Wow — how does one get this delusional without imbibing LD-50 quantities of prescribed or proscribed substances:
McLaren’s “plan” on how to get Medicare for All in 2009:
Here’s how you get the public option:
[Step 1] The president of the united states goes on national TV to declare a national emergency. He says he’s nationalizing the U.S. health care system by executive order to prevent the holocaust of 45,000 people per year dying from lack of insurance and to regain economic competitiveness to overcome the 2008 economic meltdown. [Step 2] Republicans and the AMA and every nurse and medical devicemaker in America go berserk. They threaten Obama, give hysterical interviews, scream for impeachment, and call for a mass armed uprising. [Step 3] Obama announces that he’s willing to compromise. Instead of nationalizing the entire U.S. health care industry and pressing all doctors and nurses into compulsory military service at milnimum wage by executive order, he thinks it might be possible to work out an alternative: single-payer public option. [Step 4] The Republicans foam and froth at the mouth, introduce impeachment resolutions, doctors burn Obama in effigy, nurses show up with AK-47s at hospitals and placards reading WE ARE ARMED AND DANGEROUS. Medical devicemakers and hospitals and doctors’ groups blanket the airwaves with smear campaigns screaming SO-SHUL-IZM!
The Democrats express incredulity. How can the Republicans and the doctors possibly object? After all, we’re being reasonable — we’ve offered a compromise. [Step 5] Public pressure and beltway media pressure builds for the “grand bargain,” the great compromise — single-payer national health care.
Or more likely, the staff lawyer that is tasked with writing up the draft executive order remembers something from law school about the Youngstown Steel case and refuses the assignment and offers his resignation and leaks the plan to the Washington Post a week before the speech. And after the speech (Step 1) a clear majority of both the Senate and the House come out against the plan. After Step 3, the SEIU (who represents quite a few nurses and med-techs etc) begins preperations to primary any Democrat who supports this plan. If the plan still goes forward, the relevant Congressional question is whether or not to use the 25th Amendment while articles of impeachment are drafted. The Supreme Court votes 9-0 to stay the Executive order for Step 3 with a single page opinion that only cites Youngstown Steel.
And then the Democrats still get shellacked and lose the House and Senate in 2010 and the White House in 2012 as they have demonstrated that they can’t be trusted with power.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
mclaren is our go to guy for political strategy, asshole.
The Other Chuck
Great, troll filtering mclaren isn’t enough since now I have to read its shit on the front page now.
Yatsuno
Why did you do that? Do you like three thousand word screeds and personal insults directed against you? Because mclaren will now target you with her vitriol.
MD Rackham
But if the president would only show some leadership…
pete
Art thou not aware of all traditions on ye olde Interwebtubethingees? Forsooth, milor’, prithee hie thee unto a nunnery and remove these woebegone pixels from the shards of my memory.
Citizen_X
Oh, Richard. I understand the motivation, but at the end of the day, you’re going to tell yourself, “Oy, let’s not do that again.”
Alexandra
Someone must have looked into a mirror and loudly chanted ‘mclaren’, five times over.
scav
Thing is, I don’t think trolls or whatever ilk of the interwebs we’re dealing with dealing with here, well, I don’t think they’re like goldfish. We can’t kill them by overfeeding.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@scav: You can kill goldfish by overfeeding them??
oops
MikeJ
It is interesting to see just how delusional even people on our side get. I pied that troll eons ago so sometimes I forget just how stupid it is.
But Richard left out that all of what he said wouldn’t happen if just BULLY PULPIT!
dmsilev
Slow news day?
Trying to break the “most trollish comments in a single thread” record?
Bored?
Yatsuno
@dmsilev: Richard wants his first TBogg unit. Otherwise I got nothin’.
Soonergrunt
Forget it Jake. It’s mclaren.
EDIT: I bet we get this thread to less than 50 comments before she pops her head in here to call Richard a sociopath.
Another Holocene Human
McClaren got that way by NOT taking the meds, EVER, Richard–duh!
(That’s how the CIA implants those chips in unsuspecting people’s minds.)
handsmile
Where’s the comity in using a front-page post to embarrass a BJ commenter, even one as provocative as mclaren?
What hath Harry Reid wrought?
chopper
oh boy, this is going to be fun. why not chant toko-loco’s name backwards three times while you’re at it?
Another Holocene Human
@dmsilev: Clickbait.
@handsmile: I was going to say something about not mocking the mentally ill, but then I gave into my baser nature and just made fun of the bint. I… I’m a terrible person.
I’m also goddamned tired of someone in goddamn Massachusetts spewing hate and vitriol on a program and a president who has worked so hard to bring blue state style regulation to red states over the Confederacy’s most strident and scary objections. Fuck you, mcclaren. Seriously.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yatsuno: Rookie mistake, thinking someone who types that much must have something to say.
Actually, I saw some very similar spewing by Bob Kuttner IIRC at HuffPo the other day. Medicare for All was a can’t miss legislative home run! if only Obama… had the balls or wasn’t a secret Republican or both. I didn’t make it to the end and I can’t remember which wacko-bird pigeon hole Kuttner goes in
fuckwit
Wat? Elevating a ridiculous troll comment to the front page? Um, not advised, but whatever.
I dunno. The more I look at the tangled mess we’ve got, the more I like Medicare for All. But it also becomes more obvious that the time to have done Medicare for All would have been in 1965, or maybe 1971, before the ridiculous patchwork we have had gotten quite so entrenched.
It’s going to take a generation or two, to unwind all the clusterfuckery. ACA is a first step.
I’m remembering an exchange (hah!) from Hedwig and the Angry Inch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LixmUgFKZhI
pseudonymous in nc
Pie filter, Richard.
I can now detect mclaren’s tl;dr at ten paces.
elmo
I love how the world works when I get to write the screenplay.
Another Holocene Human
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If only the Green Party hadn’t lost all 50 states and DC.
Another Holocene Human
Oh my, I only now caught the “green lantern” reference:
Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night–
scav
@elmo: So long as one also gets to co-author reality, physics, statistics and psychology at the same time, well then, yeah, amazing how all true to lifieness it can manage to look too.
NR
You guys are right. What Obama did instead is so much better: Cut a secret backroom deal with the hospitals and the insurance companies to kill something 70% of the public supported.
max
That is, Go Bush.
And said order gets stayed that very evening, permanently, until trial.
And then somebody starts yelling about abortion.
And then the health insurance companies commit 1/2 of their book value to campaigning against Democrats.
You don’t need to ‘nationalize the health care system’ for a public option – you would ‘nationalize the health care system’ to impose an NHS-type system. (In which system doctors get paid solely by the government.)
max
[‘Anesthetize the commanding heights!’]
