Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

People are weird.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, it’s door #2)

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: ICYMI

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: ICYMI

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The NYTimes Editorial Board, of all unlikely cheerleaders:

… There is one other thing he must do: Resist his instinct to follow the false promise of compromise. Give-and-take is part of the legislative process, but trade-offs amounting to Republican legislative triumphs are unacceptable. Gridlock seems almost foreordained over the next two years. Mr. Obama should do nothing to confuse the voters as to where the responsibility lies.

There were (at least) five “official” GOP responses; Marin Cogan at NYMag has a synopsis.

As for the general Repub responses… well, timely science article:


***********
Apart from turning the page on a shadow of the crisis that has passed, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Reader Interactions

91Comments

  1. 1.

    Morzer

    trade-offs amounting to Republican legislative triumphs are unacceptable

    I wonder how Cardinal Douthat is going to react to this heretical proposition from his employers.

  2. 2.

    Schlemazel

    trade-offs amounting to Republican legislative triumphs are unacceptable

    Where were these guys 6 years ago when we needed them?

  5. 5.

    Schlemazel

    @Mustang Bobby: EXACTLY!

    what has changed though? Has the even-the-liberal-New-York-Times finally woken up to the fact there is not compromise with today’s GOP?

  6. 6.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    My landlord called to tell me they’re finally going to start replacing my bathtub today. I anticipate a great deal of barking from my girls. Oh well, happy b-day to me. :(

  11. 11.

    Keith G

    Interesting watching the slight curl of a suppressed smile from the Speaker after the “I know, cause I won both of them.” comment.

    Wonder if he was thinking…”My side is so stupid. They walked right into that one.”

  12. 12.

    ThresherK

    @BillinGlendaleCA: When Joni Ernst was your age, she had to bathe in a galvanized laundry tub. While scrubbing her laundry in it.

    Be grateful you have a bathtub to replace with another bathtub!

    (Which is my off-kilter way of wishing you Happy Birthday.)

  13. 13.

    Kay

    If Democrats would memorize just this from the speech they would win:

    First — middle-class economics means helping working families feel more secure in a world of constant change.

    It really is “first”. Democrats can’t keep telling economically insecure people to go climb a ladder of opportunity. It’s clueless.

  23. 23.

    Mustang Bobby

    Interesting that the GOP chose newly-unwrapped Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) to deliver the response in Spanish. Contrary to Joni Breadbags, he brought up immigration. It’s ironic; most Hispanics don’t want to be lectured on the topic from a Cuban. Thanks to the Cuban Adjustment Act and the wet-foot/dry foot rule, they — and only they — get frontsies on immigration: you make it to Miami, you’re home and dry. To los otros, es una tonteria tremenda.

    Beseme ardilla, Carlos.

  26. 26.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mustang Bobby: In Republican land, if his name ends in a vowel, he’s good to talk to Hispanics.

    @raven: Pretty much.

    @Baud: If they show up this time, they were supposed to start on Sunday and be finished now.

  29. 29.

    danielx

    @Schlemazel:

    Be nice, If not for compromise Grover Norquist would never get laid.

    You’re saying that like it would be a bad thing. And when did Norquist ever compromise on anything?

  30. 30.

    Schlemazel

    @danielx:
    It was a ‘joke’ based on fuzzy(minded) Grover saying compromise was like date rape.

    yes, I am a sick & twisted guy but everyone here knew that

  32. 32.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @danielx: Thanks, this is the nice thing about being a renter. I don’t have to fix it if it goes south. Anyway the landlord will be supervising.

  33. 33.

    Kay

    @Mustang Bobby:

    Was every single person listening thinking “bread bags go over the sock and under the boots”?

    Then they slip down and bunch under your heel which is why no one does that anymore :)

  34. 34.

    danielx

    @Kay:

    Which is why your wise bread bag wearer used rubber bands as garters to hold them up, or so went my mom’s theory. I finally said the whole thing is ridiculous and refused to wear them as I recall.

  35. 35.

    ThresherK

    @Kay: Yes, over the sock and under the boot.

    However, I thought no one does that anymore because (back in the day) it kept our feet wet. Not with snow or rain, but the sweat of our childhood feet, and the cotton socks we typically wore, got trapped inside the whole-sealed rubber boots that went up well over our ankles. Even when the socks were wool, it didn’t help that much.

    With the breadbags, slipping my growing feet into those big boots was easier. After sweating in them, and getting melted and refrozen snow on the laces, getting out of them was another matter.

