I’m just starting to get a real bunker mentality- Planned Parenthood is apparently the new Acorn. We’ll do a fundraiser for them sometime soon.
As to Sullivan’s “Of course cuts hurt people” bullshit, a couple thoughts:
1.) Who is this ED Kain and what did he do with the old one?
2.) No one writes with the fire of a convert.
3.) The fundamental thing you need to understand when talking to deficit hawks is that when they say something is painful or that cuts will hurt people, you need to recognize that what they really mean is that the cuts will be painful TO SOMEONE ELSE and hurt people THEY DON’T KNOW AND WILL NEVER MEET. That’s why it’s so easy to be a condescending asshole about the budget. That’s why it takes nothing to suggest raising the retirement age for Social Security. That’s why, after taking a month off from writing on the internet to recover from a cold, he can tell people who work back-breaking manual labor every day of their god damned lives for much less money than he or McMegan earn that they should “contribute” more to their health care costs.
I’ve added “the math demands it” to the rotating taglines.
BTW- For you insane people who keep asking, Tunch’s anal glands are fine. I’m in a hotel in an undisclosed location this weekend, and am going to spend the night streaming Chuck episodes so I can catch up. I should note that Sarah with black hair has me all sorts of hot and bothered.
Dave C
Nobody rants like you rant, Cole.
khead
No one is topping this tonight. I’m headin’ out. Y’all have a good one.
Mutant Poodle
You can go here and find out how to donate to Planned Parenthood in Mike Pence’s honor. Apologies for the blogwhoring.
Anne Laurie
Thank you thank you thank you for letting us know that Tunch is okay — physically, at least. (The psychic damage caused by leaving him with a petsitter, on the other hand… )
Yutsano
@Mutant Poodle: They were doing a fundraiser outside the grocery store not long after I first moved to Seattle. I chipped in $10, which was all I could afford at the time. I plan on upping that donation here soon.
Comrade Luke
Can we just refer to Tunch’s anal glands to Tunch’s “Sullivans”?
Next time you need to express Tunch’s Sullivans, let us know!
Batocchio
A good summing up – particularly #3.
Have fun!
The Dangerman
Just wait until the shutdown; when the Baggers stop getting their SS checks, there will be some epic meltdowns.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
A masterly summary of the world as seen by Sullivan and the rest of the gibbertarians and conservatives.*
The only reason you can’t call them full-on sociopaths is they don’t feel the need to inflict the pain themselves. It’s the difference between a guy who jerks off to snuff movies and a guy who directs them.
*B.I.R.M.
Violet
Thank you for this. And just because it was so good, once again:
Yesssss. Who the hell has a month worth of sick time anyway? He should count himself lucky every fucking day that he’s got such a cushy job, with health coverage fer cryin’ outloud, and can afford to take that much time off without fearing he’ll be out on the street.
Rich entitled jerks don’t know how good they’ve got it.
ItAintEazy
@The Dangerman: Or their Medicare scooters.
Mark S.
I must have missed that episode and will have to wait for it on Netflix Instant.
Roger Moore
They’re on my short list of charities that I give real money. I never knew until her funeral, but my Grandmother was a huge believer in Planned Parenthood, so now I donate to them in her memory. It’s hard to think of a more deserving organization.
slag
Seriously. Kain is fast becoming serious competition for you. Better keep upping your game or he’ll be owning this place soon.
asiangrrlMN
Glad to hear Tunchie is fine. Pics would be nice. Sully is an ass. Always has been. Always will be.
Cole, posts like this one is why I can’t quit the Juice.
ETA: I’m still working on my post that will convince Cole to take me on as the “right-leaning front-page poster”.
Just Some Fuckhead
OMIGOD. I just splooged all over the monitor.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hear, fucking hear, and let it echo throughout the land. Carpet bombing in the class war, from above, aided and abetted by altother too many smug, complacent, upper class ‘liberals’ (Yes, Joe Klein, I’m thinking of you, but not only you). And we need to stop calling them “upper middle class” a comforting and I think uniquely American bit of squishy thinking meant to appease our own complexes and delusions.
MikeJ
@Violet:
And who can’t sit in front of their computer at home and churn out half witted tory bullshit even when they are sick? I could write a perl script that produce posts more coherent than most of his output, and it would probably be a one liner too.
jl
“I’m in a … an undisclosed location”
I do not know why Cole bothers with that. He is always in an undisclosed location.
DougJ better through in some variety or he will blow the Spoof.
Some one should write up a Wikipedia entry for Cole, as a fictional character. I would do it, but am too lazy.
Jules
Thank you.
This can not be repeated enough times.
lamh32
I’m not as avid a watcher of the Daily Show lately, but I do catch a skit here and there. IMHO, John and his crew are hit or miss to me (by comparison, I find that Colbert Report seems to hit it out the park 9/10 times)
But, when the writers at the The Daily Show are on, they are really on point. BTW, this skit includes ABL’s fav Daily Show-er: Aasif Mandvi.
“To Defeat Muslim Stereotypes, Daily Show Creates Muslim Cosby Show, ‘The Qu’osby Show’ ”
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/to-defeat-muslim-stereotypes-daily-show-creates-muslim-cosby-show-the-quosby-show.php?ref=fpb
Zoogz
Michigan’s “tough nerd” is nerding out with a ton of stuff I never knew before too.
1. Direct quote: “Businesses are real people too.”
2. It’s not a collective tax hike, it’s a tax cut. You’re just paying more, so you must be bitter.
3. “Reinvention” is the goal… not the results, but the “reinvention”.
How come “austerity” only comes to some instead of all? Not one of them has answered sufficiently well yet.
Angry Black Lady
@lamh32: i literally just saw your tweet about this. thanks!
in other news, my brain is fried. did i read that E.D. Kain put his liberal pants on?
awesome.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
Damn that was good!
In other news, the judge who ran that scheme to send all juveniles appearing in his courtroom to private detention centers for profit was found guilty and will likely be sentenced to 12 years in jail. Too bad there’s no way to give the kids he harmed back the time they spent in detention centers. He also has to pay back $997,600 (money he got from the detention center builders).
