Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Republicans in disarray!

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Come on, man.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Not all heroes wear capes.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

You are here: Home / Archives for Show Me On the Doll Where Rahm Touched You

Progressive Glee to Hit Critical Threshhold

by | 66 Comments

This post is in: 

This is interesting:

Rahm Emanuel’s residency fight just took a turn for the worse. The Illinois Appellate Court ruled 2-1 to overturn a Chicago Board of Elections decision to allow Rahm Emanuel on the mayoral ballot. Rahm’s Attorney Kevin Forde says “its a surprise.”

I honestly can’t think of a political issue I care about less than whether Rahm becomes mayor of Chicago, which makes sense, because I DON’T LIVE THERE. However, the twitterverse is abuzz.

Progressive Glee to Hit Critical ThreshholdPost + Comments (66)

Stoned or Just Plain Stupid?

by | 128 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Reacting to the choices of Sperling and Daley, this comment is one of the all-time greatest here at Balloon Juice:

For 2011, I have resolved to believe my lying eyes. It makes trying to figure out the Obama presidency so much easier. Then there is that saying about first impressions: again when it comes to Obama’s picks go with the first impression.

These two picks tell me that if Obama loses in 2012, he has set himself up nicely to waltz right over to a Wall Street job when his gig in the West Wing is up.

Because a former Senator and President probably didn’t have enough of a resume to get in with Wall Street. But now that he has picked Daley and Sperling, he’s a fucking lock. Not to mention the well known transition from President to stock broker that everyone in politics covets.

This is why hippies are occasionally punched on some blogs. Because it is so easy. And you deserve it.

Stoned or Just Plain Stupid?Post + Comments (128)

Special Favors Come in 31 Flavors

by | 283 Comments

This post is in: 

My email box is flooded with anti-Daley reactions from left-leaning commenters, and I still have to wonder- what do people think they are accomplishing going after the Chief of Staff? The President has made his pick. This is over. There is no review process. There is no need for Senate approval. It isn’t going to come up for a vote in the plebiscite. I simply do not understand why we are going to turn the next few years into an anti-Daley jihad. You can flood the zone all you want with anti-Daley stuff, I’m betting the Obama team knew it before they made the pick and chose him anyway. So why bother?

Is there anyone out there who thinks Obama is going to come to the podium on Monday and say “I was pretty confident about my pick of Daley as my Chief of Staff, but then I read a very compelling diary at the Daily Kos that called me a traitor, sell-out, corporate whore, and worse than Bush, so I’ve reconsidered my pick and I am here to tell you that I no longer want Bill Daley and am instead choosing Noam Chomsky.”

Special Favors Come in 31 FlavorsPost + Comments (283)

Listening To Experts

by | 131 Comments

This post is in: ,

The chief economist at Moody’s likes the tax cut deal a lot, and the guy has a pretty good prognostic record, so I guess that I like the tax cut deal as well.

I don’t care about Obama punching hippies as much as most people do. As Atrios says if it takes some verbal abuse to get good policy outcomes (not awful will also do) then so be it.

I still think that it was rather stupid to argue that he would fight more if only less was at stake. I guess that the GOP won’t push him around as long as the issue is not too weighty. We can therefore expect some satisfying fights over, um, post office namings and Sense of the Senate resolutions about the Superbowl.

On the flip side, the weird alliance between Bernie Sanders and Jim DeMint suggests that the whole deal honestly might die in utero. If that happens we could do worse than just put the damn hostage down. Virtually any other use of that money would do more for stimulus than what it is doing now. John Boehner will veto any plan that cuts the military budget, Medicare or raises taxes, so come January we will almost certainly lose any chance to plug that kind of hole in our budget.

Listening To ExpertsPost + Comments (131)

A Refreshing Change

by | 224 Comments

This post is in: 

Doesn’t sound like Obama is backing down:

“That is the wrong interpretation because I haven’t had a conversation with Democratic and Republican leaders,” Obama said of a Huffington Post article suggesting that in advance of negotiations with lawmakers next week, the White House has calculated that giving in on tax cuts for the rich is the only way to get the middle class cuts extended too.

“Here’s the right interpretation — I want to make sure that taxes don’t go up for middle class families starting on January 1st,” Obama said at a news conference at the conclusion of the G-20 Summit here. “That is my number one priority for those families and for our economy. I also believe that it would be fiscally irresponsible for us to permanently extend the high income tax cuts. I think that would be a mistake, particularly when we’ve got our Republican friends saying that their number 1 priority is making sure that we are dealing with our debt and our deficit.”

