This attitude soon morphed, in practice, to lumping all the attackers together, left and right, on the ultimately Stalinist grounds that leftwing critics of Clinton gave “ammo” or “cover” to the enemy.

I have to admit I was briefly one of those, until Yugoslavia and “welfare reform” (among other things) gave me second thoughts.

Politics isn’t a zero-sum game. Neither is political criticism.

Politics is ugly. I’m also quite certain that this nation did not intend to elect a leftist–and indeed they did not.

FDL, you know, the democratic base

Man, Sadly No! never fails to amuse.

What FDL did vis-a-vis HCR is no different than what Greenwald’s doing wrt domestic spying. Who better represents the base in that regard, Greenwald or Obama?

Who better represents the base in that regard, Greenwald or Obama?

Since 99% of Democrats have no idea “what Greenwald’s doing wrt domestic spying”, I’m gonna say Obama.

Are you aware that this is a comedy blog, not Hillaryis44.com?

That’s right. I totally forgot that superdishonest thing y’all do where if you are to the left of Obama you are automatically a PUMA. Sorry. Maybe you should do the comedy.

I’m also quite certain that this nation did not intend to elect a leftist–and indeed they did not.

Quite frankly, when have we ever?

Especially when you get a pro-business centrist like Clinton or Obama and the wingnuttosphere spends eight years plus going batshit about their Stalinist leanings and the inevitable handover of the country to the Reds/Chinese/Islamofascists. Like we’ll ever see anyone left of Nixon ever run for President again as long as the likes of glenbeck and Pigman are alllowed national airtime to spew their bullshit.

I’m going to point something out: Obama promised bipartisanship. We know now that it was a tremendous mistake (and arguably we knew it then too), but he did his damnedest to deliver. And it probably did cost us a public option. But however massive and ludicrous a failure it was, you can’t say he didn’t at least try to live up to at least that one campaign promise.

Anyway, water under the bridge. We’ve seen a different Obama since the SOTU, and hopefully that’s the one we’ll have for the next three years. And maybe we will get the public option before that term is over.

I agree with the great majority of all of that and would quibble only in this detail: once all the time had been pissed away dithering and the moment where much better things could have indeed been rammed through quickly, FDL & Co. really weren’t doing anyone any favors by demanding that the whole thing be scrapped, because at that point, what we had on the table was the limit of what was going to get done – and if not now, not for many years into the future.

Not that it mattered a whit. They just had a different opinion from a lot of us on that point, which in the circumstances of the moment, did not make any sense to me or quite a few others.

True, but I was promised by Obama ppl then that his bipartisanship was all a trickfuck. I was told not to worry, because he was really an awesome leftist deep down, cuz of who he was and how he was raised. Sadly, no!

I want the trickfuck!

Politics is ugly. I’m also quite certain that this nation did not intend to elect a leftist–and indeed they did not.

Exactly. They elected a centrist Democrat who pledged to go the extra mile for bipartisanship, and to change things for the better within those limitations. I agree with HTML, and with Atrios, on the substance, but I think they’re both missing a key point – Obama’s popularity had more to do with his being Not-Bush than with his having any progressive bona fides, all the accusations of Marxism to the contrary.

He’s a touchy-feely centrist; he let the Congress do the heavy lifting – Christ, why wouldn’t he, given the fact that Democrats held huge majorities; he bent over backwards to get Reoublicans on board long after it was obvious that all they wanted to do was to fuck him over and leave him for dead. He used a historic mandate and a majority Congress to get only a fair-to-middling stimulus and mediocre health care reform passed. He hasn’t taken on the banksters with any sense of urgency. He can be faulted for all of these things.

But wishing he was FDR or LBJ instead of what he is is pretty foolish. And people like Hamsher pushing for the HCR bill to be killed because it wasn’t good enough was foolish – no, it was downright stupid.

This is not the socialist paradise you are looking for. It’s “AMERICA – FUCK YEAH!” and anything that makes things a little bit better than status quo is fine with me. I’m too old to believe in magical wish fulfillment fantasies.

who has managed his own political capital with the same skill neocons managed the occupation of Iraq

It’s so strange. Of course the inauguration buzz had to fade a bit, but there’s no reason it should have come crashing down the way it did. There’s been so little engagement with the public and even less with supporters. Their media strategy, if it exists, is incoherent.

What they’re doing is a mixed bag. *How* they’re doing it is objectively awful. Kerry 2004 awful.

I want the trickfuck!

Mellow Barry Obama, the Perry Como of Presidents?

Not. Gonna. Happen. He’s all about the collegiality, more’s the pity.

I want the trickfuck!

Typical man.

Fuck, my brilliant comment got eated. Suffice to say I agree with Jeff, Brian X and Jennifer. America elected a centrist Democrat who promised bipartisan change. What we got is what he said we were gonna get.

And double fuck you, Word Press.

I have to admit I was briefly one of those, until Yugoslavia and “welfare reform” (among other things) gave me second thoughts.

Politics isn’t a zero-sum game. Neither is political criticism.

Good examples, although the biggest scar I have is Phil Gramm’s fucking bank deregulation, which is probably the largest factor in the crash we have so far endured–assuming it is actually over. I have my doubts about that.

You make an excellent point, HM. Taking a side and defending, right or wrong, should be relegated to the “us vs. them” wingnut crowd. Furthermore, if we had sat silently while health care reform turned into “reform”, the whole thing would have gone down the drain a year ago.

Fuck all y’all, I’m not coming down from this high ever, it’s scary down there.

100%, HTML.

Man, this is really harshing my mellow. More tears of impotent wingnut rage, pleeze!

True, but I was promised by Obama ppl then that his bipartisanship was all a trickfuck. I was told not to worry, because he was really an awesome leftist deep down, cuz of who he was and how he was raised. Sadly, no!

Seriously. Obama’s about in the same ‘liberal’ political position as Angela Merkel, which just goes to show that our nation’s political spectrum is so heavily red-shifted that in the night skies between the 49th and 26th parallels north, all such moderate conservatives now appear as OMFGSOCIALEZZT! in all forms of electromagnetic radiation, particularly in the 540 to 1600 kHz frequencies.

Pelosi did much of the grunt work, but in reality that’s part of her job as a congresswoman, not to mention SOTH. As president, Obama’s expected to “be above all that.” What he should have been doing was using the podium to keep HCR The Story until it passed; that would have gone along way towards keeping the Public Option.

Besides, Obama’s biggest role in this has yet to been accomplished. Even with Pelosi pulling this off, and even if it did contain the Holy Grail known as Public Option -hell, lets go for the goal and make it Single Payer- it would be for nothing if the bill ended up going to President McCain’s desk.

So, wait; you’re saying Obama’s biggest roles in this should have been a cheerleader and paper-pusher? Damn straight. Then after he gets a win (even a half-assed one), then he can be Captain Hardcore (even though it should be clear it’s not really his nature).

And while I don’t agree with everything this guy’s done (Gitmo should be closed by now) I know I have two options if I want things to get better faster: vote/campaign/support/work for more liberal candidates until we have a voting block so large the Democrats know they can’t get anything done without, or run for something my damn self. And honestly: if more liberals thought that way, we’d have less DINOs running amok in Congress diluting legislation.

Good examples, although the biggest scar I have is Phil Gramm’s fucking bank deregulation, which is probably the largest factor in the crash we have so far endured–assuming it is actually over. I have my doubts about that.

Oh, there was a whole buffet of loathesomeness available – ending welfare, telecom deregulation, V-chips, periodic bombings of Iraq on top of continuing sanctions and allowing Turkish incursions into the “safe zone”, lies about the Sudanese “chemical weapons plant”, Yugoslavia, the ham-handed attempt at a Iraq attack in ’98, the foot-dragging during the genocide in Rwanda, Defense Of Marriage, DADT, attempts to invest Social Security in the stock market…

…and yet HE WAS STILL A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN ANYTHING THE GOP COULD FART OUT.

And while I don’t agree with everything this guy’s done (Gitmo should be closed by now) I know I have two options if I want things to get better faster: vote/campaign/support/work for more liberal candidates until we have a voting block so large the Democrats know they can’t get anything done without, or run for something my damn self.

There’s also the wingnut option: impotently threaten violent insurrection from the safety of your keyboard when things don’t go exactly as you hoped and dreamed they would.

we’d have less DINOs running amok in Congress diluting legislation.

Now I’m picturing a bunch of T-Rexes storming through the Congress chambers, tossing old white men left and right.

Awesome.

When elected, he had a mandate to kick Republicans in the teeth;

And to ram those teeth down their throats!

In his defense I mean when was the last time the forces of evil had rallied that hard. Shootings, suicide bombings, threats, people were out there everyday trying to derail him. The USCC tripled their lobbying efforts. You’d think it was the 70s, that’s just kinda where the country is, not just him.

Make me cry? Dude, I wrote at the end of last year that Pelosi would go down as one of the great modern Congressional leaders if she corralled the votes to get this past. I’m with you on all credit to Nancy for getting as much we did get passed.

Jane and FDL are not bad per se, she just got sucked into this strange PUMA-esque psychological dynamic that I don’t understand. I wish I could figure out how that happens. It bothers me that I can’t figure it out.

… ‘passed’, not ‘past’.

If people once thought that healthcare legislation was inevitable, then it is only evidence that people egregiously underestimated the difficulties it faced. Our deliberative process is just that fucked up in this country, and that won’t change no matter who becomes president.

Obama certainly did support stronger healthcare proposals, but the presidency always forces a degree of pragmatism regardless of how left or right your policy vision is. I don’t see how Obama being any more aggressive would have gotten us around the parliamentary obstacles that HCR had to get around any faster or gotten us any stronger legislation.

The important thing is that the foundation is now in place. Bush wasn’t trying to privatize SS in one step either, he started with a comparatively modest proposal. But do you really think that they would have stopped there?

What FDL did vis-a-vis HCR is no different than what Greenwald’s doing wrt domestic spying. Who better represents the base in that regard, Greenwald or Obama? — HTML

Are you shitting me? FDL was trying to stop a flawed social-justice bill from passing. Greenwald is advocating for the rule of law. How is trying to gum up the works on crappy legislation that will nevertheless help people even remotely comparable to objecting to the official abuse of spy powers? Greenwald is attacking a lawless elite; FDL was doing a Purity Test. These are “no different”? Are you on crack? This is the single stupidest thing I have ever seen you write.

I know we all love false equivalences, but this is just headdeskingly asinine. Try again.

Also, Obama didn’t fight for the public option because the WH had made a preemptive deal with the hospital lobby and didn’y *want* a public option. It wasn’t weakness, it was backroom dealing and giving away the store. If you have actually been reading Greenwald, I would think you would know this.

i was acutely aware during the 2008 election season that it was barack obama who voted to give retroactive immunity to the telecoms over their violations of the civil rights of americans by cravenly releasing the private records of americans to the bush nsa when asked

given that, i knew exactly what i was getting when i voted for him, and i have gotten what i expected. given what we have gotten in the past and what we could expect in the future from republicans, i am so far very pleased. on the other hand, he has done a few things that i definitely don’t agree with

if any political entity ever nominates a true progressive that looks like they have enough support from the american people to be elected president, i will vote for that person

in the meantime, there is only one effective way i know of to get the democratic party to listen to its progressive wing – as ntodd says, “Primaries, Bitchez!”

…and yet HE WAS STILL A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN ANYTHING THE GOP COULD FART OUT.

AMEN!

In fairness, neither FDR nor LBJ managed to get a general health coverage plan through. FDR was stopped by segregationist Democrats before he began, and LBJ seemed to think it was all he could do to pass care for the elderly during the short period following JFK’s assassination.

I think a public health insurance plan was certainly and still certainly is deserved, but, as a rather skeptical leftist, I found it quite difficult to make the assumption that a federal health insurance program was within the range of legislation that would be passed.

If you had asked me in the abstract when I first heard John Edwards mention a public health insurance option — which was clearly a way around what was said to be the impossible starter of a single payer plan — if I thought one could be passing shortly without many, many years of fighting against it, I would not have agreed.

In the abstract I thought it would take a number of years, maybe many years to develop a public health insurance program, and maybe by some miracle it could have happened this go-round, but I think it’s the kind of thing that our political system and establishment unites very, very effectively in fighting against.

You’re talking about something that strikes at the very ideological and economical heart of the Reaganite transformation of America into an upper-class, not just favoring, but 1920s style worshiping nation and economy.

I don’t think it’s done with, and I don’t think it’s out of the question. I don’t think it would be easy to pass Grayson’s Medicare buy-in, but I completely don’t get the perspective that this huge reversal of corporatist-profit-mania was likely to happen this quickly.

There’s also the wingnut option: impotently threaten violent insurrection from the safety of your keyboard when things don’t go exactly as you hoped and dreamed they would.

The upside of having low expectations (particularly for politicians) is that’s it’s a very rare occasion where I even think about doing something harmful to another person. Considering how long it took this country to give various groups the right to frickin’ vote (let alone be counted as a person), there’s little these guys can do that will surprise me.

And we haven’t even mentioned the media’s role in all of this mess (which was 10x as bad as in FDR’s day).

Agree on Nancy Pelosi, disagree on Obama. This thing was excruciatingly close to not passing, which to me means he did have to buy off the hospital lobby and so on.

El Cid said,
March 23, 2010 at 0:50

What he said.

… ‘passed’, not ‘past’.

Passed *and* past, because she had to get it past the forces of nihilism.

in the meantime, there is only one effective way i know of to get the democratic party to listen to its progressive wing – as ntodd says, “Primaries, Bitchez!”

That’s right! The further left we push Congress, the less chance there will be that reform will turn into corporate welfare. That’s how you take the country back.

