I just wanted to say thanks for saying what I couldn’t say without dropping into a string of obscenities.

Yeah, thank you!

To the extent that Susie represents the “Self-Important Jerk” demographic, I think she had an obligation to let Axelrod know what the Liberal Dickhead Contingent expects from this administration. If Obama thought he could take the Pouting Jack-Off vote for granted, Susie has certainly put him on notice that Drooling Nincompoops like her will stay home in droves this November unless someone gives them a Juice Box and a Fruit Roll-Up.

I’m still waiting for Susie The Award-Winning Journalist to tell us what awards she won, and at what paper. That information is mysteriously absent in support of her claims.

And after she made light of my freelancing for an “alternative” paper (though the same place she found that out also pointed out I am a freelancer for major daily), Susie Snowflake-Brain has a lot of gall for getting her Fee-Fee Panties in a twist over being “dismissed” by the administration.

She’s not doing jack shit for GOTV or raising money for candidates. Blegging and feeling sorry for herself that she can’t make a living off her shitty cut-and-paste blog (“Lookit Mommy, I learned to use the Bold and Italics functions ALL BY MYSELF!”) seems to take up most of her time.

In conclusion: The Wheels of the Bus Go Round and Round Over the Useless Puling Punched Hippies—and I laugh my ass off.

Team Axelrod, baby!

Also, Susie? It’s Grown-Up Land. Your “feelings” DON’T amount to a hill of beans. Those are what children use as a marker for whether something is “good” or “bad.” They generally shouldn’t be referred to as a means of judging complex policy and strategy decisions. And they sure as shit shouldn’t be prized above saving the country from the Asshole Party.

I dunno—now I feel bad. Could somebody please reassure Susie that there are no circumstances under which anyone would want to take her under the football stands?

Aw shucks.  Thanks, Betty. And thank you too, Oblomova. 

Madrak’s post on the subject and the reaction she was at least smart enough to know she’d get from certain quarters reminds me of someone calling up Howard Stern and playing a tape of himself yelling out “bababooey” on the Larry King show.  “Her, her, look what I done.”
When I think about what a disappointment the netroots has turned out to be on balance, I’m reminded of the feelings I had waking up with a terrible hangover on the floor of some seedy walkup apartment on the Lower East Side back in the early ‘90s.  “Who are these people I’ve been hanging out with?  I’ve got to find healthier ways to spend my time.”  Except I was only in it for a good time on those nights out.  My disappointment here stems from the fact that I had higher hopes for the netroots than a,, oh wait, stupid sexual metaphors are embarrassing even when commenting pseudonymously.

Preach it, brother. Honestly, I’m sick of the phrase “hippie punching” in general. It’s stupid. Listen to these nimrods when they use it:

“All right, so we’ve spent the past eighteen years using a series of increasingly nasty pejoratives in reference to the Obama administration. We’ve referred to Obama as a corporate shill, a warmonger, a liar, an enemy of the downtrodden, Bush part III. Some of us have been discussing our plans to get rid of him in 2012; a few of us are even relishing the defeat of Democratic congressmen. And after all of that, David Axelrod makes fun of us? Fucking ingrates!”

The general response to this is to point out that bloggers aren’t big enough to merit any sort of response. It’s nice to know that you guys are willing to admit that you’re meaningless, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re assholes.

Spell check please.

...Susie Mandrak’s confrontation with top…

@Strange

To the extent that Axelrod or anyone else on that call from the White House’s side knew who Susie Madrak is, I bet they are hoping that on the next call her friend Br3nd@n doesn’t show up and threaten to slap people with his cock or otherwise show her critics what’s what in RL.  Because he’ll meet you anytime, anyplace so you can say “back atchya” to his face.

One more thing on the devolution of discourse due to the insularity of the blogworld.  Are there any Flann O’Brien readers here?  Because I’m reminded of a passage from The Poor Mouth where certain Dublin based enthusiasts of the Irish language visit a remote area of the country to explain to the locals that not only should Irish people only ever speak Irish but every utterance they make should be about the Irish language as well.  Anything else would be a betrayal.

Lawnguylander, you must marry me now. I don’t care if you’re already married or not-straight.

Gaels! It delights my Gaelic heart to be here today speaking Gaelic with you at this Gaelic feis in the heart of the Gaeltacht. May I state that I am a Gael. I’m Gaelic from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet—Gaelic front and back, above and below. Likewise, you are all truly Gaelic. We are all Gaelic Gaels of Gaelic lineage. He who is Gaelic, will be Gaelic evermore. I myself have spoken not a word except Gaelic since the day I was born—just like you—and every sentence I’ve ever uttered has been on the subject of Gaelic. If we’re truly Gaelic, we must constantly discuss the question of of the Gaelic revival and the question of Gaelicism. There is no use in having Gaelic, if we converse in it on non-Gaelic topics. He who speaks Gaelic but fails to discuss the language question is not truly Gaelic in his heart; such conduct is of no benefit to Gaelicism because he only jeers at Gaelic and reviles the Gaels. There is nothing in this life so nice and so Gaelic as truly true Gaelic Gaels who speak in true Gaelic Gaelic about the truly Gaelic language. I hereby declare this feis to be Gaelically open! Up the Gaels! Long live the Gaelic tongue!

I did a lil adaptation of this book for a friend’s Irish theater company years ago. LOVE Flann O’Brien! Did you know Brendan Gleeson is supposed to be doing a film version of At Swim-Two-Birds? The mind boggles.

Maybe we should add “Reviling the Gaels” as a tag.

@ Roshan—Thanks! Fixt!

@ Lawnguylander—The Green Isle is getting greener!

Lawnguylander, I lifted your quote in toto to slap the twit posting on The Left Coaster. If you can get past the horrific horrific writing by paradox, you’ll see he offers to send flowers to Madrak. Go for the spew of adjectives, stay for the howling. Susie shows up every once in a while in comments to posture so she can flounce away when I trash her. It’s better than doing the work on my desk. A little.

Madrak gets a lifetime pass from me, because she supplied perhaps my favorite unintentionally-revealing comment of all time (thanks, whoever it was who pointed it out to me—I remember it being Polly but I’m not sure):

“Psychics always doubt their gift.”

Isn’t that awesome?

For the record, Axelrod is right about the administration trying to save the country

“Trying” is rather a strong word for it, and my footnote for that is the collected 2009 and 2010 columns of Paul Krugman.  Maybe the departure of Summers will imprive matters.  We can only hope.

And if Madrak is such a Firebagger, why was the administration unaware of that?  Why was she invited at all?  You invite bloggers whose work you don’t even read?  Come on, guys, at least get the small stuff right.

And on the subject of “blogspeak,” isn’t mastering teabagger lingo precisely what mainstream Republicans who are savvy, or who at least have low cunning, are doing right now?  If stupid bastards like Boehner and McCain can learn the lingo that makes the GOP’s crazy base drool like Pavlov dogs, why can’t our guys do something similar?

If stupid bastards like Boehner and McCain can learn the lingo that makes the GOP’s crazy base drool like Pavlov dogs, why can’t our guys do something similar?

Steve, do you really need to hear Pelosi say “hippie-punching?” Cos I’d think less of her if she did. It’s a stupid moniker that needs to be retired. Not to mention, no one but the people on certain blogs would understand what she was talking about, just like no one in the real world knew what the GOPers who said “teleprompter” were babbling about. It’d be like your dad trying to be a hep cat by say “da bomb” or something. Ugh.

Steve, I think the admin is trying, though I agree with you (and Krugman) that they’ve been too timid. Not that I know fuck-all about economics, but that’s my opinion. I believe the admin knows their fortunes rise and fall on the economy as well as we do, so even if they’re craven, self-interested hucksters who don’t give a damn about America, it’s to their benefit to try to fix the shitpile.

RE: Madrak, I sure as hell hope Axelrod had never heard of her and that no top-level official spends time poring over lefty blog sissy-fights. There’s way bigger fish to fry.

I think the reason Axelrod, et al, don’t spend time working phrases like “hippie-punching” into the national dialogue to fire up the firebaggers is because the firebaggers are about as significant as the gnat on the ass of a yak in Outer Mongolia.

Personally, I’m in favor of unilateral withdrawal from the current wars, slashing the DoD by 75% and adopting a Scandinavian-style approach to social welfare. But if 10% of Americans agree, I’d be surprised.

Unfortunately, two-steps-forward-one-step back is how shit gets done in this country, when it gets done at all.

RE: Madrak, I sure as hell hope Axelrod had never heard of her and that no top-level official spends time poring over lefty blog sissy-fights. There’s way bigger fish to fry.

God knows, any sign of competence in this Adminstration, like knowing something about someone they decide to talk to, would go against the narrative, “It’s not their fault their noses are up in Wall Street’s ass.”

Demanding to be taken seriously by comparing oneself to a teenager whose boyfriend doesn’t respect her.

I mean, who is writing this script.

craven, self-interested hucksters who don’t give a damn about America

Lately I sound more and more like someone who thinks the Obama people are like that, but I really don’t believe that.  I think Summers and the rest of the economic team believe what they’re saying, largely out of self-delusion, and I think the non-economists, starting with Obama, just respect their authori-TEH too much.  I don’t think Obama is evil.  I do fear he’s inclined to difference-splitting in all things, even though sometimes it’s bad policy and bad politics.

The game is nearing halftime, the home team is still ahead but the visitors are threatening, and where’s cheerleader Susie?

Under the bleachers giving blowjobs to the opposition.

I dunno—now I feel bad. Could somebody please reassure Susie that there are no circumstances under which anyone would want to take her under the football stands?

Charming. How about you argue the point (as the original post does) instead of making cracks about her looks and fuckability like a goddamn Freeper? Jesus. 

A.

God knows, any sign of competence in this Adminstration

...blah, blah, blah, Santa isn’t real because he didn’t bring me a pony, so this year I’m voting for Nader.

The White House needs to hire a Czar of Being Aware of All Internet Traditions.  I nominate me as I know who just about everybody is and I know blogspeak.  And one day it will go down like this:

“It was I, you fools! The man you trusted wasn’t Wavy Gravy at all! And all this time, I’ve been smoking harmless tobacco.”

Charming. How about you argue the point (as the original post does) instead of making cracks about her looks and fuckability like a goddamn Freeper? Jesus.

She chose the demeaning and stupid analogy which is essentially a confession of narcissism and terminal shallowness. Frankly, I’m embarrassed for her.

Charming. How about you argue the point (as the original post does) instead of making cracks about her looks and fuckability like a goddamn Freeper? Jesus. 

She frames her professional credence in terms of her fuckability to the White House Press Secretary during official questioning, but the real crime here is calling her out about it in the comments of a blog?

Concern troll is making my mind real.

“think Summers and the rest of the economic team believe what they’re saying, largely out of self-delusion, “

As with most netroots critics of the administration, it’s probable you have no idea what Summers and the economic team are saying or doing - after all Politico does not go there and Huffpo has too much celeb porn to cover (or uncover).

On second thought, Athenae is correct. If we can’t take someone seriously just because in a conversation with the chief WH political adviser she can’t think of something more useful to ask about than “hippie punching” and then goes on to describe herself as analogous to a teenage girl with low self-esteem and a mean boyfriend,  what does that say about our own standards? Are we ready to mock someone just for being petulant, stupid, selfish, laughable, and destructive? It’s not as if the stakes were high or anything - I mean what harm could the Republicans do?

Are we ready to mock someone just for being petulant, stupid, selfish, laughable, and destructive?

That’s how you win the 2008 Weblogs Award for Best Small Blog, and don’t you forget it.

I mean what harm could the Republicans do?

Thank you! I’ve said repeatedly on this blog that if Obama can’t close Gitmo, I’d rather have President Palin because I refuse to be represented by wishy-washy pseudo-Libs.

Alas, that’s a couple of years away. In the meantime, I’m withholding all support for Dem candidates in the hopes that losing the House and paring down our majority in the Senate will motivate Obama to finally do something about DADT.

“We’re the girl you’ll take under the bleachers but you won’t be seen with in the light of day.”

Because once you’re under there you demand a 40 carat diamond engagement ring, a $50K bridal dress and a million dollar wedding and then you freak the fuck out when your hapless beau doesn’t deliver RIGHT NOW.

If this administration does ever start to take these screeching assholes seriously, I WILL be pissed.

it’s probable you have no idea what Summers and the economic team are saying or doing

Haha, yeah we got no idea what they are doing!

