Not sure if you are watching, but all the chicken little shit about Obama going after Medicare and Medicaid seems to have been, well, a little premature (which now means the usual suspects will spend the next few days furiously congratulating themselves that their outcry on blogs is what changed Obama’s mind). Obama is also simply taking it to the Ryan plan, pointing out what a joke it is. He can barely suppress a laugh as he repeatedly points out how unserious it actually is.
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[…] Balloon Juice, John Cole enjoyed watching Obama hammer the GOP over the Ryan plan to abolish Medicare: Obama Takes Ryan and the GOP […]
NobodySpecial
Obama reminds me at this moment of James Buchanan.
KJ
He is eviscerating Ryan and the GOP. And in the process giving the media a history lesson of how we got here. Bravo!
JonF
This is such a full throated defense of pragmatic progressivism that I’m sure Fox went to commercial 20 minutes ago.
aimai
Its a good speech and I’m proud of him. However, have you seen the pained looks of attention on the part of the audience. People in DC are really not used to having to actually listen to more than a soundbite. You can see the furrowed brows as they try to figure out what some of it means. He should have contended himself with just coming out and saying “I’m not gonna do it. Fuck Ryan” and then left them to read the bullet points later. Its really more what they want.
I’m happy with everything I heard except the weird lock in of the “in 2014 if they can’t agree to my plan then I’ll force everyone to cut stuff and ‘spending on reductions in the tax code’ (?)” I want a threat that is a little more real like “I’ll chop John Boehner’s body into soylent green and use it to feed my military.”
aimai
Elia Isquire
I disagree, John. I feel that this speech is getting more defiantly liberal as it goes along. He uses the v-word (“vouchers”) to describe what the GOP wants to do to Medicare. Putting “seniors at the mercy of insurance companies” is a politically potent piece of fear-mongering.
"Serious" Superluminar
I really, really want to hear what mclaren’s take is…
The Dangerman
I could only be happier if Obama had come out and called the Ryan plan “BS”. Quote, unquote.
Still, proud to be an Obot.
Edit:
@aimai:
Yeah, that would worked for me.
AWL
I guess it’s now onto the next item where Obama has failed the left!
Legalize
Nice. Defining the preservation of medicare, medicaid, and social security as “patriotism.” Exactly right.
Scott P.
Let’s see, here’s what Sullivan just posted:
“2.24 pm. This speech is getting more defiantly liberal as it goes along.”
Hmmm. Ella = Andrew?
licensed to kill time
That shredding sound you hear? That’s Ryan’s plan, going down. I bet Republican heads are going asplody all over the nation.
Randiego
@Elia Isquire: Sully is that you?
JC
I’m at work, so not watching anything about what Obama is doing, but, sounds awesome.
Also, in an earlier thread, someone mentioned what I love about Balloon Juice, as a place to read and debate, and vent.
“Pissed Off Pragmatist”, is one of the major themes of this place.
Pissed Off – is good, because, let’s be honest – pissed off is a LOT more fun to read, and you get to be creative in your venting.
Pragmatism – in the sense of ‘what really WORKS here??”, and avoiding simply trollish pissed-offness.
Which means we get to be pissed off at the fatuous Villagers, who never once look at evidence, regarding their boy Ryan, or Iraq weapons of mass destruction, and also get to be pissed off at “Obama is worse than Bush!”, because that is also so obviously untrue. Also ‘pragmatic’, in the sense that still very willing to be wrong, if the evidence points that out, in our arguments, without getting STUCK UP about our argument.
Also, still, only place where you can go and piss enthusiasically on someone’s argument, then gush about their pet pictures, in the very next comment.
That should be a rule, I think. You aren’t allowed to curse out someone’s arguments, unless you are willing to buy the first beer for that same person.
cyntax
@aimai:
Hey now. As ex-military: Do not want.
You’ve hit on the one thing that can make MRE’s taste worse than they do (actually, I’ve heard they’ve gotten a lot better since I was in, but ya know).
Hermione Granger-Weasley
heh.
Does this mean you and ABL drank their milkshakes?
Ash Can
The President is shrill.
bemused
@aimai:
Those pained looks on their faces shows the struggle to comprehend what Obama is saying. It kind of reminds me of the mystified and gobsmacked elitist Village audience listening to Steven Colbert at the White House press corps dinner for Bush.
Culture of Truth
CHARLIE CRIST WRITES LETTERS
“The other day I received a letter from a man in Florida. He started off by telling me he didn’t vote for me and he hasn’t always agreed with me. But even though he’s worried about our economy and the state of our politics, he said,
“I still believe. I believe in that great country that my grandfather told me about. I believe that somewhere lost in this quagmire of petty bickering on every news station, the ‘American Dream’ is still alive.”
Another Nick
@Elia Isquire: You just cribbed directly from Andrew Sullivan’s live-blog. Word for word once you started your “‘v’ word …” claim. Maybe you should say that’s what you’re doing?
Hobelhouse
Good to see the doom and gloom patrol turned out to be wrong on this one…
Damnyankees
Not that I disagree with anything said, but aren’t Obama’s speeches almost always good? I don’t think it matters much. Obama is great at giving speeches which seem good in the moment but in the larger view don’t seem to do much in advancing the cause of liberalism or moving the Overton window in any way.
mclaren
Super super SUPER bad news.
As we have learnt to our cost, whenever Obama says he’s in favor of something he actually acts strongly against it, and whenever Obama says he opposes anything it means he’s going to move heaven and earth to get it done.
So now that Obama has come out strongly in favor of Ryan’s plan, we’re seriously fucked.
Bend over, America. It’s gonna be ugly.
Cris
We’ve bred a better-marbled class of senior since then
Comrade Javamanphil
Meanwhile, Jake Tapper crouches and awaits his opportunity to ask “What are the specifics?”
OzoneR
If progressives are going to win, this is how they’re going to do. You got to invoke people’s patriotism and nationalism. Here Obama subtly described Republicans as “unpatriotic” because they don’t think America can do what China, Brazil, etc. are doing. Will the GOP say that and risk looking like they don’t believe in America?
Joe Beese
Says you.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/13/966552/-President-Obamas-fiscal-policy-speech
“Accountability”, “unnecessary”, and “strengthen” are code words for “cut”.
JZ
When Obama “took on” the left, you could practically feel Andrew having a Sullygasm.
Uriel
Just to be clear- He did announce that the retirement age would be raised to 147 and benefits would be reduced to a dead rat on a string, bi-monthly, right? ‘Cause I just got out of a benefits meeting, and I kinda structured my options on all of the informed policy predictions of karate guy and Joey B.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Elia Isquire:
Talk about a great soundbite. And what a way to frame the argument. Whoa, this guy’s a Democrat? Oh wait…
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
A woodshed built out of stimulus money, and with a larder stocked with gubbmint cheese.
El Tiburon
What are you more excited by, that you can get a dig on all the “chicken littles” or that Obama apparently is bagging on the Ryan plan.
I am not watching the speech, but while we are on topic, if Obama is being as forceful as you claim he is, then tell me when he has been this forceful on other issues. Because, quite frankly, I don’t recall it.
Oh, right. We all know we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Fact is you have no idea what impact the outcry from ‘the base’ has had on Obama. Perhaps not the blogs so much, but combined with the shit he’s been taking over Bradley Manning, etc. maybe he decided it was time to take a stand.
Awesome. So now Obama has set a precedent. He can call out the stupidity of Republicans. So from this point forward we can expect the same response to other stupid Republican ideas. Conversely, if he doesn’t call out a stupid Republican idea, can we infer he agrees with the stupidity?
Finally, I’m an easy date. Give me a couple of shots, take me to a nice dinner and I’ll give it up. Obama – show me you got some more of this and you gots my support, some cash and vote. Like I said, I’m easy.
chopper
it’s amazing how quickly the firebaggers are shifting gears from ‘oh noes, obama’s totes going to speechify about cutting SS and medicare!’ to ‘whatever, it’s only a speech’.
Justin
@mclaren: When you consume food, do you shove it up your ass, expecting it to come out your mouth?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Hobelhouse:
Fixited.
Culture of Truth
CHARLIE CRIST WRITES LETTERS
“The other day I received a letter from a man in Florida. He started off by telling me he didn’t vote for me and he hasn’t always agreed with me. But even though he’s worried about our economy and the state of our politics, he said,
“I still believe. I believe in that great country that my grandfather told me about. I believe that somewhere lost in this quagmire of petty bickering on every news station, the ‘American Dream’ is still alive…”
Liberal Sandlapper
That was his best speech this year, hands down. One of his best ever. Clear and concise points delivered in a manner that even Eric Cantor could comprehend.
That crackling sound you hear? Congressman Ryan gritting his poor teeth to nubs.
Sentient Puddle
@“Serious” Superluminar:
I’m rather disappointed in what we got, myself. Nowhere near par.
Chyron HR
@Joe Beese:
Whereas when your best friends Andrew Sullivan and Paul Ryan openly announce that they want to cut Medicare without using any double-secret-reverse code words, they’re just being silly billies.
Go figure!
Joel
Link?
catclub
@Damnyankees: Yes, there is nothing in there that will become “Where’s the beef?”
for ridiculing the Ryan plan.
I would have hoped for something like “It better beat doing nothing.” Which the Ryan plan does not.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@chopper:
Another fix. I’ve got a million of em!
Miss Kitkas's Comrade Wayne
@aimai:
I think Bohner’s body when chopped is used for Soylent Orange.
BombIranForChrist
This speech was certainly heartening.
Now let’s see how well he follows through on it. He said all kinds of things the last time he was running for election, and he didn’t exactly follow through on them.
I’m skeptical. And Obama has earned that skepticism.
joe from Lowell
Wow, the Republicans are freaking the hell out about the tax increases.
They’re taking the side of the richest Americans against Medicare and deficit reduction.
Awesome.
SIA
Fantastic, solid speech. This is going to be fun.
Beta Magellan
@JC:
This sounds about right—“pissed pragmatist” is also my default state nowadays.
nisl
Sullivan’s quote, “He uses the v-word (“vouchers”) to describe what the GOP wants to do to Medicare. Putting “seniors at the mercy of insurance companies” is a politically potent piece of fear-mongering.” Just shows what a half-wit he is.
Ryan’s plan specifically calls for “the v-word” but if we point that out we are fear mongering? Is one of the characteristics of a “serious” plan; that nobody can talk about what is in it without being accused of “fear mongering?” If Ryan had come up with a plan to cut Medicare/Medicaid by deporting all HIV positive people and Sully had pointed out how stupid and hateful that was, would Sully be “fear mongering?”
Why I still bother reading that moron is beyond me.
Bob Loblaw
This conflict will never ever make sense to me. It seems like both sides are intent on remaining stupid and angry forever.
Obama just did exactly what “unserious, unpragmatic, bully pulpit fetishist libruls” wanted. Clear lines of partisan division, overwhelming use of rhetorical force, etc. And what do we know will happen?
1. The people who called for this tactic will not acknowledge it, and continue blaming him for something else. Even though he isn’t looking to sell anybody out.
2. Obama’s diehard supporters will also not acknowledge that he is actually living up to those leftier critiques and changing his governing pattern. They weren’t baseless.
Whatever.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I was going back and forth to the TV. Did liberal MSNBC really just go from Chuck Todd to a Tea Bagger, then back to stories about raccoons with their heads stuck in jars?
Corner Stone
He sold me out(tm) !!
Ranjit Suresh
Obama contrasted his position from that of people in his own party who feel there should not be no cuts when the economy is still so weak, just as he distinguished it from the Republican’s vision of privatization and tax cuts for the rich.
Here’s the problem: the people in his own party he’s indicating some sympathy for but at the same time suggesting are too ideologically liberal, in fact include a broad swath of *neoliberal* economists.
In other words, the President is placing himself to the right of self-avowedly free trade, free market economists. After everything’s said and done, he’s putting himself in the same camp as David Cameron and Chancellor Merkel in favoring austerity over stimulus spending. He is, in fact, repudiating any suggestion of further stimulus. So while he poses under the guise of favoring an open dialogue on the deficit, he meanwhile is declaring that the debate on another stimulus is closed. And this is not merely in response to the Republican majority in the House, if we accept his own words, but because he believes the time for major government pump-priming is well behind us.
Blue Carolinian
Obama didn’t call for the total abolition of private property and the transformation of corporations into Worker’s Soviets! SELLOUT! FREE MUMIA!
Elia Isquire
On the serious side, it was a great speech. But I’m trying to balance my enthusiasm for it against what DamnYankees said, because it’s true: I always completely forget why I ever for a minute didn’t adore the man when he’s giving a speech.
I’m really happy though to see that his speech was what, frankly, you’d expect from a Democrat. I really wonder now what was with those articles saying it was going to be Bowles-Simpson? I mean, he positively alluded to it, but it was hardly like he said: “There — that’s the plan.” His outline was certainly more left-wing; rhetorically he spent FAR more time defining “entitlement” programs as fundamentally American and optimistic. So the LA Times piece was right, basically; what gives? Did the Times et al get punk’d?
Last thought: I think this speech, more clearly than anything he’s delivered yet, shows the influence of his Reagan fascination.
rikryah
he hung Ryan’s plan around the GOP neck. so, either they abandon the turd, or spend 2012 telling new members of AARP and Seniors why they shouldn’t plan on dying in the next decade before the ‘ privatization that isn’t privatization’ takes place.
Davis X. Machina
I’m withholding all judgement until the transcript is on line and I can see if Obama mentioned the public option.
aimai
@Culture of Truth:
that was the first belly laugh of this thread.
aimai
Midnight Marauder
Good shit, Mr. President. Real good shit.
Nylund
How long until Sully writes a post praising Ryan for forcing Obama to finally “confront the issues.”
Yes, we must praise Ryan for forcing Obama to talk on national TV about how stupid Ryan is. The math demands it!
Dave
@mclaren: Good lord but you’re an idiot.
TuiMel
@aimai:
THAT woulda been a thing of beauty. And in today’s environment, he came close in places between the lines on his teleprompter. Let’s see where he goes from here.
Joe Beese
@chopper:
Right. Which he just did.
MattR
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: It is both sad and pathetic how much enthusiasm there is for using this speech to bash firebaggers compared to enthusiasm for the content of the speech.
Corner Stone
Obama can gut Medicare and SS for all I care but for the fucking love of God, will someone please get him to stop open palm slapping the podium surface after every sentence!? !?
Just Some Fuckhead
No one said he was going to affirm Ryan’s plan, doofus. They said he was going to start at Simpson-Bowles, which he did according to EK, but “in a good way”.
Whatever the hell that means.
Davis X. Machina
@rikryah: The GOP’s plan is basically, the worse, the better.
The GOP is the last major Leninist parliamentary party in the developed world.
Martin
Ok, I don’t see what’s unreasonable in this plan (from TPM):
+ A debt failsafe that will be triggered if the debt-to-GDP ratio hasn’t stabilized, and begun to decline by mid-decade. This will include automatic spending cuts, and reductions in tax subsidies, but no tax increases. Social Security, Medicare, and low-income programs will be exempted. It will not tie the government’s hands in the event that an economic downturn requires fiscal stimulus.
+ Cuts to discretionary spending, compatible with those in the Bowles-Simpson recommendations.
+ Defense spending cuts, contingent on a thorough review conducted by Secretary Robert Gates, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Obama himself, and savings generated by winding down operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
+ Strengthening the Independent Payment Advisory Board, created by the health care law to recommend and implement cost savings reforms to hold down the cost-per-Medicare-patient.
+ Simplifying the formula for providing federal matching funds to states for Medicaid, which would automatically increase in the event of a recession
+ This is a big one — Obama will propose using Medicare’s purchasing power to reduce prescription drug costs for seniors
+ Reductions in agricultural subsidies
+ Comprehensive tax reform, which reduces loopholes, simplifies the system, allows the Bush tax cuts for high-income earners to expire, and reduces the corporate tax rate.
Simpson/Bowles Discretionary spending cuts
+ Eliminate all earmarks.
+ Eliminate the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools.
+ Freeze federal worker wage increases through 2014; eliminate 200,000 federal jobs by 2020; and eliminate 250,000 federal non-defense contractor jobs by 2015.
+ Eliminate subsidized student loans, in which the government makes interest payments while the student is in school.
+ Establish co-pays in the VA medical system and change the co-pays and deductibles for military retirees that remain in that system.
+ Eliminate NASA funding for commercial space flight.
+ Require the Smithsonian museums to start charging entrance fees and raise fees at the national parks.
+ Eliminate funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — which many conservatives suggested in the wake of the firing of former NPR contributor Juan Williams.
+ Reduce farm subsidies by $3 billion per year.
+ Create a Committee to eliminate unnecessary programs to the tune of $11 billion by 2015.
+ Merge the Department of Commerce and the Small Business Administration and cut its budget by 10 percent.
+ End “low-priority” Army Corps of Engineers programs to the tune of $1 billion by 2015.
+ Cut the State Department’s overseas budget by 10 percent by 2015; reduce the proposed foreign aid budget by 10 percent in 2015; and cut voluntary contributions to the United Nations by 10 percent in 2015.
+ Eliminate the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which provides subsidized financing and political risk insurance for U.S. companies’ investments abroad.
+ Cut $900 million in fossil fuel research funds.
