*Paul Ryan pulls a quarter out from behind my ear*
ME: “Is that supposed to be a magic trick?”
RYAN: “That’s the magic of your tax cut!”
ME: “That’s fucking it?”
RYAN: “Now, watch me make Medicaid disappear!”— Sam Grittner (@SamGrittner) February 3, 2018
It was another crazy news week, so it’s understandable if you missed a small but important announcement from the Treasury Department: The federal government is on track to borrow nearly $1 trillion this fiscal year — Trump’s first full year in charge of the budget.
That’s almost double what the government borrowed in fiscal year 2017.
Here are the exact figures: The U.S. Treasury expects to borrow $955 billion this fiscal year, according to a documents released Wednesday. It’s the highest amount of borrowing in six years, and a big jump from the $519 billion the federal government borrowed last year.
Treasury mainly attributed the increase to the “fiscal outlook.” The Congressional Budget Office was more blunt. In a report this week, the CBO said tax receipts are going to be lower because of the new tax law.
And we all know what that means- we will suddenly become (and by we, I mean the Republicans and the media) with the debt and deficit, so something will have to be done. That something will not be getting rid of the newly enacted tax cut, the proximate cause of this mess:
Welfare hardly exists anymore in the United States. Yet in his ever-persistent war on the poor, Paul Ryan is pushing a proposal that “could include work requirements for welfare beneficiaries,” as Politico reports. And to do so, Ryan and other Republicans are trying out a shiny new rebrand.
According to Politico, at a GOP retreat, “Ryan urged congressional Republicans to tackle ‘workforce development.’ He messaged the somewhat amorphous phrase as a matter of ‘helping people[.]’” House Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker followed a similar tack, saying, “If you really want someone to get out there and find fulfillment… even though you’ve got to get the framing or the phrasing right, wouldn’t you want to see that person excel?” and that “When we talk about ‘Medicaid reform,’ that’s not a great buzz phrase.”
The exact details of Ryan’s plans are not clear (after all, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the current version of welfare, already imposes strict work requirements), but he has consistently advocated for cuts to programs like Social Security, Medicare, and food stamps. And Donald Trump has already opened the door on tampering with Medicaid, allowing states to impose work requirements for the first time in the program’s 50-year history.
Winning the House and putting a dent in the Senate are national priorities.
N M
Reposting from downstairs: #yomemo so lame that it didn’t even last two days on Drudge!
Since the worst of the MSM watches drudge like hawks (“rules our world”) maybe this means it truly is down the memory hole.
Edit: check drudge right now, not one MEMO headline
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
The Indiana House of Representatives just approved a bill to allow payday lenders to rape their customers after a heavy lobby effort.
The most expensive thing to be in this country is poor. The well-off to moderately well-off siphon cash from the poor, then stand up in their asshole churches and pay themselves on the backs about their fealty to Jesus.
Derelict
Personally, I simply cannot wait much longer for Paul Ryan’s glibertarian utopia to become reality. I’m tired of watching my 85-year-old mother collect Medicare and Social Security without having to work for those benefits. Both of those things need to be slashed or even eliminated entirely in order to encourage her to get off her duff and go be productive like the rest of us.
At the very least, I’m hoping Ryan converts Medicare to a voucher system. According to his last proposal on the subject, my mother would get $1,500 a year to put towards health insurance on the free market. Combined with the $928/month she gets from Social Security, that voucher should help her pay for 3 or maybe even 4 months of health insurance every year!
Derelict
Ryan’s right, you know. I’ts about time that lazy moochers like my 85-year-old mother got some incentive to get a job. I’m tired of watching her collect Social Security and Medicare without having to work for those benefits.
Baud
I can’t even imagine the ghoulish “reforms” Hillary would have made.
Raoul
So, we have a debt ceiling moment coming very fast at us – at the GOP, really. And while it is sort of ancient history, we do have past occasions of reversing the worst (and by that I of course mean the biggest tax cuts on the rich).
I have some small hope that our journalists learning that the GOP deficit panic is bullshit. But to the extent that they forget this in-their-faces lesson from, ohh a few months ago, our #2 job (#1 is electing Dems in November), our second most important job is to hammer home the message that if the debt and deficit are too high, reverse the tax cut on the rich. Period.
If they won’t do that, then Dick Cheney was absolutely right: Deficits don’t matter. And the GOP has made that crystal clear with the 2017 Trump-Ryan Tax bill.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
I bet she wouldn’t even sign an executive order closing Wall Street!
#trueprogressivismdemandsupendingeverythinginoneswoop
guachi
When Republicans and conservatives claim they care about the deficit, I assume they are lying.
Only one Republican President since Eisenhower lowered the deficit as a % of GDP from the beginning of his four-year term to the end of his four-year term. Where “beginning” is the first full fiscal year for that President (so FY2018 for Trump and FY2010 for Obama, etc.) and “four-year term” is combined for Kennedy/Johnson and Nixon/Ford.
The only time it happened for Republicans was Reagan’s second term but in his case the deficit didn’t decrease in his second term as much as it increased in his first term. So he ended up behind.
Every Democrat lowered the deficit. Every. Single. One.
Raoul
We also need to do all we can to discredit the Third Way/deficit scold ‘centrism’ industry. It’s all bullhsit Republicanism by people embarrased by Trump and/or the godbotherers.
Anything that can be done to expose their funding ties back to traditional GOP donors so that we can be very clear that these are GOP operations, just astroturfed to look independent would be valuable. Follow the money, as always. It leads to the 1% and their anti-tax obsessions.
Schlemazel
@Baud:
I have it on the highest authority whatever she would have done would have been much worse.
danielx
@Baud:
I blame Obama.
SFAW
I’m going to whine* about one of the tags:
according to Dictionary.com, “venality” means “openness to bribery or corruption.”
Although this is true for most/all of the elected Rethugs in the country, I’m thinking “Republican EVIL” is a better tag for stuff like this. Because that’s what those motherfuckers are.
*or “whinge” for persons like Amir, what don’t talk gud ‘Murican English.
Raoul
@guachi: And yet, who gets the garbage ‘tax and spend’ label?
Yeah, the media is complicit in the stupidification of our politics and our voters.
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
There’s a drive for similar legislation in Ohio. Somehow, they manage to find people of color who testify that payday lending has worked out very well for them.
