Watching Up With Steve Kornacki because I refuse to watch the bobbleheads and the Cheney tonguebathing, so that means that MSNBC has two viewers this morning- me and Steve’s mom. Both of us want to tell him to comb his hair. At any rate, one large segment was devoted to how mad many Republicans are at Ted Cruz, and Steve repeatedly mentioned that Mitch McConnell, when asked about his caucus and whether he was mad at them, answered with a “wink and a smile.” This line of thinking tracks nicely with this TPM piece:
Other members of the Senate fumed Saturday over objections by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) that held up a $1.1 trillion omnibus bill meant to keep the government open. The objection was fueled by the two conservatives’ desire to fight President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration.
The objections by Cruz and Lee mean that the Senate must slog through procedural votes Saturday on nominees and also vote to end a filibuster on the omnibus bill at 1 a.m. on Sunday.
It was too much for Democrats and even Republicans to bite their tongues over.
The TPM goes on to offer up several sternly worded tweets so as to prove how angry people are at Cruz and Lee and their antics.
It’s all bullocks. The Republicans love Cruz. Notice what really got no attention whatsoever in the Senate? Elizabeth Warren, and something really worth fighting for in the CROMNIBUS, the big giveaway to Citigroup and friends (for a primer on why this was so important to them besides oodles of money, read this– it’s all about the credit ratings). Instead of having a serious debate about that, the conversation tilted to the right on immigration, and the progressive concerns were squelched as the right and center right banded together to fend off the “lunatic right,” and CROMNIBUS was passed and everyone not named Jamie Dimon gets screwed.
Cruz gets attention because McConnell and company want him to get attention, as he shifts the conversation to the right, making the already unpalatable right wing position seem palatable by comparison. You’d think watching how the Republicans did the bait and switch during the ACA debate, always making more and more demands while never being able to find a way to vote for the bill they helped craft would have clued some of our media in.
It hasn’t.
AdamK
I call bullshit on your bullocks. I would second a good ballocks, of course.
danielx
I must disagree; both wikipedia and urban dictionary (and I too) maintain the correct spelling is ‘bollocks’. Kate Winslet uses the word in an ever-so-elegant Brit accent in The Holiday, and I was laughing til tears ran out of my eyes.
Baud
I’m not persuaded by this grand conspiracy of kabuki. I think most of GOP senators did want to get this done quickly and go home, and I don’t think Warren would have gotten attention even if Cruz had STFU (unless she was able to stop passage of the bill, which was always doubtful).
skerry
Sen Feinstein is back on Twitter this morning with her #ReadTheReport hashtag
Princess
Mara Liasson (of all people) gave Elizabeth Warren mad props on even-the-liberal NPR this morning.
Iowa Old Lady
I notice that lots of MSM people and other politicians jump to the conclusion that Warren’s seizing the spotlight means she must be planning to run for president. They don’t consider for a moment that she might ardently believe what she’s arguing about.
It’s all, always, about the horse race rather than governing.
Baud
BTW, what’s up with Steve Kornacki? His star really has fallen over the last year. The few times I’ve tried to catch his show lately, it’s been unwatchable.
Iowa Old Lady
@Baud: When Hayes hosted Up, it was wonky and interesting. Kornacki is all about politics. He has a lot of hacks on who just spin for either side, and he wastes the opportunity that a 2-hour show gives him to dig deep.
He seems personally likeable but I don’t get much news from his show.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady:
Yes, that’s it. I think you hit the nail on the head.
MomSense
@Iowa Old Lady:
They are trying to find a way to make 2016 Clinton v. Bush: The Empire is Guaranteed to Strike Back exciting. They’re desperate and they haven’t figured out or aren’t being paid to cover the whole world of news that exists beyond the beltway.
sharl
@Iowa Old Lady: Yes, very much this. Sen. Warren is plenty smart to realize that big money media pundits want her in the Preznitshul horse race for their own interests, not for the country’s or her interests. Hopefully she’ll continue to (IMO) stay where she is most effective (relatively speaking). A couple political reporters offered up a defense of her stance:
It’s reminiscent of the 2010 election that led to the GOP takeover of the House – during the election it was all “Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!”, but the first thing those tools did when they got into office was go after women’s rights and health care issues.