+ Force airlines to increase their contributions to airline security costs and allow them to increase per-ticket security fees.
Yeah, not happy about some of the proposed discretionary cuts in Simpson/Bowles, but they’re not dealbreakers, IMO.
Bobby Thomson
Good.
More, please.
slag
The post-oratal boys currently on Whitehouse.gov aren’t doing too bad of a job either. Trying to appeal to whoever may or may not be The Base.
General Stuck
That was my liberal president speaking. And he told you wingnut, to KEEP YOUR GRUBBY GREEDY PAWS OFFIN HIS MEDICARE, and for firebaggers to eat shit, you faithless feckless watb motherfuckers.
I will unavailable for comment. So dial 1-800-FUC KYOU, and I won’t get to you. Have a nice day and don’t take no wooden nickels, unless they are black with funny ears.
OzoneR
@Joe Beese:
I’ll alert the University of Glasgow.
Joe Beese
@MattR:
Republicans don’t have a monopoly on organizing based on hatred.
Midnight Marauder
@El Tiburon:
I get it. Really. I do.
But maybe, just this once, we could take a moment to acknowledge that this was a kick ass performance–regardless of the disappointments experienced previously?
Can we do that? Is that a viable option? Can we say that comments like this:
are kind of exactly what we all were hoping to hear today? Is that a thing we can do?
Just Some Fuckhead
My favorite was the part where he said progressives needed to prove we could afford our safety net, ya know, like that hadn’t ever been done before Republicans and Obama started giving away the store.
Elia Isquire
@aimai: Yeah that was really funny.
Corner Stone
@Davis X. Machina:
It is. He said it will be a campaign promise in the upcoming election. Eerily reminiscent of the 2008 campaign somehow.
rickstersherpa
I figure Sully and Bobo will be very turned off on Obama as just becoming another “doctrinaire” liberal because he does not want to defenestrate Medicare and Social Security while preserving Pete Peterson’s tax cuts. I have been reading Sullivan since he was TNR and publishing Betsy McCaughey’s libel about the Clinton Health Care Plan. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/02/10/695709/-Betsy-(Elizabeth)-McCaughey-is-back;-Obamas-health-care-dangerous-to-your-health-
Sullivan admitted in this Kos story that he will push stuff knowing it contains “factual” erros (sometimes called lies) to be “provocative” and “push the debate.”
Sullivan makes no bones about being some sort of Conservative, with a prejudice in favor of Austrian economics and against the welfare state (although he grew up coddled by the British one of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 80s). http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/people/andrew_sullivan.php So I am kind of surprised by all the surprise that he has a hard on for the Ryan plan.
Nevertheless, given that he now detests the theocons who control the Republican Party more, I expect that he will be all in for Obama in 2012, with probably more enthusiasm than Firedoglake, Digby, and someo of the commentators on this blog. Me, I am kind of with Bob Somerby and Dean Baker in that I will expect a politician to act like politician and the Prez is hoping to get the unemployment rate down to 8% and his share of the white vote up to 43%. If he does that he can the typically miserable, barren, 2d term of most two term Presidents, but hopefully with a couple of Supreme Court Appointments. (Both Scalia and Kennedy turn 75 this year and will be 80 by 2016. One can hope can’t one. And Ginsburg, and even Breyer, may need replacing.)
Poopyman
Not being one to resist throwing red meat to the masses, here’s what’s currently at the top at FDL:
White House Strategy FAIL: Appeal to Independents by Giving Republicans Everything They Want
(Runs away with hands over ears….)
Linnaeus
Didn’t see the speech (at work), but I’ll read the text later (which is what I typically do anyway). From what I’m reading here, though, it sounds like the president is signaling moving things in the right direction, hitting good progressive notes, etc.
joeyess
I just called Obama For America in Chicago and told them very simply “more of that, please”.
While I know he’s a busy man, he’s also the goddamn POTUS… He can go on teevee anytime and the chattering class will cover him.
He should do one of those a week during these negotiations. Let Boehner follow that act like some worn-out ’80s rock band and let’s allow the American public to decide who’s got the goods.
trollhattan
@Midnight Marauder:
Beauty! And let’s not overlook this tidbit.
Joe Beese
My favorite part was where he said, in effect, “I will not renew the Bush tax cuts.”
A line that should be delivered in the tone of “I will not vote to support telecom immunity.”
drkrick
@Dave: I don’t know about that. He’s always OT, but I like a good piece of pie from time to time, too.
Martin
@Joe Beese: Right, because what matters isn’t what services are offered to people, but how much we overpay for them.
Joe Beese: Doesn’t use coupons because paying 20% less for the same amount of food leaves him hungry after the meal.
Dave
@MattR:
Fixed that for ya.
MattR
@Joe Beese: At the same time, your one note whining and “when Obama says X, he really means the opposite” schtick are equally sad and pathetic.
@Dave: Thanks for pretty much proving my point for me.
OzoneR
@MattR:
the two aren’t mutually exclusive
Jess
@BombIranForChrist: What, specifically, did he promise that he hasn’t pushed for? Obviously he isn’t going to win every battle, but going down the checklist I’d say he’s followed through as well as, or even better than, I expected. What were you expecting that he fell short on?
mclaren
Candidate Obama spoke out strongly against individual mandates in health care reform, opening ridiculing them.
So, naturally, when Obama became president, we got…individual mandates in his HCR bill!
Candidate Obama spoke out vehemently against more tax cuts for the rich.
And so, of course, when he became president, Obama gave us (wait for it…) more tax cuts for the rich!
Now, Obama is speaking out vhemently against and ridiculing Ryan’s plan to cut taxes for the rich and pay for it by slashing medicare and social security benefits.
And what will Obama work hard to accomplish?
You know the answer. History shows that Obama does the opposite of what he says. So Obama has now come out foursquare in favor of the Ryan plan by speaking out against it.
Very very bad news.
Midnight Marauder
Oh wow. Say what you will about Joe Beese being a once-in-a-generation idiot, but that idiocy never fails to deliver the goods.
cleek
@Joe Beese:
of course they are.
everything is code for things that trigger your knee-jerk anti-Obama bullshit.
different church-lady
Two thoughts:
1) We all know damn well that if the results are that Medicare is cut by even just a single dollar, there will be furious keyboard pounding attempting to argue that one dollar is the difference between life and death for someone.
2) I’m beginning to wonder if the Ryan budget is the equivalent of the never-filmed Brothel scene in Citizen Kane. (The theory was that Wells and Mankiewicz deliberately wrote a scene they knew the censors wouldn’t allow so that the censors could have something to object to and leave the rest of the film alone.)
joeyess
I’ll just let the rest of you deal with mclaren. I’m fairly certain it’s mcmegan, but I’m really just guessing.
Corner Stone
@MattR:
Completely predictable. Cole loves to troll the hell out of his own blog, and he has a well trained pack of Republican commenters that follow his lead. Just look for anyone using the word “firebagger” as an epithet and it’s one of them.
Davis X. Machina
@Corner Stone: Well, then, what could there possibly be to complain about.
Oh, wait, Elizabeth Warren is not the new Secretary of the Treasury.
Damn…
matoken_chan
Can we call this the “Slaving Private Ryan” moment of the Obama presidency?
Bill
I agree that a strong anti-Ryan message is a GREAT start.
Shouldn’t we wait to see what “negotiations” bring before going all ga-ga over this though? He doesn’t have the best record of standing by his initial liberal positions.
Pamela F
@Ash Can:
Heh, Ash Can. The president is never shrill, he never demonizes. He lays out a progressive pathway in a commonsense way that emphasizes the part of our heritage that appeals to our better angels. Now I’m neither a centrist nor an independent yet he speaks to our common decency and a vision of America that’s very respectful, empowering and inclusive.
Justin
@mclaren: My God, mclaren, how will we survive in this dystopia where the God-king Obama’s word is law, where he negotiates with no one, where his merest whim is decree?
trollhattan
Kthug:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/the-budget-speech/
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Corner Stone:
and technically, you’re a PUMA, right?
A L
@Pamela F: You must not know America’s zeitgeist, then, because what you describe is in short supply in most Americans.
Dennis SGMM
An excellent speech, to be sure. I listened to it on the radio and I was thrilled to see something of candidate Obama appear in President Obama.
It’s the follow-up that concerns me. Obama is dealing with a pack of drooling nihilists who really don’t care if the rest of us fuck off and die in the cold and dark as long as they can give the wealthy one more blowjob. Their touting of the Ryan plan is a clear signal that they won’t let facts or the common good get in their way. It’s going to be an uphill battle.
Disco
I’m sorry, did I miss something? Does a speech magically become law now?
It’s a SPEECH. Talk to me when any of this becomes law.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Damnyankees:
Ssh! We’re not supposed to notice that!
Instead we’re supposed to say “hey, Obama promised not to let the Bush tax cuts expire!” as if he never did that before.
Chyron HR
@Corner Stone:
Voting for a Democrat = Republican! We’re through the looking glass here, people.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@MattR:
Remember, who do we hate more than the Romans?
THE FUCKING JUDEAN PEOPLES FRONT!!!!!
Some human reactions are timeless.
Elia Isquire
OH MY GOD CAN ONE THREAD HERE NOT BECOME A PITCHED BATTLE BETWEEN OBAGGERS AND FIREBOTS?
Jim Pharo
I thought the speech was the usual pablum. He sure sounds progressive! But I think when we measure the final results, they will be much, much closer to Ryan’s vision than Obama’s. The difference is that the GOP could care less what Americans think of them. They know that they can spend their way to electoral office in the six weeks before a campaign. Look how close they came with McCain/Palin, a ticket that should have gotten 27% of the vote.
Obama seems like a decent sort, and it’s that weakness that the GOP will use to eliminate any meaningful tax increases and get Draconian cuts on the poor, the sick, children, the elderly, students, prisoners – basically, anyone who’s weak.
It’s far too late for the likes of Obama to make a difference. The other side won long ago, and are now just consolidating their gains. We’re playing a game that is in fact over.
Corner Stone
“Obama is a liberal President.”
~ President Stuck April 13th, 2011
A L
@Bill: His “initial liberal position” is the Simpson-Bowles plan, which is not “liberal” even in the milquetoast, silently reactionary American liberal sense. What’s left of the American left has been locked out of the negotiating room.
catclub
@Bob Loblaw: “It seems like both sides are intent on remaining stupid and angry forever.”
Who knew?
BombIranForChrist
@Jess: A fewer of the bigger items for me have been civil liberties, the Bush tax cuts, ending the Iraq war, banking reform, etc. However Cole or others may want to characterize me, I am not some wild-eyed Manic Progressive who expected him to be able to do everything he promised, but I am concerned that the height of his passion for progressive values peak during speechifying, especially in an election season, and fall utterly flat when it comes to actually doing something. In other words, he’s just a garden variety politician. And with garden variety politicians, I will applaud their speeches that uphold my values and boo the speeches that don’t, but at the end of the day, I will vote based on what he was actually able to accomplish, not what he said he wanted to accomplish when he is fishing for votes.
mclaren
When the most powerful man in the world comes in strongly in favor of slashing medicare and social security in order to give more taxes to the rich, there’s not much hope left. And that’s what just happened.
Obama told us all very clearly that he loves Ryan’s plan and he’s going to work hard to make sure it becomes law, and he told us that by saying the exact opposite (as we’ve come to expect: whatever Barack Obama does, he always says the opposite beforehand).
Now, if Obama tells us we’re definitely getting out of Afghanistan and Libya and Iraq before the end of his presidency and he’s going to cut the military budget and reinstate civil liberties, it’s all over. Because in that case, it’ll mean we’re never going to get out of Afghanistan and Liby and Iraq and he’s going to increase military spending even more than the 8% it’s gone up just this year, and the Bill of Rights really and truly is dead and gone forever.
Bad times.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@El Tiburon:
You just don’t get it! ! ! Obama has never done anything like this before! It’s not like once every few months he gives a speech ragging on Republican ideals, then caving in to those same ideals!
He gave a good speech! What more do you want?
drkrick
@Corner Stone: Did you see the FDL front page hed that was mentioned earlier in the thread. The constant commentary about those folks may be tiresome, but it isn’t unjustified. This isn’t the group threatening to sit on their hands and let the GOP win, after all.
Litlebridifrnt
@rikryah:
Actually it gets better than that, from what I have been hearing there are members of the GOP who want congress to investigate the AARP, not sure what for, but it seems to me to be a sure fire way to piss off your ever shrinking base.
Corner Stone
MSNBC showing scenes of a 6 year old girl getting patted down at the airport. Just fucking disgusting.
Rhoda
I loved the speech, I just finished reading it.
This was the start of 2012 and it was opening a major conversation on taxes. He used the deficit to being to pave the path for tax reform in his second term.
This was great politically and policy wise IMO; especially when you have the IMF starting to sound off on American debt.
eemom
@mclaren:
ok, so by this “logic,” if Obama had just given a speech parroting the Ryan plan, that would be very VERY GOOD NEWS.
Batshit crazy. U iz it.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@BombIranForChrist:
Oh my god! People like you are just impossible to please! ! !
Davis X. Machina
@A L:
The American Left since approximately 1974 can meet in a phone booth, and still leave enough room for a DJ and his equipment. And a cash bar.
bemused
@mclaren:
You never disappoint.
taylormattd
No, no John. They won’t be congratulating themselves.
Rather, after screaming bloody murder for days about a false version of what Obama might say in a speech, they will seamlessly shift to “this speech is just words”.
The Obama-deranged at DKos are already doing it.
drkrick
@Disco: It won’t become law any time soon. It’s hard to imagine anything constructive getting through this edition of the HoR. As a marker for 2012 and the attempt to get a better House the next time it’s not so bad. I just wish the Senate wasn’t such a lost cause for next year.
joe from Lowell
@mclaren: Everyone, please don’t point and laugh at the freak. It’s not polite.
askew
So, the PL who have been demonizing this speech as Republican and promising a primary fight (most of DK, FDL, PCCC) will be issuing apologies for being dumbasses who over-reacted for no reason right?
Elia Isquire
@mclaren: This is so, so, so good.
This:
would make a great banner hyperlink.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Karen, is that you?
cleek
@A L:
got a cite for that ?
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Davis X. Machina:
“The American Left since approximately 1974 can meet in a phone booth, and still leave enough room for a DJ and his equipment. And a cash bar.”
I know, I know, no one in America wants to tax the rich, or help the poor, or end the wars, or protect the environment, or create jobs, or do any of the other things liberals want, so we might as well support in-name-only Democrats for office.
Corner Stone
@drkrick: And? Sheesh.
different church-lady
@mclaren: Are you for real?
Morbo
@Midnight Marauder: Can you believe Obama invited Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration?
mclaren
@joe from Lowell:
We won’t point at you and laugh at you, Joke from Lowell, don’t worry. We don’t want to hurt your feelings.
mrmobi
@mclaren: Jesus, are you high? Please explain how you’re going to get President Kucinich elected, or, alternatively, take some Vitamin B12, it might stop the hallucinations.
Midnight Marauder
@mclaren:
What color is the sky in the world you live in? This is the talk of loons.
Ailuridae
@A L:
Bull shit. There was almost none of Simpson-Bowles in his speech.
SIA
@Joe Beese: Um. Well, except that I don’t exactly go to GOS for realistic assessments of policy.
joe from Lowell
@Bob Loblaw: Oh, David Broder, your above-the-fray seriousness is such an inspiration to us little people.
Great speech, but I don’t see why anyone is pretending it’s any different from every other major speech he’s given.
virag
calling the ryan plan bullshit is fine. too bad he couldn’t come out and say that the simpson-bowles plan is just as much bullshit. sounded to me like the pregame analysis suggesting he would take the s-b report as the left pole for negotiating against that asshole ryan was pretty close to correct. don’t see what those usual suspects missed so shamefully.
OzoneR
@Disco:
and predictably, the “I’d be happy if he at least fights” goalposts move yet again
Comrade Javamanphil
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Splitter!
Jess
@BombIranForChrist:
Well, you may want to take a look at this and consider all the things in the plus column before you focus so much on the negatives. I’m pretty impressed with what’s he’s done so far, especially given what an uphill battle it’s been.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Bob Loblaw:
“Obama just did exactly what “unserious, unpragmatic, bully pulpit fetishist libruls” wanted.”
Actually, what liberals want is more government spending. Since unemployment is around 9%. But hey, at least Obama isn’t cutting quite as much as the Republicans want to cut, thus delaying the next catastrophe by weeks if not months.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mrmobi: like most O-bot sell-outs, you ignore the massive electoral votes from the states of Should and Ifthen
Lawnguylander
@El Tiburon:
I’m more excited by the eloquent trashing of the Ryan plan and most excited about the chicken littles being spectacularly wrong again.
Blue Carolinian
Ok, mclaren isn’t real. He’s someone doing a savage parody/performance art piece on a sixties Marxist.
Sentient Puddle
@virag:
Why would he need to? That plan has been dead for months now.
Joe Lisboa
Obama told us all very clearly that he loves Ryan’s plan and he’s going to work hard to make sure it becomes law, and he told us that by saying the exact opposite (as we’ve come to expect: whatever Barack Obama does, he always says the opposite beforehand).
This is utter lunacy. You have lost your mind.
mclaren
@eemom:
Exactly.