I don’t quite understand why beating up on Madrak is so important. Her bleachers talk was too low brow? Maybe we should let Broder talk to Axelrod then on our behalf. That’s gonna get everyone fired right up. I’m hoping the administration keeps away from these crazy Susie Madrak types, these aren’t the votes we want, we want the good ones, who obliging vote for us since the other guys are so bad. Talking to lowly bloggers six weeks before a blood bath, who gave them this super idea? After all someone has to take the blame for losing the majority, it’s not the administrations fault, it’s these blogger goodfornothing types who is to blame.

@Hunger Tallest Palin—Thanks for clearing that up for me. I thought Madrak was making a reference to meeting men under the bleachers so she could sell her Food Stamps for drug money. Now it all makes sense.

Athenae, it’s Susie’s metaphor, we’re just living in it.

Let me attempt to pour oil on the waters I roiled (no, not that kind of oil—Jesus!). I do think Madrak’s plaint was juvenile and embarrassing, and it seems odd to me that someone who spends most of the time telling everyone what a piece of crap Obama is would imply that if only the administration would show her a little love, she’d be able to deliver her vast readership.

One of the things that bugs me the most about the whole manic-progressive blogger shtick is its overweening self-importance. Far lefties (and I count myself among them) don’t carry a lot of weight because there aren’t that many of us! Simple as that!

If we want to make any progress at all, we have to swallow some half loaves and drag our more centrist brethren with us, kicking and screaming along the way.

I don’t agree with everything the administration does—not by a long shot. There’s nothing wrong with bitching and complaining about the stuff that pisses us off. But a little perspective, a modicum of acknowledgment of the stakes is in order. It’s not about our feelings. It really, really isn’t.

“Haha, yeah we got no idea what they are doing!”

Yes. Are you aware that the Administration presents a budget to Congress each year? I have yet to see a single word on a “hippie” blog about that budget. I guess they are too busy fainting about the “catfood” commission. An administration that carried out the largest bailout of manufacturing and conducted a ballsy save of the largest unionized industry and the dipshits who claim to represent the “left” don’t give a damn.

Maybe we should let Broder talk to Axelrod then on our behalf. That’s gonna get everyone fired right up.

Neither one of these people speaks for me, but I’m pretty sure Broder wouldn’t use the opportunity to embarrass the administration and hand the Wingers a baseball bat five weeks ahead of the midterms.

To be fair, Susie has announced that she’s more fired up than ever to support the Dems because she can’t stand the thought of “a bunch of right-wing nut jobs crowing over winning this election.” It’s just too bad she didn’t have that epiphany before she decided to have her “Me the People” moment on a conference call with Axelrod.

Let me attempt to pour oil on the waters I roiled

Fuck you, you conciliatory shitbag. ;->

Charming. How about you argue the point (as the original post does) instead of making cracks about her looks and fuckability like a goddamn Freeper? Jesus.

Well, Fucking A, here is where, if I wanted to go Full Frontal Madrak on your ass, I would sneer at you for being an “anonymous coward” or whine that you should have tried to contact me “privately.” All of which, as my link to Orac’s blog demonstrates, is what she does when called on her lame shit.

(Orac is the science blogger she outrageously misrepresented vis a vis the new mammogram guidelines and then whined about how she’s not an “expert” so he shouldn’t be mean to Little Ole Her—that Susie, always the Vagina Victim, never the Bride.)

But here’s the deal: I’m a feminist, a progressive, AND a working journalist, so when a woman who pretends to represent those categories to someone of Axelrod’s stature decides to go with “Object To Be Fucked” as her primary analogy, it bugs the shit out of me because that crap rolls down hill and helps establish the image of women journalists as fundamentally unserious and cock-obsessed—the Carrie Bradshaw Syndrome, if you will.

When somebody who claims to be a journalist or former journalist consistently gets shit wrong, edits HuffPo posts to take into account criticisms in the comments without acknowledging that she has done so (as Betty called Madrak out for a while back on Madrak’s “review” of Bloggers on the Bus), and constantly pulls the Victim Card instead of doing the adult and ethical thing and offering full and public retractions for her errors, that upsets me. Maybe because I know actual award-winning journalists who are having a hard time right now and who could have knocked a question to Axelrod right out of the fucking park without once referencing themselves as horny fucked-up teenagers desperate for approval.

Oh, and then there’s the fact that Madrak had the brass to question MY credentials about a year or so ago when she has never, to my knowledge, presented a single link to back up her “award-winning journalist” claims—this after telling me I should “take a real risk” and name the papers I write for. She hasn’t provided anything to back that shit up. Not even a pub name. Every single working journalist I know—even the ones who have been laid off from papers and now blog on their one—still keep their past professional work history and credentials easily accessible on their websites. Not so with Susie. How very “untransparent” of her.

The fact that she demonstrably cannot remember anything else from that conference with Axelrod other than her own little snit-fit moment pretty much tells me that she’s in it for Susie, not for some larger cause. Maybe she’ll get face time on Fox for agreeing to be Another Useful Idiot of the Pseudo-Left, like Jane Hamsher.

So, enough about Susie and back to smart funny writers who matter: Lawnguylander, I too think Spike Jonze could do something interesting with O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. I’m told it also got referenced in “Lost,” though I’m apparently one of five people in the country who never watched five minutes of that show.

Another friend of mine in SF did a stage version of The Third Policeman, but he had to cut all the footnotes, which was a damn shame, but there was no good dramaturgical way to work them in without bringing the action to a screeching halt (they probably work better on page than stage, anyway). He did have a great program note, however: “No bicycles were harmed during this production.”

Maybe she’ll get face time on Fox for agreeing to be Another Useful Idiot of the Pseudo-Left, like Jane Hamsher.

I think this is the end game for a lot of these clowns.

1. Make a lot of noise.
2. Get on the teevee.
3. Imagine people who didn’t know they were alive in high school and still don’t know are dying of jealousy.

Hey, it worked for Erk Erkson and he’s a big bumbling dumbass also too!

An administration that carried out the largest bailout of manufacturing

Actually that was quite a feat. I’m surprised that no one has picked up on that especially on the left.
I read this in the Economist awhile back

Definitely better than being the Arrogant Elitist President Who Let the American Auto Industry Collapse and Idled 200,000 Workers.

I’m surprised that no one has picked up on that especially on the left.

Not surprising. The “left” blogs are not “left”, they are entitled whiny middle class losers who are disgruntled that some black guy appears to be failing to appreciate their non-existent talents.

Hmmm, they do like their flavor-of-the-weak heroes as much as the teabaggers, do.

Except that where the teabaggers march, these guys stay @ home and blog, because that’s so important to the cause, you know.

they are entitled whiny middle class losers who are disgruntled that some black guy appears to be failing to appreciate their non-existent talents.

Clearly you’re unaware that Bush sucked up to the fRighty blaghers hard, so Obama’s failure to do so for the lefties makes him WORSE THAN BUSH.

I’m late responding to you, Twinky, but here goes:

Steve, do you really need to hear Pelosi say “hippie-punching?”

This point got garbled in the discussion.  In this case, I don’t expect Democrats to use the term so much as to understand why people who’ve supported them, and still sorta support them (maybe not Madrak, but people like Atrios and me), use the term. 

no one but the people on certain blogs would understand what she was talking about, just like no one in the real world knew what the GOPers who said “teleprompter” were babbling about.

If the average GOP congressperson doesn’t know what “teleprompter” means to the wingers, you can damn well bet the ideologically pure young staffers know.

Republicans treat ideologically pure righties like a dog at a picnic—maybe they occasionally tie it up and leave it food and water while they talk with fellow humans, but once in a while they get up and throw it a Frisbee.  Democrats treat ideologically hardcore lefties like ants a picnic—they either ignore them or pay attention to them just long enough to brush them off.

Republicans treat ideologically pure righties like a dog at a picnic—maybe they occasionally tie it up and leave it food and water while they talk with fellow humans, but once in a while they get up and throw it a Frisbee.

And now (to extend your analogy) their masters have to roll over when they bark and let them run for office. It’s a lot of fun to watch, so long as it’s happening to a bunch of dirtbags.

The teabaggers are a fine illustration of why the thinking pol ignores the radical (ideologically pure, hardcore, what have you) elements in his party.

When did Susie become an “ideologically hardcore lefty”? And Duncan? He’s a hardcore lefty? By golly! Will wonders never cease?

So Steve, then the Obama administration is erring in not cynically throwing the far lefties a bone?

What bone would even work? There are too many people in the blogoshere whose predetermined position is to complain about scratches they receive on the sidelines while the opposition is throwing incendiary bombs at the front.

Polly, it’s not the bone throwing that’s the problem, just don’t throw a shoe at them. It just aggravates the complaining. And Madrak is hardly a far left type.

The segment of the left that is incapable of distinguishing between “hasn’t done enough” with “hasn’t done anything” deserves nothing but contempt. It would help if they provided an honest yardstick based on either past presidential accomplishments (again, without resorting to kneejerk FDR fellatio) or with at least taking into account the possibility that their own expectations were inflated and somewhat reflective of entitlement and privilege—i.e., “We got our guy in and now he’s gonna kick ass and make everything all better—IN YOUR FACE, wingnuts!”

Part of this, of course, is that the scale of the problems is more epic than anything any other president has faced—and yes, that includes FDR, who, though he inherited the Great Depression, didn’t also have two ongoing wars, many nations with nuclear-strike capability, a roiling Mideast, and a planet in environmental meltdown to contend with. So yeah—we got bigger problems now, and the solutions we’ve seen so far are probably inadequate so far.

But they aren’t “nothing,” and to claim that in the face of autoworkers who have kept their jobs, people who found work thanks to stimulus projects, people who will now be able to keep or add health insurance for themselves or their kids—that is “throwing under the bus” anyone who has had their lives improved or at least not made more shitty by the actions of this administration. “Sorry, the benefits you’ve received don’t matter, because I wanna play Access Blogger on Tee-Vee and make a big deal out of my hurt feelings.” People who play that game can fuck off.

Roshan, I never thought Susie was a hardcore lefty. That’s one reason I found it laughable that she’d use the term “hippy-punching.”  Anybody who supported Hillary Clinton and this is not a slam against Hillary, but just to note her near-Obamidentical centrism—cannot be considered a hardcore lefty.

What I do consider her is someone who missed a chance to have a real discussion with the man who has the ear of the president. In favor of a self-aggrandizing tantrum. It was childish and reenforced the image of bloggers as irascible, emotionally immature grievance farmers.

What I do consider her is someone who missed a chance to have a real discussion with the man who has the ear of the president. In favor of a self-aggrandizing tantrum. It was childish and reenforced the image of bloggers as irascible, emotionally immature grievance farmers.

Exact-a-mundo, Mrs. P! And the ironic part is that the Leftie Blogosphere is often the place that—quite rightly—calls out mainstream journalists for resorting to silliness in the face of substance (asking Obama what he thought about Henry Louis Gates getting arrested, because hey, white presidents get grilled at press conferences about random cantankerous white dudes who get busted on false pretenses all the fucking time, right?) So you get a shot to show that you’re not like those lapdog celebutard fuckstains like David Gregory or any of the Fox and Fiends crowd, and what do you do?

Whip out some incoherent personal-trauma sexual history scenario, instead of asking something like “There is a perception that the White House persistently chooses to distance itself from segments of the progressive community and there are well-documented cases of members of the administration, such as Robert Gibbs and Rahm Emanuel, using phrases that seem dismissive or insulting. How do you address that perception moving forward into the midterms?”

Okay, that might be kind of lame, but I just did that in 30 fucking seconds. Presumably, Madrak had plenty of time to come up with a question—and really, “girl under the bleachers feeling like the town ho” is what she tosses over the plate? Pathetic.

The segment of the left that is incapable of distinguishing between “hasn’t done enough” with “hasn’t done anything” deserves nothing but contempt.

This.  This right the fuck here.

We all (rightly) mock the narcissistic centrists like Nelson and Lieberman when they pout over insufficient respect and/or attention.  So what’s the difference between them and so-called ‘progressives’ who obsess about ‘hippie-punching’?  Anyone?

“We got our guy in and now he’s gonna kick ass and make everything all better—IN YOUR FACE, wingnuts!”

