.
Well, this should cause plenty of soiled diapers among the stalwarts of the Wingnut Wurlizter. Per the NYTimes:
HONOLULU — President Obama plans to spend the weeks leading up to his State of the Union speech traveling across the country to promote different themes from it, a new approach by the commander in chief to the annual address to Congress.
In previous years, the administration waited until the day before the speech to disclose what the president planned to talk about, hoping that the element of surprise increased its news value and reach. Typically, Mr. Obama went on the road the day after the address, like the two previous presidents, to push his agenda.
But starting on Wednesday, according to the White House, Mr. Obama will begin a three-day, three-state trip in which he will lay out new executive actions and legislative policy proposals for higher education (Tennessee), housing (Arizona) and jobs (Michigan)…
The administration has not said whether Mr. Obama plans to do any additional traveling after the speech. But officials said they had changed their approach because they wanted the president to contrast with, and perhaps overshadow, Republicans, who will be taking over control of the Senate when the new Congress convenes on Tuesday…
“The president is eager to get to work, and looks forward to working with the new Congress on policies that will make sure middle-class Americans are sharing in the economic recovery,” the White House said. “There are a number of issues we could make progress on, but the president is clear that he will not let this Congress undo important protections gained — particularly in areas of health care, Wall Street reform and the environment.”
I believe this will be interpreted by the GOP as “YOUR CHEERIOS, I AM PEEING IN THEM”.
***********
Apart from donning our political ear protectors, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the weekend / the holidays?
Amir Khalid
I shall be sitting at home, stuck here with no cash and no access to it — having lost my wallet with my MyKad (ID) and ATM cards. (I have my bank savings book, but to use that to withdraw money I must wait until Monday, after I get a temporary note from the National Registration Department to sub for the MyKad.) Das mag ich nicht.
TriassicSands
Obama going on the road to promote his agenda? Sounds like high crimes and misdemeanors to me.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: National ID card? Sounds kinda commie to me.
Debbie(aussie)
If Raven is around, I have a question. You mentioned the other day that in Viet Nam you drove/with convoys. My uncle was conscripted and was a truck driver, 67/68. Just curious if the teams were mixed (Aussies and usians)or kept separate? Sorry my memory is not good enough to remember when you were there.
OzarkHillbilly
46 more days till the holiest day of the year.
sm*t cl*de
a new approach by the commander in chief
I am shocked to see uniform-fetishism from the NYT.
mai naem
@Amir Khalid: Wow, you keep no cash stashed away at all? One thing I learned from listening to the teevee post-Katrina or whatever disaster is to keep a little cash in case the electricity is out and ATMs don’t work. I still haven’t done the copies of important documents though but I know where my passport is and I figure that is the what i need for pretty much anything else.
Tommy
@TriassicSands: How about it. I think a politician, and I mean both parties BTW, going and talking to the public directly seems to be their second most important job next to you know passing laws!
Keith G
The best defense is an in-your-face offense.
@Tommy: In late 2008, I figured that such behavior would be common in the new government. I figured wrong.
Tommy
@mai naem: I know I should do that, but I don’t. Now I am not a hoarder, but I have a pretty large pantry and each time I shop I tend to buy 1-2 more things than I need for my meals that week. Do that for the seven years I’ve lived in my house and my pantry is full and I now have stuff in a closet that should be used for coats and stuff. Combine this with the fact I am an avid camper and I can clean just about any water and do many others things, push comes to shove I could live for a long, long, long time :).
Amir Khalid
@mai naem:
My cash stash was in my wallet.
@BillinGlendaleCA:
The original identfication card (or IC, as they were called) was introduced here by the British imperialists during the Emergency, as an anti-communist measure.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: See, I knew commies were involved.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Can’t write a check* to a friend and have him/her use the ATM on his/her account to deposit it and take out cash to give to you?
*or cheque, as the case may be
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
Wouldn’t work for me.