SFAW
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
But she WOULD sign one closing Main Street, because — as her Goldman P. CitiMorgan speeches showed — she hates middle class Americans.
Raoul
@SFAW: They are evil. But they are indeed venal. The bribe is summed up in the recent “Koch’s to spend $400,000,000 on GOP election 2018. The tax cut on the Kochs is kicked back to the GOP in their pursuit of one-party rule.
SFAW
@Raoul:
A large part of that is due to the Rethugs “working the refs” for 30 years. That, and Pinch Fucking Sulzberger destroying the integrity of the FTFNYT, which Junior seems in no hurry to reverse.
No Drought No More
Ted Lieu just stated on the great Joy Reid’s AM show that it’s vital the democrats release “their version” on the Nunes memo. I found that inexplicable. The Nunes memo has been universally and deservedly mocked for what it is. Why then does Lieu, or any other congressional democrat, feel the need to further expose what is already understood to be a laughably bankrupt document? I say the hemming and hawing of congressional democrats is them buying time in order to summon their courage to declare congressional republicans in league with a foreign power to subvert our democracy by destroying our Constitution…. And goddamn them for their hesitation.
SFAW
@Raoul:
It’s not an either/or situation. I was just opining that THIS particular batch of shit (helping the poor find “fulfillment” by fucking them over on Medicaid) falls (in my “mind”) much more in the “evil” bucket.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So Kansas all over the country, cut and spend, scream about the deficit, cut, still spend, scream again. Term out of office and complain about how the left has neglect the infrastructure.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Raoul:
The right has been creating this LARP of theirs since at lest the 80s now and a lot of the media are conservatives. If they stop believing Tax Cuts are Magic! then the game ends. Remember these are the same idiots who thought the way to support the Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan was enacted a tax cut.
chris
Paul Ryan:”It’s not a proper oligarchy until we have children begging,er, finding fulfilment in the streets. Get with the program, people, we’re this close”
The Moar You Know
@No Drought No More: You’ve been hammering this for a few days. It is never going to happen and you and I both know it.
Not saying it shouldn’t. But it won’t.
Villago Delenda Est
Paul Ryan needs to be ended.
The Moar You Know
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Wouldn’t you, if you could? Shit, the GOP and the media have been playing this little game for the vast majority of my lifetime (since the late 70s) and it keeps working. I don’t blame them, I’d do it too. I blame their enablers.
opiejeanne
@No Drought No More: They’re not hesitating. The Republicans on the committee forbade them from releasing theirs.
debbie
@No Drought No More:
Of course you have to respond, no matter how stupid the memo. One word: swiftboating.
opiejeanne
@No Drought No More: And I would like to add, way to misrepresent what’s going on.
debbie
@opiejeanne:
I agree. I’m not sure Nadler won’t get blowback from them on his memo.
gene108
Speaking of taking back the House, I went to a meet and greet for Andy Kim, who is looking to unseat Tom MacArthur of the MacArthur Amendment fame, which helped get “healthcare reform” passed in the House.
Andy’s a good guy. Father of a young kids (2.5 and 0.5 year old), who isn’t seeing as much of as he would like because he is campaigning. Bunch of foreign service experience, from advising Gen. Patraeus (sp?) in Afghanistan, to President Obama on ISIS.
He could use a few bucks.
B.B.A.
@opiejeanne: I think the Democrats on the committee can release the memo without Republican approval by reading it into the Congressional Record. The Constitution gives full criminal immunity for anything said officially in Congress, but they’d still be subject to internal sanction.
Also, it wouldn’t be declassified, and we’ve gone over those complications before.
raven
Iggles?
japa21
@No Drought No More: Partially because it is only being partly mocked. Not totally enough. We see it being mocked but we are in a bubble too. There is a lot of “this is what they say and we can’t really judge it one way or another. If what they are saying is true, then it could be bad.”
opiejeanne
@B.B.A.: Yes. so reading it into the CR won’t do diddly. I thought maybe Nancy Smash might hand it to the press or something but the possibility of being blamed for further endangering National Security is the reason I’ve heard that they are reluctant to do so without approval of the committee
Betty Cracker
@No Drought No More: Two points:
1) Lieu has seen the Democrats’ memo. You haven’t. Maybe he knows what he’s talking about.
2) Prominent elected Democrats have repeatedly accused Republicans of being in league with Trump and Russian to undermine democracy. Examples after about one minute’s search here, here and here.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: I think that Hillary lady said something about that too.
oldgold
Whatever your opinion on Nancy Pelosi, it is clear that if she remains the leader of the Democratic House congregation, the goal of attaining a majority in November is going to be considerably more difficult.
She needs to step aside.
gene108
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
We still have troops in combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the third tax cut Republicans enacted, while we are at war.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: No Betty, we have to beat up on DEMs because they aren’t superheroes or murderous thugs.
The Golux
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Serendipitous typo.
OzarkHillbilly
@oldgold: Disagree.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Is oldgold a troll? Because that’s the only way I can imagine that comment being said in all seriousness?
JMG
@oldgold: Why? Because Republicans don’t like her? All Congressional leaders are unpopular no matter what, because people hate Congress. Pelosi is like her Senate opposite number, McConnell. Each excels at leading their caucus, and are very unpopular with the general public precisely because of that skill.
Betty Cracker
@oldgold: It’s not clear to me. Maybe show your work? And if your work consists of “wingnuts hate Pelosi,” perhaps you can explain how being not-Pelosi will protect any other Democrat from being slimed non-stop by Republicans and their media?
Baud
@oldgold:
That really doesn’t go far enough. Every Democrat in Congress needs to resign if we really want to win in November.
ArchTeryx
Quite time to drag out the old Barbara Ehrenreich polemic Nickel and Dimed, which was an awesome bit of investigative journalism showing just how expensive it was to be poor in America, and how the working poor are constantly shortchanged or out and out robbed by means such as wage theft.
Everything old is new again. As a class, the rich in this country are our mortal enemies. But there are plenty of individual rich people that are fighting the good fight alongside us – the media just never covers them, the same way they never cover all the moderate Christians in favor of the bible-humping loudmouths.
ArchTeryx
@JMG: And yet, despite that awful unpopularity, she keeps right on knocking down primary challengers and winning her district going away. The American public may not like her, but her voters sure do, and they’re the only ones that get a say.
