(Ted Rall’s website)
__
Well, it made me laugh. And for those of you who are sick of Rick Santorum, Jon Chait at NYMag‘s Daily Intel has a (not the moronic troll) reality check:
Here are some things to keep in mind when assessing Rick Santorum’s chances of beating Mitt Romney. He has no pollster, no campaign headquarters, and no paid advance staff. He’s currently getting outspent on television in Michigan by a ratio of 29-1… He also failed to get his name on the ballot in such states as Virginia and Indiana. Perhaps you have heard of them…
__
As Josh Marshall put it, “running around the country in a long twilight struggle with Rick Santorum is just … how to put it? inherently demeaning and diminishing. It’s like struggling to land a one pound fish or searching for the way out of a paper bag.”
So… what non-sickening events are on the agenda?
Phil Perspective
Here are some things to keep in mind when assessing Rick Santorum’s chances of beating Mitt Romney. He has no pollster, no campaign headquarters, and no paid advance staff. He’s currently getting outspent on television in Michigan by a ratio of 29-1… He also failed to get his name on the ballot in such states as Virginia and Indiana.
And yet it’s The Frothy One that’s making the Mittster look like a chump. Doesn’t speak very well for Mitt and his sugar daddies, does it?
Pygalgia
Not sure what to say, but Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine’s endorsement of “pro-life” Santorum are the kind of words that might make the English language moot.
Linda Featheringill
So you’re betting on the not-Santorum? That’s an idea.
The idea of a President Santorum is quite frightening. On the other hand, if he honestly got elected maybe we’re lost anyway.
A respiratory bug invaded the household this afternoon and has been giving the humans a hard time. Yuck. Hope tomorrow is better.
butler
Like Mitt needs any help with that.
Canuckistani Tom
rewriting the 150 pages on my website because my site host got bought out, and no one thought it important to inform their customers that they were going to put everything on new servers.
amk
poor paul. never seems to catch a
breaklead. are his minions/bots hitting the bhong hard yet ?WyldPirate
Hmmm…from a new book “The Escape Artist”:
So he ignored Romer’s call to go for a 1.8T stimulus package and then a 1.2T and low-balled it…Sorry-ass negotiation skills plus listening to the dickweed deficit hawks like Orzag.
At least Obama seems to be learning that “earnest negotiation” with nihilistic jizzbuckets like the Rethugs is a fucking waste of time. That’s something.
beltane
Markos and Chris Bowers’ “Operation Hilarity” is the most stupid thing they’ve proposed in a long time. I am not amused.
amk
@WyldPirate: still hung up on stimulus ? pun intended.
FuriousPhil
@Pygalgia:
Maybe I don’t know enough about Dave Mustaine’s political views (I know one of the Ramones was a right-winger) but he doesn’t strike me as that stupid. He did screw up being in Metallica, I guess.
The Kossacks are split on “progressive activist voting” for Santo in the open primaries, there’s a big thread about it over there. Much wringing of appendages. Personally, I have a bushido personal code thing that prohibits me from voting for a Republican in any capacity, even my local state reps who I know personally, and aren’t really bad guys.
Soonergrunt
Watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on Netflix. Midway through season 2. It’s the best of all the Trek, and flat out some of the best SciFi period.
General Stuck
I’m tired of talking about the blood sucking republicans
Thread needs mo puppeh
Villago Delenda Est
The thing is, while Santorum has no traditional organization, this is not a traditional campaign, which drives the tradtional media observers batshit insane.
He should not be polling this well, he should be caving, but the fact is, OvenMitt may have tons of money, but OvenMitt isn’t likeable, by anyone but Mormons and members of the Thurston Howell III fan club. Santorum may be repugnant to us, but to the moral scolds who make up a substantial portion of the GOP base, he’s mana from Heaven. Literally.
There are more of the moral scolds than their are Mormons and TH III fans in the GOP primary electorate.
Michael
Nate Silver says that the fundamentals favor Obama
If you want to play with Obama’s approval rating and GDP growth by election day to see probabilities of Obama victory, click here
Villago Delenda Est
@Soonergrunt:
Ben Sisco would approve of this post, as do I.
It gets even better. Wait until the Klingons show up…
Also, too, Emil Garak is the best Trek supporting character, ever.
Pope Ratzy
Can anyone tell me why the EU is torturing the Greeks? Why not just give the banks the money directly and tell Greece to go pound sand? No, they have to screw everyone HARD and then the Greeks give the money to the banks.
Pope Ratzy
Can anyone tell me why the EU is torturing the Greeks? Why not just give the banks the money directly and tell Greece to go pound sand? No, they have to screw everyone HARD and then the Greeks give the money to the banks.
Raven
@Pope Ratzy: Because they double post on blogs.
JGabriel
@WyldPirate:
That would be Summers who ignored them. Those recommendations never made it to Obama’s desk or ear.
.
Villago Delenda Est
@Pope Ratzy:
Because they’re swarthy, lazy, drink wine and eat goat cheese, and have better beaches than the Germans.
gex
@Linda Featheringill: Can we get that bug to displace Santorum in the race? I’m guessing they at least believe in evolution.
khead
Looks like a happy puppeh…
PurpleGirl
@General Stuck: Aaaaaawwwwwwwww. Puppeh is cute.
beltane
@Pope Ratzy: I can’t even stand to read about Greece any more because rage is debilitating. It has moved beyond mere greed an rapaciousness into pure cruelty and sadism. As Pope Ratzy, you may have insight into what is motivating the Germans; I certainly don’t want to speculate.
jeff
Ted Rall cannot draw. I think if Twitter were around 20 years ago he would have found a better medium.
JGabriel
@Soonergrunt:
You might be interested in the episode essays by Zack Handlen at AV Club. He just started writing them about month ago.
.
WyldPirate
@amk:
I’m glad Obama seems to have come around. He had some shit advisers and didn’t listen to the one’s that knew what they were talking about.
Sure, he likely wouldn’t have gotten 1.8T or 1.2T, but that wasn’t the point. You go with what is needed even if it is outrageous and immpossible and then negotiate down while beating the shit out of your opponents and hanging it around their neck how wrong they were. That takes away some of the silly-assed crowing of “the stimulus didn’t work” (even though it is a lie and did). Sure, it wouldn’t have stopped the Rethug lying, but it wouldn’t have hurt at all to start higher and work down even if he stopped at what he did.
Barring some unforeseen setback this summer (can you say $4+ gas?, or a eurocrash, or some BS in the Mideast), it looks like Obama may be catching a break on the economy. That break, however, certainly can’t be attributed to a strong negotiating stance out of the gate.
The Dangerman
They aren’t voting for Santorum; they are voting for the last Not-Romney left standing. That it’s Santorum is just his good fortune; it could just as easily have been Bachmann.
Delia
@Soonergrunt:
A kindred spirit. I’m halfway through Season 3 on Amazon Prime. The only thing I keep wondering about is why Dr. Bashir is always leaving his important duties on the space station to go pilot a ship on the next gripping adventure. Aside from giving him screen time, of course. I do agree that it’s the best of the Treks.
Raven
@WyldPirate: Come on dawg, the dude was an FNG.
Linnaeus
Just had my dissertation group meeting and now it’s time to make dinner.
Trentrunner
Any frontpagers care to weigh in on Kos’ Operation Hilarity?
Rachel gave it a winky thumbs-up tonight on her show.
But they’re up in arms over at GOS about it.
Calouste
@Phil Perspective:
I’d look at it in that way as well. Rmoney has all the advantages, yet has won fewer states than S*nt*r*m, is behind in national polling and it looks like he will lose a state he has strong family ties with. Despite actually having a campaign organization and budget.
Ron
Bah, GOS is planning an “Operation Hilarity” to get progressives to vote for the frothy one in open primaries and are asking for money to help promote it. This idea is just stupid and the money used for this has a lot better uses.
dopealope
@Soonergrunt:
Totally agree.
“The Dominion” totally kick the Borg’s asses as the best Star Trek Baddies …
Canuckistani Tom
@Villago Delenda Est:
As a fan of General Martok, we may have to agree to disagree
hildebrand
I like a great many lefty political cartoonists – Ted Rall is not among them. Sarcasm, dry wit, these are good things for a cartoonist, Rall always strikes me as simply bitter. Unless you can do mad and bitter like Lewis Black (which necessitates more than just a few panels), its best not to give it a go. More often than not, I can see where he is going and why he needs to go there, but he never actually gets there.
edit: Yes, I realize I am mixing my media types.
General Stuck
LOL, must have been the white tooth fairy that done it.
Linda Featheringill
@FuriousPhil:
:-)
EIGRP
Has anyone else noticed that balloon-juice.com does not show the same front page posts as http://www.balloon-juice.com?
Right now, balloon-juice is showing Doug’s Fully Vested post at the top of the page while shows Anne’s Wednesday Evening Open Thread.
Anyone else notice this?
Eric
Martin
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think it’s different from that. I think the traditional media observers work from a basic premise that the nomination process is designed to produce a competitive general election race, and in order to have a competitive general election race you need to have at least a certain amount of money and organization on which to build a general election campaign. Further, the nominee needs to be at least in the ballpark of likable by the public, because you can’t win if the public doesn’t like them.