Peale
@Amir Khalid: think of it as living an intentionally simplified life. Your loss can be considered heroic that way.
raven
@Debbie(aussie)When I was there RAR was mostly around Lai Khe which was the Area of Operations of the US 1st Infantry Division just Northwest of Saigon and then down at Nui Dat near the coast. It was not a large presence buy they did suffer over 3,000 wounded and nearlt 500 KIA’s. What I know about them is that they were very tough, well disciplined, trained and motivated troops. At one point early in the war there was talk of having RAR troops train US troops in jungle warfare but asshole Westy wouldn’t hear of it. Most of their equipment excpet their small arms was US so he probably drove the same truck as me, M35A1 mutifuel.
eta
I’ll be damned, they have a list of EVERY Land Rover that served in Vietnam!
http://www.remlr.com/ARN/vietnam-landrover.php
TriassicSands
@Tommy:
Indeed. In fact, I wish Obama had done more and done it better. It doesn’t seem to be one of his strengths. I still wonder if he’d made a major effort to explain and sell the PPACA back in 2010 if it wouldn’t be a lot more popular today. It seems like he allowed Fox News and the Republicans to define it. Today, it seems clear that if many Americans who say they don’t like the law understood it better, their opinions would be a lot more positive. For example, the individual mandate may not be the easiest thing to love, but when I’ve explained to people that you can’t have pre-existing condition coverage without it, they’d rather accept the mandate than give up that coverage.
Baud
@mai naem:
I don’t keep a stash either. I probably should, especially now that the GOP is on charge of Congress.
Baud
@TriassicSands:
I don’t think it would have made a bit of difference, IMHO.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: That cake got baked in the summer of 2009.
raven
@Debbie(aussie): More to your point, I was there from Oct 68-Sept 69 and the units were, indeed, separate although things like air and arty support could be mixed.
JPL
When the GOP loses, they have a mandate to protect the minority and when they win, they have a mandate. If the President is on the campaign trail, it means he won’t compromise.
@Baud: I don’t even keep a stash in my wallet.
Amir Khalid
@TriassicSands:
The Republican party, its Confederate tendency in particular, was busy at the time whipping up a great deal of personal hate towards Obama. I’m not sure that sailing directly against that wind would have done anything but make the haters hate Obama and Democrats all the more.
@Baud:
Funnily enough, I just found a small stash of cash: a US$5 note and five ones, or about 35 ringgit. Not enough to be useful, alas.
OzarkHillbilly
@TriassicSands: Most people, when told they are exempt from the individual mandate (because they get their insurance thru their employer) suddenly find that it is not that onerous after all.
BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: In the past, when the President went out to sell his policies, the Republicans said he was just campaigning(though St. Ronald called it going over the heads of Washington when he did it). So what would Obama be campaigning for at this point?
JPL
@Amir Khalid: It’s sad that you lost your wallet and maybe it will still turn up.
At least you only have half a day to wait until Monday.
Zinsky
Look for a dreadful start to 2015 with the Republicans controlling Congress – completely pointless and unnecessary legislation like the Keystone XL pipeline, more unneeded tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and ramming the TPP through. Of course in 2016 we can look forward to a continuation of either the Bush or Clinton monarchies, as if there weren’t other qualified people among the other 300 million Americans. Dreadful, just dreadful. The Founding Fathers would be so ashamed…
JPL
@BillinGlendaleCA: My guess is minimum wage. I assume he’ll continue to call out the repubs for not passing an immigration bill.
Iowa Old Lady
@Amir Khalid: Oh. I was patting myself on the back for having a cash stash and realized that of course it’s in my wallet. Duh.
@Zinsky: We spent the last week with my SIL and her husband in Florida. They were betting on Jeb being the R candidate. I was hoping their views were distorted by living where he’d been governor.
gogol's wife
@TriassicSands:
Go fly a kite.
JPL
In the past I made copies of all various cards in my wallet. It might be time to update that list. I only have one credit card but there are various medical cards and other items that would be nice to keep track of.
