If you think that Cokie Roberts is a liberal, you might be a moron. The first clue is that her daddy was Hale Boggs. Hale Boggs got his start in politics fighting against Huey Long’s Louisiana machine. Huey Long was a fire-breathing liberal. Hale Boggs didn’t like fire-breathing liberals. And neither does his daughter. Also, too:
During his tenure in Congress, Boggs was an influential player in the government. After Brown v. Board of Education he signed the Southern Manifesto condemning desegregation in the 1950s and opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet unlike most southern congressmen of his era, he supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Open Housing Act of 1968.
That’s actually a better than average record for a Southern politician of that era, but it’s not the record of a liberal. Now, don’t get me wrong. Cokie Roberts isn’t some radical conservative, either. And her dearly-departed sister served as a fairly liberal mayor of Princeton, New Jersey. I grew up with Cokie’s nephew and can’t say enough nice things about that whole family. Yet, it’s been clear forever that Cokie and her husband Steve are a little right of center.
And, in any case, Newsbusters completely misunderstood her comment. She wasn’t blaming the Constitution; she was blaming the Republicans for acting like they serve in the majority of a parliamentary system. She was saying, in effect, you can’t act like that because of our Constitution.
This is a woman who criticized Obama for visiting his dying grandmother in Hawaii and also criticized Glenn Beck for being worse than a clown. She doesn’t like anyone to do anything out of the ordinary (like, say, hail from a tropical island). She’s a radical centrist. So, yeah, she’s no fan of teabaggers or liberals.
I’ve always seen her as basically David Brooks in drag without the occasional subtlety.
I’ve always wondered, what’s the big complaint against Huey Long? Is it the corruption, or did he do something really horrible that sets him apart in history? As populist politicians go, he said and did a lot of very good things–his analogy of the BBQ is still one of the most succinct and apt descriptions of wealth distribution that I’ve ever run across.
The problem she is saying is that our constitution created divided government intentionally to avoid rash swings and populist brush fires.
The other problem is we had a rash swing and a populist brushfire…. that is now known as the tea party, which has a large enough majority to hold the country hostage as a protest party. There is no getting around their majority.
In her joint autobiography with her hubby Cokie admits to working in Gloria Steinem’s CIA-financed propaganda shop at one of those international youth festivals in the late fifties, early sixties.
The Mighty Wurlitzer!
She’s just like Andrea Mitchell Or George Will. WAY Too connected into the Washington inner circle of hacks, quacks and crooks. And she would never speak out against one of her “friends.” So, if every establishment Washington crook is your “friend,” regularly breaking bread at you home, how objective could you possibly be?
Remember how bent out of shape all of these people were when Scooter Libby got sent to jail? Why should anyone care what they have to say about anything? And why do our Media Overlords force us to listen to them as the Voices of Washington Wisdom? It’s more like the “Millionaire’s Washington-Insider Roundtable.”
Just don’t raise their taxes. They’ll start squealing like stuck pigs.
After I finished that comment, I thought Hmmm Maybe people don’t know what a “stuck pig” sounds like.
Pigs get stuck, often trying to break out of their pens because they are very smart animals, but maybe a little over-confident. Sometimes they get stuck doing it and they squeal like mad. The sound is worse than listening to a Michele Bachmann speech/rant.
I know this well. My family raised a several batches of pigs when I was growing up. (Delivering all the babies is one of my fondest memories.)
So I bring you Squealing Pigs – Washington Lobbyist edition.
It’s a feeding frenzy.
Enjoy.
P.S. I just love the little black piglets. If they would just stay that small, they’d make great house-pets. Unfortunately most of them grow as big as than mommy pig.
.
“I kinda like Cokie Roberts?”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Huh?
When he went on vacation in Hawaii with his family, she complained about the “optics” of it all in that smarmy-ass southern white-bitch way. She suggested that it would be more appropriate for him to go to some South Carolina Golf Resort (can’t remember the name) instead.
WTF!?
So Obama and his BLACK family should go to SOUTH CAROLINA for their family vacation… to satisfy Cokie Roberts?
Really?? Really??
And this is instead of going to Hawaii and actually visiting their family members who live there.
WTF? I’m sorry but Cokie really should just retire (to that golf resort in SC) and take Princess George Will and his large collection of clutchable Pearls with her.
