Not surprised that conservative pundit Stu Rothenberg is backing Christie, but the L-word?
“We still don’t know whether Christie told the entire truth at his news conference last week or whether the many investigations that are now developing — about the bridge scandal but also about other decisions made by the governor during his time in office — will show poor judgment or even malfeasance,” Rothenberg wrote in a blog post for Roll Call, where he also writes a twice-a-week column. “But given the governor’s immediate reaction to the personal crisis that has engulfed him, it isn’t too soon to wonder when the accusations and media frenzy crossed the line from inquiry and investigation to political lynching.”
Maybe I’ve become too sensitive about this stuff, but the overuse of the word “lynching” really nauseates me.
Cervantes
It’s lazy, not to mention meretricious.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
No, you’re not. Rothenburg should be ashamed of himself
This also too is illuminating
Boss Christie isn’t the only one who thinks the real victim here is Mrs Christie’s boy.
Just Some Fuckhead
Maybe because it’s Christie I read it as “political lunching”.
Patrick
Immediate reaction? Hell, he joked about it back in December claiming it was no big deal. What does Rosenberg think the reaction would have been from his party if Obama had behaved this way?
schrodinger's cat
BTW is Charlie Cooke of the Cooke report also Republican? His bipartisany analysis always favors Repubs no matter what.
Big R
Come on, DougJ, you know as well as I do that asking sharp questions about what Christie knew and when he knew it is EXACTLY the same as extrajudicial torture and murder. And providing oversight of the use of the public fisc is EXACTLY the same as targeting people based on whether they are appropriately servile to the Powers That Would Like To Be.
Just Some Fuckhead
@schrodinger’s cat: Yes.
jl
Setting the offensive historical insensitivity aside, Rothenberg’s piece was pretty funny.
Johnny Bones was whining about ‘moving on’ too.
Sorry, kids, this wacky scandal has been entertaining so far. It has enough hoodonit and mystery to even compete for entertainment value with Bill and Monica. And public knows that it involves a real governance issue, so maybe actual legal or political consequences should be on the table for those responsible.
Maybe there should be a contest for the most entertaining BS about why people should ‘move on’ past a good old fashioned substantive political scandal with some entertainment value?
MattF
“It isn’t too soon to wonder” he says. And then inspiration, a veritable bolt of truth out of the clear blue sky, strikes him… and he no longer wonders… he knows.
Alex S.
Too bad, I’ve grown to dislike Charlie Cook because he’s become too Broder-esque “both-sides-do-it” for me, and I thought that Rothenberg was an acceptable alternative. Seems I was wrong.
scav
There’s also the underlying weak sauce of “We don’t know what’s going on yet, nor if the accused is lying. But, based on how he said stuff that may or may not be true? It’s totally too early to speculate about his guilt but totally the time to speculate about the guilt of others.” And yes, @Jim, Foolish Literalist: maybe in their eyes the possible use of a multi-state agency controlling a transportation link is utterly a personal affair. Those Matchbox cars with the orange loop-di-loop rubber roads are in their sandbox, theirs!
matt
It seems to me that the term is wholly inappropriate here. Christie is suspected of breaking the law, not of having character defects that people desire to punish extrajudicially.
Poor writing, poor analysis by Rothenberg.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
No. He’s a Louisiana Democrat.
(You may not think there’s a difference.)
Mudge
I like Steve M’s headline…”REMEMBER ALL THOSE SOUTHERN BLACKS WHO DID BIG-TICKET FUNDRAISERS AFTER BEING HANGED AND MUTILATED BY VIGILANTES?” Although, Ed Kilgore has adopted the Marshall Rule,
“All things considered, best to keep the ‘lynching’ metaphor to people who are black, come from historically terrorized minorities and/or most of all end up dying by being hanged from a tree. “
MikeJ
Bridge-lnacht?
shortstop
I hate it when personal crises jump up and engulf me, unconnected to anything I personally did my personal self.