Precisely.
Now you’re starting to get it.
If Barack Obama gives a big speech explaining that he’s going to massively increase military spending, we can cheer, because that means Obama will work hard to cut military spending.
If Obama publicly ridicules the idea of ever leaving Afghanistan, that’s fabulous — because it means he’s going to pull troops out tomorrow.
If Obama starts praising Ryan and his crackpot teahadist buddies, that means Obama will veto anything they send him.
So, yes, exactly right. It took you 3 long years, but you’re finally starting to understand how Barack Obama works. He says one thing, and does the exact opposite, time and time and time again.
Studly Pantload, Vibrant Trollbot for Obama
@Dave:
It’s sad. Abused children grow up to crave the attention we all do, but they’ve never been taught they can receive that attention through love, so they seek out the derision and abuse they’re used to.
We scoff, but really, we should pity.
Chyron HR
@virag:
Wait, I thought it was a speech full of liberal ideas that were just meaningless words. Now you’re telling us that it was actually a right-wing speech, so there?
Can you guys decide on ONE bullshit argument against “Black Jesus” (aka “The GOP’s House Ni**er”) and stick with it?
A L
@cleek: Obama mentioned one plan by name: Ryan’s (in castigating it). However, some of the provisions he mentioned as being in support of come from the S-B plan, namely the failsafe and revising the tax code in lieu of raising taxes.
Most importantly, the Schakowsky plan was not mentioned whatsoever, nor were any of its provisions mentioned.
Do the math.
Midnight Marauder
@Morbo:
You are lucky that I am too busy laughing to properly hate you.
mr. whipple
It was an awesome speech, but you know Obama. He’s gonna throw the granny hippies under the bus after he steals their penis and feeds them catfood. All True Progressives know this.
Tom Q
Incredible. Beese, Corner Stone and the Karate Master were all utterly wrong about what Obama’s speech would say, and they’re all here screaming that they were in fact utterly right. As if, you know, none of us had eyes and ears.
It reminds me of the guy whose wife walked in on him when he was having sex with another woman; his reaponse was to quickly shout out “It’s not me!”
Davis X. Machina
@Master of Karate and Friendship: There are people, who support all of those goals, collectively, or individually. And some of them are leftists and some of them aren’t. Some of them aren’t affiliated with anything. And there are interest groups that support some of them, and not others. But there’s no programmatic American left to speak of that you can find without a microscope.
The American Left such as it is, is outfits like this — I’m a member, have been since Michael Harrington and Irving Howe started DSOC — and on a good year, they’re 6000-8000 strong. Tampa Bay gets bigger home crowds.
I wish it were different, but it’s a fact. That ship sailed a generation ago, maybe longer, when Meany purged the AFL-CIO, perhaps.
Admiral_Komack
@Poopyman:
FUCK FDL.
cleek
@A L:
awesome. in other words: you, and the rest of the knee-jerks, are just making shit up because his actual words didn’t disappoint you as much as you hoped they would.
Sentient Puddle
@A L:
@A L:
Flag. Illegal goalpost moving.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Jess:
The escalation in Afghanistan is an accomplishment? Pass.
How? With cruise missiles and bombs?
Um. Right.
Hey, this list might have been a nice list once, but it really needs some updating. Ask the Gulf of Mexico how much Obama has done for the environment. Ask the green jobs program he just axed in the budget deal.
No Child Left Be–uh, I mean Race to the Top is a failure, based upon fraud. Ask Michelle Rhee.
Snicker!
Which he told us would keep unemployment below 8%. What is unemployment now?
etc. etc. etc.
OzoneR
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
Then shut the fuck up about the bully pulpit
Father Tyme
Is this from the same group that made deals with Big Pharma; that told us BP was going to set aside 20 billion; that boasted about transparency in government; that cut taxes for the wealthy; that continued huge subsidies for Big Oil? I’m sure I missed one or two but talk is cheap even nice sounding talk. And one thing Obama is good at is talk.
Let’s see how this translates into actions.
Opolgists will blindly love the speech (yet maybe not have all the data).
The “Hard Left Progressives” will disagree with the “partisanship thing again and wait to see what, if anything, changes.
The Republicans and Tea Bigots will resort to their standard epithets of socialism, communism, fascism, birtherism(?) and just about any other ism you can think of
The jury is still out on the coming War of 2012 but if Obama can come through for the people instead of the corporations and special interests, he may be able to save something of our democracy.
A L
@Sentient Puddle: Evidently you don’t know what “signaling” is.
Keep in mind Bush never explicitly blamed Iraq for 9/11, yet magically he got Americans to accept that notion. I wonder how he did that.
Ian
My take was almost word for word what John said. Pleased by Obama today–and not at all surprised.
Lawnguylander
@virag:
Why would he say something as stupid as that? The Ryan plan is far worse than the Simpson-Bowles plan. There are good ideas in the Simpson-Bowles plan. What are the good ideas in the Ryan plan? As far as I can tell it’s all horrible.
slag
@Elia Isquire:
I thought the new guy thread was fairly solid. And the couple after him that followed up on some of his stuff were, while spotty, overarchingly decent. New guy. Me likey.
Maybe one person can make a bit of difference, after all. Short-lived though it will likely be.
joeyess
@Admiral_Komack:
Seconded. With the obvious exception of Tbogg.
FlipYrWhig
@El Tiburon:
Yes, he was so moved by Tales Of Bradley Manning’s Underpants that he reconsidered negating all of 20th-century liberalism on the spot. He was totally about to do it, too! Next, he’ll be so stung when remembering how little he did to help Paul Hackett’s senate campaign that he’ll refuse to implement that secret plan to kill abortion providers with Predator drones. All the great blogosphere grievances will have been productive after all!
Corner Stone
@Tom Q: What are you babbling about?
joe from Lowell
@mclaren:
We?
Just how many of you are in there, mclaren?
Can I talk to Sybil now?
cleek
@joeyess:
the motion carries.
fucking to commence in 3… 2…
virag
@Ailuridae:
he took credit for simpson-bowles in his speech. he referred to the deficit commission he created! he said nothing to repudiate those recommendations.
the speech certainly had the tone of a campaign speech, full of yay for our team, boo for their team; that’s what’s getting the rise out of mr. cole.
didn’t obama promise not to renew the bush tax cuts once before?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
President Obama actually addressed the social compact. He gets it.
i lurve this guy.
Know hope…haha….membah when Sully usta say that alla time? That was before he figured out the GOP has no candidate.
Now he concern trolls Obama like the rest of the hive.
eemom
hey, check it out, y’all. mclaren says I GET IT!
Chris
Actually, John, I think he saw the part a few days ago where you said you were going to go knock on doors and raise money for Obama and Democrats no matter what (or words to that effect).
Because we all know that pushing back against what may well be trial balloons (aimed at defining how much political wiggle room someone who’s famous for pre-compromising with his political opponents has) would be silly.
But let’s actually wait and see how the negotiations go before anyone brags about how smart they were, or how silly anyone else was — any (or all) of us could be wrong.
different church-lady
@Chyron HR: Forget it Jake, it’s Calvinball.
jibeaux
@Joe Lisboa:
Well, she did apparently take her name from a stroller brand. And oh yeah, the things she says makes no fucking sense whatsofuckingever.
Martin
@Jess:
Um, all they can see is negatives. They’re the parents that never praise their kids accomplishments but berate them constantly when they disappoint.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Tom Q:
Right. We thought Obama would embrace Republican ideology. Instead…he said we need to reduce the deficit by enacting 3 dollars in spending cuts for every 1 dollar in revenue increases.
So, there it is.
You know how much the economy has grown so far this quarter? 1.6%. In other words, we are treading water. But hey, let’s cut spending and wait for the money trees to bloom so consumers can bail us out.
But the typical Balloon Juicer now has a happy-talk speech to feel warm and cuddly about, which is what’s really important.
Bruce S
He IS the one we’ve been waiting for…while reading Digby, FDL, Atrios, et. al.
I shoulda’ known betta’.
joe from Lowell
@virag:
Uh, the absence of cuts to Social Security? The absence of reductions in Medicare and Medicaid services? The insistence on raising taxes on the rich?
You know, the basic premises of their predications, that were all proven wrong?
joeyess
@cleek: ha ha ha ..
Sentient Puddle
@A L:
This has absolutely nothing to do with what I said. You moved the goalposts in your reply chain. “Signaling,” however the hell you define it (evidently, it means hearing whatever the fuck you want to hear, semantics of the actual words be damned) does not excuse you.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Martin:
“Um, all they can see is negatives. ”
Right, some people are so weird they fixate on the children blown up by helicopters or the Pakistani civilians massacred by drones instead of the pretty speeches. They are weird like that.
Sasha
So not only did Obama pretty much roll Boehner (according to what’s coming out of the deal made), he let Ryan’s plan inflate to ridiculous proportions in the media … making that much easier to pop and thereby showing that Ryan is full of nothing but balloon juice.
Can a man get a “Chill the fuck out — I got this”?
SIA
Text of the speech.
Tuttle
The American Left since approximately 1974 can meet in a phone booth, and still leave enough room for a DJ and his equipment. And a cash bar.
Yet they threw the 2000 elections. Go figure!
stuckinred
@Master of Karate and Friendship: Oh well thanks for being an “atypical Balloon Juicer” and telling us all about what IS really important.
joeyess
@cleek: Frankly, I think Cole should ask Tbogg to blog here. That would make this my dream blog in Blogomuslimleftystan.
virag
@Sentient Puddle:
not dead. he took credit for his deficit commission in his speech. it is true that there was no official report because they did not have the votes. that’s correct.
joe from Lowell
@Ailuridae:
Even better, there was an embrace of the best elements, like the big cuts to the military, letting the Bush tax cuts expire, and eliminating tax expenditures for the rich, combined with a loud denunciation of the worse elements.
All the while, larding praise on the plan so as to look “serious” to the beltway crowd.
Neat trick.
Midnight Marauder
@A L:
Yeah, big fucking wonder.
Because the one thing we know big time Republicans love to do strategically is come out and explicitly state their aims. They love explaining that they are fear mongering to start a war or that they are using LGBT rights as a wedge issue.
Jay B.
So there’s no bully pulpit? Then shut the fuck up about a speech from a figurehead.
Which I thought was good, actually. But it’s pretty much the fucking definition of “bully pulpit”
cleek
@virag:
golly. i wonder if there was anything else in that tax bill which the Senate handed to him… i wonder if, perhaps there was a choice was between ending unemployment benefits and extending some tax cuts.
nah, couldn’t have been. Obama (R-Kenya) would never sign something like that.
FlipYrWhig
@Master of Karate and Friendship: Or, to put it another way, “I might have been totally bugfuck wrong about this grievance, but I have lots of other grievances too!”
Master of Karate and Friendship
@OzoneR:
“Then shut the fuck up about the bully pulpit”
Huh?
OzoneR
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
the quarter is 13 days old LOL
BombIranForChrist
@Jess:
I certainly will. Thanks for the link!
scav
Somedays you just wonder why reality bothers to happen it gets so completely ignored.
mr. whipple
Post of the day. I’m tired of these lunatics.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@FlipYrWhig:
But I wasn’t wrong. I thought Obama would accept the Republican narrative–“we must reduce the deficit!”–and he did.
Tom Q
@Master of Karate and Friendship: No one moves goal posts faster than you. As quick as one of your strawmen falls, you’ve propped up another. I will give you points for high energy.
Oh, and, Corner Stone, please, another post on Obama hitting the podium while he talks. I’m pretty sure that’ll be most people’s take-away from the speech, as it evidently was yours. You might work in something about the teleprompter, too.
camchuck
No mention of Planned Parenthood = Not a serious budget plan
Southern Beale
The Associated Press got punk’d by a fake news release, and MarketWatch responds with some hippe punching. Just another update on the “GE pays no taxes” story.
Linnaeus
@joeyess:
Given the blog collective with which Tbogg is now affliated, I kinda doubt that will happen anytime soon.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@cleek:
“golly. i wonder if there was anything else in that tax bill which the Senate handed to him… i wonder if, perhaps there was a choice was between ending unemployment benefits and extending some tax cuts.”
And you’ll fall for exactly the same thing next time, too.
virag
@joe from Lowell:
bullshit. he didn’t go into any specifics, so that metric is meaningless. it was a political speech, a campaign speech, full of condescension for the other team, as is proper for campaign speeches. certainly getting specific wasn’t gonna help his campaign.
Suck It Up!
What Mr. Cole said.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.:
“This speech is gonna be a disaster! Hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your husband, because they’re cutting errbody ’round here!”
[watches speech]
[finds nothing objectionable about it]
“Oh yea, well, it’s just a speech!”
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Tom Q:
“No one moves goal posts faster than you. As quick as one of your strawmen falls, you’ve propped up another. I will give you points for high energy.”
What exactly are you talking about?
“Your predictions were wrong!” What predictions?
joe from Lowell
@mclaren:
Shorter mclaren: “I’m in my happy place. I’m in my happy place. I’m in my happy place.”
How good was this speech? The firebaggers are retreating into a fantasy world.
Martin
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
Which is why you guys are so fucking stupid. If you were Senators negotiating for how much Medicare should pay for Plavix, you’d constantly be negotiating upward. You don’t care what services we get from government, just that we pay as much as possible for them. I bet you buy those $150 gold plated HDMI cables as well, for the highest digital fidelity.
virag
@Lawnguylander:
i don’t see any good things in the simpson-bowles plan.
mclaren
Here’s a translation into plain English of the first paragraphs of Obama’s deficit speech:
TRANSLATION: “This sucks. I hate this job, I hate having to deal with demented corporatist Democrats and even more insane Republicans who want to bring back the Confederacy. I especially despise being here with you Beltway insiders who make me want to puke. I hope you all die in a fire.”
TRANSLATION: “None of what we’re talking about matters a damn and everyone knows it, because America is being consumed by at least 6 different bubbles that are going to pop soon and trash the entire economy. We’re in the middle of a gigantic military-industrial-terror-police bubble with out-of-control spending on endless pointless wars we can’t win, we’re in the midst of a vast higher education bubble with tuition skyrocketing and the middle class drowning in college debt, we’re in the midst of Peak Oil but all you fools are still roaring around in your SUVs and acting like it’s still 1999, we’re in the middle of global warming but half of you deny it even exists, we’re staring down the barrel of a giant offshoring/outsourcing bubble that’s destroying the American middle class and wrecking our tax base, and we’re in getting fed feet-first into the meatgrinder of the medical-indsutrial bubble, with medical costs rising so fast that there isn’t enough money in the entire world to pay for them. So none of these haggling and squabblng and quibbling about tiny little 10% or 15% cuts to any programs makes a damn bit of difference — because when all these bubbles pop, America as we know it will collapse and there’s going to be nothing but Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. So this entire exercise is a complete waste of everyone’s time, and we all know it.”
TRANSLATION: “From our first days as a nation, we have put our faith in trusts and monopolies and cartels and, as Jay Gould boasted, `I can hire half the working class to kill of the other half.’ More than citizens of any other country, we are craven lickspittle toadies and crawling wannabe slaves: the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the fall of the Eastern Empire.”
TRANSLATION: “But there has always been another thread running throughout our history – a belief that no matter how bad things are, we can always improve everything by lynching some convenient scapegoat. We believe, in the words of Boss Tweed, that `I saw my opportunities, and I took ’em,’ And so we’ve built an impotent military run by careerist cowards and manned by rapists and gang members that couldn’t even defeat the Tijuana police force, and public schools and universities that can’t teach our students even the most rudimentary elements of the English language. We’ve laid down railroads that run off their rails because the tracks are so old and we’re tearing up our highways because we’re too broke to pave them. We’ve ridiculed the work of scientists and researchers whose discoveries have saved lives, unleashed repeated technological revolutions, and led to countless new jobs and entire industries. Each of us has snarled with mindless hatred against from these investments, and we are a more vicious and subhuman country as a result.”
[next up–more of Obama’s deficit speech translated into plain English]
OzoneR
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
Reducing the deficit is a Republican narrative? If Republicans say we should not rape babies, does that mean we should rape babies because no raping them is “a Republican narrative?”
Midnight Marauder
@virag:
In the real world, this kind of makes the plan dead. Full stop.
dollared
@Davis X. Machina: Damn big phone booth. There really is an American left, and really is about 65% of the Democratic party. But it is so marginalized that its two most potent advocates are an Independent Senator (sanders), and another Senator elected with 38% of his state’s vote (Franken).
And you’re helping marginalize it. Why? You’re a smart guy that agrees with most of its goals.
cleek
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
do you actually understand how bills become law ?
serious question.
askew
@OzoneR:
Yep, that’s how the loons at DK and FDL can continue to never apologize for being dumbasses. They just keep moving the goalposts. Nothing Obama does is ever right for them. Both sites are sliding further and further away from reality. Hopefully, they’ll end up like MyDD which became a ghost town after they went full-on PUMA.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Jay B.:
Okay, now you are calling into question the entire reason for being of this blog.
If it wasn’t for talking about how the president going on TV can’t change anything one minute, then talking about how anchormen talking about things on TV is ruining this country the next, 90% of this blog’s posts would disappear.
different church-lady
@scav: I am total stealing that for a sig line.
