The only real questions are how long will this charade will go on and what kind of smoking husk will be left of the Republican Party when it’s over.
White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer likened House Republicans to suicide bombers, kidnappers and arsonists in a single interview on Thursday.
“What we’re not for is negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest,” Pfeiffer told CNN’s Jake Tapper in laying out the president’s refusal to compromise with the GOP to win an increase in the nation’s debt limit. “We’re not going to do that.”
…
Pfeiffer also offered up analogies comparing Republicans to kidnappers and arsonists.
He referred to a list of Republican add-ons to a debt-limit bill as “ransom demands,” and said “it’s not a negotiation if I show up at your house and say give me everything inside or I’m going to burn it down.”
All day long, Republican senators have been going to the floor to badmouth the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, using language that is either distorted, one-sided, or simply made up. And they are the reasonable ones. The Mighty Right-Wing Media Wurlitzer has churned out so many lies about ObamaCare and raised so many false fears and expectations, that they have created a singularity. Like a supermassive black hole, this singularity has an immense gravitational pull, and it is pulling the entire Republican Party into its maw. Logic, reason, political common sense, understanding of the Senate rules, self-preservation, relations with the business community, our credit rating, realism, practicality, and the truth are all being sucked right into this black hole of “asininity.”
And it is already chewing them to pieces. Nothing any of them are saying has even a passing resemblance to the truth unless it is immediately preceded or succeeded by one of the biggest lies you have ever heard. And, in the end, the whole farce will be shown for what it is. The Republicans will have to cave completely and totally, and have nothing to show for their efforts except disappointment, disillusionment, and a health care bill that doesn’t do any of the harmful things they all agree it will do.
I always knew that there would be a time of reckoning. It turned out that the opening of the ObamaCare exchanges is that time. Now they pay the consequences for their sustained mass hallucination. It will be much like when Romney convinced himself that he was about to be elected president, but on a far broader and consequential scale for the Party of Lincoln.
No one in their leadership or their rank-and-file or their base is prepared, even a little, for the sting that is coming.
The Mighty Right-Wing Media Wurlitzer has churned out so many lies about ObamaCara ..
I think you need to fix something there! š Unless, of course, you’re pulling a Yglesias.
What’s a ‘Yglesias’?
He usually has(at least before Slate) at least one misspelled word per post. Like clockwork. People used to bust his balls in comments because it was obvious no one proof-read his posts before they went live.
I used to bust his balls in the comments before he moved to Slate. Ah, those posts where he went entitled neoliberal douche…! (Or the evils of parking ;))
What ever happened to Petey(or whomever the guy was that always called MY a trust-fund scumbag in comments)?
Looks like the startup of the program has them in a state of utter panic. They had a free hand at fear mongering when most of the ACA was on the drawing boards, so they could prophesy armaggedon. Now it will be a reality, and even the most gullible will be able to judge for themselves how it’s starting to affect their lives.
The monster has arrived, and it’s just a seeing-eye dog. Even America’s corrupt and mindless news establishment is starting to slither aboard. They will, of course, admit no responsibility for the chaos and destruction their “reporting” helped to unleash.
Yes, see this reasonable article: Gullible Americans Fuel Obamacare’s Bad Rap I can’t believe the comments to this piece. A few Democrats making sensible responses to an overwhelming number of raving hyenas. The comments on any Yahoo Finance story seem to attract every mouth-breathing loon on the planet, or else robots make the comments. Is the American public really 90% nuts?
Yahoo News, especially Finance, is basically Drudge Lite.
I check it every day for the stock quotes and sometimes get sucked into a story. Can’t seem to break the bad habit of reading the comments.
Drudgico aka Tiger Beat on the Potomac aka Politico is the same way. The comments are a sewer. Just check out their piece today on Wendy Davis running for Governor of Texas.
I don’t think it’s regular America, but most comment sections are shit. I wouldn’t care if every website deleted comment sections actually.
It’s why I love it here. The commenters are great.
All newspaper comments, with the possible exception of the NYT, are monopolized by the crazies. To wit, today’s story that Popular Science is eliminating public comments on its website. Heard the interview on NPR and the PS spokesperson said that while trolls frequently monopolize the comments the real damage is that inaccurate science and opposition to real science are too frequently the byproducts of these comments.
Perhaps they’ll be SO unhinged and desperate that they’ll take to the streets in a Brooks Brothers Riot.
Followed by loss of bladder control, running away, and loud GOP whining.
just like good fellas, when pauli took over the restaurant. they ran the credit up, fenced out the back, everything. the end result: burn the place down.
so too, for the gop and the country.
but hey – at least we taught Obama a lesson in 2010! yay progressive “lessons”!
You did? What did you do to teach Obama a lesson?
Because in 2010, I turned out and voted. And re-elected my New Democrat (yeah, that’s what they call themselves) Congressman, who is all disappointed we’re not going into Syria.
Too bad that a bunch anti-Obamacare Democrats aren’t around to share in the glory. They lost bigtime in 2010. And Bart Stupak, who held up the bill to make sure the anti-abortionists could take another whack at killing it? He decided not to run for re-election.
but hey – at least we taught Obama a lesson in 2010! yay progressive “lessons”!
You need to learn why people vote, or not. Maybe you’ll learn something instead of spewing nonsense.
We humans are meaning-seeking animals. We want to be inspired, to feel like we matter, to feel like what we do matters. The last couple decades in particular have been uninspiring. As voters, we’ve been given one big kiss-off. No dreams, just different flavors of neoliberalism. The Dems can still bank on some long-term demographic trends that will favor them, and that the GOP is reduced itself to being nothing more than a white-supremacist/nationalist party, and the Dems can at least motivate a base by playing on our very real fears of losing what few advances our ancestors achieved during the mid-20th century. Somehow, fear of loss alone makes it hard to feel anything but empty when the next electoral silly season rolls around.