MikeJ
@schrodinger’s cat:
He used to come talk to the FFax county Dems every now and then when I lived there. I didn’t always agree with him, but he seemed to be giving an honest opinion about how he perceived things to be, not how he wished them to be.
shortstop
@Mudge: But then we’d have to give Clarence Thomas a pass for applying the word to himself. I’m on board with that rule otherwise, however.
shortstop
@MikeJ: Most criticisms of Cook I’ve heard from the left have to do with his methodology being antiquated (not knowing what it is, I cannot comment on that), rather than on his being particularly partisan.
slippytoad
Wait until he’s in front of a federal court, the rhetoric will be bugfuck crazy. He’ll get “tortured” every day by having to hear testimony, or give it. He’ll feel “executed” by having to go to a country-club federal prison, and his release will be more glorious vindication of his righteousness, than that of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi, and fucking Alan Turing’s posthumous pardon.
schrodinger's cat
You know what else nauseates me, PBS Newshour giving fear mongering cranks a forum.
scav
@shortstop: Not if we apply a two out of three rule, heavy emphasis on the third condition.
feebog
Gawd, the hyperbole, it burns! His entire press conference was a perfect demonstration of Republican victimization. Even given what we know at this point, it would be hard to make the case that Christie did not know about the entire scheme. The only question in my mind at this point is whether it was his idea, or if he merely approved it once it was laid out for him.
schrodinger's cat
@shortstop: How come we never see Nate Silver or Wang on these totebagger shows?
shortstop
@scav: Okay, I’ll buy that. He also gets points deducted for spending his adult life telling black people to stop their complaining about the past, then whipping out that word the second someone asks him whether he harassed women…who also happen to be black.
Amir Khalid
It’s one thing to say partisanship is overtaking the search for truth in Bridgegate. Stu Rothenberg can make some kind of case for that assessment, even if I’d disagree with him. It’s quite another to call it a political lynching, when Chris Christie is nowhere near being forced out of politics in disgrace.
shortstop
@Amir Khalid: Not yet he isn’t, but we’re a patient people.
Suffern ACE
Let’s give Christie the benefit of the doubt and admit that we’ve gone too far.
Mudge
@shortstop: We can argue that Rothenberg used the word because he is stupid and insensitive. Thomas, on the other hand, is arrogant and an asshole. Not sure he deserves a pass.
muddy
Of course they can also take the opposite tack, at the same time of course. I’ve had a few (in person) Republicans say to me that Obama should be “strung up in front of the White House”. When I say that talking about lynching the president is extremely offensive, I get the wide-eyed, “Why do you say ‘lynch’? Why do you have to make everything about race?”
I said I’ve heard a lot of shit about a lot of presidents, but I never heard the phrase “strung up” used until this one. My eyeroll was apparently too much to defend against in several cases, but one lively fellow said that he was Definitely Not Racist because “power mad Harry Reid” should be strung up next to Obama. I said I did not care to associate myself with treason and left.
Here’s the shit I hate: people I know who agree with me on all of it scold me for being rude to these idiots.( i.e. You didn’t actually say that? I can’t believe how abrasive you are! Do you really think that’s helpful? etc )
Hell yes I think it’s helpful. If nothing else for my self-respect.
shortstop
@Mudge: Wait, Cook used the word? In addition to Rothenberg?
Mudge
Rothenberg and word…where’s the edit?
shortstop
@Suffern ACE: When you think about it, he’s suffered enough. Let him get back to the business of leading New Jersey into a brighter future.
MikeJ
@shortstop:
That may be true. Also, I used to hear him back in the 90s. *everybody* was using antiquated methodology but nobody realised it yet.
@schrodinger’s cat:
Because Cook has been there for decades and actually made a living writing about DC. Bookers call people they know. If you want to be a pundit that gets asked to do guest shots, you actually have to work at it. And by work at it, I mean the being on TV part. It’s nice to be super smart and to actually know what you’re talking about, but that doesn’t have anything to do with TV.
Mudge
@shortstop: Nope..fixed.
shortstop
@Mudge: Got it.
The Tragically Flip
This is nothing. Rob Ford’s brother complained that he was being crucified. Christie has it easy that you US liberals are just hanging him by a rope in a tree. We held Rob Ford down and nailed his limbs to a wooden cross then left him to die of exposure.
Or something like that. It might have been more toward the “sustained criticism and non-binding demands to resign” side of crucifixion.
