Unhappy Leftists in other countries burn palaces, organize national labor strikes and set themselves on fire. Our squishy DU pukes can’t even be bothered to vote. Fuck them all. I’m surprised any of them ever get laid, since it’s so much trouble to take off your pants.

I have no residual respect for 90% of the Left-blogging pioneers who balls-out led the online charge against Bush II, and brashly defended any pus-bag with a “D” next to its name…until they got Obama, who, incidentally, just days ago gypped the Tea Party out of the easiest victory they could ever have hoped for, simply by refusing to play their game and successfully turning their own leadership (and the public) against them.

Self-pitying, amoeboid Liberals brought the Tea Party on themselves by giving up when they were winning. If they haven’t figured that out yet, God help them when they wake up on Nov. 7, 2012…‘cause I sure won’t.

I’ve been struck by a great desire to go wring the hell out of a lot of online lefties’ necks. Partly because they won’t stop whining, and partly because they won’t stop whining about stupid things.

Do any of them consider what would’ve happened if the debt ceiling increase had been voted down? The Democrats would’ve been blamed for destroying the global economy. I swear, it’s like half the Dems online got replaced by teabaggers.

Unhappy Leftists in other countries burn palaces, organize national labor strikes and set themselves on fire.

To be fair, they also do a whole lot of whining and griping and infighting (some of which eventually leads a proportion of them to action, constructive or not). As do unhappy rightists.

@YAFB — Thanks for yanking the rug out from under that otherwise highly-effective contrast. Don’t you have some Europe-y things to do? ;->

Brit makes a good point about the universality of whinging, but Strange is also correct to note that our US lefties seem to have a unique tendency to pick up their ball and go home when miffed. I’m not sure why that is.

Is the left more susceptible to ennui? Does the right’s overwhelming numerical superiority in terms of corporate sponsorship and stupid people give them a built-in advantage?

Are we happy about the debt deal? Hell fucking no!

I’m pretty happy with it.  Once we get past the fact that 60% of Americans are morons and think there should be spending cuts, I think you can pretty well say Obama rolled the teabaggers again.

I’m unhappy with a deal that cuts spending and lets the oil companies, corporations and wealthiest individuals continue to either receive outrageous subsidies or pay less than their fair share.

However, I recognize that the most important factor in predicting the outcome of a negotiation is the hand you’re dealt going in. November 2010 dealt Obama a shitty hand. He played it as best he could. But the deal is still a shit taco. In my opinion.

To use the terrorist analogy, suppose terrorists were in a warehouse building a bomb to blow up the super bowl.  The cops find out and raid the place.  Sadly, three or four cops are killed in the raid, but on the upside, 50,000 people weren’t killed by the bomb.

Saying that you’re happy with the outcome doesn’t mean you’re glad the cops got killed.

Excellent article Betty Cracker.  Well said!

No doubt, Mike—the outcome was about as good as we could have hoped for since the Economic Suicide Bombers were truly prepared to drag the entire world economy down to score points on the Kenyan. Some folks—Lawrence O’Donnell among them—think the GOP would have blinked at the last minute and agreed to a clean debt ceiling bill.

I do not think they were bluffing. They might have agreed to raise it in monthly increments, thus paralyzing the government indefinitely and guaranteeing a credit downgrade (instead of merely making one likely as they have already done).

I keep wanting to stake out a nuanced position between the people who love Obama, hate the bill but understand why it had to be this way…and the people who voted for Obama, think the bill is the best deal we could have gotten, but hate the system that produced such a shitty outcome.

Is the left more susceptible to ennui? Does the right’s overwhelming numerical superiority in terms of corporate sponsorship and stupid people give them a built-in advantage?

Word, Betty Cracker.

What the hell is wrong with people? Is 2000-2008 really that hard to remember? I know I haven’t forgotten one agonizing moment of having to be on my toes at all time lest I hear his fucking voice and reflexively stick a pencil in my ear.

Jesus.

Also, my 50th birthday today. Tomorrow, Obama’s. I think Obama may be a direct result of my birth. I’m responsible for him

There can be no other explanation. Happy Birthday!

I too see this as authoritarian/will to fascism problem. Some folks are just predisposed to be told what to do.