Pretty much the same goes for McConnell. Kentucky loves that bastard even if the rest of the U.S. hates him, because he’s so effective. It is fair to note, though, that his star got rather tarnished after the disastrous attempt to repeal Obamacare and destroy Medicaid. It got more tarnished still after the tax cuts. Would not be surprised to see him retire the day he loses the Senate. Being minority leader isn’t going to be nearly as much fun as it was when the Democrats were letting him run roughshod over their majority.
MomSense
@chris:
Exactly. How will we ever find fulfillment and honor if we aren’t impoverished and starving.?
p.a.
Maybe trump is the final “tell” in their plan to gut the remaining surviving programs of the New Deal and Great Society: “well if enough of the people are stupid enough to get him elected, and stupid enough to continue supporting him in the face of mountainous, obvious incompetence, maybe we finally can gut FDR-ism without much electoral damage.”
Aimai
@oldgold: fuck off. She is the most accomplished majority and minority leader ever.
oldgold
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/amp/republicans-dust-anti-pelosi-playbook-midterms-will-it-work-n844241
Chyron HR
@oldgold:
If you don’t like her, primary her. If you can’t beat her in a primary, get the Democratic caucus to select a new leader. If Your Revolution can’t do either those things don’t come bitching to us about it.
Repatriated
@Baud: Slacker.
The problem is Democratic candidates!
Once they even run for office, they become tainted with neoconservatism.
The way to win is for not only every Democratic office-holder to resign, but also for no one to ever run as a Democrat again.
Only by disbanding the party entirely can the party achieve victory.
Or something. Yeah.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: At least Bernie’s safe.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@oldgold: So we’re going to let the enemy choose our leadership? Maybe we should select Paul Ryan as the Democratic leader.
ETA: I’m sure “The Village” would applaud us “reaching across the aisle”.
B.B.A.
@oldgold: At this point they might as well just use the c-word. We all know they’re thinking it.
Baud
@p.a.: That’s what I would think if I were them.
PIGL
@OzarkHillbilly: he only wants what’s best for your party.
Peter
@oldgold: That’s not clear at all.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: When people say Dems are weak, what they mean is that the Dems accurately reflect he character of their constituents.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I’ve been around here for a while and Democrats are characters.
Baud
@Repatriated:
Only when the GOP holds every office in the land can the contradictions reach their maximum height.
Then we strike!
oldgold
Having the Trump’s GOP controlling all of the levers of power in Washington is an existential threat to our nation.
Our best shot of ending this Trump/ GOP hegemony is taking the House next fall. I am more than willing to sacrifice Nancy Pelosi to make this more likely.
opiejeanne
@Aimai: Pelosi is also one hell of a fundraiser for Democratic candidates,
Baud
@oldgold: I’d be willing to sacrifice to you to make that happen. That doesn’t mean sacrificing you is a good strategy to achieving our goals.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@oldgold: I think the point is that it won’t make a damned bit of difference. Whoever we select as leader, they will be attacked.
opiejeanne
@oldgold: It won’t work like that. Sacrificing Pelosi, as you put it will harm the Democrats and the Republicans will crow about how they chased her from leadership, if not office, and crow about how weak we are for allowing her to be hounded from office.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Thank you. Amen. Ad infinitum.
Baud
Holy cow. The Simpsons (via Reddit)
https://youtu.be/ZtparSnQhFc?t=29
WaterGirl
@oldgold: Yeah, rigtht. And when I’m playing volleyball, I TOTALLY listen when THE OTHER TEAM calls the ball in or out on my side of the court. Because they totally have my team’s interests in mind, not their own team. They are totally trying to help me, what an idiot I am for thinking they might have their own agenda.
Weaselone
@oldgold:
Won’t work. They’ll still run against her even if she isn’t leader while applying generous layers of slime and shit to the next person.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@oldgold:
Clearly, Dennis Kucinich must be tapped for the role. Or maybe, Bernie can act as both Senator for Vermont’s white granola progressives AND as Speaker of the House….
oldgold
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
It will make difference.
Yes, anyone we select will be attacked. But, the political traction gained from the attack will be different – much different.
Winning he House is more important to me than Nancy Pelosi.
eclare
@ArchTeryx: That was a great book, I read it years ago.
Baud
@Weaselone: They’re still running against Hillary.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Yup.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@oldgold:
Obviously, we disagree on whether it will be helpful, so there’s no point in you continuing to push the issue, because it’s never happening.
gene108
@oldgold:
My mom has the same line of thought that Pelosi should step aside, because she is toxic in the swing districts Democrats need to win, in order to take back the House.
There will be a fuck ton of ads about a vote for the Democratic candidate is just another vote for Pelosi and her San Francisco values.
It is a no win situation. If she steps aside, Republicans will do a victory lap claiming something or another about Democrats in disarray or Democrats realize their ultra-liberal agenda is a failure and are moving closer to Republicans.
Also, too, if Pelosi steps aside, they just make Chuck Schumer, and his New York values the next person for Republicans to run against.
Villago Delenda Est
@oldgold: Oh, nonsense.
Patricia Kayden
Gowdy is admitting that he was a lousy politician just as he leaves office. But kudos to Gowdy for admitting that the Nunes propaganda memo has nothing to do with Mueller’s investigation (although we all know that Orange Bigot is trying to use it as an excuse to fire Mueller’s boss).
Another Scott
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: No, we need to really shake up The System and pick someone from outside the House. After all, the Speaker doesn’t have to be a member.
I think we should pick a consensus leader. Someone with demonstrated accomplishments, the ability to reach across the isle, and someone who is young and clear-thinking. Someone born outside the USA would be a plus, too. An international perspective is always valuable.
I vote for David Brooks (born in Toronto).
You’re welcome.
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@gene108:
The GOP has already won by manipulatimg our side into discussing this issue. Dem voters have learned nothing from 2016. So much for being “woke.”
germy
@gene108:
opiejeanne
@oldgold: It’s obvious you don’t know how this works and you didn’t pay attention when she was Speaker or how she has done business since. Nancy is very effective in corralling balky members of her own party and protecting those who need cover. She’s a very effective fund raiser for the Democrats.
Very effective defines her. And you want to accommodate the Republicans by getting rid of someone who is very effective at her job because argle bargle,, oh damn, I am too sick to argue with you.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Who?
