jeff2sf wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:You and Tom are completely over-reacting.

Frankly, the tone seems a lot tamer than the angry vitriol sent Bush's way over the last few years. I guess the difference is that most left wing nuts are pacifists and/or don't own guns?

I disagree, but it's irrelevant anyway. The poisoned discourse is the problem, not the fact that Obama or Bush is the target.

I do think there is a difference--the anti-Bush crowd was never cheered on by broadcasters or elected officials. Find a Kucinich quote that is in any way comparable to what some Republicans in the House and Senate are saying about Obama, such as the one cited above.

Did I just imagine Rachel Maddow/Keith Olbermann/Jon Stewart and others routinely criticizing/berating Bush? Oh, they were only saying what was true? I guess that's the difference.

More importantly though, I just don't think you can trace a crazy person who assassinates a politician to what is on the radio every day. A crazy person will find a reason to justify what they're doing, and we certainly didn't blame Jodie Foster for the Reagen thing did we?

What you don't seem to get is that none of us are calling for an end to criticism of the President. Moreover, as I said in the passage you quoted (but appear not to have read so I'll bold it this time is this: The poisoned discourse is the problem, not the fact that Obama or Bush is the target.


I'm not really worried about a lone crazy person. I'm worried about the breakdown in civil order. It takes very little for that to occur.

Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security.

Edmund Burke

I get upset and frightened when I hear people yelling "Kill him" at McCain rallies, or when I see people carrying guns in close proximity to where the President is appearing. I don't consider that "pissing my pants". It's a legitimate fear that in this environment something bad is eventually going to happen to someone. And, like I said before, it already has to several innocent people this year.

It takes VERY LITTLE for the breakdown in civil order to occur. What the hell are you talking about. You think we're heading towards a revolution in the next year?

And I'm telling you that the disrespect that Bush got, however much I agreed with it, is different in slight degree, not a difference in kind.

Now, I really could buy into the thought that it was a bunch of no-good hippies that no one was afraid of as opposed to no-good gun nuts, but that's about it.

jerseyhoya wrote:

dajafi wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Alan Grayson said on the House floor yesterday that the Republicans' health care plan for sick Americans is for them to "die quickly"

But by all means this is Glenn Beck's fault

You're really comparing one smart-assed and unserious* quip on the House floor to a full-time operation that might be having the effect, intended or not, to delegitimize an elected president?


*to be fair, much like the Republicans' health care "proposals." When they show the least seriousness about governing again, I'll have more of a problem with Grayson or whoever making obnoxious remarks. Right now, it's "I know you are but what am I?" in both directions, except that the Ds actually have some people trying to make policy.

So when the Republicans say crazy $#@! it's bad because they're crazy, but when the Democrats say over the top things it's OK because you like them.

The fact that the left treated a sitting president like $#@! for six years and then starts pissing their pants when the right starts treating a sitting president like $#@! is something I just can't wrap my head around.

This doesn't seem to be an argument where we're going to get anywhere. We just disagree.

Fair enough. I don't think it's the same thing, because "the left" didn't imply the threat of violence, at least not as a regular, everyday thing. But I'm sure that my biases--like yours--inform how I see it.

Maybe the point we can agree upon is the one Paul made, which is also what Friedman gets at: it's difficult, bordering on impossible, to do the country's business when roughly half the country views the president as essentially illegitimate. And sadly, that seems to be a permanent fixture of our political culture.

(That said--and I know this is my bias to some extent--I can't view Bush and Obama as equivalent here. Obama, as I see it, has bent over backwards in efforts to engage the Republicans in Congress... and they've shit in his face. Bush, in a way to his credit, was pretty up-front in considering himself only the president of those who voted for him; Democrats were free to uncritically agree with him, and otherwise could pretty much fuck off.)

TenuredVulture wrote:

Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security.

Edmund Burke

Is this the quote that every malingerer and psychosomatic patient lives by?

How bout this quote "the boy who cried wolf eventually was eaten by the wolf because no one believed him the 100 other times he cried wolf".

We're all gonna die eventually, I choose not to worry about the 99 false alarms.

jeff2sf wrote:It takes VERY LITTLE for the breakdown in civil order to occur. What the hell are you talking about. You think we're heading towards a revolution in the next year?

And I'm telling you that the disrespect that Bush got, however much I agreed with it, is different in slight degree, not a difference in kind.

Now, I really could buy into the thought that it was a bunch of no-good hippies that no one was afraid of as opposed to no-good gun nuts, but that's about it.

What TV is saying and what I'm saying is that the legitimate criticism of Obama's policies is not the issue. The stuff being said now is far beyond political criticism disagreement and is rapidly approaching a call for violence and rebellion.

And what I'm saying is... no, it's not. We're not going to have a revolution in this country. Not over health care or a black president.


Perhaps the poor may revolt, but that would be with a Republican in charge, so we've got at least 7 years until that happens.

dajafi wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

dajafi wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Alan Grayson said on the House floor yesterday that the Republicans' health care plan for sick Americans is for them to "die quickly"

But by all means this is Glenn Beck's fault

You're really comparing one smart-assed and unserious* quip on the House floor to a full-time operation that might be having the effect, intended or not, to delegitimize an elected president?


