“The loser now will be later to win,” is just supposed to sound good, it doesn’t actually mean anything.
5.
Howard Beale IV
It’s The End Times, dontchaknow….take everyone out. Hell, even the Randriods want a crash and burn…
6.
MattF
Note that the ‘strategy’ here is to dig an ever deeper hole– combine defunding Obamacare with a long list of winger wanna-haves (including, possiblty a late-term abortion ban). The idea is that lengthening the list will attract more votes in the House, until you get up to 217.
Here’s Lucinda Williams on the subject of lengthening the list, just to make sure that bad man goes away:
If anyone has read what the demands for reaching a deal are (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/house-gop-debt-ceiling_n_3988783.html), you too will prefer a default on the debt ceiling; besides delaying ACA for a year, they want huge tax breaks for oil companies, Wall Street, remove all the power of the EPA, the right to over rule ANY reg by any agency, and a host of taxes on brown skinned people just to name a few(!) of their demands – they can go fuck the horse they rode into town on (i.e. the teabaggers.)
When Wall Street see’s what happens, along with the old white farts if the ceiling is reached, the thugs will go down in flames. The Dems and the President hold all the cards and to hell with the ceiling – there are far worse things than that issue. These crazies have to be cut off at the knee’s now before the cancer they have become kills all of us.
9.
Ash Can
I hope everyone else tells them where to shove their proposal (if they bother responding at all).
Top Nevada GOPer: 2014 Will Be ‘Great’ For Party Because Minorities, Young People Won’t Vote
The top Republican in Nevada’s state assembly predicted earlier this week that his party will triumph in 2014 in part because minority and young voters will be more apt home in a non-presidential year.
State Assembly Minority Leader Pat Hickey (R) made the comments in an interview with conservative talk radio host Dan Mason.
“We have some real opportunities in 2014,” Hickey said Tuesday. “This is a great year in an off-presidential election. Seemingly no Democrat on the top of the ticket against [Gov. Brian] Sandoval. No Harry Reid. Probably where we had a million voters turn out in 2012, we’ll have like 700,000. A lot of minorities, a lot of younger people will not turn out in a non-presidential. It’s a great year for Republicans.”
Hickey told The Huffinton Post on Wednesday that he was merely discussing historical trends in off-year elections.
“What I was trying to say, in Nevada, historically, off presidential years have historically been lower turnout models,” Hickey said, while defending his record on issues important to the Hispanic community.
“We certainly in Nevada are encouraged by Governor Sandoval, being a Hispanic sitting governor who is enjoying broad support,” Hickey said. “Persons like myself in the Legislature supported a resolution for comprehensive immigration reform and driver’s license cards. That is helping the standing of Republicans in Nevada, especially in state legislative races.”
Actually the congress already has the right to overrule any reg, provided they can get the president to sign it or get enough votes to override his veto.
They just hate the American form of democracy.
15.
artem1s
Why pull the pin on a hand grenade when there’s a pile of dynamite, a fuse and some matches within reach?
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) heard Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) argue last night that his critics remind him of Nazi appeasers, and to his credit, the Arizona Republican criticized his right-wing colleague this afternoon, calling Cruz’s comments “a great disservice.”
But that’s not all McCain said (thanks to my colleague Mike Yarvitz for the heads-up).
For those who can’t watch clips online, here’s a partial transcript of the senator’s remarks:
“Many of those who are in opposition right now were not here at the time, and did not take part in the debate and I respect that. But I’d like to remind them that the record is very clear of one of the most hard-fought, fair — in my view — debates that has taken place on the floor of the Senate in the time that I’ve been here.
“And then I’d remind my colleagues that in the 2012 election, ‘Obamacare,’ as it’s called — and I’ll be more polite, the ACA — was a subject that was a major issue in the campaign. I campaigned all over America for two months, everywhere I could, and in every single campaign rally I said, ‘And we have to repeal and replace Obamacare.’
“Well, the people spoke. They spoke, much to my dismay, but they spoke and they reelected the president of the United States.”
How stupid of Boehner to even propose this “deal.” What time is Obama scheduled to laugh himself silly?
19.
RaflW
Our f-ing press corpse. I suppose this is a plan, like deciding to go up rather than down is “a plan” when two inexperienced cavers get totally lost in a complicated cavern system.
But I’d offer a more accurate headline GOP offers stalling tactic
There are many things I hate about McCain. But I will never forget his townhall meeting in 2008, when he informed a bigoted old lady that Barack Obama was not an Arab. And the comment in your posting he made about the 2012 election and how his side lost is another classy comment by McCain.
School board lifts heavily-criticized ban on Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’
By Arturo Garcia
Wednesday, September 25, 2013 20:44 EDT
The board of education for Randolph County, North Carolina voted on Wednesday to rescind its ban of Ralph Ellison’s book Invisible Man, the Asheboro Courier-Tribune reported.
The 6-1 vote reverses the board’s Sept. 16 decision to remove the novel from school libraries in the district. The ban was instigated by a parent’s complaint about its content.