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Republicans.
eclare
@Baud: Amen.
debbie
@opiejeanne:
Again I’m agreeing with you. Getting rid of Pelosi now is just inviting the fox into the henhouse (nothing against chickens).
?BillinGlendaleCA
@oldgold: Enough of this bullshit, I’m headed to the west Valley to get a dose of radiation.
gene108
@raven:
I liked the basket full of Wawa hoagies. Nice touch.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Ya missed the joke there.
(Who was directed, not at the subject but the predicate.)
Mary G
So Nancy SMASH is the new Al Franken?
opiejeanne
Anger at the general stupidity is making me cough so hard I nearly blacked out for a second. This cold is so nasty I begin to understand how death is a release.
Off to find something on Netflix. Or Acorn. Or something
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Sorry, man. It’s one of those days.
rikyrah
Tell the truth, Cole
Amir Khalid
@oldgold:
And just how does sacrificing one of the Democratic party’s most effective Congressional leaders make taking the House, or more importantly prevailing there after the election, more likely?
sdhays
@oldgold: Not one race will hinge on Nancy Pelosi being the leader of the House Democrats. Not a single one. And Nancy Pelosi is the most skilled Congressional leader Congress has to offer. Sure, regaining control of the House is of paramount importance, but until you demonstrate which House seats swing Democrat because of Nancy Pelosi’s retirement (or defenestration) and exactly how the mechanics of that work, you’re simply allowing the right wing to get into your head and do their work for them.
Big R
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
This seems like it needs explanation? Or, you know, less rape culture?
debbie
@Big R:
Charging interest of around 400% on short-term loans is quite a violation of decency, no?
B.B.A.
@Mary G: No, she’s not a sexual predator.
…dammit, off to the penalty box again.
sdhays
@Patricia Kayden: The way he’s talking, it really sounds like he has become disenchanted with the Republican Party under Trump. And I wonder if he now feels some shame about the shabbiness with which he treated Hillary Clinton, and regret in the role he played in getting Donald Trump elected. He was playing a traitorous game, and he didn’t even realize it until it was far too late. He may never say it, but it’s kind of hinted at with the timing and the way he simply won’t repeat the talking point about “the memo”.
J R in WV
@oldgold:
I strongly disagree, and I suspect you are a troll, because you begin with a valueless assertion and get more stupid from there. Leader Pelosi is a great leader of her party in Congress. The reason she is still Leader of the Democratic Party in the House is because her fellow Congressmen and Women Know full well that she is the best Leader of our party available at this time.
I suspect you know this full well, as you provide no reasoning whatsoever for wanting her to lose election. That’s how she got to be Leader of her party, you know. She won the election. The only way she won’t be Leader is to die in office, cease running for office, or lose election as Leader, which isn’t going to happen because Democratic members of the House know she’s the best leader they could select.
Jager
Remember the news reels of old people in Moscow sweeping the streets, moving rubble, etc, combine that with third world children begging in the streets, crews of unhappy men removing the bodies of people who died in doorways over night and you have the republican vision of ameirika. Tough to see the reality when you are driving by in a limo with dark tinted windows or drinking expensive bottles of wine with Paul Ryan in a fancy restaurant while patting yourself on the back.and getting yourself up for the highly anticipated military parade scheduled for tomorrow and hey, that atmospheric nuclear test the other day was awesome wasn’t it? That mushroom cloud was incredible.
NotMax
Arbeit macht frei.
mai naem mobile
@Villago Delenda Est: If Paul Ryan was physically attacked, I bet he would curl up in a ball and start crying like the little baby he is. The guys who aren’t considered
manly men like John Kerry and Barack Obama would be the ones who would fight back.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@oldgold: Democrats have to make Paul “Atlas Shrugged” Ryan into a boogeyman too. Pretty sure the video of him salivating over cuts to SS and Medicare are out there. Media Mattesr probably has it if the DNC doesn’t. Yet.
And while I think getting rid of Pelosi is moronic, sexist, ageist and a few other kinds of stupid, she should stay away from cameras. She’s almost as bad on TV as she is good at her actual job of leading the caucus.
oldgold
I love smell of orthodoxy in the morning.
Nicole
Years ago, I read a piece that said the right-wing’s fear of the (at the time Speaker, now Minority Leader) was obvious in that they referred to her only by her last name. That was all I needed to know. They attack her because she scares them. Capable women have a way of doing that.
afanasia
@oldgold:.Much different? How?
trollhattan
@J R in WV:
Naw man, it was really well thought through. Ya see, if we have a leader who Republicans don’t hate then we can…uh…er. I got it, we fire Nancy SMASH (note to self: email San Francisco voters to share this decision) and then appoint somebody SECRET to lead the Democratic Party to victory in November. How can they lose?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax:
Fulfillment is the new word.
Mike in NC
In his younger days Paul Ryan found fulfillment driving an Oscar Meyer wienermobile. Maybe he could go back to doing that full time.
trollhattan
@oldgold:
“Orthodox” jackals. Got it. Like all good underpants gnomes, you haven’t filled in Part 2 of your plan. Show your work.
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’ll agree with that. Pelosi’s one obvious flaw as a politician/leader is that she’s not a smooth public speaker. You can really see the filter working on her – there are things that she wants to say, but knows that she can’t speak “unvarnished” because she represents the whole Caucus, so you physically see the filter working on her or she sticks to talking points which don’t sound natural or obviously sidesteps a question.
I remember seeing her interviewed by Jon Stewart years ago, and he was pressing her on something (maybe impeachment for W?) and she was just clearly uncomfortable, basically because you could see that she personally agreed with Jon, but couldn’t say that since a bunch of people in her caucus weren’t behind it and they had made a strategic decision to everything possible to win in 2008.
Nicole
While we’re on the subject of scary Pelosi, I find it often useful to look back at profiles of politicians from some years back. Here’s one on her from 2010:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/26/nancy-pelosi-politician-speaker
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m sure if Dems, for some reason, replaced Nancy Pelosi with Seth Moulton– who has a great biography but no original or interesting ideas, or evidence of political effectiveness, that I have ever heard– Republicans would stop using Pelosi as a boogeyman.
There might be a case to be made for Dems to follow the Tom Delay model– find a meat-puppet to hold the office while everyone understands the unspoken rule that Pelosi is running the show– but that kind of pragmatism just isn’t in Dems DNA. And yes I am deliberately leaving out the name of Delay’s meat puppet.