MattR
@cleek:
So then when Obama gets presented with a similar choice in the future, why should we expect him to keep his pledge this time?
virag
@Chyron HR:
are you high right now?
Blue Carolinian
The American “Left” (senile Marxist-Leninists, Anarchists, ANSWER protest marchers etc) did not, in fact, throw the 2000 elections. Gore lost more registered Democrats to Bush in Florida than he did to Nader. Far more. Please stop inflating their already overinflated sense of their own importance.
virag
@MattR:
thank you.
Brian R.
@mclaren:
No thanks, man. We’re all good.
A L
@Sentient Puddle: So Obama mentions things that come from the S-B plan, but nothing that comes from the Shakowsky plan, and that’s not good enough for you.
Did you also miss the part where he played up what a HUGE IMPORTANT DEAL cutting the deficit was? About how it was some kind of emergency?
You’re conflating his denunciation of the worst possible option with supporting good options, which he did not do even in this speech. So when he comes around to killing Medicare with 1,000 cuts, you’ll be there to applaud because he at least said somewhat mean things about Paul Ryan.
And voila, you now believe that Iraq played a role in 9/11.
DonkeyKong
I could swear I heard Obama say that during his speech.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@cleek:
“do you actually understand how bills become law ?
serious question.”
Yes. Do you understand that all Obama had to do was nothing, letting the tax cuts expire, then propose his own tax cuts for the middle class and challenge Republicans to oppose them?
Oh wait, you’re probably one of those people who thinks Obama got more out of the deal than the Republicans, as if a 1-year extension of unemployment benefits (until people hit the 99 week mark, then they’re SOL) outweighs a 2-year, multi-trillion dollar tax cut for the wealthy.
joeyess
@Linnaeus: Yeah… I know.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Balloonbaggers demanded – and received – the mediocrity, empty promises, inadequate band-aids and Republican Lite talking-points buy-in that only President Obama can deliver with such eloquence.
Pat yourselves on the back with both paws this time.
.
.
Lawnguylander
@Chris:
Come on now, are you really trying to push the idea that Obama might have had two speeches in mind and the other one he was considering included talking about cuts to Medicare or was an endorsement of the Simpson-Bowles plan? And that because of push back from the left he decided to give a radically different speech instead? This = a pivot from paranoia to delusions of grandeur. Believing that there was a trial balloon floated to deliberately cause those who the White House knew would freak out to freak out is less silly. I assume they did it just to amuse me, in fact.
renegademom3
@Chris:
I think that well before this speech was given, Obama and his aides had already figured out what kind of “wiggle room” was needed, and built it into the plan. they already KNOW what they are willing to “give away”.
PTirebiter
Andrew Card is on now saying he disappointed he was in Obama’s lack of leadership in contrast to Paul Ryan’s. Card went on the usual tax cuts for the rich generate private investment,underpants, profit then jobs!
Shep Smith just asked him why that didn’t happen under Bush.
Pause, cough, stutter, Clinton recession! 9/11! 9/11! Why won’t Obama come to Paul Ryan’s table with an honest proposal.
Not sure how Smith keeps his job.
FlipYrWhig
@Master of Karate and Friendship: “Deficit bad” is not a “Republican narrative.” “Deficit bad, first priority is to cut everything, then cut taxes more” is a Republican narrative. Even liberal economists think _something_ should happen to address _long-term_ deficit concerns. That’s what he was talking about.
I think even short-term cuts are bad policy, personally, but given that Republicans have a majority in the House, we have to suck it up and gut out a wave of bad policy for the time being. That’s why I keep using the “harm reduction” phrase. Damage is unavoidable. Let’s reduce it as much as possible.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@MattR:
Exactly. There will be another weak excuse–“he only had one deal, so he had to take it!” or something like that–and all the loyal Democrats will believe it.
Poor Obama–always being forced to do things he just doesn’t want to do! Oh, when will it stop?
Raenelle
@AWL: It’s not about failing the left. I don’t think I’ve ever read or heard a leftist complaining that Obama had failed them as leftists. It’s really not about team loyalty. It’s about his policies and whether they make the country safer and more prosperous, or whether they don’t. Not allowing Medicare to slip into the dustbin of history is nice. But there’s still 3 wars, Gitmo, Bradley Manning, the Bush tax cuts, his failure to defend a progressive vision until today. Rich people get bonuses for their crimes. Wall Street is right now planning its next big rip-off. Unions, fucking unions, are under attack around the country. Look at his economic advisers. This country badly needs someone who understands that free market capitalism is destroying this country, not someone who panders to robber barons because he’s convinced they’re valuable.
joeyess
@mclaren: You obviously believe that English=Esperanto.
joe from Lowell
@virag:
Actually, he explicitly, for most of his speech, devoted himself to repudiating the what Simpson and Bowles had to say about Social Security and Medicare services.
No. He came out against doing so, said he opposed it, but he’s never before ruled it out the way he did today.
Corner Stone
@Tom Q: Jeebus but you are a bucket of babbling nonsense.
MattR
@OzoneR:
Yes. Talking about how important it currently is to reduce the deficit is the Republican narrative. More importantly, it is a false narrative unlike your baby raping analogy.
@Midnight Marauder:
Not when politicians keep referencing it and talking about it as an important foundation for handling the deficit.
different church-lady
@OzoneR: Yeah, I never could figure out the “deficits are inherently good” line any more than I could figure out the “deficits are inherently bad” line.
It’s like increasing the deficit is dogma somehow. Instead of discussing whether deficit spending makes strategic sense, they just take it as a given that it’s automatically good.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@MattR:
So Obama should have let unemployment expire for the tax rates to rise?
Gosh, I bet a bunch of unemployment voters would have LOVED that from him. Not to mention the stores they suddenly can’t go to, and the people hit overall from the loss of that direct infusion of funds.
Yeah, no loss there. He promised, and thus must always deliver, no matter the situation on the ground — right?
FlipYrWhig
@dollared:
Are you using Megan McArdle’s calculator? Because I think you are an order of magnitude off on that.
cleek
@MattR:
you should expect him to do the best he can given the circumstances.
MikeJ
Obama: “Today we’ve announced a plan to hang those making more than $500k a year.
FDL: “We wanted to garrotte them with piano wire! Why doesn’t the guy who was elected in a landslide know as much about politics as a random whiner on the internet!”
FlipYrWhig
@Raenelle:
“Yes, but we need a majority,” as Stevenson said after being told that he had the votes of every thinking man.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@FlipYrWhig:@FlipYrWhig:
“Even liberal economists think something should happen to address long-term deficit concerns. That’s what he was talking about.”
What Obama is doing is trying to cut the deficit now and in the long-term. Which is absurd. Why freeze the pay of federal employees now? How does that help us? Why cut heating oil subsidies for poor people now, or cut the EPA’s budget now, or cut WIC now? These are not only good policies, they stimulate the economy as well.
He has a long-term plan too, such as his attempt to cap health care costs. But even by your own standard, he has swallowed the Republican “we have to cut the deficit now” mantra hook, line, and sinker.
A L
@joe from Lowell: Not really. If he wanted to skip away from S-B, he could’ve mentioned removing the payroll tax for social security. But he didn’t do that.
Hmmmmm, the mind ponders what he has in store for it then.
maus
@rickstersherpa:
FIFY
joe from Lowell
@Jay B.:
Of course there’s a bully pulpit. It’s very useful for moving public opinion.
As a tool for influencing current legislation, however, it’s not the right tool for the job.
Poopyman
This shit still going on over here?
You people need to get a life.
Martin
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
I didn’t say ‘nobody should acknowledge the negatives’. I said ‘All they can see is the negatives’. Here’s an example: link to a non-snark positive statement Beese or mclaren have made about Obama ever on this blog.
MagicPanda
This has probably already been said upthread, but if Obama was planning on giving this kick ass speech, why didn’t he do it as a nighttime presidential address?
virag
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
second.
the campaign is obama’s strong point; he resembles clinton in that way, too. as long as he as another team to campaign against, he’s all set.
dmsilev
@mclaren: How many boxes of Ovaltine did you need to buy before they sent you your secret decoder ring?
Just curious.
Master of Karate and Friendship
“So Obama should have let unemployment expire for the tax rates to rise?”
But look what’s happening now: to pay for those tax cuts to the rich, he’s cutting programs that help those same desperate, struggling unemployed people. LIHEAP. WIC. Stuff like that.
FlipYrWhig
@A L:
IIRC one of the commission’s recommendations was, in fact, to lift the cap on Social Security earnings.
RP
Is there any meaningful distinction the firebaggers and the tea partiers at this point w/r/t their rhetoric about Obama?
sy2d
Hate to quote Ronnie:
Trust, but verify, jack ass. Trust, but verify.
OzoneR
@MattR:
and we should increase the deficit because?….we have to be different than the Republicans?
Tom Q
@Corner Stone: Strong rebuttal. Teach me to debate the master.
Quicksand
@mclaren: When I read your posts, I’m reminded of watching games called by Brent Musburger. I wonder: “how can he possibly be watching the same game I am?”
Sentient Puddle
@A L: OK, let me step back a second…do you know what the term “moving the goalposts” means?
MattR
@Woodrow “asim” Jarvis Hill:
How is this even remotely related to what I said. I made no judgement about Obama’s decision. But if there was a good reason to break the promise before, then there is no guarantee that there wont be an equally good reason to break the promise later.
@OzoneR:
Because it makes proper economic sense as you are recovering froma recession.
joe from Lowell
@Tom Q:
No kidding. He is now claiming that “reducing the deficit” – period, full stop, not modifications – is “the Republican narrative,” and that, since Obama’s speech dealt with reducing the deficit, he has bought into the Republican narrative.
So, he’s totally not wrong or anything.
virag
@joe from Lowell:
you live on a happy planet. i bet the sky is pink. seriously, it’s okay for you to be a cheerleader for your guy, but it doesn’t change what he said today or what he’s done in the past.
Corner Stone
@joe from Lowell:
Sooo, moving public opinion is not useful in moving legislation?
Blue Carolinian
Again, folks, mclaren is a parody troll.
freelancer
@mclaren:
This is how I picture you posting your bizarro missives in the last hour.
OzoneR
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
He’s cutting money that wasn’t being used, but of course we’d rather than cut THAT AND unemployment benefits.
Pamela F
@A L:
Is there a reason that we can’t effect a change in the “zeitgeist” instead of turning our ire on our own?
It’s high time we compared Ryan’s “Path to a Banana Republic” to what our president laid out and start working together.
On the AA blog “WSY” I read a comment where the FDL is raising money to buy bus ads in D.C. that read “Primary Obama”. These are not fellow liberals I want in my foxhole.
Corner Stone
@Sentient Puddle: If you take a step back then I can’t kick that nice juicy football you’re holding Lucy.
Tom Q
@Master of Karate and Friendship: And the goal post moves again. You’re a combination of Obama Derangement and ADD.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@OzoneR:
“Reducing the deficit is a Republican narrative? If Republicans say we should not rape babies, does that mean we should rape babies because no raping them is “a Republican narrative?” ”
Well, of course Republicans only want to reduce the deficit when Democrats are running it up.
I didn’t think this was so complicated: right now we need the government to spend money to stimulate the economy. We could hire people to teach children basket-weaving or something. As it happens, a lot of work needs to be done in this country so the government should be paying people to do that. Considering how low rates are, it’s a great time to borrow money. Then we pay back what we spent by growing the economy, like what happened after World War II. This would increase the short-term deficit, sure, but it would vastly improve our long-term situation.
Instead, we have Republicans saying “cut the deficit!” as a way to head off help for the desperate. And Obama is going right along.
cleek
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
so, no you don’t understand.
“do nothing” in that case meant the end of unemployment benefits for many.
the Republicans already opposed them. specifically, they opposed the Dem plan in the Senate, where they used the power of the filibuster to force Dems into concessions.
it’s always Obama’s fault with you clowns. everything, always. the 535 people who actually write the laws, and the rules which bind them in the process, never come into it. funny, that.
Chyron HR
@A L:
And, really, why should you wait for the President to actually do or say something you find objectionable, when you can just complain about hypotheticals?
Sure, he didn’t outlaw abortion, and yet… THE MIND PONDERS. Serious pondering here, people.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@OzoneR:
“the quarter is 13 days old LOL”
Oh right, it’s April already. It was last quarter which saw economic growth of 1.6%.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/g-d-p-forecast-for-first-quarter-slides/?hp
But hey, I’m sure cutting WIC will fix that, huh?
A L
@FlipYrWhig: It also calls for the shredding of benefits. Obama mentioned the shredding but not the taxing. Judging by his past behavior, this does not portend Good Things about the future of social security.
@Sentient Puddle: I’m not interested in what he said. I’m interesting in what he did. His entire preface of the speech was about how DIRE and URGENT the budget deficit was, which is something only a) Republicans and b) imbeciles talk about. Alternatively, it’s also what c) people who are looking to destroy social security/medicare/medicaid talk about.
I know you heard the speech and all the pretty words about how mean Paul Ryan is, but you evidently didn’t listen to it and its meaning.
Corner Stone
@Tom Q: Lesson 1: usually when you accuse someone of something, having actual examples to cite is helpful.
IOW, not lying is helpful. Unless you’re a Republican, then it’s second nature.
different church-lady
@Quicksand: Hmmm… that makes me wonder… what would the play by play on a game of Calvinball sound like? Would the announcer have the freedom to make up any call he wanted, in the spirit of the game?
OzoneR
@MattR:
no there isn’t. Campaign promises aren’t really promises because most politicians can’t carry them out
they’re goals really.
Maybe we’ll have the votes to pass a middle class-only cut next time, maybe we won’t, maybe public pressure will change some GOP minds, maybe not. No one is sure what will happen, but hopefully Obama will, like last time, spend some time making the case to end them so you can ignore it and pretend like he never did.
FlipYrWhig
@Master of Karate and Friendship: Those are in fact bad policy. But he’s still talking about “investing” and he even used my favorite comparison, carrying a credit card balance to get through a rough patch. That’s actually not Republican deficit-fear-mongering.
IMHO you can justly say that Obama cares too much about deficit reduction. I don’t think you can justly say that Obama cares about it in a way that validates the particular way Republicans (pretend to) care about it.
By analogy: there’s that issue of the Social Security shortfall. It’s not pressing, and it’s not hard to fix. Republicans whip up a lot of hysteria about it. If a Democrat says that there are simple ways to fix Social Security, is he validating the Republican narrative that Social Security needs fixing? I wouldn’t say so.
joe from Lowell
@virag:
…and since the disgraced firebaggers predicted that he would propose slashing Medicare and Social Security, and he didn’t provide any specifics doing so, and spent a great deal of time making the case for not doing so, that makes them WRONG.
Nice goalpost moving: sure, Obama didn’t do the things we said he’d do. Sure, he argued for doing the opposite. But he didn’t do so with budgetary specifics, so that means we were right!
Whatever, man. Just eat your crow with some dignity.
jibeaux
Okay, I officially nominate “the mind ponders” as a rotating tag. Is there like a box for that?
Midnight Marauder
@MattR:
Politicians LOVE to reference things that will never come up for a vote in Congress.
It’s one of the things that makes America so great.
dollared
@FlipYrWhig: OK, 1) Medicare for all, 2) Cap and trade with no giveaways and 3) US out of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. You don’t think you can get 60% of Democrats to support those?
What the hell do you think “the Democratic Left” is? Only direct, lineal descendants of Norman Thomas?
OzoneR
@MattR:
no there isn’t. Campaign promises aren’t really promises because most politicians can’t carry them out on their own
they’re goals really.
Maybe we’ll have the votes to pass a middle class-only cut next time, maybe we won’t, maybe public pressure will change some GOP minds, maybe not. No one is sure what will happen, but hopefully Obama will, like last time, spend some time making the case to end them so you can ignore it and pretend like he never did.
FlipYrWhig
@MagicPanda:
It gets on the traditional evening news programs this way. But I don’t know how much that’s a factor anymore.
A L
@Pamela F: You won’t believe the generality that Americans generally are selfish and short-sighted, but you will believe the generality that Americans are generous and peace-loving and such, and only need to be shown the light in order to come on board.
Mm hmm.
@Chyron HR: Did you wake up from a coma today? A lot has happened since Obama was inaugurated, much of which anyone with a sense of humility would not like. It would boggle your mind what he has done (which apparently you missed).
On second thought, you’d probably be better off just going back to sleep.
mclaren
Here’s more of Obama’s deficit speech translated into plain English! Get it while it’s hot!
TRANSLATION: “Part of this American belief that it’s every man for himself and we can solve any problem by lynchiing Jews and blacks and Mexicans and Asians is a conviction that each one of us who isn’t rich deserves to be beaten with tire irons until we’re hamburger. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, hard times or bad luck, a crippling illness or a layoff, may strike any one of us, and when that happens, the rest of need to laugh and exult in the agony of the poor and unfortunate among us. `There goes some poor dumb fuck who didn’t work hard enough,’ we say to ourselves, and so we snarl with mindless hatred at the prospect of contributing to programs like Medicare and Social Security, the medicare part of which is a giant bubble which will soon pop, resulting in riots and burning hospitals and doctors dragged from their rolls royces and lynched on the street when medical costs get so high no one can afford medical care. We are a savage and despairing nation because of our infantile hatred for these commitments. I’ll go further – we would not be as widely despised and detested around the world if we didn’t hate and despise having to pay our taxes to pay for these commitments, even though America has the lowest taxes of any country in the first world.”