Yep. Many people, despite TONS of evidence to the contrary, were certain Obama would be a cross between Shaft and Robin Hood.

Well, I suppose it’s also true, as Booman pointed out yesterday to somebody, that if St. Howard Dean had won election, the Purity Left would be treating him as the second coming of Ivan the Terrible for his compromises as well.

We’re a big diverse insane asylum of a nation. Sometimes I think that lack of homogeneity is a great benefit, but it does make it difficult for anyone who is serious about governing to balance all the competing interests.

To claim that Obama isn’t serious about governing, as I’ve seen some leftie commenters and bloggers do, is a bald-faced lie. My sister works for a health insurance company. I told her about the “ObamaCare is nothing but a big giveaway to Big Insurance” line and she was basically “What insane fucktard would say something like that? If that were true, why did all the insurance companies pour tens of millions of dollars into ads and lobbying efforts to defeat it?” And she was a public option fan—as was I—but she realizes that a lot of people are going to have access to care who didn’t have it before.

The obsession with vengeance-over-results (i.e., more important to “stick it to the insurance companies” than try to work out something that might actually pass and help people who need it) is another common characteristic between teabaggers and firebaggers.

When the world is running dow, I don’t really give a shit about settling scores over trying to stanch the bleeding. Should Bush and Co. be in jail for war crimes? Sure. Was it gonna happen? No. Not because Obama is a pussy and a sell-out—but because NO president would pursue that kind of investigation. Does it suck? Sure. Welcome to citizenship in a hypernationalist and imperialist nation.

And again—not even BushCo stooped to putting actual American citizens into interment camps based on nationality and race simply to appease the pants-wetting xenophobes after 9/11.

I am just so tired of hearing that Obama could do it all IF HE REALLY WANTED TO!! Because the Dems had 60 VOTES in the Senate!!  Except that some of those votes were held by DINOs like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu.  Not to mention needing to count Lieberman in there.  But the Firebaggers were just sure that Obama could MAKE them do whatever he wanted if he WANTED TO!

Well, FFS, why wouldn’t he want to enact the changes he said that he would?  If it was possible to bend these people to his will just like that, why wouldn’t he have done it?  He got slammed up against the reality that the Repubs would do everything they could to obstruct him on literally everything and that Blue Dog Dems are too afraid of not being re-elected to stand up for Democratic principles.

And as far as single payer, as has been frequently noted here he never campaigned on that idea and second, for those of you living in the East or other liberal Dem enclaves, you may just have no idea how the most of the country keels over in shock at the idea of anything resembling SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!!  Whether it’s because of the Ronnie Reagan years or what, I don’t know, may go all the way back to McCarthy, but the average American believes that socialized medicine aka single payer would literally mark the beginning of the end of our country.  I think it’s a miracle that we got the amount of health care reform that we did. 

Susie Madrak behaved like a spoiled child at someone else’s birthday party determined to grab the spotlight for herself.  The adults really need to ignore her.

And as far as single payer, as has been frequently noted here he never campaigned on that idea and second, for those of you living in the East or other liberal Dem enclaves, you may just have no idea how the most of the country keels over in shock at the idea of anything resembling SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!! 

Yup.  The leftier-than-thou folks operate on the fallacy that the more extreme your opening position is, the better the result of the negotiations.  In reality, if your opening position is too far out there, it’ll end negotiations right there and you’ll get nothing.  Opening with single-payer would have had exactly that result.  It’s unfortunate, but that’s the political reality.

Negotiation 101. I have often suggested to the people who authoritatively like to explain what stupid black president could have done, that they should try that tactic in their own personal lives. For example they could go to whoever is unfortunate enough to employ them and demand $2million/year, settle for $1million, and then bankroll their own suave blogs.

@ Betty Cracker on 09/24/10 at 07:21 AM

You and this White House are full of it.

Obama’s Chief of Staff says supporters who helped him win are “fucking retarded.” Then Obama’s press spokesperson says liberal bloggers need to be “drug tested.” Later, when Alan Simpson egregiously insults a constituent group, Jennifer Psaki accepts an half-assed apology on their behalf when they do not. Later, Robert Gibbs goes out of his way to defend Simpson. 

How many liberal bloggers have Alexrod had at the White House? None. What has Obama done to show he understand liberal’s concern about civil rights lost and abused under the previous administration? Nothing. In fact they have gone far beyond the previous administration by claiming the right to assassinate Americans at your convenience, to defend torture by using the corrupt State Secrets Act, to wage secret wars using drone to kill civilians around the world.

Alexrod has spent the past two years listening to the GOP which hates then and wants to block Obama in every way possible, and dissing Obamas’ core supporters. That is so stupid one can only ask, Are you insane or merely arrogant and stupid?

After those insults, Axelrod demands unconditional help? Grow up, chum. This administration has nothing but contempt for his supporters.  Don’t try to piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining. It’s right back at ya,  pal.

So, mike, it really is all about your poor delicate fee-fees?

Unconditional help!?? In two years, the netroots has offered unconditional help - to the Republicans.

Nader just keeps looking better and better, doesn’t he, mike?

Thanks for answering, SteveM, and while everyone else has made the same points I was thinking of, I would also like to add that Susie (don’t they have these calls all the time?) wasn’t just thrown a bone, she got a seat at the fookin’ table. And all she could do is yap about there not being steak, and how the conditions in the kennel are just appalling, why don’t you ever call?? The obsession with getting a shout out from the Dems is just silly, IMO. Is that really why the leftosphere (besides Hamsher, kos, and Marshall who absolutely did it to get big and famous - obvious from the start) got into blogging and activism? For myself, I do it for the snark. Too stressful, otherwise.

Mike, you seem surprised that torture and assassination happen under the watch of American presidents. Good Morning, Starshine! The Earth Says Hello!

But Oblomova, Mike wasn’t asked to the White House! Priorities, Oblo! Where’s your sense of them!!!

I was waiting for Oblo to truly hippie punch Madrak, and it was good, damned good.

Assassinations? Good Christ! Now I for sure hope the GOP retakes Congress so they can investigate Obama and put a stop to this heinousness.

DA, nobody here agrees with most of the Obama administration’s policies on warmaking. But did anybody on the line with Axelrod bring up this or any matter of real importance? Who knows?

All we know is that Axelrod wouldn’t take Susie under the Boardwalk, and the rights of American citizens not to be assassinated by their government (even if they are working with undisputedly terrorist organizations), aren’t as important as the wounded psyches of progressive bloggers.

I need a cigarette.

In fact they have gone far beyond the previous administration by claiming the right to assassinate Americans at your convenience.

If I’m not mistaken, they are talking about Americans who operate with foreign terrorist organizations planning to kill people (but just never mind that small detail). Come to think of it, state and local police departments, sherriff departments, the FBI, etc… can also “assassinate” Americans at your conveinience. Especially if that American is attempting or about to kill someone.

*

Concern troll is making my mind real.

First off, Athenae’s hardly a concern troll. Secondly, it’s actually spe…

Wait, no, forget it. I’m glad you’ve got a real mind.

My favorite typo ever was in a student’s paper on the evolution of film noir: “Once again, I must refinance Chinatown.”

I’ve prepared a short guide to hippie punching

Gil! Thanks for bringing back Athenae, who is so far upthread as to have been unreachable to my lowly self, but she lives again!

Charming. How about you argue the point (as the original post does) instead of making cracks about her looks and fuckability like a goddamn Freeper? Jesus. 

Now I get to say, Athenae, who mentioned Madrak’s looks? You! I don’t think Oblomova has paid much attention to the comely visage of Susie Madrak. Much less the, you know, otherability.

The woeful personality would be the assumed deal-breaker in sub-boardwalk amusement here.  But really, how can one do anything but wince in mortification that Madrak would introduce this bizarre sexual element into a conversation with a presidential advisor?

Thanks, Gil, and hope I didn’t include any typos enabling people disagreeing with me to disqualify my entire comment by implying that I’m illiterate—unless they produce a truly amusing pun.

(You know I still love you, btw. I have a Creature From The Black Lagoon figurine standing in the same pot as my prized Euphorbia, and they look just stunning together.)

Obama’s Chief of Staff says supporters who helped him win are “fucking retarded.”

Help me here. I stopped reading after the first blatant lie. Was there any more to that comment?

Mrs. Polly, thanks. I don’t believe I did get into Susie Q’s pulchritudinous qualities or lack thereof. As for her fuckability—hey, she brought it up. To fume about others running with the metaphor is akin to wearing a see-through blouse to church and then screaming “Stop objectifying my funbags in the presence of our Lord!”

Speaking of funbags:

@Polly

Hey, I think Athenae and Oblomova are both kick-ass, but a) I didn’t dig O’s line of attack there either and b) I’ll defend pretty much anybody against that stupidest of stupid blogologisms, “concern troll.” Maybe if someone used it correctly once in a while, I’d be more open.

I have a Creature From The Black Lagoon figurine standing in the same pot as my prized Euphorbia

Dude, you must send me a picture. I’ll trade you a shot of a baby squirrel piloting a TIE fighter.

DA, nobody here agrees with most of the Obama administration’s policies on warmaking. But did anybody on the line with Axelrod bring up this or any matter of real importance? Who knows?

“It’s Susie Madrak’s fault she made Axelrod look like a dumb shit, because he isn’t.”

Hippies who punch back?  Whocouldanode?

I don’t really care what you Obots have to say or what the manic progressives have to say until ONE OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS CURE CANCER.

We now return to our regularly-scheduled thrashing.

“It’s Susie Madrak’s fault she made Axelrod look like a dumb shit, because he isn’t.”

You know what’s fucking dumb? The idea that Madrak has any interest whatsoever in helping this administration, coupled with the idea that all that’s been holding her back in this noble endeavor is the administration’s attitude to certain bloggers.

My evidence? Take a good look at her blog, and the majority of her posts at C&L.

Except for the part where Susie Madrak made herself look like a dumber shit, right on, DA! When we have the ear of the president’s senior advisor, what could be a better use of everyone’s time than to divert oneself from the pain of having a terribly ill friend? Poor Susie! Now I understand. So I hope she will excuse my calling BS on her excuse for the silly smoke-bomb she threw into that conference call, but I have TWO terribly ill friends to divert myself from.

So for the Rumproast conference call with Axelrod, I’m planning to divert the conversation to his understanding of what is meant by “concern troll,” and then insult his mustache. Hey, who could blame me? I’m just a whimsical madcap with a secret sorrow, and a formerly award-winning class warrior! (Dramatic Interpretation, 3rd place,9th grade. The judges were put off by my choice of Last Exit To Brooklyn, for some reason. I thought I gave the character of Tralala an unquencheable inner fire, but first went to a cheesy life-affirming selection from the Bhagavad-Ghita.)

Whatevs!

You know what else is fucking dumb?  Continuing to talk about Susie Hack Madrak.  She has gotten way more attention here than she deserves.

Present company excepted Mrs. P.  I would gladly listen to you expound on any subject for as long as you wanted to. ;-)

Gil, as I said to Athenae, as a working female journalist (okay, an arts journalist, but still), I found Madrak’s whole “Imagine me as somebody you’re fucking” line of inquiry with Axelrod to be reprehensible, self-serving, and belittling to women—and frankly, if a male commenter or questioner had raised that analogy, I don’t think anyone would blink at calling them out for their bullshit.

So yeah—I have no patience with women who use fuckability as a metaphor, then pout that no one will take them SERIOUSLY!!!! And I have no patience with people such as Athenae who read in things I didn’t say—as Mrs. Polly pointed out, I never trashed Madrak’s looks—I have no idea what she looks like nor do I care. And it’s impossible to engage Madrak on “substance” because she’s a feckless fucking liar and cretin who turns around and blubbers about “anonymous cowards,” censors her comments section, and has no shame in badly misrepresenting the positions of people who DO know what the fuck they are talking about.

So—I think at that point all we’re left to deal with is the question of her “fuckability,” which she broached in the first goddamn place. Generally, if you don’t want people to talk about your vagina, it helps if you don’t spend time in a conference call with the president’s top adviser pointing to your cooch and crying.

The idea that Madrak has any interest whatsoever in helping this administration, coupled with the idea that all that’s been holding her back in this noble endeavor is the administration’s attitude to certain bloggers.

If Alexrod had the wit to defuse the comment with a small joke, then a praise sandwich, finishing by thanking her for being in the call, you wouldn’t be writing about Susie right now.