It’s a rainy day in GA.
danielx
@Tommy:
Got to disagree about what a pol’s most important job is. Ask any of them what they spend the most time on, and they’ll tell you it’s raising money. Which doesn’t leave all that much time for talking to the public…how much contact do you reckon the average senator has with anyone making less than six figures a year, aside from his or her staff?
There are members of Congress who are interested in legislating; equally there are members of Congress, Ted Cruz for example, who have no interest in passing legislation because a) as with Ted, that’s not what they are there for; their offices are a platform for self promotion; and b) passing legislation usually involves hard work and compromise. It’s a hell of a lot easier to obstruct (meaningful) legislation (especially in the Senate) than it is to pass legislation…
Peale
@TriassicSands: Grover Norquist is smarter than whomever is the equivalent on the Democratic side. Oh, we don’t have and equivalent and don’t want one, I guess. But on their side you had an endless number of personalities to fill up the air time. Our side has one president who can only have so many town halls and a bunch of waffle making machines.
Almost seven years in, and our team still takes the summers off, like they did in 2010, and then comes back from vacation to find that the republicans have turned sentiment against them. It happens every summer.
Schlemazel
Here in Minneapolis a deaf man was shot to death on a city bus a couple years ago. He was signing and the little Einsteins decided that ASL were gang signs and he was ‘dissing’ them.
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
OzarkHillbilly
@Zinsky: I rather suspect they would find the regression to the mean somewhat gratifying.
Baud
Karnaki announced that Huckabee quit his Fox show last night because he is considering a presidential run.
Zinsky
@Iowa Old Lady: Count on Jebbie being the nominee in 2016. Who else do they have? Republicans would vote for Satan, if he had an (R) after his name! As dreadful as that is, Democrats aren’t much better, putting up the 67 year old Hillary Clinton as some sort of savior. Pathetic. I am very ashamed to be an American as I look across the political landscape.
Mustang Bobby
Good morning from South Florida where the peacocks are strutting their stuff and being annoying.
Speaking of annoying, Steve Kornacki is making a big deal about Mike Huckabee running. BFD.
ETA: Baud, you and I… jinks!
Debbie(aussie)
@raven: my uncle never talked about it very much. I did here him say that he was in the lead truck/vehicle with a weapon on board. I also don’t think he was as young as you at 22/23, conscripted by birthdate, 25th December.
Amir Khalid
@Mustang Bobby:
Huckabee’s put on weight again, so I hear. He’ll need to go on another diet first, won’t he?
Baud
@Zinsky:
Democrats are better than Republicans.
Baud
@Mustang Bobby:
FWIW, you spelled his name correctly.
Mustang Bobby
@Amir Khalid: He and Chris Christie can both do ads for Nutrisystem after their campaigns crater.
Mustang Bobby
There’s an article in this morning’s NY Times about how the Republicans are planning to use the courts and activist judges to overturn the president’s agenda.
Skipping over the shattered glass of the Irony Meter, they are saying it’s totally different than when they objected to the courts and activist judges making the laws because shut up that’s why.
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
I’m really sorry this happened to you.
@Mustang Bobby:
I think he could take the nomination. The guy has a way of saying the crazy without sounding like he’s actually crazy. He has some aspects of his record that will not please the teapublicans but he can talk his way around them. He came in second in the 2008 field and was smart enough not to run in ’12.
Baud
@Mustang Bobby:
Not really news.
Schlemazel
@Amir Khalid:
Maybe just have his lap band put back on.
Amir Khalid
@MomSense:
Thanks. I’m over the worst of the panic now.
Tokyokie
@Amir Khalid: Sorry you’re missing your wallet. The last time I lost mine was when somebody stole my book pack, and I was more upset about losing my prescription mirrored-glass (not plastic) Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses and an old Norwegian textbook, neither of which would have been of any use to the thief.