“I didn’t find any literary value,” board member Gary Mason said at the time. “I’m for not allowing it to be available.” The Courier-Tribune reported that he was the only board member on Wednesday who voted to uphold the ban.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the book’s removal prompted at least two offers of free copies of Invisible Man for students, as well as an increase in orders from the county library. Readers of the Courier-Tribune also voiced their complaints on its website.
“Yet another reason why the South will never rise,” one reader posted at the time. “The ignorant squeaky wheels hold others back. Invisible Man is an incredibly important book, not just for its historical importance, but for its literary merits. If anyone had suggested sensible gun laws or taxing churches, the same yahoos who wish to ban a book would have been enraged and threatened revolution and/or secession.”
Both the Times and the Courier-Tribune reported that board members have refused to comment on the initial ban.
Could someone please tell my blathering, centrist, third-way useless senior Senator Amy Klobuchar this?
24.
Cermet
@MikeJ: Correct; I was not clear. The law they desire would put that procedure on its head. Unless they, congress, vote to up hold a reg, then it is nullifed automatically.
25.
MattF
@rikyrah: I suppose the school board reached a dim realization that they had gotten into ‘so much irony your brain implodes’ territory. “Oh, let’s make that bad book invisible.” That should work.
26.
RaflW
@MikeJ:
They just hate the America n form of democracy.
FTFY
27.
Punchy
Ah, the deadline is on the spawn’s 2nd birthday. When she’s 18 and facing college loans with 24.9% interest rates, I can just point to her 2nd birthday party as the origin of her pain.
28.
Keith P.
Sounds more like a scheme than a plan.
29.
IowaOldLady
When I read the claims Rs are making about the ACA, it increasingly sounds like parody to me. It’s just crazy. We really do live in separate realities. The question is how many people the Rs manage to convince to live in theirs.
30.
Tone in DC
I almost laughed at that. I may not be reporting to work next Tuesday because of congressional cowardice and idiocy, so my sense of humor isn’t what it might be at the moment.
The g00pers best tactic, after a filibuster attempt that pissed off 73% of the country, is an out and out stall.
Whatever, guys. Keep fornicating with sizable rodents.
31.
nemesis
Dems are in a position of power in the shutdown negotiations, a fact that should worry every one of us.
While I want the gop to be “blamed” for the shutdown, expect media to play it like they always play it. If the gop were to be blamed, I doubt they really care.
Most Americans will blame “gummit” simply because most Americans are too busy/distracted to even notice. Pity we dont watch reports from our media where individuals and families of those effected are given a platform.
Like my son for instance. He works for an EPA contractor. He will be furloughed. He and his gf just leased a townhouse with a sizeable monthly payment. Even my son, the offspring of a rabid liberal (me), doesnt clearly see the gop’s culpability in the shutdown.
The gop is succeeding in destroying government and seemingly most folks just do not give two shits.
Like my son for instance. He works for an EPA contractor. He will be furloughed. He and his gf just leased a townhouse with a sizeable monthly payment. Even my son, the offspring of a rabid liberal (me), doesnt clearly see the gop’s culpability in the shutdown.
Just point out to him that if the GOP had it’s way the EPA would not exist, hence he would not even have a job to be furloughed from.
33.
joes527
How is this different than shaking their fists and shrieking “You won this round, but I’ll get you next time, Gadget… next time!”
@RaflW: If a sane GOPer runs against Klobuchar, they’ll get my vote-but I doubt there’s a sane GOPer anywhere in Minnesota. Hell, I’d take Ventura as a Senator…..
When I read the claims Rs are making about the ACA, it increasingly sounds like parody to me
completely.
i wonder what people are going to do when all of the GOP’s outright lies about what will happen never happen? will people say “huh, odd?” or will the GOP claim credit for somehow fixing the things they lied about? hah… people won’t even notice. they’ll just go to the doctor as usual and never give it another though…
How is this different than shaking their fists and shrieking “You won this round, but I’ll get you next time, Gadget… next time!”
Obama’s name isn’t Gadget.
42.
VOR
Re: Cleek. Go back and listen to Ronald Reagan’s rants in the 60s against Medicare. Obviously discredited him so much that it allowed him to be President. There are no consequences.
Re: Howard Beale IV. There are no Arne Carlsons left in the GOP, especially the Minnesota GOP. It truly is the party of Michele Bachmann and Tom Emmer.
@Xantar:
i saw an anti-Obamacare commercial last night where some 2x cancer-survivor woman was complaining that she didn’t want her health care decisions made by a faceless bureaucracy.
in my head, i yelled “DO YOU KNOW WHAT A MOTHERFUCKING INSURANCE COMPANY IS??” as loudly as i could.
If a sane GOPer runs against Klobuchar, they’ll get my vote-but I doubt there’s a sane GOPer anywhere in Minnesota. Hell, I’d take Ventura as a Senator…..