Except for the part where Susie Madrak made herself look like a dumber shit, right on, DA!

Folks, when you have to use than a few sentences to explain away an observation, you’re already behind and losing the race.

Thanks, mar, I believe that was it. Somebody was talking about pie…..

Okay, I’ve just used “cooch” in a sentence. My work here for a Friday is done. And Mar, you’re right—time to stop feeding the Promiscuous Ego Beasts of the Emosphere.

Shhhh, Marin! We’re within spitting distance of 100 comments, at which point Strange is honor bound to do a streak down the blogroll.

The idea that Madrak has any interest whatsoever in helping this administration, coupled with the idea that all that’s been holding her back in this noble endeavor is the administration’s attitude to certain bloggers.

If Alexrod had the wit to defuse the comment with a small joke, then a praise sandwich, finishing by thanking her for being in the call, you wouldn’t be writing about Susie right now.

And that responds to my point how, exactly, pray tell?

Forget it, Brit: It’s Chinatown.

Oops, I guess that’s not it. WHY DIDN’T ALEXROD (Yankee fan, DA?)SOFTSOAP SUSIE? NOW THAT WOULD SHOW RESPECT!

No, it wouldn’t.

Don’t be afraid to use as many sentences as you need to address the original point I tasked you with, however; one would be a start.

Yay 100!

Also, TDA, had Axelrod responded with a joke, I’m sure that would have been used as evidence of nefarious whatsoevergrindlegrundlesniff and trumpeted around the blogs to the echo. As for praise, in Madrak’s case, what the fuck FOR?! So he should have been a hypocrite.

And this makes no sense whatsoever:

Folks, when you have to use than a few sentences to explain away an observation, you’re already behind and losing the race.

Forget it, Brit: It’s Chinatown.

200 HERE WE COME!!!

the Promiscuous Ego Beasts of the Emosphere

Blessings on you and all your kind, for this another of your plenteous gifts to the Snarkworld. We shall think of you whenevs we employ it, which shall be not less than half-a-dozen times per day.

If Alexrod had the wit to defuse the comment with a small joke, then maybe a cookie and some warm milk, finishing by giving her gold star for being extra special, you wouldn’t be writing about Susie right now.

the Promiscuous Ego Beasts of the Emosphere

Kevin, I think we have the birth of a new tag!

Of course, that would mean we have to keep blogging about them, but hey ho.

And that responds to my point how, exactly, pray tell?

And this makes no sense whatsoever:

Here’s the original observation:

“It’s Susie Madrak’s fault she made Axelrod look like a dumb shit, because he isn’t.”

If Alexrod had the wit to defuse the comment with a small joke, then a praise sandwich, finishing by thanking her for being in the call…

Seriously, this Administration’s crippling inability to make dumbfucks feel good about themselves makes me despair that the spirit of Eddie Haskell is truly dead and gone from America.

And that responds to my point how, exactly, pray tell?

And this makes no sense whatsoever:

Here’s the original observation:

“It’s Susie Madrak’s fault she made Axelrod look like a dumb shit, because he isn’t.”

Are you studying Non Sequitur 101 in your spare time, or is it a full-time class?

RESOLVED:

THAT DAVID ALEXROD IS THE KINDEST, BRAVEST, WARMEST, MOST WONDERFUL HUMAN BEING ON THE WHITE HOUSE STAFF.

Oh, please don’t tell me you have an actual debate team background. First Affirmative, no doubt.

How many liberal bloggers have Alexrod had at the White House? None.

Yet another thing I like about the Obama Administration.

Why the fuck are my opinions more important because I’ve got enough spare time to sit at the computer and jerk my opinions into the internons?

Fuck that shit. I thought it was bad news when Bush Admin. started inviting fRighty Blaghers over for milk and cookies and I still think its bad news. It’s incredibly vain and wrong-headed for anyone with a blog to think they should get special treatment, and I’ve yet to hear a coherent argument as to why this should be.

Any citizen who wants to share their opinions with any elected official needs to do it the old fashioned way: Call or send a letter. For your Congress critters you can even drop by the state office and leave a letter there. No butting to the head of the line because you’ve got Wordpress account.

You know, I went back to the thread in the Rumper Room where I first tangled with Susie, and it occurs to me that when it comes to taking the administration to task for being curt and abusive toward “supporters,” it’s pretty funny that the Poster Girl is the same person who accused people who read her cut-and-paste blog (“Now With Extra Bolding Power!”) without donating money to be “hitching a ride” and essentially stealing from her.

Thanks so much to the 24 47 readers (out of 1500 daily) who have donated. That’s not a great ratio, huh.

Though I’m still not sure if she scolds her tens of commenters who use nyms for their anonymous cowardice as well as their parsimony.

But of course, it’s worth it, because ...

I’m pretty sure my batting average in terms of accuracy is better than .900.

So she only gets things totally wrong like, 10 percent of the time.

Okay, seriously—time for pie. And Strange’s Streaking Festival.

“It’s Susie Madrak’s fault she made Axelrod look like a dumb shit, because he isn’t.”

Um, that statement does sort of presume that Axelrod is the one who looks dumb—rather than the woman who described herself to the president’s top adviser as the Town Pump. (H/T to whoever wrote the scene in Mad Men when Peggy goes on the pill for giving me that little epithet!)

OK, here’s this valuable champion that Axelrod so cruelly snubbed, cherrypicked from her own blog posts:

I would say that this president’s penchant for sarcastic, not-quite-whiny, “why oh why aren’t they as smart as me” insider riffs is one of his least attractive qualities. Psst, Mr. President? You’re not doing standup — you’re the president of the United States, and the head of the Democratic party. This isn’t the high school lunchroom.

Boy, that Obama really knows how to play the 11-dimensional chess, huh? He really knows how to take the wind out of progressive sails — by sort of appointing Warren, but not taking the fight to the Republicans over consumer protections and quite possibly energizing the base (which still cares about things like consumer protection). Kind of like he pissed on it:

Well, I don’t know that it should be a shock to anyone that Obama intends to “reform” Social Security – and by that, I mean gut it. Either through benefit cuts or partial privatization, Obama will do the bankers’ bidding:
...

Can we admit yet that Barack Obama is a DINO?

I won’t quote any more of Madrak’s burblings, mainly because most of them consist of an introductory sentence, an extensive block quote with random bolding (I’ve toyed with doing a quasi-parody and bolding different sections of the same quote to prove exactly the opposite to her point, but it’s not really worth expending anyone’s energy), and if the reader’s lucky and the stars are aligned, then a snippy sign-off, but it’s not an unrepresentative sample.

The real meat comes in her comments sections, which are generally rabidly anti-administration and anti-Obama, on her own blog ruthlessly censored, and both there and on C&L, never get anywhere constructive.

And that’s the demographic she’s supposedly going to turn around and encourage to GOTV for the Dems?

This bridge is very reasonably priced, and we can do an instalment plan.

Yeah—the woman who calls her own readers chiseling thieves and implies that those who use nyms are “anonymous cowards” doesn’t strike me as the best go-to person for GOTV. I mean, she can’t be charming and convincing when she’s working for HERSELF, let alone someone she hates.

But as HTP pointed out a long time ago—thank god the blogosphere allows these people to isolate themselves from those who go out and do the hard work of organizing, canvassing, and other boots-on-the-ground stuff.

thank god the blogosphere allows these people to isolate themselves from those who go out and do the hard work of organizing, canvassing, and other boots-on-the-ground stuff.

Perhaps I’m just tired but the thought of these cretins doing a door-to-door has me cracking up. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN’T TALK RIGHT NOW?! I DON’T CARE IF YOUR HUSBAND IS DYING OF CANCER. WHY DON’T YOU STOP BEING SO SELFISH AND THINK OF THE GREATER GOOD! FINE YOU STUPID FEMBOT!!”

OK, it’s funnier in my head.

Oh, please don’t tell me you have an actual debate team background.

No, but that’s the lead, isn’t it?

Brave, noble, sophisticated David Axelrod is left with his mouth hanging open, and it’s all due to that peace-sign flashing, patchouli-scented, unpractical hippie who had the gall to ask why this WH treats progressives as if they were infected with the Black Plague instead of part of their base.

And that’s the demographic she’s supposedly going to turn around and encourage to GOTV for the Dems?

This bridge is very reasonably priced, and we can do an instalment plan.

Yep, after reading the above, it makes perfect sense that the WH would include her in a conference call with expectations that she’d line up like a good soldier, ask the right questions, go back to her blog and give 110% for the cause.

Yep, after reading the above, it makes perfect sense that the WH would include her in a conference call with expectations that she’d line up like a good soldier, ask the right questions, go back to her blog and give 110% for the cause.

What makes sense is that they’d invite Crooks & Liars, a very decent bunch of bloggers in general with a fair bit of clout, to have a representative take part in the conference call (Madrak’s own blog is tiny, so it’s highly unlikely it was on the strength of that). If they’d been excluded, you’d no doubt join in the whining about that.

Why was that representative Madrak? Who knows? Did she respond to this opportunity with something useful? Well, if you call handing a tiny victory and a “news” cycle to some of the RW blogs (and she’s since been trying to walk back that effect of her tantrum) useful, yes I guess she did. If you like similes, she acted like the disruptive, bored kid at the back of the class who acts up to get attention and amuse herself and try to impress her classmates (if you read her C&L post, that’s not an unfair characterization).

Brave, noble, sophisticated David Axelrod is left with his mouth hanging open,

You’re a fantasist, and your puerile spite is transparent. Were you in the room? If someone on the other end of a business call comes out with nonsense like the daft simile in question, silence that masks a “WTF?!” is a pretty understandable reaction.

No, but that’s the lead, isn’t it?

Nope. The lede (in Betty’s post and my comment above) is:

You’re little over a month from one of the crunchiest of crunch elections of the past couple of decades, and you want to talk about somebody supposedly making Axelrod look dumb on the phone?

As for this:

and it’s all due to that peace-sign flashing, patchouli-scented, unpractical hippie who had the gall to ask why this WH treats progressives as if they were infected with the Black Plague instead of part of their base.

On the evidence, a proportion of those “progressives” are about as useful as being ten bloggers short.

WH treats progressives as if they were infected with the Black Plague instead of part of their base.

Define progressives. Use extra paper if necessary.

What makes sense is that they’d invite Crooks & Liars, a very decent bunch of bloggers in general with a fair bit of clout, to have a representative take part in the conference call (Madrak’s own blog is tiny, so it’s highly unlikely it was on the strength of that). If they’d been excluded, you’d no doubt join in the whining about that.

It’s no skin off my butt who the WH staff invite or exclude on their calls, and if you’re saying that they included Susie because of C&K but didn’t have any idea what she had written on her own ‘tiny blog’, I agree 100%

Then I’ve answered one of your recurring questions.

Now, I’m abroad, and can’t do much about events coming up in the US, but here’s that lede again:

You’re little over a month from one of the crunchiest of crunch elections of the past couple of decades, and you want to talk about somebody supposedly making Axelrod look dumb on the phone?

Again, me here, always late to the party and dateless to boot.

If Mike is still around, I’d like to address this mess:

How many liberal bloggers have Alexrod had at the White House? None.

Now I’m surely not sure that it was Axelrod’s doing, but I’m sure Duncan Black, Oiiver Willis, Chris Hayes, John Aravosis, Erin from BlogHer, Tim Fernholz and Matt Yglesias would be very surprised to hear that they were NEVER

Whoops, continued:

supposedly making Axelrod look dumb on the phone?

I’m sorry, I now realize that Axelrod behaved like a genius in this whole situation, thanks for changing my mind.

Shorter “Dark Avenger”:

I got nuthin’.

Oh, there’s no doubt Axelrod’s mouth was left hanging open after Madrak hauled out first one, then another inane internet cliche´, particularly the wildly inappropriate sexual one that undoubtedly caused an inward groan amongst the other participants.

But you’re right: anybody who thinks Madrak made an embarrassing spectacle of herself out of a misguided self-importance while better questions from more serious journalist/bloggers were ignored or never asked, must be a deluded Axelphiliac Obot. YOU HAVE TRIUMPHED! I hang my head and strike my colors.

@Dark Avenger: I’m lost. What are you arguing, again?

I’m lost. What are you arguing, again?

I think it boils down to “The list of REAL Progressives is pretty damn exclusive.”

