how in the hell did I manage that?
I have a suggestion for you. How about you stop trying to chew tiny holes in my socks and make another comment about climate change. If the invisible hand of the free comment market decides that’s a better topic then it will be picked up as the winner.
Corner Stone
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: 11-D Chess is the misnomer applied to people who tell the rest of us what things really mean when the WH or admin does something someone here disagrees with. It has nothing to do with Obama being shifty or what-have-you. It’s a refutation of the often expressed genre of “Obama plays the long game.” and “As we know, Obama plays the long game.”
It’s not a comment on Obama, his intellect, how someone else would be doing topic A better, or anything else about Obama.
Some decision or action or balloon is being floated, and for example I say, “Dagnabbit. Why even bring that up?” and someone then commences to instruct me that Obama is really doing XYZ and ooooo but it gives them the squiggles and happy smiley emoticons in their soul.
I make fun of the 11-D comment (NOT Obama!) and then the rest of the process plays out here.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Corner Stone: Thank you. Carry on.
kc
@ruemara:
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you complain about various policies here. So why don’t YOU run for office?
Corner Stone
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: I shall, thank you.
Now where’s that Master P cd I had the other day in my boombox?…Fuggit, I’ll just go with some Bone Thugs.
StringOnAStick
@Trollhattan: Yes, exactly where beach-front property is actually going to be located in the near and not so near future is going to be interesting. I suppose this is why wingnuts must deny all science – they must cling to their belief that all thiat is now is all that has ever been or ever will be and can not change.
I recall reading about the recognition that most paleolithic sites of human habitation around water bodies (fresh or salt) are well underwater, so we don’t have nearly as much archeological evidence as we would if they were above water. More water was locked up in ice then, but everyone knows the most effective way to deal with information you don’t like is to stick your fingers in your ears and make obnoxious noises. They’ll have to switch to their noses soon enough….
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Corner Stone: I make fun of the 11-D comment
who brought up 11-D chess? Wasn’t it you?
patroclus
@Corner Stone: Why bother? You’ve long since derailed this thread with your invective and your personal criticisms of Obama and me and Ivan and others that any attempt to pull the thread out of your hellhole would be useless. In fact, if I attempted to make a point about climate change legislation, you would almost certainly respond with yet another petty insult that you thought was super funny but that was really your usual shtick.
Why don’t you care about climate change legislation? For a supposed liberal that’s a spure as the driven snow, why did you so purposefully derail this thread with your usual non-responsive inanitites?
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, and although I didn’t feel like directly citing it, I put my comment out there due to the comment at #40.
Corner Stone
@patroclus: I have a better idea. Comments #112 and #122 are both on point for what you’re interested in. Both of them were within the last hour or so, there’s a chance they may check back in.
I implore you to engage them. Please.
patroclus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Of course it was Corner Stone – because he couldn’t care less about climate change or proposed legislation to combat it. He’s far more interested in insulting commenters and launching invective. For a supposed liberal, his dismissive attitude towards climate change is bizarre.
patroclus
@Corner Stone: Okay, unlike you, I’ll be responsive and try and see if you’ve completely derailed the thread. I’m guessing it’s useless, but we’ll see.
@Trollhattan: Thanks for the link. What is being proposed to combat sea level rise? The California bill seemed more aimed at energy conservation and decreasing the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. Are scientists counting on a long-term effect from reducing carbon emissions worldwide or mdo they have something different in mind? How does Kyoto address sea level rise?
catclub
@patroclus: “What is being proposed to combat sea level rise?”
In Louisiana, raising the houses! Stilts, lifts, elevators, hoists!
patroclus
@catclub: That might help people and pets, but wetlands and bayous and real estate seem unlikely to be benefitted.
If the Dems actually obtain House control in 2014, I hope that an improved Waxman bill will be ready with more than that. Part of the Hurricane Sandy Relief Act contained major infrastructure improvements for NJ and NYC to be ready for storm surge exceeding previous levels – I think all states with coastlines should be getting investments of that sort over the next decades.
Just Some Fuckhead
@gene108:
No, he was the dead last in the Not Romney sweepstakes last time around.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
You aren’t going to see that because the “political realities” are the stuff that is trotted out AFTER THE FACT to justify whatever course of action was previously decided on. This should be pretty blatantly obvious to anyone who is paying attention 5 years into the Obama administration.
And just for comparison’s sake, all of my rightwing friends thought George Bush was doing the best possible job under the circumstances. At least they don’t pretend his failures were a result of people being unfair to him because he’s black.
Just Some Fuckhead
@patroclus: Have you thought about starting your own blog where you can talk about whatever you want without other people ruining it for you? I’d participate. Let me know.
J R in WV
Somehow we got on a list used by right-wing fund raisers. So far I’ve been told by the NRA that the UN and North Korea will be taking all our guns away NEXT YEAR!!! This was a couple of years ago, imagine that.
Then we got one from Newt all about how Obama and the Democrat party was planning to take our doctors away, throw our guns into the sea, run the price of gas up to $4 a quart, and do away with light (pick-up) trucks.
My favorite was the last one, from Rick Santorum, who has a voice that just hurts my ears. I really don’t recall what lies Ricky told, I was surfing at the time and just left the speaker phone on until the recording was over.
I listen to all of them on speaker, and offer to do anything that will get a real human talking to me, ’cause they’re all on a payroll, and it costs someone money. The more resources I can burn the better, right?