EXCLUSIVE: House conservative leaders say it's too late to stop debt ceiling hike: https://t.co/Rfe37MMZjC pic.twitter.com/a0cPA93EZA
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) October 26, 2015
From the Reuters article:
Leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives’ most influential conservative group told Reuters on Monday it was too late to stop an extension of the federal debt ceiling this week, but they will not hold it against the expected next House Speaker, Paul Ryan.
Representatives Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and Mick Mulvaney, founders of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, told Reuters in an interview that there was not enough time for House Republicans to rally around a list of demands for raising the $18.1 trillion U.S. borrowing limit.
Outgoing House Speaker John Boehner is working with Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to finalize terms of an extension of federal borrowing authority through March 2017 along with a $112 billion deal to ease military and domestic spending caps for two years, according to House and Senate aides and lawmakers…
However, [Mulvaney] said Ryan’s first big test would be a spending bill to keep government agencies open past a current shutdown deadline of Dec. 11. This would have to produce “at least something better than we would have gotten under Mr. Boehner.”
Mulvaney said that in his view, that would mean not raising any discretionary spending caps without an equal amount of spending cuts elsewhere.
That’s Meadows in the twitter pic, wishing he had a mustache to twirl. As I interpret it, the Freedumb-Humpers Caucus will present a list of absolutely non-negotiable demands along with this bill to President Obama, and he will inform them they are free to pound sand into the orifices of their choosing. Then they will go on to their next outrage, because that is what they do, just like my little rescue dogs shriek impotently at the mailman every day, never slacking at their self-appointed “responsibilities”.
And if Paul Ryan thinks he’s getting off easy, Jim Newell at Slate disagrees:
… At no moment in this process will Freedom Caucus members be deserving of sympathy. It is their fault that the constituents who empower their crusades are unresponsive to reason. When it comes to confronting their constituents with facts, they have been cowards, choosing to fan the prevailing rage rather than challenge it…
The Freedom Caucus’ irresponsible antics have quite obviously earned them enmity among party leaders, donors, and moderates. In the most comical example of their cowardice, these members are trying to use the speaker’s election process to ensure that they are never put through the same test that Tea Partiers delight in subjecting “establishment” candidates to: primaries. The Chamber of Commerce, which successfully propped up many “establishment” Republican Senate candidates against Tea Party challengers in 2014, is talking about going after more obnoxious House Tea Party members in 2016. The Freedom Caucus wants the next speaker and his leadership team to “step in to make sure that [doesn’t] happen,” according to Rep. Mick Mulvaney. They’re throwing a fit. And, God help him, Paul Ryan is treating this seriously instead of laughing it off.
The good news for Freedom Caucus members is that it appears that Speaker Boehner will try to push through a bipartisan, two-year debt ceiling and budget deal package as his last act before Ryan is elected speaker. It’s not good news because Freedom Caucus members will like the sweeping package—early outlines of the deal suggest that conservatives will complain about this like it’s Christmas morning and their parents bought them the wrong color pony. But at least it will be Boehner who brings it to the floor instead of Ryan, the sellout RINO whom the sellout RINO Freedom Caucus allowed to become speaker.
mclaren
Delightful.
Once again, the diabolical schemes of the R’s in the House are getting turned against them. This has become an ongoing theme for Republicans in 2016, and I predict it’ll continue well into 2017.
redshirt
It’s funny because we have become the mirror image of our so called opponents, the Republicans.
I would never vote for anything or anyone that has anything to do with Republicans. Am I as crazed as the crazies in the Freedom Caucus?
ruemara
@redshirt: Not voting for crazy shit is the essence of sanity.
Betty Cracker
No comment on the Freedumb Caucus; I can’t bear to think about such an unimaginably dense concentration of stupid. I think I’ll whine about a topic closer to home instead.
Last night, I felt like I was coming down with something — sore throat, coughing, stuffy head, runny nose, achiness, etc. I was feeling a bit worse today but not too terrible.