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NR: 70%? You used to say 80, 85. And I’m sure there were some polls that said that. What you can’t seem to get through your whiny little head, Dumpling, is that a sizable majority of your 70% didn’t support it on the first Tuesday of November, 2010, which is the only poll that really matters.
Comrade Mary
Well, my work day was fucked anyway.
/waits patiently for shitstorm
NR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
No it didn’t, dumbass. The ACA was a done deal by then. The insurance companies had already won.
scav
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: (ssshhhh, Somebody’s jealous — it’s not his birthday. Give him a mo.)
chopper
@Comrade Mary:
the wait only means she’s typing up something really long.
OTOH, that makes it easy to spot and skip over.
taylormattd
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Ah yes, the douchebag frustrati firebagger solution to everything:
leeeeeeeeeeeeeeedership bullypulpit scream fiat = win
eemom
Hey y’all, mclaren recently outed itself as a MALE who jerks off to McArdle.
Jussayinzall. On behalf of all womankind.
chopper
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
actually it’s 120%. and there were 90 votes in the senate. obama spiked the whole thing out of spite.
NR
And by the way, I’d just like to point out that the attitude expressed by Richard and most of the commetariat here was perfectly satirized by Voltaire hundreds of years ago. God is good, therefore this is the best of all possible worlds, therefore any evil that happens is both absolutely necessary and the least that it could possibly be.
People really do never change.
dmsilev
Don’t forget that mclaren preceded that bit of alternate reality with ” “We got the best that could be gotten” because Democrats and president Obama lacked basic negotiating skills and a spine.”
Yes, if only Obama had a spine, he would have forced this fantasy through via sheer force of will. Raise the Green Lantern indeed.
cleek
OMFGLOLROTFL
Anoniminous
Step One: President goes on national TV and declares the nationalization of the Health Care Sector.
Step Two: Congress impeaches President for attempting a coup d’etat.
taylormattd
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Also, what the fuck does NR’s number have to do with anything? Polls show substantial majorities of Americans support Social Security and Medicare, and yet that doesn’t stop them from voting for republicans.
And more importantly, I fail to see the connection between the public liking provisions of a proposed bill and whether there are enough votes in the House and Senate to pass said provision.
chopper
@NR:
lol, it’s like a corollary to godwin’s law. the more a thread goes on, the higher the likelihood some buffoon will make a self-righteous and entirely meaningless reference to Candide.
ericblair
@Comrade Mary:
The Blood Wars, where hordes of Obots and Firebaggers are condemned to battle in the infernal depths of Balloon Juice, forever.
Now a major motion picture.
Frankensteinbeck
@taylormattd:
You’re missing a more important question. What was NR doing at this secret back room meeting?
chopper
@dmsilev:
step 1: obama, by executive order, makes the republican party illegal
step 2: forcibly eject all republicans from congress
step 3: pass whatever you want
this is simple and would have worked beautifully. of course, obama doesn’t have a spine.
Sugar Daddy
Such ideas are always unpopular here, just like going nuclear was three years ago.
But once Obama embraces it, it will be the best idea ever and central to the pragmas dogma.
Ruckus
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
Just like humans. Remember, just one wafer thin mint.
scav
Thing about the fetishizing of the bully pulpit and spine+will+messaging! line of attack is it’s an out that makes them think they’re accomplishing something by all their yammering, without having to do any of the heavy lifting.
NR
@chopper: It’s a perfect description of you guys. Just replace “God” with “Obama” and you’re good to go.
dmsilev
@chopper: Does this mean we can finally get our long-promised FEMA concentration camps?
Woohoo!
dmsilev
@ericblair:
What can change the nature of a commenter?
taylormattd
@Frankensteinbeck: He, Jane, and half of daily kos were recording the whole thing, obvs.
Somebody had to document how Barry Hussein THREW US ALL UNDER THE BUS, SLAPPED US IN THE FACE, LUCY LINUS FOOTBALL.
Comrade Jake
I made it as far as “McLaren’s plan”.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@chopper: I know a Godwin moment when I see it, Chopper.
Cassidy
There are days where being bored and no calls is frustrating. Getting to read this thread will partially make up for it.
NR
@taylormattd: It was documented in the New York Times. Sorry it doesn’t mesh with your preferred reality of “Obama is great and perfect and just wants to do the right thing, but the mean old Republicans/Blue Dogs/whoever won’t let him!”
Sly
This reminds me of something a young member of CPUSA told me, years ago, in response to my question of how the Communist Party intends to get in power and enact its agenda.
“Step One: Overthrow Capitalism.”
I interrupted him immediately and suggested that the plan may need some refinement.
Violet
Love this thread! The dire warnings to batten down the hatches and stay out of trouble are great fun. Good luck, Richard!
Incitatus for Senate
I’ve never understood Balloon Juice’s obsession with trolls. The FP engage them, flatter them, many commenters help them derail whole threads. I guess I’m in the minority, but it really degrades the site from my point of view.
Ruckus
@eemom:
Well half the population is saved the embarrassment of having any association of any kind with it.
And, just the….. brain bleach, 55 gal drum sized. Please.
Petorado
@max: I can see the beginning of a nationalized system occurring when a for-profit insurer, unable to squeeze more cost-cutting from providers to feed the expectations of infinitely growing profits for shareholders, runs their company into the ground by maintaining super high executive salaries and then requests/ requires a government buyout/ bailout so the top execs can jump off the ship in their golden life rafts. The government then runs the company as a not-for-profit enterprise and other for-profits start seeing the writing on the wall. Executive greed is a far more likely scenario for an increasingly managed system to turn fully public.
Patrick
@NR:
Was that what was important to you? Making sure the insurance companies didn’t win? I could care less if they won or not. To me the most important thing was to get rid of the pre-existing condition. And unlike Clinton in 1993, Obama managed to do just that.
By the way, there are insurance companies in pretty much every country in the world. Even evil “socialistic” Sweden have them.
dmsilev
@Sly: Duh. Everyone knows that step one is ‘Steal underpants’.
handsmile
@eemom:
Crikey, that was two months ago! Well, at least we now know who’s the NSA mole around here.
(or maybe just Mrs. Claus, helping with the list.)
And desire, after all, can make one do or say almost anything.
chopper
@NR:
“obamawin’s law” makes no sense. it doesn’t even sound good.
El Cid
It looks complicated, but actually the proven results of string theory knit the steps together.
scav
needs more random erudition. “First, Catch your hare.”
