Waggish.com has some awesome Robert Bork quotes, mostly from his book Slouching Towards Gomorrah (via):
One evening at a hotel in New York I flipped around the television channels. Suddenly there on the public access channel was a voluptuous young woman, naked, her body oiled, writhing on the floor while fondling herself intimately…. I watched for some time–riveted by the sociological significance of it all.
Plenty of other good ones there too.
The greatest conservative legal mind of the 20th century, folks.
Gin & Tonic
Wow. Looked through some of those quotes, having never read the book, and for someone touted as a brilliant legal mind, they sound as if they were written by a not-overly-bright undergrad. Leaving the content of the ideas aside, just the syntax is really surprisingly pedestrian.
“For the topic of my term paper, I picked blah blah, because…” Doesn’t that start off at like a C-?
Gin & Tonic
Wow. Looked through some of those quotes, having never read the book, and for someone touted as a brilliant legal mind, they sound as if they were written by a not-overly-bright undergrad. Leaving the content of the ideas aside, just the syntax is really surprisingly pedestrian.
“For the topic of my term paper, I picked blah blah, because…” Doesn’t that start off at like a C-?
arguingwithsignposts
“riveted by the sociological significance of it all.”
I hear too much of that riveting will make you go blind.
Gin & Tonic
FYWP. Can’t delete.
Amir Khalid
Nine Inch Nails are a rap band? Well, you learn something every day.
Baud
I think Bork has a point here. Exhibit # 1: John Boehner, consummate sobber, weakest Speaker in U.S. history.
MikeJ
I have paid $50 to be riveted by sociological significance.
Baud
BTW:
New BJ tag line?
RSA
@Gin & Tonic: Add this as well:
Too bad Bork never learned how to work the Internet; he might have become aware of some traditions.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
While I don’t generally sympathize with the wingnut 27%, Bork is regarded as a great legal mind, and when someone like that writes drivel like this, it’s not hard to see how the alternate reality in which 27% live was created.
Baud
@RSA:
I wonder if he ever got the chance to google Santorum before he died.
gogol's wife
I haven’t gone to the link, but these quotations have to be parodies, don’t they? Don’t they?
gelfling545
@arguingwithsignposts: Reminds me of when my brother convinced my mother that he HAD to buy those Playboy magazines for sociology class.
dmsilev
@RSA: He isn’t even right about alt.sex==alternative sex. Back in the days of Usenet, alt.* was simply a catch-all for things that didn’t fit into the pre-ordained six or seven Big Categories, (comp.* for computers, sci.* for science, talk.* for random babble, plus a few others I’ve since forgotten), and in particular pretty much anyone could create an alt.* group without going through the fairly involved process needed to create a main-hierarchy group.
alt.sex was simply a discussion group for matters sexual, both vanilla and otherwise.
cathyx
@Baud: To the simple mind, they are great words of wisdom.
dmbeaster
I cant wait to read the Scalia sequel, Waiting for Sodom
RSA
@dmsilev:
Right–I knew that once but had to look it up again to check. I usually stuck to the rec hierarchy back in the day, but there was good stuff in some alt newsgroups; I was a regular reader of alt.usage.english, for example.
NonyNony
@dmsilev:
To Bork, people wanting to discuss sex was alternative. Sex was to be between a man and a woman, both married, and nobody was ever supposed to talk about it.
@Baud:
Let’s see – Slouching Towards Gommorah was written in 1996. Which means that Bork was talking about 1986. Which is a lie because the anti-feminists tell me that it all went downhill when men started crying in the 1970s.
Baud
To our Canadian friends, we miss you. You were good people.
Mark S.
Gasp, people have sex in other ways than missionary. This didn’t happen before Griswold.
Baud
.
I don’t even have a joke for this. Jesus H. Christ.
RSA
@Baud:
Again, to Bork’s writing skill: Conservatives usually like high culture, in some forms at least, what with its classical roots. I guess only if it’s not soft.
Culture of Truth
I need to face this peril, even if it’s very perilous.
Culture of Truth
yes… yes… give me some of that… sociological… significance…!!
AxelFoley
lolwut?
And to think, the rest of us straight guys would have just fapped off to that scene.
To quote Lex Luthor: “Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it’s a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.”
Baud
Bork’s passing gives all of us an opportunity to reflect on the eternal, incontestable truth that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Culture of Truth
Is this the hotel he sued for a personal injury he mysteriously sustained? Hmmmmm….
redshirt
I read the internet for the articles.
Honey! I’m not watching porn! I’m doing research!
Joey Maloney
@Baud: I wonder if he ever got the chance to google Santorum before he died.
Maybe that’s what killed him.
Baud
@redshirt:
I wonder what sociological significance Bork would have found in Sarah, Proud and Tall.
The Ancient Randonneur
He probably read Playboy for the articles. I know I did as a younger man. For some reason I never taped those articles to the inside of my locker when I was a soldier. Maybe I was confused by all that sociological significance stuff.
Baud
@cathyx:
I don’t know. I have a simple mind. I’m not a wingnut. I think it’s more complicated than that.
bemused
Bork, LaPierre, Scalia, Adkin, yadda, yadda….after awhile the names all start to blur into each other, my head aches and I have to go cuddle a cat.
General Stuck
Hardy har har!!
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
One transitive verb passes and another comes into being. I heard ‘Riced’ on the radio yesterday. Apparently it means preemptively opposed before nomination. See: Borked.