I knew Obama was no leftist. He never really got behind any truly progressive reform–he certainly never said jack shit about single payer HCR. But I like the comparison to FDR–it would be awfully cool to see the Congress dragging him to the left. (Or back to Earth, as it were)

Does Balloon Juice count as a bunch of Obots? Because they can’t praise Pelosi and Reid enough right now. And speaking of Reid, I don’t know if anyone’s seen what he said to John McCain today, but holy shit was it brutal: http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/03/22/country-first-4/

I think even people who say that the Dems are a bunch of worthless corporatists have to admit that they’ve gotten a lot more aggressive over the last month or so, and they were rewarded for it last night. One thing that I’m hoping comes out of all this is that the Dems get a taste for winning, and realize people like it when they’re on the offensive and stop pussying around regarding the GOP. Maybe we can have two political parties instead of one political party and its deferential butler. Assuming Washington doesn’t get tied up in wingnuts-trying-to-repeal-HCR bullshit, they’re charging into either immigration or financial reform next, both of which will be easier than health care.

I’m sorry if I sound like a suck-up right now. I guess I’m still riding the high from last night, but I’ll be back to my weepy, existentially confused self whenever the next sellout comes around.

Corrente? Really?

A lot of what you have to say is valid, but…

Corrente? REALLY?

The upside of having low expectations (particularly for politicians) is that’s it’s a very rare occasion where I even think about doing something harmful to another person. Considering how long it took this country to give various groups the right to frickin’ vote (let alone be counted as a person), there’s little these guys can do that will surprise me.

Perspective. I’ll take some too. Being past the suffrage and civil rights days (at least in the legislative sense), makes these things seem much less dire.

You’re talking about something that strikes at the very ideological and economical heart of the Reaganite transformation of America into an upper-class, not just favoring, but 1920s style worshiping nation and economy

Well said. An unbelievable (to me anyway) number of people are putting the rights of large corporations to make profits over other people’s lives. (The real kicker is these scumbags say they’re the real Christians).

I heard a GOP radio in Ohio that said “thousands of Ohioans have lost their jobs, and now government wants to enact health care. Send Republican Cracker McCrackerton to Washington to stop this outrage”. I couldn’t believe my ears. “You’ve lost your health care thanks to Republican fuckovers in the economy, now lose any chance to get non-job based health care!”. And people buy this twattle?

Hell the damn Business Roundtable, no liberal bastion they, say it will save employers about $3000 per employee on average. This is the best thing to happen to small businesses in years, the only people getting screwed over are the big companies. And people with no fiduciary connection to these companies come to their defense, frothing at the mouth.

Unbelievable.

I totally agree with HTML. It makes me feel weird.

That said, the way Obama acted over the past few months was EXACTLY the way he could have acted from the start to make his plan an inevitability. I’ve been told countless times that there is no bully pulpit and that it was Congress’ deal and all that. And the last couple of months disproved all of that.

In the end, Obama led. Pelosi led. And, God help me, Reid may even have led.

It would have been nice to have tried that approach from the start, so we could have avoided the endless psychodrama of Presidents Lieberman, Nelson, Snowe, Baucus, Suptak, Grassley and the Town Hell stupidity of the Wallace shouters — and gotten, perhaps, an even better bill.

But whatever.

I’m sorry if I sound like a suck-up right now. I guess I’m still riding the high from last night, but I’ll be back to my weepy, existentially confused self whenever the next sellout comes around.

HA! You’re awesome, Spaghetti.

Well stated, HTML Mencken. While I may disagree with the worth of the bill, I agree with your description of the politics and framing around the bill.

Not sure what this will mean for future bills.

yeah, what D Johnston said. Corrente? I mean, it may be the one stop shop for bugfuckery, but I have a hard time with folks that still are posting that Obama stole the election…

Nice quote from Reid, and he has his pluses and minuses too, but I’m still reserving judgment until reconciliation passes.

It is kinda funny how he went from the second coming of “Give em hell, Harry!” to “Who is this wuss?” since he became majority leader.

One thing that I’m hoping comes out of all this is that the Dems get a taste for winning, and realize people like it when they’re on the offensive and stop pussying around regarding the GOP.

I hope that happens too, though you’d think the Dems would have gotten that message from the last elections.

Assuming Washington doesn’t get tied up in wingnuts-trying-to-repeal-HCR bullshit

Ah, sweet naivete of youth…

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/mccain-fundraising-e-mail-repeal-this-bill-immediately.php?ref=fpa

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/mcconnell-health-care-vote-a-turning-point-in-the-politics-of-our-nation.php?ref=fpa

FWIW, Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” approach was not to pass legislation that was ‘too conservative’ or any other such type of statement.

It was a strategy of passing legislation written by and supported by a majority of the Congressional Republicans over and against a majority of Democrats.

NAFTA is example Numero Uno. Drafted by George H. W. Bush (on PRI dictator Carlos Salinas’ model), and backed by the biggest corporate lobbying assemblage ever seen, Clinton picked it up, pushed it through with a majority of House Republicans and Senate Republicans over and against a majority of Democrats in both houses.

This is very, very, very different from passing legislation whose content is more ‘conservative’ than the Democratic base.

How many people were saying “Now it’s just a matter of a short time before EVERYBODY is covered!” after Medicare got passed by LBJ?

The late 60’s were when the Fat Cats started buying up the media to make sure that news like “FOUR DEAD IN OHIO” would stay on page 48 where it belonged. That would have figured in the equation, if indded the Dems thought that Medicare would spread to everybody fairly quickly.

Years ago I saw on CSPAN or something the speech given by Truman at the 1948 Dem convention, where he called for universal healthcare as a plank of the party. It has taken an awful long time – the Fat Cats needed to stuff their pockets before allowing even the amount of change we got yesterday.

I say “Corrente” because Brad gave them a lot of shit last year, and he feels sorry for it now. I also say “Corrente” because to me they have always seemed like principled leftists. Maybe they really were for Hillary, but I didn’t see any posts like that. What I did see were many posts correctly attacking Obama from the left, and more importantly, slamming the Obamabots which did and do exist (and I think Greenwald has finally convinced most people that this is true), for which they were assumed to be PUMAs on the same grounds that Anon upthread assumes I’m paid by Hillary44.com.

Harry Reid (re Walnuts!): “For someone who campaigned on ‘Country First’ and claims to take great pride in bipartisanship, it’s absolutely bizarre for Senator McCain to tell the American people he is going to take his ball and go home until the next election. He must be living in some parallel universe because the fact is, with very few exceptions, we’ve gotten very little cooperation from Senate Republicans in recent years.

God damn! Who gave the testosterone shot to Harry?!

Caveat: I don’t read them regularly. I’m going by what has been linked to here and a few other places over the past year and a half or so.

Assuming Washington doesn’t get tied up in wingnuts-trying-to-repeal-HCR bullshit

That’s the bad part about it taking so damn long. Not enough time for the poor bastards that need help to get some. I do hope Dems bring people who can get health insurance now out to tell the Republicans to shove it.

i remember very well the political atmosphere in 1964, when the lbj presidency still enjoyed the air of sanctity bestowed on it as the inheritor of the mantle of the martyred president

that advantage has to be weighed in comparisons of lbj’s effectiveness

The very very long Corrente-related thread. I didn’t and don’t read Corrente, but at the time what irked me most was their unwillingness to do the math: Hillary had lost unless a super-duper magic wand could be produced.

HTML: Hear, hear. Obama can take a hint from Nancy.

…or rather, he SHOULD take a hint. From Nancy. Sigh.

HTML, Lambert linked to this today. FWIW, the pissing match on HCR has been more about the acceptable level of pragmatism than where any given individual stands, politically. People aren’t upset that FDL and the like-minded want a public option, it’s that anything without a public option is unacceptable and not worth passing. And they are willing (or appear willing, I’m out of the loop) to work with republicans to keep it from passing.

I want single payer, but I’m not going to hold my breath until it happens…

Fucking asshole spoiled little racist shitbags killed ACORN with their lying propaganda, gulped down in gallon size by both the god-damned Democratic Congress and every single fucking major media organization, and all because they hate black people, they hate poor people, and they despise any such people successfully working in their own interests.

Who funds big hollywood anyway, I’d love to throw a brick through that window.

Who funds big hollywood anyway, I’d love to throw a brick through that window.

Oh dear, A Radical Leftist.

They started it

http://www.azstarnet.com/news/local/crime/article_eb24e4fe-35dc-11df-ad88-001cc4c03286.html

Obamabots which did and do exist (and I think Greenwald has finally convinced most people that this is true)

But who are they? I don’t come across Obots in my regular internets reading.

But who are they? I don’t come across Obots in my regular internets reading.

That’s easy, just look to the right of you, it’s all of them.

♩♩ If Jimmy threw a brick right through your window
Is it right to throw a brick right back through his? ♩♩

Well, of course the Republicans will try to do it, I’m asking if they’ll be successful. The parliamentarian doesn’t appear to be buying any of their bullshit, and I haven’t seen any compelling legal arguments that a judge wouldn’t laugh at. Supreme Court is what worries me most, given the pigfuckingness of Roberts, Alito, and Scalia.

they hate black people, they hate poor people, and they despise any such people successfully working in their own interests.

Way-ull THET’S SOCIALISM!

Who funds big hollywood anyway, I’d love to throw a brick through that window.

We do, assbucket. By consuming entertainment.

One thing that I’m hoping comes out of all this is that the Dems get a taste for winning, and realize people like it when they’re on the offensive and stop pussying around regarding the GOP.

They should immediately propose a massive jobs bill to immediately funnel money to local governments for infrastructure repair/improvement. Let’s see those GOP fuckers try to fight that one!

Who funds big hollywood anyway, I’d love to throw a brick through that window.

You and that (other) Boner guy.

I say this with all respect, but with all my heart:

This is a stupid goddamn post. And Jane Hamsher can play in traffic, once she’s put down Norquist’s scaly cock.

HTML, Lambert linked to this today.

Oh, my, that’s nearly Beckian in its insanity.

Shalom, gentlemyn.

I actually disagree HTML.

I think Obama isn’t the bad guy, the senate democrats were the collective bad guy and chief fucker uppers. Obama’s faults are as you put it, being much more centrist than most of us life-long progressives, being too willing to treat Republicans as arguing in good faith, and putting too much priority on removing the “president as God” crap from the Bush years to actually put right all the crap from the Bush years.

But on HCR, it seems like he made an honest effort. Sure, he didn’t really care much about the specifics. As long as it would make some people’s lives better, he didn’t really care if it was historic NHS level stuff or what we’re getting (a damn decent health insurance reform bill). But, I think he expected just like us that the senate would get its ass in gear and was as surprised as all of us at the sheer level of fucked-up traitor shit from the bought-off senators in the Democratic Party and the sheer open corruption of the collective media.

I’m used to every struggle being an uphill battle cause I know my history, but it has been amazing seeing a tiny fraction of white supremacists openly organized (poorly) by a news network treated as bigger than the SCLC and the Iraq War protests combined. And I don’t think anyone appreciated the sheer lengths Senators Lieberman and Nelson would go to try and make health care reform absolutely impossible.

Given the climate and the struggle, the fact that we got out of this with a damn fine health insurance reform bill is a really good deal.

In general, I think Obama’s real flaw wasn’t so much some magical ju jitsu that would have made the fat elite of the Senate remember that they aren’t actually royalty, but rather focusing too hard on HCR at the expense of all other bills. If the Senate was passing other stuff, it wouldn’t seem so bitter that HCR wasn’t as awesome as it could have been and we would have been in a better space to pass some of the other stuff.

But the real problem is the Senate and also the strategy abilities of the Democratic Party.

So yeah, but as to your other point regarding pushing Democrats from the left. Duh. And yes, it’s what we need to be doing.

I would argue that those of us doing it though need to focus more on the pushing from the left (i.e. articulating far leftist views, presenting them to elected officials, pushing Overton windows, etc…) and less on the easy way out of just saying Obama is generally bad. It can be really easy to get angry at the overworked black man for not fixing a fundamentally broken everything with a tool that’s just as fundamentally broken as the rest, it’s really hard to articulate, organize, and push as far to the left as we can and also appreciate whatever scraps we get.

As lefties, every struggle is this one. We fight, we scrap, we stand for what is necessary and we get pieces and fragments in laws, and pieces and fragments in culture. And these are the points by which the next fight gets easier until life less and less resembles the hell of the past and more and more resembles an easier future.

But yes, never censor, never self-censor, but for sanity’s sake, drink deeply of each tiny victory we carve out of the mountain. As long as we’re moving forward, it’s one of the best wins we’ll see. We’re progressives, we don’t get Christmas morning type victories (no, not even the New Deal, the New Deal put up levies against a corrupt financial industry instead of dismantling it for fear of communist revolution, tiny fixes over the sweeping changes lefties wanted and most of the holding back the tide stuff even got overruled by a corrupt Supreme Court, even that was a “sellout” that “wasted the mandate of the people”).

Sorry about the long post everyone.

which just goes to show that our nation’s political spectrum is so heavily red-shifted that in the night skies between the 49th and 26th parallels north, all such moderate conservatives now appear as OMFGSOCIALEZZT! in all forms of electromagnetic radiation, particularly in the 540 to 1600 kHz frequencies.

Hardly surprising given that the only illumination comes from the Starfish Prime blast of faux news and hate radio.

—————–

As wrong as I think shutting down the bill from the left would have been, I think it was important to remind everybody that in fact there was a position to the left. In the endless Overton Defenestration that is our modern media, this is willfully ignored far too often. It will only be by letting the lefties speak and be heard that the center will become, well, the center again. I’m happy that the Peace Elf finally came around and voted for the bill, but I’m also happy he made some noise about it not being enough.

—————–

The poll that the nutsackers are keening about actually said that the disapprove from the right # was 43%. The approve # was 39%. i don’t know the MOE of the poll, but that’s pretty close, particularly taking into account the fact that a huge portion of the populace has been bombarded by outright lies about it for months, to the point where I doubt many of them have much of an idea what it really is. There were also 13% opposed from the left, but nobody seems to be talking about them. The sacksuckers just like the way dilution helps their spin. In reality, more than 50% of America wanted at least this much of a bill if not more. Somehow, that’s not the spreading meme. I can’t imagine why.

Obots

look, this is a president who’s getting it hard from both sides. judging from the health care polls, we’ve got %43 republitards opposed to obama breathing air that constitutionally belongs to them alone, about %13 opposed to HCR because it’s not liberal enough, leaving only about %39 of americans who are democrats who are not actively giving him shit at this particular point in time

and a remaining %5 who are watching the game

Sure, and I suppose Glennzilla should go play in traffic, too, as soon as he’s done playing with Bob Barr’s cock?