Well, this everning, whatever it is hit me like a truck, including a dramatic worsening of previous symptoms with bonus puking!
Now I’m shivering on the sofa under a throw watching a program called “The Great British Baking Show.” The contestants are making something called a “self-saucing pudding.”
redshirt
@ruemara: Of course. But literally my political agenda these days is: Defeat Republicans.
That’s all that matters. I don’t care about any other issue whatsoever compared to this one main concern:Defeat All Republicans.
I realize posters on FreeRepublic and other right wing websites probably feel exactly the same against me.
Thus my concern of hypocrisy.
redshirt
@Betty Cracker: Bonus puking is always the best puking! :)
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Is it 9 Thermidor yet?
On other subjects, I’m working through the copy edits to Becoming Phoebe, and I’m learning interesting things about women’s fashion, or the lack thereof if you’re really tall.
mclaren
@redshirt:
Really?
If the Republican en masse decided to vote for a higher minimum wage, would you be against that?
I don’t think so.
Democrats are the reality-based evidence-driven party. Repubs are the “our opposition is illegitimate and we refuse to accept the rules until our unilateral demands are met” party.
Seems like a big difference to me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker:
The show is brilliant. You must watch all of it. Both my father and I are addicted. Last weekend, during the very exciting Packer game, Dad turned to me and mentioned that we were missing the baking show. We both caught the episode on later nights. Me, I am pulling for Ruby, and if not her, Kimberley.
Frankensteinbeck
@efgoldman:
I put it to you that if the Republicans en masse decided to vote for a higher minimum wage, I would at least look twice about the proposal and try to figure out what horrible poison pill I missed. It’s like I was worried that the ACA would not be political death for the Republican Party because Kristol predicted it.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
I am suspicious of Ruby. I think she is playing the judges. An episode or so ago, she batted her doe eyes at the male judge: “Oh, I think this turned out badly. I really messed up,” etc., etc. And of course he—and the other judge—loved it and up-rated her. She is treading the fine line between endearing lack of confidence and manipulation.
Note: Have not watched the most recent episode.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: @efgoldman: @Frankensteinbeck: What Frankie said.
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m enjoying it very much. Sounds like we’re on different seasons — not the same cast of characters. I’m watching the first season on Netflix.
Steeplejack
Fuck the Freedom Caucus. Fuck them up their stupid asses.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Oh, Ruby is playing them. She figured out the game and is winning it. She also seems to deliver good baked goods. She’s won a couple of technicals too – those are blind.
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ve pulled for Ruby a few times myself.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: Aha, they are all good. Decent people competing. The “rude” judge is really a good guy. It is fun.
Steeplejack
@Mike J:
Phrasing!
Adam L Silverman
What’s going to be interesting about this is the easing of the caps brought about by the sequester/Budget Control Act. There has been a lot of pent up need for civilian hires that has been stymied as a result of the caps. And this includes both for non-military civil servants and for DOD, Department of the Army, Navy, and Air Force civilians. A lot of openings have been coded in order to protect folks who’s positions were identified to either be formally done away with due to sequester or informally by allowing someone to retire or jump to an equivalent landing pad somewhere else and then never fill the vacancy that results. This has the ability to even further improve the economy because it will create hiring opportunities.
My program, which identified, recruited, vetted, and then detailed cultural advisors to Army schools to assist with preparing Soldiers, through education, training, and experiential learning, died because of the sequester. I was the last one and only because my commanding general decided to pay for me out of his own budget for an additional year while he sought either an amendment to his table of distributed allowances (TDA – the term we use for the official, institutionalized billets at any given duty site/location) or dedicated funding to seek a waiver and extension of my civilian mobilization orders. Even as a I type this there’s a TDA amendment requested sitting on a desk somewhere in DC waiting for the Budget Control Act to be repealed…
This isn’t meant as a rant, but there’s a lot of pent up need for expertise and if you’re not allowed to hire it under one of the existing civil service solutions, then you wind up paying out the nose for out with contractors. Ten years ago the discussion was that there would be a huge opportunities, right about now, as an entire generation of civil servants retired. Those opportunities haven’t emerged because either the retirements didn’t happen because of the bad economy or if they did, the openings were never filled. And this doesn’t even get to agencies that need to have their personnel size greatly increased.