Or that shoehorning bizarre sexual references into conversations is a a brilliant tactic and ought to be emulated. Well played, sir!

Define progressives. Use extra paper if necessary.

HTP, I’m going to be stealing this. A lot.

And I too am amused by your scenario of the door-to-door emogressive patrol. “Oh, you’re too busy to talk right now? Fine! I’ll just go back under the bus. No, it’s fine. In fact, I LIKE it there! But I’ll have you know one thing —It’s not my fault and I never asked to be born!”

DA: I know how badly the online-gressives love to play the game of “If I were in the room, I’d really stick it to THE MAN”—indeed, fulfilling that fantasy has far more importance than, you know, passing legislation that works and shit for a lot you. Hence the “kill the bill” shills who felt that extending insurance coverage to the uninsured wasn’t the point of the Affordable Care Act—it needed to be about dick-slapping insurance companies, or no dice! (Though, again, no one has been able to explain just why, if HCR and FinReg were nothing but gigantic blowjobs to the health insurance companies and banks, both groups fought like hell to sink even the mildest regulations. I mean, to hear the emogressives tell it, it was a big giveaway in cash from Obama and Co.—why weren’t they on that like flies on shit?)

So of course, in your made-up fantasy version, David Axelrod was left with egg on his face and the online pseudo-gressives TOTALLY KICKED ASS!!!!

But—I’m from Chicago. As is Axelrod. A silly little blogger talking about her psychosexual teenage dramas as a metaphor for political activism isn’t the sort of thing that’s going to flummox a guy who worked for Daley. More likely, Axelrod was thinking “Can I get away with saying ‘Would a reach-around help the next time?’ Naw, better not.”

@Dark Avenger: I’m lost. What are you arguing, again?

As far as I can gather behind all the tiresome cracked-record busking, “Dark Avenger” has the screaming hots for Mr. Axelrod, but he ain’t getting any attention from him, so he’s gonna act up till he gets him alone in the stockroom and whoopy-doop.

Hey, it’s an inappropriate (well, maybe not so much) sexual analogy, but apparently that’s the way you get the golf claps nowadays.

I’m also outta here for a concerted dose of RL. Have fun.

I’m lost. What are you arguing, again?

I’m merely stating the notion that the blame for what happened is entirely Susie’s fault is reductionist, stupid, and unproductive.

why weren’t they on that like flies on shit?

They had to play hard to get before they let Obama take them under the bleachers. And they pretend they hate each other so their friends won’t suspect their forbidden love.

Or something.

Ah fuck! Nicely done DA. Change your handle and come back and play with us again?

XXOO,

HTP

I’m merely stating the notion that the blame for what happened is entirely Susie’s fault is reductionist, stupid, and unproductive.

Really? Let’s think about this. “What happened” is Susie Madrak asked a dumb-as-shit question. The neurochemical processes which led to the formulation of the dumb-as-shit question were conducted in Susie Madrak’s head; the electrical impulses which caused Susie Madrak’s jaw and vocal chords to work in tandem, producing a sound reflecting the dumb-as-shit question were conducted willingly by Susie Madrak. Hmm…yep, I think it was Susie Madrak.

Yeah, I know that you’re under the impression that had Axelrod dropped to all fours and kissed Madrak’s ass, everything would be hunky dory. I also know people who believe that Barney Frank should have sincerely answered the woman who asked him why he was being a Nazi. Both of you are wrong. You don’t humor crazy people, at least not in politics.

Also, wasn’t there an outstanding question for you? Let’s see…here it is:

You’re little over a month from one of the crunchiest of crunch elections of the past couple of decades, and you want to talk about somebody supposedly making Axelrod look dumb on the phone?

Yeah, can one of more of our visitors make me list of people considered “true progressives”?  You know, the ones that actively root for Obama and a congressional majority to fail.

I got Hamsher, Armstrong, Madrak, Uygar, but I need more names.

Not that I want to emulate them (I’m nowhere near emo or bitter enough), but I want to study patterns of speech, writings and body language so I know who to avoid when out and about.

“We’re the girl you’ll take under the bleachers but you won’t be seen with in the light of day.”

That’s because you only root for the team when they’re winning by 100 points. When it’s 4th and 1, and the linebacker is throwing his hands up for you to make noise, you rush home early to write snotty “Clap Louder” posts and bitch about the game plan.

Yes, nothing could possibly be poor lil Susie’s fault—just because she described herself to the president’s adviser as a walking cum bucket devoid of self-respect. But by no means would THAT be something that would fall under the rubric of “reductionist, stupid, and unproductive.” Of course, from what I’ve seen, that’s most of Susie’s “journalistic” output. Until somebody points me in the direction of real journalism she’s done, that judgment shall have to stand.

I finally figured out who Duh Avenger and Susie remind me of: years ago, I was at a talk on my college campus given by Siskel and Ebert (had to be a long time ago, since one is dead and the other doesn’t talk now—at least not the same way).

This woman who was dressed to the nines —hat, gloves, lace stockings, the whole bit (and this was a casual mid-week event, mind you) stood up in the balcony during the Q and A and said, very dramatically, “WELL, as you know, most people consider you two to be the Mutt and Jeff of film critics…”

And Ebert cut her off with “That’s funny. Most people consider you to be the Faye Dunaway of the balcony.” She sat down. Deflated into her seat, really.

Whether she had a real legitimate and interesting question about cinema or not, who knows? By deciding to play lookit-me-everybody-drama-queen-with-a-tired-insult to a guy who has heard it all (much like Axelrod), she ended up as nothing but a walking punchline.

And that’s really the problem for the Emogressive Avenger Fantasists. They spend so much time thinking of what they’d say to that quarterback political strategies if THEY were in the room that they forget that they’re talking to people who have actually already won big races and achieved big things.

In a week or two, this will be forgotten by everybody except Susie and her little cliquey-claque. Axelrod will move on with getting shit done (already, with HCR alone, imperfect though it is, the Obama administration has done more to transform the country than any Democratic president in the last 40 years). Congress may or may not fall into the GOP’s hands. But here’s the thing: Susie and people like her will never be players, and that’s what bugs the shit out of them. They’ve spent their lives in some kind of weird Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion fantasy of getting back at the mean kids—and they don’t realize they’re still walking around with toilet paper sticking out the back of their trousers.

Haven’t seen either of the two movies that you’ve set up in your binary world of good/evil handy political references, DA, and though I could follow your links and familiarize myself with them, it seems like a poor use of my time on this otherwise pleasant Sunday.

Sure, Axelrod could have, as per your suggestion, fed Susie the “praise sandwich” any really intuitive sociopath would use to mollify an obviously hungry ego. He obviously held back from answering in as oafish a manner as he was addressed.

It makes me awfully sorry the meeting wasn’t with Rahm instead.

That should have been “political strategist” of course.

they forget that they’re talking to people who have actually already won big races and achieved big things there’s a good chance they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about and/or their super brilliant plan is as practical as a glass hammer.

FifY.

Expert spoofing from DA aside, we all know that any group (political, social what have you) will always contain at least one authoritarian dick scab who is really, really, really into making lots of rules. And then scolding/driving out the people who don’t follow the rules. And making up MORE rules.

The GOP today is an excellent example of what happens when a group doesn’t toss the little wanker out on his ear ASAP, and instead puts him in charge of shit. Any one who wants that noise on our side of the aisle can get fucked for me.

This American Life’s theme today is victimhood and mock outrage. Synchronicity is such a freaky thing, isn’t it?

The Ax-Man totally smoked Susie’s lame-o prog-blog ass, dude. Honk! Honk!

“Suck” knocked on Susie’s door, and she answered it! Woot!

Holla back, Strange!

Allan, you jest but $20 says Mandork claims this is a Victory 4 Progressives!

Seriously people, can we think of a way to convince the Fauxgressives and the Teatards to meet and discuss statergery?

Yes, I know blood sports are reprehensible, but still…

Yes, I know blood sports are reprehensible, but still…

Given the fainting-couch-humping, pearl-clutching nature of both demographics, I’d be inclined to say that the floor would be drenched with sugar water.

I’m lost. What are you arguing, again?

I’m merely stating the notion that the blame for what happened is entirely Susie’s fault is reductionist, stupid, and unproductive.

That this demonstrated that the WH staff is more like something out of First Family instead of Air Force One is a thought that none of you seem willing to entertain for even a nanosecond, let alone one blog post.

That’s it? That’s IT?! After 153 fucking comments and counting, this lameass boring-as-hell shit that Strange coulda shat out in the am after a particularly wan curry and flushed without a second thought is your best shot and the culmination of your trolling?

Is this “what happened” going to show the door to Boehner and the ravening hordes at the gate? Is this what thousands of years of quasi-civilization has wrought? The wolves are at the door keening for red meat, and you want to discuss the fucking wallpaper?! Without even referencing Laura Ashley or William Morris?!!

And you want to talk PRODUCTIVE?!

I dragged myself away from a thoroughly enjoyable village-wide bender and checked in before retiring to the pub down the hill to do even more self-harm for this? Christ, I’ve had boils that have had more insight, political nous, not to mention a sense of perspective and humor.

Gah.

+ several

Does this thread remind anyone else of that scene from The Simpsons where Homer thwarts the Krustyburglar?

Or Nagasaki?

If this thread reaches 160 I’m going to start cramming Valiums into the comment box.

Three more to go and Kevin shares his stash!

Valium? What the fuck? Did I just wander into Annie Hall? Hillbilly heroin or no deal!

Also, I can’t help but notice that the creator of this post is probably playing with cute boxer dogs and laughing at what she hath wrought! ;)

Oh, and am I the only one who thought YAFB’s last comment sounded suspiciously like Humboldt? Have we ever seen them in the same room?

There—160! Gimme my drugs!

[checks CD/DVD tray]

set to music by…

Peter Daou singing “Where have all the flowers gone”

*

Make that: Peter Daou, Paul Rosenberg and Mary Scott O’Connor - singing “where have all the flowers gone”

*

Someone points out that the most memorable arm-twisting and snide comments of this administration have been against its base instead of against its opponents and everyone here is “shocked” by the tone used.  I guess only Rahm can call someone a fucking retard and have it come out as diplomatic constructive criticism.

When I donated and voted for Obama I hoped he was someone who would fight for me but I didn’t really expect it.  What I expected was that someone who had run the best political campaign in my memory was someone who would, you know, be good at politics.  That’s where I’m completely flabbergasted. People on this thread hold up the Democrats few accomplishments like they aren’t to the right of Nixon or in some cases Reagan.  News flash.  The Democratic party looks way too much like the Republican party circa 1992.  You want the base to get excited about that?  How about Independents?  If you know little about policies do you vote for the people who are certain about what they believe or the ones who seem to run away from it?

But keep up the flaming.  I’m sure it’ll convince people to volunteer to work with you.

Just when I think this thread is going to die, someone new shows up to complain. What, are you guys queued up just off-screen?

Rick, I’m not even going to bother with you because we’ve already gone over all this upthread. Let me just leave you with this: Apply your logic to yourself. If the conservatives are the real problem, maybe you should spend more time going after them than pulling histrionics with Obama.

Now where’s that Internet Valium?

One other thing: I think the reason this thread is reaching such epic lengths is because we couldn’t have this conversation anywhere else in the progressive blogosphere. If I went to any of the blogs I read and tried to criticize another blogger, I’d get shouted down tout suite. I tried it at Sadly, No! and Brad Reed had a conniption (though it didn’t stop him from later claiming that I agreed with him, the prick). Madrak herself is beyond irrelevant, but this madness is all over the place these days.

Wow, epic thread! I heard there were drugs??

Hey Rick, can you give me the link to the site you cut the generic emo rant you just pasted up there? I’m tired of rephrasing the same old whiny arguments over and over again; I wanna just click it, and drop it into random comment sections. What name is this one filed under, I particularly like the phrasing you’ve deployed today.

Thanks in advance!

@Rick: Yes, dear, we’re shocked that Susie Madrak hauled out a couple of silly internetisms from her jukebox of semirelevancy. That is so unlike her!

And how dare the administration attempt to turn the ship that Captain W headed for that burg before freshening Emogressives’ drinks!

@D Johnston: you wouldn’t be shouted down at Susie’s~~you’d be deleted. Well, maybe shouted down and then deleted.