The problem here is that this contest is not going to lead to that result. Santorum (and everyone else) is very unpopular. Santorum has no money and no organization. NONE. And that might almost be okay if the party had his back, but they don’t. And even if we could look past ALL of that stuff and say “well, at least he’ll deliver his hugely important home state”, but Obama is leading Santorum in PA.
There is absolutely, positively NO benefit to having Santorum as the nominee. He brings no money, no organization, no electoral votes, not even a popular face. Nothing. And he’s leading in the polls and may soon be leading the race.
It’s not that Santorum is running a traditional organization, it’s that the GOP has been tasked with the equivalent of choosing their favorite fruit and selecting ‘radial tires’. It’s driving the traditional media observers batshit insane because this is effectively the political process at the primary level completely imploding – nonfunctional. It’s entertaining as all fuck, but it’s also a bit frightening. We really only get 2 people to choose from to be President, the very least the public deserves is two reasonably qualified candidates chosen for sound reasons, and that’s not likely to happen this cycle.
WyldPirate
@JGabriel:
True. My bad.
Summers was mistake in judgement number one, though and the buck stops at Obama’s desk.
Moreover, Romer sat down with Obama and briefed him prior to him taking office and told him how bad in the toliet the economy really was. Just read something about that a few days ago, but I don’t recall if anystimulus figures were mentioned. I’ll look around and see if I can resurrect that article from teh Google machine…
Bottom line, though, is that the buck stops at Obama’s desk…
Delia
@dopealope:
And of course you have the Ferengi . . .
MobiusKlein
#Operation Hilarity is a bit of a mockery – voting is not supposed to be a game.
Martin
@Soonergrunt: Yeah, that was a good series. I particularly enjoyed the season-long story arc which involved arming up for an inevitable invasion, whichever season that was.
JGabriel
@beltane:
I agree, primarily because I think the GOP will best select the craziest, and most repulsive to the American public, candidate all by themselves.
The Republican party has evolved such that ugliest on the inside Americans are their base. They don’t need our help to pick the worst candidate.
.
Frankensteinbeck
Everyone but Mitt Romney lost this race at the starting line. They’re so incompetent they don’t have campaigns. They just showed up at the debates and said ‘Hey, vote for me?’
Romney is such a weak candidate, so unlikable, so arrogant and bone-headed, so clumsy in debates and gaffe-ridden, so badly organized, that he may yet lose to these clowns. Those are some fine political skills I hope he takes to the General.
Linda Featheringill
@gex:
The bug is probably quite honest. I think its platform is “lebensraum” but hey, at least it’s an ethos.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Soonergrunt:
Its a FAAAAAAAAAKEEEEE!!!!!!!!
JGabriel
@WyldPirate:
Romer couldn’t have done that because she didn’t know. Corrected numbers that accurately described how bad the situation was didn’t become available for a year or two — no doubt due, in part, to legacy Bush hires providing the analysis at first.
There was talk of a $1.2T stimulus package, but, again, it never got to Obama. “Over A Trillion” was seen as a third rail that the GOP would use as a campaign attack slogan — which they did anyway.
.
Soonergrunt
@Villago Delenda Est: I loved Andy Robinson as Garak. I just watched the episode “Blood Oath” with the three Klingon captains from the original series and they take Jadzia with them on a revenge mission.
beltane
@JGabriel: They don’t need our help and they certainly don’t need our money in their quest to self-destruct. Also, turnout has been abysmal on their side, why on earth would we want to do anything to boost those numbers or improve their morale?
The Dangerman
@Frankensteinbeck:
Romney might get within cheating distance of Obama.
If Santorum is the nominee, the keys to the Diebold machines stay locked away.
Dennis G.
That is just pure win…
It describes Mitt Romney to a T
cheers
robertdsc-PowerBook
@Trentrunner:
Fuck that noise. I wouldn’t participate for anything. Kos is stupid for hatching this moronic idea.
barath
@beltane:
This is why I’m wondering whether this is a reverse-psychology move on the part of Markos. (Or at least if that’s how it’ll turn out.) That is, once Fox or Limbaugh get wind of it, it’ll cast some doubt on any Santorum wins leaving Romney to limp over the finish line.
boss bitch
You know Obama is doing well when people start bringing up old shit.
Frankensteinbeck
@WyldPirate:
Okay, I looked at the article. It says that the advisers worried that the stimulus was already so big it would be hard to pass were right. Aside from that, it mostly says that no matter what side of an issue you want to pick, someone in the administration supported it.
What it does not say is that offering a $1.8 trillion stimulus would have gotten us any better than we got. If anything, it suggests we’d have gotten nothing.
Chris
@Soonergrunt:
Fact.
(I’ll put in a kind word for BSG too, which is what I’m watching now, having finally broke down and started it a week or two ago).
@Villago Delenda Est:
Fact. Garak and Quark are my two favorite characters on the show, and some of the best ones in all of Trek.
@dopealope:
And another fact.
The Borg were great for what they were, but never got developed too far (grand total of six episodes) – at least not until Voyager and they kind of sucked in that. Neither thing is true of the Dominion.
ETA: and as individual baddies go, Gul Dukat’s the best one in all of Star Trek, better even than KHAAAAANN.
SiubhanDuinne
@EIGRP:
I notice it all the time. I don’t know what can be done about it, or why, so I just notice and try to move on.
General Stuck
Besides the official stim bill, Obama and dems have been chunking up any bill they could with additional stimulus dollars, not to mention all the payroll tax holiday moneys that has gone into low income folks paychecks that get spent immediately. And not letting the middle class Bush tax cuts expire added another 300 bil or so, to stay in the economy to be spent quickly as stim monies.
All of it together, likely does approach the 1.8 trillion mark. Certainly well past the original stim bill, that was heavy on re investment for research for future markets. And last months 50 thou gain in manufacturing, I would like to find out how many of those jobs come from the r and d into any number of those future markets in alt energy, med science, etc…
Soonergrunt
@Amanda in the South Bay: That episode is probably one of my top five from that whole series. Especially the wrap-around of Sisko sitting in the dark, using his log to describe what he’s done and what he’s allowed to happen. And the end where he tries so hard to justify his actions–actions that any reasonable outside viewer like us would see as absolutely necessary–and he just can’t do it. But he can live with it, because it worked, and because he has no other choice.
Very powerful scene of a man at his limits, wrestling with his conscience.
Martin
@WyldPirate:
FDR had years to watch the Depression unravel and come up with a remedy, and he still came up short in his first shot. Obama had a few months, and even though he did come up short, the US was the only economy other than China that went predominantly for stimulus rather than austerity.
If you demand nothing but perfect results, nobody can ever meet your standards, so your disappointment and arguments are useless to convince anyone around you because they have no value – you’re predestined to be disappointed no matter what, so we might as well all ignore you.
Linda Featheringill
Operation Hilarity . . .
. . makes me uneasy. I don’t know why. It’s like I fear a trap hidden there or something.
Maybe I’m an old fuddy-duddy and it’s all just good clean fun. But at any rate, I think I’ll sit this one out.
barath
@General Stuck:
The thing that I wonder about is how well things would have turned out had they gone for a “single vision” type stimulus rather than a grab-bag. It might have taken a bit longer for it to kick in – maybe a year – but it would have had much longer lasting effects. (The sort of single vision I have in mind is energy / transportation related, since that’s a key issue we’re facing: a national fully-funded electric rail system combined with enough new solar and wind power to run such a system. Combined that would have been a $1 trillion stimulus that would have powerful knock-on effects for manufacturing, for construction, for engineering firms, for clean energy, etc.)
RalfW
@JGabriel:
Yes, this. Let them be covered in the goo of their own making. No assist from liberals.
Likewise spending even one dime on this stunt is double plus stupid when there are many Dem candidates needing cash.
Make it stop. (though I won’t go to GOS to say so, I avoid that place…
Gin & Tonic
@EIGRP: Don’t see you nym here all that often, but had to tell you that I’ve been spending a lot of “quality” time recently struggling against an EIGRP problem at $DAYJOB.
WyldPirate
@JGabriel:
Here’s the article I was talking about in my respons to you at #41 above:
…and this which seems to confirm that Summer’s axed the 1.2T (or higher) suggestion by Romer:
Seems like Obama, being the sharp cookie that he is, would have remember the bleak picture that Romer painted. It would appear from the first article that Obama put political pragmatism and his cherished notion of bipartisanship with a bunch of psychopathic jackals ahead of good negotiating tactics and sensible politics.
CaseyL
@Martin:
This is an interesting take on the subject. This election is supposed to be all about The Money, with post-Citizens United making the US government truly for sale to the top bidder, with voters reduced to non-sentient larvae reacting to advertisements like so many tropisms.
I detest Santorum, and all he stands for, but if he can swipe the GOP nom from Mitt Romney, the 1%’s anointed Corporate Tool, he’ll have succeeded in doing two laudable things:
One, putting the lie to the idea that you can sell anything to (50% + 1) of the American electorate if you have enough money; and
Two, making it obvious even to the most willfully blind that the GOP belongs on the trash heap
…because I do not for one moment believe Santorum can beat Obama.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
What’s on my agenda? Cleaning out old useless crap and putting it up on eBay. I sold a couple of carburetors I hadn’t touched in 35 years. Now listed: 3 K&E catalogs that I rescued when my employers cleaned out their company libraries: 1962, 1971, 1981.