Culture of Truth
@General Stuck: HA HA HA
WereBear
Well, to be fair, he probably is the apex of the “conservative mind.”
Which explains so much.
Hawes
The original Angry Old White Guy.
Anthony Kennedy never looked so good.
gf120581
@General Stuck: Obama channels Michael Corleone. And that was before the Drunk Weepy Oompa-Loompa shot himself in the foot Thursday.
Is Plan B now Boner’s version of the dead hooker in Senator Geary’s bed?
gbear
The oiled woman was making a very serious, thoughtful, statement that had never been made in such detail or with such care.
dmsilev
@General Stuck: Please, please tell me that Obama followed that up with “Not even the fee for the gaming license, which I would appreciate if you would put up personally.”
Mike in NC
The title of this prig’s book is all you need to know about what a know-nothing idiot he was. Good riddance to the scumbag.
arguingwithsignposts
@General Stuck: I’m glad Goddard released that bit from behind the WSJ paywall.
General Stuck
@arguingwithsignposts:
me too
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
SCOTUS once decided it couldn’t define pr0n but knew it when it saw it. Apparently Bork failed that test.
gbear
Is that social significance in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?
Hill Dweller
@General Stuck: I see from some of the WSJ snippets floating around on Twitter that the President sent a plane to pick Boehner’s ass up on Monday and bring him to Washington to verbally smack him around.
Obama sold us out!
gbear
“@General Stuck:
“Do you expect me to talk?”
“No Mr Bohner! I expect you to die!
General Stuck
@gf120581:
Boehner is like the ringmaster at the circus. Bawling about how his clowns won’t stop clowning around.
Citizen_X
Christ, what an idiot. Good riddance.
ant
wait, wut?
So Bork thinks that women didn’t masturbate until the 21st century?
Or is it that nobody ever watched women masturbate before…..
Now I’m curious what the context is of this quote. Kinda like rubbernecking a good semi-truck crash.
And speaking of things off topic, I like this song….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odpglvg_mW8
Hill Dweller
Someone needs to cut and paste that article here. The snippets I’m seeing are hilarious.
The GOP staff wanted Obama to offer the 2011 deal again, but he told them to eat shit.
Paul Ryan prevented a larger deal because it didn’t make structural changes to entitlements. I think this validates the theory that Obama wanted to give the impression of being open to entitlement change for the Village without actually following through.
Obama reacting to the wingnuts’ offer: “You’re asking me to accept Mitt Romney’s tax plan? Why would I do that?”.
Helen Bedd
@Citizen_X:
I had never heard of Michael Behe til just now…turns out the “research” that Bork was citing got tossed overboard by Behe himself…
RationalWiki
Behe’s second book The Edge of Evolution, published in 2007, abandons many of his earlier positions, to formulate a new idea of the intelligent designer as the “great mutator,” driving the mutations which drive evolution.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Behe
General Stuck
@Hill Dweller:
None of the front pagers, save for ABL, has the courage to piss off their progressive betters. Maybe someplace online will later post the entire article.
Helen Bedd
Going thru those those Bork quotes is just like reading comment threads full of stuff from Fauxnews watching teabaggers.
Plus, a lot of it is simply endless variations on the theme of “Hey! you kids, get off my lawn.”
If anyone cares I’m listening to the hippity hopping stylingz of Trent Renzor as I type.
Next I’m going to look at sex gifs at Tumblr….I plan to watch for some time, riveted by the sociological significance of it all.
dmsilev
@arguingwithsignposts: You can get the whole article by Googling on ‘Wall Street Journal Obama Boehner’. Somehow, links that come in through Google don’t get stopped by the WSJ’s paywall.
dmsilev
@General Stuck: Another excerpt:
(I got to the article via this google link)
Soonergrunt
I’ll bet he left some sociological significance on the floor of the hotel room, too.
General Stuck
@dmsilev:
wow, thanks. your googlefu is strong!!
Honus
“Irving Kristol was going through Romania back when it was a Communist dictatorship, and he learned that, of course, they banned rock ‘n’ roll on the grounds it was a subversive music. And it is, but not just of Communist dictatorships. It’s subversive of bourgeois culture, too.”
Best justification of rock and roll I’ve heard in 50 years.
Villago Delenda Est
Ayn Rand, Ron and Rand Paul…he’s talking about you and your cults of personality, you vile fucktards.
arguingwithsignposts
@dmsilev: Thanks. Anyone who wants can try this link which has a google news mod at the end.
Here’s some more:
Full Metal Wingnut
Much as I love to hate Justice Kennedy (motherfucker wrote the Citizens United opinion) guys a pinko commie compared to Bork.
Also, didn’t burns allude to going to Yale Law? I had a professor at Cornell, John Blume, who was a Yale alum, and even he praised Bork’s brilliance (Bloom was and is heavily involved in death penalty stuff, a lot of appeals for death row inmates).
Hill Dweller
@dmsilev: That excerpt, much like Woodward’s book, glosses over the fact Republicans were threatening to destroy the full faith and credit of the US. It is/was economic treason, but the Village rationalizes everything the Republicans do in order to blame Obama.
SiubhanDuinne
@Citizen_X:
Funny, somebody just posted on FB the creationist explanation for how the dinosaurs died:
After dinosaurs ate everything on earth, they dug deep into the ground to search for food. Sadly, they became trapped in the holes, which is why their skeletons are found underground today.
I wish I were joking.