Show us Christie in a crown of thorns and Rothenberg can start complaining.
shortstop
@MikeJ: Yes, all that — and also too, when it comes to the screaming cableheads (not so much PBS), Silver, Wang and Linzer have crapped all over the beloved horserace narrative. What the hell are these shows going to gasp about for months before elections if they accept metapolling?
Belafon
My children’s immediate reaction to crises they have created a lot of time is to start crying. The only way that tends to affect how I am going to punish them if it’s called for is how much worse the punishment is going to be. I don’t really care about Christie’s getting defensive about stuff he created, even if it was only the culture that this stuff was acceptable.
Trollhattan
@shortstop:
Reading the snippet I caught myself wondering whether he meant to type “personnel,” because the only way this goes away is if Christie dumps the whole affair on rogue staffers. A blowhard like Christie never has a personal crisis–he’s too special for anything so pedestrian.
Cervantes
@Belafon:
When you do punish them, you punish them more if they cry?
Belafon
@Mudge: A simpler rule is that lynch can never be used with the word virtual, whether it’s explicit or implicit. If you aren’t being actually lynched, you aren’t being lynched.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Even leaving aside the use of the L-word, as DougJ put it, the idea that Chrisie is a victim of media excess is bollocks. Virtually all of Chris Christie’s career is media hype. “The Repubican who won in a Blue State!”, running against a Goldman Sachs muckety-muck in the middle of a huge financial crisis caused by Goldman Sachs muckety-mucks and their allies, with a left-of-center third party candidate taking enough votes to deprive Christie of a majority. The Village, always desperate for vicarious machismo and a “moderate” Republican to bring the party of Eisenhower and David Broder back to them, fell in love, and then the post-Sandy performance, far more than the fact, gave him a teflon coating. Take away the media love and his skill at playing it, Christie’s suit is way over sized, if not empty.
muddy
I don’t know what it is that I cannot keep from thinking fat Christie jokes. Any other time I loathe fat jokes because they are childish and stupid, and also because people could readily aim it at me! And have aimed it at me plenty, come to that.
I keep trying to think of intellectual reasons why, such as it is only illustrative of his general nature, his constant building himself up literally and figuratively with narcissism and lack of self-control etc, thus it is fair when assessing him. Maybe it’s just because I hate him though.
scav
@The Tragically Flip: We’ve also got the option of throwing him to the media lions if they insist on the done in for deeply held transcendent moral beliefs if not actually the second coming imagery. Honestly, if we’re going for public methods, there’s something to be said for being broken on the wheel, if only for the metaphorical oomph. Might have even hurt more.
Belafon
@Cervantes: Sometimes. It generally involves the explanation that they need to stop trying to change the subject. But I generally only punish them because they failed to tell me about something, not for doing something wrong. My kids are pretty good. I haven’t had to deal with sneaking out of the house at night or stealing something.
BarbCat
@schrodinger’s cat: And Charlie Cook is almost always wrong. I used to fear his predictions – not sure why, but now I know better.
Belafon
@muddy: Probably because, knowing he’s a bully, it feels like his weight was gained by taking other people’s lunches.
Cervantes
@Belafon: Teens?
shortstop
@Trollhattan: Right, and to his everlasting shock and sadness, his staff did really let him down, personally. I’ll bet you’re right. Homophone error.
rikyrah
Fight over jobless aid ‘just outrageous’
01/16/14 11:42 AM
By Steve Benen
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was asked yesterday for his take on extended unemployment benefits – a policy he and his party have now killed more than once.
“Look, it’s no secret that Democrats plan to spend the year exploiting folks who are still struggling in this economy for political gain,” McConnell said. “I’d probably want to be talking about something other than Obamacare, too, if I’d voted for it. But to create a conflict where the possibility for agreement was so close, while more than a million people are stuck in the middle, is just outrageous.”
Think about just how much chutzpah is necessary to say something like this out loud, on the record, with a straight face. Democrats are ready to help the jobless keep their heads above water in exchange for nothing; McConnell leads a caucus that first wanted to cut off the unemployed, only to change its mind and say it’ll help if Democrats meet GOP demands.
McConnell did a radio interview last week in which he literally laughed at the idea of extending jobless aid; now he sees it as “outrageous” that Democrats won’t approve the policy by giving Republicans what they want?