FDL threatened with the only leverage they had wrt HCR.

The Norquist thing was about Rahm Emmanuel, not health care (at least that’s what I remember).

I stand corrected on Lambert. Still, I don’t hate him.

. Their heads are exploding, they voted as a disciplined anti- bloc, they are inciting teabagger violence, they are totally freaking the fuck out over this tepid, Romney-esque HCR, because they were gonna do that no matter what; that is how they are.

And yet they’re still essentially dictating policy. And they always will.

To the extent that the Dems really did abandon that bipartisan nonsense and ram it down the Rethug’s throat, this establishes two precedents from which we can go forward:

1. The Dems now realize that bipartisanship is a Tooth Fairy fantasy and that they can make stuff happen without the liars and obstructionists from the other side, who have done nothing but pout, scream, and prevaricate over the issue of people’s fucking health.

2. SO DO WE, and we can hold them accountable under these new, proven terms. We can say to Reid, Pelosi, and esp, Obama: You tried. You now see we were right. Let’s have no more of that nonsense and let’s accomplish things you were all elected to accomplish.

Basically, to summarize myself out of apology for the huge post, senate sucks, every struggle seems this futile, of course stand up for the left-most views you can and never self-censor your damn opinions, but also eat deeply of this disappointing cake, because for us liberals, it’s always disappointing cake.

This very good health insurance reform bill is a good step forward and about as good of a victory as we’ll see. Doesn’t mean we ask for less, doesn’t mean we “scale our demands or our expectations”, only that we feast on these scraps because the struggles are long for us and victories few and far between. We need to appreciate them and remember them in their piecemeal nature otherwise we’ll get burned out and unable to fight at all.

In shorter shorter, no one ever said caring would be easy.

Life got slightly better today for a large number of suffering people. Any day that happens is a good day.

As we’ve been told time and again it is the “President’s job to protect Americans, well now that Obama has gotten the Authorization to Use Medical Force he should go ahead and declare war on viral infections.

Americans are under attack!!
Will Obama use his powers as the Commander-in-Chief to protect
Americans or will cave to the forces of Illness and Disease?

Sure, and I suppose Glennzilla should go play in traffic, too, as soon as he’s done playing with Bob Barr’s cock?

Yes, actually. That and his support for Jake Fucking Tapper. Dearest progressives of such sweet piety, choose your friends wisely, you pricks.

I’m glad Greenwald is on my side, usually, but I have no qualms in calling him a world-class asshat. Because he is.

FDL threatened with the only leverage they had wrt HCR.

Cool story, bro.

The Norquist thing was about Rahm Emmanuel, not health care (at least that’s what I remember).

Wow! Well, then. That makes it OK. Hehindoodily!

I stand corrected on Lambert. Still, I don’t hate him.

Welp, that speaks poorly enough of your character, at least.

I seem to recall “reconciliation” was fucking pipe dream that NOBODY should be pushing for?

Funny how that worked out…

I hope that the whole “he can’t do anything without the votes thing” has been proven false. Seriously, Rep Boyd, who supported Bush’s SS privatization, voted for this bill. This is what the Obamabots decried as “wanting him to wave a magic wand.” Its called leadership.

For the people who said he talked about bipartisanship during the campaign, which somehow justifies it – he also claimed to be against the Hyde amendment and for a public option, so he has shown the flexibility to change his position when he wants to.

I hated Hillary during the primaries, and what makes me the most angry is we ended up with Hillary as President, right down to the seemingly epic incompetence.

There was a chance, after as big a discreditation of an ideology had occurred, to give a new vision for America. Reagan took that moment and said, “Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem.”

There was a chance in 2008 to start a new narrative and make a positive case for government. Obama tried to get Olympia Snowe to ask him to the prom.

It was the biggest squandering of national goodwill since Bush told people to go shopping.

I don’t understand what probz peepz could have with this bill. I think it’s terrific and I’m overwhelmed by how OMGbama managed to effectively silence big pharm. Twilight of the interest groups, mothafucker, and it’s all thanks to our greatest president since Reagan!@

Plus too also why are peeps still so upset about no public option? I mean WTF? I know it’s embarrassing but if you’re really strapped for cash just have your ‘rents pick up the tab until you land your first sinecure, the E$ Klein way. Whatevs man. I’ve got a vegan vindaloo to which to attend. E$ AUDI!@

This Obot punching has to stop.

Maybe they really were for Hillary, but I didn’t see any posts like that.

They hate Jane Hamsher because they say she didn’t stand up for Hillary against the mean Obots during the primaries. Which they’re still bellyaching about over there. And now because she supported the public option. She even banned Lambert a few months ago for giving her shit about not showing enough support for single payer. They became fierce single payer advocates after Obama was elected. While Clinton was in the running I don’t think they ever talked about it and I really doubt that they ever criticized her for never advocating for it.

I don’t understand what’s so horrible about agreeing with Bob Barr when — whatever his prior political actions, which I know about well enough — he used his influence to argue against Bush Jr.-era anti-Constitutionalism.

Why is that not useful?

Obama tried to get Olympia Snowe to ask him to the prom.

OMFG my dad would’ve been PISSED ROTFL. But not too pissed really coz Obama is the negro the whole country club can agree on! Also have you ever seen him in jeans and a tee shirt? Dreeeeeaaaaaaammmmmyyyyyyyyyyy.

And as horrid as this process has been, and as tepid as the results are, anyone who in retrospect wants to say that the passage of health insurance reform by a Democratic President was just some sort of given due to the numbers of politicians elected from the Democratic Party has gotten hold of some seriously mind-altering drugs.

Why is that not useful?

I get to read his weekly spew in the local rag. He’s useful 2 times out of 10. Hell, even McMegan averages that.

I hated Hillary during the primaries, and what makes me the most angry is we ended up with Hillary as President, right down to the seemingly epic incompetence.

There is not one microscopic chance that Hillary Clinton gets healthcare passed as president and you know it. Hillary’s idea of relegation was to turn over her campaign to mensas who forgot the Democratic primary had proportional voting. Fuck that noise. For all the hand-wringing over Obama shrugging and letting Congress work itself out- and for what it’s worth, his lack of fight until the last few minutes pissed me off to no end- Hillary would have been an epic bomb on this front.

Where I’m at is this: Nancy Pelosi is the shit, Harry Reid’s at least earned some grace with me for his smackdown on Walnuts, and I’ve been overall frustrated with Obama but I’m ultimately happy enough *for now*. But Hillary fantasies? Jane Hamsher worship? Corrente? Sainting Greenwald? Fuck this shit, thanks.

In my opinion the two most absurd moments, or set of moments, in this whole health insurance reform thing, was His Highness General Max Baucus disappearing into the cellar with his sub-sub-sub committee of 3 Republicans and 2 other Democrats so that he could avoid the Democratic majority on his own fucking committee and spent nearly 80 fucking days of TeaTard rage jacking off thinking about the lobbying money flooding into his coffers and at the fucking end of TeaTard Summer having not one fucking Republican vote for his ‘efforts’ at pissing down the bill, and then the whole fucking ridiculous princely courting of Olympia Snowe because one minute she said she might vote for HCR ‘if you did a triggered PO or maybe not and she’s not sure and in the end, NO, sorry, I have to pull the football away again you dumb simpletons, what fucking party did you think I was in?’

Actually, having written those, I take that back.

Those are the 2nd and 3rd most absurd moments, right after the election of Scott Brown had the effect on our mature, sober elected Democratic politicians of lighting a firecracker in the midst of a roomful of cocained-up feral cats.

One more thing before I forget. I’m so sick of purity trolling cunts. I mean we have a great President here and seriously, back in the Bush years, who would’ve ever thought we’d be electing a black man President? Especially a black man with a scary Muslim sounding name? And who’d have thought that he’d be crafty enough to assume even more massive powers of surveillance and detention than Bush/Cheney ever dreamed of? So fuck you if you can’t appreciate everything we’ve accomplished.

Seriously, all this Obama bashing has to end. We got a health care bill that I personally can live with, that is going to work out for me and the people I know, and I’m fucking sick of all this negativity toward our President. If you disagree with Obama just fucking keep it to yourself, okay,you stupid fucking fire-breathing liberals, because purity trolls can kneel down and suck my fucking dick from here on out.

?

All Presidents learn. Some do that better than others. It’s still early in what I sincerely hope will be an eight-year presidency. And I was, am and always will be way to the left (forgive the shorthand) of the Big O. He’s smart, and I hope his successor will be to his left. I think that’s possible.

BTW, I loved the sort-of-spam email I got from his peeps, saying sign here — an excellent way of validating my email address. I signed. I want single payer, but I signed.

“i remember very well the political atmosphere in 1964, when the lbj presidency still enjoyed the air of sanctity bestowed on it as the inheritor of the mantle of the martyred president

that advantage has to be weighed in comparisons of lbj’s effectiveness.”

Yeah–no. The assassination gave LBJ a certain amount of cover to launch his campaign for a civil rights bill (“It’s what the martyred Kennedy wanted!” Which was true and yet not–JFK wasn’t going to risk any political capital on it) but he had NO PUBLIC MANDATE for it. He also didn’t just lean back and think that between the post-assassination zeitgeist, Sam Rayburn and Mike Mansfield that the bill was just to magically appear on his desk. Its passage (along with the later Voting Rights Act) came down to LBJ kicking down doors, cracking heads and calling people in the middle of the night to let them know that *he* knew where the bodies were buried.

He called in every favor he had accrued over his long career in Congress, and political calculation had nothing to do with it (let’s not forget: “We have lost the South for a generation.”) He pursued a civil rights bill because it was the just and moral thing to do.

Balls of ti-fucking-tanium. I like that in a president.

Bay of Arizona,

Word.

Oh yeah and DN Nation is right. Fuck Greenwald. What the fuck has THAT guy ever done? Stupid fucking cocksucker was against the war in Iraq, back when we were for it, because SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!@ and COLIN POWELL SAID SO!@ Then the stupid motherfucker was against the surveillance state, back when I was for it, because SUPPORT OUR PRESIDENT. Then once I realized I’d hated Bush all along (BUSH ROFL) Greenwald was okay again but now he’s coming out against Obama from time to time? Fuck that purity trolling fucker. SUPPORT OUR PRESIDENT. Besides, how could Greenwald possibly be smarter or more persuasive or a better constitutional scholar than DN Nation and me? I mean what do we have to do to prove our liberal bona fides, skullfuck Bush? (BUSH! ROFL. THAT GUY WUZ TEH DUBM!@ M I RITE?)

I just want to say thank you for this post HTML. And that I eated teh plums – dey were hot cold and nummy!

TS;MOAR humourless dildonics version:
I’m even more negative on the merits of the HCR package than you’ve presented yourself in the post – but in the end I threw my chips in with the obvious winner (ooh, there’s a risky stand!). This reform has a lot of crappy garbage in it – even die-hard Obots fall back on the “it’s just the start” line. IOW, they aren’t judging the bill so much for what it does, but what it might do some time in the future. It’s nice that someone is willing to point at the shit sandwich and say that it’s got shit in it.

And, holy fuck – if you attacked this bill from the left, the response you got was over the frigging top. Before Dennis’ dressing down on Air Force One, the things said about him, the way hey was treated by “progressives” was pretty fucking shocking. I’d also like to point out that after he flipped one-eighty with the zealousness of the recently converted, there was nary a nice thing to be said for him. i.e. cross the Don once, and there’s no getting back into His good graces.

Yeah, thirty million hostages putting off routine doctor’s visits and the like – sure that’s gonna change the way people see things. But the ransom is paid now – it’d be nice for them to acknowledge that they may have lashed out at the wrong targets in the heat of the moment. Perhaps said some things that weren’t justified. Or not, wev.

One more thing before I forget. I’m so sick of purity trolling cunts. I mean we have a great President here and seriously, back in the Bush years, who would’ve ever thought we’d be electing a black man President? Especially a black man with a scary Muslim sounding name? And who’d have thought that he’d be crafty enough to assume even more massive powers of surveillance and detention than Bush/Cheney ever dreamed of? So fuck you if you can’t appreciate everything we’ve accomplished.

Seriously, all this Obama bashing has to end. We got a health care bill that I personally can live with, that is going to work out for me and the people I know, and I’m fucking sick of all this negativity toward our President. If you disagree with Obama just fucking keep it to yourself, okay,you stupid fucking fire-breathing liberals, because purity trolls can kneel down and suck my fucking dick from here on out.

I’ve read this like three times already and I can’t figure out if it’s 1) a misfired attempt at meta-sarcasm, 2) an actual cranky outburst aimed kind of off to one side at somebody else and somehow it ended up here, or 3) it’s brilliant satire I’m too thick to figure out.

Balls of ti-fucking

ok, tough guy, you go get yourself elected president of the united states so you can show us how easy it would to pass single payer if you only kick enough ass

“everything is ‘easy’ to the man who doesn’t have to do it himself”

I think we’re all a little tender today, kids. Let’s have a nice nap.

Oh yeah and DN Nation is right. Fuck Greenwald. What the fuck has THAT guy ever done? Stupid fucking cocksucker was against the war in Iraq, back when we were for it, because SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!@ and COLIN POWELL SAID SO!@ Then the stupid motherfucker was against the surveillance state, back when I was for it, because SUPPORT OUR PRESIDENT. Then once I realized I’d hated Bush all along (BUSH ROFL) Greenwald was okay again but now he’s coming out against Obama from time to time? Fuck that purity trolling fucker. SUPPORT OUR PRESIDENT. Besides, how could Greenwald possibly be smarter or more persuasive or a better constitutional scholar than DN Nation and me? I mean what do we have to do to prove our liberal bona fides, skullfuck Bush? (BUSH! ROFL. THAT GUY WUZ TEH DUBM!@ M I RITE?)

Was against the Iraq disaster from the goddamn start, you vile prick troll. Heaven forbid I refuse to kneel at the porcelain Greenwald altar.