Of course, I’m blowing my earnings buying tools. Such is life.
Martin
@Linda Featheringill: I don’t care for it much myself. I’ve done this – but I voted for Orly Taitz because I couldn’t resist. But it’s clearly against the intent of the process.
That said, the process is just totally, completely fucked and our good intentions aren’t going to fix it.
schrodinger's cat
@Soonergrunt: Another DS9 fangirl here. I think the 5 episode arc at the end of season 5 is the best of the entire series. Best Trek ever, with great characters, Garak, Dukat, Weyoun, Kai-Winn, Damar come to mind. Of the main cast, I liked everyone, with exception of Jadzia, the actress was too wooden.
amk
@WyldPirate:
I’m glad you ‘approve’. I too wish that I lived in your fantasy DC world where everyone sings kumbaya to your command.
Egg Berry
@WyldPirate:
cough – bullshit -cough.
Felinious Wench
Tore something in my lower back. On muscle relaxants and Vicodin.
So what would that equate to, +13?
Martin
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: That kind of stuff might work better on Craigslist if you have a reasonably sized local population. We’ve had fantastic results selling stuff on CL, without the shipping/payment hassle or someone taking a cut of the results. It’s fairly gratifying to decide to sell something and have it gone and cash in hand 3 hours later.
Frankensteinbeck
@WyldPirate:
…you do realize that your conclusions are the exact opposite of what the article says? That the 800 billion was the biggest stimulus that could be squeaked through? And that she only proposed 1.2T in the first place? That again, your entire argument comes down to your unsupported belief that you always get more if you ask for more?
Donut
@WyldPirate
Can I get you a paper bag and a Quaalude? Jeez, dood. Chill. It’s going to be okay. President is not a job that anyone learns to do well off the bat. He is coming around. And I will take him over any Republican, full stop. And even hindsight being 20/20, I’d still vote for him over Hillary. I think the GOP shitstorm would’ve been worse with her. At least with him they had to work up to the crazy, which bought him some time. With Clinton it would’ve been 1994 all over again, forever.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
What made Dukat so great as a villain is that he was so multi-layered. He started out as your typical baddie, but there was a period where the writers sought to make him softer, to give him a sympathetic side. In one episode he laments that he’s not spending the day with his son at an amusement park, he’s chasing a rogue Tom Riker flying the Defiant around Cardassian space on behalf of the Maquis. Then he’s doting on his illegitimate half-Bajoran daughter that he had set out to kill as an embarrassment to his career.
Then he goes nuts and hops into bed with Kai Winn.
General Stuck
@barath:
I think What we need is a national effort to focus on alt energy/transportation, in something like a Manhattan Project with money as no obstacle for the effort, with the very best tech and scientists coming together. But of course, the plutocrats want none of that, that might mess with their current codlock on oil, with their GOP apostates to progress, blocking such a vision any way they can.
People think the size of the original stimulus was why the wingers hated it so much. But they hated it because Obama snuck in some sizable dollar amounts for that research, that the wingers have been blocking for years. It is also why they are harping on events like Solyndra to discredit the effort.
Martin
@WyldPirate:
Obama got the bill that Congress would pass and said at that time that they would look into additional stimulus efforts if more was needed. But he couldn’t have passed the stimulus without at least a few GOP members on board.
Linda Featheringill
@Felinious Wench:
And you’re performing neurosurgery at midnight, right?
:-)
Seriously, hope you get to feeling better.
Michael
In Obama’s defense, standard poly sci tells you that you have to pay “rent” to all the legislators at the various veto points in the process of passing a bill. So, at least according to one report, the thinking in the WH was that they request 1.2T, and then to get the bill through, everyone along the way tacks on their own private pork project here and there, eventually pumping the price tag to closer to 1.8T
Of course, standard poly sci was both exactly right and exactly wrong. All the pivot votes wanted “rent,” but they wanted it in the form of reducing the size of the bill, which is pretty counter-intuitive when you think about it. Seems a lot of congress people got it in their head that a headline proclaiming them protectors of the country’s financial future were better than brining some new infrastructure projects to their home state/district.
Of course, they were totally wrong; barely anybody outside of true political junkies remember who was responsible for trimming the size of the deficit, but we all know where unemployment and GDP stand etc.
WyldPirate
@Martin:
I don’t really give a fuck if you ignore me or not, Martin. And you didn’t, BTW.
You miss my point, though. I know good and goddamned well he wouldn’t have gotten a 1.8T stimulus through Congress. That’s not the point. My beef was with Obama’s wimp-ass style of going half-ass on everything from a negotiating standpoint for the first half of his administration. He “jewed” himself down instead of asking for the moon. He did this on multiple occasions on multiple issues. He seemingly did this, as I quoted from Schreiber’s excerpt way above, out of political pragmatism and his fucked up idea that Republicans could be negotiated with to do the best thing for the country even though they stated out of the gate that their main priority was to make him a one term President. That was fucking stupid on his part and he is extremely fortunate that the Rethug field he is facing is so goddamned pathetic.
Fortunately, he finally seems to be coming around WRT to the Republicans.
Villago Delenda Est
I should have mentioned Dukat’s endless attempts to get Kira to consider an affair with him, and of course Kira would have nothing to do with it, but Dukat never gave up trying.
cmorenc
@FuriousPhil:
Actually, the overwhelmingly prevailing opinion over in the DKos threads discussing this proposal is AGAINST this proposal as not merely a bad idea. The reasons given most often by responding commentators are: 1) the tactic requires voting for someone with such abhorrently repulsive views; 2) it will be counterproductive as well, both because it will arouse more public resentment than any tactical advantage gained; and 3)because it will give Romney a plausible excuse to dismiss a loss in Michigan.
It’s rare to see so many rotten apples being thrown at such a usually respected commentator as Chris Bowers by fellow Kossacks (in response to the diary Bowers wrote explaining and advocating the idea) but that’s exactly what’s happening.
Ken
@Frankensteinbeck:
“Or at least buy my book. If you could drive up my numbers enough so I can get a gig on Fox News, that’d be great too.
But definitely buy the book, cause I’ve spent more time setting up my book-signing tour than trying to get on the ballot in Virginia and Indiana.”
MariedeGournay
“running around the country in a long twilight struggle with Rick Santorum is just … how to put it? inherently demeaning and diminishing. It’s like struggling to land a one pound fish or searching for the way out of a paper bag”
For some reason this quote makes think we’ll find Santorum has eaten a gun in a truck-stop restroom before this is over.
Frankensteinbeck
@WyldPirate:
Your argument isn’t being ignored. We just understand that your belief that asking for more gets you more is unsupported and wrong. ‘Asking for the moon’ gets you nothing at all. The article makes it clear that even what he asked for was much harder to sell than it should have been.
Your belief that we could have gotten anything more than 800 billion is a fairy tale, a fantasy in your head. There’s no evidence to support it other than your idealized vision of haggling.
lamh35
Hmm, so Westboro Church has said they will pickett Whitney Houston’s funeral I guess outside New Hope Baptist Church.
I do NOT see that ending well for Westboro. Cause you know Jersey fans and any other will be outside that church to see the casket carried away.
My bet is that the fans of Whitney Houston will not take too kindly to Westboro.
befuggled
@EIGRP: I’ve noticed that too. I thought it was cached in my browser at first but eventually realized otherwise.
Mark S.
Today’s Moment of Zen is brought to you by Sarah Palin:
Some people think she would make a good president.
Villago Delenda Est
@lamh35:
They are, as usual, trolling for lawsuit fodder.
They’re such scum.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Trentrunner: 8 out of the 12 recommended diaries are about how bad of an idea it is. Can Markos do a Netflix and state how crappy his idea was, or will he double down on it? It’ll be fun to watch, and by fun I mean a useless distraction.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Martin: I sold two dog crates on Craigslist within a week. The carbs were from a TR-4 and the K&E stuff is for slide rule geeks — needs a bigger audience than South PA. Dunno what to do about the foosball table. I put it on CL at half the price of the others and got no bites. I think it’s landfill.
BTW, every foosball table ad says “Barely used.”!
amk
@WyldPirate: Let’s see how many more adhominem racist remarks you can make. Go…
robertdsc-PowerBook
You’re a fucking clown. GTFO.
amk
@Trentrunner: kos has gone birther style crazy ? entirely possible.
Donut
“Jewed himself down” ? Whut? That was seriously messed up, man.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mark S.:
Yes, obviously she’s referring to “our religious liberties” to ram our particular doctrinal beliefs down the throats of our fellow citizens.
That high pitched whirring sound you’re hearing? James Madison twirling at high RPM in his grave.
Villago Delenda Est
@Donut:
The only time I can recall ever hearing that particular phrase was from a Jewish fellow officer at Fort Lewis, referring to some negotiation he was involved in with an off post merchant, and I was floored by it.