The editorial board of the New York Times is unimpressed.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/fight-over-jobless-aid-just-outrageous
jl
But let this hack pundits and politicians waste their time trying to persuade people to give up on the scandal. They will produce funny bit parts for cameos in the movie. I for one think Robim Williams will do a far better Johnny Bones than he did an Ike.
Really? Lynching. Half a dozen of of Christie’s damn staff and two of his crony appointees are in on smoking gun texts and emails, and were responsible for dodgy, probably illegal BS that snarled traffic for miles, cost millions of dollars and endangered the public safety.
It’s an entertaining scandal, with interesting and easily comprehensible questions: Did Christie do it? How much did he cover up? What was the scheme?
kindness
For all their macho and chest beating it’s become clear that Republicans are scared. They are scared no one will believe their cries of righteousness and victimhood at the hands of a Soshulist Muslim oppressor and his Senate henchmen.
Yea, sure. The right wing base is angry and up in arms. Same as every day the sun rises in the east. But everyone else? Crickets. And that has them scared so they resort to sounding like this.
Another Holocene Human
dammit, skimming too fast I saw “fruit” and “l-word” and thought “lesbians”?
Now I feel queasy.
Another Holocene Human
@Cervantes: +1 for proper use of meretricious.
Belafon
@Cervantes: I have three boys, five years apart (18,13,8). My oldest is in college now, so I’ve covered all the ages. I even had to ground my oldest during the summer before he went to college, for not telling me the truth.
shortstop
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: We saw a similar reaction from John McCain when the media suddenly started asking their darling a couple of questions and expecting answers. The ones who’ve been most coddled by reporters are beyond outraged when the press doesn’t play ball.
BTW, not sure if this has been discussed here and I’m the last woman in America to find out, but Alpha House, available only on Amazon streaming, is a superbly funny show just made for the people who hang out here. I didn’t want Amazon Prime so I just did the 30-day free trial to watch the first season of it. You guys will howl.
What made me think of this? Remembering a throwaway line in which John Goodman, playing Senator Gil John Biggs of North Carolina, tells someone on the phone, “Yeah, John, who’s the maverick NOW?”
MikeJ
@shortstop:
I really don’t believe the bookers care what the guests say. They’re not trying to protect the status quo or push any particular slant on the story, they’re trying to fill five minutes. When they need to fill those five minutes, they call people they know. The people they know all live and work in DC.
Ripley (Whiskey Fire version)
I was expecting “lie” or some grammatical tense variation, thereof.
Another Holocene Human
@shortstop: Thomas has enough of a persecution complex to have truly believed that all judges are black-robed freaks and he was only getting attacked because blah.
To be fair, a lot of judges are black-robed freaks… though few of them get dominated for federal judgeships, never mind the supreme court (in fact, a lot of them get disrobed).
No links because where would I start? There have been so many of them. :)
Nemo_N
At CNN this morning, Wolf Blitzer was telling me that this was an opportunity to test Christie’s scandal-handling skills. Seriously.
Basically, let’s talk about this on the meta level, lest we have to to deal with the wrongness of the act itself.
Cervantes
@Belafon: Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.
Another Holocene Human
Also, too, nobody cares about the fates of Black women (see Sowell, Anthony) so clearly it was (in Thomas’ mind) racially and politically motivated for the white men on the Senate to give a shit about what he did to Anita Hill.
Probably some truth to that but the man ain’t right, and it’s telling he thinks that’s some sort of dodge for his disgusting, bullying, hateful behavior.
Clarence Thomas was nominated to replace Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall.
In closing, Thomas has a pass to say what he said but his statement was unpersuasive, and nothing he’s done on the court since then would serve to modify that judgment one jot.
Another Holocene Human
@slippytoad: nobody feels pain like a malignant narcissist being called on his bullshit
Jesus (fictional or otherwise) endured no such passion as this
jl
@shortstop: How about some news? During an election, for example, they could actually cover what the candidates say, do facty things on the candidate’s records, talk with journalists who have facty things to say about the candidates and the issues.