TRANSLATION: “For much of the last century, our nation got lucky and sat on its ass making billions by manufacturing and selling weapons to Europe and Russia while the rest of the world destroyed itself in WW II. As a country that values lynching helpless people, America loved watching Europe and Russia bomb itself into rubble whlie we emerged with 50% of the world’s GDP, unscathed — and then, arrogant and infantile gomaniacs that we are, American boasted and strutted about our alleged private-enterprise genius, when the reality was that the rest of the world had to buy our cars and radios and washing machines after WW II because America had the only factories that hadn’t been bombed into rubble. Yet even despite America’s fabulous wealth in the 1950s and 1960s, we viciously begrudged those who’ve done well – we hated their success and tried to undermine it at every turn. This is a basic reflection of our belief that might makes right, that the lone cavalryman who stands atop a pile of Sioux and Iroqois and Dakota Indian corpses is a hero just because he’s alive and they’re not, that those those who have benefitted most from our way of life deserve to brutalize the poor and rape and murder the minorities, because that shows the poor and the minorities just what their real place in America actually is. Moreover, this belief has not hindered the success of those at the top of the income scale, because Americans are born bully-worshippers, and we all love nothing more than watching a 300-pound musclebound thug beat up a helpless old woman or a small chlid.”
TRANSLATION: “Now, at certain times — particularly when
the greed and bloolust of the wealthiest 1% gets so far out of control we trash our nation with a war or a Ponzi-scheme-induced recenssion — our nation has had to indulge in especially savage lynching of the poorest among us. And as most families understand, a little lynching isn’t going to hurt, as long as you don’t kill any darkies or jews or Asians who have a lot of money. Because that’s what we Americans really care about — cash, and lots of it. Stringing up a Jew is no big deal, we did all the time throughout the 1920s, and killing blacks is a form of light entertainment for Americans and always has been…but if an American strings up a rich man, why, that’s worse than a crime, it’s a blunder!”
TRANSLATION: “But as far back as the 1980s, America lost its collective mind and elected a very old very ignorant actor who happened to be a senile sociopath…yet we adored him and hung on his every demented word. We started amassing debt at more alarming levels, and those ignorant incompetent Reaganoid co-conspirators who hadn’t yet been sent to jail for their corrupt crimes began to realize that a larger challenge was on the horizon. They knew that eventually, if they wanted to loot America completely, they’d have to hoodwink the American population so thoroughly that no one would even realize they were being robbed. Like parents sending their young children out to streetcorner to prostitute themselves and give the parents the money, America had to start leeching off its young people and taxing them at ever more unsustainably high levels to pay for ever-increasing tax cuts for the rich and endless unwinnable wars fought in third world hellholes for no reason.”
Master of Karate and Friendship
@cleek:
“so, no you don’t understand. “do nothing” in that case meant the end of unemployment benefits for many.”
Okay, I’ll simplify it even more for you: the tax cuts, when enacted, were written to expire at the end of 2010. All Obama had to do was nothing, and they would expire, and there would be absolutely no need whatsoever to worry about the deficit.
Instead, now we have deficit-cutting measures like chopping WIC and cutting LIHEAP. Good work. I’m sure there are no unemployed people who need help buying food.
“the Republicans already opposed them. specifically, they opposed the Dem plan in the Senate, where they used the power of the filibuster to force Dems into concessions.”
Then maybe the Democrats could have given no more than they got, instead of being taken to the cleaners like they were.
Martin
@MattR:
What? That’s retarded. Increasing the deficit might be a byproduct of stimulus spending, but it’s most decidedly NOT the goal.
Argue that what Obama is cutting or what Obama is not spending on will dampen the recovery, but that’s not what you’re doing. And a lot of what he’s holding the line on is stimulative. Reducing what we pay drug companies is not going to hamper recovery, particularly as most of that money is headed to Europe anyway. It might hamper their recovery, but not ours.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
As someone who lived off a few of the programs as a kid, and when to school on them as a young adult, you’ll hear no bitch from me on cutting them. I think it’s horrible to cut without at least grasping what the programs do, and how they help not just the people, but the overall social fabric.
BUT. My point is that a debate on it starts with Obama being handed a set of ugly choices. If he had let the tax rates go back, it would have been a year+ before those funds were available to spend. And then you have to get the laws passed to get those funds disbursed.
None of that helps the people in unemployment right then and there. The GOP made clear they would kill that part of the recovery over this. That’s a call we can debate…but I submit it’s far from a sellout, as was implied.
Jahill10
href=”#comment-2530551″>Chyron HR: Well, it would have been a very LONG speech if Obama had to explicitly state that he would NOT do everything that his concern trolls on the left could dream up that he MIGHT be thinking of doing.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@joe from Lowell:
“and since the disgraced firebaggers predicted that he would propose slashing Medicare and Social Security”
I don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t predict that.
lllphd
@joeyess:
agreed on both points. with the additional exception of emptywheel. she holds obama’s feets to the fires, but she does so with the most granular and incisive analysis out there, bar none. it’s her job to confront imperfections, but i’m always impressed with how careful she is to be even-keeled in her position.
(however, i confess that i had to stop regular visits because it just took too much energy to keep up with her level of specifics and detail. admire it no less, but definitely read it less. had i but world enough, and time….)
PTirebiter
@cleek:
Thank you. I was disappointed, but given the choice between keeping a campaign promise (made before congress turned over etc.) and literally and immediately taking food off the table of millions, etc. I would have done the deal too.
Sentient Puddle
@A L: So again, we’re back to the speech meaning whatever the fuck you wanted it to mean. I’ll just let you do your thing and I’ll step back into my world where the sky is blue, craft beer is tasty, and Obama didn’t just propose gutting the safety net.
A L
@FlipYrWhig: The credit card analogy is actually stupid because the United States can do this thing called “print money” to pay for debts, which it has been doing to great effect so far.
On the other hand, Joe and Jill Kitchen Table cannot print money and thus must rely on credit cards.
The U.S. government does not have an analogue to a credit card.
Simply put the federal budget is in no way comparable to anything an ordinary American has to deal with and should be discarded as an analogy in almost every situation.
Joe Beese
@cleek:
Can you say, specifically, by what non-cutting activity The Man From Hope plans to “strengthen” Social Security?
No? He was a bit skimpy on details there?
Well, then you make your assumptions and I’ll make mine.
MattR
@OzoneR:You are too busy trying to make a personal attack to realize the point I was making and responding to. Of course in your world, because I pointed out that Obama might not keep a promise that means that I must hate him and everything he does. There is no chance that I could actually have suported Obama’s compromise regarding the tax cuts while still pointing out that Obama promising to end the cuts in the future is no guarantee that it will happen.
@Martin: Fair enough. More to the point, worrying about increasing the deficit during a recession is a terrible idea.
Suffern ACE
@OzoneR:
Stupid budgets. How do they work?
D.N. Nation
– Melissa McEwan
I swear, belching oafs like this are beneath my contempt.
stuckinred
@mclaren: you really are a fucking moron
OzoneR
@MagicPanda:
because the networks refused to carry it and preempt their prime time programs (See: Fox, So You Think You Can Dance, American Idol, ABC: Dancing With The Stars)
jibeaux
@dollared:
And if the Senate is ever 100% Democrats, then by my math you can go somewhere with them right fine ideas of yours.
FlipYrWhig
@dollared:
No. There are A LOT of conservative Democrats. The chair of my county Democratic party organization put ousting Nancy Pelosi from leadership as one of his chief recommendations for what the party should do in 2010.
SIA
@freelancer: Love it!
MagicPanda
@FlipYrWhig: Either way, it was a great speech and I feel like the only people who watched this speech are people like us who post on blogs.
joe from Lowell
@MattR:
First of all, he never made a pledge last time. He stated his position, but this was the first time he state it as a non-negotiable ultimatum.
Second, and more importantly, he traded away the tax hikes on the rich to get things he wanted – DADT and START – passed through the Congress. The lame duck was the end of the two-year period during which he was cramming through as much of his legislative agenda as possible. In two years, he will still be looking at a Republican House, which will be passing absolutely none of his legislative agenda.
In other words, he traded away 2 years of lower taxes in exchange for his priorities. By making his budget plan the centerpiece of his agenda going forward, and by making those tax hikes the centerpiece of that centerpiece, he has made them his priority.
licensed to kill time
@freelancer: That is perfecto..have bookmarked it for future use!
A L
@Sentient Puddle: So you really do think Obama intends to do what? Raise taxes on the wealthy? He already balked on doing that and conveniently pushed the sunset to happen after the 2012 campaign season is over. What makes you think he won’t balk again? Because of this one speech that will be forgotten soon enough?
Hey everyone remember when Obama mentioned how much he supported the public option in the ’08 campaign? And then when it came time to create a healthcare bill he never mentioned it again? Actually I’m mistaken. He mentioned “public option,” but only to deny he ever seriously supported it.
Yeah let’s take this guy at his word. Good thinking chum, you’ve shown me the error of my ways.
OzoneR
@MattR:
I figured out early you weren’t making any point.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@ Woodrow Jarvis Hill:
“If he had let the tax rates go back, it would have been a year+ before those funds were available to spend. And then you have to get the laws passed to get those funds disbursed.”
This is all completely true. But the big problem is now Obama is cutting programs we need to pay for those tax cuts.
“I submit it’s far from a sellout, as was implied.”
Well, I can’t help but compare what Republicans got to what Democrats got. The former was much, much more. I mean, people like Ezra Klein tell us that the payroll tax holiday was a big concession from the Republicans that they were really sorry to give.
Ranjit Suresh
The bottom line is this: both major American political parties agree that the government should be *cutting* spending on valuable social services, research and development, and infrastructure during a time of almost 9% unemployment, over *three* years after the beginning of the economic recession.
My problem with the in-fighting on this blog is that isn’t really a debate between two sides of the same family at all. Those who are supporting the President’s deficit cutting plan are simply not traditional liberals, they belong firmly in the middle of the political spectrum. That’s fine, but those who oppose the leadership of the two parties and believe we need a major (as in $1 trillion) stimulus *now* are on the left. This is a major political, ideological divide that can’t be papered over by name calling, finger pointing, and ad hominem attacks. It’s not a tactical issue, or a matter of juvenile hysteria versus mature pragmatism. It is a political debate between two different and opposing ideologies.
Tom Q
@PTirebiter: To say nothing of, he’d also promised not to raise middle class taxes, and by not acting he’d have broken that promise. He was in a bit of a double-bind.
Of course, if you believe the GOP would have magically caved on the middle class cuts — instead of, you know, campaigning as if it was all Obama’s fault they were raised, which would have been their obvious play — then you can convince yourself it was 100% Obama fail.
FlipYrWhig
@D.N. Nation: Trigger warning! Trigger warning! I was once really freaked out by a magician, so any comparison to magic brings back that whole traumatic experience. I can’t believe zie would do that to hir.
SIA
@RP: They take different crazy trains around in circles but wind up back at the same asylum.
joe from Lowell
@MattR:
In point of fact, he argued explicitly against currently reducing the deficit in his speech, making the liberal argument that economists don’t think it is important to do so in the short term.
OzoneR
@FlipYrWhig:
one county Democratic committee in Southern Indiana went further, they actually endorsed the Republican for Congress over our Democratic incumbent.
joe from Lowell
@different church-lady:
To be fair, no one has been arguing the “deficits are inherently good” line until this particular thread, and that’s only one guy casting about for excuses to avoid admitting he was wrong.
dollared
@jibeaux: That wasn’t the question – it was “does the Left fit in a single phone booth?” And my point is that a majority of Democrats want these things, regardless of what Steny Hoyer thinks.
celticdragonchick
The lizards at LGF are nearly ecstatic over the speech. Charles is delighted at how the right wing blogs are shrieking “like wounded banshees”.
BTW, Charles at LGF linked to John’s post yesterday about birtherism and racism.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@FlipYrWhig:
“IMHO you can justly say that Obama cares too much about deficit reduction. I don’t think you can justly say that Obama cares about it in a way that validates the particular way Republicans (pretend to) care about it.”
Of course you can justly say it. Even if he didn’t praise all the wonderful cuts he agreed to after the budget deal, he has completely swung from where he was in 2009, and where we needed to be–spend money for stimulus– to approach the Republican position–cut spending NOW. And as a bonus, he is cutting spending from programs that, mostly, help people who need the most help.
@A L:
Also this.
joe from Lowell
@A L:
Yes, really. Everything I wrote is both real, and really in opposition to the Deficit Commission.
Or, he could have done what he actually did, and made a strong case against cutting Social Security and Medicare services.
cleek
@Joe Beese:
the difference is that you made your assumptions before he spoke a single word. and then you cherry-picked to pick out the secret hidden message that confirmed what you already wanted to believe. it’s fundamentally dishonest. it’s bullshit.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@joe from Lowell:
“To be fair, no one has been arguing the “deficits are inherently good” line until this particular thread”
You’re so full of crap it’s coming out your ears. Who said “deficits are inherently good”?
Seriously, who? I’m waiting.
MattR
@joe from Lowell: This is a very reasonable counterargument. Not sure if I buy it 100%, but it makes sense to some degree.
@joe from Lowell: Fair enough though I wonder how that jibes with some of the budget measures that were taken such as freezing federal pay.
Joel
@Ranjit Suresh: Um, I believe the world you’re looking for is “refudiating”.
Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
dollared
@FlipYrWhig: Well, OK. But that anecdote does not answer my assertion.
FlipYrWhig
@Ranjit Suresh:
I would venture to say that the vast majority of people who post here would celebrate a $1 trillion stimulus. I also think the vast majority of people who post here would enjoy a perpetual motion machine. Neither one is going to happen.
Chyron HR
@A L:
In summary, you don’t believe anything that the President said in his speech, so you’re going to substitute something different and pretend that’s what he actually said instead?
And this seems like a perfectly reasonable argument to you?
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Ranjit Suresh:
Excellent post.
I would go further: the debate is between traditional liberals and those who support Barack Obama no matter what he does, because he is “their guy”.
joe from Lowell
@virag: Thank you for sharing your feelings.
You’ve yet to provide even the slightest reason to believe that anything I have written was false….except for noting that it doesn’t bash Obama.
And it is to your discredit that you seem to believe that that is a reason to believe something is false.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@FlipYrWhig:
We can’t get a big stimulus, so we should cut spending to help poor mothers buy food for their children. That’s what you’re saying?
Mike in NC
Did somebody give a speech or something? I’ll check back in a few and expect 500+ comments from the butthurt firebaggers.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
Why in the world would anybody take heart in that series of generalities? There was nothing that even approached specificity regarding his own proposals going forward. He trashed the Ryan plan and the Bush tax cuts, which was great, and frankly if he accomplished nothing else beside those two things I would score it a victory. But the stuff about reforming Medicare and Medicaid, building on Pentagon cuts, reforming the tax code, finding common ground, etc., was all mush. It was a campaign speech, not a policy speech.
jibeaux
@dollared:
Your assertion is that 60% of (registered?) Democrats endorse three fairly solidly lefty proposals, and did not include polling or any other support for that assertion. How’s he supposed to refute it? I certainly don’t think 60% of Democrats would sign on to all three of those, no. Hell, I’m not even positive 60% of the pretty lefty people I associate with would sign on to all three of those.
A L
@joe from Lowell: On the other hand, he cut payroll taxes which negatively impacts social security. But yeah, keep insisting that he really really really will not cut social security and associated services.
“He made a strong case” really? Really now? After the payroll tax holiday you still don’t get it?
Master of Karate and Friendship
@joe from Lowell:
“No. He came out against doing so, said he opposed it, but he’s never before ruled it out the way he did today.”
LO freaking L! There really is one born every minute.
Who said “Deficits are inherently good”? Which post number was that?
FlipYrWhig
@dollared: No, but that’s the nature of anecdotes and assertions, isn’t it? You have circumstantial evidence for your view, I have circumstantial evidence for mine. I’m pretty sure Democrats are not comprised of 60% liberals. If that were true, we wouldn’t keep getting saddled with Ben Nelsons and Blanche Lincolns. We could easily pick off conservative Democrats with liberal primary challengers. The fact that that hasn’t happened IMHO suggests that it’s not a likely win.
Joe Beese
@cleek:
Right, you’ve got nothing.
Thanks for playing.
A L
My dad made a “strong case” that Santa Claus exists, guys, so the fact that I saw him placing gifts around the tree is irrelevant because damn, what a strong case.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
I skimmed this thread, and even that much was a bad idea.
Are goalposts painted with Mercury and lead paint? Cuz I think the goalpost movers are getting permanent brain damage.
Martin
@MattR: Well, that depends on how much the deficit itself is serving as a drag on the economy. Time was that it wasn’t much of a drag. Now that debt service exceeds total corporate tax receipts, that’s a lot of federal revenue that can’t be used for more productive things.
People are bitching about $39B in cuts, while we spend $200B per year to service the debt, money which could be going toward other things. And each year that we run large deficits takes even more of that money off the table. That’s 30% more than the total unemployment benefit outlay for the federal government at the peak of the recession. Prior to 2008, the federal outlay was about $40B.