WyldPirate
@Frankensteinbeck:
IT was never my contention that he would get any more than he did on the stimulus. What I had a problem with is that he didn’t try to get what was really needed–and what a number of economists said was needed at the time–in order to turn the economy around quicker. He undershot by at least 50%, and it was to little to get things turned around before he the Dems got rolled by a crop of utter lunatics in Nov. 2010 (admittedly, even a bigger stimulus might not have turned things soon enough to prevent that disaster).
I also don’t see the article the way you do at all. I see shit in there about his economic team being unable to count votes, Summers’ being a douche, discord and undercutting by Geithner and Orzag. I also see Schreiber’s conclusion at the end about Obama which I happen to agree with.
It’s clear that there are some here that tolerate no criticism of Obama. That’s fine. I’m not singing along with the BJ Obot hallelujah chorus, though.
Martin
@lamh35:
A bunch of white assholes are going to picket a funeral outside of a black church in Newark?
Well, I’m sure somewhere someone has thought up a stupider idea.
KG
It has been way too long since I’ve watched any Trek series (or movie, and I refuse to acknowledge the reboot), to give a definitive position beyond the awesomeness of Quark and Worf
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Martin: Markos I believe wins that award today.
amk
@WyldPirate:
yeah, when posting offensive remarks while trying to peddle unrealistic fireabagger talking points would easily do, why sing kumbaya ?
JoyfulA
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: For stuff you can’t sell and want to get rid of, instead of a landfill, try FreeCycle.org. Pick your closest location from the website, and then list your item to give it away; then listmates contact you about getting it. People will come to your house and carry away the stuff, such as 100 used socks, an old encyclopedia, an elderly prom gown, a couple of hundred books, a screen door, a weightlifting bench—all stuff I’ve given away.
pragmatism
@Linda Featheringill: Do not want operation hilarity. That’s the best idea those two could muster? Don’t race to the bottom on tactics, people.
slightly-peeved
The Democratic party’s history on healthcare, before the ACA, was repeated instances of asking for everything and getting nothing. First Ted Kennedy, then Clinton.
Obama’s got two not-as-good-as-we-might-have-liked-but-good-all-the-same results in his first term, and is in a strong position leading into the election. Maybe he knows what he’s doing.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@KG: The reboot was really good. It’s easily one of my favorites of the movies. And Karl Urban has been playing Bones in every movie he’s been in, he just needed the stories to catch up.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@slightly-peeved: You missed Truman.
Martin
@WyldPirate:
You don’t know that. What you’re pissed about is that he didn’t deliver a public narrative to that effect. You don’t fucking care about the result, you just want someone to jerk you off.
And you’ll find a lot of us really hate that trait among Democrats, the ‘kill the bill’ brigade that didn’t fucking care if we got any form of HCR at all, they just wanted their own ideology validated and fuck anyone that might have benefitted – they were grunts to be sacrificed for their little ideological war.
So yeah, in the 4 weeks Obama had between getting into office and getting a bill passed and money spent, I’m sorry he didn’t find time to praise you for cleaning your plate and hand you a cookie. 150,000 people a week were losing their jobs, but yeah, your feelings were clearly more important.
patrick II
Rachel Maddow did an interesting story on the Maine republican primary tonight. Mitt Romney may not have won after all. Votes were evidently deliberately miscounted by the central republican party. Local precincts have complained. The complaining localities have had their votes zeroed out. The vote was also incomplete due to a forcasted snowstorm which caused one district to delay its vote until this week. So, part of the Maine vote was miscounted, and part of it is not finished.
That is two states, Iowa and Maine, where the central headquarters for the republican party misreported vote counts. Both in favor of Romney. Iowa changed its winner. Maine is pretending it is over.
Soonergrunt
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): I thought the reboot was brilliant myself, and I’m looking forward to the next movie.
Watching the episode “The Maquis, Pt. 2”
WyldPirate
@Donut:
Ironic considering all the bashing religion on this blog. And it likely wouldn’t have drawn a blink from anyone if it were used in connection with criticism of a Republican; but use it criticizing Obama and it’s automatically a heinous crime.
@Villago Delenda Est:
Try the Google machine. 11,000 hits….
Gin & Tonic
@lamh35: Wow. White asshole out-of-towners going to Newark to be assholes. What could possibly go wrong?
OzoneR
@WyldPirate:
HO
LE
SHIT
OzoneR
@WyldPirate:
Oh I missed the part of the service at Temple Beth Shalom where being cheap was God wanted of the Jews.
Hill Dweller
What is up with The Colbert Report? They’ve suddenly shut down production for today and tomorrow, and are airing reruns.
slightly-peeved
@102: So you don’t think he could have got more, but you think he should have tried to get more? So to you, the definition of a ‘good negotiator’ is someone who cares more about how other people perceive the deal than the deal itself. Right.
Donut
You are pretty fucked in the head , Wyld Pirate. And boring.
Mark S.
@WyldPirate:
I doubt it. Just don’t use that term.
pseudonymous in nc
@Mark S.: That would be a mistake. Also too, that.
freelancer
@WyldPirate:
The bashing of religion, if it exists, is against imposing, dogmatic thinking and not a putrid racial slur based in ignorant stereotype. And no, if you had referred to a Republican doing anything as “Jewing themselves down”, you would have gotten the same reaction of disgust and incredulity that you could be so gob-smackingly stupid and out of touch.
But make things even here and just call me an Obamabot.
WyldPirate
@Martin:
Ok. All the articles you read saying otherwise are wrong, Martin. Ok. You know that he did. I suppose he told you in a fucking private meeting that he DID try.
Bullshit. You don’t know me from Adam. I was in terror of losing my job in Feb-June of 2009 because it was announced that the axe was going to fall. It fell hard and it fell on me, you fucking asshole.
And thanks for the wank you sanctimonious dickhead;, it felt good. Now go get something and wipe the jizz out of your eyes as it’s making you cranky.
Donut
Do you even know any Jewish people on anything but a superficial level? Have you any clue what you are saying?
Chris
@slightly-peeved:
As I recall, Ted Kennedy had an opportunity under Nixon for a plan that included a public option, and said no because he was hoping to get more. :(
amk
@WyldPirate: You’re getting there dood. Keep at it.
Martin
@WyldPirate:
I never said that either. But since you seem to admit that he likely couldn’t have gotten much more stimulus than he did, you’re not complaining about him making a stronger case to Congress, rather you want him to make a stronger case to you.
Ah, so because he couldn’t save your job, you’re pissed, and wonder why he didn’t take a few more months negotiating for no gain other than to take few hundred thousand other people down with you. Well, maybe that’d make you feel like less of a loser, but I suspect most of us would have sided with the jobs not lost than your personal self-esteem.
Frankensteinbeck
@WyldPirate:
Wait. So you admit that he got the biggest stimulus possible, but you’re mad at him for not asking for a bigger stimulus that he couldn’t have gotten and might have sunk what he did get?
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman:
Well, when I said I was floored by it, it seemed to me to be an offensive phrase I’d never dream of using. It was compounded by who I heard it from. Not that it justifies it in any way, I share your reaction to it.
Alison
@WyldPirate: Take it from this Jew that using that term against ANYONE will piss me right the fuck off. Don’t even try to play that fucking “you’re only mad about it in THIS CASE” card. It has nothing to do with the religion anyway, you idiot. It’s a slur, out and out, connected to stereotypes about Jews as a people, not about Judaism as a belief system or whatever.
MikeJ
I’m waiting for WP to tell us how Obama killed our savior. Oh wait, that’s the argument he’s making with stimulus.
Alison
@efgoldman: You as well. I’ve had that shit said to my face. Fuck anyone who tries excusing it.
WyldPirate
@Mark S.:
I won’t use it again, but surely you’re not serious given all of the shit that is spouted about religion here WRT to Christians.
As a disclaimer, I’m atheist and don’t mind the Christian bashing at all, but I do want to make sure that I get this straight. It’s fine to bash the fuck out of Christians of all persuasions, and have a big cheer-leading fest when Cole does it with hundreds of rah-rah comments from the Obot peanut brigade, but it is a mortal sin when it is clearly used to describe a bargaining tactic.
Check. Got it. No fucking hypocrisy here at BJ. Clear as a bell.
With that, my apologies to the people–particularly to those of the Jewish faith– that I offended. I didn’t intend to offend you and I’m sorry that I did.
Suffern ACE
@Frankensteinbeck: Let alone there was very little bubbling up from the left as to what to spend the money on. Stuff I suppose. Green Jobs, trains and rural broadband! And after that, who cares! It’s all Stimulus which we NEED! But I HATE “SHOVEL READY” because it is not visionary enough.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@JoyfulA: Thanks, Freecyle’s a good suggestion. I hate putting perfectly good stuff out on the curb.
freelancer
This…
…followed by this…
…renders your apology hollow and reveals you’ve missed the point entirely. Amazing what you seem to do to people by opening your mouth the minimum amount. Do you get punched in the face on a daily basis? Because if you’re rhetoric IRL at all matches what you scribble out here, I imagine you must be a very bruised individual.
Cassidy
And Wyldbigot loves pie now. Have fun with your contortions son. I hope you find comfort in knowing that your use of slurs and attempts to justify them would fit right in with any skinhead/neo-nazi forum. Fuckin’ cowardly little douchebag needs his ass kicked.