Probably it’s about money with commercial and public stations. With some stupid political horse race analyst you throw two or three of them a few hundred bucks and pay for a limousine ride, and you got ten twenty minutes killed off right there, as well as a lot of listener brain cells.
shortstop
@MikeJ: Yes, that’s surely true about bookers. I do think a lot of cable, broadcast and print reporters (and, even more, political opinionators) are very hesitant to talk about this stuff for the reason I mentioned, though.
Another Holocene Human
@shortstop: It’s always, always, always, always projection.
Drunken hausfrau
Boo frickin hoo! Christie can start playing the martyr when they are discussing the markings on his penis and spending $70 million on a special prosecutor to examine the stains on clothing!
schrodinger's cat
@jl: We really need a better news media. How to go about getting one is the question.
Paul in KY
@schrodinger’s cat: I would assume he is. He makes alot of money.
Paul in KY
@Alex S.: Rothenberg is even more of a Repub. They are both dipshits, who lie to benefit Republicans.
Belafon
@schrodinger’s cat: Term limits.
Paul in KY
@The Tragically Flip: You don’t die of exposure when you are crucified, you suffocate when you are too weak to lift your body to take a breath.
Pendantic point there…
Cervantes
@Paul in KY: I thought you were talking about crucifixion rather than hanging.
phantomist
Brody: You’re gonna need a bigger rope.
ericblair
@Cervantes:
Are we gonna do both? Because that’s a long day, and we should probably order pizza then.
catclub
@Paul in KY: Pendantic point is that you are _hanging_ there.
MikeJ
@shortstop: And I should have specified that what I said about bookers not caring about what the guests have to say only applies to news shows that view themselves as straight news. Obviously Fox cares, and the bookers for the explicitly opinion driven shows on other nets care to some extent. Many of those still only care about filling time, but some really are as ideologically driven as people perceive them to be,.
Ash Can
People such as Rothenburg couldn’t empathize with the black experience, and all its horrors, if their lives depended on it, but seeing their Great White Republican Hope crash and burn has traumatized them into using whatever hyperbole they feel expresses their level of butthurt. As a result, they make asses of themselves. It should be entertaining to see who they end up pinning their hopes on next for 2016.
Gene108
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You do realize that is what the Republican Party wants?
They want a guy with Teflon coating, so scandal do not stick, who is praised by the media for being tough and is disinterested in actually running things that the cockroaches that form the brains of the Republican Party do not get exposed to the light of public scrutiny.
mai naem
The media turning this into a “poor wittle Chris Christie vs. the Democrat Legislature and the Democrat USAGs and the Democrat NYrs and Liberal MSM” is exactly what I am worried about. I just hope the Dems are smart enough to have enough stuff dripping out at the right pace with the right mix of salaciousness, an outrage factor and just plain illegality.
low-tech cyclist
I’m OK with ‘lynching’ being used to refer to things other than execution by mob. But IMHO, it had still better be life-changing bad shit – if not killing or maiming, then at least imprisoning or impoverishing.
If all you’re losing is high office and/or public cred, but you’ll still never have to live on the bad side of town, let alone miss a meal, then fuck off: you’re not being lynched.
The likelihood of Christie actually going to prison over any of the Bridgegate or Sandygate stuff is pretty small, and the chance of any of the other stuff is zero.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Cervantes: He was. For many years, the prevailing theory was that crucifixion killed by inhibiting the breathing process. When the condemned was too tired to pull himself up to free up the ribcage to expand, he would suffocate fairly quickly. I heard the process recounted numerous times in sermons.
Recent experiments suggest otherwise, but I don’t think the data is all that well known.
Samuel Knight
Funny how others had the same reaction about the Thomas analogy. Dating mysefl, but I remember when Clarence Thomas used that word, all of a sudden I realized that he was lying. (Yup I had thought no way a Yale grad would need a government job, she had to be lying, and then…)
And I think Stu Rothenberg, paired with Boehner saying let’s move on, just signaled to the whole democratic party – don’t go here, please!.
Twenty five years ago, Dems were idiots not follow up on Clarence Thomas by bringing the extra witnesses, and you have to guess they won’t be that stupid again.
And don’t be fooled by the “did you change your mind? polls. Almost no-one ever admits to changing their own mind.