General Stuck
@dmsilev:
link goes to a different article
Villago Delenda Est
@Hill Dweller:
This is one of the many reasons why there is no revocation possible on Booby’s tumbrel ticket.
Amir Khalid
@General Stuck:
See if this works.
bemused
@SiubhanDuinne:
Oh man, I don’t know how these people make it through each day without some disaster…they are too dopey for words.
dmsilev
@General Stuck: Right, sorry about that. Too many WSJ fiscal-cliff stories.
Edit: try this one.
General Stuck
@Amir Khalid:
nope, maybe it’s a comcast thing.
Triassic Sands
Sociological significance, my ass.
I have a friend from the DC area and he once saw Bork in a store — buying pornography (magazines). I guess he was just doing more sociological research. Once the scientist, always the scientist.
WereBear
@Triassic Sands: Oh, wingnut, FREUDIANPROJECTION be thy name.
Uncle Cosmo
I believe Mr Bork was using “riveted” as a technical term referring to an alternate method of penetration.
“Riveted” is what geezers get when they are no longer physically capable of getting screwed.
Origuy
@dmsilev: One of the best of the alt.* newsgroups was alt.folklore.urban. From that sprang both snopes.com and Mythbusters.
Peter
Oh my god, Obama’s not fucking around with these negotiations.
arguingwithsignposts
@General Stuck: try the one I linked in my comment.
General Stuck
@dmsilev:
no worky, but thanks for trying:)
arguingwithsignposts — nada
GregB
Is ‘riveted by the sociological significance of it all’ conservative speak for fapping?
kooks
@dmsilev: This one worked for me, thanks!!
Southern Beale
Oooh oooh look who’s getting sued! The National Review! Thanks to Mark Steyn’s big mouth. And they have to go on the bleg because, as they say,
LOL. The free market hath spoken.
Petorado
@Honus:
Years ago, a 70’s-era rocker was asked to define what rock ‘n roll is. He responded, essentially, that it’s whatever music pisses off one’s parents.
I guess Bork hated us for our freedoms.
sidhra
@dmsilev:
More’s the pity.
arguingwithsignposts
@General Stuck: Search the headline How ‘Cliff’ Talks Hit the Wall in Google. The article should show up there. Click on it and you can get to the article. Comcast blows ass, but I can’t imagine they could screw that up.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
Strangely enough, just this last summer I was strolling a beach towards sunset when I discovered two naked young women swimming in a calm inlet. The sun glistened off their firm flesh, their tawny skin. I watched for long minutes as they cavorted, twining their legs around each other, their tongues eagerly exploring each other’s bodies….
I stood their pondering the chances of the Rams winning the Super Bowl in 2014.
I think Bork was probably borking off….
Chris T.
@dmsilev: The “Big 7”: comp, news, misc, rec, sci, soc, talk. Add “alt” and you really had the “big 8”.
This organization has apparently gone to seed:
$ sed 's/[. ].*//' < .trn/active.newsguy | sort -u | wc
3616 3616 23704
The last ten, just for the heck of it:
zixia
zm
zoo
zoom
zoomnet
zpr
zsu
ztb
zyxel
zz
zzz
Villago Delenda Est
@Peter:
Which is, IMHO, a very good thing.
The teatards really should be gathered together, shot at dawn, and a bill sent to their relatives for the ammunition expended.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris T.:
The rise of the link and click graphical web browser did USENET in, really. The only thing deader is GOPHER.
Peter
@Villago Delenda Est: Me too, I’m just a bit in awe. I’d hope the reflexive “he sold us out!” crowds are reflecting on their failings right now, but I know better than that.
Anya
@General Stuck: Obama caved. GOS and Crooks and Liars should teach him about negotiation, and how to leverage an election win. That Obama, what a dissapointment.
arguingwithsignposts
hahahahahaha. Okay, that was funny.
Maude
@arguingwithsignposts:
They might be already on he sold us out about gun control.
We know Obama is getting rid of SS. We know this because they said he did.
dr. bloor
@West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.):
“Dear Yale Law Review, I never thought I’d be writing to you…”
aangus
Just sayin’!
Also, too…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk8Vszu9hHs
:)
JGabriel
Robert Bork @ Top:
In the vein of The Onion’s Ironic Porn Purchase Leads To Unironic Ejaculation, one must wonder: Did Bork’s sociological porn viewing lead to an unsociological, i.e. solitary, orgasm?
.
gnomedad
@Citizen_X:
FTFY.
zenster
“Particularly horrifying was this alt.sex.stories. I don’t know how to work the Internet yet, but I did that research. I found it written up.”
Heh heh. Sure, you knew about the internet but couldn’t “work” it yet. Wink-wink nudge-nudge.
AxelFoley
I knew this thread had potential!
Ya’ll are killin’ me with some of your responses. LOLOLOLOL
Liberty60
@arguingwithsignposts:
“At one point, according to notes taken by a participant, Mr. Boehner told the president, “I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?”
“You get nothing,” the president said. “I get that for free.””
Goddamn if that doesn’t sound familiar.
Bobby Thomson
@redshirt:
Worked for Pete Townshend.
gnomedad
@Petorado:
When wingers are against “individualism”, they want everyone to be Christian. When they’re for it, they want everyone to have guns.
Lojasmo
@General Stuck:
Please will some front pager put this article and quote up as a post so we can all laugh and point at the emoprogs and firebaggers?
Thanks!