Tell me, whoever you are, how much you enjoyed casting that vote for Nader in 2000. Let’s dance.

Around the internets some are taking issue with my assertion that a year ago some sort of HCR seemed inevitable. Perhaps it was just irrational exuberance at the time, but certainly everyone I talked to, from congressional staffers to people working for HCAN, seemed to think it was basically inevitable, the only question being how good it would be, specifically whether or not there would be a public option,,,

What did he think such people were going to tell him? Did he think they were going to spin HCR’s chances negatively to one of the highest traffic liberal bloggers out there? What a twat Atrios can be sometimes. I have no idea if it could have been significantly better but neither does he. He’s as full of shit as everyone else out there who claims to know how it was going to go down. Before he took office I didn’t expect him to even try HCR in the midst of a near depression, that he’d use the economy as a reason not to and as a result of not trying, the great liberal freakout would be on. I’m shocked that Obama staked his presidency on it and I’m glad as fuck he got it done.

I want to know what Iris thinks about this.

What Atrios also said was that Dems should have threatened the Rs with enacting what I believe he called “some commie hippie type shit” unless the Rs played ball. Maybe it’s not Obama’s fault, but he sure didn’t help.

And while you may diagree with FDL, who else was demanding that the process and product be more “progressive”? I’ll spot you Atrios. If there wasn’t someone willing to pitch a giant fit, we could just as easily have ended up with the Dem consensus being Free Band-Aids For Half Of You. Who else was castigating the liberal members from safe districts for being too cautious? It’s not purity trolling.

I’m glad they were willing to do what they did.

What Atrios also said was that Dems should have threatened the Rs with enacting what I believe he called “some commie hippie type shit” unless the Rs played ball. Maybe it’s not Obama’s fault, but he sure didn’t help.

“Some commie hippie type shit.” Nice strategy, especially when viewed from the warm comfort of one’s own asshole.

And while you may diagree with FDL, who else was demanding that the process and product be more “progressive”?

Me. And I didn’t fuck teabaggers to do it, either.

Please, no dancing.

What did he think such people were going to tell him?

If someone lies a good thing to me I’m gonna try to hold ’em to it. I don’t think the Atrios position is weird at all whether he was suckered or not.

And who’d have thought that he’d be crafty enough to assume even more massive powers of surveillance and detention than Bush/Cheney ever dreamed of?

Too bad the Republican party so completely destroyed their credibility on that issue even they know they can’t make an issue out of it

It does appear however that, “Immigration Reform” or “Education” will be next on the agenda.

Maybe in Obama’s second term we can get around to it?

Jane Hamsher is a self serving media mogul, no less careerist than others you have railed against, and as a defender of the status quo, arm in arm with Grover Norquist, she is every bit the sellout and criminal turncoat that clear headed observers have branded her.

There is no need to excoriate Obama. He did exactly what he does, he has never NOT been who he is, and anybody who thought they were getting the second coming of eldridge cleaver can go fuck themselves, this is, in case you somehow managed to forget, AMERICA, the most paranoid, delusional group of tribal nativist thugs ever to get together and decide to be in charge.

The HCR bill passed last night improves substantially on the status quo. Jane Hamsher is exposed as a gimme gimme thug, I’m sure she’ll be fine taking payoffs from all sides, and even the eternally useless Dennis Kucinich stepped up to the plate and said “Hey, this is a helluva concept. I’m going to DO SOMETHING, because all this wanking hasn’t done a goddam thing in twenty years”.

Jeez. Sorry we ain’t in Denmark, pal, but purity just hands a win to the worst excuse for a political party since the KKK…

mikey

I want to know what Iris thinks about this.

That makes a whole one of us.

I want to know what Iris thinks about this.

Shalom, gentlemyn.

heh

I was told not to worry, because he was really an awesome leftist deep down, cuz of who he was and how he was raised.

Who told you this, besides some whackjob wingtards?

Who, Obama or Greenwald? I’m losing track of the players and I don’t have a program. Oh, you mean Hamsher.

Maybe in Obama’s second term we can get around to it?

HA HA HA yeah sure cocksucker. Maybe. It’s definitely on the fuckin’ list. Right under HAHAHAHAHAHAH gay rights and ahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahaha indefinite detention by fiat and ahahahaha you know what? I can’t even finish. Just open wide and say my fucking name and I swear to God if you even think about fucking making eye contact with me you fucking liberals it’s getting motherfucking medieval all up in this bitch and I’m going to fuckin’ bulldoze you the way Israel triumphantly and cheerfully bulldozes political protesters. Now you know how this works. You’re the fuckers who get fucked in the ass but you’re also the fuckers who had better leave the money on the dresser before I pull on my ostrich boots and sharkskin jacket or else it’s gonna be President Palin and then how will you feel?

it’d be nice for them to acknowledge that they may have lashed out at the wrong targets in the heat of the moment.

How would you like the apology phrased? I’d just like to know how much submission you’re expecting for your precious hurt feelings to heal.

Still with the Jane bashing. AWESOME.

There are politicians who are greedy, corrupt and evil bastards, and not all of them have an R after their name. But certainly not any of the ones you agree with.

I suppose all those folks at FDL, the “firebaggers” – TBogg and Marcy Wheeler and the rest of the team that brought you any coverage of the Scooter Libby trial – useless dumfucks in teh pocket of Ed Koch or Rupert Mourdoch or wev.

I suppose that this is just a recycled Hillbuzz piece.

I suppose that Jon Walker, their very vocal HCR guy, is all tears of impotent rage and take his ball and go home because all he cared about was making sure the black guy looked bad or wev. Totes teh case – totally.

If folks disagree with you, maybe it is because they are stupid or jerks or owned by teh ebil conspiracy or whatnot. But isn;t there a possibility that it’s you who’s wrong? Or maybe even the chance that you’re both right but seeing things from different perspectives?

Nah, Jane Hamsher must be some sort of sell-out bitch.

What did he think such people were going to tell him? Did he think they were going to spin HCR’s chances negatively to one of the highest traffic liberal bloggers out there?

That was my take too. The Democrats said they would do something, then did it. This could only fail to impress someone who just discovered politics.

There is no need to excoriate Obama. He did exactly what he does, he has never NOT been who he is, and anybody who thought they were getting the second coming of eldridge cleaver can go fuck themselves, this is, in case you somehow managed to forget, AMERICA, the most paranoid, delusional group of tribal nativist thugs ever to get together and decide to be in charge.

Mikey is correct. Nobody had better ever criticize Obama because we knew who he was when we voted for him which makes all criticism purity trolling, by default. When you pick the lesser of two evils you’d better suck it up and pretend to love it or you know what? Get the fuck out of my party. Better still, if you don’t love Obama, get the fuck out of my COUNTRY, pal. This is the POTUS we’re talking about. Why do you hate America?

I’m fucking sick of people who aren’t happy with exactly what they’re getting. And if anybody fucking mentions the “Overton Window” I will fucking go off on them because that’s the same bullshit purity trolls have always used.

PS, to fill my Circular Firing Squad bingo card, I still need John Cole to use the phrase “the Jane Hamshers of the right”.

If you fail to support Obama in thought, word, or deed you are bringing about Me. We are the only two options in the entire universe! You must choose!

PS, to fill my Circular Firing Squad bingo card, I still need John Cole to use the phrase “the Jane Hamshers of the right”.

Fuck you. I saw “John Cole” and “firing squad” in close proximity and it was the closest cause for optimism I’ve had this entire thread.

Nobody had better ever

so what’s yer plan, smartass?

Good Democrat-

Your strawman makes me feel funny. Down there.

Geez, Rahm! Do you actually kiss the President’s ass with that mouth?

Would have been moved better had healthcare been torpedoed entirely by progressives.

I did your mom! Your moms are all ugly whores and I fucked them without a condom. Also, I hate fags, and black people. And I love poop. Yummy yum, poop. And I love the penises of the men whom you hate.

Haha, you are a helpless little female infant and the only way to prove your manhood is to recognize how right-thinking everyone is who hates me.

I would have been really moved had healthcare been torpedoed entirely by progressives. Hold on, gotta fart.

Now, this right here is a circular firing squad.

There is no need to excoriate Obama.

There is no need to excoriate *anybody*. Congress passed a bill that will do a lot of people a lot of good. We can keep up the pressure to get more good stuff into our newly minted socialistical health care system. In fact, the rules of the game *demand* that we do so.

And although I feel like a dork for using a sports analogy, what has happened here is the equivalent of winning a football game in spite of 150 yards of penalties, three picks and a whole bunch of three-and-outs. It still goes in the “W” column.

Our congress critters did not exactly dazzle us with process, but they did a lot of good. Let’s pat them on the back and then dial up the political pressure to make what they did better.

Besides, this is the best indulgence in shadenfreude I have had since the election. More of that, please.

I’d be impressed if you could count how many people were in it.

Hey, I’m not filling your bingo card!

I’m more or less with Mikey … not for the first time

kapew!

Fuck you.

Your mom already did. You know, I strongly disagree with a lot of things going on at BalloonJuice right now, but I still read it. Maybe it’s Cole’s natural instinct for defending The Team – something that was obvious to all lefties before his Schaivo induced epiphany.

Still, despite my issues with them – I still read BalloonJuice. There’s a lot of really good writing, some smart shit, some laugh out loud funny shit and some righteously awesome takedowns that get posted there. Because I can accept that intelligent people can disagree with me on some points and not be demons or teabaggers.

PS, the original post was absolutely awesome. Too bad it was just more purity trolling, though 🙁

I need to get on my Very Serious Democrat Face and dig out some of my old striped school ties. Does anyone know if it’s cool if I at least stay vegan, or does that also make me an Unserious Faggy (in the bad way, not in the sense of actual gay people whom we love but to whom we don’t feel comfortable supporting politically right now but that’s on the agenda) Firebagger?

I also need a list of Serious Democrats I can read and quote. Ezra, obviously, and Balloon Juice. Ackerman’s probably okay right? I mean he had a raging Wargasm early on so that should be enough to demarcate him as a Totally Serious Guy. Other than that, what is it precisely that demarcates a Serious Democrat? Like, is cheerleading on the health care reform enough? I know that somehow it needs to work out with Ezra on one side and Bad, Flippant, Unserious, Firebaggers like Greenwald and Taibbi on the other.

Because I can accept that intelligent people can disagree with me on some points and not be demons or teabaggers.

Splitter! Reactionary! Etc.!

Me. And I didn’t fuck teabaggers to do it, either.

srsly?

Jane Hamsher is a self serving media mogul

srsly?

WTF?

Because I can accept that intelligent people can disagree with me on some points and not be demons or teabaggers.

Except Whale Chowder. What that guy said about my mom really hurt.

That’s right, liberals, eight states are already SUING over this government takeover. We’re going to take this ALL THE WAY to the Supreme Court, and, much like campaign finance “reform”, it will be overturned by Roberts!

Suck it! Long, and hard!

I couldn’t hear you with that package in your throat

kapew kapew!

eight states are already SUING over this government takeover

The great state of Chawcheek sues for victory!

Still, despite my issues with them – I still read BalloonJuice. There’s a lot of really good writing, some smart shit, some laugh out loud funny shit and some righteously awesome takedowns that get posted there. Because I can accept that intelligent people can disagree with me on some points and not be demons or teabaggers.

Yeah, me too. But something about Cole just pisses me off, and I can’t quite place it. Like, I actually probably agree with Cole about as often as I agree with Yglesias on the merits, but I enjoy Yglesias’s rhetorical and analytic style immensely just so long as I don’t venture into the frat house of his comments section.

It’s funny, how life presents itself sometimes.

The status quo is a foul, dehumanizing crime. People every day are forced to make a decision between trying to live and trying to keep a roof over their family’s head. And you think that people like Jane, fighting tooth and nail to preserve the status quo that is a republican’s wet dream, because rich white people get superb care and poor and brown people quietly DIE are some kind of hero? Oh yeah – she’s a hero all right. I’m sure Steve King and Mitch McConnell and Michelle Bachman love the shit outta her,

You had two choices – keep things the same or get try to do better. If you think the status quo is better than what we’ve got to now, fine, say so. But somehow, I kind of doubt you do. So if you can’t defend the status quo, but you can defend DEFENDERS of the status quo, you’ve got some kind of slippery outlook, is all I’m saying…

mikey

Oh, fer God’s sake…let’s not forget the fact that 32 million people are going to get health insurance now in favor of an interblog dick-waggling contest or anything.

it will be overturned by Roberts

see, here is a nice troll who has come to tell us all about how to overturn things with Rabbits

I love Yglesias’s comment section, it’s like a peanut gallery filled with the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

What that guy said about my mom really hurt.

Aw. But I was hoping what I said would really hurt too. Guess I’ll have to work on it some more. And by “it”, I mean your mother.

see, here is a nice troll who has come to tell us all about how to overturn things with Rabbits

I find that they don’t survive the leverage when you use them as a fulcrum.

I love Yglesias’s comment section, it’s like a peanut gallery filled with the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

I managed to get banned. Who knew Panetta was such a sore spot for the pudgy little trustafarian?

But I still dig his writing and his ratiocination.

ELEVEN states now! 11 states are suing on Constitutional grounds!

I can’t wait to see this overturned! The liberal crying and whining will be delicious!

BTW, if you’re a leftist and hate this bill, join the Grand Alliance of patriot liberals and conservatives! Michael Moore already said tonight that he hates the bill, too.

It’s Americans vs. Obamaists.

Who funds big hollywood anyway, I’d love to throw a brick through that window.

Michael Flynn, Breitbart’s editor-in-chief at BigGovernment, is a major lobbyist within the DC power nexus, so he’s probably getting funds from everyone.

And if I can be honest here for a moment, aside from this place, the only people I seem to read is Neiwert. So everyone else you guys get into firing squads over are just some hypothetical Internet entity like the girls with the cup, the guy singing Swedish techno, and the cat in the attic watching you pee.