Zinsky
@Baud: Marginally, perhaps. Watch Obama approve the Keystone XL pipeline, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and more tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations over the next six months. Then, come back to this forum and tell me all about how Democrats are so much better than Republicans on policy issues. At least the Democrats don’t want to re-instate slavery – yet…
TriassicSands
@Mustang Bobby:
But, but, but…America’s never before had such a tyrannical president shredding the Constitution with every stroke of his pen. If only the people had awarded them the 2/3 majority in the Senate they need to convict Obama after the House impeached him, the poor, downtrodden GOP wouldn’t need to resort to the courts to save the Republic. They’re doing this to save FREEDOM!
And their real prize may come if and when the radical five kill the health care subsidies from the federal exchange. It’s hard to even imagine the joy that will surge through the Republican Party if they can succeed in “freeing” millions of people from their health care coverage by stripping away the subsidies they get through the federal exchange.
What a victory for freedom that will be.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: I’m one of those who believed he never was on a diet so much as he got an operation. I base this on skim-reading his diet book, which was unlike any other I had read.
He was lying.
I suspect he’s a stress-eater and if he runs, terrible things will happen to him. Since he’s got a pair of some of the meanest Baptist-Preacher eyes I’ve ever shuddered under, I also tend to think he’ll deserve it.
Mind you, I’m not wishing it on him. It’s just that Republicans won’t accept reality even when it’s beating them with a cricket bat. So they won’t change course.
OzarkHillbilly
@Zinsky: Difference between Dems and GOP: the Affordable Care Act.
Baud
@Zinsky:
More than just marginally. And if Obama does all of those things, I would still come back and tell you how much better Democrats are than Republicans. Your ilk seems to think that any imperfections among Democrats erases all of the distinctions between the parties. That attitude is a large part of why we see so much apathy and why our government is in the state that it’s in. People like you are corporate America’s best friends, but you give the appearance of being anti-corporate, but you encourage the type of hopelessness and despair that makes it much easier and cheaper for corporations to wield influence.
Zinsky
@OzarkHillbilly: You mean Romneycare? Sorry, that was a Republican idea. A real Democrat would have pushed for universal single-payer health coverage for everyone.
Baud
So the mobile site still has Newsmax while the website how has Wonkette. Weird.
Baud
@Zinsky:
Dammit, DougJ. I can usually smell your sockpuppets a mile away. You got me this time. Kudos.
OzarkHillbilly
@Zinsky: Romney paraded the ACA as his great success in 2012? I want some of the drugs you’re on.
debbie
Are the Republicans still thinking about disinviting the President for the State of the Union?
Hildebrand
@debbie: Ooh, I hope this comes to pass. That would be such an epic tantrum that even the media might have to cover it. That, and it would give the President a smile and a glint in his eye that would last the rest of his term.
Schlemazel
@debbie:
I wish. the President could still give the address on national TV but we could avoid the phony applause/heckling and not have to see that asshole shake his head when BHO suggests that unlimited campaign cash is gonna f up elections.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
The NY Times has an interesting article on Yanukovych’s last hours as Ukraine’s leader.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@Schlemazel:
Not to mention the opportunity for a pool on who would be the first to shout out “Liar!”.
PurpleGirl
@Mustang Bobby: There are two or three peacocks on the grounds of the the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. They are allowed to roam freely. I was told by a caretaker that they can be a pain. They make noise and go after each other. And leave messes that need to be cleaned up.
Phylllis
@OzarkHillbilly: A man after my own heart.
debbie
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
It was also nice to read Douthat’s acknowledgement of his 2014 mis-predictions, specifically on Ebola. I hope others (like Glenn Beck who predicted 18,000 American deaths by January 1, 2015) will publicly acknowledge their errors and credit the administration for actually protecting the country without hysterics.
Schlemazel
@debbie:
Yeah and I wish I had a unicorn that shot rainbows out its butt. Each is equally likely.