Villago Delenda Est
@WyldPirate:
I’ve never had a Jew try to ram any of their beliefs or doctrines down my throat.
I can’t say that for Christians, especially fundigelicals and the red beanie brigade.
All of whom can go DIAF.
WyldPirate
@efgoldman:
Ok, so the post you linked back to of mine was a reply to donut. Are you donut, efgoldman or both? I ask because I don’t remember replying to you in this thread and I frankly can’t tell when people use two different handles.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Suffern ACE: I work at an engineering company. One of our bosses scoffed at “shovel ready”. He sez: You know what it means? You’ll be driving 2 inches closer to God.
The only shovel-ready project is repaving, and by God I saw a hell of a lot of that.
Did it put any engineers to work? No. Did it give more than a handful of contractors any work? No. Did it bring any long-lasting stimulus to the economy? No.
Was it a stupid phrase and a stupid idea? From my perspective, and our long-term need to change the transportation system, hell yes, it was a stupid idea.
Cassidy
@WyldPirate:
Ahhhh sheeet! When you refresh the page it changes the phrase. How nifty is that.
Wee Bey
@WyldPirate:
I know you’re a bigot. I know you’re not a liberal.
I know those things.
kideni
Politico so wanted to make Obama into a union tool that they ran a story about how, at the stage in Milwaukee where he was speaking today, the White House hung the flag for “the local union, Wisconsin 1848” alongside the stars and stripes. That flag is the state flag (WI became a state in 1848). Idiots. They quickly pulled the story, but Google cache preserves it for our amusement. (via)
WyldPirate
@efgoldman:
Ok. I see your post up thread. I hadn’t read it and you’re right, there were better terms I could have used. I didn’t. It was a mistake.
I still stand by my point that it is hypocritical for a lot of people who got their panties bunched up in their ass-crack who I have seen write far worse things about many groups on many occasions multiple times per day.
dead existentialist
Pffft. Wyldpirate is not only wild, she is OUTRAGEOUS! Give a grrl a break, peoples.
Alison
@WyldPirate: Okay, let me try this.
When people here “bash” Christians, what I see is people who are angry, offended, hurt, damaged by ACTUAL THINGS that Christians have done through or because of their faith. Things like letting gay kids get bullied because they have to be neutral, or screaming epithets at women going into PP clinics, or trying to pass laws against building mosques or teaching evolution. We are disgusted by the things they say and do, which they dress up as religious freedom or whatnot. We are ticked off by their demands for their religion to be treated as the law of the land and and their insistence that everyone should live according to their chosen dogma.
Again…the “bashing” is against the actual actions, deeds, words, laws, etc.
“Jew him down” has NOTHING TO DO with the actual actions, deeds, words, etc of Jews. It is a slur based on a nasty caricature of the Jewish person as a greedy, conniving, miserly, penny-pinching, lying thief. It takes someone’s identity and turns simply the fact of that identity into a Bad Thing. It goes all the way back to the days when Jews were the moneylenders/bankers/whatever because it was seen as a dirty business, and thus fitting for those awful Jews, and entirely beneath the Good People.
Do you even get this? Do you see how it’s different to rag on a group of people for what they do, versus ragging on another group for who they are perceived to be, based in nothing but bigotry and hate? Do you want to connect yourself to the latter? If so, go right ahead, but I’ll call you a fucking bigot and you can STFU with your whining.
Donut
Goldman, am I you? You kids and your internets handles are so confusing! In my day we used CB radios, and had names like Boss Mustache and Luxury Model. Get off my lawn!
Cassidy
@Alison: The little shitstain gets it. Now it just wants to pretend it had a higbrow reason for using it.
SIA
@General Stuck: You may not see this, but I have to say this is the CUTEST Charlie pic EVAH
Alison
@efgoldman: Ugh, sorry to hear about that. Thankfully I didn’t get it from family, though I know my dad’s dad was, let’s say, not overly enthused that his son married a Jewish woman and that two of his three grandchildren identify as Jews. He was at least civil enough to keep it to himself…99.9% at least. (I one time caught him giving some weird side-eye to my Star of David necklace…I chose it ignore it.)
General Stuck
@SIA:
I did see it. Charlie waves a paw in appreciation.
CaseyL
It’s getting so that I scroll past more than half the posts sometimes, when a troll comes by and people can’t resist engaging with it.
Re Trek: I love (mostly) all things Star Trek. (Exceptions: Voyager, when I couldn’t make it through the first season; Enterprise, when I couldn’t make it through the first episode; and ST V).
FTR,I loved the reboot. I wasn’t planning to see it. When I heard they were making a “prequel,” focusing on Starfleet Academy, I threw up a little in my mouth. That might be Lucas’ fault, since the prequel Star Wars movies were gangrenously bad. I paid no attention to news about the new movie (except to note that Zachary Quinto did have absolutely the right look for a young Spock), and thought about it not at all.
Then I was in a theater for some other movie, and saw a trailer for the reboot. It just blew me away. I told my friends about it, said “Damn: I wasn’t going to watch the thing, and now I have to.” And when I did, I was totally blown away all over again. I thought creating a new timeline was an absolutely brilliant way of opening up a whole new universe of storytelling.
The people making the new Trek take it seriously in a good way: they didn’t hurry to get out a sequel, but waited until they had a good story and script and production personnel. I’ll be eagerly curious to see if they can pull off another stunner. I’m old enough to have seen TOS when it first aired: one way or another, Star Trek has been a major player in my personal universe very nearly all my life. I’d be very happy to see the franchise continue for the next few decades. It’s one of the few hopeful future visions we have, after all!
WyldPirate
@Villago Delenda Est:
Perhaps you haven’t lived in the right place. Perhaps you should go ask some Palestinians how they liked getting their land taken from them and dumped on the West Bank. But maybe being homeless is not as bad as chewing on some bullshit beliefs about a magical cloud riding Sky Daddy (that’s acceptable here at BJ, right?)
As to the rest of your comments, I agree.
Danny
My non-sickening event is the New York Times doing pretty decent reporting on climate change and the Heartland Foundation document leak. This part is especially decent:
So maybe Brisbane decided that a truth vigilante is a pretty cool guy after all?
Suffern ACE
@WyldPirate: I don’t even think you’re using the term right. If you’re going to use the term and get the rightfully deserved blowback, use it correctly! Even slurs have precise meanings.
MikeJ
@CaseyL: The only way to beat the Kobayashi Balloon is to reprogram it so that wyldpirate doesn’t show up.
CaseyL
@MikeJ: The only way to win is not to play.
Comrade Mary
@WyldPirate:
You are completely wrong. It’s a foul thing to say about anyone, not because we like or don’t like the ostensible target, but because it’s an ugly insult to Jews.
If you can’t see right now that this is something you should walk right back and apologize about, consider turning in and looking at this thread tomorrow.
You’ve gotten use to a lot of invective back and forth on this blog, but earlier in this thread, and in some other threads, I’ve seen you and others actually start talking to each other with some respect. The latest part of this thread is not turning out the same way, and it has little to do with opposing views of the stimulus and Obama, but your choice not to reconsider your choice of words.
freelancer
@MikeJ:
I’m not even a trekkie and that made me laugh.
different-church-lady
@WyldPirate: You really just can’t help it, can you?
Alison
@WyldPirate: Oh for the fucking love of God.
So the actions of a group of hard-line assholes – assholes the majority of Jews in this and other countries disagree with sharply – in another country justifies your use of a slur against an entire people? Who the fuck are you, Pamela Geller?
WyldPirate
@Alison:
To answer your question, yes, I get it.
But this is interesting:
Do you not “get” that there are actual Christians that are fine people and that no distinction is made in the actual bashing here? Do you not get how caricatures come to be in the first place?
Chris
@CaseyL:
A strange game.
How about a nice game of chess?
Donut
Yo, Pirate, my advice is stop digging when you’re in a hole. Also, too, you need to bone up on the differences between religious Jews and ethnic Jews, and also apparently you need some understanding they American Jews and Israeli Jews are not necessarily as one and completely in lock step.
Your brush needs to be a bit less broad, maestro. I’m out.
catpal
@JGabriel: it is tempting because moving ahole Santorum to the top would give the RNC and Karl Rove a stroke.
so tempting.
Alison
@WyldPirate:
I have very often seen people, on this blog, make a point to note that not all Christians are assholes, that there are liberal Christians who are working for social justice and are warm, welcoming, loving people, that it’s a shame they don’t have as big a platform as the fundie assholes who share their pews, as it were. And again, it’s one thing to get angry about ACTUAL ACTIONS and maybe dash off a “fucking Christians” comment because of it. It’s another thing to use someone’s identity itself as a nasty, hateful slur.
hamletta
Ted Rall can suck my dick.
I will now read the comments.
Suffern ACE
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: I’m not disagreeing. But the concept was actually that state and local governments had not been spending money on infrastructure projects for the past 20 years. The belief was that they were at least planning to spend money. You know, they had plans to build an aquarium – or public golf course – had the plans ready – just didn’t have the funding. Made sense. While you didn’t need to hire engineers, we needed jobs now. Not in the 10 years it takes to get a project through planning and zoning and whatnot.