I also need a list of Serious Democrats I can read and quote. Ezra, obviously, and Balloon Juice. Ackerman’s probably okay right? I mean he had a raging Wargasm early on so that should be enough to demarcate him as a Totally Serious Guy. Other than that, what is it precisely that demarcates a Serious Democrat? Like, is cheerleading on the health care reform enough? I know that somehow it needs to work out with Ezra on one side and Bad, Flippant, Unserious, Firebaggers like Greenwald and Taibbi on the other.

The whole serious/shrill schtick that gets whipped out whenever someone rightfully disses people like the Norquist Buddies or Saint Greenwald, even from the left, is so thoroughly stupid I’m surprised it still gets shat out. Then again, people still eat at Jack In The Box, so what the fuck do I know.

Just a hint: I don’t consider Greenwald to be “unserious,” merely that he’s chosen some ghastly people to play kissy-face with, and needs to be called out on it. But hey, asshole, I guess that makes me….unserious, right? Is that how it goes? That how this thing work?

ELEVEN states now!

The great state of Humpcow joins the fray!

Are you sure you got banned. I feel like if you got banned they’d ban the the guy who spams it with conspiracy theories or at least one of the virulent anti-semites to quiet down the rest.

eight states are already SUING over this government takeover

Frivolous lawsuits! Tort reform! Activist judges! Legislating from the bench!

I love how divided you liberals are! A supposed “victory” and you’re already at each other’s throats.

I love it!

I wonder where these “suing states” rank as far as health care…

Oh, fer God’s sake…let’s not forget the fact that 32 million people are going to get health insurance now in favor of an interblog dick-waggling contest or anything.

But we said mean things about Greenwald and Hamsher! The fact that the bill passed just shows that we were wrong to be right, and that we really should’ve held out for the moon! I mean, that this passed shows the votes were there for a more left-wing bill, doesn’t it?

wow.

mikey,

I srsly doubt that Bachmann or even Grover Norquist is singing Jane’s praises.

Yeah, the status quo is fucked up worse than impossible. Even those with insurance are living the modern version of indentured servitude if they have pre-existing conditions. And they’re the lucky ones. That is FUCKED UP SHIT.

I would love to believe that this HCR package will put an end to a lot of that, but I guess I’m cynical on that point. I’m very surprised to find myself more cynical than you – another data point on my constant re-assessment of how I feel about this thing.

But here’s my issue – you’re accusing Jane of being a DEFENDER of the status quo. That her motives aren’t to get better or more meaningful reforms, but to help the insurance industry to keep fucking over (and not in the good way) the entire country. Is that what you mean? Do you believe that Jane is actually thinking something along the lines of “this awesome rat-fucking campaign is gonna screw over the working poor better than W did”!!one1!

That said, all of the parody trolls with their Rahm impersonations and bullshit posts with the oh-so-clever names can lick my bag while I fuck their moms.

I love how divided you liberals are!

Well, we still all hate you, so we can unify pretty quickly. So thanks for being our tent pole.

What that guy said about my mom really hurt.

I am literally fucking her right now.

Troofy, I want to tell you a secret.

Your presence on this thread has brought warmth to my cold heart.

Constitutional grounds

if you please, mr The Troll, explain your grounds

But here’s my issue – you’re accusing Jane of being a DEFENDER of the status quo. That her motives aren’t to get better or more meaningful reforms, but to help the insurance industry to keep fucking over (and not in the good way) the entire country. Is that what you mean?

Gosh, I’m so sorry we’re being…shrill. If only we could be…serious. Like Hamsher.

(You will eat this tired paradigm whole.)

If someone lies a good thing to me I’m gonna try to hold ‘em to it. I don’t think the Atrios position is weird at all whether he was suckered or not.

Sure, but I don’t think the kind of people he’s talking about there were in any position to promise him anything. And just because they had some more inside info than him or me doesn’t mean they really knew what was going to happen. If they thought the chances were less than 50/50 I don’t think they would have told him so. That what they predicted about a bill passing turned out to be accurate is of course central to my point.

Fighter for Change? or Mister Status Quo?

P.S. Best article I’ve read on the HCR as it is, and what it means: G.G.
~

The whole serious/shrill schtick that gets whipped out whenever someone

It tends to get whipped out whenever a lot of other people are offering tiresome polemics about how “the real world works” and sneering at the notion of dissent from party lines. It’s an irritating, ultimately intellectually fruitless tactic, just like the aforementioned polemics/sneerstorms. It has two objectives:

1) To irritate you.
2) To hold a mirror up to your own rhetorical strategy so that you can see it’s just as vapid and fruitless. I regard this as a teachable moment. You’re welcome, buddy.

Then again, people still eat at Jack In The Box, so what the fuck do I know.

Well hello, time traveling personification of a Jay Leno monologue! That said, using the “shat out” metaphor so close to the “Jack in the Box” allusion was stylistically brilliant. Kinboteish.

Just a hint:

You should have said either “pro-tip” or “free kloo”. I’m going to have to deduct points for this. You understand.

merely that he’s chosen some ghastly people to play kissy-face with, and needs to be called out on it

So….you have some criticism of Greenwald on the merits? Or? Not? Or? Doop de doop de doop okay then….

I guess that makes me….unserious, right?

Unedifying, I guess. I’m kinda bummed out to be honest though. I mean I was totally sure you were about to smash some of Greenwald’s positions. You know, really lay into him and show me how silly I was for buying into his arguments as arguments. I hadn’t really expected you to play the “OMG HE HAS TOTALLY GROSS FRIENDS” card.

Though you did help answer my original question. You apparently determine, in your own mind, whether someone is “Serious” according to how Serious their friends are.

From TPM:

There’s a lot of nonsense out there about constitutional challenges to the Health Care Reform law on various ‘state sovereignty’ grounds. That’s nonsense. The Nullification Crisis and Civil War settled those issues.

The GOP making outlandish claims? The heck, you say! It’s almost like they’re trying to get their base so revved up they can hit ’em up for more cash…

I love how divided you liberals are!

Even though we are totally evil, most of what goes on here is just good-natured ribbing.

sneering at the notion of dissent

excuse my pissy fitz, but what was irritating me was the sneering at the notion that the president was kinda ok overall sorta

Libruls are so utterly divided they RAMMED OBAMA’S ENORMOUS PACKAGE DOWN AMERICA’S REPUBLICAN THROATS.

What kind of villian would we be if we didn’t kill one of our own henchmen every once in a while, troofy?

Are you sure you got banned. I feel like if you got banned they’d ban the the guy who spams it with conspiracy theories or at least one of the virulent anti-semites to quiet down the rest.

Dude, me too! But a bunch of us got banned during the whole Panetta shitstorm. I guess that whole deal hit a little close to Matt the Y’s family ties. But I still like his writing and hopefully in a couple of years when Ezra gets a sitcom Matt can get a Patton Oswalt-esque gig as Ezra’s goofy, fat friend.

Kill Surf City said,

March 23, 2010 at 3:58

Good Democrat said,

March 23, 2010 at 3:23

Your sockpuppetry game is weak.

You will eat this tired paradigm whole.

Okay, you’ve got a point. Hamsher is probably in a pretty bubblicious universe, and maybe some attacking from the left might do her some good too – so OM NOM NOM NOM. wev, anyways Jane can look out for herself – I’ve spent enough time defending her that I’m starting to feel uncomfortable with it.

On a deliriously OT tangent, for some reason the Nintendo fanboi in me loves this.

DKW. One of the things we learn as we go out in the world and fuck shit up is that our intentions really don’t matter. What matters is the net functional result of our behavior. You most certainly can imagine Jane ADVOCATING for more effective reform while still supporting that which the real legislature managed to get through the real system in real world conditions.

I want more. Hell, we ALL want more. But seriously, “Kill the Bill?” At this point? With fucking NORQUIST? What do you expect? How much forgiveness is there supposed to be? Hell, Mencken (he started this) refuses to forgive writers who have gone to great lengths to apologize and prostrate themselves for their original opinions on the Iraq invasion. I’ll welcome Jane’s help on the next issue, whatever it is, because I understand people go down the road their heart takes them, but I will NEVER let her have a pass on her stand on HCR. There is ideology, and there is reality. And if you are more than a pundit, if you are an activist and a participant, as she is, you have to work with one eye clearly open to what the reality of the situation is. That’s not selling out. But advocating for the status quo most certainly is….

mikey

It tends to get whipped out whenever a lot of other people are offering tiresome polemics about how “the real world works” and sneering at the notion of dissent from party lines.

Which…is not what I’m doing. Some others on this thread are, certainly. Go rageguy on them, thanks.

Well hello, time traveling personification of a Jay Leno monologue!

You apparently think I’m referring to that old E. coli story, which…is not what I’m doing. Rather, referencing this lovely piece that’s been making the inbox rounds this past week.

So….you have some criticism of Greenwald on the merits? Or? Not? Or? Doop de doop de doop okay then….

Oh, I’m sorry. Shrill little old me, taking old Serious Pundit And Constitutional Scholar Glenn Greenwald for, for the sake of his own sniveling ego, smooching with monsters. Clearly my Shrill Talking Points have no Merit, and must be removed Immediately in lieu of lengthy grafs full of Ironically Capitalized Terms.

You apparently determine, in your own mind, whether someone is “Serious” according to how Serious their friends are.

I don’t give a shit about Serious!/Shrill!, to tell you the truth, other than to nyuk nyuk at Beltway wanna-bes like Greenwald and Krugman delighting in their own overkill on the concept, if only to get back to those Real Beltway Types who I’m sure you believe are somehow ultimately different than the former.

excuse my pissy fitz, but what was irritating me was the sneering at the notion that the president was kinda ok overall sorta

Fair enough. I try no to sneer. I try to just say outright that I think the President is a cunt, and I’ve thought he was a cunt for a long time now, like since he was still in the Senate. But I volunteered for him, gave him money and voted for him and I’ll keep doing it because we call that Democracy.

But I’m still going to call him a fucking corporatist cunt, even though I knew that’s what he was when I was making calls for him and when I was voting for him and every time I clicked the “Gimme some money, bitch” button that had a picture of Rahm pantomiming bitchslapping me and then calling me a retard. Maybe the vitriol will do some good and, even if not, it makes my deeply Unserious heart beat a little more vervefully.

the bible clearly states that hamsters lying with ratquists is an abomination

Again, the Norquist thing was about Rahm and mortgages and bailouts.

Linking to FOX Lieberals!

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/24/odd-couple-demands-probe-rahm-emanuel-freddie-fannie-money-rolls/

But Joe Klein gets a pass for cheer leading dropping of the public option by Obama & Co., mikey?

The clown didn’t even know what he was talking about. But it was a corporate sell-out guaranteed to piss off liberals, so Joe Klein typed out of his butt to cheer.
~

Libruls are so utterly divided they RAMMED OBAMA’S ENORMOUS PACKAGE DOWN AMERICA’S REPUBLICAN THROATS.

Well, there’s a lot of Republicans, and we couldn’t just let Obama do it by himself! He’s not Santa after all. So we all divided up into teams and JAMMED OBAMA’S MASSIVE DONG PACKAGE DOWN AMERICA’S GAPING MAW.

Maybe the vitriol will do some good and, even if not, it makes my deeply Unserious heart beat a little more vervefully.

Keep fucking that chicken.

Again, the Norquist thing was about Rahm and mortgages and bailouts.

You think I give a fuck what it was about?

In November 2008, Americans elected a socialist as their president. In March 2010, they woke up stunned to find themselves living in a socialist country.

Health insurers — once private companies — are now organs of the federal government. Every citizen is a ward of the state, which can now compel you to have insurance, punish you if you don’t; determine if your insurance is acceptable, punish you if it isn’t. Thousands of new federal bureaucrats will soon spill from the D.C. Beltway and flood the country, scrutinizing our finances to verify compliance with this new law.

A government that grants itself this kind of power over us can conceivably do anything to us. For our own good, of course. Such a country is in no meaningful sense “free.”

And this is only the beginning. Liberals are salivating in contemplation of all the fanciful window trimmings that can in the future be hung from this legislative framework. Public option will soon appear as prelude to single payer, as was the intent all along. Soon, Americans won’t even have the illusion of a choice — the government will move from subsidizer to provider, and it will be the only game in town.

So what’s next? Some look to the states as possible saviors. Please. The states long ago surrendered their sovereignty, and they are now junkies on federal monies, which they need for schools, roads, Medicaid, and much else. If the citizens are now wards of the federal government, then the states long since preceded them in that sorry servitude.

The individual? What are we going to do, not pay the taxes to support this beast? Oh, they’ll take that from you before you ever get your check; we gave them that power to them long ago, remember. March on Washington, en masse? Lot of good that’s done thus far.

The Republicans? Assuming the GOP can take back both houses of Congress and the White House in the next couple of elections (by no means a sure thing), can you name one gigantic entitlement enacted by liberals that Republicans have successfully repealed? Or even made serious effort to repeal? Ever? Anyone?

The Courts? Sure, maybe Obamacare will work its way through the courts, and maybe the Supreme Court will finally take up the case (there is no guarantee of that, remember), and maybe the Court will not have tilted left by then, and maybe the Justices will declare it unconstitutional. Then what? Who will enforce this decision? Obamacare is already unconstitutional on its face, and yet it is the law of the land. Do you think the Democrats will say, “Oh, all-right, never mind,” and cheerfully strike it from the books after their successful five-decades-long crusade?

And even if a court challenge is eventually successful, how much of the bureaucracy will by then already be in place, how many of the thousands of new regulations already in effect, how much of the billions in new taxes and fines collected, how many jobs killed, how many middle class families addicted to the entitlement?

There’s a reason why Democrats were desperate to ram this through at any cost — once enacted, such things are all but perpetual. Former freedom-loving peoples begin to tell themselves that it’s really not so bad. Sure, government is forcing you to eat state-approved gruel, but hey, at least they hold the spoon, and they even pour a little sugar on top when you’re good.

The worst part of watching the proceedings unfold on Sunday was the endless stream of commentators and pundits calmly discussing this bill as if it were just one more piece of bad legislation that we will have to live under. In fact, what has transpired is nothing less than an overthrow of the old Constitutional order.

In 1776, the American Republic boldly announced its birth with the Declaration of Independence. In 2010, it quietly expired with a declaration of dependence — on government, on entitlement, and on the Democratic party.

cont.