Wow,
Thanks to the sage arguments of D Johnston, Twinky P and Mrs. Polly my memory of what Candidate Obama said he would work for (and what used to be the Democratic party platform) has been completely deleted. I just wish I could be one of the cool kids like them in their reality where passing the Dole-Chafee health care plan is a great victory for those being priced out of the market. Where a Democratic president sure does look like he’s going to cut Social Security.  And a whole laundry list of things that Reagan would have been proud to accomplish.  But I’m sure you’re aware of all that and just find me unappreciative so carry on with your hippie-punching on the way to a Republican house this year and a Republican senate and president in 2012.

I tried it at Sadly, No! and Brad Reed had a conniption

This story’s vaguely familiar. Were you being a prick to Brad? ‘Course, everyone can be a prick for no good reason sometimes, so I’m not ruling it out in Brad’s case. Are you the D Johnston of Fixing Amanda infamy? I always get creeped out about the title and concept of that site. It reminds me of Boxing Helena. Eeesh.

Bite the pillow, Rick. Just bite the pillow.

But I’m sure you’re aware of all that and just find me unappreciative so carry on with your hippie-punching on the way to a Republican house this year and a Republican senate and president in 2012.

No objections here. You’re just doing your bit to encourage even more Dems to stay home on election day, so that insufferable little bitches like you can inflict a truly retrograde, progress-killing government on the rest of us, you fucking intestinal worm.

Victory Through Suicide! Great plan, Rick. You’re a fucking genius, and I’m sure your Mom is proud.

Sorry StrangeAppar8us, I’ll clap harder so Tinker-bell doesn’t die.  The point I’ve been unsuccessful in making is people pointing out failure isn’t suppressing voters, failure to act in the interest of those voters is what is doing the suppressing.

I’m sure it’ll convince people to volunteer to work with you.

Listen up people! Be sure to put your internet handles on your “Hello! My name is:” badges so Rick doesn’t do volunteer work with you.

Rick, there are just two problems with the phrase you and Susie enjoy employing:

1. Lack of Hippies.
2. Lack of Punching.

Unless by"hippie” you mean “blinkered melodramatic self-important impulse-disordered blogdiva who thinks pounding a keyboard constitutes heroism,” and by “punching” you mean “assemblage of ones and zeroes into an electronic pattern on a screen causing distress to some nervous systems too delicate to function in three dimensions.”

I’ve been unsuccessful

You’ve got the title of your memoirs. Congrats!

Also Rick, please feel free to name the “progressive” president that you wish Obama would emulate. Hint: If you come up with “LBJ” or “FDR,” you flunked history class.

pointing out failure isn’t suppressing voters

You’re dumber than I thought, and I was wrong about your Mom.

The quality of adult conversation here is stunning.  I take back some of the smaller things I’ve said about Redstate.

Kids (I’ll be 60 on Halloween), my hat is off to all of yez.  This made for a laff-filled and enlightening (seriously) Sun. morn.  I’m in love with Oblamova, but don’t worry about it.  That’s my problem.

I’m willing to bet semi-serious money that there is no equivalent to this thread’s smarts and wit anywhere among conservative, Rethug, and allied sites. 

Re “hippie punching”—it may be a case of both/and.  Not to play the Broderite pipe-puffing centrist, but progressives are entitled to more respect from the O admin, but a war council phone call with Axelrod isn’t the time or the place.

200 yet?

Another Great Moral Victory for you, Rick.

That’s all that matters, isn’t it?

And frankly, as someone who was raised by and around actual hippies: Some of them DID need punching.

Mr. W, it would be lovely to have a serious discussion of the shortcomings and achievements of the Obama administration sometime;  it’s just hard to hear normal tones above the shreiking banshees insisting that IndoKolonial Kenyan Mooslim Soshalerrorist Pocket Banksters in the WH OMGOMGOMG!!1!! ARE ALSO TO THE RIGHT OF REAGAN SAY MEAN THINGS WE STAY HOME NOW OMGOMGOMG!!!1!!

Somehow, I just think beating back McCarthyism is more important than whether Joseph Welch’s aide-de-camp was snotty to me in the hallway.

Mrs. P—

I was afraid of this.  No, see, I was serious. I was not being snide and saying, “You people are juvenile and are wasting my time.”  My post was a sincere expression of admiration for all the snappy writing here.

So, to sum up, yes, I’m an old softy. 

BTW, what galls me about the administration (among other things) is not their hippie punching but their liar coddling.  I want Obama to say to the Merkin People, “Okay, here we have the Pledge to America.  It’s more of the same.  They take you for suckers and a lot of you let them.  Every Republican administration since Reagan has led to a financial scandal.  Everything the Republican Party has done since Reagan has taken wealth away from the middle class and sent it up the ladder to the now-hideously wealthy upper class. 

“You, meanwhile, are unemployed, un- or under-insured, and encouraged by demagogues to live in a constant state of fear and rage.  Sound good?  Want more?  Then elect the liars.  And, when they’re not golfing with lobbyists or screwing their mistresses after drafting speeches about ‘values,’ they’ll throw you a bone and pat you on the head.  Or help us turn this thing around.”

What does he have to lose?  Republican “cooperation”?  Their “civility”?  Their “willingness to compromise”?  That’s what I would say to Axelrod.

Also, I can’t help but notice that the creator of this post is probably playing with cute boxer dogs and laughing at what she hath wrought! ;)

Comment by Oblomova on 09/25/10 at 11:51 PM

Busted!

Mr. Wonderful, amen to your comment above, sir. I wish to hell you had been on that call instead of Madrak.

Are you the D Johnston of Fixing Amanda infamy? I always get creeped out about the title and concept of that site. It reminds me of Boxing Helena.

Are you kidding? I write a blog in which I try to improve the grammar of one of the worst writers in the progressive blogosphere, and that reminds you of a movie about a guy who cuts off a woman’s arms and legs and keeps her in a box under his bed? Why, because I dared to second-guess the Queen of the Feminists?

I can’t believe this bullshit. This is why I hate feminist blogs. You aren’t allowed to question them on any subject, lest you be known as a sexist. I went out of my way on that site to avoid discussing Amanda’s politics and I still got called a sexist. Of course, I shouldn’t be shocked, and I’m not even that offended. Why? Because judging by Amanda’s writings on interracial relationships, she already considers me to be a sexist and a racist. Apparently, dating an Asian woman is a cardinal sin in the Book of Marcotte.

Drifted voer from No More Mister Nice Blog and to be fair I read the beginning and the end and skimed the middle since, I guess I’m just lazy.

I think I’d second Rick.  People pointing out failures doesn’t turn off the base, it is the failures themselves who turn off the base.  Well that and the clear contempt shown for those of us who are progressives and who worked for the democrats.

Lists of bills passed give a lot of nice names, but the bills themselves leave more than a little to be desired.  Let us not forget (or have we already) that HCR started out with secret deals (that turned out not to be so secret) with Big Pharma and went down hill from there.  It was the real left that pointed out that this bill was going to be a disaster in terms of electorial stragedy.  It isn’t our complaints that are destroying the party at this point.

Continuation of two wars,secret detention, arguing against repeal of DADT in court with little or no real support for repeal in congress, expanding executive privlage, refusal to deal with torure ordered and justified at the highest levels, assination of American citizens, fighting against regulation of the FED, fighting against real credit card reform, developing a forclosore policy that doesn’t work and appointing the three people who basically lead us into this economic mess as his main economic advisors.

Combine all this with an insane attack from the right that claims that Obama is a crazed leftist communist and you’ve destroyed progressive politics for a generation. 

Finally, it is the left the administration spends most of their time attacking not the right, and by anyones defination that was the people that got them their.  Or as someone else once said:  I would have been nice if they’d danced with the ones who brought them.

So if these are the people you think it is important to back, go right ahead and more power to you.

Damn I meant the comments, not the essay, which I did read.

So if these are the people you think it is important to back, go right ahead and more power to you.

Thanks. I will. At least until the “progressives” replace all the Blue Dog Dems and vulnerable, on-the-bubble Dem loyalists with Kucinich clones who can capture the Tea Party vote.

C’mon, lawguy. Show me an alternative that doesn’t look like Joe Miller. I’m keen to know.

Mr. W, seconding Betty seconding you! What I was trying to say, I suppose, was that it isn’t that I don’t have disagreements with this administration and its policies; it’s that my priorities are set at “FIRST put out forest fire. THEN plant organic garden,” and I suspect that’s where yours might be, too.

Finally, it is the left the administration spends most of their time attacking not the right

I just don’t see that happening, and trust me, I’m about as far to the left as it’s possible to be. The two mortal offenses I’ve heard people complaining about were 1) Emmanuel saying it was “fucking retarded” to try to take Blanche Lincoln down from the left, and 2) Gibbs expressing frustration with the “professional left.”

Big fucking deal. You can argue with the wisdom of criticizing “the left” at all, but both were rather off-hand comments (one not even on the record, IIRC). Meanwhile, Obama has gone after the Republicans fairly aggressively for fucking up the economy (though I wish he’d take Mr. Wonderful’s advice above). So I just don’t see how you can claim they spend more time “attacking the left” than going after the GOP.

As for how pointing out failures affects the base, frankly, I don’t think intra-blogular hissy fits amount to a fart in a whirlwind. I had two problems with Madrak’s message:

1) It was about pwecious personal feelings when far greater things are at stake, and

2) It came from Madrak, who has been busily spreading the Obama = Bush meme from day one.

She has every right to do so, of course, but it just seemed a bit disingenuous to pretend that if only Axelrod would personally kiss her ass, she’s deliver her extensive readership to the polls.

Sounds like bullshit to me on both counts. As does the charge that nothing has been accomplished. Has enough been accomplished? Is everything perfect? No and hell no. But more has been accomplished in two years of the Obama administration than in eight years of the Clinton administration, and in the face of challenges the Clinton team never dreamed of.

Combine all this with an insane attack from the right left that claims that Obama is a crazed leftist communist Bush III and you’ve destroyed enabled progressive fRightwing politics for a generation.

There you are, lawguy!

And I’m sorry you didn’t bother to read the whole thread, but it does give me the chance to repeat a new favorite from our own Oblomova:

Mike, you seem surprised that torture and assassination happen under the watch of American presidents. Good Morning, Starshine! The Earth Says Hello!

Well Mrs. Polly, forgive lawguy and me for having standards for American presidents somewhere north of banana republic when it comes to torture and assassination.Your snarky lowering-of-standards favorite quote notwithstanding.

I write a blog in which I try to improve the grammar of one of the worst writers in the progressive blogosphere,

Whoa there, Tex! Jest askin’. It just seemed a little obsessive to me, but hey, everyone’s gotta have a hobby…

*backs slowly away from the thread*

Rick—Bite me. Twice. Everyone on this blog has higher standards than you do…just a shitload less self-importance when the whole world’s future is on the line. Grow up, please.

I’m sorry, did I say “Bite me?” I meant “Fuck you”—you and every other fucking morally-superior dickhead who thinks that Conceding the Field is the same as Winning,

I have no use for you, and I’m pretty sure the world doesn’t have one, either.

From now on, you can call me “Mr. 200.”

Thank you, Mr. 200, or as Mike, aka “the real Mike, not the schmuck Mike, requested, DAD.

Rick, you do realize you are harumphing about your most jewel-like perception and unbesmirchable (and oh so effective) standards on a blog called RUMPROAST, don’t you?

Be sure and give your pixie queen at FDL props for her purity when she and Grover attend the next Taking Back Our Country From The Centrists dinner.

Oh, I forgot my new handle:

“THE SNARK AVENGER”

So wait—now that it’s past 200, does Kevin come by and hook us up with morphine drips?

I’ve moved on to enemas.

I’ve moved on to enemas.

How nice for you! Now, when do we get our drugs?

Well, however can we withstand the devastating power of Duh Avenger’s Wiki-Fu?

Ass, door, etc.

Also, DA—it’s generally considered a fashion faux pas to wear your flounce after Labor Day.

You had to hyperlink a definition of “groupthink”? Gobble the knob, Junior.

Let me know when you have a unique thought of your own, DA. So far, you sound like everyone I know who’s too lazy to think this shit through.

Don’t you love defeated losers who sneak into a thread after they think everyone’s gone?

Let’s see if Dark Pubescence has anything to say on my new post above.