So the unfilled needs get outsourced. But I can tell you as someone who’s been doing consulting and contracting since the end of my civilian mobilization, even when contracts are awarded, the money often doesn’t start to flow because no one knows how long of a continuing resolution will exist. So contracts are awarded, companies have done work to get those awards, personnel are lined up to be pushed forward to the client, and nothing happens. I couldn’t make up a more fakakted system if
While I know many here already know this, it is important to remember that the State Department only has about 5,000 foreign service officers. That’s basically one brigade combat team. On the USAID side of the house, the numbers don’t even get that high. Part of the reason for this is that there aren’t State Department facilities in each state, let alone each Congressional district – so there’s no patronage except for a couple of members of Congress from VA and MD. But given the problem sets we’re facing, having far more foreign service officers and USAID officers would be a really good thing. The budgetary and personnel immiseration of the State Department over the years is one of the reasons the military tends to get thrown at stuff that should really be done by the State Department. And don’t even get me started on the outsourcing/privatizing of significant portions of the Intelligence Community.
I would also argue for some limited civil service reforms. While I’m a big believer in the protections that were put in place to keep civil servants from becoming victims of politics and politicians, there are some problems. Some may recall reading/hearing about civilian surges to assist in Afghanistan and Iraq. And while some members of the non-military agencies did go, the vast majority of the civilian surge never emerged. The reason for this is that you can’t force most civil servants to deploy to conflict zones… And this makes a certain amount of sense until you realize that you need a certain amount and can’t get enough volunteers. This too leads to outsourcing things to contractors.
The program that sent me to Iraq was an experimental pilot, officially a proof of contest. As a result we all had to be contractors. While no one in my brigade ever treated me differently because I wasn’t a Department of the Army Civilian (DAC), you could have hired and deployed five of me for what it cost to send one of me as a contractor. And that’s not because of what wound up in my paycheck or IRA, rather its the result of all the fees and percentages and handling charges that were being charged by the company to supply me to the Army. Eventually they moved everyone onto term limited civil service lines, which helped to contain costs, but having a much more flexible civil service hiring vehicle would have been a huge cost saver.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: One hesitates to ponder…
Suzanne
@Steeplejack: Well played, my friend.
sacrablue
@Betty Cracker: I absolutely adore the Great British Baking Show. It is just so British. I haven’t lived there since the early 80’s, but it appears to be essentially the same as it ever was. I also love the British version of Master Chef.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: yes, this is true and causes a mess as well.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: No, that would never happen with a GOP Congress. Heaven forbid.
Kay (not the front-pager)
I freely admit I don’t understand this stuff. I know what the debt limit is, and the consequences of not raising it. I know the difference between debt and deficit. But I really don’t understand the difference between the budget and spending bills.
I don’t understand why the budget deal doesn’t take care of keeping the government from shutting down. Maybe it’s the late hour (sure, let’s go with that). And I’m going to have concrete being poured literally 10 feet from my bed in 5 hours, so I will have to come back to see if anyone was able to explain it to me. But this really confuses me.
Maybe I’ll just google budget spending bill difference. In the morning.
srv
You people, you have so many demands of poor Paul Ryan, but you won’t even acknowledge he’s a hard worker:
This insanity will stop when Trump wins.
Omnes Omnibus
@srv: I actually admire your devotion to your craft. I really do.
Steeplejack
@efgoldman:
And I, for one, hope that there will be one brave voice that rings out: “Fuck that guy. Fuck him up his stupid ass.”