In 2010, it quietly expired with a declaration of dependence — on government, on entitlement, and on the Democratic party.

Obama didn’t “dither.” He got the bill he wanted.

1. Obama took out the left by taking single payer off the table and excluding and censoring the “little single payer advocates”, after promising an open and transparent process.

2. Obama took out progressives after making a secret deal with the hospitals that there wouldn’t be a public option (not that I think the pulblic option was any great shakes, but that’s a topic well covered elsewhere).

Meanwhile, Obama, after cutting the famous secret deal with Big Pharma, had installed Max Baucus as point man for the process; the Senate bill that formed the basis for all else was written by Liz Fowler, a Wellpoint VP on secondment to Baucus’s staff.

Wellpoint’s draft, at the end of the process, achieved what Obama wanted all along: A bailout for the insurance companies, exactly like his earlier bailout for the banksters under TARP, as even Howard Dean understood. Everything else was negotiable, including a woman’s right to avoid forced pregnancy.

Nevertheless, the HCR (Higher Corporate Returns) debate has been useful: The spectacle of Dennis Kucinich actually whipping on the House floor for a bill he once strenuously opposed on principle — what did Obama do? Leave a pony’s head in his bed? — should convince anyone of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Democratic party. From where I stand, the only difference between the two legacy parties is that the Rs just say outright they want to kill the weak, the Dems end up doing the same thing, while claiming it’s all a result of impersonal forces they can’t control.

Thanks for the link.

* * *

I look forward to the day when right wing tax resistance to the mandate, which makes failure to purchase a defective product from a private corporate subject to enforcement action by the IRS, is legitimized in the media. It’s GENIUS, I tell you!

I love how divided you liberals are! A supposed “victory” and you’re already at each other’s throats.

I love it!

Actually it’s called the “post victory debrief” and it’s an opportunity to tell everyone how things would’ve happened if only everybody had listened to your plan.

Very instructional.

You think I give a fuck what it was about?

No, and you’ve made it plain throughout your history here that you’re an asshole, so you can assume I’m never addressing you.

Mikey brought it up: I can have reasonable conversations with the guy.

Go rageguy on them, thanks.

“Rageguy.” Awesome. That’s, like, King of Queens level funny, dude. I like you.

You apparently think I’m referring to that old E. coli story, which…is not what I’m doing. Rather, referencing this lovely piece that’s been making the inbox rounds this past week.

HA HA HA awesome. I had not received that in my inbox this week. Because I have no friends. My only contact with the outside world comes from reading Tony Kornheiser’s tweets. That guy is a riot!

Oh, I’m sorry. Shrill little old me, taking old Serious Pundit And Constitutional Scholar Glenn Greenwald for, for the sake of his own sniveling ego, smooching with monsters. Clearly my Shrill Talking Points have no Merit, and must be removed Immediately in lieu of lengthy grafs full of Ironically Capitalized Terms.

Dude, I just wanted to know how Greenwald was wrong on the merits. If you don’t think he is, but just flat out don’t like the guy, that’s fine. I’m the same way with my girlfriend’s parrot, that stuck-up fucker. But I don’t like stand there and argue with the parrot and I don’t start calling people names when they say they like the parrot.

once private companies — are now organs

you left out the “throbbing”

…that our intentions really don’t matter…

Sure, kick the puppy right between the eyes – I mean, yeah I know this is true – but often I can get myself to forget.

You’re probably right – maybe real reform never was possible. Jane (and Glennzilla too, IIRC) were pushing the “Obama sold out the Public Option” meme since possibly before the Summer of Teabagging. Maybe not that long ago, but quite some time anyways – so maybe she knew too.

So yeah, I guess I’ve got the civility concern troll hat on. The net effect of Jane’s efforts has definitely been negative in terms of HCR, I can’t deny that. So let me just shut up about folks trying to hold her responsible for that, because regardless of her intentions, that’s a pretty ugly black mark for a progressive.

Greenwald is certainly not perfect — but, I too would sign petitions with Bob Barr and promote statements he made against, say, ignoring the 4th Amendment.

Am I forgetting some more monstrous associations?

In the 1970s, there was an evocative public service advertisement on television. It showed an old and grizzled Native American Chief with a tear rolling down his cheek as he surveyed the pollution scaring the landscape of the once-pristine land.

As the House of Representatives passed Health Care Reform, many of us who were blessed to immigrate to the United States in search of freedom and opportunity (and were welcomed with open arms) found ourselves looking across the panorama of our adopted land with a tear rolling down our cheek.

Many of us who came to the United States did so to escape the brutal hand of government or as survivors of the consequences of tyranny run amok.

It has become difficult to watch, as our adopted land appears to have chosen a path that will lead to a nation we dare not imagine: a nation beginning to resemble what we left behind.

We see in Washington, D.C. the spectacle of a Congress whose members are no longer responsive to the people or the Constitution, but instead are captive to their personal whims and greed, as well as their allegiance to a president, political party, and statist ideology.

We recognize that in the White House, in the office once occupied by some of the greatest men in history, the nation has as its president the person most hostile to the founding tenets of the United States since its inception. Mr. Obama appears more desirous of creating a “cult of personality” and a socialist utopia by any means necessary than in acting in the best interest of all the people.

We have witnessed, despite the overwhelming opposition of the people, the arrogance of power as the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress forced through a Health Care Reform bill — a bill whose objective is not to improve the health care of the citizens, but to expand by geometric proportions the power of the state over the individual.

We know that this bill will be nearly impossible to fully repeal, but more importantly, it will pit the government against the individual, foment class warfare, create additional unemployment, shackle the economy, and exacerbate the national debt crisis, while ultimately rationing health care to the most vulnerable in society.

We notice that the (once-)mainstream media are no longer the watchdogs of the machinations of government, but rather the cheerleaders for the present administration. The current health care debate was viewed not as a vital national issue, but rather as a sporting event with the requisite reporting on which team would win.

We see an economy, the engine of wealth and security, hamstrung by regulations, taxes, government policies, lawsuits, and mandates no longer able to generate jobs and income for our citizens. American businesses can no longer compete in a new global economy and must therefore leave our shores, taking employment opportunities and wealth with them. Small businesses and entrepreneurs will no longer be able to generate jobs or even open their doors, as they too will be hobbled by this same myopic and rigid socialist ideology.

We realize, as do many of our fellow citizens, that the United States is on a collision course with national bankruptcy. Yet the present government appears determined, by their policies, to make certain that there is little or no economic growth so necessary to mitigate the future debt crises and make certain that the standard of living for all Americans continues to increase.

We fear that one day, the greatest nation in the history of mankind will be relegated to secondary status, easily intimidated by those who wish us harm, as the United States will no longer be able to finance the most dominant military in the world. Many of us have known first-hand the horrors of war, and we pray that that is something our fellow citizens never experience.

We watch as a nation blessed with abundant natural resources refuses to responsibly exploit them, but rather becomes dependent on the unreliable whims of foreign nations for energy while willingly enriching potential adversaries.

We know, based on our personal experience, that when a nation embarks on the road to massive government and control of the day-to-day lives of its citizens, the outcome is always detrimental to the individual. We know that liberty and freedom are the first casualties, and once fully lost, they can never be regained short of armed conflict.

We have been blessed to live among the most generous, outgoing, and patriotic people on the face of the earth. Some of us have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams, but all of us cherish the freedom to fail or succeed, to live in a land established on the premise that our rights come from God and not man, and to be part of man’s most noble and crowning achievement: the founding and creation of the United States of America.

The founders of our country gave the people a road map, the Constitution, to maintain or regain the power of the people. Follow it. Unite, organize, use the legal process, peacefully march, and above all, vote and take back the country from those who are hell-bent on destroying it for personal vanity or adherence to a failed ideology.

This will be our last chance. On behalf of all of us over the past century who came across an ocean to seek freedom, please do not forsake your future and that of succeeding generations. There will be no beacon or haven for liberty-loving people throughout the world if the United States ceases to be that “shining city on a hill.”

Am I forgetting some more monstrous associations?

I heard Greenwald’s boyfriend is a bad tipper who drives around late at night listening to The National cranked, like, all the fucking way up.

I heard that that guy crying was Italian.

Am I forgetting some more monstrous associations?

PSSSST! Bob Barr was a member of the Republican Party!

Mikey brought it up: I can have reasonable conversations with the guy.

The timing of the whole thing seemed HCR related – although I’m probabyl venturing into Althaus-ian “phrased to imply” territory with that. The story being “Rahm as the Rovian backroom puppet-master manipulating the whole works to please his corporate masters” with the conclusion that removing Rahm means SINGLE PAYER OMG! Or at least drug re-importation.

I dunno, sounds pretty dumb, but the following rash of crazy Rahm Was Right articles and… WTF am I doing? FFS, at this rate of speculating based on bourbon vapours and conventional wisdom, I’ll be writing for Politico soon.

Somehow, all my entries got lost. I’m sure I told you libs that HCR would pass, however.

It does and it doesn’t matter what the Jover Hamquist alliance was about. If it had been a policy issue like drug legalization that a liberal and a libertarian could agree on then I wouldn’t have a problem with it as a one off deal. But it was about her teaming up with a huge scumbag to try to weaken the administration at a time when HCR was its major legislative priority and she knew it. It’s only narrowly true that it wasn’t about HCR.

Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, his current salon article is in defense of Ann Coulter.

We have the debate over ObamaCare to thank for one thing, at least: the treating of the preexisting childlike delusion that bipartisanship is possible, let alone desirable, when the other side is the Obama Democrats.

It is neither. And it never has been nor ever will be as long as there is a segment of a society that wishes to control the wealth and activities of other segments of society. With such people, there are only two options. Either you defeat them — or they defeat you. If you strive to get along with them, you will awaken one day to the fact that they have won. Period.

This little reality is blurred by poll questions designed to bait Americans into answers that fall into the “can’t we all just get along” category. Of course everybody wants that — in a theoretical vacuum. The problem is, we don’t live in a theoretical vacuum. We live in a world where you are either controlled by yourself or by someone else.

Conservatives desire control of one’s own destiny. Liberals seek to control everyone else’s destiny. These two desires by definition cannot coexist peacefully. To pretend they can, in the spirit of bi-partisanship, is frankly infantile. Yet so many purporting to be the brightest still cling to that notion.

But finally, the control freaks of the left have so exposed themselves for who they have always been that even folks unengaged enough to qualify for a Frank Luntz Focus Group are waking up to reality.

Welcome, folks, but what took you so damned long? You had plenty of warning shots.

For some inexplicable reason, the disaster of four-dollar gas was not blamed on the control designs of the left, yet it is clear that decades of liberal energy policy were collectively the reason for this economy-killing problem. Since before we knew the name Michael Jordan, let alone Google, liberals have blocked the production of nuclear power plants and any meaningful offshore drilling. Thus, liberal control of the means of energy production put America on the wrong side of that little law known as supply and demand. Our supplies were static or shrinking while our demand — as well as the demand of others — was soaring. Oops. Four bucks, please.

And no, the sixteen-cent profit is not the problem. But in the name of bipartisanship, too many folks who knew better went along to get along with that premise.

That little financial shock at the gas pump caused a lot of folks who should not have had mortgages to start defaulting on those mortgages. After all, if a family budget is tight while gas is two dollars, then something has to give when it doubles. What “gave” was the home that they moved into with no down payment thanks to a sub-prime mortgage.

Now, where in the world did these undeserving folks get those mortgages? They got them from lenders flush with cash and under severe liberal pressure to loan to the “underserved” community. Now, one would think that folks who are “not credit-worthy” should indeed be “underserved” in the world of lending, but that is not how the liberal mind works. And again, in the name of bipartisanship, too many politicians who knew better went along to get along.

Chalk it up to Cloward-Piven — or Saul Alinsky-inspired bad intentions — or simply liberal bleeding heart-inspired unintended consequences — but the bottom line is that statist attempts to control the markets involving homeownership and mortgages crashed both. And at the bottom of the mess are the left-wing fiefdoms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who managed to enrich liberal cronies like Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick while ruining millions of families’ financial futures.

And yet the McCain Campaign, a towering example of colossal incompetence if ever there were one, thought that the answer was to blame “unfettered capitalism” and to “reach across the aisle” to complicit folks like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank to solve the problem. You know, damn the truth in the name of bipartisanship.

So with no adults in the political class and only a few in the pundit class admitting that what we needed was a good old-fashioned ideological partisan showdown, America swooned and propelled the undefined vapor of hope and change into power. John McCain’s “honorable campaign,” which assured us that we “have nothing to fear from an Obama presidency,” went quietly to the ash heap of bipartisan history.

To anyone paying half-attention, a government dominated by Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Emanuel, et al was a predictable liberal disaster and highly partisan. Yet our nation embraced this notion of post-partisanship with approval around 70% as Obama took office. Apparently, only 16% were paying any attention, as this percentage of Americans strongly disapproved of Obama the day after the inauguration. That tiny remnant knew exactly what we were in for and embraced partisanship even tighter.

Not paying attention were luminaries such as Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, Christopher Buckley, Chuck Hagel, and Colin Powell. They bought the post-partisan, post-racial Kool-Aid and jumped aboard the Obama Express. They proved themselves the intellectual equals of “the ponytailed guy” of “can’t we all just get along” fame from the 1992 debate.

Meanwhile, so-called right-wing extremists who were “out of touch” never bought in. The unofficial leader of this faction was of course Rush Limbaugh, who peered into the zeitgeist headwinds and proudly proclaimed, “I hope he fails.” Only one in seven Americans knew at the time that Rush was right.

Yet now, thanks to the breathtaking and never-ending push for total control of our lives by way of ObamaCare, that number is higher than one in two. Moreover, many have come to realize that with this kind of control mindset, there is no meaningful compromise. It may sound enlightened to want Washington “to work together for the American people,” but it is becoming evident that this is impossible when one part of our government wants to control the American people.

The only remedy is to defeat such people. And right now, all of those people are in the Democratic Party, and the only buffers between them and a socialist nation are in the Republican Party. This is about the partisanship, the whole partisanship, and nothing but the partisanship.