Nick
“They really 9/11ed Christie at that press conference eh?”
Nobody would say that, despite the fact that more people died from lynching. Of course, given the speakers’ and audience’s POV, “more” “people” died from lynching.
So, no, being marginally aware of American history does not make you too sensitive.
gogol's wife
@muddy:
Same here. For some reason, fat jokes both arise in my head (although I’m certainly not one to talk), and when spoken by others don’t offend me, as long as Christie is the target.
jl
@mai naem:
“poor wittle Chris Christie”
Good luck with that project. Christie’s a fraud, and this scandal blows away his teflon suit, even if this bizarre scheme (or if the development connection is the key, this nascent aborted scam attempt) was hatched by his staff.
And Christie is shown to be either a liar and corrupt operator, or an incompetent manager who fostered a bullying and unscrupulous staff. The scandal doesn’t even have to involve Christie more than it has already (though I think common sense says that will very unlikely be the case) to damage him badly.
Multiple smoking guns are there to implicate multiple of his staff as planners, instigators and executors of low deviltry. That simply cannot be unscandaled away by mooks like Rothenberg or Christie whining and lying about it, or Lush Rimbaugh disgustingly fantasizing about Michelle Obama by proxy on air.
Ash Can
@low-tech cyclist: There should also be a rule that it can’t be called lynching if it came about through the person’s own fucking fault. Christie’s being “lynched” because — at the very least — he hired a bunch of assholes to run his state administration? Horseshit. He can shoulder some fucking responsibility.
Suffern ACE
His whole stick is the bully who can whip those democrats in line. He can try to pivot to the “you guys are so unfair to me” victim. However, I don’t think he can be both the whining victim of abuse who needs to be rescued and the guy the Republicans hope will whip those liberals at the same time.
MikeJ
@low-tech cyclist:
Lynching really has two definitions. 1) Being hanged while being innocent of all crimes, merely for being a minority 2) Being hanged after being accused of a crime without due legal process, although even then it was much, much more likely to happen to a minority.
Even being as generous as possible and assuming they’re only comparing it to a lack of due process, it’s still an outrageous proposition to say Chris Christie is being denied an opportunity to defend himself. It’s nobody fault but his own if he is indefensible.
jl
@jl: Or maybe Lush was fantasizing about Barack by proxy the other night. You can never tell with that loon.
Lush is an example of how disgusting a person can be and still be acceptable, even a favorite, among the base. It will be interesting, This scandal might act as bait to the wingnut psychology. They will demand more from Christie that will be seen as vile by normal people in order to prove he is loathsome enough to merit GOP base votes in the primaries.
IM
@MikeJ:
That doesn’t make any sense. He is tried in the court of public opinion, yes.
But that is due process for political affairs.
In he second definition due process is replaced by some kangaroo court. That isn’t happening here.
MikeJ
@IM: That’s what I said. He is getting due process.
jl
@IM: It’s all just hacks trying to sweep an obvious open sore scandal under the rug. Christie (edit: at the very least) ran an office full of political thugs who tried to pull an absolutely outrageous, arrogant, really movie script level outlandish scam of some kind.
People are interested and intrigued, Enquiring minds want to know… etc. And this is supposed to be some liberal persecution? That is laughable, and everyone knows it, even the GOP fools who pump out the BS. This Rothenberg guy knows it, whoever he is, an Johnny Bones, cheap two-bit hood in charge of the House knows it.
IM
@MikeJ:
I stormed a open door then.
IM
@jl:
Does he know? We are talking about someone marinated in the republican leaning washington media bubble for decades.
The Other Chuck
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: The inhibited breathing might or might not kill you outright, but the hypoxia would likely lead to a faster death either way. It was common practice to break the legs of the cucified with an iron club to speed things along, depriving them of any leverage to push up — sure sounds painful, but after a day or so up there the condemned were known to beg to have their legs broken.
Nasty business, but it was a punishment meant to scare everyone who saw it, and you’re talking about scaring some pretty hardened folks at that time.
terraformer
Argh! So tired of the double standard. Everyone knows that if Christie were a Democrat….well, ohh boy! Can you imagine THAT coverage?