The golf course is Hilton Head or Kiawah, and rich black executives (there are some of those folks, you know) go there. Cokie was thinking politically, not in terms of family. I guess her family never vacations in Louisiana, by this standard.
Please don’t soil my native state with the likes of Cokie Roberts and George Will. Jim DeMint, Trey Gowdy, Joe Wilson, and Nikki Haley are enough for one state to bear, don’t you think? Grafting the Village into that culture would be bad of South Carolina and bad for America. It would be like having a deadly virus become airborne.
I thought you were from NORTH Carolina.
South Carolina has a pretty ugly history, you know. And the Fundies with their Confederate Flags and such sure aren’t improving anything.
My point was that it would be an insult to expect the Obama Family to go there on vacation because Hawaii is just TOO exotic for a President to visit. That smarmy bitch (Cokey) just makes me want to puke. I have a really hard time watching that show because of her and George Will.
Did you see our girl Rachel on MTP Sunday morning? I think she was forced to hold back the energy, or else she would have beat the crap out of that jerk Alex Castellanos.
She should host that show, not that dipshit David Gregory.
I live now in North Carolina.
I grew up in a de jure segregated South Carolina. There is stuff I didn’t understand then that I do now about how social pressure keeps institutions in place because no one is willing to stand up and state what almost everyone but the loudmouths feel. And there was an underlying threat of violence that I didn’t notice but explains much about the actions of the adults around me when I was a child.
I know how ugly it is. And sometimes funny. The fundamentalist feel privileged because they are “doing the Lord’s work.” I went to high school in Greenville, SC, the “home of Bob Jones University” (well back then it billed itself as “The Textile Center of the World”). One of the stories that went around was this. The original evangelist Dr. Bob (they are now on the fifth one as President of the University), had started building his campus with donated funds on a donated farm at the edge of town. The neighbor next door was a wealthy textile executive’s widow whose estate was a former moderately sized farm. Dr. Bob went to the widow and told her, “I was praying last night about how the university might expand, and the Lord told me that you might sell your land.” The widow replied, “When I was praying last night, the Lord told me that some damn fool would come here thinking I would sell my land, and the Lord told me not to sell.” She sold the land a decade later and pointedly allowed a liquor store to be part of the shopping center that was developed there.
About Rachel and David Gregory. I agree.
I instantly hated David Gregory for a report he did as White House correspondent during the Clinton years. When the private plane crashed into the White House, Gregory was standing by the wreck of the plane telling the events and pointed to some window upstairs in the White House saying that it was lucky that the plane landed where it did because the Presidential residence was up there (where he pointed). My instant thought was that Gregory was issuing an engraved invitation to an assassination. I don’t think he is clueless enough not to have known what he was doing. This was in the days of King Jack Welch of GE.
Rachel is very self-restrained. And tears them down with that somewhat bemused look and raised eyebrows. Good journalist seem to do that when they are being censored. It was how Anita McNaught of al Jazeera communicated during her stay in Tripoli that the Gaddafi regime’s public statements were mostly BS.
no, she suggested he go to Myrtle Beach, which is not upper class if I understand correctly. It’s like going to Ocean City MD I think.
That sounds familiar. But why in the hell should he take “her” advice for where to spend his vacation with his family?
More like going to the Jersey shore, where the “real working people are”.
Maybe for a town hall or a campaign stop, but hell, Poppy Bush always went to Kennebunkport for vacation.
Where do Cokie and Steve go for vacation to meet the hoi polloi? Most likely not Myrtle Beach.
Thanks for this correction.
Now I’m pretty sure it was Myrtle Beach that she had suggested. But my point stands. Who is supposed to care what she thinks? I thought it was a really bad idea at the time and only the most politically craven would follow advice like that – as to where to spend the family vacation.
Get over it, Cokie. Keep your nose out of where the President and his family choose to spend their vacation. It’s not a political calculation. It’s a vacation to be spent with friends and family.
I found it offensive because Obama chose to spend a family vacation with family and she was suggesting he treat it like a campaign stop – not go to a foreign place (that was weird since Hawaii is a state) but go to a place where it’ll look like he’s mingling with the people. it was truly bizarre, but all the pundits were offering free advice explaining what Obama was doing wrong (already)
Nice to see somebody willing to say a good word for the Kingfish.