We need better politicians obviously, but also better media to cover them.
ETA: added final link
Violet
@MomSense: Despite the members of the MSM, specifically the Village media, being horrible toadies and horse race fanatics, they aren’t stupid when it comes to their own careers. They know what their paymasters want–which is more of the above–and they give it to them. The old style media organizations are consolidating and disappearing and there are fewer and fewer jobs available that don’t involve creating clickbait lists like “Five Reasons Obama is Teh Suxxors!”
So of course they’re hoping for a Bush v Clinton Part 2. The story options for that are way better than, oh, Martin O’Malley vs. Paul Ryan.
Anya
Cole, I agree with you. Cruz and his idiot co-conspirator give McConnell and the Rs cover. They come off reasonable while torching the country. Fuck the MSM enablers.
Comrade Dread
I wonder how Citigroup and Co. think Americans will react if they tank the economy again? I wonder how many times they think they can get away with getting bailed out before shit starts to go down?
Hell, I don’t know. I know the Tea Party used to feign outrage about being on the hook for bailouts, but they sure as hell haven’t done jack or shit about it. So who knows? Maybe they really can go on forever plundering and pillaging and the American public will continue to do jack shit even as they look up from the fields they work on owned by the local lord and wonder what happened.
feebog
Cruz has his following among the Rubes out there, but I doubt Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republican leadership in the Senate like him on a personal basis. This, IMO, is why he will never gain any traction for the Republican nomination; he is an ass, and most politicians loath him.
Baud
@sharl:
I disagree. Republicans have always been about deregulation of business, including Wall Street. The fact that they chose this particular item in this bill is kind of irrelevant. If people didn’t know, it’s because they chose not to know.
Mustang Bobby
@Baud: It makes for nice background noise while I’m doing the crossword puzzle and cleaning the house. Better than to hear Dick Cheney shrug off killing an innocent prisoner because dems da berries in fightin’ terra. I would have pummeled the TV with the Swiffer.
sharl
@Baud: That’s a fair point. Given all that Congressional Republicans put her through during the Obama years, starting well before her run for the Senate, I strongly suspect that Warren herself was unsurprised by this pro-bankster stunt, in which case her outrage could have been premeditated as well as genuine. If that was the case – and I have no way of knowing for sure – I like her even more.
ira-NY
Watching Face the Nation. Why not rename it Sunday Morning With the GOP?
Baud
@sharl:
I’m sure it was. I don’t see any conflict between being strategic and being sincere.
Baud
@Mustang Bobby:
I should invent unbreakable rubber TVs for liberals. I’d make a fortune.
RareSanity
@danielx:
I agree with you. The small sample size of people I communicate with in text form that are in or from the U.K., have all spelled it ‘bollocks’
However, if you really want to start an argument, get a drinking man from Scotland and another drinking man from Ireland…ask them what the proper spelling of that brown spirit they both take tremendous pride in is, then watch them go!
samiam
I guess this is what passes for a Cole the one man mind1ess m0b ‘think piece’. In way over his head as usual.
2 things he will probably never truly understand. It’s ALL political theater. Things are NEVER as bad as they seem and NEVER as good as they seem.
RareSanity
@samiam:
Thanks coach!
I guess your next comments will be how you’d like for your players to give 110% effort, how it’s all about putting more points on the board than the other team, and if you can’t score you probably won’t win.
So insightful.
Violet
@ira-NY: I really think there’s a market opportunity for a Sunday show that isn’t a shill for the GOP. It seems like a gaping hole to me. The current shows are all so similar. Different hosts, same guests, same topics. Yawn. Why watch any one of them over another? And they’re so similar week to week, why watch at all.
An overhaul of the way the shows work might draw in some viewers. Of course a unicorn would be nice too.
Comrade Dread
Both sides do it. It’s always darkest before the dawn. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? And it ain’t over now because when the going gets tough, the tough get going!
Emerald
@Comrade Dread: Makes no difference how Americans react when the economy crashes again. Americans don’t vote .
When over 90% of Americans wanted gun legislation after Sandy Hook and nothing happened, that demonstrated that we no longer live in a democracy.