WaterGirl
Okay, oldgold is officially a troll in my book. How many of us wasted time responding to him and discussing the ridiculous idea that Nancy Pelosi, possibly the best speaker we’ve ever had, should not be Speaker of the House or Minority Leader.
Score one for oldgold, but he has shown himself for what is. Pied.
oldgold
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I hope your treatment goes well and is effective.
Applejinx
@oldgold:
…to moose and squirrel? If you say so, Boris.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@sdhays: I remember when all the holy purists at Eschaton called for her to be cast out when she took impeachment of Bush “off the table”. I agree it was a stupid, and unconstitutional, thing to say, but it was an acknowledgement of political reality. The alternatives were blue-doggy and cautious Steny Hoyer and the already hysteria-inspiring RAHM!, not Dennis Kucinich.
Nicole
Ooh! In my attempts to find the one about referring to Pelosi by her last name only, I also found another good piece from 2010:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a6871/nancy-pelosi-bio-0210/
Greatest Speaker of my lifetime, and I do remember Tip O’Neill.
Chyron HR
@oldgold:
“I posted on a blog two hours ago to demand that Nancy Pelosi be killed and you haven’t done it yet! ORTHODOXY MUCH????”
Lyrebird
@SFAW:
Yeah. How those Medicaid-reliant 8 yr olds with spina bifida are gonna bleepity bleep go out and a job is a stumper.
Blithely trying to rip away health care, sense of security, etc, absolutely is evil.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Nicole: I forget if it was in ’06 or ’08, when she was asked about Dem candidates who dissed her in their districts, she said “I’m fine if they campaign against me, as long as they vote with me after the election.” She learned politics from her father in Baltimore. I don’t know much about old man D’Alessandro, and I suspect there are some things I would not like about a big city pol in the age of political machines, but like Obama, Nancy D’Alessandro knows not flinch at every cable news chyron.
Kay
State and local races are more fun to follow though. You don’t have to slog thru a week of bullshit on The Memo- they have normal politics- candidates saying their opponent is too scared to debate, that sort of thing.
It used to be that state and local was wackier than national- less professional, less polished- but since Trump the real nutjobs are at the national level.
Aleta
I wasn’t in the US during Reagan but I remember being shocked at this: Before his reelection it came out (Stockman himself revealed) that he/they had intentionally increased the deficit to force the cutting of social programs. (I could be wrong on details.) I was naive, and new at reading the news and following elections, and I was shocked at the exposure of their devilish plan. “He’ll never be reelected now this has come out,” I thought.
Kay
There’s a lot of liars in the national political scene, headed up by the big liar in the White House but is there ANY group of people so consistently full of shit as “deficit hawks”?
WHY are they still taken seriously? They never challenge any group who are actually powerful. They ALWAYS go after Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security recipients. This makes them not credible.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: We would be in multiple World Wars if Killary had been elected. Or so Susan Sarandon told me.
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
I’m getting long-distance worried about you. Have you seen a doctor yet? This year’s flu is a killer, and I want to be able to read your book someday.
What what?
@oldgold: Did someone hijack this nym? As a mostly lurker, I’m a pretty close reader and if I’m recalling right, oldgold didn’t/doesn’t usually drop articles as in ‘I love smell of orthodoxy…’.
Patricia Kayden
@Jager: What I find pretty amazing is that Republicans have never hidden their anti-working class/pro-wealthy agenda from the American people and yet they keep getting elected.
Nothing Ryan is doing now should surprise anyone who has been paying attention to politics.
Nicole
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah- for exhibit A of someone who really doesn’t care what is said about them, look no further. The Esquire article even had someone quoting her as saying that she welcomed attacks on her because it meant another Democrat wasn’t getting attacked.
raven
@gene108: I have Tastykakes!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
because our political discourse is dominated by white people who are “upper middle class”*, or confidently aspire to be. Scare quotes because that is a euphemism for people who are statistically rich but like to think of themselves as jus’ folks. Before Matt Lauer was revealed to be a rapist, the big recent gossip item was his purchase of an $18 million weekend place in the Hamptons. When Peter Jennings died (almost twenty years ago?) he left an estate valued at $25 million (IIRC) and he didn’t even have a book racket like Brokaw and Russert. Brokaw is pretty vocal about ‘getting serious about entitlements’, because he’s concerned about DebtAndDeficit. I don’t have specific memories of the other two saying so, but they are certainly part of the “professional centrist” mindset that advocates Republican economic policies and thinks of themselves as liberal because they have gay friends and recycle. When it’s not too inconvenient.
* which also explains the “racism is bad manners, but we mustn’t play the Race Card” thing when covering Republicans, and politics in general
karensky
@Villago Delenda Est: Amen
J R in WV
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Ya think? If there’s an opponent (a Dem, of course) I’ll be contributing to them.
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I actually take some comfort in it. I’m confident that Nancy and I pretty much agree on everything, and she knows more inner working of Congress, the Federal bureaucracy, and her Caucus in left toenail than I have in my entire brain, so if she thinks the Democrats need to do something else, then I trust that she’s got a damn good reason.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
Pelosi is extremely good at her job. No wonder the Rs hate her. I don’t think we should let that drive her out of office.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
When has this not been the case in the U.S. or the U.K. at least? Even Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of “The Nation,” is the wealthy daughter of an heiress.
Maybe the problem has become worse over time.
Baud
@Brachiator:
I never would have guessed than a vanden Heuvel came from money.
danielx
@oldgold:
Oh, well, if THAT is the source, I take it as gospel. Because clearly Pelosi is the same drag on Dems as, say, Newton Leroy Gingrich was on Republicans in 1998. Pull the other one, will you?
Jeffro
Wasn’t there a Paul Ryan quote just a few years ago that he wasn’t THAT much of a Randian?
I wonder what part he disagrees with…
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Brachiator: As I watch the Trump and/or Kennedy children, I’ve thought that any economic standing presents issues in raising a child. One tack for wealthy parents is teaching noblesse oblige. I think the Kennedys tried to do that, with greater or less success. The Trumps did not. Noblesse oblige has its limits, but so does piracy all the way around.