Robert Penn Warren, the famous writer-poet-critic who won a Pulitzer in 1947 for his 1946 novel “All the King’s Men” attacking Long, was a political conservative and a segregationist racist who changed his tune only after the civil rights movement got well under way.
His denials of intent to attack Long were ridiculous and everybody has always got the message.
It’s a fine novel and the 1949 movie was fine, too.
But imagine if what most people knew of FDR was only the story of a fictional character invented by a brilliant and talented writer with what we would recognize as the mind of a Bircher.
Long’s lasting problem is that he wanted to compete with FDR from his left and that made him the hated enemy both of the right and of the Roosevelt supporters, who were able to defend their own guy from charges of radicalism by pointing to HL.
That has left damned few to defend him.
Long’s problem is that Louisiana politics then and now are notoriously corrupt and he could not come to power without dealing with those powers that be. And it would be interesting to see an investigative report of just how clean and corruption-free Hale Boggs was.
I’m writing an Open thread comment even though Open Threads rarely exist here. That’s a shame. So I will just write it anyway.
Anyhoo, Business / Investment news watcher that I am, I recall Booman asking what we should do investment-wise to make a fortune off of the stupid debt-ceiling negotiations (which we should never have done.)
Today it seems apparent. You should have shorted US corporations of all sorts. Also just about any corporation from just about any country in the world. I’m actually surprised that I didn’t immediately suggest this because it’s so obvious now.
Investors are flocking to US Treasuries (Warren Buffet just bought $40 Billion worth and is still shopping for more.) The reason the markets are doing this is because we never should have been debating that AT ALL. By doing it, we just let the Tea Party put our country in a straight jacket and the Democrats (dumbass followers that they are) just tied the knots on the sleeves.
We now, as a result of this lovely debt reduction agreement, are stuck in neutral for years (perhaps decades, depending on how we vote) to come. No chance of any kind of stimulus. Average folks are going to constrain their spending, companies will follow. And our government will not be able to fill the void because we just committed to CUT spending during a second-dip – maybe even a third-dip-recession. The whole world is selling off corporate stocks en mass and buying – what else – US Treasuries, Gold (over $1700/oz,) Swiss Francs, anything safe.
Too bad we’re not allowed to borrow anymore. We could borrow a few Trillion right now at like 2 or 3% interest, which is less than free, considering inflation. We could use that to employ every person with out a job for a few years. But we can’t do that now and we’re fucked thanks to our “bipartisanship” administration which so badly wants the republicans to like them that they are following their trick-breadcrumb-trail into the permanent-recession-trap.
Welcome to the permanent recession.
Investors are so interested in playing paper games that they don’t realize that their best investment is in financing folks that will be hiring back people to restart the economy. I guess accountants can’t do a realistic ROI on that.
If you could figure out a business opportunity that would work in your area which people need, I would recommend perusing it, if you can finance it on your own. No one will lend to a risky start-up now.
But demand for just about everything is about to drop off a cliff and the markets are predicting that now. These are dumb rich guys in suits in fancy offices who are making these decisions right now. And frankly, I don’t blame them.
The US has just promised not to borrow or spend anymore – until we change the makeup of our congress and/or administration. That’s more than a year away until we have that opportunity.
I might advise to do both. Get rid of Obama. Pick the best Republican out there and give huge majorities in both houses of congress to Democrats. Basically, clean house completely. They had their chance and they totally blew it on all counts. All of them.
Hope and Change…
Good points, RandyH.
The scuttlebutt around me this morning is that people are furious at Obama and want him to resign. I don’t think Obama can escape blame for the effects of the debt agreement. I don’t doubt that it is primarily the Tea Party that brought us here. However, Obama is the President, and he will get the brunt of the blame. I think at this point we should forget about his chances of being re-elected.
It may be that the most useful thing that an individual can do (short-term) in terms of political impact is to register Republican and vote for Romney in the primaries. I haven’t given up hope yet that a major third party effort could still emerge, but if it doesn’t, it seems to me that Romney is the best hope for the country. If we somehow do get Romney in the White House with a Democratic Congress (that last part seems unlikely to me, though), then we can reasonably expect Romney to govern the way he did in Massachusetts, which apparently wasn’t all that bad.