I’ll give Obama credit though – he may be corporatist to the core, but he knew how to almost sound like a dreamer back in 2008. He was energizing. That said, you give us leaders with even a small fraction of that charisma, but who know how to offer and act upon some genuinely inspiring policies (the sort that actually advance income equality and social justice in tangible real world terms) and there are plenty of folks like me who will follow them to the ends of the earth. In fact, we were there all along as voters, volunteers, activists. To suggest that is of course entirely politically incorrect “utopian” thinking, and will of course be casually dismissed by the Serious People. So, yeah whatever, nevermind.
I wish I could up-rate you a thousand times because you nailed it. And it’s why Elizabeth Warren would wipe the floor with Hillary in ’16 if both ran.
Also, too, you want to know why people don’t turn out? Crap like this:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2013/09/turning-out-base-or-turning-off-base.html
Yes, she’s so awful even NARAL avoids her like the plague. And you expect Democrats to turn out for candidates like that?
If the Republicans had taken 100% full credit for inventing “Obamacare” they’d be in a better place right now.
But they didn’t and they’re not.
Yes, Romney should have played up his Romneycare, saying he had it years before the Democrats and that’s an example of the kind of private/public partnership he could bring to the country. Of course, he couldn’t in the primary, but he should have played it like that in the General. He should have realized that their base would vote for any white man over Obama.
Just checked our little community ‘bulletin board’ where I had posted a link and explanation on WA state health care plan finder. There’s 167 views after just a couple of hours and I’m getting emails direct thanking me for the post. People are hungry for information and are willing to listen where they haven’t been before. Good luck leveraging with a defund ACT this weekend!
And while they’re listening this weekend, here comes down the pike the release of the latest comprehensive study pointing towards a certainty that global warming is strongly influenced by man. Hey R’s, good luck leveraging to get Keystone Pipeline attached.
Oh if only the Sunday shows would end up all Rep, with a full on Animal House food fight.
I live in Washington state and would love to read your comment. Have you a link?
Here’s the link I used on our website, it’s the one that WA is using There’s been only 1 comment but now 197 views. The 2nd thread on our bulletin was started by a woman concerned with the 21 new taxes that Obamacare was implementing that she heard about on the Bretbart.com site…nuff said. I’m sure she’s frustrated that I’m using FactCheck.org, Snopes & Media Matters to counter her claims. Onward!
Hull meet rocks:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/09/meadows-boehner-defund-obamacare-suicide-caucu
s-geography.html
In essence, Hicksville. I’m surprised to see only one district in Alabama and one in Mississippi though. Maybe the Congressmen from the other districts are illiterate and they wouldn’t let them sign the letter with an X. Maybe they are too busy praying to Jesus to start the Apocalypse. Maybe they think the Apocalypse has started and Obama is the Beast.
I could find you people back in 2008 who were actually convinced by their pastors that Obama’s election would lead to The Rapture. Several were in tears that night of the election, from what I was told. And then there was the day after, and they were still here. Didn’t seem to stop the apocalyptic thinking.
I was surprised to see that after Texas (11), the state with the most Suicide Caucus members is Michigan (5). I guess that explains Governor Snyder.
Yes. Actually looking again at the map, Alabama and Mississippi each have one, Illinois has three, Indiana has four, and Michigan has five! Indiana used to be home to the Klan and Michigan, I have personal knowledge of, is full of religious crazies.
But I think that realization for most of them is going to be a long time coming, because here is what is going to happen. Their heads have been filled for years now about the monumental disaster that is going to occur beginning October 1. They are so invested in that narrative that nothing to the contrary is going to penetrate their consciousness. For the next six months, they are going to be glued to FOX, soaking up their 24/7 coverage of every real or imagined glitch that happens to anyone which is even remotely related to a health care issue. And the mainstream media heads; Gregory, Schieffer and Stephanopoulos will do their part to support that same story line. Because, well, “some people are saying”….
And everywhere they go, everyone is going to be repeating the same story. So, of course, it has to be true.
I question if we aren’t going to have to wait a generation or two until we get to the point where health care access is something that has just always been there for the majority of people in this country. I have a hard time believing that a lot of these people so vehemently opposed to it today will ever change their mind. There will be a few who become convinced because they or their loved ones eventually benefit from it. But for some, it will never be anything but tyrannical government oppression.
I wonder how long it took for those seriously opposed to those most socialist of programs, Social Security and Medicare, to finally realize that arguing against it was a complete political loser for them?
Some still haven’t. I know two (at work) who think SS is a fraud and we would be WAY better with our money in the stock market (actually Gold Coins for one of them).
You should offer a trade: you’ll kick in some funds so they can buy gold coins, if they agree to turn over all of the cash they get from SS.
Hey, if it’s all a scam and SS will be bankrupt, then they should take that deal for $1. Bet they don’t.
Oh, make sure to get it in writing.
straight up no chaser?
fuck these muthafuckas.
let them burn.
Nah if it’s that bad, they’ll just lick their wounds, some fringe people will talk about embiggening the tent, the media will take that very seriously, shake on some both sides do it, and the GOP will pretend very effectively it never happened. Local and state GOP will be fine.
Lol at comments.
I saw 3 comments and Corker was the loser on all three. No elected Republican can espouse the cause of sanity without being labelled a RINO and threatened with a primary. This is the GOP and they are killing the whole country.
Interesting topic š https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mokoolapps.winterwonderlandpuzzles
Hmm, this is one of those posts of yours I bookmark for future reference.
I agree with you, MNP, this is one of Boo’s best. This is the kind of analysis that should be put up against some of our more famous pundits, just to show a clear distinction between crap and quality. Brooks, Douthart, Politico, please step right up.