He couldn’t be any worse than Klobuchar who is GOP light. At least Ventura stood for something. Klobuchar even voted to condemn moveon.org for its ad against Petraeus. You would think she would have more important stuff to deal with.
i saw an anti-Obamacare commercial last night where some 2x cancer-survivor woman was complaining that she didn’t want her health care decisions made by a faceless bureaucracy. in my head, i yelled “DO YOU KNOW WHAT A MOTHERFUCKING INSURANCE COMPANY IS??” as loudly as i could.
A friend of mine had issues with her neck so she went to her chiropractor. It was a pretty bad pain, so the chiropractor recommended several treatments over 2-3 weeks. By the 2nd week, my friend got a call from somebody at the insurance company who asked why she went so many times to the same chiropractor!
This was not a doctor. This was a faceless bureaucrat from the insurance company! People in this country can be so clueless. They trust an insurance company driven by profits, but the government with no profit motive – hell no!
BTW – Regarding the cancer surviving woman; does she even realize that she has a pre-existing condition, which the ACA will fix?
@schrodinger’s cat:
Everyone did. Even the ODS crew thought the military part of the sequester would be reinstated and only the social cuts would remain. Apparently hating blacks is an even more sacred cow than the Military Industrial Complex.
Why does Cruz and his obstructionists get to keep their subsidized health care but not the uninsured?
Has anyone of our brave intrepid DC journalists asked Crazy Cruz that question?
if Obama gives anything to these extortionists, I wouldn’t be shocked to hear calls for impeachment coming from erstwhile Obama supporters. He should have learned by now that giving the House teahadists anything only leads to demands for more concessions. I’m only surprised they didn’t demand that Obama turn over his role as commander-in-chief to the House Armed Services committee. The only things Obama could do that would be satisfactory to them would be to resign and/or commit suicide, preferably by disemboweling himself on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
These people are deranged, not that this constitutes a blinding flash of insight.
ongoing issue with my insurance company….. I’m sadly overweight and after wrestling with the issue decided to go for a bariatric surgery solution (after trying otherwise for nine months) since the diet and exercise standard won’t work for me (knees are shot due to previous delusions of athleticism). Have gone through a eight month process that has included a three month diet monitoring program, psych evals, cardio profiles and esophageal explorations of my innards, two letters from my physician both recommending and approving of my need for surgery. Claim denied… why? I wasn’t given medical “clearance” from my physician… semantically, approvals and recommendations don’t cut it, it has to be “cleared”…. These are the folks the Republicans have their faith in.
After going through the end of life situation with my Mother and her 2nd husband and being their in home caregiver through the last months of their lives and dealing with the Health Insurance entities, it never ceases to amaze me the differences in dealing with Medicare and what they do and do not pay and how easy it is to see what is covered and then to deal with the mealymouthed semantics of the the private industry is maddening. I had an insurance company state to me that if my mother could lift her fork from her plate to her lips, then she needed no assistance in feeding herself, without taking into consideration that she couldn’t drive, shop or cook the meals, much less clean up afterwards as those weren’t essential skills in the eyes of the insurance company.
There are times when I think of taking a bat to the kneecaps of an insurance company’s CEO, but then those moments pass
54.
xenos
@piratedan: Part of the problem is that there is no way to publicly shame the executives and major shareholders who are responsible. It would go a long way to curbing the worst abuses.
@Patrick: I remember that moment. I thought he looked more like a man who suddenly realized he needed to pick up his own dog poop, not like a courageous truth teller. He was stunned and horrified by realizing that after all his and Palin’s careless rhetoric, after all the hate radio, there were actual voters out there stupid enough to be terrified of “terrorist Obama.” He was embarrassed and horrified and he tried to redirect her and shut her down. He did not stand up for Obama and for liberals of his own volition.
56.
Kristin
@schrodinger’s cat: I never bought that argument. It’s a benefit of employment. If they were arguing that federal employees shouldn’t receive health benefits as part of their compensation package, then they’d be hypocrites.
57.
Tom Q
@schrodinger’s cat: When the first debt ceiling face-off occurred, we were barely over a year away from a presidential election. At that point, the GOP would have been happy to do anything to push a wobbly economy back into recession, since I’m sure they know that no party has held onto the White House during a recession. They held very powerful cards over Obama at that juncture.
Now, he has far less to lose, and that to me explains why he’s so adamant about no negotiation. He’s confident the GOP money men will twist arms to make sure there’s no default, and he’s just going to hold tight.
58.
Davis X. Machina
He [Ventura] couldn’t be any worse than Klobuchar
Only noontime, and I’ve already seen the silliest thing I’m going to see all day.
@Kristin: Fair enough, but they were for it, when Romney signed something very similar to ACA, into law in Mass, in the mid 00s.
60.
VOR
@schrodinger’s cat: Yep, and Romney thought it would be an asset for his 2008 presidential campaign. Just goes to show how things have changed in the last decade. The 1994 Gingrich reps have been pushed out for being RINOs.
61.