If you look at well off people, especially well of white people, perhaps the noblesse oblige tradition doesn’t exist and it didn’t occur to parents to do anything else. So maybe your guess is right and the problem is worse? I don’t know.
rikyrah
Not a phucking lie told, Cole.
Not. A. Single. One.??
rikyrah
My name is rikyrah and I am in love with my air fryer ??
Baud
@rikyrah: Hi rikyrah. Is this your first time at Appliance Anonymous?
divF
@Baud: Actually it is her mother’s side of the family that has the serious money. Her maternal grandfather was Jules Stein, one of the founders of Music Corporation of America (currently known as MCA), a major Hollywood powerhouse.
FlipYrWhig
I know it’s not the same people but it’s kinda amusing how in liberal-left circles you can hear both “we need unabashed progressive leadership!” AND “our leaders are too easy for Republicans to demonize!”
ArchTeryx
@rikyrah: My best friend and housemate just got one of those, and I used it to make home fries to go with our turkey burgers. I’m enough of a chef that I can make fries that *taste* like something – no ketchup required!
Baud
@FlipYrWhig: True progressives are impossible to demonize. Q.E.D.
Nicole
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): I also wonder if the Kennedys being a tight-knit clan who seem to like each other has anything to do with it. There’s plenty to criticize about them, but I’ve never had the sense that each generation has felt anything other than love for the next generation. Whereas, whole books could be written about the dysfunctional parent-child relationships of the Trumps since the first draft dodger arrived here. When you’re frantically trying to win the love of a parent who really doesn’t like you all that much, I imagine it’s hard to feel anything for anyone else. Also probably explains the frantic need for more money- anything to fill the hole inside that won’t ever be filled.
JFK and Bobby were a unit. I often forget that Trump even has siblings.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Brachiator: thirty years ago, the stock market dropped 20% in one day, and a lot of people wondered if it was 1929 all over again. Mike Royko wrote at the time that in 1929 reporters called their editors, in 1987 they called their brokers. I think that problem has only become exacerbated with the expansion of TV/celebrity journalst culture. I’m sure Joseph Alsop and Scottie Reston and whoever the fuck got paid to give speeches. I’d be surprised if even second-tier types like Chuck Todd and Major Garrett don’t make exponentially more. At roughly the same time, the fabled “white working class”, which under Roosevelt saw government* as a tool they could use to level the playing field against the rich, came to see it, thanks to Nixon and Reagan and Gingrich et al, as an alien force that was going to take from them and give it to Those People. So “getting serious about entitlements” works hand-in-hand with “Obamaphones” and “those illegals”, and the Koch brothers win. For now.
* broadly speaking. My Irish immigrant grandfather was a janitor who hated Roosevelt with a white hot passion. I never met him, and my dad says he doesn’t really understand it.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Somewhat relatedly, some of the most dominant players in the market today are pension fund administrators, whose clients are presumably people who the Dems like. Complicates things.
WaterGirl
@Aleta: I was sure Reagan would never get elected in the first place after I watched Bedtime for Bonzo, where Reagan starred in a movie with a chimp.
Chyron HR
@Jeffro:
Well, he doesn’t explicitly want the mooching underclass to die in a train wreck.
Oh, wait.
oldgold
In purple district among independents this will have an impact.
Schlemazel
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
One thing old man Rockefella actually got right was that he demanded his kids perform a useful function in life. His kids all did good during their life. Sadly it ended there. Back in the 70s his grandkids were suing the trust fund because they were only getting $7million a year out of it.
Baud
@oldgold: So we shit on our own base to chase independents because maybe independents care about Pelosi as speaker more than the country? That’s throwing away every lesson we thought we learned from 2016.
germy
@Jeffro:
Her atheism?
germy
@Baud: I thought most “independents” are republicans who are embarrassed to call themselves that after George W.
FlipYrWhig
@oldgold: So the Dems ditch Pelosi and then the Republicans put up a picture of Hillary Clinton instead and the same thing happens. Meanwhile Dems can put up a picture of… Trump, who is wildly unpopular. This is a foolish thing to worry about.
tychay
@WaterGirl: I lied it as soon as I read the comment. Either it’s a troll or the person has no sense of comedic timing.
divF
@Baud: Forget it Baud – its a troll. I’ve pied him.
germy
@Schlemazel: Nelson Rockefella left a giant bowel movement on the city of Albany when he destroyed a vibrant neighborhood and replaced it with a brutalist monstrosity as a monument to his ego.
Baud
@germy: I don’t really know. There probably are a lot of people who drink the “both sides” kool-aid, and who therefore will prefer whoever is not as closely connected to the party leadership.
Aleta
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: A quote about this from the IndyStar:
Aren’t they doing away with those Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rules anyway ?
Hoodie
@N M: m@Patricia Kayden: I suspect ass-covering more than virtue. Nunes is an accessory to obstruction of justice. Goody is gettin’ out while the gettin’s good.
Jeffro
@Chyron HR: @germy: found it… it was during the 2012 campaign when he was trying to grab somr cover for his previously unsuppressed devotion to her theories …and you are right Germy it was her atheism that was part of his disavowal
matt
They did this before with the Bush tax cuts. I’m pretty tired of our shitty media and political system.
HeleninEire
@Baud: LO FUCKING L. I love you.
oldgold
I was unaware that the definition of troll is an individual advancing an argument you disagree with.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: also, one of the several ? steps in the Underpants Gnome Ditch Pelosi Strategy: Who replaces her?
@Baud: true, but all the more reason to hammer on social security and remind people that it’s separate, and insulated, from the stock market, and the stock market… tends to fluctuate. I was just reading a WaPo article on how the recent run-up has the youngs feeling (over) confident, but they mention that the olds are getting that 2007 feeling again. Certainly applies in my fifty-year-old case. They also say that the average person “approaching retirement”, which strikes me as very vague, has $135,000 in retirement. I wonder how many people have sat down and calculated how long that will last.
Chyron HR
@oldgold:
“I hate that bitch” isn’t an “argument”.
SFAW
@Baud:
Well, now that I’m done with my “30 minutes of smashing my head against a brick wall” workout, I can wholeheartedly say “Co-sign.”
Wholeheartedly, but not wholebrainedly, of course.
FlipYrWhig
@Baud: Ah, touché.