I’m glad I’m not the only one thinking this. I’ve always been a big Obama fan but I just can’t do it anymore. He still hasn’t learned how to fight a battle because he can’t handle anyone “not liking him.”
Sorry. We’re not in High School anymore and we can NOT afford to guide him through his juvenile problems that he never solved way back when. This is a multi-trillion dollar economy that he is now fucking up because he can’t take sides. If it were possible, I would fire him today, as much as like him personally.
But I agree that Romney would probably be best. But he needs to be countered by a strong Democratic congress, so he has to compromise with them. Romney is capable of that. He’s shown that he can deal with some very liberal policies and he could probably even defy Grover Norquist and raise some taxes.
Getting that Democratic congress shouldn’t be too difficult. The thinking public has about had it with anyone related to the Tea Party and they pretty much all want new representation. Big turnover in Congress coming up.
Massachusetts resident here replying:
Are you out of your frikkin mind?
Romney as governor was decent — no more — with an overwhelmingly Democratic House and Senate controlling the legislation that came to him for signature. As soon as he got presidential fever he sloughed off being governor and ran all over the country trashing the state and pretty much every liberal, liberalish, or mildly not-batshit-right aspect of its governance. The man has no principles, no core, no values beyond getting money and power, and he’ll sell whatever synthetic scrap of a soul he has for it.
If he’s elected president he’ll bring with him GOP control of both Houses of Congress, and mass quantities of those members will be either Teahadists or terrified of being primaried from the wingnut right. What kind of legislation and administration do you think will ensue?
And if you think that a strong left-wing third party will emerge from the smoking rubble of a Romney Administration, I have some charming beachfront resort property in Somalia to sell you.
I hear your arguments.
Looking around at public opinion, this stupid-ass debt agreement thing that never should have been an issue is burning holes in millions of people’s stomachs because that was never what they wanted the government working on. They wanted jobs for their neighbors and kids, etc. Now our economy is strangled by this dumb-ass agreement and we’re ready to fire Everyone in government over it. That is why the stock markets have been dropping. We’ve given up and are accepting a decade or more of recession just to be “bipartisan” and not hurt any feelings in Washington. Sorry that’s just too juvenile and lame. Obama needs to grow a spine Today and accept that some people won’t be his friends Today or quit. Too many of us are feeling serious financial impacts because of his sensitive feelings.
And Obama has shown zero leadership here. He could / should have fought back from the start and demanded a clean bill but no, he was willing to make everyone’s lives even more miserable in the interest of bipartisanship. Man, that’s where he blew it for me. Now we’re locked into this lousy agreement and we are totally fucked.
He needs to go. If he is wise, he’ll resign and let Biden take over. Otherwise, Romney probably is the best choice, in my opinion. But we need to work HARD to get a new Democratic House and as many Senators as we can get.
Opinions vary…
Dude. Pour yourself a drink and try to relax. You’re freaking out.
No I am not. This has been building for a while and now it’s become clear what needs to happen. Watch and see.
It’s become clear to you that the president should resign and the country needs Mitt Romney?
That’s the definition of freaking out.
The country does not need Romney by any means. I sure don’t like him but I think he could handle the job. Obama is over his head and needs to go if he can’t get his shit together.
But it would probably be best at this point for him to resign. I can’t see any kind of economic recovery with him in the driver’s seat. And this economic catastrophe is getting too old. People can only take so much.
If he were to resign, control would go to Biden, who has no problem with people not liking him. That is at the core of our problems. Biden could get re-elected and we could get a nice new Democratic congress, as people are ready to elect. But short of this, we’re probably best to look to someone like Romney.
Sorry. I’m not changing parties but I just can’t see supporting this administration anymore. We were promised change and we didn’t get it. And it’s becoming apparent that we never will. We may need to do it at the ballot box.
You seriously need a cocktail.
This is the entire plan of the GOP and you’re failing for it. Their plan is to stop Obama from doing anything that would make his base happy, and also to block him from doing anything that would dramatically improve the economy. It’s not because he’s Obama; it’s because he’s a Democrat. There isn’t one single thing Joe Biden could do differently or would do differently that would improve the economy.
In 2010 we had an election. That election said one thing loud and clear. The people did not support more spending to get us out of this crisis. That was poor judgment on the people’s part, but it’s something we’re stuck with for the moment.
This should focus your mind.