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: Lol, no literary merit, in 12th grade we were each given about 800 wds and had to break it down for a class oral presentation. Believe me, I learned a lot of shit during those oral presentations (for example, one of the people he tries applying for a job to is –wink, wink, nudge, nudge– gay). I’ll never forget the Battle Royale scene, or the HBCU president who rocks back and forth at the podium like a “Buddha”, the malicious recommendation letters, the hostile union workers, or the narrator’s not-crazy crazy (are you crazy when the world is insane?) explaining how he lives now, stealing power from the Man. It just kills me that Baldwin found the public reception so upsetting that he didn’t write another novel.
However, I know for a fact that people really are just that dumb. I was reading up on how to structure a genre novel and found comments–by published genre pulp authors, or one might style them hacks–that literary fiction is a put-on, an emperor’s clothes situation (and they weren’t talking about Norman Mailer–James Joyce was a favorite punching bag, and it went downhill from there). They posted excerpts of sex scenes from literary fiction. Tom Wolfe had written something pretentious and annoying, but the other excerpts mostly were written to evoke a certain reaction or mood, such as showing what was the nature of the relationship between the two people. The genre writers cackled about how “terrible” and “unsexy” and “opposite of sexy” the scenes were. They’re weren’t supposed to be sexy!* Gahhhh! You know people have complicated emotional lives and sometimes people want to read about that? No? Uhhhhhhhh….
I’m not really a huge reader of literary fiction myself, I mean some of the most talked about stuff has language a little above my head, I think, but what would life be like without Josef Conrad?
*(Except for Wolfe, who was straight up writing bad porn I guess because making it cringe worthy maintains his ‘distance’ since he likes to write about stuff and then condemn it? Not sure, it’s not like I can make it through anything he writes. I mean, he’s the guy who hates modern architecture and wants to tell me I’m an idiot because I like it, so fuck him.)
A friend of mine had issues with her neck so she went to her chiropractor. It was a pretty bad pain, so the chiropractor recommended several treatments over 2-3 weeks. By the 2nd week, my friend got a call from somebody at the insurance company who asked why she went so many times to the same chiropractor!
And I’m glad! Chiropraxy is a dangerous modality with no better pain management than massage therapy but much higher risk. Also, massage therapists typically charge you less and don’t try to sell you worthless vitamins on the way out.
Neck (“cervical”) treatments are particularly dangerous and can lead to sudden stroke in otherwise healthy adults. Child (“pediatric”) chiropraxy is also highly dangerous.
In my town, the chiropractor does all KINDS of shady shit, churning appointments while not charging the copay (yeah, insurance company loves that), writing questionable handicapped parking certs so they’ll keep coming back (everybody just loves that), selling colonic tonics “do you know John Wayne died with two pounds of impacted feces in his colon? No? Well, it’s totally true”, & so on.
63.
Another Holocene Human
@danielx: But harakiri has the air of an honorable way out, and what they want for Obama is far, far worse.
I think I understand just a smidgen why Clinton decided he would never give up, never give in… of course Clinton was only focused on the GOP, as if how the Democrats viewed him didn’t matter. IDK. I still think he should have passed the torch to Gore and let Gore run as a sitting POTUS and it would have been better for the party. But what do I know?
64.
Another Holocene Human
After going through the end of life situation with my Mother and her 2nd husband and being their in home caregiver through the last months of their lives and dealing with the Health Insurance entities, it never ceases to amaze me the differences in dealing with Medicare and what they do and do not pay and how easy it is to see what is covered and then to deal with the mealymouthed semantics of the the private industry is maddening. I had an insurance company state to me that if my mother could lift her fork from her plate to her lips, then she needed no assistance in feeding herself, without taking into consideration that she couldn’t drive, shop or cook the meals, much less clean up afterwards as those weren’t essential skills in the eyes of the insurance company.
And I’m glad! Chiropraxy is a dangerous modality with no better pain management than massage therapy but much higher risk. Also, massage therapists typically charge you less and don’t try to sell you worthless vitamins on the way out.
I had a deep-tissue massage a week ago. The massage therapist had put the thing you put your head on too low. About 36 hours later I had excruciating pain in the neck. It stayed until yesterday when I went to my chiropractor. My pain has now subsided dramatically.
Just for the record, my chiropractor charges about half of what the massage therapist charged me. This is without insurance.
66.
The Moar You Know
Chiropraxy is a dangerous modality with no better pain management than massage therapy but much higher risk.
@Another Holocene Human: Our local long-timer has a body count in the double digits now. Of course, you can’t conclusively prove cause and effect, even though every one of them dropped dead of a stroke within 24 hours of a visit. He’s also broken a couple of necks but no quadriplegia, no foul, apparently. I don’t know how the hell these people are allowed to practice such quackery. Might as well see a homeopath for septicemia.
You could not force me into a chiropractic clinic at gunpoint.
Our local long-timer has a body count in the double digits now. Of course, you can’t conclusively prove cause and effect, even though every one of them dropped dead of a stroke within 24 hours of a visit.
