Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

No one could have predicted…

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

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Election 2008

President Obama’s Dilemma

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I didn’t see the president’s remarks live yesterday, but I did read a transcript. Apparently, the remarks disappointed some liberals, including Booman, for one, and a bunch of people on Twitter.

But I think Ezra Klein has it right here:

If Obama’s speeches aren’t as dramatic as they used to be, this is why: the White House believes a presidential speech on a politically charged topic is as likely to make things worse as to make things better. It is as likely to infuriate conservatives as it is to inspire liberals. And in a country riven by political polarization, widening that divide can take hard problems and make them impossible problems.

As inspirational as he can be, President Obama has always been pragmatic, which is certainly a desirable quality in a leader, though it’s a characteristic that has to be balanced with vision. As Klein observes, before he became president, Obama was inspiring to people because they thought he really might be able to bridge political and racial divides.

I don’t know if Obama himself ever really believed that, but if so, he was quickly disabused of that notion when the GOP started acting like a sack full of paint-huffing honey badgers on January 20, 2009. Some of us got mad at him for continuing to reach out to the most floridly insane and traitorous Congress in the post-Civil War era on issues like the budget and healthcare.

But blaming the president for insufficient speechifying on the issues Ferguson raises ignores what he’s up against. My guess is he’ll thread this needle at some point with actions behind the scenes and words too, managing to inspire those of us who want to see real changes without riling up the significant portion of the country that is either batshit crazy or indifferent.

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No Victor, No Vanquished

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T. Friedman of the NYT published a column that didn’t suck. That’s because instead of giving us yet another dreary round of “how the 1% interprets cabbie chatter,” T. Friedman stood back and let someone else do the talking, and the speaker was President Obama.

Some excerpts after the jump.

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Beware of Trolls Bearing Concern

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On Friday, David Frum, the former GWB speechwriter who invented the phrase “axis of evil” to sell his boss’s pointless war, published a piece in The Atlantic chiding Hillary Clinton for playing the victim card. He cites as evidence quotes cherry-picked from a recent interview Clinton did with Christiane Amanpour and also HRC’s supposed obsession with the non-existent “whitey tape,” as reported by rancid horserace hacks Mark Halperin and John Heilemann in “Game Change.”

The day after Frum’s piece ran, the NY Post released an excerpt of Edward Klein’s “Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. The Obamas,” a title from wingnut screed factory Regnery Publishing, which publishes titles like “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” by Dinesh D’Souza, “The Case Against Barack Obama,” by David Freddoso and “Crimes Against Liberty,” by David Limbaugh.

In its inimitable style, the NY Post titled its sneak-peek “The feud between the Obamas and ‘Hildebeest.’” It contains stunning insights into the enmity between the first couples, such as that Bill Clinton hates President Obama “more than any man I’ve ever met, more than any man who ever lived” and that when President Obama and Mrs. Obama had the Clintons over for dinner at the White House, the president ignored his guests to play with his BlackBerry instead.

Steve M at No More Mr. Nice Blog reviewed the NY Post preview of “Blood Feud” yesterday and noted that “[w]hat Klein seems to have written is a bad pulp novel, disguised as non-fiction, made up exclusively of right-wing gossip, right-wing talking points, and right-wing punch lines.” He’s right; it’s a steaming load of anonymously sourced horseshit, just like everything Regnery publishes.

I’m not someone who wants to coronate Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee for 2016. I want to see a vigorous debate in the primary that brings liberal issues to the fore, and I’m hoping a viable candidate whose platform more closely matches my views emerges — just as Obama did in 2007 to capture my support. I would prefer that this happens after we retain the Senate and make gains in the House in the upcoming midterm elections.

But damned if we Democrats should allow wingnut concern trolls like Frum, Klein and Halperin to shape our views on any candidate — or anything at all. They are cynical, lying hacks, so why should we believe anything they say? What this recent emergence of high-profile wingnut concern trollery tells me is they think they’ve found a wedge to exploit. We shouldn’t let them.

Like many Obama supporters, I was pissed off at some of the Clintons’ tactics during the endless 2008 primary. But the Clintons and Obamas sure seemed to bury the hatchet and work together after that. Even if they despise one another (and there’s no credible evidence of that that I’ve seen), they made the calculation that working together was the best thing for the party because a feud would play into the Republicans’ hands. It was true in 2008 and 2012, and it’s still true today.

The piece by Frum and the latest Regnery Publishing bilge are cynical attempts to divide Obama supporters from a possible Democratic nominee, just as John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin was a cynical attempt to peel off HRC-supporting Democrats in 2008. It should fail just as hard.

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Ignore the constants

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I need to respond to John’s post concerning Clinton Fatigue and the 2016 election cycle.  I think he is wrong on his diagnosis of the underlying problem.  It is not the Clintons, it is a crazy bug shit insane anthrax and rusted tire rim eating Republican Party that is the problem.

I know this is what the GOP wants, but I can not do another round of Vince Foster or Benghazi or whatever. I just can’t. And the whole dynastic thing drives me crazy. I just can’t take any more Bush or Clinton candidates.

Vince Foster or Benghazi or Hillary is a shrill lesbian who ordered her 30 something married daughter to get pregnant with a cute grandkid are merely symptoms of a broken and crazy party.

Since it is a symptom, treatment by avoidance does not solve the underlying problem of a bug shit insane party.

I remember the great O-bot v Clintonista flame wars of ought seven here, Great Orange Satan, MyDD, FDL and everywhere else.  One of the constant arguments was that Obama would not bring out the batshit insane elements of the Republican Party while it Clinton’s history guaranteed it.  As an Obama primary supporter and voter,  I thought it was a bullshit argument then as it misdiagnosed the problem. 