Peale
@efgoldman: if the republicans were voting to slice off Cruz’ arm, I might consider voting for them.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@efgoldman: Spending my children’s inheritance on the repair of a retaining wall and patio that literally hold up the back of the house. And why am I still here instead of in my soon-to-be noisy bed? I have no self-discipline!
mclaren
@Kay (not the front-pager):
Agreeing to vote for a bill to authorize spending is not the same as agreeing to raise the hard limit of total spending (national debt limit).
Blocking one spending bill prevents the government from spending on a specific project. Blocking the debt ceiling increase prevents the government from spending any money, period.
Eric U.
I’ve had the opportunity to vote for blue dog dems, and was happy to do so, because their republican opponents needed to be fucked up their stupid asses. When the republican party becomes something other than the racist policy party, then I may reconsider. But I don’t see how that will happen
Adam L Silverman
@Kay (not the front-pager): Briefly (even for me…) here’s the difference. The Budget, also known as the Budget Resolution, sets the total amount of spending for the Fiscal Year. Now some of this is non-discretionary, its essentially programmed in perpetuity by the legislation that enacted it and has dedicated revenue streams to fund it. The rest is discretionary, which means that the members of Congress and the Administration have to wrangle what will be spent on each discretionary program.
This is where the appropriations process comes into play. For each discretionary program that needs to be funded, there will either be a standalone appropriations bill or an appropriations bill that deals with multiple discretionary programs, drafted, debated, voted on, potentially reconciled between chambers and then off to the President for either a signature, veto, or pocket veto. And that’s the difference. The budget sets the top line number for spending, the appropriations bills determine how the pie is divided.
What’s happened over the better part of the past seven years is a breakdown of this process, due to the Republican strategy of intransigence decided upon on inauguration night 2009. So we’ve been stumbling from Continuing Resolution to Continuing Resolution and budgetary gimmick to budgetary gimmick. When you pair this with the adherence of the GOP to Grover Norquist’s anti-tax increase pledge, no matter how much we slash, we never really close the deficit because we can’t ever raise the minimum necessary to actually do everything we need to do – just at the bargain basement baseline.
Hope that helps.
BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: I doubt he’ll mind.
daddyj
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m, uh, rooting for either Kimberley, whose flavor combinations always sound wonderful, or Becca, because we Welsh have to stick together.
I agree, Ruby has totally got the “Oh, I’m just so useless and yet beautiful!” thing down. I’m waiting for Mary to say “Put a cork in it, young lady!”
We were all real sad when Mr. Bean got voted out.
Amir Khalid
It amazes me that legislators who are intentionally and openly trying to crash their country’s government are treated as serious politicians.
srv
Ruh-roh:
Wait till you people see all the Berniebro’s move to Trump – they’re never going to vote for that woman.
Steeplejack
@efgoldman:
Sorry, I’m not really trolling you. Your earlier comment just made me realize that I thought Corner Stone’s repeated use of the phrase on Sunday was kind of funny and that I objected to it being beaten down. I pictured him, over the course of the day, sitting at his computer, probably in some hideously out-of-style desk chair, swilling some potent but inappropriate drink—Kahlúa and cream, maybe—railing about the Texans and occasionally being roused to a “Fuck that guy!” as he browsed the blog.
Maybe it’s not up there with “The helicopters aren’t laughing,” but it could be a thing.
Tom Q
Just want to throw in here that getting the debt limit extended into 2017 is a very big thing, in terms of the politics of 2016. There’s been (I think legitimate) fear expressed by some here that GOP intransigence could weaken the election year economy, and that the voters might take it out on the incumbent party. That obviously sounds unfair, but it’s borne out by history: no incumbent party has ever held onto the presidency during a recession, and I wouldn’t want to need to buck that trend with “but they CAUSED it” as my only line of defense.
However…in terms of GOP ability to provoke something as dramatic as recession, the debt limit was most of the ballgame. If they actually refused to raise it, for any length of time, the economic repercussions could be horrendous, and I think the fact of their being responsible could get drowned out by the general chaos. Shutting down the government over conflicting budget priorities could do some damage, as well, but not nearly at the level of a debt limit failure. Plus, the public is already (based on two years ago) inclined to see the GOP as the responsible party in that event.