Back in Clinton era, that debt service wasn’t growing very quickly, and the argument about the effects of deficit spending could be easily dismissed. It’s a lot harder to do now. At the very least, we need to show that the deficit spending is actually leading to recovery, which is getting harder to do as the economy picks up speed on its own. I would say that the nature of the spending is a much better argument to make, rather than the sheer magnitude of it.
A L
@Chyron HR: Which option is more reasonable:
1) Taking at word a guy whose every action up to this point has been demonstrably the opposite of what he said he would do
2) Not taking at word a guy whose every action up to this point has been demonstrably the opposite of what he said he would do
chopper
@A L:
i think your mom drank a few ‘strong cases’ of stuff while she was pregnant with you.
joe from Lowell
@Corner Stone:
Not current legislation about which the public’s, and the legislators’, minds are largely made up, no.
The bully pulpit is good for situations in which there are a lot of people, and legislators, still in play, still to be decided.
Once minds are made up and you’re just trying to get the last couple of votes you need to pass a bill, you need a ground game. You need to make sausage behind closed doors, and you need to send in your troops – the people who are on your side whether you used the bully pulpit or not.
chopper
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
master of reading comprehension strikes again.
different church-lady
@joe from Lowell: I’m guilty of sloppy speech — I should have said “line of thinking” instead of “line”. It’s not a stated line I’ve seen, it’s more of the takeaway I get from a lot of the spending arguments/rants I see. Usually it’s in defense of simplistic thinking: spending good, therefore deficit good. Therefore reducing deficit bad.
I can understand that framework when we’re talking about conservative dog whistles (in that case “Cutting the deficit” doesn’t really have anything to do with the budget, it’s simply code for “killing social programs”.) I don’t understand why people think Obama is blowing the same whistle.
FlipYrWhig
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
I would go further: the debate is between traditional liberals who grumble when things are less than ideal, and traditional liberals who grumble less because they/we think Obama’s the best shot we have. That’s what’s so stupid about it. We’re all liberals. We’d all do just about the same things if we were starting a country from scratch. We just have different views about how to handle the present moment. It’s not liberals vs. moderates or whatever, it’s people who think things are fucked and want to yell about how long it’s taking to un-fuck them, vs. other people who also think things are fucked and want to yell about how things are slowly moving towards un-fuckedness.
FlipYrWhig
@Master of Karate and Friendship: No, we _shouldn’t_ do Bad Things, but the presence of evil Republicans intent on doing Bad Things means that it becomes a priority to reduce their badness.
cleek
@Joe Beese:
“got nothing” isn’t quite right. actually, “made no assumptions” is more accurate.
personally, i’m willing to wait and see what the specifics are before i come to a conclusion. i understand that’s not your thing.
you apparently to prefer a state of constant disappointment in Obama, even if you have to invent reasons to be sad.
to each his own…
joe from Lowell
@MattR:
Um, no. Increasing the deficit while we’re in a recession makes proper economic sense. Done that. Increasing it even more as the economy recovers does not.
I don’t think there is an economist in the world who will argue that we should run a larger deficit in 2012 than we ran in 2009 (the year the recession ended).
FormerSwingVoter
@A L: Pie is pretty great.
Sly
Oh, we’re well beyond that phase. Now we’re in the “Obama is just playing us all for suckers, it’s all just one big lie” phase.
I note with some smug satisfaction that the chief criticism I’m starting to see is that this speech is “only words.”
Joe Beese
@cleek:
I understand. I’ve heard many people say similar things.
“Let’s wait and see if he reverses on telecom immunity.”
“Let’s wait and see if he caves on the public option.”
“Let’s wait and see if he escalates in Afghanistan.”
After a while, the waiting seems kind of pointless.
A L
@joe from Lowell: The economy is not recovering, pal.
mclaren
And yet more of Obama’s speech translated into plain English!
TRANSLATION: “So that’s how I colluded with the thieves on Wall Street who created this mess, in order to perpetuate it. This is how we got here. And now that our economic recovery is falling apart and the middle class in America is poised for its final descent into the abyss, Democrats and Republicans must come together and give the death blow to the middle class in order to preserve the permanent oligarchy of the billionaires that me and my buddies in the senate so well in the 1990s. We have to live within our means — meaning, you the middle class have to take it up the ass in order to pay for more tax cuts for billionaires; we must reduce our deficit by crushing the middle class and extract the gold from their teeth rather than by cutting back on our military-indsutrial complex, and we must get back on a path that will allow us to pay down our debt, by shutting down medicare and social security and possibly even reviving debt slavery and other nifty inventions down the road. And we have to do it in a way that protects the wealth of the richest 1% among us, and protects the investments of their precious precious money we need to create jobs in the third world after we outsource them from America, and win the future for China and India and Europe, because I know as well as everyone else does that America is done and we’re circling the bowl and the suction is drawing us down.”
TRANSLATION: “Now, before I get into how we can achieve this goal, some of you might be wondering, “You’ve lied to us and betrayed us so often, Barack Obama. Why should I listen to anything you say now?”
TRANSLATION: “Here’s why. I can order you assassinated without charges or even a trial. You’re scum. You’re nothing. I can have you killed by snapping my fingers, and under George W. Bush the rule of law went away, and I’ve continued that trend. So you’d better shut up and do what you’re told, because even though our economy will neverrecover, our government will still be on track to murder innocent women and children throughout the third world, so we sure as shit don’t care about putting a bullet in your head if you cause any trouble. That means we’ll have to keep borrowing more from countries like China. And that means more of your tax dollars will go toward mudering the world’s poorest people and destroying your basic constitutional rights. By the end of this decade, the interest we owe on our debt could rise to nearly $1 trillion. Just the interest payments. And you’d better sit still like trained seals and clap your hands, because if you try to do anything about it by cutting the military-industrial complex or raising taxes for the billionaires who keep me in office, just remember Pvt. Bradley Manning and shut your fucking face.”
TRANSLATION: “Then, as the Baby Boomers start to retire and health care costs continue to rise, the situation will get even better for the billionaires. By 2025, the amount of taxes we currently pay will only be enough to finance our health care programs, Social Security, and the interest we owe on our debt. That’s it. Every other national priority – education, transportation, even national security – will have to be paid for with borrowed money. And this gives the richest 1% in America a perfect excuse to practice the shock doctrine and impose martial law and turn you into serfs — and since I’m part of that top 1%, I love the idea and I’m going to work hard to implement it.”
TRANSLATION: “Ultimately, all this rising debt will cost us jobs and damage our economy, and that’s really great, because it will create a vast pool of serfs eager to work for bread crusts and stale gruel. It will prevent those poor people who used to be middle class from interfering with our effort to the investments we need to win the future for the third world and ship all the high-paying jobs out of America. You’re all be too busy scavenging food out of dumpsters to worry about voting against me. We won’t be able to afford good schools, new research, or the repair of roads and bridges – all the things that will create new jobs and businesses here in America. And that’s a good thing, because as everything gets worse in America, the military will get even more money, and since I now have dictatorial poewrs and the rule of law has gone away,hey! Good news! Businesses will be less likely to invest and open up shop in a country that seems unwilling or unable to balance its books, and that’s good for my billionaire buddies because we’ve given up on America anyway. We’re investing in the third world, so we don’t give a shit about you and your formerly middle class dupes anymore. And if our creditors start worrying that we may be unable to pay back our debts, it could drive up interest rates for everyone who borrows money – making it harder for businesses to expand and hire, or families to take out a mortgage, which offers yet another reason why my billionaire buddies and I are abandoning America, and why we don’t give a shit about you, the voter.”
TRANSLATION: “The good news is, this doesn’t have to be our future. This doesn’t have to be the country we leave to our children. We can solve this problem. We came together as Democrats and Republicans to meet this challenge before, and we can do it again. The bad news is that you’re gullible Obots and you’ll support me even though I’m destroying the middle class in America and enacting the entire Republican policy agenda, so I can do whatever I want and laugh at you, and you’ll sit there and take it.”
cyntax
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
What is this, some sort of no true Scott’s man argument? That’s just ridiculous. I’ve certainly been unhappy with a bunch of stuff that Obama has done, but this was a good speech and he laid down a number of important markers about what he would and wouldn’t accept.
But since you seem to be more interested as using this speech as proxy for arguing about people’s liberal credentials, let me leave you with David Dayen’s assessment:
Straight from FDL.
joe from Lowell
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
You did, there is nobody reading this who didn’t read your constant paeans to raising deficits, nor your attacks on Obama for wanting to cut them, and I’m not wasting my time reminding you of your own arguments.
If you don’t want to stand by what you’ve written, don’t write it.
MattR
@joe from Lowell: That was a quick and sloppy response by me that I already modified to mean that worrying about the deficit is the wrong approach as you come out of a recession. Martin added a few good caveats above, though I don’t think that our debt has gotten so high that the deficit needs to be priority one.
joe from Lowell
@MattR:
It’s a nod to political reality. At least he’s making the case, arguing against the righties, even if he can’t get everything he wants.
cleek
@Joe Beese:
yes, that sucked.
laying this on Obama is profoundly retarded. why do firebaggers pretend to not understand how bills become law? wait… don’t answer, i know: it’s because that would take away from the exquisite pleasure they get from finding ways to hate Obama.
he said he’d do that during the campaign. odd that you’d cite that an example of his untruthfulness. but, haters gotta hate, i guess.
joe from Lowell
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
It was a campaign speech, not a policy speech, yesterday, when the firebaggers were assuring us that Obama was going to come out for slashing Social Security and Medicare.
They were wrong.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@FlipYrWhig:
“No, we shouldn’t do Bad Things, but the presence of evil Republicans intent on doing Bad Things means that it becomes a priority to reduce their badness.”
Oh, I see: by moving our position toward theirs, we’re reducing their bad position. That makes so much sense.
@A L:
“The economy is not recovering, pal.”
Oh come on now, last quarter the GDP grew by a whopping 1.6% and unemployment went from 8.9% to 8.8%. Happy days are here again!
dollared
@FlipYrWhig: I very, very much agree with you. The rate of change is important, however. I have only a few more working years in which I could move to Canada and clean toilets for a living and end up richer because I have health care.
A L
@cleek: Actually Obama explicitly promised to back a public option, then dropped it when HCR negotiations came up. He then got angry at people expecting him to defend the public option laffo.
Just Some Fuckhead
I thought the President gave an excellent campaign speech. He even worked in “Win the Future” at least three times. As part of this speech, he gave a very good defense for Medicare, at least as it applies to those currently receiving Medicare, offered up Social Security reforms for no reason (in line with Simpson-Bowles), recognized tax increases for the wealthiest Americans were not on the table and so we’d have to get creative with the tax code.
Overall, he’s still playing on Republican field, with Republican equipment and Republican rules. It was unfortunate when Democrats owned Congress. It’s even more unfortunate now that real change has to happen and it’s clear to everyone with an IQ over 50 that Republican ideas don’t work, won’t work and can’t work.
Joe Beese
“At least two divisions” does not equal “tripling ground forces” – unless we’re arguing about what “is” is.
joe from Lowell
@A L:
Um, right, sure it does. Because 1) Social Security funds are segregated and no other funds are used to pay for it, and 2) because this country certainly wouldn’t fund Social Security when there’s a deficit.
Except both of those things have been proven false.
Well, he had his chance. And not only did he not argue for doing so, but he strongly made the case against doing so.
You have absolutely nothing but your certainty, and there is absolutely no argument or evidence that will budge it.
OK. Stop bothering me with your faith-based bullshit.
Joel
@Corner Stone: Begs the question.
WaterGirl
@Martin:
Maybe they’re the kids whose parents never praised their accomplishments and who were constantly berated when they disappointed. You learn what you live.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@cleek:
“he said he’d do that during the campaign”
Oh,m that makes it alright. Hey dead children gunned down by an American helicopter, don’t worry, Obama said he would escalate in Afghanistan during the campaign so that makes it alright.
@joe from Lowell:
“At least he’s making the case, arguing against the righties, even if he can’t get everything he wants.”
Right, he had to freeze federal pay or else…well, something bad, no doubt.
Who said “deficits are inherently good” and in which post?
Midnight Marauder
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
What’s amazing about this scenario is that Congress has ceased to exist as a relevant entity in American politics.
Amazing how that happens.
mclaren
And now, still more of Obama’s speech translated into plain English!
TRANSLATION: “But that starts by me lying to you and duping you about what’s causing the deficit. You see, most Americans tend to dislike government spending in the abstract, but they love it when America uses its money to burn brown babies alive with napalm or bomb pregnant women in third world countries. Most of us, regardless of party affiliation, believe that we should have a strong military and a strong ability to torture and rape and murder women and children and old men throughout the world…as long as they’re not white, of course. Most Americans believe we should cut education and cut medical research. Most Americans think we should reneg on commitments like Social Security and Medicare. And without even looking at a poll, my finely honed political skills tell me that almost no one believes they should be paying higher taxes, because Americans are stupid as well as cowardly.”
TRANSLATION: “Because all this money spent on killing and torture and death and burning alive innocent women and children in the third world for no reason is popular with both Republicans and Democrats alike, and because nobody wants to pay higher taxes, politicians are often eager to feed the impression that solving the problem is just a matter of eliminating waste and abuse-–that tackling the deficit issue won’t require tough choices. Or they suggest that we can somehow close our entire deficit by eliminating things like foreign aid, even though foreign aid makes up about 1% of our entire budget.”
TRANSLATION: “So here’s the truth. Around two-thirds of our budget is spent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and national security. Programs like unemployment insurance, student loans, veterans’ benefits, and tax credits for working families take up another 20%. What’s left, after interest on the debt, is just 12 percent for everything else. That’s 12 percent for all of our other national priorities like education and clean energy; medical research and transportation; food safety and keeping our air and water clean. And since that 12% isn’t spent on people who can invest vast amounts of money in my re-electin campaign, I don’t give a shit about them. In fact, I don’t give a shit about the people who get social security or medicare either, because they don’t have access to bombs and guns and trillions of dollars of war profits.”
TRANSLATION: “Up until now, the cuts proposed by a lot of folks in Washington have focused almost exclusively on that 12%. But cuts to that 12% alone won’t solve the problem. So any serious plan to tackle our deficit will require us to put everything on the table except our wildly insane out-of-control military spending and our crazy pointless spending on worthless boondoggles like the TSA and the DHS and the NSA and the CIA. A serious plan doesn’t require us to balance our budget overnight – in fact, I don’t give a shit about balancing the budget at all, because I’m stilljacking up miliatry and so-called ‘security’ spending to ever more insane levels, when I could just withdraw all our troops, tell Americans to pull their socks up and get a grip and stop panicking, and disband the DHS and the TSA and reduce our military budget by 80% and no American would suffer the slightest inconvenience. Economists are whores for the top 1% and they think that with the economy really starting to go down the tubes and approaching its final collapse, we will need a phased-in approach to more tax cuts for billionaires, lest the average American start rioting-–but it does require tough decisions and support from leaders in both parties, if we’re going to succeed in crushing the middle class completely and entrenching the billionaires as permanent olligarchs forever. And above all, it will require us to choose a vision of the America we want to see five and ten and twenty years down the road: an America with its boot stamping into the faces of the poorest people on earth, an America where cops tase 19-year-old kids with broken backs twelve times, and America where DEA goons kick in the doors of houses and shoot peoples’ dogs for no reason, and then when they discover the search warrant had the wrong house, they don’t even apologize. The vision of America I see before me is an America where anyone who embarrasses the wealthy and powerful suffers the indignities and imprisonment without charges or trial of Pvt. Bradley Manning.”
TRANSLATION: “One vision has been championed by Republicans in the House of Representatives and embraced by several of their party’s presidential candidates. It’s a plan that aims to reduce our deficit by $4 trillion over the next ten years, and one that addresses the challenge of Medicare and Medicaid in the years after that. It’s the same vision I champion, but I know you’re too stupid and too gullible to realize that, because merely by speaking a few pretty words, I can bend you all around my finger and scam you into voting for me and supporting me even as I cut your collective throats by enacting the entire Republican agenda.”
cleek
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
maybe you should read the context of the thread before jumping in and making an idiot out of yourself.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@joe from Lowell:
“OK. Stop bothering me with your faith-based bullshit.”
Says the guy who claims the economy is recovering.
Who said “deficits are inherently good” and in which post?
joe from Lowell
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
Um, yeah, the forced laughter thing? It just makes you look like you’re trying too hard.
As opposed to a dry recitation of fact, such as “This is the first time Obama has ruled out extending the tax cuts. He stated his opposition to them before, but contrary to your repeated assertions, he never actually ruled them out the way he did today.”
You, numerous different times, in numerous different terms, over the course of this thread.
Virtually all of the ones with your name on them.
mclaren
@Midnight Marauder:
Hardly amazing. When the constitution goes away and the rule of law disappears, you’re left with a king.
That’s what we’ve got now in America: a king who happens to get elected every 4 years.
That won’t last long, of course. Sooner or later a king will come along who won’t want to leave office after 4 years. And that’s when the chickens will all come home to roost.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@joe from Lowell:
“You, numerous different times, in numerous different terms, over the course of this thread.”
Bull. Shit.