Citizen_X
@gnomedad:
Or be white. And Fundy Christian. And right-wing.
Citizen_X
@SiubhanDuinne: Wow. Brontosaurus burrowing underground. That’s like an 18-wheeler burrowing underground or something.
? Martin
“You get nothing, I get that for free.”
That’s awesome. Actually, Obama gets much more than that for free if he chooses to claim it.
Alex S.
So apparently there are plans to topple John Boehner:
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/12/22/plan_uncovered_to_topple_boehner.html
By the way, the Speaker of the House gets elected with a simple majority. So Pelosi only needs to get more votes than Boehner/Cantor/whoever.
karen marie
@Baud:
See, NRA
bemused senior
@Alex S.: Perhaps we should pray for a sudden winter storm preventing 17 southern congressmen from returning to Washington.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Peter: Well, no, he kind of has been, but not in the way that most of the firebaggers would have you think. He’s been making offers, offers he knew that the Republicans could not accept because of who’s running the show (the Teabagger Comedy Klan Circus), and those offers were not made as sincere. They were made to show the American public, who are stupid, that he’s willing to give and that the Republicans would rather set fire to America than tax a person who makes a million dollars a year.
America’s getting that, and they’re really going to get it when January 2nd comes, no agreement is in place, and Pelosi starts introducing one “Cut Middle Class Taxes” bill every week, which the Republicans will vote down repeatedly until even the dumbest denizen of the reddest of red states will have to admit that the Republican Party gives a shit about nobody save for millionaires and billionaires.
This will wipe out the GOP in the long term.
I have a feeling Obama’s a bit resentful that you can do everything he’s done in his life, including win the presidency, and still be called “nigger”, and that there’s probably more payback to come.
Keith G
@Baud:
Quickly scanning the thread, I thought you had used the verb ‘gargle’. I was amused.
portlander
Just like cancer…
Amir Khalid
@Alex S.:
Somehow, I can’t see that many House Republicans voting for a Democratic Speaker. It might not sit well with the Teabaggers’ Purity Control. If there are three or more candidates, assuming that’s even possible, could Pelosi win by a plurality?
CaseyL
@MikeJ: This made me think of Woody Allen’s “Whores of Mensa.” For another $50, you can get some ontological tautologies guaranteed to put the “X” in neocortex.
JGabriel
@Alex S.:
I just want to point out that I theorized this might be a possibility last night, before the news broke that some House GOPers were planning it:
aangus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAsXMlkwXgs
Anya
@Liberty60: This part is delicious, also, too:
Peter
I would never come down off my schadenfreude mountain if infighting in the GOP ranks between Boehner and Cantor while the Dems vote in a reliable block for Pelosi gave her the gavel back. I would become a schadenfreude hermit.
Alex S.
@bemused senior:
I can’t see any republican voting for Nancy Pelosi, so in that case we really need some missing congressmen or a split vote. I wonder if a Speaker Hoyer had a chance, though. If you wanted to split the GOP into the centrists and radicals, now would be the time.
@JGabriel:
I wonder who would be Boehner’s replacement. Paul Ryan would probably unite the GOP, Cantor… maybe. A Tea Party candidate like Louie Gohmert, well, that would be the death of the GOP.
Liberty60
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
To extend the metaphor:
“This isn’t personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.”
Cool, methodical, organized. These neo-Confederates are getting assraped by the man they consider so far beneath them as to not need to take seriously.
General Stuck
@Peter:
Fat Chance. Krugman reads between the lines of the WSJ article, that just shows us more on how Obama sucks.
Low Country Boil
I’m sure that, after a few moments of “being riveted by the social significance of it all,” he realized that he had a big mess on his hands.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Keith G:
“Gargle” is good. “Google” as a verb has already worn out its welcome with me. From now on I’m Gargling.
CW in LA
Best thread EVER! And the most sociologically significant, too!
SatanicPanic
This remind me of this priest that taught at the Catholic high school I went to for a while. He was unique in that he freely admitted to lusting after various movie actresses. Basic Instinct came out around that time and we asked him what he thought- “you know, some sex, some violence in movies is ok, but that movie took it way too far… I’ve seen it four times”
Spaghetti Lee
Man, Republicans are weird.
SiubhanDuinne
@Citizen_X:
I know, right? And when you think of those short little arms ….
rikyrah
ok, the image of this just cracked me up:
………………………
Orange Julius clutching the Jack Daniels, and gets a phone call.
OJ: Yes.
Phone: The plane will be there at 10 a.m., Mr. Speaker.
OJ: What plane?
Phone: The plane the President sent for you.
OJ about to speak when he hears a ‘click’ at the other end.
MikeJ
@CaseyL: Suppose I wanted Noam Chomsky explained to me by two girls?
Corner Stone
I find it endlessly amusing that people who strenuously doubt reporting by Ezra and Kthug and others will so readily and happily dive in for a “behind the scenes” note from the Murdoch WSJ.
Hugely
@General Stuck: lol that gives me something to fap about
Villago Delenda Est
@Liberty60:
DING DING DING DING DING
They underestimate him constantly because, you know, he’s a ni*CLANG*.
@Alex S.:
While this is true, this means that some Rethugs will embrace the Bride of Satan herself (Pelosi is constantly demonized by the wingtards) in preference to any fellow Rethug.
I don’t think that’s going to happen…if it does, it really is a sign that the Mayans were off in dating the end of the world, because such a defection will result in teatard primary challenges for any Rethug who does it.