I’m not saying I’m thrilled with the idea of a government shutdown, but it doesn’t make me lose sleep the way the debit limit thing does. If the latter is truly resolved, the possibility of the Pubs inflicting major electoral damage for next year is seriously limited.
srv
jl
@srv: Just like HRC’s followers would never vote for that inadequate black man. Perhaps a good things, since President Romney is just the man to guide us through the GOP’s nervous breakdown.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: I think Kay is asking why debt ceiling limit and budget process is not linked. I’m not sure why it can’t be or whether anyone has thought about it.
There is one difference between the two.The Budget process, beginning with the concurrent Budget Resolution, can and should grind along on a regular schedule (though as you point out, it has not recently).
The amount of debt held by the federal government fluctuates due to host of factors, and the timing of when it needs to be raised cannot be predicted with certainty. And politically unpopular to raise it so probably politically very inconvenient to link the two, even though it is kind of superfluous
Anyway, the Budege Resolution doesn’t have the force of law, and the real action takes place in the individual appropriations bills, each of which has its own schedule, or, non-schedule of muddling through since the GOP took over the House.
jl
Anyway, if I understand the proposed deal, it is basically a pantsing of the Freedom caucus and they are signalling that they won’t do a thing about it.
Debt gets raised, sequester is eased (edit: meaning more spending in short run, I think) , and a transparent fig leaf of meaningless mumbo-jumbo about future spending cuts, most of which concerns programs that are off budget (and so have noting to do with the debt at all) is what the Freedom Caucus gets in return. And they say that they are just going to take it?
What a joke. And their excuse is that they did not have time to rally around a proposal. What idiotic BS. While it is true that the the timing of fed debt hitting the ceiling is uncertain, they sure as hell knew it was going to come this fall. They had time to rally, if they had anything that they could agree on, but they didn’t, or it was just a dimwitted bluff all along.
The sheer incompetence, clownishness, indeed childishness of the GOP these days may be a saving grace. If we are lucky, their cynical or incompetent BS will be so obvious that it will keep them out of WH and throw Senate into Dem hands next year.
Edit: now I gotta search for Great British Baking Show and find out about that self-saucing cake. Not that I could ever make one, but it sounds good.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@mclaren:
I get that. That’s why it’s a big deal that Boehner is on board with getting a vote on this deal, even though it probably won’t meet the Hastert rule of getting a majority of the majority. It raises the debt limit till early 2017 if I remember correctly. That’s paying bills for money we already spent. But this deal supposedly also raises spending caps imposed by sequestration. That’s new money to spend, so we can pay to keep the government open and keep programs running. At least that’s what I thought. So what’s with the new shut-down threat?
Oh my. I just thought of something. The easing of spending caps is supposed to get us through the 2016 election. Is it possible that the budget bill is supposed to run till 12/11/2016 and these Freedumb morans think it only runs till 12/11/2015?!1?
jl
@Kay (not the front-pager):
” Is it possible that the budget bill is supposed to run till 12/11/2016 and these Freedumb morans think it only runs till 12/11/2015?!1? ”
They might need something like that as an excuse. Email them and tell them you have some ideas for PR and are available for consulting.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@Adam L Silverman: This is a succinct, understandable explanation. Thank you. I especially liked this for clarity:
Your experience with the process makes all the difference in helping me to understand.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@jl: It would certainly be possible to eliminate the debt ceiling debates by explicitly saying that any appropriation contains within it the implicit authorization to issue debt to pay it, if necessary. It’s just never been done that way in this country, and would possibly require a rider in every appropriation. We didn’t have a debt ceiling until 1917, but prior to that, every issuance of debt by the Treasury had to be explicitly authorized by legislation.