Yeah, I think it’s already over. No democracy in which two-thirds of the people don’t bother to vote can remain a democracy, and I think we’ve already given it away.
I’m not sure Americans have the strength left even for tumbrils.
Gah! What a depressing way to start the mornin’!
shelley
Feh. No matter whether he’s their patsy or their fair-haired boy, he still has a snowball’s chance in hell of being President.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and they’ll still tell you the Tea Baggers are all about spendinganddeficitsandthedebt.
@Violet: at some point, I think in the early nineties, the Beltway really internalized the Liberal Media bullying, right before they all joined Tom Delay and Chris Mathews in deciding that Blll Clinton’s dick was the greatest threat to the Republic. I think that belief only became stronger as the younger generation, the Chuck Todd/Jake Tapper generation, internalized the basic GOP fiscal/economic message: Social Security and Medicare are the greatest threat to the Republic. And they still think of themselves as liberal because they support gay rights and recycle their Coke zero cans.
ira-NY
Each week out of habit I watch the Sunday ‘news’ programs. Then, in season, I watch football pre-game programming. I am always struck by how much better the news content and production values are for the football programming.
Schlemazel
@ira-NY:
Watching Face the Nation. Why not rename it Sunday Morning With
the GOPKindly Uncle John “Straight Talk Express” McCain?Seriously why not just make him the permanent guest & get it over with?
Schlemazel
@RareSanity:
you missed “it’s a game of inches” other than that a masterful job.
Comrade Dread
@Emerald: When I said react, I was more thinking along the lines of a heavily armed individual somewhere whose company just got shuttered and who has lost his home again thinking maybe he has nothing left to lose and is pretty jealous of the well connected getting another handout from the government while he gets nothing.
Villago Delenda Est
This is absolutely correct, and yet another reason amongst a plethora of reasons for my nym.
Wipe them out. All of them.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Violet: “Democrats aren’t all that interesting.”.
There ya go.
See, when Democrats are in charge, Republicans are on because they’re shaking up the status quo. When Republicans are in charge, Republicans are on because the American people want them in charge.
And the only people who watch the Sunday shows in great numbers are the political operatives and old white Republicans. So there that…
/snark
Seriously, something’s messed up. The Democratic leadership should be on speed-dial for all of these shows and they should be demanding to be on in roughly equal proportions. Where’s Durbin? Where’s Van Hollen? Nancy can’t (and shouldn’t) carry the party by herself.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
WereBear
It’s a very insidious lie, popular with libertarians but also in people who aren’t thinking about it, that governance just happens by itself, the way dandelions pop up in springtime.
I always say, “No. It took us about ten thousand years to get this far!”
Villago Delenda Est
@samiam:
Nuke LaLoosh, is that you?
Villago Delenda Est
@WereBear: They also think “the market” is a force of nature, and not a social construct.
They are, in short, fucktards.
Schlemazel
@Comrade Dread:
I am seriously amazed that something awful has not already happened. It makes me wonder where the breaking point is. That some CEO or banking exec has not been killed in a nation of so many guns and so much anger is puzzling to me. I am glad, don’t get me wrong, that we are not as violent a nation as I think we are. But I have to wonder when the time comes that some guy who was just managing to hang on before but has been screwed again decides he can get 3 hots and a cot from the government for life and payback with one small shot.
I have said before that I firmly believe the Koch bros are communist saboteurs who are so undermining capitalism that average people will end up supporting a bloody revolution to remove it. If that is not their goal they may want to think about what they are actually doing because I don’t see it ending any other way if they stay on their current path.
Iowa Old Lady
@Villago Delenda Est: I loved that movie!
Violet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Agreed. Which is why I think there’s a big, gaping hole for the opposite of what they’re all doing. When everyone is doing something, the opportunity is in what’s not being done. We see that more liberal policies, like increasing the minimum wage, gun control, etc. are popular. Some by polling, some by actual ballot initiatives passing. There’s a real opportunity there for someone to step in and fill that gap.
That goes for the news organizations but also for the left side of our politics. The Republicans have put forth concepts like “government is the problem,” “government so small you can drown it in a bathtub,” “cutting taxes is the problem,” “guns aren’t the problem,” etc. If a political party–or even just a good candidate–were to turn those around, I think they might find a lot of support. Have to craft the message right, but that series of messages is old and tired.