Fuck me, people still go to the guy?!
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Baud
Alternative headline: “Old Men Yell at Cloud”.
They can go to hell.
debbie
“Strategy”?
RobertDSC-PowerMac G5 Dual
Domestic terrorism. Send them all to Gitmo.
Chyron HR
“The loser now will be later to win,” is just supposed to sound good, it doesn’t actually mean anything.
Howard Beale IV
It’s The End Times, dontchaknow….take everyone out. Hell, even the Randriods want a crash and burn…
MattF
Note that the ‘strategy’ here is to dig an ever deeper hole– combine defunding Obamacare with a long list of winger wanna-haves (including, possiblty a late-term abortion ban). The idea is that lengthening the list will attract more votes in the House, until you get up to 217.
Here’s Lucinda Williams on the subject of lengthening the list, just to make sure that bad man goes away:
http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/williams-lucinda/change-the-locks-19631.html
Punchy
Cant the Senate just strip it out again?
Cermet
If anyone has read what the demands for reaching a deal are (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/house-gop-debt-ceiling_n_3988783.html), you too will prefer a default on the debt ceiling; besides delaying ACA for a year, they want huge tax breaks for oil companies, Wall Street, remove all the power of the EPA, the right to over rule ANY reg by any agency, and a host of taxes on brown skinned people just to name a few(!) of their demands – they can go fuck the horse they rode into town on (i.e. the teabaggers.)
When Wall Street see’s what happens, along with the old white farts if the ceiling is reached, the thugs will go down in flames. The Dems and the President hold all the cards and to hell with the ceiling – there are far worse things than that issue. These crazies have to be cut off at the knee’s now before the cancer they have become kills all of us.
Ash Can
I hope everyone else tells them where to shove their proposal (if they bother responding at all).
WereBear
The MSM will tell us it is very generous of the Republicans to offer to solve that problem they created.
Nice country you got here, would be a shame if it suddenly caught on fire…
rikyrah
Top Nevada GOPer: 2014 Will Be ‘Great’ For Party Because Minorities, Young People Won’t Vote
The top Republican in Nevada’s state assembly predicted earlier this week that his party will triumph in 2014 in part because minority and young voters will be more apt home in a non-presidential year.
State Assembly Minority Leader Pat Hickey (R) made the comments in an interview with conservative talk radio host Dan Mason.
“We have some real opportunities in 2014,” Hickey said Tuesday. “This is a great year in an off-presidential election. Seemingly no Democrat on the top of the ticket against [Gov. Brian] Sandoval. No Harry Reid. Probably where we had a million voters turn out in 2012, we’ll have like 700,000. A lot of minorities, a lot of younger people will not turn out in a non-presidential. It’s a great year for Republicans.”
Hickey told The Huffinton Post on Wednesday that he was merely discussing historical trends in off-year elections.
“What I was trying to say, in Nevada, historically, off presidential years have historically been lower turnout models,” Hickey said, while defending his record on issues important to the Hispanic community.
“We certainly in Nevada are encouraged by Governor Sandoval, being a Hispanic sitting governor who is enjoying broad support,” Hickey said. “Persons like myself in the Legislature supported a resolution for comprehensive immigration reform and driver’s license cards. That is helping the standing of Republicans in Nevada, especially in state legislative races.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/top-nevada-goper-2014-will-be-great-year-because-minorities-young-people-will-not-turn-out-audio
geg6
@debbie:
I think they mean strategery.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Outreach!
MikeJ
@Cermet:
Actually the congress already has the right to overrule any reg, provided they can get the president to sign it or get enough votes to override his veto.
They just hate the American form of democracy.
artem1s
nuke ’em from orbit, its the only way to be sure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q
MikeBoyScout
Is that all they want?
rikyrah
McCain: ‘The people spoke’
By Steve Benen
Wed Sep 25, 2013 4:21 PM EDT.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) heard Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) argue last night that his critics remind him of Nazi appeasers, and to his credit, the Arizona Republican criticized his right-wing colleague this afternoon, calling Cruz’s comments “a great disservice.”
But that’s not all McCain said (thanks to my colleague Mike Yarvitz for the heads-up).
For those who can’t watch clips online, here’s a partial transcript of the senator’s remarks:
http://youtu.be/cb-rwXu0TxY
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/09/25/20695240-mccain-the-people-spoke?lite
debbie
@Cermet:
How stupid of Boehner to even propose this “deal.” What time is Obama scheduled to laugh himself silly?
RaflW
Our f-ing press corpse. I suppose this is a plan, like deciding to go up rather than down is “a plan” when two inexperienced cavers get totally lost in a complicated cavern system.
But I’d offer a more accurate headline
GOP offers stalling tactic
Patrick
@rikyrah:
There are many things I hate about McCain. But I will never forget his townhall meeting in 2008, when he informed a bigoted old lady that Barack Obama was not an Arab. And the comment in your posting he made about the 2012 election and how his side lost is another classy comment by McCain.