West of the Cascades
@asiangrrlMN:
JPL
This article made me smile..link
Who could imagine a former aide to Palin during her short time as governor would cash out by writing a book. Unfortunately, if the manuscript hadn’t been leaked, she could be Obama’s opponent. I guess we should be happy though.
cleek
man… i liked Sully before he came back. i could accept his conservatism and his emotionalism and i could look past his Triggism. but he’s come back as if he spent the past month jerking off to velvet Reagans. he apparently has no concept of what makes up the federal budget, what it does, what people want, what politicians would actually vote for were his preferred options on the table, etc.. he’s writing with the zeal and narrow-mindedness of someone who just learned about politics in the last month because he spent a couple of weeks listening to Limbaugh. it’s sad, actually.
though, i guess this is probably how conservatives reacted when he started his now-fading leftward swing.
lamh32
@Angry Black Lady:
I figured you’d love it ABL. Seeing as you actually got to touch the loveliness that is Mr Mandvi.
jwb
@MikeJ: So you’re saying you’d put your one line perl script up against asiangrrlMN‘s attempts to pass as a right-leaner? Sounds like a blogmatch to me; winner gets hired by Cole. And I want to hear some good trash talking from both participants.
asiangrrlMN
@West of the Cascades: Well, Tunchie has a rather fetching backside when its not spraying effluvia.
@jwb: Oh, I can’t trash-talk MikeJ. He wrote the pie filter for Chrome; I less than three him for that. (But I will kick his ass to get the front-page gig).
Omnes Omnibus
Just watched Jackie Speir’s speech on the floor of the House today. Damn.
jwb
@jl: I think that scenario was covered some time ago. As I recall, it ended in the consensus that the entire blog, including the comments, was actually written by Tim F., which is why he never has time to post under his own name.
lamh32
@cleek:
yeah, Sully seems much more unhinged than usual. But I’m not really surprised. Leopard can’t change his spots right.
Linkmeister
Horses deserve access to contraception, women don’t! So sez the GOP.
AliceBlue
I wonder if any of the Wisconsin senators are in Cole’s “undisclosed location.”
Yutsano
@lamh32: To be fair, this has already been done, albeit by the Canuckistanis.
jl
@West of the Cascades: Wheww. OK, you were the insane people Cole was talking about. I thought Cole was referring to me. I only inquired about the Tunch’s a * a * * * a * * * five or ten times!
jl
@asiangrrlMN: You too, FIW.
West of the Cascades
@asiangrrlMN: Since I use the iconic “doesthisnewhousemakemyasslookfat” photo as one of my screensavers, I have to agree with you …
Jim Newell
Sullivan gets an idea in his head and all you can do is let it play out, over the course of five to ten years. Then one of those facts, like “social security is not an immediate crisis and has nothing to do with anything,” or whatever, might seep its way into his head and he’ll plead forgiveness for another five to ten years to save his hide. He is much like John McCain this way.
Just read this:
Hear that you fucking hippies? He’s been a little busy saving the middle east by himself — no big deal — to pay attention to some governor “trying to curtail government spending.”
He really doesn’t differentiate between proposals anymore, just listens to sounds. This person says he is trying to cut spending? Well, whatever the details, that person is Serious and should be left alone.
Does he know that unions would agree to Walker’s benefit cuts if he dropped the union-busting shit? no. public sector unions are just babies.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: Speir’s link.
mr. whipple
There it is. Instead of ‘but for the grace of God go I’ it’s ‘I got mine, fuck you.’
JGabriel
MikeJ:
print “gibberish(slash)n”
.
West of the Cascades
@jl: I only asked three times, so you’re 5/3 to 10/3 more insane than me … assuming I’m doing the maths right …
Herbal Infusion Bagger
“he can tell people who work back-breaking manual labor every day of their god damned lives for much less money than he or McMegan earn that they should “contribute” more to their health care costs.”
Sully’s HIV+. How can he be so fucking clueless? Even he’d be financially crippled if he had to pay full freight for his healthcare insurance.
Or at least he should know HIV+ people who’ve been shafted by the healthcare system care.
Pooh
@JPL: It’s actually pretty scuzzy – the book seems to have been leaked by Joe McGinnins (the admittedly creepy guy who Palin went all crazy about when he moved in to the house next door) who’s writing a competing Palin tell all.
asiangrrlMN
@jl: Me, too, what? I only asked one (billionty) time or two. How you be?
@West of the Cascades: I rest my case.
@Omnes Omnibus: She’s brilliant. That was marvelous. We need more like her.
ETA: And, I love that she went there with Halliburton.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Incidentally, you need to get control of your husband. He’s actually convinced matoko-chan has some strange redeeming quality. This can only end in tears without direct intervention.
cleek
@JGabriel:
i did a little Palin -> Markov Chain thing a while back.
the results were… appropriately surreal
John Cole
That just pissed me off, too. I’m no tough guy, and in fact by any objective standard I’m a pampered wimp. Hell, I’m a world class hypochondriac. I get a touch of diarrhea and I think I have colon cancer, I cough twice and I’m convinced I have lung cancer. Having said that, even I, just a few hours after launching my humerus through my scapula, shattering the latter into multiple pieces, wrecked the humeral head and detaching my bicep, was able to make it back from the hospital (which I drove to myself with one arm, after multiple attempts to put my shoulder back into socket) and blogged non-stop for the next two months while in a brace. And two of those weeks were before I even had corrective surgery, because there was so much damage they needed it the swelling to subside a little before they could operate.
But I could still operate a fucking computer with my left hand, so I did.
Christ.
jl
@asiangrrlMN: I am now officially a grouchy old man, by my own fiat.
Get off my lawn, you damn kid (pretty please honey).
I am fine.
How are you, you Tunch crazed grrrl, you?
cathyx
So who is this Sarah with black hair? Is she on Chuck or someone you know in person?
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Is this in E.D.’s thread? I saw he peeked in, but I did not see him writing such insanities.
@John Cole: Dude, you’re hardcore. Seriously. You are pretty tough when it comes to pain.
JPL
@Pooh: The leak is scuzzy but emails saying she hated her job doesn’t help her.
The only motive that McGinnis would have in leaking the manuscript is to back up his information.
MikeJ
@Pooh: What’s creepy about Joe McGinnis?
JPL
@John Cole: and we love you for all the posts. btw..how receptive was Rosie to the eye drops?
jl
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thanks for link to Speier’s speech, it was good. She my Congresscritter.