Apparently, our state and local governments aren’t very creative, and didn’t have a lot of things laying around that could be started quickly. Or…when they were creative at all, they got ridiculed as pork. I would have liked the president to say when the aquarium issue came up, something like “I like that Idea. In Fact, I have launched today the aquarium initiative such that by 2015, 80% of all children will live within 50 miles of a safe and affordable public aquarium.” But I can understand why that didn’t happen.
freelancer
@hamletta:
Oh, Dear.
WyldPirate
@Comrade Mary:
I did apologize upthread. I am sorry I said it and I won’t use it again. Some people won’t accept my apology. That’s fine as that is their choice.
I was getting piled on early on just from the criticism of Obama as per usual. There are some here–almost always the same ones– when a single sentence critical of Obama is written who show up in droves every time. They’re like cockroaches who come out of the cracks in the baseboard when the lights are flicked off.
Comrade Mary
Aaaaand for some reason my edit to my last comment wasn’t saved. FYWP.
WyldPirate, I can see that you apologized and are actually discussing this issue with others. Yeah, when people get upset, decent, liberal Christians may sometimes seem to be slapped with the same broad brush. But theses discussions are about the worst of religion and how it hurts people. When you’re in the middle of an important topic like that, things can sometimes slop over the sides.
One difference between that kind of talk and the startling use of your metaphor for bargaining was that we were not talking about religion at all.
*sigh* I need to go to bed. Been up way too last several nights running this week.
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
So using an ethnic slur that was used to justify hundreds of years of discrimination against Jews is A-OK because nowadays sometimes people say harsh things about Christians, too?
catpal
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: if in ok condition, please consider Donate to Goodwill, church group, or Org than can use Recreation items.
Freecycle is a great idea, many non-profits collect needed items from there.
WyldPirate
@Donut:
I understand that there is a difference and I understand that not all American Jews and Israeli Jews are not in lock-step. Some are, though (AEI and I am sure many others not affiliated with them). That wasn’t the point that I was trying to make as I am sure you know.
OTherwise, probably good advice WRT to the brush.
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
I still find it hard to believe that you had no idea that the term “Jewed” is offensive. In 2012. Seriously. It’s not like you can claim it was some kind of archaic term whose origins you didn’t know — the word “Jew” is right there at the front.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Suffern ACE:
I see your point. But the reality is that there aren’t plans on the shelf ready to go. States and locals don’t commit to the engineering, design, and permitting for a project if they don’t have the money in the Capital Improvement Plan to do the construction.
Design work has a shelf life. Easements, agreements from landowners, and environmental permit conditions change over time, and those are all dependent on the plans. No prudent government agency is going to spend the thousands of dollars it takes to line all that up without the construction money already in hand.
Hence, repaving.
kimp
Wll, we could have fixed some bridges that were falling down, but that would be wasteful.
dead existentialist
@Suffern ACE:
Goodness sakes, that’s how I remember it. Thanks for the reminder. The stimulus was “shovel ready” because it funded the old wish list of local communities who wanted to, but were financially unable to, get these things done, especially in the sharp down-turn of the economy circa 2009.
In the boom economy of the aughts, a lot of communities were thinking that it’d be great to do this or that in the next few years, and they were actually planning for it, but then the bubble burst and they were fucked.
Along comes the federal gov. with some scratch, and suddenly there’s a wide range of possibilities that the local economy wasn’t capable of providing for up to that point. Ba-da-bing! Stabilization of the local economy! Aquariums and golf courses and paved roads, oh my! And jobs that were about to go by the wayside are suddenly saved.
While we are taught that all politics is local, we forget that the same is true of economics. The sad truth of the affair is that we don’t understand that the two, politics and economics, are intertwined and all that actually matter.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Suffern ACE: Oops, one more thing, and you can consider my personal bias on this:
Engineers are jobs too. Committing to planning and design of projects that take us out of oil dependent transportation would also have created (or kept from layoffs) a lot of jobs. As would committing serious money to cleaning up streams and waterways.
slightly_peeved
@WyldPirate:
… if this was a problem for you, why exactly did you post it?
… and then compare your critics to cockroaches?
If you’re genuinely surprised why the pile-on is happening, it may be something to do with three people all making points similar to @Frankensteinbeck.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@catpal: Well yes, Goodwill of course. Landfill was a bit of hyperbole. Sorry ’bout that, Chief.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@kimp: Again, fixing bridges requires assessment, survey, design, plans, and permits before construction. Fixing bridges is not shovel-ready. There are damn few things that are.
Martin
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
Well, that depends on the city. We had plans on the shelf ready to go, waiting for the next year’s tax revenue to show up and for the last projects to finish so the cash-flow would work out. The stimulus arrived and we accelerated two street grade rail crossing projects, and now have two underpasses, part of our park project, expanding the bike trail system, and some maintenance and improvements to our flood control system.
Not every city fails to plan.
Donut
You know what, Wyld Pirate, good on you for what reads like a sincere apology. I just hope you do get it – the way you utilized the root word Jew was as an ethnic slur. I do not see people on this blog using ethnic slurs very much. People do come down hard on Christians, and that is also a fair point to consider in another context,, but we don’t need to devolve into a “both sides do it” argument.
WyldPirate
@Alison:
This seems to be a distinction with little difference.
Say for instance that one had a miserly landlord that was Christian and started referring to all Christians as “fucking Christians” because of one specific Christian’s actions?
There are thieves and murderers of all faiths just as there are misers of all faiths. Of course that doesn’t make all of people of an individual faith thieves, murderers and misers. Forgetting to make the distinction is using the broad brush to tar everyone of that group unless a specific distinction is made about the individual or subgroup. This is one of the things that always torqued me off about Dennis G’s rants about Southerners even though he is a fine writer that often makes very good points despite the fact that his needle gets stuck on the album at times.
All that said, I’m sorry that I used the word I did. I wasn’t intentionally trying to denigrate Jews when I said it and there were a many other words that wouldn’t have been offensive to any group except those here that are bent on attacking anyone that criticizes President
Immaculate PerfectionObama.Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Martin: Congrats. Good for you and your city, and I’m glad to hear it. I haven’t seen it that often.
When you accelerated your projects, were the design plans done, stamped and sealed, so all you had to do was hire the contractor? That’s what I define as shovel-ready.
If you had the planning done, concepts done, estimates prepared, CIP programmed, but waiting for the funding for final design and construction, that’s not what I call shovel-ready, and not what I saw come out of the stimulus.
Just by way of definition.
David Koch
If Dog-on-Roof loses to Man-on-Dog under theses circumstances, the Mittens becomes the worst candidate in US history.
Warren Terra
Wyldpirate, just adding my two cents to the general conversation: Thanks for the vision of casual racism most of us thought largely relegated to a bygone decade – heck, to a bygone century – and you are most cordially invited to Go Die In A Fire.
PS It’s somehow especially appropriate that you say:
I say appropriate because no-one could mistake it for sincerity. Firstly because no-one but an asshole apologizes “to those they offended” – a sensible person apologizes for giving offense. So that they’re not placing the blame on those who were so crass as to take offense. Secondly because the thread is full of Jewish Atheists trying to explain that you were being an ass, and yet you still fail to grasp this fundamental concept and single out those offended people “of the Jewish faith”. Fnck you very much; I hope that if you lack the good sense to stay away you get the banning you deserve (and where are the front-pagers?).
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: Gobsmacked, am I.
@Cassidy: Lemme know when there’s sweet potato. I’m a huge sucker for sweet potato pie.
Mark S.
@David Koch:
Isn’t he already? It’s like watching Mr. Burns run for president.
Cain
@patrick II:
What. The. Fuck. These people rail against voter fraud and their own party is doing it. If I was a Republican and I voted for a non-Romney I would be fucking pissed. If I was the democratic party, I would be making a fucking attack ad. Hit them hard. Show them what their party is doing with their votes.
What the fuck is our national democratic party doing?
FlipYrWhig
Why does every Ted Rall cartoon look like he carved the figures out of a potato, inked them with his eyes closed, and then stamped them lackadaisically in the vicinity of the four panels?
Suffern ACE
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: It was coincidence more than shrewd good government planning. I agree. At the same time, I don’t think we are familiar with the planning process. I mean, I have been living in this area for 15 years and throughout that time, people have been “studying” the prospects of replacing two major bridges. Every two years, a study and a report. Report always concludes “replace those bridges or they’ll fall down.” I think people were thinking that one could accelerate those projects with “generic bridge plan no. 2b”, and it doesn’t work that way.
We’re back then to the complaint that “the stimulus was too small” while at the same time “there wasn’t anything to spend it on to make it bigger” in 2009 or 2010.
Warren Terra
@Mnemosyne:
I have met seemingly sensible people who don’t already know, and refuse initially to believe, the origins of the offensive term “to Gyp”, perhaps because it’s not quite the same word and perhaps because I can’t say I’ve encountered much use of the word “Gypsy” (and when I’ve encountered discussion of the Romani, it’s almost never in an American context). I’ve never encountered anyone who didn’t make the connection between “Jew” and “Jew” before.