    As a grownup I use the boots with about 4″ of solid protection, and synthetic socks. And as someone without kids, I have no idea what people put on their kids’ feet for winter now.

  37. 37.

    MomSense

    @ThresherK:

    As a grownup I use the boots with about 4″ of solid protection, and synthetic socks. And as someone without kids, I have no idea what people put on their kids’ feet for winter now.

    Wool socks and insulated boots just like our mothers put on us.

    Until last night I had never heard of this breadbag thing.

  38. 38.

    Kay

    @ThresherK:

    Ours have to bring boots to school in the winter or they can’t go out for recess, so they all wear them to school. They wear lower boots with laces now so you don’t have to jam their feet into them anymore :)

    It’s funny she chose that because kids shoes are cheap now. It’s not that people are less frugal, it’s that perfectly serviceable boots are 12 dollars at a discount store.

  40. 40.

    henqiguai

    This is probably off-topic (a drive-by ’cause this has me wondering), but regarding the State of the Union coverage. I noticed a lot of complaining about MSNBC and the broadcast networks. Yes, I turned off MSNBC as soon as I saw Tweety, wouldn’t consider PBS (Shields, *Brooks*, and the possibility of the obnoxious Cookie); didn’t even consider the broadcast networks. Am I the only one who watches on C-SPAN? Even if you don’t have cable, or your system doesn’t carry it, you can stream it online. Direct feed from the House chamber without the idiot talking heads.

  42. 42.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @raven: Speaking of Mickey, the big news on the local news was the measles breakout at Disneyland. It’s getting much worse. Fuck anti-vaxers.

    I’m off for my 5 hours of sleep.

  43. 43.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense: It was something of a thing when I was a kid (60s), a really bad thing. As mentioned above, you’re feet sweat, can’t breath, then the sweat freezes on your feet. Frostbite is not an ennobling thing.

  44. 44.

    raven

    @BillinGlendaleCA: My big boy is not happy with the heavy equipment tearing up the street in front of the house. Today they may start digging between the houses to lay the laterals. Of course this is all a prelude to the addition being built and THAT will really piss him off.

  46. 46.

    Elizabelle

    @henqiguai: I started out watching C-Span, but it cut off at Biden and Boehner’s ties — wanted to see their faces too — so switched around among broadcast networks.

    Finished with C-Span too. Lasted 15 seconds once Brian Williams immediately threw NBC to Chuck Todd, who started off that Obama has one more SOTU, but who is even going to listen to next year’s …..

    Hello, C-Span. Which had a young woman call in on the Republican line and say she didn’t like the GOP not clapping over minimum wage, and that the congresscritters should try to live on $25,000/year.

  48. 48.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay:

    Kids’ shoes and boots come from China and other offshore locations, don’t they?

    A lot of stuff is cheaper now. Too cheap.

  49. 49.

    J.D. Rhoades

    Joni Ernst: When I was a kid I worked for shit wages at Hardees and was so poor I had to put bread bags on my feet to keep out the snow because I couldn’t afford decent shoes. Stick with the GOP and we’ll have you all living in those happy times. Also, Keystone.

  50. 50.

    ThresherK

    @MomSense: My childhood boots weren’t insulated, but rather got pretty cold and clammy. A thin layer of fabric on thick rubber with a full-up seamless accordion rubber fold that seemed to go almost to my knee, and (I forgot this part) either buckled or laced. Either model was easy to get snow to melt on them and refreeze with normal winter kid play.

    Adjustable (somewhat) to slide my feet into, but geting my foot around that “ankle curve” got to be quite a bother when I was in the 95th percentile of “this boot will fit your foot”, the last year of any pair before my younger sister got them.

  51. 51.

    Kay

    @Elizabelle:

    I agree, but providing clothing for children is not a huge problem :)

    They have lace up winter boots now with a wider tongue beneath the laces so they’re all-weather! It’s like baby accessories- strollers, car seats. Baby equipment is better now. It works better.

  53. 53.

    rk

    I want to punch Ted Cruz in the face, hard and repeatedly. I’ve never had this reaction to anyone (and I loathed George Bush). There’s something about his face along with the nasal annoying voice and the smirk. I can’t believe that there’s even a remote possibility that this guy can be the republican nominee.

  56. 56.

    Mustang Bobby

    @rk: For those of us of a certain age, the physical resemblance to the late Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-WI) is jarring, both in the cadence of the voice and the demeanor.