The toothpaste is out of the tube now. People do not want their health and their entire lives run by the folks who brought us Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, four-dollar gas, and the IRS. And they know now who those people are.

They are liberals. They are Democrats. They are extremely partisan. They are run by people elected from loony, left-wing extremist areas like San Francisco and Chicago. And there is only one way to defeat them.

We must beat them at the game of partisan politics. And the sad irony is that there has been the preexisting condition of belief in a bipartisan utopia that has allowed them to accumulate so much power. That utopian fog engulfed George Bush with his “new tone,” as well as too many Republicans for too long.

The happy irony is this: The liberal push for the dream of ObamaCare might just be the cure for that misguided belief. And liberal-dominated Google just might be the antidote to another preexisting conditions the left relies on — short voter memories.

Dude, I just wanted to know how Greenwald was wrong on the merits

Your definition of “merits” is…Serious.

so you can assume I’m never addressing you.

Ooh, feel dat burn.

I’m a serious man Larry. I am seriously fucking your wife, Larry!

Jane Hamsher I predict has a choice to make. Is the next two years about her wanting to be right so badly, she’ll fight for that in a narcissistic way? Because she seems happy to run with the ball of “Republicans are going to run on the mandate, and this is how might they do that.” I may be wrong, but I find with the pundits it always ends up being about the pundits.

I may be wrong, but I find with the pundits it always ends up being about the pundits.

That’s called your gut feeling. More often than not, you should go with it.

But it was about her teaming up with a huge scumbag to try to weaken the administration at a time when HCR was its major legislative priority and she knew it. It’s only narrowly true that it wasn’t about HCR.

Well obviously there’s a school of thought that believes Rahm is somehow isolating the wonderful Obama and tricking him into doing Bad Things instead of Good Things, and on that score I’d say the assault on Rahm was about way more than health care. With the same amount of evidence you can say it’s about the war too.

The Grover Norquist shit was a really really terrible move.

Is there a person old enough to know how to use a typewriter suggesting that a defense of free speech rights is a defense of Ann Coulter? Surely not. Not someone capable of reading and comprehending this blog.

My god — it’d be like some shit-head concluding that Chomsky favored Holocaust deniers because he didn’t think Faurisson should be censored from printing, and certainly few people here would be that fucking astoundingly stupid.

Conservatives desire control of one’s own destiny.

As long as your plans for your womb are the same as mine.

That’s called your gut feeling. More often than not, you should go with it.

Six months and we’ll know.

They will argue, among other things, that the requirement that all Americans purchase health insurance violates the Constitution because it forces individuals to contract with private companies

great! now i will be able to drive a car in california without auto insurance!

Except her free speech rights weren’t infringed on, she just got sent a douchy letter from the dean of the college. Anyway, I was just naming names because they were requested I don’t actually think any of that makes him wrong on anything.

You had two choices – keep things the same or get try to do better.

If only we had two simple words that could define these two positions. Something like “conservative” and “progressive” but without using those words.

the requirement that all Americans purchase health insurance violates the Constitution because it forces individuals to contract with private companies

Actually, you’re still free not to contract with private companies. You won’t be sent to jail. You’ll just pay taxes if you don’t. In other words, everyone else would get a tax break. Tax breaks ordinarily seem quite Constushull.

his current salon article is in defense of Ann Coulter.

Are you referring to the column in which he attacks Canada’s draconian “hate speech” law and its abuses/potential abuses?

Though he did go a little easy on Coulter. Calling her a “rightwing hatemonger.” God, are they dating or something?

Except her free speech rights weren’t infringed on, she just got sent a douchy letter from the dean of the college

Right, but the douchy letter was suggesting that her speech could result in criminal charges.

Even if something never happens in reality, you can still disagree with people who advocate something, or imply something.

I don’t think people should be criminally charged by the government based upon the political content of what they say, nor do I think that people should suggest that others may face criminal charges based upon the political content of what they say.

s there a person old enough to know how to use a typewriter suggesting that a defense of free speech rights is a defense of Ann Coulter?

I understand Greenwald’s opposition to Canada’s hate crime laws. That’s civil liberties bread-and-butter. But I find his rage at the provost, incurred by the provost warning Coulter that the law exists and she might want to consider it, somewhat strange.

Because I can accept that intelligent people can disagree with me on some points and not be demons or teabaggers.

That may be true for you, but EVERYONE who disagrees with me is a DEMONIC SPAWN OF SATAN, though they’re entitled to their opinion.

But yeah, if the criticism of Greenwald by that one dude, with the Jack in the Box jokes and whatnot, is that Greenwald sometimes supports his principles (free speech, “hey, can we please not torture people?”, “dude, where’s my gay rights?”) and privileges principle above personality when he chooses whom to criticize and whom to defend, then that’s fine. That’s a delightfully cretinous position that also has the virtue of helping to desiccate discourse and replace it with a teenage fanclub approach to right and wrong.

Actually, you’re still free not to contract with private companies. You won’t be sent to jail. You’ll just pay taxes if you don’t. In other words, everyone else would get a tax break. Tax breaks ordinarily seem quite Constushull.

El Cid, could you explain this further? I have honestly not heard of this before.

That’s a delightfully cretinous position that also has the virtue of helping to desiccate discourse and replace it with a teenage fanclub approach to right and wrong.

In other words: Unserious.

penis

Penis.

PENIS!!!1!!!!!11

And further lo, my shitty little JITB joke went unappreciated. Knives out.

El Cid, could you explain this further? I have honestly not heard of this before.

I am contrasting the notion of ‘forced’ between criminal sanctions and paying ‘fines’ or higher tax rates than others. There are no criminal sanctions against individuals who do not choose to purchase health insurance, to my knowledge, nor is it termed to be criminal. You are just levied a fee, a fine, a tax, by the government. Does that not reflect what you have heard?

I understand Greenwald’s opposition to Canada’s hate crime laws. That’s civil liberties bread-and-butter. But I find his rage at the provost, incurred by the provost warning Coulter that the law exists and she might want to consider it, somewhat strange.

Yeah, well, that’s pretty much the style of that blog most of the time. I don’t notice it that much because I’ve spent much of my life reading leftist material which pretty much is on horrifiedly indignant mode pretty much the whole time. (You ever read CounterPunch? Not much happy-shiny there too often.)

Interesting thread… although I’m glad I didn’t come across it until it was past its nasty-ass prime.

I don’t think there have been too many hate-speech convictions. The douchiness of the letter in question might depend on how loony the provost thinks she is.

I don’t know what I thought exactly. I was hoping that I stumbled onto something I could use to smash all the jackbooted ATFCensus Bureau/ACORN glibbies back on the homefront (Deviantart politics forum), but they won’t care if something is defined as a tax rather than a fee.

PENIS.

Kill Surf City–

Is it Surf City, NJ that you wish to kill?

If so, umm…why? I’ve spent many a summer on futons, floors and in beds all over Surf City, NJ.

Please don’t kill my surfy little city.

Gee wiz Dead Nettles Nation, you sure are prickly tonight. Or is that your usual way of jacking the box, because, like, I don’t think a lot of people take this place that seriously.

Seriously.

Goddamn it I said PENIS.

RESPECT TEH FUCKING PENIS!1!111!!!!

I think what makes the provost’s letter objectionable is that he tries to defend the law. The worst bit, to me, is:

Hopefully, you will understand and agree that what may, at first glance, seem like unnecessary restrictions to freedom of expression do, in fact, lead not only to a more civilized discussion, but to a more meaningful, reasoned and intelligent one as well.

I think it’s A Bad Thing for an academic to be in favour of the hate speech law, especially in the context of a campus event. (A provost is really more a politician than an academic, which may explain it.) However, for Greenwald to interpret this letter as a “threat” and act like the provost has the power to throw her in jail is, as I said, strange to me.

Gee wiz Dead Nettles Nation, you sure are prickly tonight.

No, I’m merely Shrill and Unserious.

Frankly, Mr. Surf City, as an irregular visitor and someone without so much as a border collie in this fight, you might want to consider that at some point when you become an adult, you will recognize rather quickly that binaries are almost always false, that there are shades of gray, nuance if I might borrow the term, and a person of good will might find Greenwald or even Hamsher a valuable ally with a very, very horrible take on one or another issue.

At that point we need to decide what to do. I’ve decided some years ago to stay hard on them for the position I can’t agree with, but I’ve never been one to agree with Mencken that one slip, one step away from liberal doctrine and you’re out. I’m trying to find my way, and learn what works and what can take us where we want to go, and I’m doing it in a pretty seriously autocratic corporatist surveillance state.

Everybody has something to contribute, and everybody is going to take a bad path at some point. Jane was a particular hard one to watch, but in general I don’t find it hard to tell the good from the bad. And you can disagree with Glenn without rejecting the power and honesty in his other arguments.

Honestly? I think this whole deal, the whole ball of whacks, is going to be won by the first side that puts away the false binary and embraces every ally they can enlist on every issue.

And it feels pretty good to be back here…

mikey

Or is that srsly?

I don’t know how those kids do that these days on their Twatter or whatever.

And as far as HCR helping people right now and all, last I heard nothing was going to go into effect until next year, which I guess pissed off the healthcare industry that was pushing for the twelve of never. So I guess we should feel some kind of victory. I guess.

I’ve never been one to agree with Mencken that one slip, one step away from liberal doctrine and you’re out.

Should depend on the slips, right? Everyone’s got a line. The post at the top of the thread is pretty conciliatory as HTML’s stuff goes, isn’t it?

HCR passage will be good because people will go to regular doctors regularly instead of seeking expensive ER care when something explodes which you pay for anyway and experience something we doctors like to call “preventative care” which is like running a yearly diagnostic on your car which almost everyone who has a car does but not nearly so many people run yearly diagnostics if we do them we will save billions and billions on ER and ICU costs.

And that’s just the first little piddling shuffle over the start line along the way to where we need to be: universal single payer (best case) or not-for-profit private insurance backed by a universal public option (only other acceptable case).

It’s really just this simple.

We do what we do.

Writers write. You can choose, you can reject, but at the same time what aren’t you learning, what are you missing by hewing so close to the company line?

Now, there’s limits. I’m not going to seek nuggets of wisdom in Hannity’s writing, even if the odds say there might be a few. But I’m not going to skip the opportunity to see a little more light just because I disagree with parts of the wireframe….

mikey

The bill’s been passed and I’m glad it did. Compromise is part of politics, the art of the possible, blah, blah. I get that. And yes, Jane Hamsher should have had nothing to do with the likes of Grover Norquist. That said, I think talk of purity and firebaggers was rather overblown from time to time.

Let’s let Rod and Gary Coleman do the legwork…

BTW, it’s the Second Coming Of The Flood here in Central Jersey.

By which, of course, I mean last week’s flood.

No water restrictions this summer, woohoo!!!!!!

Fuck this revisionist history. If Obama had only done this or that, then we’d have fucking single payer by last week. Bullshit. We have no fucking clue what would have happened if Obama had rolled out a list of demands last February and then berated members of Congress who defied him. Oh yeah, no fucking problems with that strategy, is there? Especially since he’s the first black president, who won by peddling his kumbayah shtick, so laying the smack down on old white Congressmen would have meant his white approval numbers dipped into the low 20s. Oh yeah, good plan.

Not that there is a learning curve with this governing the country shit, either. After all, look at all the great, effective Democratic White House veterans they had to choose from. Wasn’t James Carville available? I’m sure that if the White House tried running the legislative show from Day One it’s not possible they would have fucked it up, leaving us all holding our genitalia rather than raising a cup of lukewarm tea to the passage of the I Guess It’s Better Than Nothing Act of 2010. If only Obama had told the Congressional leadership to STFU and do as they’re told, then we’d all be pissing ourselves laughing as we watched video clips of laid-off health insurance company and pharma executives walking dejectedly out of their shuttered office buidlings, jeered by crowds. There’s no way we’d be sitting here with no bill at all, bitching that Obama was a control freak who thought so much of himself that he had to try to do it all himself, and failed.

Also, fuck corrente sideways with fistful of rusty razor blades.

Can we please limit the fratricide to the other side?

Consider this tragic ululation from former Axis-Of-Evil phrasecoiner/Bush cabana boy David Frum:

“No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.”

Can we come together and help to save a moment like this as a crucial first step toward a necessary good and lay off the personal attacks?

For jeebus’ sake, we’re not like them.

Once, a wise man said to me:

A man with a can of shinola would know it from shit when he smelt it.

A man with a can of shit would know it from shinola when he dealt it.

And a man with a can full of shit and shinola wouldn’t have a fucking clue what he was smelling or dealing with.

I believe we’ve chosen path #3. I just hope it’s way more shinola and the shit’s just a stronger odor than what I’m currently smelling.

For jeebus’ sake, we’re not like them.

No, they win much more often.

Lawnguylander:

Corrente started posting daily on single payer in May 2008, when DCBlogger came on board and started covering it. So far as I know, nobody else in the blogosphere gave an equal amount of sustained coverage to the only health care policy on offer that can be shown by evidence to actually work. Oh well.

As for the primariez,Hillary was marginally better than Obama on health care, in that — for example — she didn’t run Harry and Louise ads in Ohio. She also had a mandate which I, naively I suppose, saw as necessary precondition for universality (which it is), and assumed could be negotiated upward after the Dems won the Presidency.

When I stopped writing about the horse-race after the collapse of Lehman, I started writing more fiercely about single payer, because I had time to look at the issue.

And then, Obama got elected and took it off the table…

Can I both agree we should have gotten better and think that atrios is way off to have thought HCRs passage was inevitable? Because please, health care looked inevitable a ton of other times, and it always got slapped down so forgive me if I think that saying “it was always going to happen” is overly simplistic to the extreme.

Everybody has something to contribute, and everybody is going to take a bad path at some point. Jane was a particular hard one to watch, but in general I don’t find it hard to tell the good from the bad. And you can disagree with Glenn without rejecting the power and honesty in his other arguments.