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: taking both sides of the issue is the GOP, “oh we would vote for it but the big bad Democrats held it up” at the same time “UI hurts the poor and unemployed, anyone pro jobs would vote it down”
wish someone would point this out forcefully
ranchandsyrup
OT but check out below video of Chait debating McCardle on Obamacare. She tries to say that she doesn’t oppose National Health Care and Chait points out that she wrote a column titled “Why I oppose National Health care”. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/01/death-of-the-death-of-obamacare.html?mid=twitter_dailyintelligencer
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Of course. that’s what I’m saying, and this has (I think) stripped Christie’s Teflon.
Villago Delenda Est
Villager idiots like Rothenberg are the ones who need the necktie parties.
rikyrah
Dems still not giving up on unemployment insurance
By Greg Sargent
January 16 at 3:38 pm
Earlier today, Harry Reid tweeted:
After Senators go home to hear from constituents next week, we’ll vote again to #RenewUI
I’m told it’s very likely that Dems will hold another vote on the Reed-Heller bill to extend the unemployment benefits program for three months. This measure, which is not paid for, was the one that already got a surprise 60 votes to proceed to the bill; the next vote would be to end debate and move to a final up or down vote.
The question would then be whether the same six GOP Senators who supported it last time would do so again. They probably won’t, obviously, since it isn’t paid for. And they can always trot out their objections over amendments. Dem aides say they are “open” to another round of discussions over votes over amendments, provided Republicans agree to move the bill to a final vote. Probably not gonna happen.
But for what it’s worth, Republicans may have to vote again to sink UI, and Dems are hoping that during the intervening recess, GOP lawmakers catch an earful at home. Liberal groups may gear up again to mount some pressure. Organizing for Action is likely to be active. And Americans United for Change, which ran UI ads in December, is set to coordinate constituent telephone calls into GOP offices, particularly those of GOP senators Rob Portman, Dan Coats, Lisa Murkowski, Kelly Ayotte, and Susan Collins, who voted for the bill the first time.
Democratic Senators, particularly in states where the other Senator is a Republican, will be encouraged to hold events and/or speak out about the issue.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/01/16/dems-still-not-giving-up-on-unemployment-insurance/
Villago Delenda Est
Gonna be pretty quiet here on the left coast, then. Solid blue from Bellingham to San Diego as far as the Senate is concerned.
LanceThruster
More like when Robert Morley was being force-fed his ground poodles in “Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe.”
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@The Other Chuck: Except that volunteers who were suspended as if crucified reported no trouble breathing. It’s been a long time since I’ve read reports on the research, but the suffocation theory was pretty much debunked.
jl
@Villago Delenda Est: And I think, HI. But, no love for our neighbor to the North, AK?
GregB
Stu Rothenberg’s political analysis is worse than the Armenian genocide.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ripley (Whiskey Fire version):
For me, the post title flagged it as “lynch” or some grammatical tense variation thereof.
(Autocorrect absolutely wants to turn that into “lunch,” which, as somebody noted upthread, seems peculiarly appropriate for Christie. Sorry to indulge in fat jokes, which I don’t really approve of. But Autocorrect did it first!!!)
gogol's wife
Just noticed the post title. Well played.
Thoughtcrime
@LanceThruster:
I think you mean “Theater of Blood” with Vincent Price and Diana Rigg.
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/463|0/Theatre-of-Blood.html
LAC
I would love the lynching metaphor to be stopped …along with the (insert special snowflake white guy) ‘s struggle is like MLK or Medger Evers, etc. That would be helpful.
TheWatcher
@schrodinger’s cat: Isn’t one of them Teh Gay? That would be icky and uncomfortable, and would require some ‘balance’ by booking Reverend Phelps…..
schrodinger's cat
@TheWatcher: MSM bots love them Andrew Sullivan, perhaps it is the accent?
LanceThruster
@Thoughtcrime:
Thx. I even checked IMDB hoping to get the citation right. Morley was in both.
HeartlandLiberal
Saying ‘lynching’ is just good ol’ American home grown equivalent of yelling ‘Hitler’.
It is a variant of the invocation of Godwin’s Law.
brantl
@muddy: I have often said that Bush and Darth Cheney needed to face a war-crimes tribunal, and if they hung them, so be it.