SFAW
@oldgold:
Well, in this particular instance, “troll” was considered less hurtful than “moron.”
schrodingers_cat
@sdhays: Jon Stewart was fucking rude to Pelosi as he was to Obama, his good manners were reserved for war criminals like Yoo and Rumsfeld.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@oldgold: I don’t think you’re a troll, but when the second line of your argument is “I guess all you group thinkers are too stupid to see that I’m obviously right”, people might take you less seriously
Ruckus
I can think of many things to do with the senate to improve it, all of them highly inappropriate. Putting a dent in it is the least of them.
schrodingers_cat
That Pelosi should resign is an argument I have seen pushed on Twitter too, of late. “Progressives” seems to be the code for the Russian enablers on our side.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
You pretty much lost the whole argument with this petulant crap.
Nicole
@Jeffro: Someone might also have broken the news to Ryan that the Big Bad in Atlas Shrugged is a crony capitalist. Lotta right-wingers who sing Ayn Rand’s praises forget that part.
oldgold
@Chyron HR:
Do you enjoy jousting with strawmen?
bemused
@Aleta:
Regular folks should have gotten a clue big money is hell bent on plutocracy when municipalities started naming stadiums and arenas after banks and corps. Cleveland arena named Quicken Loans Arena really makes me grind my teeth.
SgrAstar
@oldgold: @oldgold: Nancy Pelosi in no way “needs to step aside.” Just NO.
HeleninEire
@Jeffro: It came out that she was an atheist and he panicked. Like the pu$$ycat he is.
Ruckus
@oldgold:
You really don’t understand the concept of leadership do you?
Is that because you are only a follower?
Because everything you’ve said here today screams republican troll. Including your name.
oldgold
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You are well named.
Humdog
There is a perverse Villager and evangelical idea that cruelty to the vulnerable is righteous. The Pain Caucus sees putting the screws to the little support we provide the poor is tough love that will jolt them into becoming worker bees as they ought to be. No recognition that there are multitude of reasons why people end up needing help. Since the wealthy clearly deserve their riches, the poor are where they are because of their lack of virtue. Punishing them and making a public display of it is to shame the poor and those who may become poor any moment into taking whatever crappy underpaid job they can find. Disability is no excuse, they are all shirkers.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
Old gold has been posting here for quite a while. I disagree with him about Pelosi, but he’s not a troll.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Yeah Baud.
I don’t usually care about appliances ??
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Those who want Nancy Smash out, need to collect the votes to VOTE her out of leadership.
Until then?
STFU ?
SFAW
@oldgold:
And you would be more aptly named were you to change it to “oldgold, thin-skinned progressive.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@oldgold: Ho ho! Zing! now you’ve convinced me that Pelosi should step down. Harvard Law? Oxford Union? Where’d you learn to be so clever?
SFAW
@Repatriated:
A/k/a “we had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
oldgold
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
Thank you.
Of course, I knew many would disagree with my take on Pelosi. I was somewhat surprised that so many would consider my opinion beyond the political pale and that anyone advancing it was a troll, misogynist and a moron.
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Lawrence University?
[Just kidding, Omnes and zhena gogolia!]
Fair Economist
If you want to know why the Republicans are revving up their attacks on Pelosi (which had lagged for a while) you only need to check out her recent tweet about Ryan’s latest attack on the safety net:
https://twitter.com/TeamPelosi/status/959559725900816384
She shivved him and they’re panicking.
Edit: also, the #TaxScam is WAY WAY worse than the Republicans have been saying. The CBO estimates it will increase the deficit over 400 billion just this year, which would extrapolate to a 10-year cost of 4 trillion, not 1.4 trillion. This is a big bomb which is going to explode on them soon.
schrodingers_cat
@Fair Economist: “Progressives” like GG and the great sage of Vt and his assorted flunkies on and off the intertoobz and the Rs are all playing for the same team, Mother Russia, whether they realize it or not.
Mandalay
The Republican candidate for a Congressional seat in Chicago is the worst of the worst…
At first blush you’d think he’d be Trump’s kind of guy, but there’s teeny-weeny problem with that notion…
This video of him ranting is absolutely chilling: https://youtu.be/vjWeEBf1TUo
Steeplejack
@oldgold:
The clickbait headline for that story is “Republicans dust off anti-Pelosi playbook for midterms. Will it work?” As we know, the answer to a Cavuto question headline is always no.
Steve Stivers can sit in his bunker and play over the glory days of the 2010 election all he wants, but as head of the National Republican Congressional Committee he is going to preside over a beatdown of biblical proportions in November.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: There are stories about Ted Kennedy like that too. He was the biggest boogie man in suburban Atlanta when I was growing up. “Kennedy’s Senate Bill 1 is going to turn America into a Gulag!!!11ONE!” He was happy to play the boogie man for a few Democrats in the South on that, and take brickbats from them on it, because he knew how the game was played, and how to move the ball forward.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
It has. The wealthy who aspire to have far more than enough have always been an issue, but the world, or at least parts of it has grown and there are more people that have climbed that ladder of wealth, and like what they see and don’t mind what or who they have to step on to get to the next rung. I’m sure you understand that the ladder is made up of all the people that get stepped on by almost everyone who climbs up. It doesn’t have to be but when people become ruthlessly wealthy, like the koch bros, or the walton family, it is because they gotten there by stepping on, kicking, stealing or whatever it takes to get there. They care about nothing else except being wealthier than anyone else. Not better, not faster, not principled, just wealthier. It is a disease and it is killing all of us. Social programs like SS and Medicare, welfare, SSDI, etc, etc, they haven’t stopped the koch bros from becoming very wealthy, they haven’t stopped them from becoming extremely wealthy, or from there being a rather wealthy upper middle class. 60% of a billion dollars a year (a 40% income tax rate) is still a lot of money to “earn” but it is not nearly enough for those who have to be whatever is past extremely wealthy.
germy
@oldgold: I understand you want to win. I want to win. I just think we need unity going forward. I like what Pelosi is doing and saying (see comment 197) and I’m hopeful the current monstrosity/45 will inspire more people to register and VOTE.
oldgold
@SFAW:
I surprised no one has suggested Trump U.
germy
@Mandalay:
I think the GOP has found its 2020 presidential nominee.
Steeplejack
@SgrAstar:
Ro-Tel explicated downstairs.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
A chimp and a chump. One was an extremely hairy beast who walked upright and one was a hairy asshole who led a political party.
oldgold
@germy:
Yes. I want to do whatever is within reason to enhance our chances in the fall of having a majority of the House.