Unless it’s a teatard doing it out of spite, which I wouldn’t put past the mewling babies.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Wow. Krugman and Ezra ought to count their coup for a corner stone endorsement. Maybe Krugman will retract his mea culpa just after the election that he was wrong and knows squat about politics. Especially regarding Obama. He has fallen off the firebagger wagon again, though, unfortunately.
Kropadope
Will someone please explain the difference between majority and plurality?
Spaghetti Lee
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think the point to this Pelosi discussion is that it doesn’t take an outright majority. For example, the voting could go like
Tea Party guy: 100
Boehner: 140
Pelosi: 200
And Pelosi would win by plurality. Correct me if I’m wrong, anyone.
Anya
@Corner Stone: Ezra said a deal was finalized, did you see any final deal between the president and Orange Julius? If Ezra’s sources were correct, why did Boehner come up with his own failed Plan B?
Villago Delenda Est
@Spaghetti Lee:
If a plurality wins it, what a Rethug split effectively does is destroy the GOP, because if they stay united, they select the Speaker. If they don’t stay united, it means they are, for sure, the new Whigs.
I’m not up on all the history of the control of the House, but I don’t believe such an event has a precedent.
? Martin
@Spaghetti Lee: No, that’s exactly it.
I mean, if the GOP can’t agree on whether to cut taxes for income below $1M and income below $250K to the point that their vote fails in the face of a guarantee that neither happens, then I don’t see how they reach unanimous consensus on Speaker, other than to say ‘fuck it, we’ll stick with Bohener’.
I mean, if the candidate is a teatard, the moderate GOP will likely stick with Boehner as the new guy will be an even greater hostage taker than Boehner is. If the candidate is a moderate GOP, the teatards will worry that they’ll bring minority votes to the floor (as the speaker is supposed to do) and they’ll wind up losing all of their battles along a Dem/Moderate GOP votes. So they’re likely better off with Boehner as well.
The problem here is that along many measures, the more natural parliamentary alliance in the House is Dem/Moderate GOP, with the tea party shoved in the coat closet.
PurpleGirl
@dmsilev:
Grant gave Lee more at Appomattox.
Maybe that’s cause of our problems now… Grant was nicer to the South than he should have been.
Villago Delenda Est
@Anya:
A deal might have been finalized, but Boner couldn’t deliver on his end. His negotiation position is dreadful, since he can’t be assured his caucus will support the deal he crafts with Obama.
He’s seriously fucked.
Todd
Hahahahahahaha….
OT – Dana Loesch has sued Breitbart.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpolitics/breitbartcom-star-dana-loesch-sues-site?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Young Ben is flummoxed.
MikeJ
@Spaghetti Lee: Nope:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-HPRACTICE-112/html/GPO-HPRACTICE-108-6.htm
Amir Khalid
@Spaghetti Lee:
Is a Democratic Speaker going to be able to lead a Republican-majority House? Especially one that wouldn’t take leadership from the Republican Speaker it elected? It’s hard to see Nancy Pelosi volunteering for that clusterfuck.
Spaghetti Lee
@Todd:
I hope they both lawyer each other into oblivion. That would be the best Christmas gift of all.
General Stuck
The only way a deal could get done now, is a clean bill dealing only with keeping the tax cuts at 250 thou cuttoff, plus maybe UI, to pass a dem majority bill. I seriously doubt that if Obama gave the nutters everything they want, they would still would not pass that bill out of pure spite.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
Pelosi has shown that she has a mean, spiteful streak. She has manipulated votes for no reason but to make Captain Orange Face And His Two Hundred Clown Posse look like idiots. Yes, I think she’d take the gavel and with it the opportunities to humiliate the GOP further.
Mnemosyne
@General Stuck:
Wow. It’s pretty amazing how his commenters are still completely convinced that Obama wants to kill Social Security and it was just a coincidence that he failed. Again.
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it’s enemy action.” — Ian Fleming
Villago Delenda Est
OK, how about this scenario:
The teatards tell Boner he’s fucked. Boner goes to Pelosi, and asks for her help in retaining the Speakership. Pelosi proceeds to totally cage what’s left of Boner’s balls and Boner is in an even worse position, because he’s beholden to a block that will follow orders from Pelosi.
Boner is still nominally “in charge”, but still is in a position where he can’t negotiate squat, because Pelosi pwns his ass, nothing happens without her approval.
It’s as bad a situation as he has now, with the bonus of him being reamed by the wingtards as a craven traitor.
Amir Khalid
@Frankensteinbeck:
True, but this is more easily done from behind the scenes.
ETA: For example, in the kind of scenario VDE describes in #145.
dr. bloor
@Villago Delenda Est: This scenario is, for all intents and purposes, already in effect. Last week pretty much made it obvious that Boehner can’t pass anything that has a chance in the Senate relying on R votes alone.
And the wingtards already see him as being a craven traitor.
Peter
@Corner Stone: I’m endlessly amused by what a complete dickhead you can be.
chopper
@Liberty60:
don’t forget the neo-confederates’ firebagger handmaidens, who are currently coalescing around the meme that the president’s successes in life are merely ‘luck’. anything to deliberately downplay the man I guess.
Mnemosyne
@Liberty60:
Can we please find a metaphor that doesn’t use rape as the punchline of the joke? KTHXBAI.
General Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
I ain’t that bright, but I know enough to know that a dem president doesn’t try to intimidate a republican Speaker of the House, by telling that Speaker what that dem president believes and is afraid of, but rather what the winger speaker believes and is afraid of. Obama has not let up for scrounging any bits and pieces of stimulus he could scrounge and get past the republicans. Despite public rhetoric on the debt, that is always couched in ‘long term’ terms.
lojasmo
@Corner Stone:
Um. These are direct quotations, dipshit.
burnspbesq
No one who has anything resembling a clue would suggest that Bork is the foremost conservative legal mind of the twentieth century. He wrote one great book on antitrust law, and then coasted for the rest of his career.
Get a fucking clue, Doug. Or outsource talking about law.
Peter
@burnspbesq: I was wondering when you would show up to impress us with your diploma and your talent for unlimited pedantry.
burnspbesq
No one who has anything resembling a clue would suggest that Bork is the foremost conservative legal mind of the twentieth century. He wrote one great book on antitrust law, and then coasted for the rest of his career.
Get a clue, Doug. Or outsource talking about law.
gogol's wife
@General Stuck:
When did Krugman ever do any “reporting”? I don’t think even he would claim that he does reporting.
Spaghetti Lee
@burnspbesq:
Burns: Es un chiste. Calm down.
lojasmo
@Corner Stone:
Also, Klein et. al. have been shown to be full of shit…as the non-emoprogs among us knew.
Thanks for playing. dick.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
Someone needs his snark meter adjusted.
Doug’s sarcasm screams at me…it’s Bork’s moron fans who assert he’s some sort of great legal scholar.
dr. bloor
@burnspbesq:
I think it’s safe to say most of us thought he was a dick, although I don’t think Doug was being inexcusably hyperbolic here about his reptutation among our self-proclaimed betters.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/12/19/reactions-robert-bork-a-titan-in-the-legal-field/
Mnemosyne
@dr. bloor:
And, as far as I can tell, that’s Boehner’s problem — he insists on only allowing votes that can be won without any Democratic votes being needed at all. I’m not sure if he made this decision to head off an open rebellion by the teabaggers or just because he’s a dick, but that’s the hill he chose to die on. Any bill that would win because a majority of Democrats joined with a minority of Republicans never even comes up for a vote.
The Democrats would need 17 Republicans to vote with them to win whatever they wanted to. That’s why Boehner is so desperate to hold his caucus together — if he allowed horsetrading with Democrats, the whole Republican coalition would fall apart.
General Stuck
@gogol’s wife:
I never said he was a reporter. And your point?
Uncle Cosmo
@SatanicPanic: You in turn remind me of “Father C.,” a gray-haired Jesuit priest in a mid-size Pennsylvania city a bit over 40 years back, whose misadventures I heard about via my college GF (RC raised & schooled) who was from there. At one point, I heard, he totaled a large & fairly pricey auto (himself emerging unhurt) while under the influence. Problem was that the car belonged to his GF. In exchange for her not reporting the accident, the province bought her a new car out of pin money.
I was up visiting one summer & we were driving around & she said, “See that guy over there? That’s Father C.” I said, “Why is he standing on the corner wearing a gold polo shirt?” She replied, “Probably waiting for his girlfriend to pick him up–I don’t think she lets him drive anymore.”
Jebbies. Jeebus….
gogol's wife
@General Stuck:
I was attempting to support you by referring to Corner Stone’s reference to Krugman’s impeccable “reporting.” Sorry it wasn’t clear.
Corner Stone
Unsurprisingly, the reading comprehension here is fail. I’m not vouching for the accuracy of any “reporting”, and my comment certainly does not imply that.
Only that something you didn’t want to hear, coming from some people nominally on your side, was immediately pounced on and trashed. But an “article” by Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ, who has shown the ethical wall between reporting and op-ed means nothing to them anymore, is glorified to the point of orgasm, and for lack of a better term, swallowed wholesale with no question or provenance.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
I suspect that by Teabagger notions of ideological purity, saying yes to Democrats on anything is unthinkable. The only acceptable outcome of any negotiation with Democrats is unconditional surrender by said Democrats. If Boehner brings Democrats on board for a vote, their thinking goes, he must have conceded something, i.e. sold out the Republican party. So in effect he’s not allowed to deal with Democrats, only to demand they surrender. But right now, Democrats have the upper hand and no reason to surrender.
Boehner’s flailing is entertaining to watch, but his position is obviously untenable. I don’t see how he can hang on to the gavel.
General Stuck
@gogol’s wife:
I realized that after I set out for Charlie’s walk. My apologies for sounding terse:-)
Amir Khalid
@Corner Stone:
I was under the impression that the Wall Street Journal’s financial and business reporting has always been above reproach, and that their political reporting was at least rather less biased than their editorials.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
awwe CS is butthurt, poor ch’ld. Come on over for big ole Stuck hug, you task force ranger, you.
edit – oh, and if the journal news desk has been corrupted by Murdoch, then why did they write an article making Boehner look like Obama’s bitch. duh
Corner Stone
@lojasmo: Show me one on the record by Obama or Boehner, dipshit. Or go fuck off you stupid fucking troll.
“a Wall Street Journal reconstruction shows”
“according to notes taken by a participant”
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: If your shut-in self can’t read plain English, it’s not my problem.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck:
Actually, as undeniably stupid as you are, I believe that is the first question that should have been asked when reading this “reconstruction”.