  57. 57.

    FlipYrWhig

    @rk: I’ve told this story before, but a friend from high school went away to Princeton in 1988 and his freshman roommate was one Rafael “Ted” Cruz. He despised him intensely and immediately.

  58. 58.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: Fell asleep too early last night to get in on the breadbag discussion, but we used them too. Everyone did in the late 50s -early 60s because a lot of kids boots weren’t insulated, they were basically galoshes. The idea that only poor people did that is absurd, the really poor kids just wore their wet shoes all day because they didn’t have specialty gear like boots a lot of times.

  61. 61.

    Turner Hedenkoff

    I lived in the Midwest and Northeast as a kid and my folks did the breadbag thing, too. I just figured it was because my granddad worked at a bakery and had big packs of them around. They also used them as elbow-length gloves to work in the garden, which was riddled with poison ivy. And weeeeee liked it!

  63. 63.

    MomSense

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I do remember feeling lucky that I was the oldest because that meant I got new boots and not hand me downs but then we moved and our neighbors had a daughter older than I was and I got hand me down boots.

    Do you remember the moon boots with the rainbows on them? FSM knows I coveted those things but my parents would never have coughed up the cash.

  64. 64.

    rikyrah

    They can stay phucking mad

    That moment was priceless.

    Right up there with ‘Please proceed, Governor.’

    ………………..

    Republicans Irked By Obama Zinger In State Of The Union Address

    BySahil Kapur
    PublishedJanuary 21, 2015, 12:15 AM EST

    Republicans were irked by President Barack Obama’s caustic reminder in his State of the Union speech that he defeated them twice.

    “I’ve run my last campaign,” Obama said toward the end of the nationally televised address. Republicans in the chamber applauded derisively, which prompted the president to ad-lib a zinger which wasn’t in his prepared remarks: “I know because I won both of them.”

    Democrats erupted with applause.

    In the Capitol after the speech, Republicans expressed displeasure at being jabbed by the president in the same speech where he asked for their cooperation.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/republicans-obama-jab-state-of-the-union?utm_content=buffer8a83a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

  66. 66.

    Tripod

    I didn’t watch anything last night, but caught the GOP response on the radio news – they seem perplexed the black man is still there in the oval office and driving policy. Yahoo has some story up that some of the GOP clown crew are waffling on the speech.

    I expect the clown car to implode over the next two years.

  67. 67.

    schrodinger's cat

    @MomSense: I am the oldest too. No hand me downs for me. New books and new shoes, new everything at the start of the school year. I googled moonboots with rainbows, they look snazzy. You has good taste! For winter stuff, I like L L Bean, stuff lasts forever.

  68. 68.

    rikyrah

    They are STILL mad that POTUS isn’t cowering because of the November 2014 elections.

    ………………..

    The remarkable confidence of Barack Obama
    By Chris Cillizza January 20 at 10:46 PM

    Seventy seven days ago, Barack Obama’s party lost control of Congress — largely due to his unpopularity nationwide. You’d have never known it watching the president deliver his sixth State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night.

    From start to finish, Obama was supremely confident, challenging — and mocking — Republicans at every turn. Touting the turnaround of the economy, Obama turned to Republicans, who, in classic State of the Union symbolism, had refused to deliver a standing ovation, and joked “That’s good news, people.” On Cuba, Obama challenged those who disagreed with his Administration policies; “When what you’re doing doesn’t work for fifty years, it’s time to try something new,” he said.

    But more than the words on the page, it was Obama’s tone and overall demeanor that absolutely oozed confidence. He winked. He laughed at his own jokes. And he ad-libbed. Repeating his “I’ve run my last campaign” line, Obama was clearly irked by the sarcastic applause from Republicans in the audience. “I know because I won both of them,” he added, in a rare moment of candor.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/01/20/the-remarkable-confidence-of-barack-obama/

  73. 73.

    Elizabelle

    @rikyrah: Chris Cillizza’s a tool. An effing tool.

    And Obama is NOT that unpopular. He’s unpopular with the Village and his political opponents (but I repeat myself) and Fox News land.

    I’m sick of the “Obama is so unpopular” business. I wonder if a few of those wavering Dems would have done better supporting rather than fleeing him.

    ETA: Obama is unpopular in the red states. Which have a lot of acreage and not so much brainpower.