I believe that she was a widowed single mother for awhile, so probably considered a harlot of some sort by the crazies.
JGabriel
cleek: Heh. That’s great. I always thought it would be hilarious if someone could get Palin to interact with an Eliza-type program and publish the transcript.
Edited to Add: Of course, one could say that’s what the Couric interview was, and not be far off.
.
jl
@John Cole:
That will be dynamite sequence when they make “BJ: the movie” (Well, Ok, they have already made films with similar titles, but I am referring to the must be made future docudrama).
JPL
@MikeJ: Frank Bailey, a former aide to the gov. wrote a book about Palin and McGinnis got hold of it and leaked it to the Alaskan presses.
kdaug
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): Best news I’ve heard all day.
Gozer
@The Dangerman: Bet you dollars to donuts they blame Democrats/Obama/”those people” instead of republicans.
Omnes Omnibus
I just saw me on the TeeVee.
Annie
@Mark S.:
LOL :)
Marty
@cleek: I can’t believe you already went ahead and wrote the Markov chain code for Palin. I was thinking that would be a great project for one of my graduate students.
Now I have to think of something else for him. A McArdle generator perhaps?
RedKitten
@John Cole: That’s the thing that cracks me up about you. Disease, and you turn into my great-aunt Pearl. Injury, and you make Chuck Norris look like a Girl Scout.
MikeJ
@JPL: That kind of makes him a jerk, but I don’t think creepy is the appropriate word.
Pooh
@MikeJ: I don’t want to get into to too many details, suffice it to say that I have family in the AK media. I’ve heard many first and secondhand accounts of maybe not “creepiness” per se, but a huge mix of asshole/zealot/self-aggrandizer.
And really, SPa freaking out over him moving in next door obscured the fact that a guy writing a tell all on you and your family moving in next door is, well, creepy. I mean he’s either doing it just to be a asshole/attention hog or he plans on spying on you and your family.
I can’t believe you’ve driven me to defend Sarah Palin.
RedKitten
@John Cole: That’s the thing that cracks me up about you. Disease, and you turn into my great-aunt Pearl. Injury, and you make Chuck Norris look like a Girl Scout.
freelancer
@John Cole:
If K-Lo and Althouse can spew their bile from the bottom of a box of Franzia, what’s the bar on blogging while wheezy? Did he stay at his place in DC or did he go to his second home in Provincetown? Wish I could do something like that when I was sick, but every day I take as a sick day comes out of my vacation time. Paid time off is paid time off. If Sullivan had those constraints we’d be reading Aaron posting under Andrew’s nom, and it’d be the same except for a noticeable increase of Madonna videos.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: YouTube or it never happened.
@asiangrrlMN: It’s towards the end. I try to nudge him back to sanity but he insists upon his course of action. Kids these days I swear.
asiangrrlMN
@jl: Heh. You’re funny. I’m enduring. My moms is here, and we have a difficult time communicating, to say the least. Spiers is your Congresswoman? Mine is the one getting death threats because she said something disparaging about NASCAR. Good times.
@Omnes Omnibus: YAY!
@Yutsano: OK. I check it out. That means I have to un-pie m_c, though.
Mike in NC
Ex-Governor Palin? I thought she had brown hair with new blond highlights and extensions. Gal has had some work done…
jwb
@Gozer: That’s already started in a major way. It’s not clear that it will work, but it’s certain that the GOP knows they have to win this message war on “blame” if they are going to win a showdown over a shutdown.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: B-roll of the nighttime crowd in Madison on the Maddow show. If I didn’t know where to look for the .13 seconds I was on screen I would have missed it.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@Jim Newell: Inflated notions about the nature of one’s efforts? Check!
Sullivan suffers from the same delusion that allows fReichtard bloggers to claim sitting at home typing screeds on their computer is VITAL to the U.S.’s war against terror.
I really have less than any use for the man. Even when he IS funny or insightful you’re left feeling you just picked through a mountain of shit for a penny.
Elia
Amazing, John. Thank you for this. I don’t know why but this whole deficit thing — from all corners, not just Sullivan — is really bumming me out. It feels like 2002 again when voices not only of moral clarity but just simple pragmatism and reason are shut out, and the degree to which our country is run by a small group of relentlessly selfish people is laid bare. And then we have Obama who is increasingly looking like a tragic figure, fighting to stay afloat and playing by their rules, for no other reason than to be there with his veto, not so much doing substantive, lasting good things (anymore) but rather just making it so this country becomes a banana republic…more slowly.
JPL
@Pooh: It was scuzzy… The Palin’s now have time to gather together and paint Bailey as a former disgruntled employee who has an ax to grind. McGinnis has his own motives whatever they are. It was not the action most journalists and authors would take.
EDIT..or add on..All I know is that it is a nice diversion from an otherwise shitty week….
Mark S.
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
I’m sure he does. I’m also pretty sure he doesn’t give a flying fuck.
jl
@Pooh:
I don’t see what Joe McGinniss being creepy or not has anything to do with Palin.
As I guess you know, McGinniss has written books and articles about Alaska in the past, and Alaska being a small state (edit: in population, and gossipy), I’ve run into a couple of people who have McGinniss stories from his previous work there. They found the experience of him doing research odd and unsettling. For an Alaskan to find some one odd enough to mention it, that is saying something (IMHO)
jwb
@Omnes Omnibus: Just 14 minutes 59.87 seconds of fame left.
cleek
@Marty:
well, that was like a 3 hour project based on some stuff i found on the net; i’m sure a grad student in search of a grade could come up with something better. plus, when i did that, she was still new and there wasn’t a lot of stuff to prime it with – there are 2.5 years of new stuff out there! all those tweets and Facebook thingys!
:)
Ksmiami
Just donated $100.00 to Planned Parenthood in the name of Mike Pence (asswipe)
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: You’re on the virtual couch tonight. I cannot BELIEVE you made me unpie m_c so I could see why TS was fussing over her. WAI! Cudlip.
jnfr
@Mutant Poodle:
Thank you so much for that link. Much more satisfying than just donating, because I am apparently just that pissed off about this. And I am.
WereBear
I thought that was her Facebook page.
Geez, Cole, between the naked mopping and putting your shoulder back in with a doorknob, the blogging is just meat frosting on the cake of macho, ya know?