Dude, do you know what the tea party was doing yesterday as the Administration was pining gthre “tea Party Downgrade” on them (Something Brendan and Dataguy said they would never do as Obama is too nice, as an aside)
Celebrating
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/08/wisconsin-tea-partiers-cheer-downgrade/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1NagON189g
So, since the Tea Party are HAPPY that the US has been downgraded, what do you think that Obama should have done? Gone “My way or the highway” like Bush did with secure majorities of a united party on both houses? Bush who would happilly have left the troops starve if the Dems filibustered? Shooting them all and starting again? When you are dealing with people who are literally insane but have enormous power, what would you do with this particular horse to make him drink?
Let be tell you pal, I’ve gamed this out in my head and I cant see myself or anyone else getting a better deal than Obama, Ried and Pelosi did. And yes it was not just Obama that was negotiating with them. And even yesterday Ried, not Obama, was talking about the need for compromise on the super committee so don’t talk about Obama in particular trying to be nice.
And your solution is replace Obama with Romney? What you are saying is “lets give the insane bad guys what they want and things will be better.” Isn’t that what you are accusing Obama of doing?
Even Obama said this deal was shit but he got what he wanted out of it. No more hostage taking till after the election, which was his bottom line. Medicare and social sec ring fenced. Defense cuts. I cannot see anyone doing better.
And as for Biden he shook Obama’s hand after the deal was done then went down to congress selling it to the caucus.
You can lead a horse to water but you cant make it drink. How would you make the tea party horse drink when its busy celebrating the downgrade and being blamed for it?
I didn’t mean to say that I thought Romney would be a good alternative. I was just saying that if a person is as deeply pessimistic as I am about the economy and about the re-election prospects of Barack Obama, then it seems like a good idea to try to influence the choice of the Republican party as a way to save the country. Maybe Huntsman is preferable to Romney, I really don’t know. However, it seems like in this instance, Romney’s lack of principles and his willingness to say whatever he needs to say to get elected is a positive. It means we can hope that he will be practical in making policy decisions and not ideologically motivated to drive the country off a cliff.
A third party might be successful, and it might not be. I certainly don’t want things to get horrible so that a liberal third party will rise from the ruins, as you seem to be reading my comment. My argument essentially is that a third party is necessary because we have two parties that represent corporate interests. Citizens United will have the effect of wiping out much of what is left of the Democratic Party as a vehicle for pro-consumer, pro-environment policies.
Why do you think Romney is special? In a phrase: he isn’t. He’s doing what every other professional politician does, and that’s securing his election. Politicians don’t have principles. They do what it takes to get elected; including Obama.
Tea Party Republicans aren’t politicians, and they will not last.
I just noticed in your comment that people want Obama to resign. That’s another possibility. A very smart one, actually. Joe Biden could lead us out of this mess. I’m sorry to say that Obama has proven that he is incapable of it. He can only bring us further into the wilderness with his “everyone wins” policies. Ain’t gonna work, Barack.
We desperately need to set some national priorities Right Now and this dilly-dallying around isn’t helping anything. We need to get out of these wars. We need to challenge or shut down S&P for political hackery. We need to prosecute Wall Street. Maybe even some people in the Bush Administration need to go to jail. Biden could do all of this. He gets it.
If Obama cares about his country, he will forget about a second term and just resign. I’ve had it. Millions more will too in a few days when things get even worse.
I do think we can wait for a little while to decide whether to get rid of Obama. Right now that would be like getting rid of Eisenhower because D-Day troops hadn’t reached Paris yet, when in fact the Battle of the Bulge was yet to come.
The US has not promised anything. The Congress is stuck right now. And there’s still those platinum coins that can be struck.
Where exactly is that stock money going to? Because of the heavy drop, it’s likely the AI program algorithms drove it down a few percentage points by themselves. You would have to look at the volume of trading to find out.
we don’t have to decide whether to get rid of Obama or not, he’s doing a fine job of making himself irrelevant on his own.
he’s headed for a one and done presidency.
as far as volume on the stock market…well, lets just say it was rather significant:
oops…looks kinda nasty, eh?
the only people getting hurt are the small investors, and those locked into managed 401k’s, etc. the money players have most probably done quite well shorting and hedging their resources.
.
Tribute diary – Against the Grain: Reflections of a Rebel Republican
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."