Douchebag of the Day

I wonder if he’s read “The Predator State.” http://www.amazon.com/Predator-State-Conservatives-Abandoned-Liberals/dp/141656683X

And even the Public Option is a craven pre-compromise from Single Payer, or extending Medicare…

Debate elsewhere is that We aren’t doing enough to support whatever muddled policy they’re walking back on. Folks, gimme something to fight for, and I’ll be happy to fight. But don’t expect me to hit the streets screaming for my right to ill-conceived political expedience.

@nojo: Jane Smiley sounds like you.

@SanFranLefty: Close enough for conversation…

They think he’s weak, and they think they’re winning.

Reminds me of a quote about Bubba around the time DADT happened: “He can be rolled.”

But I still have to add the boilerplate clarification to any criticism: We saw this coming when Barry lurched to the right after the primaries. And he remained by far the best pick on the menu. In that respect, no buyer’s remorse here; just sadness that this was our best shot in a generation, and we’re blowing it.

@nojo: Looks like the best we can “hope” for is some incremental change. That’s clear from the climate bill — it’s a weak-assed piece of crap.

@Dodgerblue: I understand compromise and sausages and all that — but Barry has this annoying habit of making concessions before anyone demands them. The best may be the enemy of the good, but could we at least go window-shopping for the Sony before we settle for the Sanyo?

@nojo: But Sony doesn’t make a rice cooker.

@nojo: I’ve found that the best way to settle lawsuits is to be polite but unreasonable. If you start out being reasonable, you get rolled. Note to Barry: it’s OK to be a dick now and then to the other side.

Just got back from the protests outside the VFW convention. I counted about 400 anti and estimated about 3x that from the pro-reform crowd. Others were telling me 1500+. Did not see Barry. He snuck in the back door.
Will post pix at clubhouse as soon as I figure out how.

@Jamie Sommers: News says there was a guy hanging around w/ a handgun and an assault rifle. Did you see him?

@blogenfreude: I tol’ you, mon. New Hampshire guy was just the first. Can’t tell what Ironed Shirt is packing on the hip, but note the extra rifle magazine in his rear pocket.

Further coverage on New Hampshire guy. Ties to AZ separatists. Who woulda thunk?

http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/WATCHBLOG/60115

@redmanlaw: As the NH dude would tell you, it would be stupid to carry around an assault rifle without a spare magazine.

And since I don’t feel like working it up into a post, I’ll bitch here about the AARP “ambulance” ad, which is wayyyyyyy too high-concept to do any good. Don’t blow your budget on a vague metaphor about cars blocking its way — just a few “Lie/Fact” cards will do.

@blogenfreude:
Some of the protesters quotes in the AZCentral
news story covering the Obama speech to Veterans were just so cute:

“Under Obama, everyone will get the same health care, that’s socialism,” she said. “It has failed in other countries, you know, like Europe.”

“This has nothing to do with the president being Black,” he said. “My ex-wife is Black.”

“Under Obama, everyone will get the same health care, that’s socialism,” she said. “It has failed in other countries, you know, like Europe.”

– 12 year old Micah Vadenboom, according to the azcentral.com site

Yeah, that Europe. Tsk. Sure is a failed state.

@texrednface: As we know, rational thought has no place in this debate, so it won’t do any good to mention that even the Tories love Britain’s National Health Service.

@texrednface:

Of course it’s a failure, if you define failure as 100% affordable care for all of their citizens that costs less than half of what we pay in the US and includes lower infant mortality, longer, healthier lives and the basic impossibility of being bankrupted by medical bills that’s the norm here.

Yep, who’d wanna be part of that commie clusterfuck? We’re bankrupted and left to die painfully by a for-profit health system that’s totally unaccountable and amoral and that’s the way we likes it, dagnabbit.

On the bright side, the Repukelicans are gonna be falling all over themselves to vote for whatever bill comes up, and the birthers, deathers, neo-fascists and other assorted extremists will now be lining up to sing Obama’s praises, right?

@nojo: I saw that ad yesterday – I had similar thoughts.

@Original Andrew: @nojo: This NYT column sums up an expat’s relatively positive experience with Britain’s commie NHS.

I am severely disappointed with what’s going on. I want a public option. But politically, it’s not going to happen because of the Blue Dogs and the general spinelessness of the Democratic Party.

My hope is that there is no complete cave in and we’re left with the status quo. At this point, even if the only thing that survives is the striking down of preexisting condition clauses, I’ll take that crumb even if everything else is scuttled.

I really have no hope for this plan because the mouthfoamers are vastly outnumbering those in favor of reform in terms of vociferousness and volume. Those who scream the loudest get the most teevee coverage by our feckless media.