“As opposed to a dry recitation of fact, such as “This is the first time Obama has ruled out extending the tax cuts. He stated his opposition to them before, but contrary to your repeated assertions, he never actually ruled them out the way he did today.””
Oh I see–before he only said he wouldn’t extend them, but today he said he wouldn’t extend them. See? Bold print!
Do you really fall for this stuff?
joe from Lowell
@A L:
Now you’re just making shit up.
You’re entitled to your own opinion, madam, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.
The sum total of actions Obama has taken to cut Social Security is zero. No matter how many times you continue to lie about this point, it will not become true.
A L
@joe from Lowell: Laffo you don’t know how social security is funded.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@joe from Lowell:
“Now you’re just making shit up.”
Look whose talking. You make stuff up about me all the time. Liar.
FlipYrWhig
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
Um, it does. Left to their own devices, they’d do terrible things. In the absence of an agreement, they’d cause to happen a whole different set of terrible things. So arriving at an agreement mitigates the terrible things.
I mean, this isn’t difficult. If your kid gets gum in her hair, you can use peanut butter to get it out. You wouldn’t normally put a bunch of peanut butter in your kid’s hair, but you can find ways to get peanut butter out that are less damaging than just yanking on the gum. Your remarks are like, “Oh, so you’re all in favor of putting peanut butter in kids’ hair, then?” Well, no, not as a general rule. But as a step to ratchet down a disaster, it makes more sense.
mclaren
@Just Some Fuckhead:
On the contrary: Republican ideas work very very well. The will work and they can work — for the top 1%.
Republican ideas work fabulously well for the billionaires.
And since the billionaires are the only people who matter anymore in America, that’s all that counts.
Obama isn’t stupid. He knows what’s up. He’s on the side of billionaires, because they’re winning, and the rest of us are toast.
joe from Lowell
@MattR:
This is a long-term vs. short-term question. In the short term, the deficit is not so high that reducing it needs to be top priority right now. In the long term, without doing something, it will become large enough.
The solution to this apparent dilemma is what Obama said in his speech – to start now on actions that will kick in gradually.
cleek
@Joe Beese:
umm… who said it did ?
Master of Karate and Friendship
@cleek:
What context did I get wrong? You don’t hold the escalation in Afghanistan against Obama because he said he would do it during the campaign. of course it has caused the deaths of hundreds of innocent people, but you still won’t hold it against him.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@joe from Lowell:
“The solution to this apparent dilemma is what Obama said in his speech – to start now on actions that will kick in gradually.”
While cutting programs like WIC and home heating subsidies for the poor right now.
But Obama isn’t acceding to the Republican narrative, oh no.
joe from Lowell
@Sly:
Clearly, he’s playing 11-dimensional chess.
Heh.
Sentient Puddle
I must admit, I previously thought mclaren had already cut ties with reality and sanity completely, but this whole translation of Obama’s speech into the underlying secret conspiracy really cranks it up to 11…nay, 12! He’s (or she’s? I never quite got a solid answer on that) really exploring the studio space on this one. Don’t stop, don’t stop!
Just Some Fuckhead
@mclaren: I should have continued my thought by saying Republican ideas can’t work for us because they have different goals. For their goals, you are correct, their ideas have been working blisteringly well.
joe from Lowell
@A L:
You haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about, and should cease to hold forth on economic matters entirely.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@FlipYrWhig:
“Um, it does. Left to their own devices, they’d do terrible things. In the absence of an agreement, they’d cause to happen a whole different set of terrible things. So arriving at an agreement mitigates the terrible things.”
Oh I see. So, after the Democratic party has moved toward the Republican party for decades, that means Republicans would never launch an illegal war, propose privatizing Social Security, propose eliminating Medicare, or torture people.
Because when you move your position closer to someone else’s position, the natural response from them is “whoa, I better slow down here! I’m losing the struggle! Time to reign it in!”
AlphaLiberal
Good thing we shot down all those trial balloons.
Midnight Marauder
@A L:
Um…what?
Your position on this is astoundingly dumb.
joe from Lowell
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
Which guy is that? Paul Krugman, who says the economy is recovering?
Steve Benen?
This is not a matter of opinion. This is not a matter of ideology. You are factually incorrect, demonstrably incorrect. Heck, you think that citing positive economic growth for a quarter of GDP is actually evidence that the economy is not recovering from a recession.
No wonder your politics are so stupid. You don’t understand the first thing about economics. You don’t even know what the words mean.
You, in virtually every post you’ve written on this thread, as everyone who’s read this far already knows. You can keep asking me this question, and I will keep answering it the same way.
Jay B.
Since everyone is getting their strawmen mixed up: I, like many others, was pissed when Obama “rolled” the GOP into accepting $600 million in cuts to health care exchanges — one of the very few cost-controlling measures in “his” signature HCR program. And I, like many others, was pissed that we’re cutting WIC and Planned Parenthood in a shitty economy. After all, it was Obama, not me, who was bragging about these “historic” cuts.
I was criticizing the policy. All the dicking around about who “won” and “whom fooled whom” was completely irrelevant. It helps no one. The affirmative case was better than subterfuge — The GOP wants to cut. I/The Democrats/Responsible do not. Bragging about slight of hand and suckering Republicans isn’t all awesome (which obviously brings up the obviousness of the complicity of GOP leadership in the “deal”, so they could say the Democrats gave in to an additional $38 B in cuts).
As to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, who was saying they were going to be cut? The administration wasn’t helpful by talking about S-B and “taking a scalpel” to Medicare, but there was a lot of mixed messaging coming out in advance of this speech. Instead of opacity, given the Republican mindset of outright rejection, a simple affirmative case that “Medicare is off the table” would have been just as easy to say without all the bullshit tap dancing. Being clever is awesome and everything, but it tends to fuck up the whole message, which should be that the GOP is offering titanically bad ideas that are giveaways to the rich at a tenuous economic time in the recovery.
So, if that makes me wrong — not having offered a single prediction about cutting while the Administration was floating the idea — I was wrong. I’m glad Obama made fun of Ryan’s idiotic plan.
Now, why is cutting the budget so fucking important again?
joe from Lowell
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
Nope. Go back, read the comment again, see if you can figure out where you went wrong.
I’m not playing the “You can’t make me say it” game with you. If you want to play dumb, you’re going to have to play solitaire.
mclaren
And now…even more of Obama’s speech translated into plain English!
TRANSLATION: “Burning brown babies alive in the third world and crushing the middle class are both worthy goals for us to achieve. But the way this plan achieves those goals would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known throughout most of our history, and I want to be remembered as a nice guy, not a thug, even though I’m enacting the policies of the thugs. So I have to lie to you some more.”
TRANSLATION: “A 70% cut to clean energy. A 25% cut in education. A 30% cut in transportation. Cuts in college Pell Grants that will grow to more than $1,000 per year. That’s what they’re proposing. These aren’t the kind of cuts you make when you’re trying to get rid of some waste or find extra savings in the budget. These aren’t the kind of cuts that Republicans and Democrats on the Fiscal Commission proposed. These are the kind of cuts that tell us we can’t afford the America we believe in. And they paint a vision of our future that’s deeply pessimistic — and since I know America is headed down the drain just as the billionaires who pull the strings of the Republican party do, I’m enthusiastically in favor of these policies… But I don’t want to come right out and say so, because you’d riot in the streets. So I’m going to speak lots of pretty soothing words, and then enact the Republicans’ policies anyway.”
TRANSLATION: “It’s a vision that says if our roads crumble and our bridges collapse, we can’t afford to fix them, and it’s correct, because Americans would rather give billions to the rich than living in a country with decent infrastructure. If there are bright young Americans who have the drive and the will but not the money to go to college, we can’t afford to send them, because America is a sick twisted country built on hatred for intellectualism and a demented belief in the debunked cult of social Darwinism. Go to China and you’ll see businesses opening research labs and solar facilities. South Korean children are outpacing our kids in math and science. Brazil is investing billions in new infrastructure and can run half their cars not on high-priced gasoline, but biofuels. And yet, we are presented with a vision that says the United States of America – the most infantile and short-sighted and sadistically foolish nation on Earth – can’t afford any of this, and this vision is correct, so suck on it, middle class, and kiss your ignorant foolish short-sighted asses goodbye, because I’m going to get mine while the getting is good and the hell with all of you.”
TRANSLATION: “It’s a vision that says America can’t afford to keep the promise we’ve made to care for our seniors — and since America never kept any of the promises we made to the American indians, why should we bother to keep our promises to you? It says that ten years from now, if you’re a 65 year old who’s eligible for Medicare, you should have to pay nearly $6,400 more than you would today, and that’s good because it kills off poor people who are just an impediment and an annoyance to rich folks like me and my billionaire buddies. It says instead of guaranteed health care, you will get a voucher, and that’s wonderful because it blames victim — which Americans love. And if that voucher isn’t worth enough to buy insurance, tough luck – you’re on your own. That’s the American way! Put simply, it ends Medicare as we know it. And I’m wholeheartedly in favor of it, because the alternative is cutting the military, and the sadistic foolish cruelly stupid people of America adore the military and loves them a war president, and I know that.”
TRANSLATION: “This is my vision, a vision of a phony scam non-reform HCR bill that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. And who are those 50 million Americans? Many are someone’s grandparents who wouldn’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid, but I don’t give a shit, because they’re poor and I’m rich. Many are poor children, but I’m an adult, so fuck ’em. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down’s syndrome. But my kids are healthy, so fuck ’em all! Some are kids with disabilities so severe that they require 24-hour care. Those people should die because that’s social darwinism: survival of the fittest! These are the Americans we’d be telling to fend for themselves, and I’m all for it, because I will never again in my life have to do my own laundry or do my own shopping or live without a butler.”
TRANSLATION: “Best of all, this is a vision that says even though America can’t afford to invest in education or clean energy; even though we can’t afford to care for seniors and poor children, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy. Think about it. In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90% of all working Americans actually declined. The top 1% saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each. And that’s who needs to pay less taxes? They want to give people like me a two hundred thousand dollar tax cut that’s paid for by asking thirty three seniors to each pay six thousand dollars more in health costs? You bet your ass they do, and so do I, because the billionaires are the ones who’ll pay for my presidential library and my re-election campaign and my cushy retirement after I leave the White House. That’s right and just and proper, and it’s definitely going to happen as long as I’m President.”
joe from Lowell
@A L:
As a matter of fact, I do. Social Security taxes are put into the general fund, the same fund that income taxes go into, and Social Security payments are made from that fund.
You, on the other hand, appear to be fooled into believing that Social Security checks and other government spending come from different pots.
Poor dear. The “Social Security Trust Fund” isn’t actually a pot of money. It’s an accounting fiction. Social Security is funded, as I’ve already explained to you, from the same fund into which FICA taxes and income taxes are put.
WaterGirl
@freelancer: Was it you who linked to a photo of your vision of M_C a few months ago? I felt bad laughing about it, but that image was so unbelievably perfect, I couldn’t help myself. (If it wasn’t you, well, never mind.)
che
@chopper: Exactly right!
Same way they always cite the poll that 87% or whatever it was of Americans support public option but when it’s a poll that’s positive for Obama then it’s poll’s don’t mean anything.
joe from Lowell
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
I love how large I loom in your consciousness. Tell me, when you have nightmares about me, what does my facial hair look like?
ETA: for my part, I don’t actually remember who you are from one thread to the next. I wonder why that is?
les
@A L:
Surprisingly, citation needed. If your position is, you didn’t get every last thing you wanted, when you wanted it, therefore O is an asshole, just say it. Making Shit Up is not any better argument.
Midnight Marauder
@mclaren:
Or when Congress decides they don’t want to actually use the powers they have available to them to enforce checks and balances. But I guess that is not paranoid and deluded enough for you.
Fever dreams. You have them.
Come on, son. Even George W. Bush left office after 8 years.
Nellcote
@Martin:
Yay! Reality check. Thank you.
cleek
@les:
A L’s “every” is a pretty easy word to defeat. takes just one counter example. here’s one: DADT.
che
@taylormattd: They were clamoring for him to use the bully pulpit, dammit, but when he does, it’s just words. There’s just no pleasing those fucking whiners.
joe from Lowell
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
OK, I see where I’ve gone wrong: I thought, when you kept using the term “narrative,” that you knew what it meant.
See, there are two issues here – one about rhetoric and moving public opinion (this is what the term “narrative” refers to), and one about substantive actions in office.
These two fields differ in various ways – for instance, Obama’s narrative is entirely in his own hands, while the substantive actions he takes (at least the ones that require Congressional action) are not. This is what smarter versions of yourself argue all the time – that Obama’s narrative, his rhetoric, needs to be further out than what he substantively does, because politics requires both acting with a defined range of possible actions, but also influencing what is possible by using what is sometimes referred to as the bully pulpit.
See, pointing out that Obama, in making a deal over the budget, gave Republicans some of what they want has nothing at all to do with the issue of the narrative.
Hope this helps.
les
@cleek:
True; whatever fantasy realm A L inhabits is pretty easily distinguished from reality. The list of positive examples is not as long as any of us would wish, but it’s not inconsequential. Also not surprisingly, the big shit is harder, takes longer and is more likely to get watered down. This reality shit kinda sucks; no wonder A L abandoned it.
A L
@cleek: Ah yes, repealing DADT (which actually hasn’t happened yet and only happened after he had to be dragged into doing it) certainly makes up for numerous war crimes, expanding the police state, and setting the stage for the dismemberment of SS/Medicare/Medicaid.
You’re right, with that shining example I am undone and Obama is in fact not only a great president, but a great human being as well.
A L
@les: Hey, the trains are running on time aren’t they? Quit complaining!! – A liberal baby
mclaren
Just what you’ve been waiting for — even more translation of Obama’s speech into plain English!
TRANSLATION: “The fact is, my vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America. As Ronald Reagan’s own budget director said, there’s nothing “serious” or “courageous” about any of my plans, since everything I’ve proposed during my presidency so far is a watered-down version of some Republican scheme to loot the poor and transfer the money to the rich. There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and that’s why I’m supporting it even though I’ll make a pretty speech full of soothing words saying the opposite. There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill, and that’s why this has been the basis of my entire presidency. Serious people get laughed into oblivion in Washington, and I know it. And this is not a vision of the America I know: it’s a vision of a pathetic impotent infantile country, and that’s the America we’ve turned into, so like everyone else in high office, I’m facing reality and playing the hand I’ve been dealt and telling all 300 million of you gullible dupes what you want to hear, because if I told you the hard truth that you screwed up America with your own stupidity and gullibility and sadism, all 330 million of you would tear me apart. You adored Ronald Reagan because he told you soothing lies you wanted to hear and you despise Jimmy Carter because he told you tough truths you didn’t want to hear — and I’ve learned from that, so you’re going to get nothing but soothing lies from me. After all, in the kingdom of lies, truth is treason.”
TRANSLATION: “The America I know is sadistic and hate-filled; a land of savage cruelty, where each citizen stays afloat by standing on the shoulders of his drowning neighbor. We take responsibility for nothing, and when trouble comes, we scream lies, turn on one another like cornered rats, hunt down the guilty, and punish the innocent, and then congratulate ourselves on having solved the problem even though the problem remains; Americans care only about `dancing with the stars,’ they care nothing for the country we want and the future we share. We are the nation that built a railroad across a continent by enslaving thousands of coolies and then lynching them when they demanded the right to vote, we are the nation who marched twenty thousand strong down Pennsylvania avenue carrying burning crosses and dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes in the 1920s. We sent a generation to poor schmucks to fight and die in WW II to preserve America’s empire while our rich people made billions in war profiteering, and we slavishly bribed millions of seniors to vote for us by enacting Social Security and Medicare which we knew we were going to dismantle as soon as they got close to retirement. We have led the world in scientific research on finding new ways to murder and torture, including the marvelous new microwave pain ray, and technological breakthroughs like the atomic bomb that have transformed millions of lives at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And we Americans are proud of nuclear-bombing those women and children in 1945, because they were yellow–so fuck you, and stay in your places, you assholes in the Third World, or we’ll Hiroshima your yellow or brown or black asses into briquettes.”
TRANSLATION: “This is who we are. This is the America I know. We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit investments in our people and our country: we can have both! To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms, which unfortunately mean destroying the middle class. We will all need to make sacrifices, and by “we” I mean “anyone who isn’t rich will get fucked hard up the ass without Vaseline.” But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in, not those of us who are wealthy, anyway. And as long as I’m President, we won’t.”
TRANSLATION: “Today, I’m proposing a more balanced approach to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over twelve years — and by `balanced,’ I mean, it fucks over everyone in the bottom 99% of the population equally. It’s an approach that borrows from the recommendations of the bipartisan Fiscal Commission I appointed last year, and which everyone has derided as insane and “the end of America,” and builds on the roughly $1 trillion in deficit reduction I already proposed in my 2012 budget but without any cuts to the military which accounts for all 1 trillion dollars of that deficit. It’s an approach that puts every kind of spending on the table, whichis another way to saying, fuck you, middle class! — but one that protects my reputation by gulling you with soothing words. And most of all, it protects our military-indsutrial complex and the interests of the billionaires who run America and represent my future.”