The problem with taking a position that you don’t negotiate with terrorists (which, apparently, is the position Obama should have taken if you’re a true progressive) is that you have to be fully willing to let the hostage be blown up.  Obama was not willing to see the country get blown up.  For that I am thankful. I’m not crazy about the deal but it has some upsides.  And it’s infinitely better than the alternative.

I do not think they were bluffing.

Neither do I.  The Teathugs really didn’t want to raise the debt ceiling.  They were fully prepared to see the country default on its debt.  That was a feature to them, not a bug.

Happy birthday AltHippo!

YAFB, thanks for that Stonekettle link. I got sucked in for a couple hours there. Great stuff.

Happy birthday, Alt!

The story out of Wisconsin sounds a little fishy.  Folks up there are going eyeball-to-eyeball every day with real Tea Party government, and suddenly they’re all having a sad about some shit that happened in DeeCee? Wouldn’t it be a coincidence if Democracy for America just happened to be doing a little fundraising right now?

Many happy returns, AH! you’re just a pup!

If this is a truly widespread phenomenon, it should worry more than the White House. It should concern us all because it would mean that a nation whose citizens were once hardy enough to ruthlessly colonize a continent, fight a war with their own brothers, extract workers’ rights concessions from robber barons, storm the beach at Normandy and demand civil rights for its citizens has been reduced to a nation of pallid, whiny, moistened gummi bears.

I don’t know how much that attitude has to do with people being quivering piles of goo , and how much it has to do with people becoming so hardened and cynical that they’re just saying , “fuck it”. This is especially true with younger voters that just started voting in the ‘08 elections. A lot of them approached the political process with already jaded eyes , and seeing this latest clusterfuck can’t have done anything to improve their outlook.

I am personally going to look on the bright side—no one is writing anything on the political genius of John Boehner anymore.

Obama was not willing to see the country get blown up.

I remember in August-September of ‘08 (When did Lehman Brothers blow up?) a considerable amount—not a lot, but enough to raise eyebrows—of loose talk at DKos about how letting it all blow up would be a good thing. Because although there would be significant suffering—insert appropriate Strangelove quote here—we’d be purging the system of a lot of bad things, like bankers and consumerism and boy-bands, and in return we would be gaining a lot of good things, like more time with our families, liberation from the tyranny of stuff, and a better appreciation of what really matters—starting with subsistence agriculture.

WWI was supposed to purge a flabby and etiolated culture of its ills, instil virtue and such. And be over by Christmas. We know how that turned out.

Millennialism isn’t a right-wing only phenomenon…

Someone needs to remind these people that at the end of Quadrophenia the dude gets off the scooter.

Someone needs to remind these people that at the end of Quadrophenia the dude gets off the scooter.

True , but it’s never made clear whether he gets off the scooter before or after it goes over the cliff.

Many Hippo returns, Alt!

Are we happy about the debt deal? Hell fucking no! But that’s all the more reason to fight back against the scumbags who put fat cat tax cuts ahead of middle class families. In short, buck the fuck up, Buttercup.

This and Strange’s take is why I love this place.

One of the worst things we inherited from Bush, aside from a horrible economy,  politicizing everything, bunch of incompetent torture apologist assholes, and conditioning us to appeal to our basest instincts of fear,  ignorance and hate, is the fact that anyone who’s not an authoritarian dickwad is seen as weak. Some in the left want President Obama to emulate what they hated most in Bush.

I stopped reading most left wing blogs because it’s full of bunch of chicken little cry babies who are constantly wailing about one thing or another.  I am just getting annoyed talking about them. What a bunch of emotionally immature nincompoops (sounding like my grandma).

There’s a very deliberate long shot of the cliff edge with Jimmy standing on it after the bike’s gone over, and I at least have always considered the very beginning of the film to be him walking away from it.

Well, I’m going to try to make calls for WI, regardless. And I’ve read the riot act in general to the whiny pukes. I’m sure I’ll lose some Facebook friends but I don’t give a shit. I have an easier time dealing with my libertarian buddies right now than I do some of the puling infants of the “progressive” world. One friend-of-a-friend on FB told me she just was through with voting for candidates and was going to work on “electoral reform” measures instead. I of course asked her how the fuck she expected those measures to pass unless she voted for people who support them. I’m sure she’s off biting the pillow and cursing my name.