For those with cash / Cheap option
NR
@taylormattd: Oh, and by the way, I love the fact that the filibuster reform yesterday has finally, once-and-for-all revealed you and your fellow Obots excuse of “But… but… sixty votes!” for the hollow bullshit it’s always been. Gee, it’s almost as if the filibuster is a simple Senate rule that can be changed at any time by a majority vote, and not the all-powerful, magical, undefeatable force you’ve been claiming it was….
I am not a kook
This blog has now Officially Jumped The Last Shark. Nutpicking your own comments is a symptom of cranio-rectal inversion. Ask your doctor if Slow Release Anthrax is right for you.
Bill E Pilgrim
Wow this takes “feeding the trolls” to an entirely new level.
I think the admonition not to do so needs to be amended with “this includes handing the front page over to them, or just giving them the blog. Just to be clear, these are not recommended”.
I say this as someone who does think that Democrats acted like spineless handwringing jellyfish until just recently when the species seems to have wised up and grown spines, but “have the President seize and nationalize the health system” uh yeah, no. “Have the President act exactly the way that Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck keep claiming that he is already when they call him a socialist” in other words, right. No thanks.
ETA: Weird, I typed “handwriting jellyfish” the first time, I wonder what ShadenFreudian tangle that came from.
chopper
@NR:
clearly, the fact that harry reid didn’t have enough votes to blow up the filibuster until yesterday is obama’s fault.
this is how it works: first, obama gathers the votes from yesterday, then he goes back in time and uses them to end the filibuster in ’09 to pass single-payer. ETA: oh yeah, when the votes go back in time, they change so that they also nuke the filibuster over legislation, not just nominees. it’s science.
problem is, then the filibuster would never have been blown up yesterday so obama would have had no need to go back in time in the first place. we’re working on this problem using the proven results of string theory.
cleek
@NR:
so, in 2009/10, there were Senate 51 votes for removing the filibuster on legislation ?
feel free to list those Senators.
taylormattd
@NR: It was not documented in the New York Times. Have fun masturbating to your zombie lies, as if you are a Fox News viewer.
It was a single story from David Kirkpatrick in the New York Times, largely about Max Baucus’ Senate Finance Committee and how that committee was seen as the bottleneck for the entire process. It talked about two deals with Baucus and the WH: one for the hospital lobbyists who were seeking to hold down costs of the ACA to hospitals; and one with drug industry lobbyists who were seeking to leave drug re-importation out of the bill. That’s what the deal was; it was not to exclude the public option.
The entirety of your premise is based on this thin gruel from anonymous hospital lobbyists: “Several hospital lobbyists involved in the White House deals said it was understood as a condition of their support that the final legislation would not include a government-run health plan paying Medicare rates”
But later in the article, Henry Waxman said the president was telling people the public option was not off the table. Additionally, even after everyone acknowledged the deal on costs and drug re-importation had been cut, many Senators were *still* talking up the public option. It was not part of the deal.
taylormattd
@NR: Jesus christ you are fucking stupid. Is it your belief that Harry Reid has *always* had the votes to eliminate the filibuster?
Also, do you realize the filibuster is *still* in place for legislation?
Villago Delenda Est
@chopper:
Well, as a recent occupant of the Oval Office once said, being a dictator is not bad if aforementioned occupant is the dictator.
As it turns out, our system of government does not work that way.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@I am not a kook:
I hope you are prepared to defend that on the Is I Am Not a Kook Really a Kook? Open Thread.
Sugar Daddy
As demonstrated so well here, an idea is unpopular, reviled and unrealistic until Obama embraces it.
Perhaps like the nuclear option, single-payer will one day be embraced and we can get what we deserve and not what the surrenderists are always willing to settle for.
Another Holocene Human
@eemom: That’s right, eemom. Every entity who is attracted to females (although McMegan? Ew) is a cis-gendered biomale, amirite?
Another Holocene Human
I’d better go tell my wife that LGBT people don’t exist and we’re not really married. Thanks, eemom.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sly:
Well, that’s pretty similar to the entire “then a miracle occurs” middle step in some scientific hypothesis.
I’d have to say that “steal underpants” is a much more reasonable goal as the first step, h/t dmsilev.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Ruckus: I can’t fit humans in my fishbowl, unfortunately.
Villago Delenda Est
@I am not a kook:
Let me guess, you also think there are too many states, and Obama should eliminate three or four.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Holocene Human: The use of the phrase “tap that ass” causes me to suspect that eemom is correct.
Feudalism Now!
This is a lovely bridge. I may have to live here a while and maybe I can get on the front page. The Feudalism plan: Have every American give me a list of their best stuff. Stuff catalogued turn it all directly over to me. Divested of you earthly possessions, you are now open to enlightenment.
It’s more bullet points than a plan, but still worthy of discussion…
Cassidy
@Sugar Daddy: Your’s, NR’s, etc. point of view doesn’t take into account almost all of what really happened.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Another Holocene Human: Let her down easy and for godsake, don’t wound her unnecessarily by telling her about yer desire to tap McMegan’s ass.
Gex
Haven’t followed mclaren but the way you all are talking about her reminds me of someone else. And then I noticed the first two letters in the nym…
Aji
@eemom: Of course it’s male. Also a garden-variety troll*. I can’t believe people actually entertained the thought that this was some pained and demoralized True Leftist, much less one of the female of said species.
The Holocaust ref is a nice touch, though (and, yes, by “nice” I mean “utterly repugnant”). Just like one of the dead-enders at MyDD and formerly at the GOS who as recently as 2010, at least, liked to refer to Obama’s efforts to pass health care reform as a “Final Solution.” Hmmm . . . . Nah. Not the same level of writing, and that one I’m pretty sure did have our chromosomal pattern.
*Yes, I know there are “garden-variety trolls” on the leftist end of the spectrum, too. Just sayin’ that this one never struck me as . . . authentic, shall we say, in that regard.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Gex: MC Hammer?
FlipYrWhig
@taylormattd: He thinks “the Democrats” are a coordinated force that always moves in lockstep, mostly to spite him personally. Forget it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gex: Not the same commenter. No WAI, no cudlips, none of the cyberpunk jargon.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Omnes Omnibus: Plus mclaren is too legit to quit.
Roger Moore
@taylormattd:
We’ll see how long that lasts. The biggest thing that happened yesterday, even bigger than the rule change, is how the rules were changed. The Democrats just showed a willingness to change the rules in the middle of the session with a bare majority. This means that any sufficiently motivated bare majority can do the same thing for any other case. IOW, the only thing that’s keeping the filibuster around for legislation and Supreme Court nominees is that the Democrats haven’t found the motivation to go after them yet.
taylormattd
@FlipYrWhig: I mean, ffs, it barely passed for just judicial nominees, even after years of republican BS. Senators are really attached it it. Carl Levin still opposed it.