Peter
@Corner Stone: Unsurprisingly, your self-awareness about being a complete and total peckerwood is fail.
Corner Stone
@Amir Khalid: That was how it started out. There have been a few defections from WSJ due to pressure to conform to what was being displayed on the op-ed pages.
Corner Stone
@Peter: Your concern trolling has been noted, citizen troll.
Frankensteinbeck
@Corner Stone:
False equivalency. Krugman makes up what he’s sure the president believes, and Klein reports that he knows a guy who knows a guy who says the deal might be X, then pretends it definitely will be X. They turn out to be wrong. That is the pattern repeated over and over, and by now their pronunciations on the ‘What will Obama do’ issue are treated as garbage.
In this case, a claim of specific praiseworthy quotes from a source whose only bias would be in the other direct are taken, if not as gospel, then at least at a ‘that’s cool!’ level of enthusiasm.
There is no hypocricy between the two judgments because they are applied to very different circumstances. There IS bias, but it’s accounted for in the system. If these quotes were proven to be false, we would shrug and go back to watching for what the final bill would be – since our faith in Obama has been consistently validated by those. The investment you think we have in this story does not exist.
jeffreyw
Thread needs moar Homer kitteh. Keep your eyes peeled, boy.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Yer So cute when riled up. Kind of like a popped balloon in a phone booth. Santa won’t bring you nothin’ with this kind of talk.
Peter
@Corner Stone: Your being an unvarnished shaft of bull penis is noted, citizen douchebag.
(Not to break pattern here, but concern troll? Really? Do words not have meaning anymore? I’m not saying I agree with your position but have ~concerns~, I’m just calling you a dick. And now I suppose I’m calling you a dick who uses words he doesn’t understand)
Corner Stone
@Frankensteinbeck:
What’s the source? Please tell me.
General Stuck
@Frankensteinbeck:
The journal news desk is a quality operation, still. And I suspect one side or the other told them what happened and what was said, and the other side confirmed it before going to print.
If not, and it only came from Obama’s peeps, or Boehner;s, then they would have stated as such. That is the basic formula for reporting that has been around forever. Otherwise, they open themselves up to all kinds of grief from cries of foul, that is bad business for a newspaper.
bemused
This blog has been left alone for hours and hours….never a good thing.
Frankensteinbeck
@Corner Stone:
The Wall Street Journal? And? Again, their only prejudice would be anti-Obama, and that’s primarily from their editorials. See above – these quotes are not taken as set in stone absolute truths, but Klein and Krugman’s political speculations HAVE been consistently proven to be utter bullshit. Even if you dislike the WSJ, your false equivalence remains a false equivalence.
Redshift
@General Stuck:
I don’t read it that way. It reads to me like they are doing their absolute best to make it sound like mean ol’ Obama was completely unreasonable and that’s why there wasn’t a deal. (I see from the Google search list that it’s being cited by a lot of wingnut sites, probably for that reason.) For example, they talk about how Republicans asked for X amount more in spending cuts which was rejected by the WH, but never mention that Boehner’s clowns never named a single actual cut other than gutting Medicare, they only offered target amounts and wanted Obama to name the cuts. In addition, Boehner’s staffer is quoted as asking for “help” from the White House in finding other revenue than raising tax rates, which in wingnuttia was presented as completely reasonable rather than a complete failure to offer an actual proposal.
The fact that despite their straining in that direction the article paints a picture of Obama making Boehner his bitch just illustrates how completely he did it.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone:
But that happens a lot, and for good reason, because Some People Nominally On Our Side sometimes start interpreting and reading between the lines — because they think that’s what they’re good at — and then other people nominally on our side pick up on those interpretations and it’s off to the races. The Klein/Chait thing a little ways back, f’rinstance, was IMHO very clearly two wonkish sorts kicking around the merits of an idea, raising the Medicare eligibility age, in a sports-radio-like way: “we’ve heard that some people speculate that this is being discussed. If it actually happens, would it be a good move?” And then Krugman and lesser lights of the blogosphere got all excited: “I can’t believe Obama wants to make this bad move, and it’s all obviously a trial balloon, blaaarrggh.”
It’s not “I don’t want to hear it.” It’s “What exactly did I just hear?”
So, sure, you’re right to raise the question of what the audience for a WSJ piece is supposed to make of it. IMHO it’s supposed to make Obama look more combative and even arrogant, to reassure people that Both Sides Do It. (I bet the Halperin/Heilman/Scarborough types would take it in that spirit.) But Democrats and liberals and blandly pro-Obama lefties actually _like_ the idea of a combative Obama, so the message we take from it isn’t the message the WSJ probably hopes to promulgate.
Peter
Bluh, my comment’s in moderation. The point is, Corner Stone is accurately described by a metaphor involving a bull’s genitals, and he apparently doesn’t know what ‘concern troll’ means.
FlipYrWhig
@Redshift: You and I were clearly on the same wavelength — sorry I didn’t see yours while I was writing mine.
Triassic Sands
@Uncle Cosmo:
As long as there are Republicans no one will ever be too old to get screwed.
It’s like we used to say when I was in the military: It’s just not fair; I don’t have a sex life, but I’m getting fucked every day.
Corner Stone
@Frankensteinbeck:
And what? If you can’t read plain English it’s not my problem. There are no on the record quotes in that WSJ article.
That means the piece is planted for effect. This isn’t hard.