I thought that whomever the Democrats nominated in 2008, they would see wild, insane, violating the laws of physics and narrative consistency conspiracy theories and charges levelled against them.  The superstructure of the charges would vary by candidate.  The right had a good playbook on Clinton while it was not 100% clear what the playbook would have been on Obama or Edwards in the summer of 2007.  However, the attacks, despire differing on the surface details, would be isomorphic manifestations of rage and otherness. 

The relevant question for supporters is not whether or not a Democratic candidate can do something to mollify the chain e-mail forwarded, Fox News viewer, Brietbart grunting conspiracy theorists as that is a constant impossibility.  It is whether or not they know how to ignore the stupid and counter-productive mud wrestling while only worrying about winning November instead of the morning.  The crazification factor is a constant, and it should be ignored in any comparative decision analysis.

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It’s Always About Projection, Part the Infinity

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Via valued commenter Schrodinger’s Cat, an excerpt from Juan-Amnesty McSoreLoserPants’ NYT op-ed, the topic of which is how Obambi has made America Putin’s bitch:

For Mr. Putin, vacillation invites aggression. His world is a brutish, cynical place, where power is worshiped, weakness is despised, and all rivalries are zero-sum. He sees the fall of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” He does not accept that Russia’s neighbors, least of all Ukraine, are independent countries. To him, they are Russia’s “near abroad” and must be brought back under Moscow’s dominion by any means necessary.

Allow me to interpret:

For Mr. McCain, diplomacy is inferior to aggression. His world is a brutish, cynical place, where power is worshiped, weakness is despised, and all rivalries are zero-sum. He sees the decline of American influence in the wake of the disastrous Bush administration as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” He does not accept that America’s neighbors* any country in the world, least of all [fill in the blank], are independent countries. To him, they are America’s “near abroad” and must be brought back under Washington’s dominion by any means necessary.

And thank you, liberal NYT, for giving the cranky fuck — who never met a war he didn’t rush to mong** and who was cynical and unpatriotic enough to thrust that babbling, empty-headed, moose-shooting twit from Alaska onto the national stage — a platform from which to denounce the guy who has been trying to clean up Bush’s mess for half a decade.

*Updated for truth — H/T: Kay (not the front-pager)

**H/T: Jim, Foolish Literalist (I think)

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2009, Blue Dogs and 218

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The National Journal reports the demise of the Blue Dogs as Rep Mathesion (D-UT) is retiring:

Matheson’s retirement continues the decline of two overlapping Democratic groups: Blue Dogs and Democrats who opposed Nancy Pelosi’s bid to continue leading their caucus after the electoral shellacking of 2010. There are just 15 Blue Dog Democrats in the House now, down from 26 in the previous Congress and 54 in the Congress before that. Meanwhile, 19 Democrats publicly opposed Pelosi for speaker on the House floor in January 2011, and Matheson will become the 11th to leave the House at the end of his term.

During the 111th Congress, the Democrats had a maximum of 40 spare votes to lose before legislation would fail if we assume that there would be no Republican votes for anything more adventurous than renaming post offices.  Most days due to vacancies, illness, and random things happening, the margin before failure was thirty-five to thirty-eight votes.

The Blue Dog caucus was always larger than the margin of failure.  Blue Dogs tend to represent districts that were significantly more Republican leaning then the rest of the nation.   Their political survival depended on being seen as hippy punching assholes.  There were exceptions like Lipinski who voted like a R-7 rep instead of a representative from a solid Dem district.

Anything that could come out of Congress had to get a third of the Blue Dogs to defect.  On any issue, there were a few easy gets, but after the first half dozen, significant policy concessions from liberals would be needed to the next dozen or more yes votes. And that is why I think there were marginal improvements that were possible but not wholesale improvements from what we’ve actually got in PPACA.  The Blue Dogs had an effective veto on anything that would make liberals too happy.

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Good news everybody

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Via Politico:

More than one million Americans signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act during the first three weeks of December, including 500,000 through the federal exchange, President Barack Obama announced Friday.

The Obama administration says nearly 3.9 million people have qualified for coverage through the health care law’s Medicaid expansion.

The numbers released Friday cover the period from Oct. 1 to Nov. 30 and underscore a pattern of Medicaid outpacing the law’s expansion of private insurance.

Big h/t to BrainWrap and his team at Daily Kos

The Medicaid number will grow substantially as the December numbers have not been reported.  Plenty of people are going to healthcare.gov and finding out that they are Medicaid eligible either through traditional pre-PPACA Medicaid or through expansion Medicaid in the non-IGMFY states.

The Exchange number will grow substantially over this weekend as well.  The procrastinators are hitting a hard deadline to choose a plan and they don’t even have to come up with the money for another week or two.   I will make a $10 dollar donation to the RNC if there are not 150,000 new enrollments between the state exchanges and healthcare.gov between 12:01AM EST 12/20/13 and 11:59PM 12/23/13  EST.  If that number is met, my $10 is going to Planned Parenthood instead.

I work in a non-expansion state.  My company runs a Medicaid managed care plan.  New enrollment is above typical pace at this time of year as people who were eligible but never signed up for Medicaid are signing up from the Exchange.  On the private insurance Exchange side the pace of tiny niggling glitches, fixes and tweaks that we have to make on our systems have been expanding geometrically in the past two weeks as enrollment is coming in.  And that enrollment is at a scale  where there are a sufficient number of odd cases to find glitches that weren’t discovered in a six month testing cycle.

There is a very good chance that on January 1, 2014 seven or eight million people will have health insurance that they otherwise would not have had.

That is a win and I’ll celebrate that while I enjoy my Christmas bonus of Glen Livet 21 tonight.

Richard +1

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