Unlike most of his colleagues, he is not all bad…
rikyrah
School board lifts heavily-criticized ban on Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’
By Arturo Garcia
Wednesday, September 25, 2013 20:44 EDT
The board of education for Randolph County, North Carolina voted on Wednesday to rescind its ban of Ralph Ellison’s book Invisible Man, the Asheboro Courier-Tribune reported.
The 6-1 vote reverses the board’s Sept. 16 decision to remove the novel from school libraries in the district. The ban was instigated by a parent’s complaint about its content.
“I didn’t find any literary value,” board member Gary Mason said at the time. “I’m for not allowing it to be available.” The Courier-Tribune reported that he was the only board member on Wednesday who voted to uphold the ban.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the book’s removal prompted at least two offers of free copies of Invisible Man for students, as well as an increase in orders from the county library. Readers of the Courier-Tribune also voiced their complaints on its website.
“Yet another reason why the South will never rise,” one reader posted at the time. “The ignorant squeaky wheels hold others back. Invisible Man is an incredibly important book, not just for its historical importance, but for its literary merits. If anyone had suggested sensible gun laws or taxing churches, the same yahoos who wish to ban a book would have been enraged and threatened revolution and/or secession.”
Both the Times and the Courier-Tribune reported that board members have refused to comment on the initial ban.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/25/school-board-lifts-heavily-criticized-ban-on-ellisons-invisible-man/
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud:
They will. Problem is they are going to drag the rest of us down with them.
RaflW
@Cermet:
Could someone please tell my blathering, centrist, third-way useless senior Senator Amy Klobuchar this?
Cermet
@MikeJ: Correct; I was not clear. The law they desire would put that procedure on its head. Unless they, congress, vote to up hold a reg, then it is nullifed automatically.
MattF
@rikyrah: I suppose the school board reached a dim realization that they had gotten into ‘so much irony your brain implodes’ territory. “Oh, let’s make that bad book invisible.” That should work.
RaflW
@MikeJ:
They just hate
theAmerican form of democracy.FTFY
Punchy
Ah, the deadline is on the spawn’s 2nd birthday. When she’s 18 and facing college loans with 24.9% interest rates, I can just point to her 2nd birthday party as the origin of her pain.
Keith P.
Sounds more like a scheme than a plan.
IowaOldLady
When I read the claims Rs are making about the ACA, it increasingly sounds like parody to me. It’s just crazy. We really do live in separate realities. The question is how many people the Rs manage to convince to live in theirs.
Tone in DC
I almost laughed at that. I may not be reporting to work next Tuesday because of congressional cowardice and idiocy, so my sense of humor isn’t what it might be at the moment.
The g00pers best tactic, after a filibuster attempt that pissed off 73% of the country, is an out and out stall.
Whatever, guys. Keep fornicating with sizable rodents.
nemesis
Dems are in a position of power in the shutdown negotiations, a fact that should worry every one of us.
While I want the gop to be “blamed” for the shutdown, expect media to play it like they always play it. If the gop were to be blamed, I doubt they really care.
Most Americans will blame “gummit” simply because most Americans are too busy/distracted to even notice. Pity we dont watch reports from our media where individuals and families of those effected are given a platform.
Like my son for instance. He works for an EPA contractor. He will be furloughed. He and his gf just leased a townhouse with a sizeable monthly payment. Even my son, the offspring of a rabid liberal (me), doesnt clearly see the gop’s culpability in the shutdown.
The gop is succeeding in destroying government and seemingly most folks just do not give two shits.
OzarkHillbilly
@nemesis:
Just point out to him that if the GOP had it’s way the EPA would not exist, hence he would not even have a job to be furloughed from.
joes527
How is this different than shaking their fists and shrieking “You won this round, but I’ll get you next time, Gadget… next time!”
Serious question.
Elizabelle
@MattF:
I knew that was the song you’d choose.
Love me some Lucinda.
Howard Beale IV
@RaflW: If a sane GOPer runs against Klobuchar, they’ll get my vote-but I doubt there’s a sane GOPer anywhere in Minnesota. Hell, I’d take Ventura as a Senator…..
cleek
@IowaOldLady:
completely.
i wonder what people are going to do when all of the GOP’s outright lies about what will happen never happen? will people say “huh, odd?” or will the GOP claim credit for somehow fixing the things they lied about? hah… people won’t even notice. they’ll just go to the doctor as usual and never give it another though…
Xantar
@cleek:
Do you see any old people realizing that there are no death panels?
Chyron HR
@joes527:
Sasha and Malia have iPhones, not futuristic 20-pound computer-books.
RaflW
@Howard Beale IV:
Wow, so an insane Independence member trumps Amy?
But I get your gist. As a friend once said about Amy “You live your life like a finger in the wind…”
Frankensteinbeck
@Cermet:
The House of Representatives is actually a very important card.
Roger Moore
@joes527:
Obama’s name isn’t Gadget.