General Stuck
@Redshift:
That could well be. I still haven’t been able to access the full article, only the snippets provided here and elsewhere. From what I read, they were quotes by the participants, and if they were trying to make Obama look bad, or like some kind of bully, they failed miserably. Until I can read the whole article, I can’t give my overall impression.
Corner Stone
@Peter:
I knows one whens I sees one, you troll.
Dream On
All in the interest of research of course.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: You haven’t even read the whole article?
…
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
No, so? The overall tone and tenor of the writers is completely different than the accuracy of the quoted parts in the article. I don’t really care what the writers thought about the talks, just that they reported the quotes accurately. And the fact that neither side has complained, I think that speaks for itself. Now say something stupid and irrelevant.
Peter
@Corner Stone: You apparently don’t, since you are calling someone who is just straight-up calling you a dick repeatedly instead of professing to agree with your position but citing ‘concerns’ a concern troll. Where is the concern in my troll? It isn’t there. I’m just a guy who thinks you’re a dick.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: How do you know you’ve even read all the quotes? Or the attribution for those quotes? Or the timing or context for those quotes?
Corner Stone
@Peter: And you’re a troll, so we’re good.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
You don’t disappoint
zoot
one good thing you can say about republicans is that they’re so bad at sex that some day evolution will have eradicated them.
Hill Dweller
@Redshift: There is no doubt some of the quotes are an attempt to make Obama look uppity and intransigent, but the writer does talk about Obama moving towards Boehner a couple of different times on revenue and spending cuts. Also too, the Plan B fiasco was obviously Boehner’s attempt to avoid blame should we go over the curb, and it was done without any sort of heads up for the President.
Ultimately, the article just reinforces Boehner’s weakness, in my view.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: I bow to your irrefutable logic. Not knowing all the quotes, sources or context is, indeed, stupid and irrelevant for rubbing one out to this WSJ article.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
@General Stuck: \
I got yer “quotes” “sources” and “context” right here
again
It gets sweeter with each reading.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
Yep. And unfortunately it does seem that some of those people have a built-in assumption that Obama is naive and/or is plotting to kill Social Security, so everything they see gets filtered through that assumption, which is why Krugman is apparently interpreting Obama’s discussing the options with Boehner using Boehner’s preferred wording as Obama actually preferring those options rather than Obama using language he knows Boehner will respond to.
Krugman is a brilliant economist, and he’s very good at breaking down the pros and cons of actual proposed plans, but he really sucks at reading political tea leaves and predicting future moves of politicians. That’s fine, because that’s not what I read him for, but it does become a little tiresome to see people quoting his tea-leaf-reading as gospel truth without looking at his track record with that stuff.
Mnemosyne
@Hill Dweller:
If I were going to do some tea leaf reading of my own (hey, I can’t be any worse at it than Krugman), I would guess that the story was leaked to the WSJ by Republicans to highlight Boehner’s weakness and pressure him to step down from the speakership when it comes up for a vote in the next session. The Obama quotes actually are there to make liberals happy because making Obama look good and emphasizing how much he pwned Boehner will piss off conservatives and increase the calls for Boehner’s head.
But, hey, I’m just some chick on the internet who reads blogs, so make sure to keep a salt block with you on this one.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: How about the actual part from the full WSJ article:
PurpleGirl
@jeffreyw: What an amazing picture of Homer.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
irrelevant. You either believe the quotes are accurate and confirmed by the wsj, or not. I would say a participant is a pretty solid source. But a big league news desk is not likely to print something based on just one source, especially about quotes from the POTUS and Speaker of the House in an epic conference with an issue of such high importance.
opie_jeanne
@jeffreyw: This blog needs another dose of kitten:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/snowwhite/8297608493/in/photostream
opie_jeanne
@jeffreyw: Homer is so cool!
sharl
@opie_jeanne: That’s a cute video. I didn’t think there were many cats that play fetch. Good thing s/he has a hard head too…
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
We’ve had several cats that will play Fetch. The trick is to make sure they don’t figure out that you can just walk over and pick up the toy if they don’t bring it back, because then the game turns into Chase, where you throw the toy, they run madly after it, and then they turn to look at you from where it landed as if to say, “Okay, now throw it again from here. It’s too much trouble to bring it back to you.”
chopper
@Corner Stone:
I’m sure you said the same thing when anonymous leaks said Obama put chained CPI on the table.
opie_jeanne
@Mnemosyne: She’s our first one to do this with us. Most of the rest did what you described, or else they just decide to play with the mouse where it lands.
opie_jeanne
@sharl: She ran into a flimsy plastic box that came with bows and ribbon. Makes a lot of noise but it’s much softer than the walls or the furniture.
She started this game when we were in bed a couple of nights ago, brought us the mouse and put it down and just stared at us, so mr opiejeanne threw it to see what would happen.
Derek
@Low Country Boil: Winner!
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: I don’t trust any off the record source, I don’t care who is quoting it.
The difference is that I evaluate those people and don’t just swallow the things I want to hear.
The fact that you’re defending the WSJ is about as telling as it gets.
Corner Stone
@chopper: I did look for those sources. And did not have to go far.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
LOL. Still butthurt? Get back to me when one side or the other disputes those quotes printed in the wsj. Otherwise, you should feel better when the swelling goes down.
AxelFoley
Corner Stone got owned all over this thread. Give it up, son. Stuck and chopper are just embarrassing you.
chopper
@Corner Stone:
really? you found a quote from Obama? Let’s see it.