Oh DA. Yes, Betty Cracker and StrangeAppar8us have entirely lost their creative chops since they were seamlessly folded into the RumpHive. But YOUR corruscating insights (h/t wikipedia) will cut through the political fog in the collective national brain just in time for us to realize that there’s nothing to advance freedom and justice in America like having David Axelrod kiss Susie Madrak’s ass.

Heck! If I’d known that DA considered being banned from Talkleft a requirement for credibility, I’d have gone and done it months ago!

Dark Avenger should be banned from all political blogs, just for having the screen name of a 10-year-old.

Strange, it’s easy to forget sometimes that for all we know, Dark Avenger is a 10-year-old. Possibly, 14.

One of my co-workers at the Census was a just-turned 18-year-old whose parents were desperate to get him out of the house. It seems he’d managed an achievement that puts DA to shame; he got himself banned from YouTube. Considering what YouTube leaves up (comments, not videos), “Oscar” might well have been the Tony Hawk of trolldom.

Dark Avenger should be banned from all political blogs, just for having the screen name of a 10-year-old.

If this blog had the political sophistication of a ten year old, or names that didn’t sound like the cutting edge of a high school newspaper, you might have a point.

he got himself banned from YouTube

Any idea how he managed that? In fairness to the kid, I’ve known some people that were kicked off YouTube for really asinine reasons (along with a few who really, really deserved it).

And yet you keep returning. “Such bad food, such small portions!” So that sort of makes you the loser here, doesn’t it, O Shitbrained Twatwaffle?

Don’t you have some leftie blogs to get banned from as proof of your online revolutionary progressive manhood? Don’t you have anywhere else to run to in your Captain America Underoos?

Just remember: when you slit your emo wrists, make sure you go vertical, not horizontal. You wouldn’t want Mommy to have to clean up your messes for you. Again.

Good Lord, DA, are you still here? Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit drinking. You’ll excuse us if we’re not engaging you, but your persistent use of non sequiturs is a bit of a headache. And really, what is with the name? Throw some random numbers at the end and you’ve got a YouTube account name. In fact…

(2 minutes at YouTube)

Yep, we’ve got DarkAvengerC86, DarkAvenger27, darkavenger1989, TheNewDarkAvenger, DarkAvengerAngel, DarkAvenger92, DarkAvenger423, Darkavenger974, DarkAvengerHoly, DarkAvenger101, darkavenger2464, SasukeDarkAvenger, and 00DarkAvenger00, among many others. Any chance that one of those is you?

Oh yes, and here’s that outstanding question again, since I guess you forgot about it:

You’re little over a month from one of the crunchiest of crunch elections of the past couple of decades, and you want to talk about somebody supposedly making Axelrod look dumb on the phone?

If this blog had the political sophistication of a ten year old, or names that didn’t sound like the cutting edge of a high school newspaper, you might have a point.

Neener-neener-neener.

I knew that “10-year-old” jab would crease your shorts, you predictable little dweeb. You, too, will be embarrassed by “Dark Avenger,” once you discover girls.

@D Johnston: I don’t think it was any one thing. He was proud of it, of course; it seems he’d go on anybody’s video, whether it was crocheting baskets or baby’s first bite of congee or Morris Dancing in the Phillipines, and proceed to make himself unwelcome in the extreme.

Gee, DA, your very own YouTube account! That’s almost as impressive as being the first president to sign comprehensive universal healthcare legislation into law and to save the U.S. auto industry from immolation!

re the YouTube “Dark Avengers”: I hate to use it, but sometimes you have to: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Excellent work. Obviously, the DA’s greatest moment, getting banned from TL, came about not because of any rippingly revolutionary views s/he held, but because s/he bored them to death.

Actually, my youtube account is here, and here is how to do effortlessly what this whole thread has been attempting to accomplish over two days.

What? It warped the time-space continuum and got you to address this question?

You’re little over a month from one of the crunchiest of crunch elections of the past couple of decades, and you want to talk about somebody supposedly making Axelrod look dumb on the phone?

I leave the Whack-a-Troll device in everyone else’s far-more-capable hands. G’night!

(Oh, and if Kevin decides to pull the plug on this whole operation—for which I would in no way blame him—it’s been lovely knowing all you crazy kids! Stay swell, and don’t take any wooden nickels from Soros.)

I can tell by your stunned expression that you’re pretty impressed!

Perfect.

Dang, if only I had brought my shades, the better to shield my fragile retinas from the blazing glory of the Avenger’s revealed wisdom!

Good night, O, and I know you will sleep the sleep of the just.

DA, some of us have to work tomorrow. If you just won’t be happy until you’re banned, then by all means, let’s gratify your little twisty heart. Then you can take a smarm bath and watch the bubbles and admire how you made them yourself.

Dang, if only I had brought my shades, the better to shield my fragile retinas from the blazing glory of the Avenger’s revealed wisdom!

I took a look, Mrs. P. It’s a bit like that flasher in the park dangling his wotsits out of his trousers and leering, “Do you know what this is?”

To which the only sane reply is: “Well, it looks like a penis. Only smaller.”

Good Morning, Starshine! The Earth Says Hello!

You know, this retort has so many potential applications both online and in real life. Even with sulky tweens who’ve never seen Hair. Maybe especially with them.

That’s almost as impressive as being the first president to sign comprehensive universal healthcare legislation into law and to save the U.S. auto industry from immolation!

Thanks for reminding me what will turn out the Democratic base this year.

It sound so exciting it’s all I can do to keep from falling asleeppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp

I guess the point is that there is something out there that appears to have destroyed the enthusiasm of those of us who really worked for Obama.  Is it just possible that it was Obama and how he has governed?

At any rate I plan on voting for my Blue Dog because he came out with as strong a position against cutting Social Security as any I’ve seen any where.  Unlike Obama.  I’ve also sent money to Mary Jo Kilroy a not perfect congress person in my state, who is a real progressive, unlike Obama.

So beat up those straw men all you want, it won’t help elect good progressive politicians in 2010 or 2012.

Lawguy, is it just possible some people’s expectations were a tad unrealistic? Look, I don’t think anyone is saying Obama is perfect and that they are 100% satisfied with everything the administration has done. I know I’ve said the opposite repeatedly.

Thanks for reminding me what will turn out the Democratic base this year.

It sound so exciting it’s all I can do to keep from falling asleepppppppppppppppppp[et cetera et fucking cetera]

And it’s trivial trolls like you that’ll REALLY make a difference to people’s lives, huh?

BTW, when did you get elected as spoke for the “base”? I try to keep an eye on all US elections, but that must have been one I missed.

BTW, when did you get elected as spoke for the “base”?

I wasn’t elected, but that doesn’t mean I can’t read the polling numbers and deal with reality without running around like a headless chicken or threatening to ban people because they remind me of those inconvenient numbers.

I don’t care if you folks ban me or not, but getting the Free Republic treatment here is pretty risible, the only thing missing was the threat to stop the car if I didn’t shut up RIGHT NOW!

Thanks for making my day.

I wasn’t elected, but that doesn’t mean I can’t read the polling numbers and deal with reality without running around like a headless chicken

The scuttling of a particular troll herewards is the only running around I’ve seen. This blog majors in pointing out that the sky probably isn’t falling, or at least not descending as rapidly as some might wish. But then you’re incapable of copying and pasting another comment coherently, so I’d guess reading comprehension isn’t your forte. (And BTW, this blog is quite capable of multitasking - while this thread has grown, life’s been going on much as normal, so yeah, if that was your aim, yet another fail to chalk up. Evidently sucks to be you.)

or threatening to ban people because they remind me of those inconvenient numbers.

Who threatened to ban you? There goes that headless chicken again.

[Mrs. P. upthread:] If you just won’t be happy until you’re banned, then by all means, let’s gratify your little twisty heart.

Don’t you want your twisty little heart gratified? And “because they remind me of those inconvenient numbers”? Most of your comments on this thread have been whining incessantly about allotting “blame” for a fairly trivial exchange that excited others in the blogosphere. Try reading the post again.

I don’t care if you folks ban me or not, but getting the Free Republic treatment here is pretty risible, the only thing missing was the threat to stop the car if I didn’t shut up RIGHT NOW!

“Free Republic treatment”? Jesus fucking Christ. I bet when you stub your toe you look up “gangrene” and “amputation” on the intertubes.

Thanks for making my day.

No problem. With someone as sad as you, it obviously doesn’t take much.

I don’t think we’ll give you the satisfaction of being able to say you were banned by Rumproast, DA. That’s a rather exclusive club.

Glad you enjoyed the ride, though, and sorry to hear the Dems don’t excite you. But think of all the fun you’ll have saying “I tried to tell them” after the midterms. If you play it right and keep your grades up, you could be Prom King this year.

This blog majors in pointing out that the sky probably isn’t falling, or at least not descending as rapidly as some might wish.

Yes, I’m sure the folks running FreeRepublic would make the same claim as well.

Which explains all the hysteria and multiple comments when I post a few observations here.

Right.

But then you’re incapable of copying and pasting another comment coherently, so I’d guess reading comprehension isn’t your forte.

Then why the mention of a ban in the first place?  I’ve only commented here infrequently so it’s not like I’d be bereft and weepy if it came to pass.

“Free Republic treatment”? Jesus fucking Christ. I bet when you stub your toe you look up “gangrene” and “amputation” on the intertubes.

I didn’t bring up banning, I just ran with the concept.

What you wrote was a lie and possibly slander, as when I stub my toe I do what you folks do and find a way to blame the object that attacked it and say funny, humiliating things about it until I start to feel better.

The scuttling of a particular troll herewards is the only running around I’ve seen.

Says it all.

What you wrote was a lie and possibly slander,

Jesus Fucking Satan on a Pogo Stick, to call you dumber than dogshit is an insult to dogshit.

Since you apparently DO know how to google things despite the lack of opposable thumbs, look up the fucking definition of “slander,” you useless fuckstain.

And DA, I’d take the threats of people like you and Susie MadHack about being “the base” more seriously if I believed either of you had spent a single nano-second of your lives knocking on doors, phone banking, stuffing envelopes, or doing anything other than wanking your egos on the internet and mistaking that for “activism.”

I merely asked if banning him would make him happy, as he’s so proud of having worn out his welcome at TL.  He apparently thinks Betty’s lack of a similar merit badge means her opinion is dross compared with his own golden stylings, and so I was impelled to offer him another nut cluster for his epaulet.

But I don’t mind if we keep him, as long as somebody oils his exercise wheel. Last night, the squeaking kept me up till all hours. ;o)

I just hate having to watch small brainless creatures eat their own shit, but that’s kinda what emogressives do, so…

Jokes about a troll that’s been gone for over a year, huh, DA? Cutting edge.

Anyway, since you’ve repeatedly declined to answer YAFB’s inquiry, here’s a conundrum of my own:

While walking in the countryside, you see smoke and decide to investigate. You find a burning house, with ten people trapped within. The one and only exit is barred from the outside. You know for a fact that one of the ten victims is a heinous criminal, a truly notorious figure. You are not entirely sure of his appearance, and if you unbar the door, everyone inside will flee with such haste that you will be unable to find the guilty man. Your choice, then, is as follows: Unbar the door and let everyone (even the criminal) live, or do nothing and let everyone (even the innocent people) die.

The firebaggers opted to support the latter. What about you?

I just hate having to watch small brainless creatures eat their own shit, but that’s kinda what emogressives do, so…

I’m not sure that the Dank Trollvenger can be graced with even that epithet.

A couple of dissenting people have cropped up on this thread with genuine concerns and genuine disagreements about focus and approach. Immoderate expressions of these get proportionate responses.

It’s the existence of pointless narcissistic blatherers like the DA on so many “progressive” blogosphere threads that gives it a bad name.

I won’t go so far as to say we should keep him as a pet, but as a lab specimen for evidence proving Betty’s point to the nth degree, he’s served his purpose more and more revealingly as we’ve trudged (or skipped, in some cases) towards 300 comments.

I’m just glad he’s been rising to our bait with such monotonous predictability. It saved one of us the effort of sockpuppeting.

Is this post on its way to immortality?  Could be*, I think, perhaps much in the way of comments to that long-ago S,N! post where Ma’ri’e J’o'n whatshername called in her white supremacist pals, and the comments kept rolling along for weeks and weeks afterward, with only a few regulars over there knowing about it, and occasionally going down to the basement to poke the visiting pests with a pointy stick.  Kindasorta like that underground coal fire that’s been ongoing under Centralia, Pennsylvania for several decades now.