@WyldPirate:
Throw in a couple millenia of propaganda about miserly Christians, innumerable acts of injustice and industrialized slaughter, and a more specific use than “fucking Christians”, and then you’ll have a closer parallel. I’ll wait here.
I don’t think Dennis does rant about “Southerners”. I think Dennis rants about racists, often in the South but also often not, and draws connections between them and the legacy of the Confederacy. Does Dennis even use the term “Southerner” as anything other than a descriptive adjective to denote a Southern origin?
I say again: where are the front pagers, one of whom she’s now slurred by name, and what is this unrecalcitrant bigot still doing in this thread?
hamletta
All the blah, blah, blah about the Santorum is quite lovely, but he doesn’t have a real presidential-level campaign organization.
Y’all saw his latest ad where a faux-Romney is paint-ballin’ him with something that looks like santorum-the-substance.
I admire his attempt to reclaim his family name, but it’s filled with pellets of fail. Lube-y, shitty, frothy fail.
I love this. The GOP is going to be stuck with the Romney-Bot. And he’s gonna be stuck fulla holes like a Saint Sebastian pincushion.
Suffern ACE
@Cain: What they are doing isn’t exactly voter fraud. It is voter suppression. It shows how fair they are. it takes courage to suppress the votes of your own party.
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
Yes, let’s look at a theoretical notion of something that could potentially happen rather than the long history of anti-Semitism and discrimination that made what you said offensive.
And I really hope you’re not heading for the “but some Jews actually were misers, so it’s okay to call it ‘Jewing it down’!” line of defense. Defending your ethnic slur as being totally true is a continuation of the offense, not an actual defense.
Cain
@WyldPirate:
Please. When digging a hole one should just stop and not dig deeper.
Mark S.
@FlipYrWhig:
Cause he’s a shitty cartoonist?
Actually, looking at it again, is the person on the left supposed to be a guy or a girl? The two panels on the left look more like a woman and the two on the right look more like a dude.
Martin
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
For all but one of the underpass projects, the design plans were done and signed off on. I think the one underpass project was already in bidding. The others not yet because we were only waiting for tax and other revenue to arrive. The city had planned on getting some of that revenue from selling off a parcel of land in 2008 to a developer for housing (still intends to do that) but the housing downturn delayed that.
The other underpass project was just about to go into final planning in anticipation of the first one getting underway, so it’d fall in your second category, and my understanding is that they accelerated the project considerably due to a number of factors (such at the 2008 high speed rail bond measure appearing likely to pass) so that it was even further along than it might have been.
Maybe what makes us an outlier is the we were growing into 2008 and have grown since. Our housing prices are down a bit, but not that much, and because we more-or-less leaned into the recession instead of going into full austerity mode, the city remained desirable. We’ve had a nonstop pipeline of infrastructure projects since the early 70s and that’s planned to continue for another 20 years. I don’t think most cities have a culture of planning like this – they tend to be much more reactionary. A shame really, there should always be something in the queue.
amk
@patrick II: what ? jeebuz ? again ? So did that loony old guy win ME ?
thalarctos
@Yutsano: Hi, Yutsano! I asked on the other open thread last night whether the Seattle meetup was still on for this weekend, or whether y’all had rescheduled, but I think I had missed you already.
Suffern ACE
@Mark S.: Because he changes earrings between sentences.
Just Some Fuckhead
@CaseyL:
It’s like that movie where Groundhog Day keeps happening over and over; can’t remember the title. Back in the summer, I went on vacation, with limited access to the intertoobz. When I left, there was one of these threads going on. When I got back, there was this exact same argument going on in an entirely different thread.
And the exact same conversation (for lack of a better word) has been going on here now, for what, three years? The same fucking retards saying the same stupid shit back and forth LIKE THEY NEVER JUST FUCKING SAID IT TWICE A WEEK FOR THREE YEARS. Followed nearly every time by the same pedantic insults (racist!, pedophile!, whatever!)
Christ, do any of you awful human beings have the teensiest bit of self-awareness?
eemom
I have just discovered a fun new game where you start reading comments at the bottom of the thread and work your way upward, and whoever can figure out what’s going on in the lowest number of comments wins.
I guessed that Wyld used a disgusting antisemitic slur to make some half-assed “point” and is too stupid and/or obtuse to acknowledge that’s what he did in 15 comments. Any challengers?
FlipYrWhig
@Mark S.: I don’t even get why that’s the punchline. Because even his rebellion is commodified? Wouldn’t something like “Good thing that counts as a preexisting condition” be truer to the premise? And who’s the other guy? It doesn’t have the structure of comedy. It’s just irritation in four panels.
Villago Delenda Est
@amk:
The thing is, we don’t know, because the Maine GOP basically shut down the straw poll before the loony old guy could be declared the upset winner.
Also, keep in mind that the straw poll means nothing in regard to the nomination process itself. After the straw poll, the actual delegates in each precinct are selected, who go on to a county convention, where they select more delegates to the state convention, where the delegates to the national convention are selected. How that turns out has nothing at all to do with the straw poll. The Paulistas are attempting to game the system with ‘stealth’ delegates who might be pledged to Romney or some other candidate for the first ballot, but who will line up for Paul on subsequent ballots. They’re attempting this in every caucus state, knowing that the actual delegates are chosen through a more elaborate and time consuming process than the straw poll.
They’re counting on their dedication and fanaticism carrying them through to actual delegate power over the less dedicated reps of the other candidates.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@eemom: That, or anti-Semitic.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Fuckie! Is THAT why you don’t luvs us anymore? : (
Suffern ACE
@Just Some Fuckhead: It’s that hole in my heart that hasn’t healed since you left. I am aware of that every day.
Yutsano
@thalarctos: I’m actually good with a re-schedule. I’m sick as a dog with no immediate recovery in sight plus I’m gonna be swamped this weekend. I might have to run out of town also.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
um, Groundhog Day.
middlewest
WyldPirate has tipped his hand so many times; I’m confused by why people still fall for him.
Martin
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, what’s cool is that just a month and a half into 2012, the GOP has managed to demonstrate now in 4 separate ways that election fraud does not happen by voters, but by the voter handlers:
1) Iowa GOP caucus fuckup
2) NH James O’Keefe vote fraud operation busted
3) Indiana GOP Sec State indicted on 6 counts of voter fraud
4) Main GOP caucus fuckup
How many more examples do you think they’ll grace us with in the 9 remaining months?
amk
@Villago Delenda Est: The whole thingy is fucked up ‘democracy’ for sheeple, ain’t it ?
Redshift
Here’s the thing I’m never clear on, though. That description applies exactly to the Virginia Democratic delegate selection process, with one addition. There’s a primary (instead of a caucus straw poll) which determines the number of delegates each candidate gets in each congressional district. So even though the specific delegates are undetermined until the district and state conventions (some at each), who they’re pledged to on the first ballot is determined by the primary.
So I’m always a little suspicious of a description that says a vote doesn’t matter because “after the straw poll, the actual delegates in each precinct are selected,” because it tells me nothing about how they’re selected, and it doesn’t inherently mean that the initial caucus/primary doesn’t have any effect. Maybe it’s true, but there’s still some process by which delegates are pledged to candidates, and I’d like to know what that is before I accept that the caucus can be dismissed entirely.
WyldPirate
@Mnemosyne:
Learn to use Google advanced search, Mnemosyne, and try a few “slurs” in combination with “evangelicals”, “Christians”, “fundies”, “white-middle class” “old white people” and the like. Then get back to me. It will only take a few weeks for you to read them all.
Then get back to me and try to explain with a straight face that there is not hate carelessly slung here every day by posters.
Redshift
@Martin: They’re reminding me more of the Know-Nothings every month.
(I really need to read up on that period of history so I can back up that statement — so far it’s just based on knowing that the Know-Nothings were so corrupt and incapable of doing anything right that the portion of the construction on the Washington Monument that was done while they were in power had to be torn down and done over.)
The prophet Nostradumbass
Shorter WyldPirate: “I know you are, but what am I?”
amk
twitter hacks into your address book and stores the data in their servers. You’ve been warned.
WyldPirate
@Warren Terra:
I apologized and I sincerely meant it. I really don’t give a fuck if you liked the way I phrased my apology or not. I have said multiple times that I used an inappropriate phrase. There is little else I can do to undo what was said and I’m certainly not going to use you’re idiotic phrasing.
As to “no-one could mistake it as a sincere apology”, go look at @Donut and @Comrade Mary.
Hyperbole much? There is exactly one person on this thread–efgoldman—that made that claim. I will admit that I don’t keep a handy list of all the religious persuasions of the posters on this board so I am incapable of associating a particular poster with being an atheist that was once a practitioner of any particular religion. Maybe you do, but you sure as fuck must lead a miserable life if you’re that anal retentive. Just so you don’t get more upset worrying about my “phrasing”, why don’t you shove your head back up your ass so you feel more at home?
Martin
@Redshift:
The problem is that we’ve gotten used to the primary process, where the results are binding, which means that you have a district which votes for Romney, and then someone from that district is chosen/volunteers to go to the state to say “Hey, we voted for Romney” and they’re not allowed to vote for anyone else, because all they’re doing is representing the primary result. That’s what the ‘binding’ bit refers to.