PurpleGirl
@Tokyokie: I know what you mean about having other things taken. I once had tote bag stolen. Losing the money I had in my wallet was hard but also in the tote bag was a crochet hook collection. I had about dozen hand-carved hooks and didn’t remember where I had gotten them, so I couldn’t replace them. It took me several years to go to yarn fairs and get other hooks.
AxelFoley
@Zinsky: Yeah, we’ll be watching. Where will you be when he doesn’t do all that shit you just spewed?
Take a hike, ass.
GregB
With the return of a full Republican contingent in the NH House of Representatives the debate has been renewed on whether to allow concealed and open carry of firearms in the General Court.
They ended that policy back in the 70’s when a Republican Representative threatened the Speaker of the House with a gun.
Good times.
Betty Cracker
@PurpleGirl: There are peacocks at St. John the Divine? I went there early one morning in July when I was in NYC for my sister’s wedding. Didn’t see any peacocks, but I would have been delighted to. They are loud and messy and stupid, but I like them anyway.
The house we had before our current abode was across a river from a neighborhood with peafowl. They were several hundred yards away, but we could hear them clearly. Some people complained about it, but I thought it was nice, maybe because they weren’t TOO close.
Eric S.
@OzarkHillbilly: so roughly 2/18. Around that time I think Spring Training. What do you got? (Hopefully I’m not actually insulting a religion of which I’m ignorant)
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
Some of them may be thinking about it, but nahgonnahappen:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/12/19/speaker-boehner-invites-president-obama-to-deliver-state-of-the-union-next-month/
Josie
@WereBear: I agree with you about his eyes. To me, he radiates barely concealed meanness. I would hate to be subject to his rule.
Tokyokie
@PurpleGirl: I occasionally look for a replacement for the Norwegian textbook (I preferred it grammatical explanations to those in other textbooks I’ve picked up), but it was long out of print when it was purloined, and it’s not like Norwegian textbooks are exactly high-demand items. But the worst one was a wastebasket I left behind in an apartment. I returned the next day to try to retrieve it from the new occupants, but they denied having it, despite the landlord saying he hadn’t removed it. I would have gladly bought them a replacement wastebasket, and I can’t imagine a wastebasket découpaged by my mother with old pictures of my favorite baseball players had much meaning for a couple of foreign students.
Zinsky
@Baud: Pardon me for pointing this out, but you have no idea what “my ilk” is. I know for a fact that I have done more work for and provided more financial support to the Democratic Party in the past 35 years than most people on this blog. People like you and Ozark Hillbilly and AxelFoley that reflexively attack anyone who questions the DLC and DCCC wing of the Democratic Party are the people who have damaged the Democratic brand, perhaps beyond repair. I attend every local Democratic precinct caucus, campaign, door knock and write letters in support of true FDR Democrats. What do you do? Sit on your butt and post snarky comments on blogs like this? That accomplishes exactly nothing in advancing progressive causes. Until you get active and promote causes like universal, single payer health coverage, defunding the military, implementing higher marginal tax rates on the wealthy and corporations, and greatly boosting public funding for education and mass transit, you can keep your “Republican Lite” ideas and “your ilk” comments to yourself. Thank you.
Frankensteinbeck
@TriassicSands:
He did. He can’t get credit for it. Website, speeches, ads, online videos – he did everything I can imagine.
Nobody paid a damn bit of attention. Pundits and Republicans (but I repeat myself) on national television spent the time talking about how the Tea Party Revolution represented the true spirit of the nation, open-minded independents who realized that the government had gone too far. They would sometimes mention that ‘death panels’ were a slight exaggeration.
Liberals, the uninformed, and this blog took a brief glance at the information flood from the White House, then forgot about it and went on with their lives.
dmsilev
@Zinsky: ACA brought health care into reach for something like 20 million people who previously couldn’t afford it, between the expansion of Medicaid and the insurance exchanges. Is it perfect? No. Is it as good as single-payer would have been? No. Was single-payer at all plausible to get in 2009? No. (If you disagree, please explain how you get Joe Lieberman to vote for cloture on that bill). Given that last ‘no’, the ACA is a hell of a lot better than what we would have gotten if the approach had been ‘single-payer or bust’, which would have been ‘bust’.