All told, when adding up the environment, health care and gay rights — I’m glad that we don’t have an overtly hostile administration. But hope has faded into reality for me, cynicism and fear is what has taken hold in my mind, and I have no expectation of true, meaningful change.

@blogenfreude: I saw him and the commotion around him, but never saw the rifle. Now I know why there was so much activity around him.

@texrednface: I learned a long time ago not to read the comments on azcentral.com. It destroys my faith in humanity.

@nojo:

What do we want?

ILL-CONCEIVED POLITICAL EXPEDIENCE!

When do we want it?

WHENEVER THEY THINK THEY CAN GET AROUND TO IT!

Yup, lacks punch, dontcha think?

@rptrcub:

Dear Gays,

Please make us stop stabbing you in the back–we really can’t help it. We hate that we have to use all of the resources at our disposal, including your own tax dollars, to ensure that you continue to receive mandatory discrimination and public ridicule.

Kisses,

Team Obama

P.S. Time for another donation! Send bigtime $$$$ plz.

@Tommmcatt Floats: @Original Andrew:

We are the people we’ve been waiting for to stab us in the back!

@rptrcub:

My feelings towards the Obama Administration are like that Violent Femmes song:

Well, you know that I want your love-ing
but my logic tells me it ain’t never gonna happen
then my defenses say that I didn’t want it anyway
but you know sometimes I’m a liar…

@rptrcub: All told, when adding up the environment, health care and gay rights

Don’t forget the Geneva Conventions! Be kind to our war criminals.

everyone will get the same health care, that’s socialism
Democracy is all about being able to get better health care if you’re rich. Everyone knows that. That’s how Jesus wants it.
@nojo: The Times of London published an outraged op-ed this weekend on that very point: America has no right to speak ill of our NHS. Free healthcare is the mark of a civilised society. It is the one principle that unites British politicians across the spectrum
My favorite part:

Healthcare free at the point of delivery is the principle upon which every politician across our spectrum — marginal self-publicists such as Daniel Hannan aside — now agrees. The NHS ministered to David Cameron’s brain-damaged son as tenderly as to Gordon Brown’s fatally ill infant girl. It shows that decency, fairness and compassion, the national traits we fear died with nobler generations, live on. That America does not have universal health-care, that 47 million of your citizens live in fear of getting ill, appals and, frankly, baffles us.
The Republican National Committee can condemn the NHS as Orwellian or evil or “socialised”, but what it is, at root, is Christian.
Perhaps not the kind of noisy, nosy, puffed-up Christianity that Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, or Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia are most familiar with, one that applies its energies chiefly to shutting abortion clinics and preventing gay couples from sanctifying their love. It is the simple, quiet, industrious Christianity of chapel and kirk that, woven into the Labour movement, strived to do God’s work on Earth. I’m no Bible-basher, but I’m struggling to recall the verses in which the Good Samaritan asks for insurance details or Jesus bills Lazarus for “co-payments”.

Can I get an “Amen”?

@nojo: But the economy is doing better, isn’t it? Oh, wait a minute.

Well, at least it’s Mission Accomplished in Iraq, right?

oh, shit….

ADD: @Mistress Cynica: now I am really mopey…

@Mistress Cynica: The Brits can dish out insults with as much panache as Southern ladies.

@Mistress Cynica:

Wow. Attacking the right with religion almost feels like hitting below the belt, but it’s about time somebody did it. Unfortunately, most of the “Moral Majority” and it’s descendants wouldn’t understand the teaching of Jesus if the man himself showed up and told them. They’d probably think he was a communist, with all the sharing…

@SanFranLefty: I dunno, from seeing the teabagger protests, Southern ladies aren’t really dishing out insults in the way they used to.

@The Nabisco Quiver: Homofascist was recently paid, I believe, in liquor for work, and he needs to share it with the rest of us because it will be the only way for any of us to survive.

So, how will Barry wind up? As:

A) Bill Clinton — big progressive promises, little action, fabulous economy (See Maddow’s take.)
B) LBJ — ramming through social programs but stuck in a quagmire (Iq/Afghanistan?)
C) Jimmy Carter — Disavowed because he actually spoke truth to Americans, but an elder statesman after office?

@Mistress Cynica: Salon’s war blog made the brilliant observation that the next time the Right decides to use a foreign country’s universally-popular program as a worst-case-scenario scare tactic, they may want to consider picking a country that doesn’t speak English!

@Mistress Cynica: You mean the Murdoch-owned Times of London?

The same Murdoch who now owns the Wall Street Journal? And (all together now) Fox?

Ah, Rupert. All Demagoguing is Local.

@al2o3cr: @Mistress Cynica: Let us not forget that many Labourites, who gave birth to NHS, were adherents of Christian socialism, which the mere idea probably causes American wingnuts’ heads to asplode.