I hate whiny fucks. Fuck ‘em.

There’s a very deliberate long shot of the cliff edge with Jimmy standing on it after the bike’s gone over, and I at least have always considered the very beginning of the film to be him walking away from it.

  Never noticed the long shot before , I’ll have to watch the movie again. I’ve got a brother that’s a rabid Who fan , and he thinks the movie’s depressing because Jimmy offs himself at the end. He’ll be happy to find out that he doesn’t.

Happy B’day, AltHippo and many more.

Re end of Quadrophenia: Check the helicopter shot… The cliff-edge figure is quite clear in the theater, but in YouTube-sized format, it’s much less so.

To chip in my 2 cents’ worth on the “crybaby” factor, one thing that comes across quite strongly in my wanderings round the blogosphere over the past few years is a yearning on the left for a messianic figure.

Some thought they’d found it in Obama (I don’t think that applies to anyone here). Then there’s the Hamsher cult, the Greenwaldians, the Krugmanites, the left-behind Edwards fans, the rump PUMAs in their various incarnations (though many of those have now tellingly abandoned Hillary for Palin or points far right), the now-depleted Weinerians, the Kucinic lauders ....

I’m sure you could plot similar patterns on the right, except they’re even shorter of a suitably inspiring set of candidates with wide appeal than the left are nowadays.

One thing that struck Ms. YAFB and I about the 2008 Obama campaign was the community organizing approach that sought to empower people to make their own decisions within an overall campaign structure - quite anarchistic in some ways.

I don’t think you can blame Obama as POTUS for not continuing to capitalize on that overtly in between-election times - Ms YAFB and I did remark that it was a powerful approach that could easily turn sinister in the wrong hands.

Maybe some of the problem is historical? The US left got the stuffing kicked out of it during the McCarthy era, it’s hard to sustain the intensity of campaigns like that which centered on the likes of Luther King in the long term, especially when they bump off your figurehead, and since the Reagan/Thatcher axis, it’s been difficult for the left anywhere in the world to get its bearings and organize, with a few notable exceptions.

In the end, as we’ve seen in Wisconsin etc., if you want something done politically, you have to do it yourself in concert with peers, not wait for edicts to come down from on high. Sadly, it’s often only in rearguard actions that people come together like that nowadays.

We all need heroes/heroines/people we can look to for inspiration, of course. It’s when people expect them to produce miracles on a regular basis that disillusionment sets in.

Her e-mail to me had the subject line: “I am done.”

My brother pulled this horseshit on me, and I reminded him that he had damn well better go and vote for Democrats again, and SMILE, because he lives in a big swing state and is paid by writing grants to the NSF. I pointed out that if he didn’t want to be writing reports about how DNA proves Jesus rode a Triceratops to the sermon on the mount, he’d better not pout his way out of the next election.

Screw the crybabies - or really, educate them.

@ YAFB - I blame Hollywood. They depict black men, as either thugs or benevolent heroes with magical powers, so some in the left expected Obama as POTUS to combine both qualities. He would go gangster on some wingut asses, whenever they dare to breath in his vicinity, and would use his benevolent magical powers to reverse all the ills that America experienced in the last 30-years.

Screw the crybabies - or really, educate them.

Yep. My sister-in-law sat out the 2010 election in a snit. I throw Governor (P)Rick Scott in her face at every opportunity.

I’ve always suspected not having seen Quadrophenia is a gaping lacuna in my musical literacy. I’ve got to remedy this toot sweet!

@Anya - that’s something I’ve been thinking about for awhile.  That a lot of the fury the Professional Pouting Left is unleashing is because they didn’t really listen to what he was saying during the campaign which was mostly pragmatic common sense stuff.  They really believed he’d be their progressive purity pony dream Barack-the-Magic-Negro savior, wave his wand and Medicare for All would descend on the land. 