TRANSLATION: “The first step in our approach is to keep the amount of rioting by the middle class low by easing in the massive cuts to middle class programs. We will make the tough cuts necessary to achieve these savings, but we’ll do it gradually, making sure the middle class is so weakened and so demoralized by the time the really brutal cuts come that the National Guard can put down the riots without having to shoot all of you. Because billionaires need butlers and maids, not to mention sex slaves. But I will not sacrifice the core investments we need to grow and create jobs in the third world by outsourcing all high-paying American jobs overseas. We’ll invest in medical research for welthy people, though only the rich will be able to afford medical care because by HCR non-reform does nothing to control costs, and we’ll invest in clean energy technology…just not in America. We’ll invest in new roads and airports and broadband access in the third world because we’ll need those things when American corporations move all their factories overseas. We will invest in education and job training in the third world, because we need educated workers. We will do what we need to compete in the third world by outsourcing all our jobs these and we will win the future. But Americans will never see any of that prosperity, because that’s the way capitalism works now in the age of globalism, so suck on it, America. If your daughters are pretty, tell ’em to go into porn, because that’s the only kind of future young people have in today’s America.”
licensed to kill time
@WaterGirl: Was it this one?
eta: Like you’ll ever see this after mclaren’s ritalin-fueled wall-o-text o_O
FormerSwingVoter
Where did all the firebaggers come from?
cleek
@A L:
lookit them goalposts go!
lookit how AL’s delicious dark fantasy tickles that anger spot just right. ahh… feel the hate. become one with the hate.
Midnight Marauder
@A L:
Here’s a pretty dumb position for a supposed liberal (or non-Republican) to take.
“Sure, we got this big thing we wanted accomplished, but does it mitigate these other terrible things that may or may not even be happening?!”
I mean, this is such a wholly unserious approach.
Blue Carolinian
Mclaren nobody is reading your tiresome spam. You have now become more boring than matoko Chan.
different church-lady
@Sly:
Can you really call something that’s a constant state a “phase”?
Tom Q
@FormerSwingVoter: It’s just the same few. But they’re pretty much indefatigable.
Max Power
Was anyone other than the PL really surprised? I mean, they take un-sourced , anonymous stories from the WSJ and Politico and then trot it out as written in stone reality BEFORE Obama says one word about anything. Their willing ignorance to promote the “Obama is a SELLOUT” meme is just comical at this point.
mclaren
And now, still more of Obama’s magnificent speech translated into plain English!
TRANSLATION: “The second step in our approach is to find additional savings in our defense budget. As Assassin-in-Chief, I have no greater responsibility than ordering the assassination of American citizens without a trial and without even accusing them of a crime, and I will never accept cuts that compromise our ability to burn brown babies alive for no reason or slaughter pregnant women en masse in pointless endless wars in third world countries. But as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mullen, has said, the greatest long-term threat to America’s national security is America’s debt. Except that we can’t deal with that debt by cutting any of our military spending, of course. I thought I’d throw that in for those of you with American flag tattoos who like to watch Rambo movies and shout `Boo-ya!’ while polishing your gun collection. The rest of you, try to ignore the glaring logical contradiction in what I just said.”
TRANSLATION: “Just as we must find more savings in domestic programs, we must do the same in defense. Over the last two years, Secretary Gates has in typically cowardly fashion proposed a bunch of phony cuts in wasteful spending in the military which conveniently only take place after he resigns a year from now, and which will never be enacted — so both he and I will get credit for saving $400 billion in current and future spending, even though defense spending keeps going up and not a dime will actually be cut. That’s the old shell game, and Gates is a master of it, and I’m getting pretty good too. I believe we can do that again. We can run this shell game on you over and over again, and you’ll never realize that military spending is actually going up and not down, because you’re a bunch of gullible dupes. (After all, the Pentagon has done this countless times in the past: during the bogus “efficiency” push of the 1970s, the failed efforts at “procurement reform” in the 1980s, during the failed and futile “future military” reforms of the 1990s, and so on.) We need to not only eliminate waste and improve the efficiency and effectiveness with which we enrich defense contractors, but conduct a fundamental review of America’s missions, capabilities, and our role in a changing world — meaning, we need to find new pretexts to fight even more pointless endless wars in more third world hellholes. I intend to work with Secretary Gates and the Joint Chiefs on this review, and I will make specific decisions about spending after it’s complete because everyone in the Pentagon works his rice bowl and demands hard cash, and I’ll need to hand out even more lucre in order to keep the support of the military and their congressional pork barrel defense contractors if I want to be re-elected in 2012.”
TRANSLATION: “The third step in our approach is to further reduce health care spending in our budget. Here, the difference with the House Republican plan is nonexistent: their plan lowers the government’s health care bills by asking seniors and poor families to pay them instead. Our approach lowers the government’s health care bills by forcing everyone to buy unaffordable private for-profit health care and then standing by and shrugging as premiums and co-pays gradually to the point where no one can afford health care in America except the rich.”
TRANSLATION: “Already, the reforms we passed in the health care law have resulted in tens of thousands of people losing their insurance, and millions more will soon join them. My approach would build on these policies, eventually forcing everyone in America to abandon health care because without cost control, no one will be able to afford the premums or co-pays. We will reduce the number of middle class people on health care until all of you die, and that will take of the problem of middle class jobs going away: if you’re all dead, who gives a fuck whether you have jobs or not? We will cut spending on prescription drugs by using Medicare’s purchasing power to drive greater efficiency and speed generic brands of medicine onto the market but of course we won’t allow importation of drugs into America from Canada. We will work with governors of both parties to demand more efficiency and accountability from Medicaid, and this will result in all the states slashing their medicare and eventually shutting down state-subsidizied medicaid programs around the country. We will change the way we pay for health care – not by procedure or the number of days spent in a hospital, but with new incentives for doctors and hospitals to prevent underbilling and improve their bottom line by creating a vast captive market of tens of millions of new Americans who are forced to buy for-private private health insurance. And we will increase the growth of Medicare costs by strengthening an independent commission of doctors, nurses and medical experts (who aren’t really independent but who are just a bunch of wolves voting over which lamb to eat for dinner) who will look at all the evidence and recommend the best ways to jack up their already bloated outrageous incomes while protecting the gigantic nested series of medical cartels that makes unaffordable the services seniors need.”
mclaren
@different church-lady:
Spoken like a true Obot — “Reality is just a phase we’re going through!”
different church-lady
@mclaren: I don’t recall addressing you.
El Tiburon
@Midnight Marauder:
Tell that to Cole. He’s the one that opened up the debate by referencing all of the ‘chicken littles’.
mclaren
And now, just what you’ve been yearning for –the final section of Obama’s speech translated into plain English!
TRANSLATION: “Now, we believe the reforms we’ve proposed to strengthen the death-grip of the medical cartels will enable us to keep these commitments to our rich doctor contributors while piling uu $500 billion in campaign donations for the Democratic party by 2023, and an additional one trillion dollars in the decade after that. And if we’re wrong, and Medicare costs rise faster than we expect, this approach will give the independent commission the authority to make additional savings by further crushing and brutalizing ordinary citizens, possibly by such measures as shooting them in the head if they get sick. Because shared sacrifices must be made, except if it costs a doctor or a hospital or a medical devicemaker money.”
TRANSLATION: “But let me be absolutely clear: I will preserve the obscene profits of these health care programs as a promise we rich folks make to each other in this society. I will not allow Medicare to become a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry, with a shrinking benefit to pay for rising costs. Instead, I’ll go along when the Republicans suggest we eliminate it entirely. I will not tell families with children who have disabilities that they have to fend for themselves: I’l force them to buy insurance they can’t afford. We will reform these programs to insure even greater monopoly for the health care cartels, but we will not abandon the fundamental commitment this country has kept for generations to enrich already wealthy doctors and make obscenely profitable hospitals even more profitable.”
TRANSLATION: “That includes, by the way, our commitment to wipe out Social Security. While Social Security is not the cause of our deficit, it faces real long-term challenges in a country that is growing older because we can’t possibly cut military spending lest we risk losing the ability to be defeated by three different third world nations of barefooted children at once. So since it’s a choice between social security and military spending, social security has to go. As I said in the State of the Union, both parties should work together now to wipe out Social Security for future generations. But we must do it quietly, on the sly, without putting at risk current retirees, because they’re the ones whom we hope to dupe into voting for us; without slashing benefits for future generations, because we’re going to start slashing benefits right now, but in stealthy ways we hope you won’t notice; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market, because the American middle class is disappearing so fast, they won’t have any retirement income, so who gives a fuck?”
TRANSLATION: “The fourth step in our approach is to reduce spending in the tax code. That’s code for “we need to cut taxes for the rich.” In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans, other than by vetoing the bill, or actually showing some balls, or sequestering the funds, or getting up off my cowardly ass and actually taking a stand. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. And I refuse to renew them again. Which is my way of saying to the Republicans — hey, sailor, you busy tonight?”
TRANSLATION: “Beyond that, the tax code is also loaded up with spending on things like itemized deductions. And while I agree with the goals of many of these deductions, like homeownership or charitable giving, we cannot ignore the fact that they provide millionaires an average tax break of $75,000 while doing nothing for the typical middle-class family that doesn’t itemize. So we need to preserve these deductions for millionaires while eliminating them for average people, because you’re not paying attention and you applaud like seals anything I say. After all, whattaya gonna do–vote for Huckabee or Palin?”
TRANSLATION: “My budget calls for limiting itemized deductions for the wealthiest 2% of Americans, since the wealthiest 2% of Americans make all their money off capital gains and this reform won’t touch them – a non-reform that won’t do a thing to reduce the deficit, but which sounds good if middle class dupes like you don’t think about what I’m saying. But to reduce the deficit, I believe we should go further. And by “we,” I mean “someone else,” because I’m not gonna stick my neck out to risk angering the billionaires. That’s why I’m calling on Congress to reform our individual tax code so that it is fair and simple – so that the amount of taxes you pay isn’t determined by what kind of accountant you can afford. I’ll stand here and caal on Congress, doing nothing myself. That’s my big “reform”: I’ll pout and make angry faces and point my finger at congress, and when the predictably do nothing, I’ll be off the hook, having risked nothing myself. I believe reform should protect the middle class, promote economic growth, and build on the Fiscal Commission’s model of reducing tax expenditures so that there is enough savings to both lower rates and lower the deficit. I also believe everyone should have a magic pony. But of course I’m not actually going to lift a finger to do anything to accomplish any of that. And as I called for in the State of the Union, we should reform our corporate tax code as well, to make our businesses and our economy more competitive. Once again, though, I won’t lift a finger to accomplish any of this. I’m just going to talk. Lots of pretty words will come out of my mouth, and you’ll applaud like trained seals, and nothing will happen — but you’ll love me because you’ll be thrilled by my empty vacuous eloquence.”
El Tiburon
@FlipYrWhig:
Then it is so agreed. Bloggers have no fucking influence here or anywhere.
So next time some Firebagger or Glennzilla makes all of you wet your pants because they something a wittle bit mean about your cool frat-buddy President, you won’t get all bent out of shape. Right?
I mean, that is the implication here, right?
Mnemosyne
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
Wait, you mean Obama cut home heating subsidies in April? Right before the coldest months of the year like June, July and August?
Yes, I can’t imagine why anyone would cut the home heating subsidy in the summer. Clearly he’s a monster who just wants people to freeze to death in the middle of July.
El Tiburon
@FlipYrWhig:
Well, you would be wrong. Does Social Security need fixing? As far as government programs go, no. It was ‘fixed’ back in the 80s. In fact, it was fixed so fucking good it has propped up every administration since Reagan.
So yes, you are buying into the Republican narrative. If you use the term “pro-life” you are buying into the narrative. If you say we as a nation are ‘broke’ you are buying into the narrative.
Mnemosyne
@El Tiburon:
You do realize that Glenn Greenwald makes lots of appearances on that there teevee box and isn’t just on the intertubes, right? As does Jane Hamsher, BTW.
But, yes, please continue pretending that their only forum is the internet so anyone who gets upset about what they said on MSNBC is overestimating the influence of pajama-clad bloggers.
'Niques
@Pamela F:
Wasn’t FDL bought by AOL? Then they’re pawns for somebody who wants to manipulate the Prof.Left the way they do the Teabaggers. They have experience in making zealots insane. Follow the money. Koch?
(sorry if this has already been said)
singfoom
@mclaren: You’re best parody troll ever.
I loved your story. 5 Stars! Do you think you could go back and do this for some of Stalin’s speeches?
I really think you could sex up his material.
lulz
Midnight Marauder
@El Tiburon:
And does that somehow make your actions less culpable?
'Niques
@FlipYrWhig: Actually, I think he’s deliberately given the politically savvy time to talk about the speech before media gets the chance to spin it.
WaterGirl
@licensed to kill time: Yes! So happy to see it again. I had left it up on an open browser window for days, until my computer crashed and then I lost it. (photo at the first link, not the second)
I am sure i am going to hell for it, but i laughed out loud again when I clicked the link just now. It’s just too perfect. This time I bookmarked the picture for future viewing pleasure.
FlipYrWhig
@El Tiburon:
Oh, Jesus Christ. There is in fact a point at which Social Security will no longer be able to pay the usual level of benefits. After that point, something like 75% of benefits could be paid out. (Here’s a meta-cite from Bob Somerby.)
There is not a point at which Social Security “goes broke,” which is the fearmongering you’re alluding to, but there is, yes, indeed, actually an issue that would have to be resolved with either a small adjustment in money coming into the system or a small adjustment in money flowing out. But there is an adjustment in order–*a small one*. That’s just plain actuarial. Not a partisan narrative.
ETA: We agree that there is no reason to prioritize taking care of this particular small problem when there are very many vaster ones to handle. It’s very near the bottom of the list of worries. But there is, in fact, an issue there. It just doesn’t come up very soon, and when it does come up, it’s not like the till is empty.
FlipYrWhig
@El Tiburon: I don’t think they’re important, no, not when it comes to what actual voters think. I don’t buy the bit that comes up from time to time around here that mean bloggers demoralized “the left” and caused the electoral losses of 2010. I do think they’re aggravating and get way too much attention. That’s what I like to mock and otherwise do my part to push back against.
El Tiburon
@FlipYrWhig:
Look, Social Security does not need fixing. Like any program, private or public, of course it needs tweaking.
I will have to change my cars oil and rotate the tires, but that don’t mean it needs fixing.
It has what, several billion in reserves? The program is solid for another 30 years. So, by you and everyone else who begins by saying, “here is how I would fix it…” is not helping. You are accepting and promoting the narrative.
El Tiburon
@Midnight Marauder:
Settle down, Francis. You are being way too melodramatic here.
My “actions less culpable?” Oh. Brother.
El Tiburon
@Mnemosyne:
Seriously? In the context of this blog and discussions regarding Hamsher and Greenwald (or someone from the Agonist) you know damn well we are talking about their blogs.
Oh, and how is it, you think, Hamsher and Greenwald got invited onto the teevee? Was it because of their winning smiles and shining personalities? It was because of their blogs.
Stay focused and looking for wiggle room.
Midnight Marauder
@El Tiburon:
This is kind of a weird response considering that you replied to a comment of mine that had nothing to really do with you.
Mnemosyne
@El Tiburon:
Your claim is that Hamsher and Greenwald have no influence because they’re “just” bloggers. I’m pointing out that they have influence beyond their blogs, like by going on TV.
IOW, they now have influence beyond just the people who read their blogs because they’re on the teevee, so pretending that no one outside of blogs has ever heard of Hamsher and Greenwald is idiotic.
Glad we can agree.
El Tiburon
@Midnight Marauder:
I’d love to hear who it had to do with. Your pronoun usage of ‘you’ that you used in a comment linked to me made me think it was about me.
FlipYrWhig
@El Tiburon:
You admitted it needs tweaking! Tweaking is a kind of fixing! I’m aghast — you’re advancing a Republican narrative! :P
The Republican narrative is that it’s “bankrupt” or “busted” or “broke” once the saved-up reserves are spent down (which was the whole point of building them up in the first place, as you and I both know).
We’re off in a direction that’s below even “semantics” at this point, so I’m just going to drop it. But we’re not disagreeing on policy and only a teeny tiny bit about rhetoric.
Wolfdaughter
@Poopyman:
Assuming that the headline wasn’t misleading, this tells me that I need not take the FireDogLake people’s word for anything.
Wolfdaughter
@mclaren:
My GOD, McLaren. That was some serious projection. You have a right to your opinion, but your “translation” is all in your head. You hate Obama, fine. But your screed is typical of people who are biased and who read their own beliefs into everything the hated one does and says.
Obama is far from perfect. But you are just plain imbalanced.
AxelFoley
@NobodySpecial:
You been around that long, huh?
Fuckin’ idiot.
AxelFoley
@Justin:
Pwn’d
Joseph Nobles
I used to lean toward the CT that mclaren was Greenwald ghosting here to punch Obots. With this Obama translation, now I’m thinking Gore Vidal.
AxelFoley
@joe from Lowell:
Pwn’d²
beatty
well I liked the speech too. I’m glad he said what he said. I’ve been bitterly disappointed in some stuff he’s done/not done. But I will vote for him again. I might also give him money if his administration knocks off quips against the professional left. I know he’s a guy who’s stood for doing things differently but I also know that he’s just using Republican memes. I don’t consider that doing anything differently. But I much prefer him to any single Republican out there.