Pooh
@jl:
re: McGinnins and Palin – it doesn’t really, but the fact that she went so far over the top in her victimhood sort of obscured that she was largely right that him moving in next door was unsettling and purposefully so. And now I’ve defended her twice in one thread, though I think I’m basically paraphrasing Sobchak. “Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism…”
re: Oddness and Alaska – yeah we have a high bar, but he seems to have cleared it with room to spare.
jl
@asiangrrlMN:
“made me unpie m_c so I could see why TS was fussing over her. WAI! Cudlip.”
What language is that supposed to be?
Pooh
gah mod hell, take 2
@jl:
re: McGinnins and Palin – it doesn’t really, but the fact that she went so far over the top in her victimhood sort of obscured that she was largely right that him moving in next door was unsettling and purposefully so. And now I’ve defended her twice in one thread, though I think I’m basically paraphrasing Sobchak. “Say what you will about the tenets of National So$hulism…”
re: Oddness and Alaska – yeah we have a high bar, but he seems to have cleared it with room to spare.
Omnes Omnibus
@jwb: Nonspeaking parts don’t count.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Dammit. I was aiming for at least a dickhead. :) And I never said SHE was making sense, only that FH #1 was pursuing some strange obsession with her. Don’t be blaming me for that.
sherifffruitfly
(shrug) All of this crap is SPECIFICALLY what we white folks voted for last election.
This crap is specifically what “true progressives” helped bring about with their 2 solid years of whining about how Obama and Democrats are “just like republicans”.
Not sure why I’m supposed to feel sorry for much of anybody in all this. Electorates deserve what electorates vote for, and help to bring about.
(shrug)
asiangrrlMN
@jl: The language of m_c. I don’t like to type her full name because I don’t want to summon her.
@Yutsano: Dickhead! Harrumph.
@sherifffruitfly: How about for those of us who are not white and not a true progressive who did not vote for these nutsos or stayed at home? If only the ones who voted for these assholes or the ones who took their toys and stayed home were the only people affected.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Sarah with Black Hair = Miranda Lawson from Mass Effect 2.
.
WyldPirate
@jl:
He only uses that when he is off on hookers and blow weekend replete with two wet suits and Baby Jesus butt plugs.
JPL
@WyldPirate: hopefully he is enjoying himself because those in house animal sitters are pricey. worth it but pricey.
parsimon
@John Cole:
If Sully’s HIV+, a cold is no small thing. That doesn’t explain coming back after a hiatus and being a dick. It’s sounded to me like he’s, erm, a bit emotional and not paying attention. Maybe he needed a longer rest.
Jules
@Jim Newell:
Man….Sully is really a sanctimonious prick, isn’t he?
Villago Delenda Est
In pretty much the same sense that the members of the RHSA in a certain Central European country in the 40’s were real people as well.
Davis X. Machina
@The Dangerman: SS is heavily into direct deposit, better than 80% today.
Back in ’95, they were still mostly mailed, and there was some leverage. With the modern shutdown, they’ll only need a corporal’s guard to keep the ones and zeroes moving, with a minimum of outraged grannies as a result.
Jules
@Pooh:
bullshit.
Wasillia is not awash with houses to rent.
Her next door neighbor who the Palin’s screwed offered him the house at a good price so he took it.
And the only ones acting creepy were the Palins who not only took pictures of the guy without his permission, but also bitched on their “reality” show about a lack of privacy while the TLC folks were also filming him without his permission.
Elizabelle
I’m appalled at Sully’s hysteria over the deficit. Maybe the Great Recession is in the rearview mirror at his house. Not here.
It’s not been much payback for worrying about him for a month, and checking the blog frequently for his health updates. Bronchitis and poor lung function are serious.
Mostly, I appreciate Andrew Sullivan for linking so often to Balloon Juice, because that is how I found this virtual home.
Villago Delenda Est
The Palins do not mess a trick in the “totally clueless” marathon, do they?
Pooh
@Jules: I never said the Palin’s didn’t completely overreact and freak out, I just don’t really think McGinnis should be painted as the “good guy”, more like the “less bad guy” in the scenario.
ETA: I mean, if I was interested in being all journalistic and doing things like “not becoming part of the story”, I think not moving in next door to the people I’m planning on painting in an extremely negative light would be high on my list of things to do.
ETA 2: yeah the “zomg my privacy” on an eponymous reality show was pretty gobsmacking.
jwb
@Davis X. Machina: Am I wrong in thinking that the government still has to release the money to pay the SS deposits, and if that money hasn’t been approved to be released, then it can’t be released?
Ija
What do you expect from someone who can take a month off for being sick without having to worry about financial repercussion? He’s fucking privileged and it shows.
Martha
@Omnes Omnibus: Which channel? I avoided tv cameras…it was crazy at lunch and we just got back from some time in the Capitol rotunda tonight. We’ll be there tomorrow but I have to keep mr m away from the teabaggers. He’ll say mean things to them…
Ija
What do you expect from someone who can take a month off for being sick without having to worry about financial repercussion? He’s fucking privileged and it shows. I hope he loses his cushy job at some point and have to worry about paying for his HIV drugs. Maybe then he wouldn’t be so callous towards other people. That’s the only thing that can teach people like this.
Michael D.
@parsimon:
I was quite surprised to see John say this. You’re right. A cold is no small thing. And bronchitis, which I believe he had, is 10x worse. To dismiss it with a flippant comment was unbecoming to try to make a point.
jwb
@Martha: I say, good for mr m. The teabaggers need to hear mean things.
Martha
@asiangrrlMN: LOL. Sorry, but this is very funny. I read her sometimes and scroll the rest. Her fixation on EDK is tiresome.
Donald G
ISTR Sully writing about when he left “The New Republic” that either Peretz or one of the editors did some finagling to enable him to keep his health insurance. While Sully has been dealt a bad hand with the HIV, he has also been a beneficiary of breaks and kindnesses that a lot of less well-connected and poorer people never could take advantage of, and far fewer of them who contracted the virus around the same time he did survived the 17 plus years he has before being driven to the poorhouse.
Sully tendency to catch breaks denied to his socioeconomic lessers manifested itself again during his recent pot bust, which could have had a detrimental effect on his immigration status, but again, influential friends spoke up on his behalf and the judge let him off with leniency.