I think that replacing Pelosi might do this. In this regard, I could be incorrect. It would not be the first or last time.
SFAW
@oldgold:
I didn’t think you were a real-estate-scam kind of guy/gal, whatever your other (potential) faults. I hope I haven’t misjudged you in that regard.
Mandalay
@germy: I think so:
Looking on the bright side, he didn’t mention the Jews, so there is that. I guess you have to moderate your message to win over the undecided.
J R in WV
@oldgold:
How do you like the smell of pie, asshole? ‘Cause that’s all you’re gonna talk about, for ever and ever. The end.
Also, where did you attempt to learn American style English? Because we use articles in our English, and you don’t. Asshole!
KS in MA
@Humdog: Indeed. We need to come up with an equivalent of “Death panels!” for this Ryan/GOP work requirement shit. How about “Chain gangs”?
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Royko’s take is vivid. Not sure how true it is. Even back in 1929, reporters and editors were beholden to plutocrat publishers.
But Joseph Alsop V was a blue blood, an insider and American aristocrat descended from James Monroe. Scotty Reston came up from poverty, but was comfortably upper middle class, at least, as associate editor of the New York Times.
Finding and cultivating journalists with integrity is tough. I don’t think that there is an easy answer for this.
J R in WV
@oldgold:
You don’t have an argument, you have an assertion with no facts mentioned. Plus you can’t speak/write English, either, which is one hell of a tell, Russian Troll.
Let’s fire one of our best legislative leaders to help win the battle against Russian-Republicans… right, great idea.
What’s your favorite pie? Fruit or nuts or creme?
Villago Delenda Est
@oldgold: We’ve established you’re misogynist scum. You may find a fire to die in now.
oldgold
@J R in WV:
Hopefully, in November, assuming Pelosi does not step aside, it will be crow.
Adria McDowell
@oldgold: Pfft…please. I live in Stivers district and, aside from a few Columbus suburbs, it’s pure Trumpista/GOP country. It doesn’t matter if the target is Pelosi or not. Nice try, though.
ETA: It literally doesn’t matter- they will attack any liberal woman they can find. Why fall into that trap yourself?
Citizen Alan
@oldgold:
Die in a fire, troll
Mnemosyne
@Adria McDowell:
You’d think that after the first 300 or so misogynist attacks against liberal women, “progressive” dudes would wake up and realize that Pelosi, Clinton, Harris, Warren, etc aren’t getting attacked because of anything they’ve actually done. This whole “we have to drop Nancy Pelosi because Republicans hate her” thing is the stupidest iteration yet.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: Yes, yesterday was the fourth time, Urgent Care and you get who you get on a Saturday, so not my regular doc. He took another look at the x-rays from a month ago and noticed something that looks like a cloudy area in my right lung, where the right margin of the heart should show up as a bit darker than the lung, and it’s not there. Says it could be “walking pneumonia”.
He put me back on steroids for a short course, and added antibiotics just in case. I haven’t had a fever, not much of one, 99 at one point.
And he prescribed a cough medicine which is Robitussin with hydrocodone in it, which every pharmacy in the area was out of. I got some but boy are they touchy about dispensing the stuff.
We have a bottle of plain Robitussin that I’m using during the day today so I can stop coughing and I find I’m able to fall asleep while watching tv.
I’ll call my own doctor this week and make another appointment. I don’t want to end up like my best friend who had to stay in a hospital in Mexico for a week while she was on vacation, because her cold morphed into pneumonia, but dammit I’m beginning to think I might need to go there if this doesn’t clear up soon. Today is the end of the sixth week.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@J R in WV: Bernie’s safe from all Dems having to resign, he’s not a Democrat.
And about my dose of radiation…I went to hike in a park adjoining the old Santa Susana Field Laboratory were they had a core meltdown on a test reactor in 1959. Oh, they also test rocket engines there, big rocket engines.
Matt McIrvin
@oldgold: Pelosi is net-unpopular because she is a national hate-object for conservatives, and most liberals don’t think about her much outside of California.
Pelosi is a national hate-object for conservatives because she is a Democratic leader, a forthright liberal and a woman. Replacing her with somebody else wouldn’t change that unless possibly the new leader were a (white Christian) man, and even that would probably last about 5 minutes. In any case, it’s not the sort of thing you want the other side to have the heckler’s veto over. “Get rid of Pelosi to win” basically translates to “preemptively surrender to a Republican agenda to win”. That trick never works.
Lalophobia
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Being around here a while and being a troll are not mutually exclusive. For the record
opiejeanne
@oldgold: I think the reason people are calling you a troll is that you don’t sound like the oldgold we’ve seen post here. Almost like someone else is using your name, which I’ve been told is not that hard to do.
opiejeanne
@J R in WV: Aha. That supports my suspicion about whether this is the oldgold who has posted here in the past.
thalarctosMaritimus
@opiejeanne: @Mnemosyne: Me, too. Do you need anything, opiejeanne? because I will drive out there if you do–just say the word!
opiejeanne
@thalarctosMaritimus: Thank you, that;s very kind. I have an adult child who lives in Seattle who would come if we need her. I made David go to the doctor too, yesterday and now he has a bunch of meds he’s taking. I’m staying inside, bundled up in a robe and pjs, taking all the nice meds (Prednisone tastes TERRIBLE) and behaving myself.
And I’m trying not to think about periocarditis because that’s what the x-ray looked like to me. I will talk to my regular doctor this week about it.
oldgold
@opiejeanne:
No one has stolen my name. You do not think my comment at #216 sounds like me? Would you like me to discuss my thoughts on kale?
Other than my remark at comment #187, for which I apologize to Jim, Foolish Literalist for making [it was uncalled for], I stand by what I have said in this thread.
Mokum
@What what?: Russian speakers have always trouble deciding between a, the or no article. Just saying…
opiejeanne
@oldgold: Kale? Is that one of your markers? I’ve seen you post here over several years, but you’re not active enough during the house when I usually am on the site for me to have a fix on your likes and dislikes. I’ve just never noticed you posting something of this nature, attacking the strongest Democratic member of Congress. OK, you be you, and have fun with all of the pie.
TenguPhule
Killing Paul Ryan shouldn’t be considered a crime but our nation’s sacred duty.