VOR
Re: Cleek. Go back and listen to Ronald Reagan’s rants in the 60s against Medicare. Obviously discredited him so much that it allowed him to be President. There are no consequences.
Re: Howard Beale IV. There are no Arne Carlsons left in the GOP, especially the Minnesota GOP. It truly is the party of Michele Bachmann and Tom Emmer.
cleek
@Xantar:
i saw an anti-Obamacare commercial last night where some 2x cancer-survivor woman was complaining that she didn’t want her health care decisions made by a faceless bureaucracy.
in my head, i yelled “DO YOU KNOW WHAT A MOTHERFUCKING INSURANCE COMPANY IS??” as loudly as i could.
Patrick
@Howard Beale IV:
He couldn’t be any worse than Klobuchar who is GOP light. At least Ventura stood for something. Klobuchar even voted to condemn moveon.org for its ad against Petraeus. You would think she would have more important stuff to deal with.
Patrick
@cleek:
A friend of mine had issues with her neck so she went to her chiropractor. It was a pretty bad pain, so the chiropractor recommended several treatments over 2-3 weeks. By the 2nd week, my friend got a call from somebody at the insurance company who asked why she went so many times to the same chiropractor!
This was not a doctor. This was a faceless bureaucrat from the insurance company! People in this country can be so clueless. They trust an insurance company driven by profits, but the government with no profit motive – hell no!
BTW – Regarding the cancer surviving woman; does she even realize that she has a pre-existing condition, which the ACA will fix?
schrodinger's cat
The debt ceiling crisis last time around brought us the sequester and set a really bad precedent.
ETA: Obama underestimated the crazy, that the Republican Party has now become.
cleek
@Patrick:
i know a man who unfortunately had to go to alcohol rehab, recently. he signed up for a month’s stay. his insurance co kicked him out a week early.
very wise with their pennies, the insurance company is.
Fred
Please tell me the Democrats aren’t going to entertain this crap for a second.
Frankensteinbeck
@schrodinger’s cat:
Everyone did. Even the ODS crew thought the military part of the sequester would be reinstated and only the social cuts would remain. Apparently hating blacks is an even more sacred cow than the Military Industrial Complex.
schrodinger's cat
@Frankensteinbeck: Don’t forget the women and the poors, especially the poors of all colors.
schrodinger's cat
Why does Cruz and his obstructionists get to keep their subsidized health care but not the uninsured?
Has anyone of our brave intrepid DC journalists asked Crazy Cruz that question?
Why yes, my middle name is Hypocrite.
danielx
if Obama gives anything to these extortionists, I wouldn’t be shocked to hear calls for impeachment coming from erstwhile Obama supporters. He should have learned by now that giving the House teahadists anything only leads to demands for more concessions. I’m only surprised they didn’t demand that Obama turn over his role as commander-in-chief to the House Armed Services committee. The only things Obama could do that would be satisfactory to them would be to resign and/or commit suicide, preferably by disemboweling himself on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
These people are deranged, not that this constitutes a blinding flash of insight.
piratedan
ongoing issue with my insurance company….. I’m sadly overweight and after wrestling with the issue decided to go for a bariatric surgery solution (after trying otherwise for nine months) since the diet and exercise standard won’t work for me (knees are shot due to previous delusions of athleticism). Have gone through a eight month process that has included a three month diet monitoring program, psych evals, cardio profiles and esophageal explorations of my innards, two letters from my physician both recommending and approving of my need for surgery. Claim denied… why? I wasn’t given medical “clearance” from my physician… semantically, approvals and recommendations don’t cut it, it has to be “cleared”…. These are the folks the Republicans have their faith in.
After going through the end of life situation with my Mother and her 2nd husband and being their in home caregiver through the last months of their lives and dealing with the Health Insurance entities, it never ceases to amaze me the differences in dealing with Medicare and what they do and do not pay and how easy it is to see what is covered and then to deal with the mealymouthed semantics of the the private industry is maddening. I had an insurance company state to me that if my mother could lift her fork from her plate to her lips, then she needed no assistance in feeding herself, without taking into consideration that she couldn’t drive, shop or cook the meals, much less clean up afterwards as those weren’t essential skills in the eyes of the insurance company.
There are times when I think of taking a bat to the kneecaps of an insurance company’s CEO, but then those moments pass
xenos
@piratedan: Part of the problem is that there is no way to publicly shame the executives and major shareholders who are responsible. It would go a long way to curbing the worst abuses.
aimai
@Patrick: I remember that moment. I thought he looked more like a man who suddenly realized he needed to pick up his own dog poop, not like a courageous truth teller. He was stunned and horrified by realizing that after all his and Palin’s careless rhetoric, after all the hate radio, there were actual voters out there stupid enough to be terrified of “terrorist Obama.” He was embarrassed and horrified and he tried to redirect her and shut her down. He did not stand up for Obama and for liberals of his own volition.
Kristin
@schrodinger’s cat: I never bought that argument. It’s a benefit of employment. If they were arguing that federal employees shouldn’t receive health benefits as part of their compensation package, then they’d be hypocrites.