Reagan got attention with his “Most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help'” crap. That’s partly because it felt new. Someone who can step in and craft a message about jow “Government works” and sell that message to people, I think would find it felt new and fresh. Not something old or timid that still plays off the “small government” like “small but effective governance.” Yawn. Something big and bold that talks about what government does that’s good and why we need it. All these representatives work for and in the government. If it’s so horrible, why are they there? Ask that question. Stand up in support of it to counter.
Ruckus
@ira-NY:
Your concept that the production values are so much better goes right along with the content being so much better as well.
Not a football fan so don’t watch, but then I don’t watch the Sunday morning GOP commercials either.
Ruckus
@Comrade Dread:
The average American gets more than nothing, they get screwed.
Violet
@Violet: That’s obviously supposed to be “cutting taxes is the solution.” Sorry. Flu brain.
Emerald
@Comrade Dread: Ah, well, same difference.
Your heavily armed individual will wind up in the same field as the rest of us. Only difference is that he’ll be under it and the rest of us will be tilling the surface.
Ruckus
@Schlemazel:
Why would the kochsuckers worry about that? Even with a run on banks and a collapse of most of the social order they’d still be rich. They are very rich old farts who want the bullshit they want and want it before they die. I think they want to leave a legacy of their screwed up ideas that the rest of us will have to live with forever.
raven
@RareSanity: Hey man!!
MomSense
@Violet:
I agree that they want Bush v. Clinton part deux but it is still a ways off so they have to create some drama until then. They are going to throw a bunch of people in the mix, write some really tacky lead-ins for the panel segments where they offer nonsensical speculation about each non actual threat to Clinton or Bush, and hope to keep our interest until the Inevitable v. Least Insane happens. O’Malley will be of particular interest because Meet The Nation This Week can appear to be cool by showing clips from The Wire.
And we on the left are going to have some fun with each flame out of the crazy Republicans. Santorum is bound to say something both horrifying and entertaining. I am personally rooting for Huckabee to enter the race because another Bachmann candidacy is just too good to hope for.
gogol's wife
@AdamK:
I thought, somebody has to tell Cole it’s bollocks, not bullocks. Of course commenter #1 does so.
I keep hearing it in the voice of Rupert Graves at the beginning of the Sherlock season when he was supposed to be dead.
J
@Schlemazel: Part of the explanation, I would guess, is that the pathetic nutters with guns who might lose it in the way you describe have been very well propagandized–they’ve been taught to think that people who look, let us say, more like Trayvon Martin than Jamie Dimon are the source of all their problems.
Violet
@MomSense: I hope the Republicans have a huge group of people who want to run and enough ultra rich sugar daddies to make those candidates’ dreams of running come true. Four years ago was fun.
I also hope Hillary Clinton gets some opposition. She needs to practice her politicking skills.
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet: Even with flu brain, you’re a supernova compared to the 40 watt dimbulbs of the GOP.
Schlemazel
@Ruckus:
They would worry about that because after the revolution they would be classified as moneyed elite and end up having their dead bodies dragged through the streets and then put on display for the proletariat to spit on. That sort of thing would spoil their enjoyment of wealth.
Citizen_X
@Violet:
It’s been pretty clear lately that what they really love is government so ruthless it can drown you in a bathtub. *Sigh.*
MomSense
@Violet:
May FSM make it so!
Citizen_X
@AdamK: @danielx: Never mind the bullocks, this here’s Balloon Juice.
Villago Delenda Est
@J:
This is absolutely true.
Just the other day the local fishwrap had a letter from an obvious teabagger who bemoaned the rich getting rich…and placed the blame squarely on Obama for that.
Then there are the fuckheads who take Darren Wilson’s cock and bull story at face value and INSIST that Michael Brown attacked Wilson, and that Wilson was in fear for his life.
Sure. Right. The armed guy was at the disadvantage because blah. Gotcha.
Schlemazel
@J:
I assume a part of it is just that but still have expected some laid off worker to look to take revenge on his boss. Hell, if they are total Paul-tards they might shoot some elected officials. Its the total acceptance without violence that surprises me. My real concern is that if the dam breaks instead of being horrified and repelled more peope will join in.