  74. 74.

    bemused

    I’m an old so one of my strongest memories of grade school is of dripping, soggy wool coats, snowpants, socks, boots hanging from hooks outside classrooms after recess. I don’t have any memory of breadbags. The halls reeked of kid sweat and raw wool. No fun putting those back on when we went home on the bus.

    I loved the green rubber boots that our 3 kids wore on spring, summer and fall wet, muddy days. We had them in all sizes from toddler to teen.

  75. 75.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @henqiguai:

    I watched the White House feed on my iPad. They had what the called “enhanced” coverage. The speech itself was probably much like C-Span, with no distracting graphics or streaming instant polls or talking heads; but on the right side of the screen they would put up simple charts or images to illustrate whatever the President was saying, as reinforcements to his points rather than as distractions to them. It was well done and I hope they do it again for next year’s SOTU and any other “big” speeches (obviously needs prep and care, so would have to be something planned; not, say, a press conference or impromptu statement about breaking news).

  80. 80.

    Elizabelle

    Borowitz today. Illustrated with Joni Ernst’s rictus grin:

    Poll: Majority of Americans Now Believe That They Could Be Senators

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a poll taken on Tuesday night, a wide majority of Americans said that they now believe that they could be elected to the United States Senate.

  83. 83.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    The last neocon Democrat speaks

    “The more I hear from the administration and its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran,” Menendez said. “And it feeds to the Iranian narrative of victimization, when they are the ones with original sin — an illicit nuclear weapons program going back over the course of 20 years that they are unwilling to come clean on.”

    …and I just heard on the radio that Boehner has invited BiBi to speak to the House about the imminent threat from Iran.

    on to the next crisis.

  84. 84.

    chopper

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    “And it feeds to the Iranian narrative of victimization, when they are the ones with original sin — an illicit nuclear weapons program going back over the course of 20 years that they are unwilling to come clean on”

    whereas israel has been nothing but forthcoming about their nuclear program. lol

  85. 85.

    JR in WV

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Wow! That’s the same year I got drafted!!!

    Did the fact that her family got nearly half a million dollars in farm subsidies make it to the thread yet?

    Poor little girl, her Daddy won’t buy her boots!! Right.

  86. 86.

    BruinKid

    So did you guys see how the GOP doctored the video of the State of the Union address when they posted it with their own annotations by completely cutting out the part where Obama destroyed their climate change denialist “I am not a scientist” argument?

  87. 87.

    Canuck Chuck

    @rikyrah: NO. Although he may have been “irked” by the applause his comment was directed at a particular heckler. I wish someone would print what was said. I imagine it was along the lines of “Two is enough”.

    CC

  89. 89.

    Turgidson

    @Elizabelle:

    There’s an obvious bit of insecurity baked into the Village’s idiotic coverage of Obama. They’re mad and confused that Obama is refusing to swirl the drain the way their boy George W. did. They don’t get it because they tried so fucking hard to prop that miserable piece of shit up for so long and only began reporting on his shitty approval ratings when they were in the low 30s, never to recover. They can’t stand it that, yet again, they are utterly failing to keep the narrative where they want it. GWB tanked in spite of them, and Obama is persevering in spite of them. They can’t understand it, because to them politics is all a game and a contest of personalities, and they’ve worked as hard to cast Obama out of the game as they tried to keep George W. on top of it.

    They can’t stand Obama (feeling is mutual), so they have been trying like hell to relegate him to the same fate. For over a fucking year, every Village-media piece that discussed the president had at least one, and sometimes several, references to his “plummeting” or “crashing” approval ratings, or Obama’s “historic unpopularity” or some other such tripe. It was always exaggerated at best and total bullshit at worst. It was a blatant thumb on the scale. Served its purpose for the midterms, convincing Democratic candidates that their only chance to win was to pretend they’d never heard of the guy. But they thought they’d broken him and sent him into a GWB-esque death spiral. Oops.

    Obama’s approval rating never went below 40 for any extended period of time and only in a handful of polls that whole time did he come out below 40. If going from high-40s to low 40s over the course of a year and a half is “plummeting”, what descriptors can they use now to describe his rise to 50% in the past two months? Do they need to put it on a logarithmic scale? Can these computer machines all the kids are using even calculate such a rise?

    Fuck those twits.

  90. 90.

    SWMBO

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Happy Birthday! One year for Mother’s Day/Birthday our hot water heater died. I got a new hot water heater instead of the usual flowers/gifts. Best gift ever. Hot showers every day are not gifts to be taken for granted.

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