In the caucus process, the vote means fuck-all. It’s basically just supposed to serve as a measuring stick for how many delegates to send. So if you look at the Dem caucus in Iowa, you’ll have 3 delegates to work out. All of the Hillary people will go over into one corner and all of the Obama people will go over into this other corner, and the people for the other candidates go in their respective corners, and they need to figure out how to fairly pick 3 people – two from Obama, one from Hillary? Maybe if the Hillary people can convince a few Biden folks to come over, they would have enough for it to divide one Obama, two Hillary. So there, the delegates are specifically representing a candidate. Who they vote for is purely a reflection of who is picked to go. They aren’t bound by what happened in the room at all.
The straw poll is sort of supposed to just ‘take the temperature of the room’, figure out roughly where everyone is situated to make the delegate wrangling easier, but people do the straw poll and leave, and so the final makeup for delegate selection could be completely different than who only bothered to show for the straw poll.
And this is precisely where having a strong ground campaign matters. You can’t get good outcomes in caucus states just through advertising. Yeah, you might get a good result in the straw vote, but you’ll get creamed in the delegate selection by the guy who didn’t bother with the ads and instead made sure they had 30 people in the room at the end of the evening.
And these states often have what’s called a ‘sifting process’. There’s multiple delegate stages, so the precincts send their delegates to the county, where they convene and select delegates for the state, where they do it again to select delegates for the national convention. In 2008, Obama gained delegates at every stage (and Hillary lost at every stage) because he trained staff in every county, in almost every precinct, to know the rules, stay until the end, and carry his name to the next stage, and then he trained those people to pick off delegates at the next stage and so on.
The goal of the process is a pretty noble one – as candidates drop out, their delegates get released and join the camps of people still running. And if a candidate does something really pretty outrageous, delegates may flat-out abandon them. It’s a coarse sort of instant-run-off election, except that it’s excruciatingly slow instead of instant, but it also captures the candidates with the most strongly loyal supporters. In a year like this, where Romney seems to have almost no loyal supporters and no real ground game, but where Ron Paul has fiercely loyal supporters and a remarkably good ground game, who better represents the interests of the party – Romney or Paul? In many ways, I’d argue Paul.
Oh, and Iowa has precinct delegates, then county conventions, then congressional district conventions, and then the state convention. So there’s 4 sets of delegate selections plus the national convention where the nominee is picked.
amk
@Martin: As head spinning as it was, I read through it. Thanks.
Stentor
He’s Number One! He’s Number One! From the 10 Dimmest Members of Congress
URL:http://www.progressive.org/dimmarch.htm
(It’s not on their site anymore, I looked high & low for it, but thank FSM for archive.org which still has a copy, go check it out for more hilarious commentary, but now back to our regularly scheduled snark.)
Dim & Dimmer by Ken Silverstein
The 10 Lowest Lights in Congress
No. 1
SENATOR RICK SANTORUM
Republican, Pennsylvania
The boy blunder of American politics and a one-time lobbyist for the World Wrestling Federation, thirty-nine-year-old Santorum repeatedly humiliates himself in public. “Santorum?” Senator Bob Kerrey once commented. “Is that Latin for asshole?” (Looks like Senator Kerrey was years ahead of even Dan Savage on that description.)
Members of Santorum’s own party make equally uncharitable observations. “[He is] critical of everything, indifferent to nuance, and incapable of compromise,” Teresa Heinz, widow of the late GOP Senator John Heinz, has said of him.
Due to his frequent gaffes, Santorum’s handlers carefully stage-manage his actions and rarely allow him to be interviewed without his press secretary, who helps the boss field any tough questions. In a 1995 profile, Philadelphia magazine said that “much of Santorum’s record has been a series of tantrums,” and quoted a former Republican Congressional staffer as saying, “If you took the key out of his back, I’m not sure his lips would keep moving.”
One example: In speaking about the country’s long-term prospects, Santorum remarked, “Nowhere in the Bible does it say that America will be here 100 years from now.”
EIGRP
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m glad it’s not just me. Tx for the confirmation
EIGRP
@Gin & Tonic: Call TAC. I advise my customers do that all the time if they are having problems or design questions. Or, call the systems engineer that covers $YOUR_EMPLOYER, however TAC generally sees/solves more problems than your typical SE.
I don’t seem to have the time to post here; Maybe I’m just missing a tool to thread posts and keep track of where I have posted.
Eric
Lojasmo
@WyldPirate:
You give atheists a bad name. GFY.
OzoneR
@WyldPirate:
Oh Good Lord, the Palestinians are not being forced to adhere to Jewish law.
Paul in KY
@jeff: He gets his point across. I’ve seen alot worse.
Paul in KY
@lamh35: I’m gonna have to watch that one. Heh heh!
Paul in KY
@efgoldman: I think VDE was just relaying what he personally had heard one time. I wouldn’t make any more out of it than that.
I have heard a few non-Jewish dickheads use the phrase. Not very often though. In KY, you are liable to hear the nword more (sad to say).
Paul in KY
@Donut: I have a cousin with the handle ‘Stump Jumper’. Know another one called ‘Swamp Stomper’. Woohoo, Kentucky!
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: The guy’s got a life to live. Can’t be drawing Rembrandt-quality cartoons all day. I hear he’s thinking about moving to stick figures.
Samara Morgan
hei Anne Laurie.
guess what?
iwasrightiwasrightiwasright AGAIN!
poor nate. he cant handicap the horse race now, so his traffic is dropping like a stone.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
NCDOT accelerated bridge replacement projects that were already in the pipeline. Word came down after the money was actually disbursed to the departments that the projects that the engineers thought they would be turning in final plans for next month, or month after next, needed to be wrapped up NOW. There was also some juggling of schedules for larger projects that had been pushed into next month’s letting for years because the state’s matching funds just weren’t there. The entire TIP was reviewed, looking for projects that would require no right-of-way purchases. And yes, there was a lot of resurfacing and retrofitting medians with cable guiderail.
There was a time when NCDOT would have had a supply of finished plans on the shelf, waiting to be inserted into a letting when another schedule slipped, but permits age out too fast for that to be practical any more.
The engineering firm I work for does a lot of municipal work. We were applying for grants from the stimulus as soon as the application process was set up. We had complete-to-the-permit-stage designs waiting for several of our municipalities to find the construction money when the stimulus passed; we worked hard throughout the debate to be ready.
Both of the owners are wingers, so they’ll never admit it, but the stimulus kept our doors open.
Terry
Over the years I have met many, many people who use that term. I am not Jewish. I find its use to be repugnant.
When it is someone I care about, or have to spend time with, I politely call them out about it. Most, if not all, have been mortified to learn that it is an offensive term, and abandoned its use. Uniformly, it was just a term – like “gypping” – they had grown up using for a single meaning.
Few with whom I have spoken with had ever previously thought at all of a connection between the term and Jews. That would include my first wife, when we were married at age 20 in 1967.
MomSense
When DS9 first came out, I tried to watch and couldn’t really get into it. After reading the comments here, I think I will give it another try.
MomSense
@225 Martin
The ironic thing about the Maine GOP caucus eff up is that Charlie Webster is the one who spearheaded the legislation to undo almost 40 years of same day voter registration and other ballot access laws because of student and “illegal alien” voter fraud.
MomSense
I actually really like the caucus process. It is like a big town meeting and requires a lot of organizing in advance. Once you get to the caucus there is a wonderful sharing/debate about the issues and the candidates. Having served as a delegate from my caucus in 2008, I can tell you that here in Maine there is not a county selection process between the town caucus and state convention. I was chosen by my precinct to represent them as a delegate at the state Democratic convention where I was able to vote for the state delegates to represent us at the national convention.
The bonus was a fabulous speech by Sen. Durbin–really a masterful speech that was tailored to Maine, using our history to encourage Democratic unity (Hilary was still in the race when our convention took place).
patrick II
@amk:
I don’t know, but the difference between Romney and Paul was only 192 votes. The locals that reported miscounts claim higher vote totals for Paul.
The last Maine district won’t vote until Saturday, so it’s still undecided even if all of the current votes were counted.
Since the management of the actual vote count (local guy counts and calls into republican headquarters where they put it on a spreadsheet) is so lax, once those local guys have gone home, who knows what happens to the original vote tabulation?
It appears the fix was in for Romney.
JGabriel
@WyldPirate: A bit late, but just to clarify my previous points:
I don’t dispute that Romer recommended a $1.2T package. I dispute that Obama ever heard of or saw the recommendation.
Nor do I dispute that Romer had an early meeting with Obama to discuss the dimensions of the exploded sewage tank of an economy that Obama was inheriting from the Bush administration. But we now know that the true situation was worse than Romer knew at the time, because accurate numbers and reports describing the situation’s true horribleness weren’t available until about two years, maybe a little longer, after Obama took office.
I don’t have links for the above info, but it’s all fairly common knowledge at this point. I remember that my sources (i.e., where I first read it) were Ezra Klein, Paul Krugman, and maybe Felix Salmon.
.
Uriel
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The only thing I saw Urban in before ST was Chronicles of Riddick.
The performance didn’t immediately evoke Dr Mc Coy to my mind. But I have been known to be tone-deaf regarding subtitles like that. ;)