Schlemazel
@Citizen_X:
It would all be a lot simpler if he had just said what he meant – “BULLSHIT!” but then what would the pedantic have to bitch about?
Baud
@Schlemazel:
Don’t you mean “BOLLSHIT!”?
Schlemazel
@Baud:
Ballshirt? Like the one I wear in the outfield during games?
Baud
@Schlemazel:
You a playa?
tybee
left field?
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est: Ha. Thanks. This flu brain is a real thing. My fingers keep mixing up words on the keyboard. I’m not seeing mistakes I type. It’s weird. Figure it must have something to do with the flu. I hope so, at least. Otherwise I need to see a neurologist. It feels like my brain is acting weird.
Schlemazel
@tybee:
my normal position is left out.
Joey Maloney
@Violet: I really think there’s a market opportunity for a Sunday show that isn’t a shill for the GOP.
Three words: Melissa Harris-Perry.
TOP123
Certainly something should mark this date and what happened on this day.
raven
@TOP123: Tuesday is 10 years since we found Bohdi.
D58826
@skerry: iIt’s pretty bad that in order to show that Bush was a hands on president, his brain(Rove) has to state that he was all in on the war crimes.
Violet
@Joey Maloney: Are you saying she’s already a Sunday show of that ilk or that she could/should be one?
I’ve watched her a few times but I just can’t get into her show. Not sure why.
Joey Maloney
@Violet: I’m saying she’s definitely not a GOP shill. She talks about stuff and gives a platform to voices you won’t find anywhere else in the bobblehead ecosystem (with the exception of her inexplicable tolerance for Avik Roy).
She’s an academic and sometimes the show can get pretty dense for tv, sometimes they go off in the weeds…but when’s the last time you heard someone in that time slot use the word “intersectionality” correctly – or at all?
Violet
Top headline on Google News: “Dick Cheney Would Torture Again.”
srv
@Princess: She’s winning over the right too:
SiubhanDuinne
@TOP123:
There are definitely 26 families in Connecticut who are well aware of the date.
Still breaks my heart, and still infuriates the ever-loving blue-eyed fuck out of me that we haven’t, as a nation, done diddly squat about getting a better handle on our out-of-control gun culture.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven: Now that’s a cheerful anniversary! I remember that adorable puppy photo you posted — I think actually on the day you found him. Such a cute pup, and such a gorgeous handsome dog, yes he is, yes he is.
(Edited to fix a ridiculous autocorrect thing.)
Kay
@Comrade Dread:
He got retraining money, displaced worker training funding, which he will think is to retrain displaced workers (like he’s about to be) when 1. the new trade deal passes, or 2. Obama’s “mass amnesty” takes place.
Democrats will think it’s for workers displaced by the upcoming trade deal and Republicans will think it’s for workers displaced by immigrants.
Violet
@srv: Wouldn’t say that’s “winning over the right.” That’s Ingraham saying she thinks Warren did something smart politically by giving the speech. Not the same as praising the content of the speech.
Baud
@srv:
You know what I really love about this whole thing. Democrats got absolutely no credit for passing Dodd-Frank in 2010, but the GOP was able to get one provision repealed after four years of trying, and Warren is now a big hero.
This is not a knock against Warren, who I like and appreciate. It’s a knock at our whole anti-Democratic political culture.
D58826
@Violet: And to think someone was probably bumped out of line so that this unrepentant monster could get a heart transplant.
Violet
@Joey Maloney: I do like that she brings in people that aren’t seen elsewhere in the bonblehead universe. I think using words like “intersectionality” is not the kind of thing that brings in the big numbers of viewers. There’s a place for her show, but it isn’t the kind of show that is going to have an impact on how Sunday shows are done in general.
Still think there’s a gaping hole where a different type of Sunday show could be. One that could address very different topics that appeal to more average viewers. Right now they all look the same, even MHP has a panel show. Why have so many panelists? That looks exactly the same as every other show on every cable network all week long.
ruemara
Just in case you’re still on, Cole, I sent you an email, re: Rosie & the vet’s.