*to be fair, much like the Republicans' health care "proposals." When they show the least seriousness about governing again, I'll have more of a problem with Grayson or whoever making obnoxious remarks. Right now, it's "I know you are but what am I?" in both directions, except that the Ds actually have some people trying to make policy.

So when the Republicans say crazy $#@! it's bad because they're crazy, but when the Democrats say over the top things it's OK because you like them.

The fact that the left treated a sitting president like $#@! for six years and then starts pissing their pants when the right starts treating a sitting president like $#@! is something I just can't wrap my head around.

This doesn't seem to be an argument where we're going to get anywhere. We just disagree.

Fair enough. I don't think it's the same thing, because "the left" didn't imply the threat of violence, at least not as a regular, everyday thing. But I'm sure that my biases--like yours--inform how I see it.

Maybe the point we can agree upon is the one Paul made, which is also what Friedman gets at: it's difficult, bordering on impossible, to do the country's business when roughly half the country views the president as essentially illegitimate. And sadly, that seems to be a permanent fixture of our political culture.

(That said--and I know this is my bias to some extent--I can't view Bush and Obama as equivalent here. Obama, as I see it, has bent over backwards in efforts to engage the Republicans in Congress... and they've $#@! in his face. Bush, in a way to his credit, was pretty up-front in considering himself only the president of those who voted for him; Democrats were free to uncritically agree with him, and otherwise could pretty much $#@! off.)

Bush started out engaging Democrats. The first year there were a lot of Dems who voted for his tax cut. NCLB was very bipartisan. The deterioration happened as the years went on. The second term he really didn't cater to the Dems, but they weren't working with him either. He went out of his way to work with Democrats at the start. Obama will probably come to the conclusion that there's no reason to work with Republicans soon too.

jerseyhoya wrote:Bush started out engaging Democrats. The first year there were a lot of Dems who voted for his tax cut. NCLB was very bipartisan. The deterioration happened as the years went on. The second term he really didn't cater to the Dems, but they weren't working with him either. He went out of his way to work with Democrats at the start. Obama will probably come to the conclusion that there's no reason to work with Republicans soon too.

He kind of had to, in 2001: you had a 50-50 Senate, and he was a minority president. And those actions, particularly NCLB, were not totally incompatible with the priorities of Democratic electeds. (You also had Kennedy making it kosher for Democrats to engage; it's impossible for me to imagine a comparably senior Republican trying to create the same kind of governing relationship with Obama today.)

What changed was Rove in January 2002, basically saying that they would demagogue the 2002 and 2004 elections by painting Democrats as "soft on terror." Once Democrats saw what they did to Max Cleland, they understandably got a little upset.

But even after that, Bush had far more support from Democrats on the Iraq War--to their severe discredit--than Obama has had from Republicans on anything. (To be fair, if/when he starts a dumb war, I would guess he'll get support from those Republicans who are for any use of deadly force.) Maybe more to the point, this was also true of Medicare Part D and the later tax cuts.

Do you really think that the Democrats were as uniformly resistant to Bush as the Republicans are to Obama?

jerseyhoya wrote:Alan Grayson said on the House floor yesterday that the Republicans' health care plan for sick Americans is for them to "die quickly"

But by all means this is Glenn Beck's fault

Since you often complain that you're humor impaired, jh, I will kindly point out that this is something that can be spotted from even this far off as what is known as "a joke". See, he's contrasting the options of attempting to fund long-term care for the very ill with the alternative, here posited as simply hoping that not much long-term care will be needed. In order to emphasize this point and to make certain no one takes his simplified characterization seriously, he has used the hyperbolic expression "die quickly". Hyperbole is a device often used (both effectively and ineffectively) in humor. It's presence gives a good clue to whether a speaker is attempting to be humorous or not, particularly in written speech where the speaker or writer's affect is sometimes hard to discern.

Allan Grayson (who I have no idea whether he is a pinhead or pin oak)is here arguing that under Republican health-care proposals funding for patients with long-term illnesses might not be readily available. If you want to see this as the moral equivalent to calling for the assassination or military overthrow of the President, by all means go ahead.

Be sure to throw in a parenthetical (nudge, nudge) if you're not being serious and might want your true intentions to be understood.

Since I'd never heard of Newsmax before, which people are citing as if it's the first place that conservatives turn to every morning... I did some research. The dude wrote the column yesterday or the day before. There has been an understandable outcry (as much as there can be in just one day) and the article was taken down.


http://thinkprogress.org/2009/09/30/mil ... p-newsmax/

Everybody happy now? People jumped all over this guy and the paper and it was removed. Just like with the move-on controversy. So let's all move on.

Do the kooks realize that assassinating or removing Obama from office means... President Joe Biden? Why else would he select Biden for veep if not as an insurance policy?


Facetiousness aside...