Does Sullivan ever seem to acknowledge his luck, or does he treat those “lucky breaks” merely as entitlements afforded to him as an Anglo Tory immigrant pundit, all the while lecturing the rest of us about the need for sacrifice and socialized healthcare being “bad” for America? Hell, no – he’s got his elite privilege, and to hell with the rest of us.
It’s a cultural blind spot he has, and there’s probably nothing we can do about it.
And I write this as someone who has liked Sullivan’s work since “Is this Church Catholic or What?” over at “The New Republic” some twenty years ago.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martha: It was MSNBC. I am going to be up there tomorrow as well.
SEIU offered to concede wages and benefits today, but not the collective bargaining. Walker walked away.
Calouste
I think you’re being a bit hard there on Sully. I wouldn’t be surprised if he meets people that are hurt by the things he advocates, although I would be surprised if he actually knows rentboys other than in the biblical sense.
Martha
@jwb: Agreed. He is really good at the one line jabs. I’m not as effective. I’m thinking about making my own sign for tomorrow instead of carrying the ones they handed out. We’ll see.
cleek
@Pooh:
McGinnis? meh.
on the other hand… if you’re the kind of person who puts a TV studio in your house, and then creates a reality TV show about your family, the same family you’ve been using as props for years… well, you’ve made your family a topic of interest. you’ve signed-up for Celebrity. you’ve invited it in. and now, people will take go to great lengths to take your picture. welcome to fame. you sought it. this is what celebrity means.
asiangrrlMN
@Martha: ‘Sokay. It’s supposed to be funny. I have to be fair–she did make me laugh once at my own expense by saying you could tell an anime figure was me by the ‘demon hentai grin’. That was funny.
Davis X. Machina
@jwb: Paid from the SS trust fund, which is real money, pace the GOP, and not from GFR…. and consequently can go for quite a while without Congressional action.
Not indefinitely, but practically. The holdup last time was the need for humans to actually cut checks, stuff envelopes, etc. Key personnel came in without being paid.
Congressional Research Service report [PDF]
Martha
@Omnes Omnibus: Shocking…not. Which is, of course, the “tell”. It was never about the wages and benefit give-backs. Wanker.
parsimon
@Ija:
If he is HIV+, he’s lucky that he has a job that supports him through it, to be honest, and I wouldn’t take that from him. I meant my comment upthread that perhaps he should have taken a bit more time to regain calm. It’s possible that the job wouldn’t allow him to take more time; we really don’t know.
jwb
@Omnes Omnibus: Of course, he walked away. It’s been clear from the get go that his mission is to destroy collective bargaining.
I Blame Favre
More proof of Andrew Sullivan’s ignorance: Dems Closed Much Larger Budget Shortfall In Wisconsin Without Destroying Worker Rights
Apparently he knows or won’t give them credit for that.
tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/dems-closed-much-larger-budget-shortfall-in-wisconsin-without-destroying-worker-rights.php?ref=fpi
fitzwili
I just renewed my Planned Parenthood membership. If you can spare a few extra dollars, this would be a good time to donate and show your support.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martha: I saw two signs carried by protesters that made me happy: “Scott Walker makes George W. Bush look like a genius” and “Scott Walker can suck my balls.”
Allan
While we’re discussing the bravery of Jackie Speier, allow me to blockquote some Wikipedia:
Emphasis added.
JPL
@cleek: The argument is silly….McGinnis leaked a manuscript written by a Palin aide to the Alaskan Presses. That is unethical for anyone and especially an author. Several on this site are trying to defend him for his choice in living arrangements but gee..he leaked someone’s manuscript.
WyldPirate
@Donald G:
I thought he was a big “bare-backer” back when he contracted HIV. There wasn’t any mystery as to how it was transmitted in ’93. That’s not necessarily catching a bad break if he was. That was reckless and irresponsible.
asiangrrlMN
@Allan: Holy shit. That was her? She’s totally bad-assed (and sorry for spelling your name wrong, Jackie!). Is she your Congresswoman, Allan?
Ija
@parsimon:
I doubt it has anything to do about being calm. He’s always been a douchebag about poor people. This is just him playing to type. The price of privilege, I suppose. Plus, he can always go back to England and get free medical care under the NHS that he is always deriding.
cokane
good god thats the kind of spot on shit that brought me back to this blog
Allan
@asiangrrlMN: I wish I was represented by someone that brave and strong and smart. Sadly, my Congressman is a skidmark named Dan Lungren (R-Fetus Fetishist).
cleek
@JPL:
interesting. how do you feel about Wikileaks ?
i have no idea who McGinnis is. but Palin can’t be both a pop culture celebrity with all that entails these days (ever watch TMZ?), and a serious politician worth of respect. if she wants to play like a hot-topic triviality, which she obviously does, she’s going to get treated like one.
E.D. Kain
Good post, John. So, so true. That was one of the many final straws for me. I’ve seen enough people struggle in this world. When the full implications of the politics that I supported really took root, well, that was it. I couldn’t support that or even associate with that any more. There was no lightbulb moment, just a cavalcade of various realizations and dominoes falling.
asiangrrlMN
@Allan: Ah. My condolences.
Marc
I know many people have said this already, but I just have to add: holy shit. That sums up the current debate better than anyone else ever has or will. Thank you.
Allan
Re: leaking the book.
One of the co-authors is the blogger Mudflats, who’s no longer anonymous after being outed.
I’d hate to see her fail to earn her share of the proceeds of this book after the time and effort she’s put into it.
She posted about the controversy earlier today.
Arundel
I’ve found Sullivan’s contempt for actual Americans’ well-being just hateful in the past few days. Yes, hateful. He called the Democrats who fled across state lines “cowards” when they thwarted an unbelievable assault and seizure of power that would upend decades of Wisconsin’s socioeconomic order by this tinpot Tea Party emperor of a governor. He saved his contempt for the Dems, had nothing to say about the audacious and destructive policy being jammed through, in no time at all. He has no opinion on the Koch sponsors of this assault.
Fuck. him. I cannot imagine a person more oblivious and out of touch with the American working class, unions, their history, than Andrew Sullivan. And he could not care less about them, as said above, they are sheer abstractions to him. And his sarcasm about “hurting people” in response to Freddie DeBoer’s very good post saying just that leaves me agahast at his real ignorance and callousness.