FlipYrWhig
My plan to sell my book for $10,000,000:
1. Write book.
2. Demand $20,000,000 for rights to book.
3. Await groundswell of support.
4. Compromise at $10,000,000.
I have some ideas for Step 1, so I figure you might as well call me a millionaire now.
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: FWIW, I’m under the impression that McLaren has said she is female. I have also had gay friends, men and women, use that phrase although it is entirely possible she said “tap that vag” and I just misheard her.
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Well, there’s that as well.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@FlipYrWhig: I know you’re pretty proud of your book, but this thread is about mclaren, not flipyrwhig.
Redshirt
LOL Sick burns. Take that, McLaren!
taylormattd
@Roger Moore: I’m sure that’s all true.
But NR was trying to use what happened in 2013 regarding judicial nominee filibusters, something made possible only after years of republican intransigence, as evidence that Harry Reid could have simply eliminated the filibuster in 2009 for legislation. Even though the filibuster for legislation is still currently in place.
Aji
@Aji: Also, too: Yes, I know that gender identity and sexual orientation exist along a spectrum of great diversity and also overlap. [In my culture, we celebrate that.] Whatever anyone else is or is not implying, that’s not what I’m saying here. I’m saying that with regard to this specific individual, I have always been convinced that said individual is a cis/het white male conservatroll.
FlipYrWhig
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Good point. I figure it should work for mclaren’s book too.
Anoniminous
@Roger Moore:
GOP are the majority in the House. Even if the Senate changed the filibuster Rule for legislation it wouldn’t matter. So there’s no point. So why bother.
chopper
@taylormattd:
ah, but there’s the rub. you see, the filibuster still does exist as to legislation, but obama could simply get around this by instead nominating ‘a single payer health care system’ to a cabinet position.
i’m sure our resident firebaggers could peruse the constupitution and make a reasonable argument that there’s no requirement that presidential appointees be actual human beings.
of course, obama doesn’t have a spine, so it’ll never happen.
FlipYrWhig
@taylormattd: NR doesn’t think that any politicians actually have views, often stupid ones. It’s all just back rooms and corruption. So if They wanted to do something, They could have, because They are a machine of Borg-like hive-mindedness and ruthless efficiency.
Gex
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: That could be a really fun addition to the blog.
@Omnes Omnibus: True. Still, uncanny how the response feels like it could be coming from people recently called cudlips.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
We could benefit by merging some of the big square states out West. Do we really need separate North and South Dakota? Wouldn’t it make sense to amalgamate Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho? Was it really a good idea to turn Alaska into a state?
Omnes Omnibus
@Gex: Well, mclaren does like to accuse people of masturbating to Holocaust porn; at some level that is like calling a person a cudlip, right?
Cassidy
Hey McLaren, if you end up reading this thread, while I’ve never agreed with you on anything and think you’re a little kooky, I think you’re awright. I’d prefer you to some other commenters.
Roger Moore
@taylormattd:
Not to mention that in 2009 the Democrats thought they had 60 votes in the bag and deliberately avoided ending the filibuster under the theory that they didn’t need to. That it didn’t work out that way in reality- thanks Massholes- and that not doing away with the filibuster gave the furthest right Democratic Senators disproportionate power to shape legislation is something we only know for sure in hindsight.
I am not a kook
@Villago Delenda Est:
Wut? I can’t follow your non-sequitur. Must be because I’m vermin, so off to the guillotine I go! See ya! (or not)
MikeJ
@Anoniminous:
If you want to hear whinging, wait until the Dems take the house and institute their own version of the Hastert rule.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@FlipYrWhig:
Good luck finding a publisher for Holocaust Porn.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@I am not a kook:
You can be in my clique if you want. There’s me, and you, so far.
BGinCHI
If this country had full employment there would be no threads like this.
ranchandsyrup
@Roger Moore: Redraw the Western states based on major watersheds.
johnny aquitard
@chopper:
I always thought toko-loco was McLaren when she’s on her meds.
Have we ever seen them comment in the same thread on the same day? I think not. Q.E.D.
El Cid
@chopper: ;)
ericblair
@MikeJ:
Can’t see the Dems ever instituting the Hastert More-Like-A-Suggestion. It makes it possible for minority factions of the majority party to stop legislation they don’t like over the majority’s wishes and that’s that. Which is great if you value party purity over getting shit done. Plus, emotionally, it’s the equivalent of tacking up a NO GIRLZ ALOWD sign outside your treehouse.
I am not a kook (Supreme Thought Leader)
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
Accepted. Please note that OUR clique meetings are held at my house from now on for efficiency. I’ll send you the agenda and meeting time. Don’t be late. Thank you for your understanding and support.
John M. Burt
Funny, just the other day, with all this talk about the Kennedy assassination anniversary, I was reminded of some clown who wrote a blog post in which he fantasized about a gigantic conspiracy to kill President Clinton, Vice President Gore, four Supreme Court Justices, a couple of hundred members of the House and Senate, &c., all in service of removing everyone who stood in the way of antichoice legislation.
I composed in my head, though I did not write, a news report from the first anniversary of the Great Abortion Massacre, which was also the date for the dedication of the Kennedy Brothers Memorial on the Washington Mall. The reporter observed that if Ted Kennedy had died a natural death, the Memorial would probably never have been built, but the symbolic significance of all four being killed by enemies of American democracy had been too much to resist. S/he went on to observe that the Memorial also represented the tombstone of the anti-choice movement, since politicians and groups of all stripes had spent the preceding year scrambling madly to distance themselves from the terrorists….
Amir Khalid
@johnny aquitard:
On the other hand, mclaren has never called me, um, that name.
On topic, it’s plain to me — even from way out here — that POTUS simply doesn’t have the kind of executive power mclaren thinks the office holds. He’s not supposed to have such power. I’ve seen the Youngstown Steel case discussed here before, in precisely this context. Even if Obama thought he could have instituted the health-care reforms he wanted by executive fiat, anything he did that way the next Republican President could undo just as simply.
NR
@taylormattd:
It’s my belief that the Democrats could have eliminated the filibuster at any time with a simple majority vote.
And by the way, in this case, another term for “my belief” is “objective reality.”
Wow, you’re an idiot. That’s some grade-A stupidity right there.
Free clue: If you can eliminate the filibuster for *some* things with a majority vote, you can eliminate it for *anything* with a majority vote.
Tone in DC
@Anoniminous:
Step One: President goes on national TV and declares the nationalization of the Health Care Sector.
Step Two: Congress impeaches, INpeaches, overpeaches and then cans peaches to stop the President from attempting a coup d’etat.