AliceBlue
@Tokyokie:
Many years ago, our house was broken into during the day while we were at work. Judging from the stuff that was taken it was probably teenagers (some pieces of costume jewelry, bottles of rootbeer from the fridge), but they also stole the one thing was irreplaceable–a walking stick that had belonged to my husband’s great grandfather. It had a gold top with his monogram on it. I put an ad in the paper saying that if it was returned no questions would be asked, but we never saw it again.
Baud
@Zinsky:
I personally wish you would do less if you can’t deal with the Democratic Party as it exists in the real world. People with your attitude are destructive to our side. No one who actually is as active as you say you are would ever try to treat the Democratic and Republican Parties as moral equals.
MomSense
@Frankensteinbeck:
Thank you for pointing out that the President was messaging like crazy. Democrats do not have the media reach that the Republicans have. The media were completely dishonest in their portrayals of the grass roots activities both for and against the ACA. We had a rally in Portland, Maine with about 800 people and yet the media went and interviewed the 4 angry tea partiers’ counter protest and gave them equal time.
PurpleGirl
@Betty Cracker: Yup. I was there for a crafts fair held in one of the accessory churches and they were walking around. A caretaker came by and we talked a bit about them. I thought it was neat to have them there. Since the grounds are fairly large, you never know where you’ll see them.
MomSense
@dmsilev:
I don’t think Zinsky is aware of all the patient protections and health insurance regulations that were a part of the ACA that weren’t even a part of RomneyCare in Mass.
The Republicans messaged against the individual mandate (which was actually in their original proposals and in RomneyCare as part of their individual responsibility schtick) but what they really didn’t like were the end to life time caps, pre-existing condition exlusions, and especially the medical loss ratio.
PurpleGirl
I double checked the Cathedral web site and found this:
http://www.stjohndivine.org/about/grounds/birds-bees
WereBear
@MomSense: And wait! There’s more!
Just read a book about how electronic health records, adjusted payments, and evidence-based treatments don’t just save money. They result in far better health care and fewer mistakes.
Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear: But it’s not single payer or even public option, so it’s bad. Duh.
Frankensteinbeck
@MomSense:
‘Romneycare’ was passed by Democrats against Romney’s repeated vetos anyway. Democrats had a supermajority and overruled him.
ThresherK
Went to a “starving comic book artist” to-do, small-scale, in Boston maybe 10 years ago. Keith Knight was there, who I’d been reading, and also Tak Toyoshima.
Hell of a good time. Made me feel less of a dorky white suburbanite hearing what these kids (not juveniles, but much younger than me) had to deal with and how they manage to be good artists expressing this space they occupy, while not letting it eat them up inside. Who says all good creative sorts are tortured souls?
Frankensteinbeck
@MomSense:
The national media is lousy at convincing people, but it’s fantastic at controlling what’s discussed. If they pretend it didn’t happen, hardly anybody knows about it. If they obsess over it, so does everyone else. Everyone here knew ISIS and ebola were bullshit topics, but they dominated Balloon Juice in the month up to the election, and in that time I watched the commenters sink into depression and despair. The topic went from kicking those asshole Republicans out to it hardly being worth voting for a country so stupid.
And then the day after the election ISIS and ebola disappeared. I hate conspiracy theories, but it’s so damn hard to see that as accidental.
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck:
Seriously? I think Richard Mayhew’s Obamacare posts are some of the most informative and positive coverage of the ACA I’ve seen anywhere.
Citizen_X
@ThresherK: Keith Knight is awesome. And I agree completely with the message with which he indoctrinated his young son*: “There are only THREE Star Wars movies.”**
*Sorry, too lazy to find a link to that strip.