Hungry Joe
Stalin said he was okay with executing 99 innocent people if the hundredth was guilty.
Dick Cheney, today, on innocent people being detained and tortured: “I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. And our objective is to get the guys who did 9/11 and it is to avoid another attack against the United States.”
Cheney would have gone far in the Soviet Union. He’d have positively thrived in the ’30s.
trollhattan
@Schlemazel:
Change the name to “The Tire Swing.”
srv
The rest of the story:
@Violet:
Next up, Obama Triangulates for the Asian Trade Pact.
@Baud:
Everyone has their place in this performance.
Violet
@D58826: Can you imagine if you found out that your loved one’s heart went to Dick Cheney? I really hope the person who died and gave their heart to Cheney, and the family of that person who had to authorize the organ donation, were die-hard Republicans. Not that we need any more of those, but otherwise it would have to be devastating. If they weren’t, I hope that privacy laws are strong enough so the donor family never finds out who got their loved one’s heart. I simply can’t imagine the horror of that.
Ruckus
@Schlemazel:
That may well, and for sure good, be what happens, it’s not what they think will happen. Remember they also think their ideals are the best and we can see how that doesn’t work out for anyone but them.
Baud
@srv:
I don’t know what that means, but I don’t really care.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Baud: ICYMI, SmartyPants on the bankster provision:
Makes sense.
We’ve gotta keep an eye on them, but crying “Wolf!!” when it’s actually a fox there isn’t going to help us.
Cheers,
Scott.
Violet
@srv:
Oh, good Lord that’s stupid. You sell it to conservative voters because Republican. Go team! Duh. There’s always a spin doctor who can turn it into something sellable to Republicans. If she’s talking actual issues and positions on issues, she’s insane if she thinks that matters to Republican voters.
beltane
@Hungry Joe: Cheney would have gone far in the Soviet Union. He’d have positively thrived in the ’30s.
Dick Cheney went very far in the USA and he positively thrived in the 2000s. What does that say about the time and place we live in?
Gene108
@Violet:
The problem with “government works” in the modern era is you turn yourself and naybe you Party into a target for folks who want to take you down a peg.
Any actual corruption, anywhere in your government or by your Party invalidates the 100 good things you did to make “government work” or even the appearance of impropriety will hurt you.
Bill Clinton wanted to show government can work for people, but stuff he got working properly, like FEMA, got drowned out because of White Water and Travelgate and getting a haircut on Air Force One a LAX.
Ruckus
@Violet:
This.
It doesn’t matter what the shit sandwich is, it will be sold as the greatest advancement in conservative action since, well, last week. And it won’t matter one fucking bit to the general repub voter that in the end they get fucked over because they will have moved on to the next shovel full of bullshit by then and the last shovel full will be sold to them as dem obstruction. It’s full circle bullshit. Or the worlds largest circle jerk.
Baud
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I don’t know whether I agree that that was the GOP’s strategy. All I know is that the passion I see coming out know simply wasn’t there before the election.
WereBear
@Violet: Geez. Nice and stark.
I will make it my own new talking point. Thanks!
Mike G
@Baud:
Years ago there was a guy selling rubber bricks for throwing at the TV. Might come in handy.
Violet
@Gene108: I hear you, but that was 20 years ago or so. Times have changed. I’m not good at crafting such messages but there are people out there who are. I think there is a big opportunity for those people to come up with a comprehensive way of pointing out how government works for people.
Maybe the thing to do is to do what Republicans do, which is to target their strengths. Those seem to be old people and the military. Since that’s where most of our government money goes anyway, talk about how Social Security is government and it works. The military is government and it works. A veiled threat that Republicans don’t like government and that means they don’t like old people and the military wouldn’t hurt either. Again, I’m not the type to craft the message but I see the gaping hole where the message could work. Would have to be done right.
We’ve been “trusting” big business for a long time. It’s old and tired and do people really trust big business anymore? I don’t know but I do think finding a way to sell government to people as a good thing could go a long way toward changing the discussion.
Hungry Joe
@beltane: My point (indirectly) exactly.
Sooner or later, in the Soviet Union, Stalin would have suspected him of something and had him shot. Here and now he gets a fresh ticker and goes on “Face the Nation.” Progress. Of sorts. I guess.