Oh, man. Richard, you may not want the resident trolls to truly glom onto your august self. As they are about to. Snarling jackals, indeed.
Just sayin’.
John M. Burt
McLaren imagines President Obama issuing an Executive Order nationalizing the entire medical industry and a public reaction which led ultimately to a compromise on a single-payer system.
Look, McLaren, the right-whingers are already talking as though he had done exactly that . . . .
Another Holocene Human
@Aji: Garden variety unmedicated schizotypal disorder, more like it. That’s my internet diagnosis as an offical Internet Commenter Pseudocologist.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Tone in DC: mmmm.. peaches.
Death Panel Truck
@Roger Moore:
Mondahoming?
ranchandsyrup
I thought that mclaren was writing Oath Keeper pr0n?
Aji
@Another Holocene Human: You’re more generous than I am. Pseudocologist degree or not. :-)
different-church-lady
Good going, Richard: you’ve given a troll a front-page spotlight.
NR
@taylormattd:
Which was later confirmed by Tom Daschle.Your continued denials of established facts is really pathetic, you know?
El. Oh. El.
Senators can “talk up” all they want to. It doesn’t matter. The fix was in.
The fact is that Obama cut a secret backroom deal with the hospitals and insurance companies to kill the public option, just like his secret backroom deal with Big Pharma to kill drug reimportation. The end.
Amir Khalid
@Death Panel Truck:
Or Wyotaho?
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@different-church-lady:
Imani did that once for Troll Allan the Self-Righteous Little White Guy and it wasn’t the end of the world.
Amir Khalid
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
And Tom Levenson did it for none other than T&H.
Napoleon
My grandpa, and some uncles, worked for Youngstown Sheet and Tube!
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Amir Khalid:
I missed that.
Davis X. Machina
@Death Panel Truck: Not in my mondahome.
I want to amend the Constitution to give a third, and subsequent, senator, for every heavy-rail mass transit system the state has.
Davis X. Machina
@John M. Burt: This is just a less nuanced version of the old DemocraticUnderground,com fave, throwing Medicare open to all by executive order. Or via a signing statement. Because unitary executive…
different-church-lady
You know, I’m changing my tune here. Most of the time I just skim over McL’s stuff, but because of this post I actually read some of it, and now I’m thinking he/she is really a parody troll.
Because nobody is that crazy.
Roger Moore
@Davis X. Machina:
How about one extra Senator for each county with a population larger than the least populous state?
Redshirt
@different-church-lady: You’ve seen this Internet before, yes? Lots of crazy people in the Tubes.
sooner grunt (mobile)
@different-church-lady: you obviously haven’t met some of our patients….
taylormattd
@NR:
Well shit, why didn’t somebody just do this earlier then?
Ya know what, you’re right! The filibuster “could” have been eliminated back in 1940 by a “simple” majority vote!
In fact, the Civil Right Act of 1964 “could” have been passed back in, what, 1945 with a “simple” majority vote!
What other deep insight to you have for us today? Slavery “could” have ended in the early 1800s with a “simple” vote by Congress?
different-church-lady
@Redshirt: Nobody who believed a plan like that could actually work would be able to put together the high-degeree-of-difficulty prose presented.
Clearly this particular McL offering is satirizing someone, but I’m not sure who.
Fair Economist
Yeah, sure, Richard spotlighted a troll but, hey, sometimes it’s fun to mock them and the thread ended up rather entertaining.
Think of it as an petblogging for an internet kind of pet. You know, like one of those blogs about a pet who goes poopy on the rug or eats the thanksgiving turkey. They can’t help themselves, and it’s amusing to talk about it.
taylormattd
@NR:
You are a fucking imbecile.
Tom Daschle:
Violet
@Amir Khalid: So did John Cole, when he commissioned the art piece, put up a thread about it with a picture of it.
Ripley
No secret backroom deals, now.
ETA: And no buttfucking.
Amir Khalid
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
Timmeh got it into his head that false-colour photographs of celestial objects were an attempt by astronomers to deceive the public about what OUT THERE looked like. And nothing Tom said could shake his certainty on this point. I don’t remember when exactly it was — last year or thereabouts? — but it was just Timmeh being Timmeh.
Peter
@NR: And for forty years America had the capability to destroy the population of the USSR, it’s hated enemies, in a nuclear firestorm. And yet somehow, this didn’t happen? It’s as if there’s more at play in politics than simple capability!
NR
@taylormattd: God, you are a brain-dead, cultist fanboy.
Daschle:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NR: You’ve never actually read Candide, have ya, Puddin?
Richard Mayhew
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Yes I did because I can’t stand stupidity masquerading as the only honest principle and a little sunlight should be useful every now and then to bridge dwellers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Tiger, we “Obots” are the ones who’ve been trying to explain to you and your ilk since that six weeks “we” had “sixty votes” that “sixty votes” didn’t mean much when one of them was Joe Lieberman’s, another was Blanche Lincoln’s, still another was Evan Bayh’s…
You haven’t posted this much in a while, nor been so incoherent, brevity being the soul of the rock-like steadiness of your tiny little brain. I’m thinking: A sub in study hall and you lost the Trapper Keeper where you keep your copy of “Jane Hamsher Explains Obama to Naderite Rage Bunnies”?
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Wait, health insurance lobbyist Tom Daschle is now saying that health insurance reform was done wrong? Gosh, that’s a shocker. Next thing you know, Paula Deen will be a paid spokesperson for diabetes medication.
NR
@taylormattd:
Because they didn’t want to.
Are you really this stupid?
Older
@Amir Khalid: Wyotato
NR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh, I have. And like I said–you Obots are nothing new. People like you have been around for a long time.
Patricia Kayden
@NR: Can you not argue without calling people names such as dumbass or Obots?
By the way, I’m a proud Obot. I love my President. What is wrong with that? If you don’t like him, vote for someone else. You mind find it shocking that there are millions of us who love this President. We know he’s not perfect but we’re glad he won in 2008 and 2012. If there is a better candidate in 2016, vote him/her into the White House.
chopper
@NR:
and my aunt could become my uncle anytime she wants by merely growing a dick.
how about you list the 51 senators that would totes have voted to end the filibuster for legislation back in 09. please, show us how simple it would have been.
oh, tee hee. oh, tee hee hee.
Valdivia
since I have her troll filtered I had never really appreciated all her genius. just wow.
chopper
@NR:
which apparently is obama’s fault. clearly, if he had a spine, he would have (insert magical thinking here) and thus ended the filibuster entirely.
NR
@chopper: Wow. Did you really just respond to this…
…with this?