**Looks like there might be a fourth this year, cross your fingers.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I think he was talking about 2009, when the ACA was being debated. I wasn’t here then, but daily kos was awful.
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: And if you’re suggesting that Balloon Juice was part of some sort of conspiracy to demoralize Democrats before the midterms, that’s just so fucking stupid it makes me wonder if someone hijacked your nym.
ThresherK
@Citizen_X: Heehee. Yes, I forgot that bit. Great way to raise a child, if I do say so myself.
MomSense
@Frankensteinbeck:
The media push despair and fear before midterm elections and then we are shocked, shocked when voter turnout is low.
I read something about just the number of Ebola mentions on all the networks including Fox before and after the election. I don’t think you would be a conspiracy theorist to wonder why those all consuming threats were completely forgotten the day after the election.
@Betty Cracker:
I think he is talking about the 2009-2010 coverage on this blog and others.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
I think here as well as other lefty blogs we do a lot of pointing and mocking but not a lot of discussion about GOTV efforts, etc. It was pretty doom and gloom here. Not saying it’s a conspiracy here, just that progressives don’t do a great job at promotion.
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
A) He wasn’t posting back in the early period during/after the ACA was sold.
B) I am referring to the president’s messaging campaign. Most of the actual information people got here from was Ezra Klein. The president’s extensive campaign was barely mentioned and then forgotten.
@Betty Cracker:
No. I am suggesting that they are so effective at controlling what is discussed that even Balloon Juice fell for it.
ruemara
@Betty Cracker: they are. But this was about selling the ACA, which is before Richard.
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
And for the ‘conspiracy’ part, once we were talking about it, that topic did exactly what the Republicans (and let’s face it, the pundit class is overwhelmingly Republican) in the media would want it to do.
henqiguai
@debbie (59):
No, Boehner has already issued the ‘traditional’ invitation.
chopper
@Zinsky:
Obummer is coming for social security! ANY DAY NOW
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
You know the drill,
Better is the downfall of the perfect.
shelley
@PurpleGirl: There’s always something eerie about peacock cries
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Three of them: Jim, Phil, and Harry.
Kathleen
@Peale: Why don’t you blame Obama? (Intended for Amir – I will blame Obama for not replying to correct post).
Cervantes
@Baud:
There’s a real question in there somewhere — but simplistic language is a good way to avoid it.
BubbaDave
@Zinsky:
So… you favor interning Japanese-Americans, excluding African-Americans from Social Security, turning a blind eye to vote suppression in the South, and letting conservative economists almost wreck an economic recovery with a premature swing to austerity?
No, wait, let me guess– FDR was constrained by the political realities and unable to fully implement his progressive agenda, while Obama is a closet Republican who is occasionally dragged in a more progressive direction, kicking and screaming all the way. Right?
Kathleen
@Betty Cracker: The Cincinnati Opera used to perform at the Zoo during the summer. The operas turned into peacock sing alongs.
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: Then the Swiss, the Dutch, and Japanese must all be doing it wrong, as none of those countries has single payer either. Granted Holland used to but they changed over and are thinking of going back.
ruemara
@BubbaDave: Not THAT FDR. The one that exists in our fantasies. The bold one, who did everything progressive with speeches, initiatives and a giant wang slung twice round his neck and trail over one shoulder. You know, like President Howard Zinn would be.
I swear, Samwise fantasied less about how he’d be a hero for the ages if he took the ring.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yatsuno: No, that’s different because REASONS.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@BubbaDave:
Plus FDR had Denocratic majorities in both houses of Congress for his entire time in office, which is a tiny factoid that the Obama bashers tend to carefully leave out of their comparisons.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Not sure who these “bashers” are.
In any event, historical comparisons are not trivially easy. For example, the House changed hands, Democrat to Republican, with the elections of 1946 and 2010. Compare how the two presidents, both Democrats, reacted. See what you can conclude about subsequent events.
Tree With Water
“The president is eager to get to work, and looks forward to working with the new Congress on policies that will make sure middle-class Americans are sharing in the economic recovery.. ”.