What is nice about all this is that a few months ago, all this discussion would have been about Rahm selling out liberals or some other stupid nonsense. Now that he is out of the picture, notice how we never even hear about Obama’s CoS anymore? How many of you can even name him?

A Refreshing ChangePost + Comments (224)

Comedy Gold

by | 152 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

Jane responds in an update, and apparently I am “eating my liver” (I thought I was pretty restrained- I simply said she was wrong, and what do you know- she was, and apologized!) because she had a “misedit” that changed “The self-described “populist” was feeding dutiful JournoList scribes like Jon Chait, Matt Yglesias and John Cole“ to “The self-described “populist” was feeding dutiful JournoList scribes like Jon Chait, Matt Yglesias, as well as John Cole.“ Regardless, it is still wrong on substance, because I never took orders or acted as a scribe for anyone. I said what I thought, and I stand by it. Additionally, as a “freshly minted Democrat,” I didn’t support the bill because it was soothing to my former Republican self. It’s her narrative, and we just star in it!

The fun doesn’t stop, though:

There were 53 Senators on record supporting the public option.

Life in a screeching echo chamber often makes it difficult to know what’s happening in the real world. But for anyone interested in staying informed and discerning the facts before they form their opinions, we actually took a good deal of trouble to document things along the way.

I get no small amount of frothing emails from people who say the same thing John says — “we didn’t have 60 votes for the public option.” And I’m sure that during the months he spent eating his own liver in a fit of misogynistic rage, he was responsible for misinforming many of them. An honest broker would take some time to correct that, rather than have another heapin’ helping of bile. But having lived through the “Jane Hamshers of the left” experience with Cole, I’m willing to bet that won’t be happening any time soon.

There were never 50 votes. Sure, there were 53 at one time who SAID they supported it, but saying you support something and, you know, supporting it, are two different things. I know us political neophytes and scribes can barely muster the political acumen as our progressive betters, but I’m going to go on record and state a bunch of them were lying. How do I know this? Because there is no public option in the Senate. If 53 Senators supported it, and we only needed 50 votes (which itself was wrong, as we’ve gone over a million times and you can again relive the glory days of this tedious debate in the comments), then where is the public option.

Oh, yeah. Rahm.

Bonus- I’m a misogynist! I’m not sure why, but I bet it has something to do with Hillary.

Comedy GoldPost + Comments (152)

You’ve Lost Your Shit

by | 274 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Now if I were Jane Hamsher, I would probably be losing my shit over the factual inaccuracies in this broad swipe at me from her. I’d probably start this post saying “Jane Hamsher is no blogger or activist, she’s a smear-monger who makes things up and projects her own fantasies onto her stories.” Or something like that. Instead of a hysterical response, I”ll just point out two quick things. First, when she states this, she is simply making shit up:

The self-described “populist” was feeding dutiful JournoList scribes like Jon Chait, Matt Yglesias and John Cole cues to attack the “left” for raising justified concerns about both the bill, and what it would mean for the Democratic Party:

Time for a hockey puck sized valium, Jane. I was never, ever a member of Journolist. I was never invited, I never accepted, I never read one email before Tucker Carlson decided to publish them. You are just flat out wrong. I have never had any association with Journolist. You’re just wrong. And, btw- you could always ask DDay if I was on the evil Journolist, because he was a member.

Second, this is also false:

And it’s no mystery why freshly minted Democrat John Cole was cheerleading the comfortable familiarity of a Republican health care bill – after its passage, Nancy Pelosi quickly sent out an email bragging that its underlying principles were written by the Heritage Foundation, with the helpful quote that “Democrats have been less than true to their principles.”

I have repeatedly and consistently stated over and over again that I would prefer any health care bill penned by Jane, D-Day, Jon Walker, or any number of far more progressive bills- if they had any chance of passing. Unlike some, I am quite capable of counting to 60. There were never votes for the public option. I supported the HCR bill because it was better than the status quo. That’s it. If I had my way, I would nationalize the entire damned industry- my military healthcare was pretty damned good. I didn’t feel that way even a few years ago, but watching this healthcare debate opened my eyes to the basic fact that our system is a disaster and there are few incentives to cost-save. Even something as common sense as end of life counseling was demagogued to death. Hell, even the way we train doctors makes no damned sense.

I know you hate Rahm and all the evil centrists, but at least get your facts somewhat straight.

You’ve Lost Your ShitPost + Comments (274)