I guess you don’t understand the difference between “could” and “would.” Perhaps some remedial Kindergarten classes are in order for you? They’ll make you sit in the corner if you eat paste, though, so watch out.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
We’ll have to defer to your personal and I’m guessing not very distant experience with paste eating, Sparky.
Suffern ACE
@NR: 70% support of what?
So right now, the complaints are that
1) OMG – I can’t sign up!
2) The President said I could keep my plan but I have to change.
1) wouldn’t go away whether or not there was a public option or medicare for all.
2) Do you hear the complaints that people would be happier to lose their plans knowing that this new “government plan” was available instead? I don’t.
Yeah. That 70% really means something, until you actually make people change. Then that 70% goes to 30%.
NR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh, good god. What’s next from you? “I know you are, but what am I?”
Cassidy
@NR: Um, no. If the Dems could have ended the filibuster, then who are those people who would have voted to do that so they could have? That’s how the relationship for those words work.
chopper
@NR:
lol. so your whole idiotic shtick is to rant about what was technically possible on paper, and blame it’s lack of happening on the president. no wonder you brought up candide, it’s clear you’re still working on the 8th grade reading list.
let’s try this out. (hits head with brick a few times) okay, y’all, it’s my belief that house and senate republicans COULD have voted for a single payer system any time they wanted to.
senate republicans COULD have voted to give everyone in america a puppy. and a brick of pure gold. why they didn’t is anybody’s guess, but i’ll bet it has to do with the president’s lack of a spine.
okay, i managed to replicate NR’s complete and utter buffoonery. what do i win, outside of permanent brain damage?
different-church-lady
@NR:
Didn’t fix the second sentence, because in the new context it even more appropriate.
gwangung
@NR: That wasn’t a response. You’re not fooling anybody with that evasiveness.
chopper
i mean, if you’re going to get pissed about single-payer based on what could technically have happened on paper but didn’t in real life because of the way congresscritters really felt, why go through all the trouble of crying over the dems not nuking the filibuster? why not instead just blame the GOP for their complete opposition to the entire concept?
i mean, it’s pretty clear at this point NR is a GOP troll.
FlipYrWhig
@Cassidy: It’s not only “could” and “would” that NR struggles with, it’s also “they.” Why didn’t “they” do it sooner? Because “they” is comprised of a lot of individuals who think about their interests and don’t always listen to reason and sometimes change their minds over time. He doesn’t accept any of that. “They” are always a herd waiting to be led by an Ubermensch, and when “they” don’t act in unison, it can only be because the Ubermensch didn’t care enough to try. It’s hopeless.
RSA
@Roger Moore:
That makes a lot of sense. Unlike the rubes who complain, “We’re not adequately represented because there are so few of us!”
Cassidy
I guess brave Sir Robin ran away.
NR
@chopper:
You know what another word for “technically possible on paper” is? Possible.
So as I said, as the vote yesterday on filibuster reform proves, all you Obots’ sniveling about “We couldn’t pass anything without sixty votes!” is nothing but bullshit. The Democrats could have passed anything they wanted to, and they didn’t need sixty votes to do it.
I don’t blame its lack of happening on the President. I blame it on the Democratic party.
Cassidy
@NR: So among other things you don’t understand time either? Interesting.
NR
@Cassidy: You get less and less coherent with every post you make. That’s quite an achievement.
Cassidy
@NR: I think we both know I’m not real concerned about any attempted insult from you. Please carry on, though. Your shrillness is amusing.
chopper
@NR:
“meaningless”
Omnes Omnibus
@NR: The problem is that you are treating the Democratic Party as a monolithic thing. The vast majority of Democrats could be in favor of something like filibuster reform, but a few holdouts are enough to gum up the works. Basically, 60 votes was the threshold as long as the GOP chose to filibuster everything; they didn’t have to do it. It isn’t the way things worked in the past.
Ripley
Dear NR:
I usually agree with your excellent points and like the pithy tone of your writing, but with today’s thread, I have to say I’ve lost faith and find you no longer supportable.
Sincerely,
Hitler
NR
@Cassidy: Actually, you seem very concerned about every single thing I post. Every single thread I’m in, you’re there, talking about how unconcerned you are about me. Hmm. That’s pretty strange….
chopper
@NR:
your problem is, when people say “we couldn’t pass anything without sixty votes” it’s implied that they’re talking about real life, not on paper. on paper, the dems could have spiked the filibuster and passed it with 51 votes. on paper, the GOP could have decided to get on board and there would have been 100 votes. on paper, the president could have sicced ST6 on senate republicans and ended the whole problem. on paper who gives a shit?
if you need, we could add ‘in real life’ to the end of every sentence to make it easier for brain-addled buffoons such as yourself, but let’s face it, why deliberately dumb it down for a handful of idiots like you?
NR
@Ripley: Shorter Obots: Anyone who acknowledges the reality that Obama and the Democrats aren’t the saints we like to pretend they are is literally Hitler.
NR
@chopper:
You mean like they did yesterday?
Oh, I guess that was just “on paper” and not “real life.” My mistake. I’ll try to think more like an Obot in the future.
chopper
@NR:
the democrats didn’t spike the filibuster for legislation yesterday, dumbass.
maybe you think a single payer health care system is a presidential appointment, in which case you need to get help.
Cassidy
@NR: I really haven’t said much to you in this thread nor in quite a while. Although, now it’s easy to see why you think the way you do, if it can be called thinking. You have an estranged relationship with facts and reality.
NR
@chopper:
I’ll just point you to something I said earlier in this very thread:
Free clue: If you can eliminate the filibuster for *some* things with a majority vote, you can eliminate it for *anything* with a majority vote.
Do you get it yet, or do I need to repeat it 50 more times?
NR
@Cassidy: Oh, wow. The irony of you saying someone else has a problem with facts and reality is almost too hilarious to deal with.
At least you’re amusing, if nothing else!
Gravenstone
And the lesson from today’s thread is that NR stands for Not Rational.
chopper
@NR:
again you’re talking about the ‘on paper’ fantasy land. which is, again, meaningless.
on paper every GOP senator could have resigned in 2009 allowing the president to pass whatever he wanted. Hey, if one senator can resign, all of them could. lots o shit is possible in fantasy land. So what?
mclaren
This is the same kind of White House counsel who eagerly wrote memos supporting torture? But somehow only 9 years later “remembers something from law school” and “offers his resignation”?
Really?
In what universe?
Ruckus
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
I thought you kept your goldfish in a swimming pool.
chopper
I didn’t know Obama kept bush’s lawyers on as his counsel. interesting. executive order 13491 must have caused a bit of friction in that relationship.