I find it curious how some folks on the right, whilst lamenting on poor Dubya's "mistreatment", so quickly forget (or dismiss) the right wanted to get Clinton out of office basically from the day of his inauguration. Was there ever a day in his presidency where they weren't digging around, investigating, etc. for something they could use to "get him"? Probably a big difference now is race. Back then, the "machine" did all the work. Now, they have to parse themselves as to not appear racist*, so they let the kooks do much of the work for them.



* the "machine" isn't racist, it's power hungry

As far as the fragility of civil order--no, I don't think we'll have a revolution within the next 12 months. But there are degrees of social breakdown. I don't look at this in ideological terms, mind you. That is, is see typical MTV programming of a piece with with the rantings and raving of Glenn Beck. The Gramsciization of the right is yet another step in the direction of significant social/political/economic disruption.

We live in a period of unprecedented dynamic change. Many changes are potentially positive, but for that to happen, we need a system that is willing to openly, honestly, and courageously confront the real challenges we face. Our current political discourse appears to me incapable of addressing those issues. The elite appears to have abdicated is responsibility.

Now, is any of this unprecedented? It's hard to say. I believe that western civilization is still coming to grips with the absolute destructive idiocy of WWI and its aftermath. And I turn to Yeats.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

“Well, I would like to apologize – I would like to apologize to the dead,” Grayson said in his floor speech. “I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this Holocaust in America.”

Grayson telling more jokes on the House floor today!

jerseyhoya wrote:

“Well, I would like to apologize – I would like to apologize to the dead,” Grayson said in his floor speech. “I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this Holocaust in America.”

Grayson telling more jokes on the House floor today!

I saw something about Grayson today that, regardless of bad-taste jokes, makes me very glad he's in Congress and hopeful that he'll be there a very long time:

In 2003, Grayson was an attorney representing government contractors. But he was growing worried over the accumulating reports of contractor fraud in Iraq, and of the U.S. govenrment’s failure to prosecute them.

Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he poured hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money into personally representing whistleblowers and filing lawsuits against fraudulent contractors. In March 2006, he got a jury to order contractor Custer Battles LLC to return $10 million in ill-gotten funds to the government. The ruling marked the first time an American firm was held responsible for financial improprieties in Iraq.

It's a mystery to me why so few Republicans, other than McCain, are at all engaged on the issue of defense contractor fraud and war profiteering. Donations I guess... but that's a really depressing thought.

Of course, Grayson was also the guy who figured out that the anti-ACORN legislation could be wielded against crooked contractors, who've taken exponentially more of our money than ACORN did.

Afghanistan - why should we NOT be listening to our military commanders and providing more troops a la Iraq? Didn't the Dems routinely criticize Bush for making due with a smaller force despite what his generals said?

I suppose if we withdrew altogether, I could support that, but this status quo seems like a bad idea.

jeff2sf wrote:Afghanistan - why should we NOT be listening to our military commanders and providing more troops a la Vietnam?

I changed a word.

Actually, the Vietnam comparison probably distorts as much as it reveals. The Taliban is widely loathed where the Cong/NVA had popular legitimacy. But the similarities--incredibly difficult terrain, deeply corrupt governing partner, and a guns-or-butter choice that gets harder every year--are worth considering. As is the tendency of the military to always ask for more. Not that there's anything wrong with their doing so--it wouldn't help to have a military that doesn't believe in victory--but there's a good reason for our tradition of civilian control. They've been wrong a lot.

I go back and forth on Afghanistan myself. Obviously we can't let the Taliban reconstitute as the governing entity, or al Qaeda reestablish themselves there. But to "win" would require a commitment that Obama (or anyone else) can't sell to the public right now, and maybe shouldn't.

Ok, and that's a fair point and I'm not necessarily advocating for this.

However, it was awfully convenient that the Dems said we needed more troops for Iraq but not Afghanistan. To say I've had it up to here with both of youse is an understatement.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H3gND4M9HA&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Rep. Grayson on "the Situation Room"

What mostly struck me here was how banal and debased CNN's coverage is. Check out toward the end when they suggest that Grayson, coming from a competitive district, shouldn't have said what he said because of the political consequences. This is really how they think! Forget public service: the point is eternal re-election.

As for Grayson himself, I agree with the substance of his remarks--and I'll admit it's gratifying (whether or not it's ultimately constructive) to see a liberal who's willing to fight hard. But I think his tactics here were kind of dumb: by not giving any ground on the smartass "die quickly" remark, he fails to point out that it's satire--a vastly dumbed-down, short attention span update of Swift's "Modest Proposal." That could lead to the real point: Republicans aren't coming up with solutions, or even semi-plausible proposals, because they're not interested in governing. Right now they're a temper tantrum in the garb of a political party; that he's being criticized for sinking to their level is nothing more than a double standard.

I also wish he'd pushed the criticism of other Democrats much, much harder. Max Baucus isn't timid; he's a whore who's taken millions from the insurance companies that, coincidentally enough, will realize enormous new profits under his proposal. Jon Stewart (who's absolutely at his best now when he's going after Democrats; it's pretty much the only time he's funny anymore) is there already; jump on that train.