@Dennis G above makes the very good point that Sullivan would be fvcked without his very, very generous health care. That he gets for lolling around at his beach house blogging with a team of interns to do anything even slightly hard or technical, or other than just letting his stoned, illiberal thoughts get out there.
As a gay man myself, I must admit that an eyebrow was raised when it was “revealed” that Martin Peretz is gay, and has long liked to surround himself with handsome acolytes. It actually makes more sense why he gave Sullivan- created Sullivan, who was a nobody in England, such power, so early. No slogging his way up the ranks of political journalism for this one!
No, Sullivan found his sugar-daddy starmaking mogul early on. Sullivan was always the precocious clever boy, spoilt and favored, and that is his permanent worldview. I think it was Spy magazine that described how Andrew would rollerblade into TNR’s offices at 11am and rollerblade out by 3pm. When he was EIC. That’s his idea of work. So of course he’s qualified to opine and advocate for the vicious assault on unions and workers’ rights.
(Ps. ED Kain, may i say you have been on a roll lately. Heartening to see, kudos. )
asiangrrlMN
@Allan: Damn. That sucks. I really admire her, too.
JPK
McGinniss’s work on the Jeffrey MacDonald case, for the book Fatal Vision, is pretty strong evidence that he is a creep, to say the least. More here…
http://books.google.com/books?id=pQba4PRbJdcC&lpg=PP1&dq=fatal%20justice&pg=PA316#v=onepage&q&f=false
Just because he’s a creep doesn’t mean Sarah Palin isn’t a dangerous idiot, in case I need to add. Also too.
Anne Laurie
@Donald G:
Quoted for truth. You’d think escaping death and deportation might have given Sullivan some glimpse of a “there but for the grace of… “ moment. Instead, he seems to have decided (insofar as he’s even conscious of his luck) that, heck, he Survived & Triumphed in Manly Oakeshottian Fashion, so anybody who hasn’t been so privileged must just be a whining luzor.
Pooh
JPK,
That too also too was the point I was trying to make.
JPK
@Pooh: The more I learn about McGinniss, and I’m not really going out looking for it, the more unpleasant he seems to become, which is why I hate seeing him in the mix of people attempting to report on Palin. He’s so easily discredited for anyone interested in making the attempt.
Alex S.
@Arundel:
That was truly enlightening.
am
Sweet Jesus that was a funny line about Sullivan. I’m glad he’s okay and is back to his hit-or-miss self.
Donald G
I think I’m going to have to change my handle so as not to be confused with Dennis G. Coincidentally enough, one of my brothers is named Dennis… just not the one who writes here. :-)
jcricket
Preach it brother John, Preach it.
Hearing upper class non-manual laboring writers preach about the need for austerity makes me want to get on a fucking plane to Provincetown, hunt down his limey-ass and fuck some shit up. And I’m not normally a violent person.
I have a bunch of friends in Wisconsin, and there’s always some libertarian ass-hat on their FB comments bitching about cushy union gigs, the CRA and Barney Frank causing the melt-down, etc. It’s people like that, just like Sully, that are fucking this country straight into the god-damn ground, all while the rich folk and corporations are laughing to the bank. I get the crazification factor – but there aren’t enough crazies to win elections without the “serious moderates” thinking that deficits can only be cured by Republican austerity (instead of, you know, tax increases).
Class warfare is real. The rich are winning. And unless we band together, it’s a race straight to the bottom.
jcricket
Would also like to note for the record that the British conservatives on which Sully has such a crush are busy enacting their austerity policies, and wrecking the nascent economic recovery. If there isn’t a double-dip recession in fact, there will be one in effect for everyone but the already rich.
Sully’s a fucking moron, who occasionally, like a stopped clock, finds an issue to be right on (torture). He’s bad at math, casually racist, and is most ironically one of those latte-swilling elitists he and his ilk are always deriding.
At least recently we haven’t been subject to his 10,000+ word screeds on some conservative writer who said something 100 years ago that has absolutely no bearing on anything but supposedly justifies getting rid of the social safety net.
Donald G
@Anne Laurie:
Let’s see: Sully went to an Independent Grammar School (a private school to us Americans) rather than a comprehensive school (the equivalent of our free public shools) and to Magdalene College, Oxford University.
At the time he went to university, wasn’t university tuition heavily subsidised by the state in the UK?
Hmfph – I just learned that Sully’s three years to the day older than I am. Hmmm, my wife has compared me to Sully in respect to our rhetorical excesses when I’m worked up on something political. Oh, dear…
Silver
@Michael D.:
Who the fuck cares? You know what a chronically ill person who takes a month off to recover is called in regular America?
Unemployed and on Medicaid.
I hope someday Sullivan gets the benefit of the same treatment he wishes on others. And then I can go chisel his fifth column comment into his fucking headstone.
Mary G
I had what sounded like the same bug Sully had and I am also immune-suppressed due to RA drugs, and I could not have blogged either. Just getting up and making a piece of toast was a major effort.
I agree that he has been a real jerk since he came back; I was really taken aback by the hostility. I have wanted to slap him silly several times in the past and swear I will stop reading the Dish, but I never do. When he’s on, he’s awesome.
I’m sure I will get flamed for this, but he is right about the math related to health care. We do have to do something major about insurance/Medicare/Medicaid, but I want dollar for dollar cuts in farm subsidies, corporate tax loopholes, capital gains taxes raised, hedge fund income taxed as INCOME and defense spending FIRST. Then you can come after my little pittance.
Frank and Jamie McCourt, who own the LA Dodgers, had a lot of light shed on the shenanigans of the super rich in their divorce case. Since they have been in California, they have not paid ONE PENNY in state or federal income taxes. She is asking for alimony of $100,000 a MONTH and they own four houses here all valued at more than $25 million. The Dodgers play to over 3 million people every season. That is obscene.
Pooh
I don’t think you’ll find much argument that doing something root suite re; insurance/medicare/aide would be a good thing. But “do something” means a bit the opposite of the “fuck those shiftless fuckers, i got mine) which Sully (to use his own phraseology) is objectively in favor of.
Pooh + 5
Allan
This is awesome.
Wile E. Quixote
@Silver:
I will then eat nothing but bacon, cheese and jalapeno peppers for a week and take a nasty
breitbartall over that headstone.Gregory
What pisses me off about this whole situation is that the Republicans have made this “create a deficit crisis with tax cuts and use it as an excuse to cut everything but defense” strategy explicitly clear through jackanapes like Grover Norquist, and yet the so-called “liberal media” keeps pretending that they are acting in good faith.