NR
@Gravenstone: And the lesson from today’s thread is that Obots have no idea what “rational” means.
NR
@chopper:
No. I’m talking about reality. Which is where the Democrats had the power to do away with the filibuster whenever they chose.
mclaren
@fuckwit:
The ACA is arguably a backdoor method of sneaking in Medicare for All. But it’s going to leave a lot of people uncovered until the ACA gets patched, and then of course there’s the issue of cost controls, which the ACA doesn’t really address.
It is worth asking why Democrats like Richard Mayhew rush forward to assure us that whatever atrocity Republican administrations ram through and then legally justify with bogus memos by the White House counsel and Attorney General, like torture or extraordinary rendition or sequestering congressionally authorized funding for a major agency like the EPA as Ronald Reagan did, is just something we have to live with because “it’s not politically realistic to impeach George W. Bush” or “it’s not politically realistic to impeach Ronald Reagan for Iran-Contra” and so on.
But these selfsame DINOs like Richard Mayhew warn us in tones of punitive hysteria that if Democrats actually try to push through any of the policies Democrats believe in, like single-payer health care, that a Democratic president will be impeached so fast you’ll hear a sonic boom.
How does that work, exactly?
The most grotesque violations of the constitution are things we can’t repeal under Republican presidents because “it’s not politically realistic”? But even the smallest steps toward policies that polls show 60% of the American public believes in would result in immediate impeachment of a Democratic president and resignation of the cabinet officers and White House counsel and Attorney General tasked with implementing those policies??
What is wrong with this picture?
Does this view fit observed reality?
Obama ended torture. He wasn’t impeached. Obama supported same-sex marriage. He wasn’t impeached. Obama refused to cave in on the debt ceiling. He wasn’t impeached.
Every single time Obama has stood up and refused to cave in to Republican bulying, he hasn’t been impeached. Yet guys like Richard Mayhew assure us that if Obama actually stood up for a serious progressive policy, he’d be impeached, no question.
So the question really becomes…is Richard Mayhew really a Democrat, or just another Republican-lite?
Does Mayhew actually have any evidence or logic to support his argument that getting a public option or a single-payer nationalized health care policy if Obama had negotiated differently was not “politically realistic”?
Or does all Richard Mayhew have is some name-calling?
Sounds like a classic Republican tactic to me. Don’t bother to supply facts, don’t offer any logic, just call your opponent a “moonbat” and “insane.”
chopper
@NR:
technically, on paper.
if only the majority party had spiked the entire filibuster, something which has never happened in American history and only exists on paper, we could have had single payer.
If only a handful of the minority party had decided to offer to vote for cloture, something which had happened a shit-ton of times in American history, we could have had single payer.
Which ones of these makes more sense? and why are you so obsessed with the first? do the republicans get no blame in NR’s candyland?
Grumpy Code Monkey
@NR:
What the bloody hell is Reid supposed to do if less than 50 Democrats (and 0 Republicans) are willing to go along with the plan?
The Democrats are currently pulling double duty as both the liberal and conservative political parties Congress (the GOP has completely checked out); there is absolutely no reason to expect Congressional Dems to act as a block. The only reason Reid has the votes now is because even the most staid Democratic Senators are getting tired of being pelted with feces from the monkey house.
Congress is supposed to run the show, not the President, and the fact that up until now they haven’t been willing to sacrifice tradition for efficiency is because we keep electing doorknobs. That’s on us.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@mclaren: I stuck up for you mclaren but I was drowned out by the Obots screaming for their motherfucking comity and reasonable center right solutions.
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: I thought you said your goldfish were stuck-up.
mclaren
@chopper:
Then you haven’t been paying attention. Obama’s lawyers have been for 4 years making exactly the same arguments Bush’s lawyers made, so they might as well be the same people.
If the names change but the policies remain the same, it’s fair to same that nothing meaningful has changed.
Or did you miss Attorney General Eric Holder assuring us that firing a Hellfire missile at a U.S. citizen without a trial or criminal charges constitutes “due process”?
Source: “Holder Defends Obama’s View of Due Process,” The Globe and Mail, 15 March 2012.
The plain fact of the matter is that today, in 2013, lawyers working in the White House have become whores. Democratic or Republican, it makes no difference — the lawyers will sign off on anything the President asks. Torture? No problem! Murdering U.S. citizens without a trial or charges? Sure!
So why not order the White House lawyers to sign off on a policy that would actually help the U.S. economy and the American people in a direct immediate way?
Like, oh, say, implementing nationalized single-payer by executive order?
But wait. These whore lawyers who will sign off on any torture or murder at a president’s whim, suddenly, they’re going to be stricken with pangs of conscience as soon as the president orders them to sign a memo supporting a national single-payer health care policy that 59% of the American people favor — or that’s what Richard Mayhew would like us to believe.
What is wrong with Mayhew’s argument?
Can you spot the flaw here?
…Yes, I think you can.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
mclaren, let’s clear up something very disturbing. Would you really tap McMegan’s ass or was that just drunk talk?
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Omnes Omnibus: Really? You’re gonna go there and make fun of my dead goldfish?
mclaren
Let’s take a quick look at the polls showing overwhelming support for Democratic progressive policies:
Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support Increase in Minimum Wage – New Gallup poll shows 76% of Americans want wage to increase; trend shows consistent support for increased federal minimum wage
Poll Shows Vast Majority for More Wall St. Regulation
Another poll shows majority support for single-payer
Two thirds of Americans support medicare for all
Multiple polls find opposition to Syrian airstrikes
And so on.
This is not a new finding. Polls over the last 30 years have repeatedly found majority support for progressive Democratic policies among the general public.
Yet somehow, alleged “Democrats” like Richard Mayhew always run out of the shower, with soap still in their eyes, to explain why these Democratic progressive policies overwhelmingly supported by the American people, are not “politically realistic.”
Does that sound credible to you?
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Apparently so.
mclaren
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
Megan McArdle strikes me as hot — or, at least, she was a few years ago. Hells yeah, I’d bang her ’till she couldn’t walk.
You’re telling me you don’t think this woman is a serious babe?
She’s a nitwit. She’s a far-right Koch brothers stooge. She’s a loathsome defender of just about any reactionary policy that comes down the pike. So I’d have to gag her, but absolutely I would tap that ass. She’s gorgeous.
Just speaking for myself, of course. And I don’t see why it’s “disturbing” to say I’d bang a hot babe.