Why is it that the welfare of poor is so rarely spoken of with the same concern as the health of the middle class? While the differences between the two parties are real, that’s not the case when invoking ‘class rhetoric’ (so to speak). They’re darn near peas in a pod on that score.
Cervantes
@ruemara:
“Bold”? You can say a lot of things about FDR, and they did — but no one who saw him, e. g., try to pack the Supreme Court would suggest that he was timid.
Cervantes
@Tree With Water:
Because doing so costs votes.
Never mind that, for several reasons, the poor tend not to vote; almost everyone who votes in this country votes as if they themselves are in “the middle class.”
Why did Willie Sutton rob banks?
FlipYrWhig
@Tree With Water: Because the poor don’t like to think of themselves as poor, but middle-class.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Yes he did have Democratic majorities to back him many times, but that support was not automatic. They didn’t back the president all the time. Remember that back then both political parties had wings that oftentimes intensely fought with each other. Liberal Democrats often had little in common with conservative Democrat who had more in common with Republicans on many issues.
Often, FDR had to go into combat against the conservative wing, that is the southern wing, of the Democratic Party. Folks seem to like to think it was otherwise, but it wasn’t.
That is one of the reasons why FDR spend so much energy going over the heads of Congress and appealing (marketing his ideas) directly to the American people
Ripley
It’s settled then:
FDR/Single Payer Option ’16!
(Gonna look awkward on the bumper sticker.)
Mnemosyne
@Cervantes:
Who was the majority in the House from 1994 to 2006? Who was in the majority starting in 2010?
Who was the majority in the house from 1934 until 1946? Who was in the majority starting in 1950?
You seem to be mistaking a regression to the status quo for superheroic efforts by Truman, and seem to be similarly blaming Obama for the same regression to the status quo.
@Keith G:
Obama also has not had the backing of his fellow Democrats all the time, and yet I keep being told that it’s a sign that Obama is a bad and weak leader that he can’t bully Congressional Democrats along the way FDR did, and also bully Republicans the way FDR never had to do.
People who compare Obama and FDR to Obama’s detriment tend to leave off the things that show the comparison is apples to oranges, like the fact that FDR had overwhelming majorities in Congress that Obama never had. They also leave out the fact that FDR was able to use African-Americans as a bargaining chip with Southern Democrats when Obama does not have a similar bargaining chip — despite the shrieks I heard in 2010, Obama did not throw gay people under the bus the way FDR decided that Black people could be sacrificed to get the New Deal.
Mnemosyne
Also, I think someone else posted this last week, but it’s on-topic to the actual cartoon:
Sign language that African Americans use is different from that of whites
Short version: because of segregation, white deaf people and black deaf people were taught different versions of ASL, and many of those differences persist to this day. Very interesting article since a lot of people don’t seem to realize that sign languages are a separate type of language that have regional and country-by-country variations.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne:
Is that what you think I said?
That’s … remarkable … but not much more than that at this point.
Cervantes
@Zinsky:
Re the Democrats, I am curious to know what you make of Eric Alterman’s recent piece in The Nation.
jcgrim
Yes, Obama is headed to Knoxville,TN to talk about his & Arne’s higher ed privatization schemes. Arne & our twit-of-the-year Governor Haslam are working in bipartisan fashion to turn TN into the first all state privatized K-12 school system. Such a disappointment.
Tree With Water
@FlipYrWhig: Bravo. Superb reply.
jc
Obama is going to tout all those Wall St. reforms he’s been pushing through … WTF?
brantl
I hope he pees in their Cheerios, every chance he gets.
brantl
@Tree With Water: Exactly, nobody is willing to believe that they are poor in this country, anymore. They’ve been guilt-shamed into holding fast to they are the bottom of the middle class, as a life preserver, to fend off starvation. Republican propaganda has odd side-effects.
Cervantes
@brantl:
What makes you think that’s a side-effect?