As John said, if so-called “deficit hawks” aren’t talking tax increases and slashing military spending, they aren’t serious.
Frank
I just found out that a customer of my employer has killed herself. She had to move back with her parents and had fallen behind on all of her bills. This is what is behind the “people will be hurt” sentiment.
Gretchen
What I keep waiting for these austerity geeks to address, is, who are the employers who are going to hire tired 67-year-olds after the Social Security age is sensibly raised and the public pensions are declared too expensive? Can we imagine a 67-year-old bricklayer, or nurse, or firefighter? When I was younger I imagined I’d work forever, but a stint in the hospital this year at age 57 made me realize I’m not going to be able to do my on-my-feet-all-day job for another 10 years. Sure, bloggers can work forever, but the rest of us need a safety net.
Svlad Jelly
“The fundamental thing you need to understand when talking to deficit hawks is that when they say something is painful or that cuts will hurt people, you need to recognize that what they really mean is that the cuts will be painful TO SOMEONE ELSE and hurt people THEY DON’T KNOW AND WILL NEVER MEET. That’s why it’s so easy to be a condescending asshole about the budget. That’s why it takes nothing to suggest raising the retirement age for Social Security. That’s why, after taking a month off from writing on the internet to recover from a cold, he can tell people who work back-breaking manual labor every day of their god damned lives for much less money than he or McMegan earn that they should “contribute” more to their health care costs.”
As a victim of backbreaking, low-paying wage slavery this paragraph almost made me cry. Don’t these fucking bastards have any goddamn empathy?
Grumpy Code Monkey
@John Cole: I’m a software engineer by trade (i.e., pampered wimp). At my current job, the development network is physically isolated from the rest of the world, so I can’t telecommute. If I’m too sick to leave the house, I can’t work and must take sick time off, which is limited.
Since starting this job, I’ve broken my left wrist (shattered it, actually; needed surgery and a plate to repair it) and my right hand (not at the same time, fortunately). I still had to drive to work (with a stick-shift, no less), write code, and do all the other crap one-handed (and when you break your dominant hand, everything becomes a hundred times harder, from driving to typing to wiping your ass), and basically do my fucking job because I don’t get to take a month off for a boo-boo.
Thankfully, I work for a company that cares enough about its employees to provide better-than-average health coverage. I shudder to think what the result would have been when I was contracting, or better yet, unemployed.
FUCK Sullivan.
salsify
John, Sully has responded to this post. You may owe him an apology for minimizing his recent illness. Take a read, it was definitely more than a cold, leaving him with half of the t-cells he formerly had, which I hazard a guess is not good news for one who is HIV positive.
Craig Ranapia
Cole:
Since Andrew’s make it perfectly clear he was suffering some something a little more serious than a “cold”, how about showing some class and apologising for what was really a cheap ad hominem bitch that should be left to the Tea Bagger sewer?
And, yeah, I don’t think defending the Bush ‘welfare for the wealthy’ tax-cuts are the field I’d want to fight a class war or go concern trolling on. YMMV, of course.
Brendan D
It sounds to me as if most of the people on here bitching about Sullivan have never actually read his blog. He has, in the past, posted story upon story from his readers negatively affected by the recession. He has, in the past, written in vehement opposition to tax breaks for the wealthy. He has, in the past, supported everything from Obama’s take on healthcare to closing corporate tax loopholes. Whether you like or dislike his politics, it seems people are trying to reframe him as some GOP flack, which he never really was, and which he certainly hasn’t been since he realized the absolutely asinine nature of the War on Terror.
But what I find particularly disgusting is John’s snarky bullshit about how Sullivan was recovering “from a cold.” Y’know, I, like many on here, would like to hear Sullivan meditate more on just how damned lucky he is to have insurance and a job that grants him three weeks off to recover from illness. But John, apparently, has had a helluva lot better luck than many of us, and it’d be nice to see some other commenters on here recognize that.
What I mean is, it’s absurd to hear Cole bitch about how Sullivan was recovering from a glorified cold, when he himself has obviously never had an illness that has debilitated him for nearly a month. My brother had just such an illness, and, in rushing back to his pampered-ass job, he almost died. Thankfully, after a second stint in the hospital, he spent time recovering and actually recovered. Thank God Sullivan did the same.
Flame me all you want, posters, but John showed an absolute lack of class and a complete dearth of understanding for another human being in pain. That sounds like a damned neocon to me.
Cathy
I’m not liking Sullivan’s take on Wisconsin at all. But all these comments about his taking a month off to be sick are ridiculous. Of course such recourse should be available to us and not jeopardize our jobs. If it isn’t, it isn’t Sully’s fault; it’s our system’s fault, our health care with insurance that will pay for hand surgery but not cover PT adequately afterward, our employers who won’t accept the fact that bodies take time to heal. Let’s push hard for other companies to offer the decent health care Sully’s got. And argue him down on his blindness to Walker’s union-busting and its centrality to the future of democracy!
BethanyAnne
@Cathy: I’m sorry, but after witnessing Sully’s pigheaded ignorance for the past 10 years, I’m not willing to argue with him for long enough to have more empathy. It’s not the way he’s wired. I note for the record that he linked to this one post where he could find someone being a dick, not the other 12 where folk argued with him. Maybe if he apologized for giving Betsy McCaughey a platform; or pimping The Bell Curve; or something better than that fauxpology for the “fifth column” comment,or decides that after a month of abortion stories, he still thinks women shouldn’t be able to have one, and are going to hell; or a bunch of other BS I don’t have time to look up… then I’ll consider it.
jehrler
Just read Sully’s response and, while I too see that the “cold” thing was a bit much from John, I also see Sully “doth protest too much.”
Sure he may be advocating for a financial hit on himself and others with similar financial resources, but he seems incapable of seeing that such hits on those with more limited resources can be disastrous, and not just a hit.
Which is ironic because, as one suffering with HIV, he should be acutely aware that one’s status (be it financial or health) has huge import on how well, or even if, one can recover from adversity.
For example, if you’re a coal miner then raising the retirement age may mean one never can actually retire (other than to the grave). But if you are white collar, with health insurance, it may not be that big a deal and you can still look forward to golfing in Arizona starting at 67 or 70.