Cassidy
@mclaren: This has to be one of my favorite comments ever.
mclaren
Alas, Richard Mayhew’s personal attack on me doesn’t seem to have produced the effect he’d hoped. Instead of an online lynch mob gleefully sneering at anyone who dares suggest that President Obama could have gotten a better deal on health care if he hadn’t started out by conceding that single payer nationalized health care was off the table, a vigorous debate seems to have broken out as to whether it was indeed “politically realistic” to abandon single-payer prior to the ACA negotations.
Too bad, Richard.
Better luck next time.
different-church-lady
@mclaren: I’m calling it — parody troll.
different-church-lady
@NR:
Why bother answering? You’re clearly going to take the second option no matter what.
different-church-lady
@Cassidy: Yeah, but not yet conducive to inclusion in the lexicon. A bit of work is required.
Ripley
@NR:
Dear NR:
What Hitler said.
Love,
Satan
different-church-lady
@mclaren: Yes, the American people are on our side. That makes it more the pity that they keep electing those senators and representatives that are completely and utterly dedicated to keeping those things from happening, no?
mclaren
What with the mentions of Hitler and Satan, safe to say the pro-Obama commenters have not covered themselves with glory in this one.
different-church-lady
@mclaren: So how about Ann Coulter? Do-able for a hate-shag in your eyes?
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady:
There is a segment of the population who just think that Democrats are icky.
Ripley
Dear mclaren:
You have made me gay.
Best,
Men Everywhere
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@mclaren:
Obama is still president so they were victorious for another day.
Cassidy
@different-church-lady: Can’t speak for McLaren, and still under the impression that she’s a she, but I’ve always been of the mind that doable doesn’t have to be likable; any port in a storm will do.
Betty Cracker
@mclaren: And just to make sure we’re not perpetrating a nano-aggression via cisgender privilege, you are a DUDE who finds McArglebargle hawt, correct?
mclaren
@different-church-lady:
History shows, doesn’t it, that when the American people overwhelmingly favor certain policies and elected or appointed representatives or judges try to block those policies, progressive presidents have found clever ways of bending the rules to translate the will of the people into political reality?
I would remind you that FDR had judges ruling his legislation unconstitutional, and he managed to get around that. There’s a gray area here. I would also remind you that President Obama right now has violated the law and flouted congress by ordering that federal agencies not enforce a section of the ACA’s provision for one year.
This seems to strike everyone as perfectly reasonable — as, indeed, it is.
So might we possibly consider that if Obama were to order various federal agencies not to enforce certain other provisions of congressional health care legislation, or to order said federal agencies to enforce them differently, that this might possibly not cause the world to end, as Richard Mayhew has suggested?
Just something to think about.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Betty Cracker: His/her name is Pat. Does that halp?
different-church-lady
@mclaren: Yes, FDR was very clever and tenacious working his way around a Republican congress like that all those years.
Just something to think about.
Ripley
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
Dear Some Fuckhead:
Hang in there, dudebro, 2016 is just around the corner.
Deeply,
Rand Paul
richard mayhew
@McLaren
STEP 1 of your plan has a (in)credible threat of nationalizing the means of production of 15 percent of the economy economy. When has there been more than a third of the Democratic Party been for a policy similar to that ? Perhaps 1933? Definitely not since 1974
The leftmost anchor of the elected dem party in 2009 was private providers charging market rates as determined by a very large buyer CMS. There was no support for National Health Service… so yes projecting a massive Dem defection in Congress and an epic crackdown from the Supreme Court is reasonable
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Ripley: Haha! How do you keep doing that with the same awesome results each time?
daverave
nevermind
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Ripley:
Ha – Dudebro is a real thing! I thought it was just a crazy word you O-tards made up. Well, at least we know what you fools are talking about now when you say it. For the record:
I am 47.
I do not follow college football, altho I may watch a bowl game depending on the story line.
I do not wear khaki cargo shorts.
I do not wear pink polo shirts.
I don’t own anything by Abercrombie & Fitch
I don’t own anything by Hollister.
I don’t wear a trucker hat, or any other kind of hat.
I don’t listen to any of the following: O.A.R., Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews Band, Avengened Sevenfold, The Fray, and often crappy radio rap (i.e. Nelly, Dem Franchize Boyz, D4L, etc.). (I may in fact have some Dave Matthews and/or The Fray on my jukebox but I have over 25,000 songs from five generations.)
I am not insecure in my manhood or insanely jealous of my girlfriend. 25 years of marriage takes a lot out of ya.
I am not overly macho or homophobic; in fact I often joke I am 25% gay because I like disco music, vote Democratic and something else I can’t remember right now.
NR
@different-church-lady: You talked about FDR without mentioning the Japanese internment. I think you have to turn in your Obot badge now.
NR
@different-church-lady: They keep voting for Democrats who say they want progressive policies enacted…. And then turn around and do not enact them.
Of course, the Dems always have some convenient excuse for why they couldn’t do it, and so far, the voters seem to be buying them. But I wouldn’t expect that to hold out much longer.
chopper
@mclaren:
Yeah, if you ignore the myriad number of posts calling you a mentally ill buffoon, you really come out looking pretty good.
different-church-lady
@NR: I didn’t realize I had one to turn in.
@NR: Which is exactly the reason Democrats now control the house, right?
different-church-lady
@chopper: “Declare victory and leave.” Except the second part never seems to happen.
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady:
NR meant the ID card – the one with the RFID chip.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@NR:
You stupid motherfucker. Though a majority supported a “choice” of a public option, few supported single payer.
Secondly, it was the senate that fucked the public option, not Obama.
Thirdly, hospitals and insurers HATE obamacare (I am a health care provider) and it would have been WORSE with universal medicaid.
Shut the fuck up.
Valdivia
so is McClaren a gal or a guy? I know this is probably not the foremost issue in this thread but it seems to be the one thing no one was able to answer. The language on McArdle would indicate to me a dude, but I guess that’s just me being hyper girly and thinking women don’t talk like that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: Sadly, that question has made it to multiple threads now.
chopper
@Valdivia:
Since it’s a troll, it’s whatever it wants to be.
Valdivia
@chopper:
I guess it gets to change its persona eh? :)
That post on McArdle just totally threw me, not just because its kind of ewwww, but just so not what I expect from this particular troll. Its usually more one note you know?
chopper
@NR:
Lol, shows what you know. It’s a brand. Once great obama fully puts into effect part 2 of his agenda you’ll need to wear the mark in order to oh, I’ve said too much already.
sharl
This thread is like the kind of dreams I get when heavily medicated.
Thanks Richard!
Laertes
Okay, it just now hit me where this came from. There’s an episode of the West Wing in which the the President threatens to nationalize the trucking industry if management and labor don’t arrive at a settlement that averts a strike. McLaren’s plan seems to be based on this fantasy.
Implausibility aside, it was a really good episode.