It’s an argument that goes back to the Washington administration, and is yet another instance in which Alexander Hamilton was right and his opponents were wrong. He argued that appropriations should allow for issuing debt if necessary, but the Jefferson/Madison faction worried that this would be putting to much power into the executive. They basically didn’t want the government issuing debt at all and, much like the Tea Party today, didn’t care that this meant that they were giving the executive contradictory instructions.
Hamilton, despite being right, lost this argument at the time.
jl
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I thought Hamilton won that argument, and there was not even a consolidated debt to put a ceiling on through most of the 19th century. I thought debt was considered automatically approved when appropriations bills authorizing the spending became law.
Edit: Oh man, why don’t I ever check the wiki first? Until WWI and Great Depression, Congress had to authorize each individual tranche of US Treasury debt issued. Which would be totally unworkable today. Wiki says started tracking a consolidated federal debt and ceilings in 1917.
I guess I got confused and misremembered because no one bothered to keep close track of the debt until they started keeping consolidated accounts in early 20th century.
jl
United States debt ceiling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_debt_ceiling
Tommy
@jl: Very interesting read. I like to joke I learn something new every day and I learned more than a little reading that entry.
EBT
@srv: Funniest unintentional line I have seen all day. Outside of any GOP political position of course.
Redshift
@redshirt:
You say that but will you “have nothing to do with” Democrats who vote with some Republicans to raise the debt ceiling?
I suspect the answer is actually no, which demonstrates that you are not the mirror image of the Freedumb Caucus.
Duane
@Steeplejack:
Tommy
@Redshift: I vote for a republican and I am a raging liberal. My mayor is really good at his job. Republican. Pretty sure in many places in this nation he would be called a RINO. I expect action and results from the people I vote for and he gets results.
BGinCHI
Meadows was born in France, though it apparently had no good effect.
He lives in Cashiers, NC.
You just can’t make this shit up.
BillinGlendaleCA
@BGinCHI:
That’s why the staff of the Onion have taken up drinking.
Eric
@efgoldman: Is there still a Rockefeller in the GOP? If not, I’m stumped.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
I am so torn because I want them both to win. I can’t believe how caught up I am in a baking show.
Patricia Kayden
@Omnes Omnibus: Kimberly ftw. Just discovered the show recently and love it. Would love to see an American version.
Pogonip
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Really? The clothes all seem designed for tall women.
Another Holocene Human
So did the CoC and a delegation from Wall Street show up with an electoral wizard who explained with charts and doodles of bombs that their chances of reelection were nil if they blew up the government (who knows if true or not) so they all agreed to this possibly face-saving (ha, tell that to RW radio) compromise?
So weird.
Another Holocene Human
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s a righteous one. Rant on. Fuck you, Congress.
The RePigs think that is a feature, not a bug, and some of the Dems too because of the district they represent.
If we got a D supermajority we’d still have to deal with bought and paid for dems, but rather deal with that than the “smash everything” caucus.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Holocene Human: Congress has an answer for that; a Planned Parenthood Special Investigative Committee.
Another Holocene Human
@Tom Q: Yes. It makes me wonder why they agreed to go along. Perhaps the short term nature of such an act’s impact electorally would be just in time to fuck the Free-Dumb Caucus during their own primaries. So sure the GOP might survive but these assholes only care about their own reelection. And even Tea Partiers in the short term might punish them hard.
Most of them turfed GOP incumbents they painted as useless, corrupt, or RINOs, so like that second marriage based on adultery, they know how vulnerable they are.
Another Holocene Human
@jl: Honestly it sounds like it would be a less metallic tasting version of those lava cakes at Domino’s Pizza. I think the classic Sticky Toffee Pudding is supposed to be gooey in the middle. Or I could be misremembering. I haven’t eaten a cake made with flour in years.
Another Holocene Human
@BillinGlendaleCA: Er, did you reply to the wrong comment? Trying to understand what you meant, maybe I’m just slow this morning.