Now, instead of being mad at themselves for being naive, they’re projecting the anger onto Obama for not meeting all their needs.  It’s hard for me otherwise to figure out all this angst and cries of “betrayal” otherwise.  I mean how do you “betray” people over the public option when you never promised one in the first place?

And as long as they’re stuck in this mindset it doesn’t matter what he does - it’s either a bone he’s throwing their way or just another betrayal.

Yep. My sister-in-law sat out the 2010 election in a snit. I throw Governor (P)Rick Scott in her face at every opportunity.

Yeah Betty , I’ve got a few friends that pulled the same shit using the “no damn difference” excuse. I couldn’t get it through their thick fucking skulls that while Alex Sink may be a loathsome banker , Rick Scott is a skeevy , low life crook that would turn the state into a Teabagger Banana Republic. I have to try REAL hard not to rub their little noses in it whenever I see them.

I’ve always suspected not having seen Quadrophenia is a gaping lacuna in my musical literacy. I’ve got to remedy this toot sweet!

The movie is well worth watching, especially if you’re a Who fan. The only thing I didn’t like was the soundtrack. They re-mixed a number of songs and I thought the result kind of blew compared to the original album tracks.

@marindenver:

I mean how do you “betray” people over the public option when you never promised one in the first place?

Do you think most of them really want the public option, single payer, whatever, as opposed to just wanting something to cry over? Why aren’t most of them working at the state level to get this, Vermont did it so we know there’s nothing in the federal reform that’s blocking any other state.

Left Coast Tom, why aren’t most of them working at the state and local level on ANYTHING? Answer: Because they love to feel like victims. It’s what gives their lives meaning and shape. And it’s so nice to never have to be on the hook for anything.

And honestly, I think what bugs them the most is that Obama won’t stroke their egos and blubber “I feel your pain” like Bubba did. Even though Bubba didn’t get anywhere near the points on the board and had a GOP that, while nuts, wasn’t quite as off-the-charts feral as the current gang of loonies.

And honestly, I think what bugs them the most is that Obama won’t stroke their egos and blubber “I feel your pain” like Bubba did.

This.  The president found a way to work as much around the folks who hang out at places like DKos as he did to work with them.  They now don’t realize that their behavior isn’t doing anything to make the administration want to work any more closely with them.

They apparently feel as powerless now as they did during the Bush years (with some justification) but screaming at the top of your lungs every thirty seconds does nothing but annoy.

Well, Vermont is on it’s way to doing it, but they have definitely committed to doing it and are starting down that path with that goal in mind.  It will take some time and LOT of hard work. 

A good friend lives in VT and he said the final detail is an 8% tax to cover the cost.  Obviously for people who currently get health insurance as part of their employment it could end up being a wash financially, but for folks who aren’t, well, you know the drill.  Then there is the fuss-fest that will be the transition period, with no doubt plenty of winger money to try to gum up the works and prevent implementation so it won’t serve as a positive example of single payer.  However, I am optimistic because if any state could make this happen, it would be Vermont.

I mean how do you “betray” people over the public option when you never promised one in the first place?

More or less the same way you betray people by sending troops to Afghanistan after telling them you would send troops to Afghanistan, I would think.

As I mentioned elsewhere here on the Rump of the Roast, I belonged to a Progressive something something group on FB.  The day after the deal, the first post I saw was, “Time for a primary.”  Someone else had posted, “No, we CAN’T!” (most of the group members are in Florida).  I left the group.  I’m so fucking sick of it.

Good for you, Asiangrrl. Life’s too short to hang with the asshats.

Well, Vermont is on it’s way to doing it, but they have definitely committed to doing it and are starting down that path with that goal in mind.  It will take some time and LOT of hard work.

And step 1 was getting a Democrat as governor ‘cause we like to balance out our fairly Democratic legislature with a Republican governor on occasion (see Douglas, Jim).  SB 5 wasn’t perfect ~ far from it by most accounts but it certainly builds on HCR.

Boy, what would happen to the Losers Weepers of Pseudo-Leftie-Land if they had to face down what the protesters of the Arab Spring have seen?

Neda Agha-Soltan? Pfft. She caved.

Oh, and happy birthday Alt Hippo! 

P.S.  Oblo, I am this close to having ABL cut someone.