Tom Q
@schrodinger’s cat: When the first debt ceiling face-off occurred, we were barely over a year away from a presidential election. At that point, the GOP would have been happy to do anything to push a wobbly economy back into recession, since I’m sure they know that no party has held onto the White House during a recession. They held very powerful cards over Obama at that juncture.
Now, he has far less to lose, and that to me explains why he’s so adamant about no negotiation. He’s confident the GOP money men will twist arms to make sure there’s no default, and he’s just going to hold tight.
Davis X. Machina
Only noontime, and I’ve already seen the silliest thing I’m going to see all day.
schrodinger's cat
@Kristin: Fair enough, but they were for it, when Romney signed something very similar to ACA, into law in Mass, in the mid 00s.
VOR
@schrodinger’s cat: Yep, and Romney thought it would be an asset for his 2008 presidential campaign. Just goes to show how things have changed in the last decade. The 1994 Gingrich reps have been pushed out for being RINOs.
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: Lol, no literary merit, in 12th grade we were each given about 800 wds and had to break it down for a class oral presentation. Believe me, I learned a lot of shit during those oral presentations (for example, one of the people he tries applying for a job to is –wink, wink, nudge, nudge– gay). I’ll never forget the Battle Royale scene, or the HBCU president who rocks back and forth at the podium like a “Buddha”, the malicious recommendation letters, the hostile union workers, or the narrator’s not-crazy crazy (are you crazy when the world is insane?) explaining how he lives now, stealing power from the Man. It just kills me that Baldwin found the public reception so upsetting that he didn’t write another novel.
However, I know for a fact that people really are just that dumb. I was reading up on how to structure a genre novel and found comments–by published genre pulp authors, or one might style them hacks–that literary fiction is a put-on, an emperor’s clothes situation (and they weren’t talking about Norman Mailer–James Joyce was a favorite punching bag, and it went downhill from there). They posted excerpts of sex scenes from literary fiction. Tom Wolfe had written something pretentious and annoying, but the other excerpts mostly were written to evoke a certain reaction or mood, such as showing what was the nature of the relationship between the two people. The genre writers cackled about how “terrible” and “unsexy” and “opposite of sexy” the scenes were. They’re weren’t supposed to be sexy!* Gahhhh! You know people have complicated emotional lives and sometimes people want to read about that? No? Uhhhhhhhh….
I’m not really a huge reader of literary fiction myself, I mean some of the most talked about stuff has language a little above my head, I think, but what would life be like without Josef Conrad?
*(Except for Wolfe, who was straight up writing bad porn I guess because making it cringe worthy maintains his ‘distance’ since he likes to write about stuff and then condemn it? Not sure, it’s not like I can make it through anything he writes. I mean, he’s the guy who hates modern architecture and wants to tell me I’m an idiot because I like it, so fuck him.)
Another Holocene Human
@Patrick:
And I’m glad! Chiropraxy is a dangerous modality with no better pain management than massage therapy but much higher risk. Also, massage therapists typically charge you less and don’t try to sell you worthless vitamins on the way out.
Neck (“cervical”) treatments are particularly dangerous and can lead to sudden stroke in otherwise healthy adults. Child (“pediatric”) chiropraxy is also highly dangerous.
In my town, the chiropractor does all KINDS of shady shit, churning appointments while not charging the copay (yeah, insurance company loves that), writing questionable handicapped parking certs so they’ll keep coming back (everybody just loves that), selling colonic tonics “do you know John Wayne died with two pounds of impacted feces in his colon? No? Well, it’s totally true”, & so on.
Another Holocene Human
@danielx: But harakiri has the air of an honorable way out, and what they want for Obama is far, far worse.
I think I understand just a smidgen why Clinton decided he would never give up, never give in… of course Clinton was only focused on the GOP, as if how the Democrats viewed him didn’t matter. IDK. I still think he should have passed the torch to Gore and let Gore run as a sitting POTUS and it would have been better for the party. But what do I know?
Another Holocene Human
Word.
Patrick
@Another Holocene Human:
I had a deep-tissue massage a week ago. The massage therapist had put the thing you put your head on too low. About 36 hours later I had excruciating pain in the neck. It stayed until yesterday when I went to my chiropractor. My pain has now subsided dramatically.
Just for the record, my chiropractor charges about half of what the massage therapist charged me. This is without insurance.
The Moar You Know
@Another Holocene Human: Our local long-timer has a body count in the double digits now. Of course, you can’t conclusively prove cause and effect, even though every one of them dropped dead of a stroke within 24 hours of a visit. He’s also broken a couple of necks but no quadriplegia, no foul, apparently. I don’t know how the hell these people are allowed to practice such quackery. Might as well see a homeopath for septicemia.
You could not force me into a chiropractic clinic at gunpoint.
Jebediah, the Righteous Boot of God
@The Moar You Know:
Fuck me, people still go to the guy?!