Peej
@Patricia Kayden: They had an American version…it stunk. For some reason, Jeff Foxworthy was the host.
Baud
This has always bugged me too (TPM)
Shalimar
@Kay (not the front-pager): I am pretty sure that the budget deal does take care of keeping the government from shutting down on December 11th. Rep. Mulvaney was unaware at the time he made his statement that Speaker Ryan’s first big test was being negotiated away. You can bet he will be fighting this horrible outrage with a fundraising email in the morning.
Botsplainer
I’d just like to see reps refer to the Hastert Rule as the Pervert Rule on the House floor as much as possible.
Dog the hell out of it – that’s the only way 40 assholes get to drive the bus.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Holocene Human: No. You need to start up your snark meter.
AxelFoley
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m still trying to determine if he’s a troll or serious.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: Is ‘progressive policy’ easily equated to a progressive person, though? Doesn’t it have a broader (and vague) meaning as an adjective? (“progressive rock”)
Back in the late 1990s, Urvashi Vaid introduced me to the new, improved progressive label. This was an intersectional liberalism that wasn’t afraid of its values. Consciously not a jump to traditional Left orgs and thought which were some flavor of Marxist/Communist/Socialist. Vaid was the director of NGLTF (more liberal–trans-friendly–than the better funded HRC) at the time. The traditional some-flavor-of-ist Left had a history of being homophobic, and, if not openly homophobic, then roughly dismissive of our concerns. By contrast, the homophile movement was more interested in Neo-Marxism (race/class/sex analysis) and just plain pragmatism.
So as late as the 1990s the ringleaders who gave progressive its current meaning were describing themselves that way. Old liberals were scared to call themselves liberals and were also treating GLBT people like the lavender menace who would be electoral poison as if we don’t vote too.
bemused
Kevin Drum suggested that the dozen or so truest of the true conservatives (wouldn’t vote for rino Paul Ryan) in the Freedom Caucus should split off and form their own Super Dooper Freedom Caucus.
Another Holocene Human
@BillinGlendaleCA: It doesn’t work on less than one cup of coffee, sadly.
Another Holocene Human
@Botsplainer: I’m sure those good GOPers believe in their hearts that that teen was “wise beyond his years” “knew what he was doing” and just plain seduced him, and is probably a Democrat, also, too.
Baud
@Another Holocene Human:
Interesting. But it’s all over my head. Not your fault. I’ve never been able to get my head around these things.
Botsplainer
@Another Holocene Human:
I’ve long said that Rush Limbaugh could be found at a videoed drug raid, nose deep in cocaine sprinkled down the asscrack of a dead rent boy, and would be vigorously defended by conservatives.
DissidentFish
@efgoldman: well, 16 years ago I knew a bunch of moderate republicans in real life — Pot-puffin’ Sandy, Snoozy, Jess, Ginger and Todd, Hud, Coco, Dave Z, Z2, Amber, Sunil, Petemoss, Kyle, Annie and Mitch, Elaine — there were lots of them.
They all are Democrats now — or independents who favor Democrats. All of them. The only people who I know personally now who are Republicans are either over 60, dumb as rocks, Christian-to-the-extreme (most even conservative Christians I know have turned Dem), or now and always have been fascists at heart.
Way to go, Freedom Caucus!
Iowa Old Lady
@Betty Cracker: I think there’s a cosmic connection between bonus puking and anything called “self-saucing.”
OzarkHillbilly
How bad does a human being have to be to be less popular in Kansas than Barack Obama? Sam Brownback bad. Obama-28% approval. Brownback-18% approval.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: Shorter: Vaid and other GenX activists felt like they needed to stake out new territory so they reclaimed an old label with good connotations (=make progress) to rebrand and reorganize those frustrated with the institutional liberals on the one hand and the infighting, parochial, and hopelessly stuck in the past hard left on the other.
Another Holocene Human
@DissidentFish: Where in the heck do you live? I wish this could be true in the South.