Chris T.
@Comrade Dread: For the average Republican voter, it’s: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you. Fool me three times, shame on you. Fool me four times, shame on you…”
Kyle
@Schlemazel:
With all the guns around in this country I’ve often wondered that myself. When Europe was going through urban terrorist convulsions in the 70s, bankers and major businessmen were prime targets.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Herrhausen
But in the US there is a relentless media industry dedicated to redirecting the anger of the screwed at ethnic minorities, foreigners and ‘libruls’.
Kryptik, A Man Without a Country
@Chris T.:
More like ‘Fool me once, shame on liberals! Fool me twice, shame on liberals! Fool me three times…wait, I’m getting fooled? DAMN THOSE LIBERALS!’
Botsplainer
@SiubhanDuinne:
My Sunday paper (we just started taking it again) was wrapped in one of those thin front fold, back full size two page gun ads.
That’s new – I never saw gun shops have that kind of ad-buying juice before.
What’s more, prices were dirt cheap, especially for gay ass camo clad .22 “assault-style” rifles that are plastic toys for fat neckbeards whose asthma and obsessive masturbation guaranteed that they never served. I could pick one up with a banana clip for under $275.00.
Kryptik, A Man Without a Country
@Botsplainer:
It might not be gun shops having more monetary power to buy ads, but the fact that there’s generally no stigma about it anymore. Everyone loves the fuck out of guns now and they want more, more, more. Guns are the only sacrosanct freedom in this country anymore, and polling finally bearing out that the country absolutely wants more more more gun rights, and fuck gun control, it’s the super evil.
Newtown was a catalyst, just for a race in the complete opposite direction of what it should’ve been.
Kathleen
@Violet: You have stated my own feelings quite well.
Kathleen
@ira-NY: Because that would be too confusing, given George and Chuck also preside over the same show.
TOP123
@SiubhanDuinne: I remember this anniversary. Was not far (couple of towns over) from Newtown when it happened. I think particularly of the silence and empty streets. There was worry there was an active shooter in a car, on the highway. All that is nothing now, of course. What no one apparently thinks is worth remembering today is the shattered children… I remember O., eyes as wide as quarters, that day after. Her friends had died. She was a first grader.
Kathleen
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Thank you for sharing that. Smartypants has done some excellent analysis of this bill.
gene108
@Violet:
It is not about delivering a message. Crime rates and teen pregnancy rates are at historic lows. High school graduation rates and college enrollment rates are at record highs. There’s so many positives happening around our society that there’s something out of whack that people have such low hopes for the future that it will take more than a message to change people’s voting habits; there has to be some major shift in people’s trust of institutions – banks, police, etc. – that I do not see happening anytime soon. There’s a real belief that the kids today will be worse off than their parents and grandparents.
There’s so much inbred distrust and despair in people these days that they cannot accept the idea that working collectively will provide you with more, in the long run, than defending what you have against everyone else because folks think we’re in a zero-sum game, where any gain by “those people” comes at our expense.
Therefore the IGMFY philosophy of conservatism resonates with people. Protect what (little) you have at all costs against others trying to take things away from you, like the government, otherwise you’ll lose what (little) you have and will become dependent on government handouts.
FlipYrWhig
@gene108: I’m not sure that conservative philosophy is particularly resonating with people — I’m more sure that liberalism and the general concept of using the government and its resources to improve people’s lives are _not_ resonating with people. I feel like there are a lot of conservatives, about the same as there always were; but then there are a lot of shoulder-shrugging “meh”-sayers where liberals used to be.
dww44
@Iowa Old Lady: I agree with you. I’ve been a faithful watcher of those weekend MSNBC shows and now that Kornacki is focused only on the optics of politics and moving himself to the he said/she said kind of journalism, I’ve totally tuned him out and favor Melissa Harris Perry’s show over his, although, methinks her “nerdland” stuff has gotten a bit old and gimmicky.
voncey
Actually, Cruz’s shenanigans allowed Reid to tee up votes on four additional judicial nominees that the Dems might not have had time to confirm. So Republicans aren’t really happy about that. Though Dems certainly are. Thanks Ted!
xian
@Violet: i’d watch (the tivo)