@The Nabisco Quiver: I’ve already seen the NRO talking point on the economy: Without Obama, it would have improved faster.

Yet another reason I never cared for high-school debate.

@Mistress Cynica: There was a little old lady at the protest this morning who was carrying the following sign:

“Healthcare for All: It’s what Jesus would do!!!”

A bunch of people were taking her picture.

@rptrcub: Hopefully not like JFK, but more like FDR. Shit, I’ll take TR at this point.

@Jamie Sommers: And then the Eagle spent the weekend at all those socialized national parks. Gysers, scenery and game should all be in private hands, which will efficiently allocate the resources as the market demands.

If the mere thought of a reform bill which just divvies up the country for the insurance companies and takes on the worst risks with a public option has these people so kookie, what will happen if anything passes, and I mean anything at all?

I got it figgered out now. The great drooling, mouth-breathing pigfucking masses were initially paralyzed, stunned, and thus did not rise up in the spasm of racist violence we feared.

They needed a PRETEXT before they could do that, some spurious reason for violence, so they could deny their racism.

Of course.

God, you know, it could have been anything. If Obama had made his big agenda item passage of a bill called the “Baseball and Applie Pie Act,” which mandates healthy, non-poisonous milk supplies, and cuts taxes, these fucktards would be wandering the streets with the AR-15s waving signs that say “wholesome milk is socialism, higher taxes are the amurrican way.”

@Jamie Sommers: The Christian website (and magazine) “Sojourner” has a “health care debate guide” outlining a Christian’s duty to lobby for equal health care for the poor and uninsured who have no lobbyists and no voice. I’ve been sending it to any “Christians” I’ve seen attacking “Obamacare” on FB.

@nojo: Or elementary school debate, such as.

@Mistress Cynica: But the Sojourner is put out by communist lefty Christians, not the good, god-fearing, free-market loving Southern Baptists that will surely be taken to heaven during the rapture.

@rptrcub: Riddle me this – if those fuckwads are going off to heaven, thus leaving us in hell, that would be fantastic to not have to deal with them or listen to them. For me, hell would be being stuck with them. So does that make my hell heaven? Or does that doom them to hell so they can torture me?

/way too philosophical for a Monday

@SanFranLefty: They will probably find heaven as hell to them once they learn that they admit brown people up there.

@Promnight: Pretext, you say?

They’ve been targeting every Demrat since FDR. Only we used to call them “extremists” in our youth, and dismiss them from the room.

@Mistress Cynica: I’m not a Britophile but this knocked it out of the park: “I’m struggling to recall the verses in which the Good Samaritan asks for insurance details or Jesus bills Lazarus for “co-payments”.”

@rptrcub: You misunderstand. The brown people are the Heavenly servants. More ambrosia, sir?

I love it that the Catholics have a term to describe the action of looking down from the ramparts of heaven (the original gated community) at the hordes of sinners (hi, mom!) burning in the firey lakes of hell. At least this activity seems to produce a certain squeamishness among them: how can we enjoy our cloud when we have to listen to all the screaming coming up from below? The unwillingness to do unto others as you would have them do unto you now seems endemic among our Christianists.

Before we get too carried away about the NHS, you have seen English people’s teeth right? Plus the system is largely paid for with immigrant labour. An old friend of mine, when she went in for an op, took her own disinfectant (Dettol, natch), rubber gloves for cleaning, soap, shampoo and etc. She says the hospitals are filthy and falling apart. And that her operation was hopelessly bungled. She is still waiting for it to be fixed almost a year later. And my cousin’s daughter died at the age of 12 from what seems to have been an incompetently handled case of strep throat. And many people there now have their own private insurance as can be seen in re-runs of Ab Fab. The piece from the Times seems to me to be yet another of one of Britain’s favorite newspaper stories; Aren’t Yanks Silly?

@Benedick: From what I’ve been reading, New Labour has been doing its best to screw up the NHS. Or is that schools? Or both?

@nojo: Both. People now seem to be as stupid there as they are here.

I don’t know if the stories one hears about the NHS are true. Certainly, where my grandmother lived in rural Scotland, it worked like a charm. It’s always the big cities that strain services. Here in God’s country I have a great doctor and good hospitals nearby. I just can’t afford them.

@Benedick:

But you can look at the teevee and see healthy people whenever you want! Capitalism!

@Tommmcatt Floats:

And don’t forget on-demand hard-on pills named after sassy black women, like Levitra and Cialis.

Take THAT, commies!

@Original Andrew: Let’s not joke about that. I’m not a kid any more.

@Dodgerblue:

Hey nobody’s saying more hard-ons are a bad thing ; )