Baud
@Another Holocene Human:
Thank you.
Satby
@Steeplejack: I love this comment and want to marry it.
brantl
Hopefully, with very sharp knives.
Another Holocene Human
@Botsplainer: The number of conservative Catholics who have been defending pedo priests and attacking their victims is truly shocking.
I mean, Bill-Do(nohue, not the other one) was a gimme, but all these other freaks? What the hell is wrong with these people.
The Catholic Church does teach this verse.
brantl
@redshirt: If your biggest problems are all caused by cockroaches, you’re extremely likely to say, “All I want to do is kill all the cockroaches”, it isn’t anywhere near as likely for you as for them, that you would want to do it with a nuclear bomb.
Another Holocene Human
metaphorically, Jesus is talking about Christians, too, because he tells them to emulate children and have faith like children, something the Church definitely teaches as well
which just underscores the point that supposedly the savior they believe in* just told them there’s an especially torturous place in hell reserved for them
*ya right, if they really believed it, they’d be shit-scared and they’re not
brantl
@srv: Hasn’t your scheduled lobotomy happened yet?
Patricia Kayden
@Peej: Jeff Foxworthy? The “you know you are a redneck if…” guy? Why? That obviously was dead on arrival. They should try again with an actual acclaimed chef, perhaps Anthony Boudain for example.
debbie
@mclaren:
Sufferin’ succotash!!!
debbie
@Baud:
In GlennBeckWorld, it’s synonymous with Communist. His proof is the fact that an aide of Vladimir Lenin, when speaking to Russians worried about the changes to come following the Revolution, comforted them by saying that not everything would change overnight. Change, he told them, would come in progressive steps.
What more evidence could anyone possibly need?
Bart
@Steeplejack:
FYI Ruby’s gay. Also, this is the fourth season you’re watching; the sixth has just finished a couple of weeks ago. The show’s original title is “The Great British Bake Off”, BTW.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
I love that show! It’s scrummy!
Shalimar
@AxelFoley: I may be confusing him with another troll from 4-5 years ago, but I think srv broke character several times in the far distant past on something that really pissed him off. I don’t remember the details, but my distinct impression at the time was that srv is DougJ-style trolling.
Manyakitty
@Patricia Kayden: Jacques Torres would be a great choice, especially since he’s an established and acclaimed baker.
Paul in KY
@mclaren: Anthrax & tire rims for lunch!
ET
They aren’t going to hold it against $Ryan? If they don’t think he is involved with this a “House leader” then they really are stupid. But then I think they are aware but they just want to postpone this when they think they are in a better position.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Forget it, Amir….it’s Congresstown.
Paul in KY
@srv: Well, that sucks. Great reggae singer.
Paul in KY
@DissidentFish: I work with a bunch of Jesus loving republicans. One of them is a big Ben Carson supporter. He is very fundamentalist.
kped
I kind of love that article you linked to Anne! They say that they considered not including anyone but Freedom Caucus members in their request that no outside group attack during primaries! They eventually decided to include all members of the Republican house, because even they could see how dumb they looked. But the fact that they debated that is awesome to me. They are 100% assholes.
Chris
@redshirt:
The easy answer is that the simple fact that you’re asking the question already puts you ahead of them. I assure you that no conservative lies awake at night wondering whether they’ve become too much like liberals, or communists or jihadists or whoever they conceive their enemies to be, which is a big part of what makes them conservatives. (A great and common concern on conservative blogs is the notion that they might not be similar enough to their enemies, that it’s important to ensure that you’re equally ruthless in all particulars to ensure that they don’t win).
Kay (not the front-pager)
@kped: “… but we did this thing [shut down the gov’t] and now we need to get something for it, and we don’t even know what…” – a rough quote from Rep Yoho (or is it Yolo?), R-Fl. during the 2013 gov’t shutdown.
The Golux
@Eric:
The only remaining Republican moderate is on display at the Smithsonian, right next to the stuffed dodo.