This is something you may want to take up with the dude with the Jack in the Box and airline peanuts jokes who was arguing that “Because Greenwald has allied himself with people I hate, I hate Greenwald.” On the other hand, since I was saying things like “Hey man, can you please show me where you disagree Greenwald on a particular issue, and we can maybe, like, discuss it, or whatever, instead of, you know, just dismissing a very bright and gifted writer out of hand because he doesn’t, I guess, sit at the right table in the cafeteria or whatever?”

I mean I really enjoyed your long Satchel Paige style windup and then the spiel about how “when you become an adult you’ll recognize doop de doop blah blooh hee hee wheeeeeeeeee” was definitely good. I would keep all that in the routine if I were you. But I feel that if you’d bothered to connect your condescension to something, anything, I’d actually said, it would have been more effective. Or, given that I seem to have been making many of the same points you made, maybe you should take up your grievances with the dude I was arguing with, who was saying the exact opposite of the things you seem to believe.

These are things you should consider before you hit “Post”, even if you have a really awesome routine all worked out where you simultaneously show off how world-weary and unassumingly intellectual you are. Thanks for that, by the way, I’d really been missing 1995 lately.

forgive me if I think that saying “it was always going to happen” is overly simplistic to the extreme.

Well, it passed, so I don’t think calling the magic health care package “inevitable” was crazy particularly if he was specifying that the devil was in the details. As it is.

corrente was a decent grouping of principled leftists- they lost me when they compared Obama to Hitler- just straight Godwin because they were both charismatic speakers.

I think this whole deal, the whole ball of whacks, is going to be won by the first side that puts away the false binary and embraces every ally they can enlist on every issue

This.

A lot of people who follow politics seem loath to accept that the vast majority of their fellow hominids are much more interested in other things … or that while it’s grand fun to argue, it’s always a better strategy to find common ground upon which to cooperate.

The divide that jumps out at me again & again is “saying good stuff” versus “making things happen” – & it’s kind of sad how many of us are willing to value the former over the latter. If all you want is a pleasant sensation, go buy a Fleshlight & knock yourself out … but if you want to turn good ideas into reality, find practical ways to compromise them with the real world or be prepared to take a ride on the Failboat.

Oh, & mikey? Welcome back, big guy.

Don’t let the trollwars-thing drive you away again – that’s why God invented the scroll-wheel.

The divide that jumps out at me again & again is “saying good stuff” versus “making things happen” – & it’s kind of sad how many of us are willing to value the former over the latter. If all you want is a pleasant sensation, go buy a Fleshlight & knock yourself out … but if you want to turn good ideas into reality, find practical ways to compromise them with the real world or be prepared to take a ride on the Failboat.

Amen, man. Like I always say, don’t let the best be the enemy of the good. Sometimes you’ve just got to get right back on that horse. A real man knows how to dust himself off, cowboy up, and get right back in the fight. Keep your head down and don’t forget to walk it off. By gum by golly.

What I see in this thread is exactly why I am pissed off about what happened with HCR. The PO was very real, except for the back room deals done by the WH. And yet there is still vitriol on all sides about how the PO was not real and FDL sucks and Obama did a great job, and all viewpoints that spawn from those 3 concepts.

One can argue about what Obama did or did not promise on HCR, but I do remember him saying something about change. Not seeing much of that at all, unless he meant change from a R to a D.

Does Balloon Juice count as a bunch of O bots

Jesus Christ yes. They self-refer as “O bots.” It’s basically just shitty writing and rah-rah tribalism from some assholes who were pro-torture, pro-Bush and pro-war before the big “Epiphany” where it suddenly turned out (OMG) that Bush was a dickhead.

Not that Epic Fake Troofy Meltdown XII is interesting or anything, but back to Zombie Thread:

This is something you may want to take up with the dude with the Jack in the Box and airline peanuts jokes who was arguing that “Because Greenwald has allied himself with people I hate, I hate Greenwald.” On the other hand, since I was saying things like “Hey man, can you please show me where you disagree Greenwald on a particular issue, and we can maybe, like, discuss it, or whatever, instead of, you know, just dismissing a very bright and gifted writer out of hand because he doesn’t, I guess, sit at the right table in the cafeteria or whatever?”

Yup, I half-heartedly told you a stinker. I’m glad you care.

Here’s where Greenwald loses me: Over the course of, oh, a while, I’ve conversed with Glennzilla in relative private and find myself, most times for the sake of just doing it, serving Glenn a nice warm comforting piece of Well What Do We Actually DO About It. And it is to this that Glennzilla earns his nickname, because the guy just fuckin buffaloes you to the walls with the Serious/Shrill debate (sic! sic!) in lieu of answering the question. Greenwald’s name for me was “Pragmatist.” Fuck that noise.

Oh. As for the answer. The ancient and nebulous “Better Democrats” I guess is what you’d find underneath the layers of self-satisfied rhythms, but who cares, anyway? It’s the cheez that sells. Also underneath all that: A resounding bitterness that he can’t be fawned over like David Broder, yet resolved through the tiresome anti-wingnut welfare of linkage, linkage, linkage. We’ve all got our issues. Some just choose to masturbate. And some earn truckloads of money masturbating, like a Krugman on the Sunday news shows. But hey, he sorta told off George Fuckballs Will! A victory to progressivism, this.

What’s all this, then? Intangibles, thinking out of my ass, whatever. It’s a feeling I can’t ignore, and if you want to call it high school this that and the other, go ahead. But the guy’s been a real shitheel in private conversations, and for that, well…dunno where I go from that other than to say Glenn Greenwald can eat me.

D.N. Nation,

So your problem with him is a personal one?

Yeah, which is petty of me and pretty much proves Kill Surf City’s point. Shoot.

Glenn can be sloppy sometimes- very sloppy, and he can be obtuse once his pitbull jaw locks around the throat of an argument.

I’d take Somerby over Glenn if I had to bet my life of something.

Substance- that was hilarious with the 6 months. Words of Wisdom!

Ezra basically shat himself with his post that was so laughable and twinkle stars that even Matthew Yglesias called bullshit on it.

Imagine. Once again, all about the pundit merit badge. The vote is a notch in the bedpost for these people. They can’t even see a single move ahead. That’s OK, though, they’re primed to tweet at the drop of a hat.

Yugoslavia, the ham-handed attempt at a Iraq attack in ‘98, the foot-dragging during the genocide in Rwanda

Wait… I’m confused. So, getting involved in Yugoslavia, bad, not getting involved in Rwanda, bad.

Is there something about Bosnians that nobody’s telling me? Are Bosnians the lizard people and Serbian genocidists humanity’s last defenders? Please elucidate!

KSC – your thing about critiquing other people’s posts as if they were comedy routines is absolutely fucking KILLING. You should totally keep that in your set.

First they came for the pulverizers, and I did not speak out because I was not a pulverizer;
Then they came for the hunting cacti, and I did not speak out because I was not a hunting cactus;
Then they came for the multi-headed quaggoths, and I did not speak out because I was not a multi-headed quaggoth;
Then they came for the dragon horses, and I did not speak out because I was not a dragon horse;
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak out for me.

A-effing-men!

KSC – your thing about critiquing other people’s posts as if they were comedy routines is absolutely fucking KILLING. You should totally keep that in your set.

D. Aristophanes–I dunno. It comes down to priorities. If I leave that in, I may have to lose the bit about Ovaltine which is, of course, gold.

t D.N.Nation–that’s fair enough. Like I say, I’m the same way about John Cole & company.

t Pinko Punko

Dude, Somerby is a MACHINE. He’s also a hell of a nice guy, based on a couple of email exchanges. He’s an example of a guy whose politics I don’t really agree with much of the time but whom I really respect as a writer and a rhetorician.

This weird take on HCR that something is better than nothing is nothing but mindless cheerleading for Obama by people who haven’t read the bill, which, in effect, is a massive bailout of the insurance companies (aka “institutional investors”) who got their ass kicked in the crash.

Lambert:

Corrente started posting daily on single payer in May 2008, when DCBlogger came on board and started covering it. So far as I know, nobody else in the blogosphere gave an equal amount of sustained coverage to the only health care policy on offer that can be shown by evidence to actually work. Oh well.

You say things like this regularly, but as someone who lives in a single payer system (Canada), and loves it dearly, I don’t know how you can say this. France, Switzerland, Germany and Japan have workable models that are not really or not at all single payer. Granted Switzerland has the 2nd most market driven system and the 2nd most expensive, but it is universal and at least “works” to the extent that it is not considered an ongoing travesty by the Swiss.

It seems like the basis of your critique is “single payer is the only thing that works, so anyone pursuing anything that is not toward single payer is probabaly not really interested in improving the health care system” – it allows you to conclude various liberal/progressive actors are being disingenous, but as the premise is wrong, it leaves a lot of people to think rather ill of you.

Something to ponder.

Jane Hamsher rightly gets called a teabagger because of her public felching of right-wing kook Grover Norquist.

Tragically Flip: When I say “on offer” I mean proposed as legislation, as HR 676 and S.703, which are both single payer and therefore have both been shown to work. Yes, there are other options, like Germany, but they are not embodied in legislation.

If you want to propose a form of words that makes that more clear, I’ll use it; I thought that “on offer” was clear (not snark, BTW).

No doubt a great many public option advocates think ill of me. Then again, I didn’t create that roach motel for progressive energy, I didn’t engage in a bait and switch operation that ultimate came to nothing, I didn’t impose a front-page news blackout on single payer advocacy, and I didn’t support, by silence, the adminsitration’s policy of censorship. So it all evens out, eh?

France, Switzerland, Germany and Japan have workable models that are not really or not at all single payer.

Japan has 3000 private health insurance companies. Germany something like 200. The German system, the original Kaiser-sponsored system, is actually the model our soon-to-be defunct private system was based on and still has viable vestiges under reform.

The distinction is, government can set limits on costs and charges. Companies are free to make as much profit under those conditions as they can, provided they serve the entire population.

To Greenwald’s column we go:

the central promise of the Obama campaign was that it would circumvent those factions by appealing directly to the armies of citizen-supporters they had lined up

Right, because these same motivated activists gave us Republican governors in New Jersey and Virginia and a Republican senator in Ted Kennedy’s old seat.

Glenn…grow the FUCK UP already, mmmmmmmmmmmmK?

My two cents;

The bill’s a good thing (the fact that people with preexisting conditions are going to have options alone makes it worth passing), but let’s also not pretend that it couldn’t have been a lot better if Obama had dug deeper for a bigger set of balls. The fact that he from the very outset turned the bill over to Senator Baucus, one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, and then spent the next months caving and caving again to an uncompromising Republican Party led by Joe Lieberman, got absolutely nothing in return and completely ignored the left wing of his party, is not something I was thrilled to watch.

Negotiating 101; you never, ever start off with a reasonable, pragmatic and middle ground offer. You always start by asking for everything you want; in fact you start by asking for much more than you want, so that when you do get into the give-and-take part of the negotiation, you have things you can barter away that don’t really matter.

That’s what he should have done, that’s what he didn’t do, and that’s what would have gotten a lot more done (potentially including a public option) if he’d played hardball.

Great post Mencken. Obama not only had a mandate to kick Republicans in the teeth, he has a constitutional obligation to investigate and prosecute war crimes,or has everyone forgotten that during this debacle of the legislative process? Now that this piece of shit is law maybe it’s time to start reminding him that ‘Presidentin is hard work’.
Plus we’ll have the added benefit of REALLY seeing right wing heads explode.

Also, spare me the crap about Republicans’ tying Obama’s hands…

NO. The minute the Republicans decided that they would fillibuster every single fucking thing that was even thought about possibly becoming a bill, the argument “Republicans are tying Obama’s hands” became incredibly relevant and impossible to ignore.

The problem is not how Obama handled his “political capital” (an overused BULLSHIT term used to place blame on a political figurehead based on the way other politicians did or did not vote), but the CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS in both houses of Congress!

We never, EVER, had 60 votes in the senate!

Fuck, I swear to God only liberals can fuck themselves as well as we do! Please, I already have six liberal cocks in my asshole. Can we remove one before the election, so I’m not too sore to vote?

Obama not only had a mandate to kick Republicans in the teeth, he has a constitutional obligation to investigate and prosecute war crimes…

I agree on war crimes. I find the first part of that sentence quaint in its massive ignorance of the way Washington works. Kicking Republicans in the teeth, so-to-speak would have brought a media revolution against Obama the likes of which would rival Glenn Beck’s nightly crocodile tears. At it would have been led not just by Fox News, but by every single fucking publication on the planet.

And we wouldn’t have health care.

But we would have stuck to our principals of hating conservatives! We rock!

My first single payer post was on Feb 3, 2008
http://www.correntewire.com/super_tuesday_healthcare_roundup

Next up, Obama goes after Social Security.

I’m going to go out on a sturdy limb and say “Democrats? Learn from something? I think not.” Sure, I applaud the passage, but I’m also painfully aware of how close it was, and how much it was a matter of luck. When the next round of Important Legislation comes around, it’ll be the same old shit with Lieberman and bought-off Dems and shrill wingnut machine-gun-grade nonsense.

If the Democrats stop being pussies in the next 500 years I will eat my hat with the rest of the zombie overlords.

Corrente started posting daily on single payer in May 2008, when DCBlogger came on board and started covering it.

I know that and I should have been more clear and said you specifically picked up the single payer banner after your non-single payer supporting candidate was eliminated. But around here those who remember that flame war generally think of you when Corrente is mentioned so I think they know what I meant.

And then, Obama got elected and took it off the table…

Yay on both counts.

Dude, it’s the money that forced health-care reform to the right. If you didn’t take insurers’ money for your campaign, your opponent was only too happy to do so. Now, you can call that gutless or you can argue that Euro-style reform was so popular with voters that it would have made up for your opponent’s financial edge come the next election. (Funny, no Republicans seem to think so.) You can even say it’s straight-up bribery. What you can’t do is say it’s a failure of the Dem leadership. Each and every Congresscritter and senator had to cut his own deal for political survival — and many aren’t going to survive. FDR, LBJ and Tip O’Neill combined would have been hard pressed to make them ignore their own futures for the good o’ the country. The GOP is credited with “discipline,” — yeah, in the sense that guys before a firing squad have the discipline to oppose loading guns.

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