This is the hypocrisy from Sully that bothers me.
fasteddie9318
I see Andy’s fans have started showing up…
Svensker
Yes, Sully had more than a cold. No, he was not a wimp for taking the time off to heal. But most folks don’t have the kind of job or the health care coverage that he has so they can afford to take a month off from work. And then they don’t start right up advocating cuts for other people’s incomes and benefits.
Sully is a narcissist. He can be entertaining and sometimes he’s right, but all he cares about is himself and stuff that affects him directly.
Doc Marten
Everyone-this is the REAL Andrew Sullivan. This is not the Andrew Sullivan that suddenly had a ‘come to Jesus’ moment. I knew that was bullshit when it happened. This is the REAL misogynist with a superiority (to the poor) complex asshole he really is. The so-called ‘conversion’ to moderate thinking was a straight up lie. This guy lies for a living.
Needless to say, I’m not a big fan of his and never have been. Andrew Sullivan is a pretentious, pompous prick. So, when he talks about budget cuts, take his Ronald Reagan worshiping ass with a HUGE grain of salt. This guy’s a mendacious asshole. Period.
myiq2xu
It’s the high-brow intellectual discussions that make this place special.
JGabriel
Sully:
I guess I have to respond to this here, since Sully doesn’t allow comments:
Sully attacks the benefits of people who don’t have much, and, when counter-attacked, whines, “It’s all they seem to have”?
Yeah, it’s all they have — because the politicians and capitalists you support take everything else from them, you fucking jackass.
(Credit where credit is due: at least Sully names names and provides links back here, unlike his passive aggressive blogging assistant. Yes, Friedersdorf, that means you.)
.
Lit3Bolt
Someone here a few months ago described Sullivan as a sybarite, a word that I didn’t know at the time but now agree that it describes him perfectly. Sullivan will always be a conservative Peter Pan, lost in his youth in the 1980s when being a conservative and poor-hatred was cool and edgy.
He will always attribute his privilege and benefits as examples of his prowess rather than good fortune, and will continue to treat politics as a whimsical game show where he gets to make saucy comments about the current gossip in the corridors of power.
Like a true aristocrat, Sullivan believes his is a noble existence where he can use his privileged white influence to raise his current choice of a dirty, brown skinned peasant of the week up to his level, at least temporarily, giving them exposure that they never would have otherwise had.
Once said person is killed or detained or beaten or tortured, Sullivan is properly outraged at the treatment of his current revolution du jour, but quickly flits to other important topics, such as plugging a coffee book of other peoples’ photos, condemning Trig Palin for existing, or linking approvingly to books suggesting that black people are simply naturally unintelligent.
People, here’s an important clue. You should like Sullivan for another reason than the fact he’s an HIV positive gay Catholic man or that he’s anti-torture (which is like taking the anti-puppy killing position…gee, that was hard!). We should also remember his vile misogyny, his glib ignorance of class, his ever shifting and fluid conservative “philosophies,” where principles are tried on and discarded like clothes, his smug gossipy behavior amongst his blogging peers where he hands out back-handed compliment awards like he’s the Queen of the Blogosphere, and above all, his willingness to claim all research and work on his blog like its the most backbreaking, mindcrushing task in the world.
So while people are risking their lives for freedom, or risking their jobs for better healthcare or living conditions, I’m going to blog about fucking views outside a window or link random poems, all the while demanding cuts to the discretionary spending budget of a country I’m not a citizen in while smoking pot and popping antiretrovirals that I get from my cushy Atlantic blogger health insurance.
No hope.
Concerned Citizen
The fundamental thing you need to understand when talking to liberal big-spenders is that when they say spending and tax increases won’t hurt people, you need to recognize that what the lazy welfare queens really mean is that the increases will be painful TO SOMEONE ELSE and WILL BE PAID FOR BY SOMEONE ELSE. That’s why it’s so easy to be a condescending asshole about the budget.
vg
lol, Sullivan writes more in a day than you do in a month, Cole. His blog produces more and much better content in a day than yours and you have six daily kos diarists helping, though obviously the kossacks won’t help with quality.
Gregor
Are you over 25? If no, then this kind of sanctimony is understandable and hopefully you will change trajectory and realize that 1) serious political conversation will always involve costs to some people, 2) pretending that you are better positioned to be in touch with the people being hurt is a cheap rhetorical trick meant to substitute for an argument, 3) the people who you’re championing likely wouldn’t respect you–the working class holds no truck for complaining ninnies.
SoINeedAName
Cole –
You are way – WAY – out of line here, Little Buckeroo.
It’s past time for you to take your irresponsible and inappropriate rants down a notch or three!
Hester
JGabriel – February 19, 2011 | 5:38 pm said:
“Sully attacks the benefits of people who don’t have much, and, when counter-attacked, whines, “It’s all they seem to have”? ”
Who don’t have much? Employees in the public sector have a lot more in the way of wages, benefits,and job security than the majority of Americans! I can speak from experience. I am one of those lucky Americans. Up until four years ago, NOTHING was taken out of my check for my health care. ZERO. When I and tens of thousands of my colleagues retire, we can cash in unused sick days for big bucks! How many Americans have that benefit? Sullivan is right. Changes must be made and they must be made now. The future of our country depends upon it.
As for Cole’s attack on Sullivan? No substantive argument, just nastiness and self-serving cant.
am
Gregor – if you’re full of cr*p, at least be concise.
Clonod
@Arundel:
Citation Please? Where did he call Wisconsin Dems “Cowards”? I haven’t seen that.
Maura Cavaleri
If I recall, Sully took a month because a common cold ISN’T just a common cold to someone withh his condition. It’s seems odd that you couldn’t rant without making it extremely personal. Shame on you
HalSF
Holy moly, what a worthless, toxic, cossetted, hateful, groupthink-infested comment thread y’all have here. Nothing like standing up for empathy for working stiffs with a dose of AIDS-bashing, weird-gossiping xenophobia.
HalSF
This post on Andrew Sullivan’s site — http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/02/dissents-of-the-day-2.html — comprises a more effective argument for the Wisconsin protests than anything I’m reading in this swirling vat of animus, and that should tell you something.
CRoyal
What an echo chamber. Seriously, open your minds people.