*Probably can’t happen here, though, with that automatic comment closing thingie; for the best, I suppose.

Is this post on its way to immortality?

I’ll break the suspense right now. No. This will not be an open-ended experiment. (Just to forestall any “I was just getting STARTED!!!” yowling from certain quarters.)

Wow, almost 250 comments, and Madrak hasn’t graced us with her presence? I feel like the girl watching the other girl go under the bleachers with the football star who hippie punches the other girl while I wait for her to realize she’s a lesbian and comes over to talk to me…or something.

Sigh.

I think Ms. M’s 15 seconds are over by now, Twinky. Hell, even the trolls aren’t mentioning her any more.

I’ll be Susie for you, Twinky:

I use my real name! You cowardly hiders behind pseudonyms have no legitimacy like me,me, me who is out there on the front lines on my blog, hovering over my delete button to keep cowards like you from making your weaselly, cowardly, arguments! You’re just lucky I can’t do charts for you, but my sixth sense tells me that you are little hate-filled anonymous mongers of hate!!!

lambert, those are such cowardly hate mongers! Digby, back a girl up!

First mention of banning on the thread:

Betty, get banned from Talkleft and then we’ll see about that reputation of yours.

Laterz:

I didn’t bring up banning, I just ran with the concept.

Consistency, consticency, consitsency.

(We’ll never make it to 300 if the fire goes unstoked.)

Whoa, whoa, whoa! How does my reputation enter into it? Good god, you sneak under the bleachers one time, and suddenly, you’re marked as a fallen woman for life! Fucking patriarchy…

Who says Twinky isn’t my real name? Huh? Huh?? Anyhow, Digby did give a little history of the phrase hippie-punching, which gave me a chuckle. Poor Digby, really, I love her stuff, but dang, the comments are firebagger x 10.

Thanks, Mrs. Polly, almost forgot lambert lambert in the excitement, now I feel complete!

Don’t mean to be a bummer, but I think we dismiss commenters like Dark Avenger at our own peril.

Oh, wait. I was wrong. Never mind.

OK, we’ve had “Free Republic,” but so far nobody’s gone the full Godwin ten yards.

In a thread of over 250 comments, this is abject slacking.

Yes, “Twinky,” or so you call yourself—the bunched bloomers are blazing in Digby’s comments section!

I haven’t checked back since I left a comment there late last night, and had to flee before the smog from the conflagration did me in.

Rumproast is just like Hitler.

Anyhow, Digby did give a little history of the phrase hippie-punching

Any chance of paraphrasing it here? For posterity, like (and it’s got to be good for another ten comments or so—the troll ain’t rising like he used to).

Rumproast is just like Hitler.

Weak.

(Guess we’ll just have to troll each other, then.)

Faugh. You’re never satisfied.

If I believed either of you had spent a single nano-second of your lives knocking on doors, phone banking, stuffing envelopes, or doing anything other than wanking your egos on the internet and mistaking that for “activism.”

I volunteered for the McGovern campaign when many of my peers were more interested in Playboy for the ‘pictorials’ than the articles, I’ve done door-to-door work when I was in my mid-20s(paid barely above minimum wage), but your clairvoyant abilities are most impressive in a Fox News sort of way.

If I believed for a femtosecond that you folks cared more about the situation on the ground then I do, they’d put me away.

Somehow appropriate: The captcha is nuclear56.

I’ve done door-to-door work when I was in my mid-20s(paid barely above minimum wage),

Sweet Suffering Jeebus On Pocket Violin, DA is a SAINT.

So, other than eschewing Miss Novembers for the Cause when you were a Youth, then, and being PAID hardly more than your average migrant worker (well, technically, a lot more, but we’re trying to achieve an effect here), you’ve done nothing but sit at your keyboard for the last, what, two decades, whinging at people doing things in 3D for not doing them to your satisfaction?

Any chance of paraphrasing it here? For posterity,

I didn’t read the whole thing, but I think it began with real hippies being punched or Kent State or something. The thing I took away was digby didn’t want to totally snub Susie, but couldn’t bring herself to praise her, either. Gotta love Digby for the diplomacy, that’s for sure. I can see her dilemma, she’d be savaged by her own commenters in the same way Rove was shredded when he dissed the masterbatin’ mama in DE. Bummer when the monster you build turns on you, huh?

Thanks, Twinky. I took a look at Digby’s post in the mean time, and it is somewhat ambivalent (indeed, you could read it as making a similar point to mine above, which isn’t a unique take by any means).

The loose use of the term “hippie” is just reclaiming a right-wing framing because it’s a catchy phrase, and if used correctly, the tongue is firmly in cheek. (What are you going to call it when real hippies—thinner and thinner on the ground nowadays, IME—really do get punched?)

I’ve mainly come across the term at Balloon Juice, where it’s usually used with characteristic snark.

The argument seems to be winding down, but I doubt very much if leftist blogs are 10 -20% of the voting population.

No one seems to want to address certain issues: 

1. Obama tried to do a secret deal with big pharma and did a deal (although not so secret) promising them massive continued profits far and above the rest of the world.  He fought for it and he got it. 

2.  Half of the uninsured (not all) will be covered with little control over prices, which means that the middle class will pay either directly or through subsidies funneled through the government to other large corporations.

3.  Obama insists that it is ok for him to kill American citizens far from a battle field, even if they haven’t been charged with a crime.

Those are only 3 things that should give anyone pause and cause you to question whether or not to vote democratic, if you are a true progressive.  I could list another dozen. 

So the fact that the next guy could be worse does not make for much of a campaign slogan:  Vote for me I’m probably not going to be as bad as that guy over there, maybe.

Well it certainly makes me want to get out and work for my local democratic politician.  As it is I am stuck voting for someone because he promises not to screw me to the wall on Social Security, unlike the president’s hand picked commission, how lame is that?

Those are only 3 things that should give anyone pause and cause you to question whether or not to vote democratic, if you are a true progressive.  I could list another dozen.

So what what former president passes your “true progressive” purity test, Law Guy? FDR, who put thousands of Americans into internment camps? Abraham Lincoln, who suspended habeas corpus at least twice? LBJ, who vastly expanded the war in Vietnam?

Suicide is painless, and the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you. Obviously, you’re far too sensitive and pure to live with your ideals in an capitalist/imperialist state,w where almost every material good that keeps you alive is attached to a metric shit-ton of misery in the rest of the world.

Vote, don’t vote—I don’t care. Just stop whining that unless a candidate nuzzles your “true proggie”  nut sack JUST THE WAY YOU LIKE IT that you’ll stay home.

The argument seems to be winding down

Not really, the troll’s winding down for now. If you want to have a serious discussion, have at it while this thread’s still alive (which won’t be long now).

I don’t take anyone who claims to be a “true progressive” seriously UNLESS they can name a single president who would meet their standards. And while I’m on the topic, TR doesn’t count either. If you have to ask why, consult Latin America.

Lawguy, if you worked that hard for Obama during the campaign and are now not happy that he’s not all you pinned your wished and dreams on, then you weren’t paying a whole lot of attention.  At what point did you think that this President (and his majority in Congress) were anything other than centrists?

What kind of healthcare bill did you think would make it through this Congress???

I love the progs that feel they’re “owed” something they were never promised because they had pipe dreams, not reality, in their heads.

If everybody, right, left and center, would stop projecting on Obama, they might see he’s about as good as we can get right now.

Yes, there are any number of excellent reasons to be disappointed with the Obama Administration and Dem policy in general. I think we’ve stipulated that point several times throughout the thread.

I do not, however, see any aspect of that situation that can be improved by shooting myself in the ass, or encouraging others to do so.

Now now, Strange, the Ellen Jamesians surely have the upper hand when it comes to unimpeachable ethical probity in progressive strategery.

Once the mighty iron gates close on this post and its comments, will the gates hold?

Wow, it’s like synchronicity, at the same time lawguy was outlining the agenda of “true progressives” I was accosted on another blog post on the same original topic with the same three questions, and was exhorted to DEFEND OBAMA! No “what is your favorite color,” or “what is the speed of an unladen sparrow” either. It can’t be coincidence, can it??

Interesting responses.  People keep beating up that old straw man of the intellectual purist.  If that concept makes you feel better than ok, go for it.  I voted for Clinton, I voted for Carter, I voted for Gore and Kerry and worked for most of them. 

There was really no attempt to get any real significant progressive legislation through this congress.  If you think there was then I have a progressive bridge to sell you, I’m sure you’ll buy it.

Both FDR and LBJ accomplished some incredibly liberal (not progressive) things, I am sorry for the other things they did, but on the whole more pluses than minuses I think.  Obama has no real serious progressive or liberal accomplishments that will stand the test of time.  He never tried.

Is he better than the alternative, I am no longer sure.  Certainly, if I can’t threaten to punish him by withholding my vote what can I do?

But do tell me how do you know a better HCR couldn’t have gotten through congress, since Obama prevent any attempts at something better and made it clear he would not support it and so strangled it in it’s cradle as it were.

Twinky: Whenever I see something like that happen, I can usually trace it to an FDL, HuffPo, or Kos post, depending on degree of grounding in fact. Cherchez la flamme.

Also.

“what is the speed of an unladen sparrow”

 
Play your cards right and you can end up ahead on that gambit.

Certainly, if I can’t threaten to punish him by withholding my vote what can I do?

Have you actually put this to Pres. Obama, or do you just complain about it online?

But do tell me how do you know a better HCR couldn’t have gotten through congress, since Obama prevent any attempts at something better and made it clear he would not support it and so strangled it in it’s cradle as it were.

Obama has no real serious progressive or liberal accomplishments that will stand the test of time.  He never tried.

Did you find that out by using your time machine, or did you go with reading the entrails of your favorite goat?

You do know that when it comes to universal healthcare, LBJ and FDR are the two Dems who “never even tried,” right?

Is he better than the alternative, I am no longer sure.

If you can’t sort that one out, you should really stop calling yourself a “progressive.” I’m not sure you know what it means.

Strange, if he can’t sort that one out, he should really stop calling himself a “sentient being.”

But you’re right, Law Guy: FDR acquiescing to Southern Dems and quietly putting the kibosh on federal anti-lynching legislation to pass the New Deal and tossing thousands of Americans into internment camps is nothing compared to Obama not succeeding in getting the public option to dick-slap those insurance companies.

Who cares about the lives of darkies and gooks? We’re talking about the IMPORTANT things: White Internet Male “Progressives” (WIMPS) feeling like they scored a moral victory against “corporatism” in their comic-book universe of good vs. evil.

Actually. The question of intellectual purity is not so much a strawman as the golem of the emosphere. And a less than satisfactory trick to disqualify a compelling argument. I don’t buy it, lawguy.
You have to be living a fairly privileged life to consider “sending a message” via letting the congress turn wingnut. But the people about to suffer the effects of your telegraph service, like former census workers who owe their financial health to the stimulus package that barely got through, to cite an example close to my heart, aren’t as able to be sanguine.

Likewise, Mrs. Polly, you have to be living a pretty privileged life to dismiss saving the auto industry, expanding community health centers, keeping unemployment benefits going, lifting the travel ban to the U.S. for people with HIV/AIDS, and basically keeping the entire country from turning into Hobo Camp USA as “nothing.”

While of course dealing with the worst economy in over 50 years, inheriting two wars, a middle east in turmoil (including nations with nuclear weaponry) and unprecedented environmental crises—in other words, being handed a shit sandwich unlike anything any other president has ever had to contend with.

But yeah, you go ahead and primary the Shiftless President with some Great White Proggie Hero like Kucinich or Feingold or some other Unelectable who will give you that empty moral victory you crave.

Great White Proggie Hero like Kucinich

Resorting to the elfman argument again, are we?

Seriously, lawguy, was that a slick legal maneuver you thought the jury would swallow? Or do you really dismiss any mention of the negative effects of Puritophilia as strawman out of hand?

I find, as someone new to the world of unemployment, that having a RepuliTea House of Representatives 20-something weeks from now to be a genuine, solid, built-like-a-brick-poorhouse, me-affecting horror.

But I wouldn’t have thought of dismissing the concerns of other people who live and die by the margins “progressives” think so unimportant anyway, even before I became one of those people, which is why I never accepted the “not a dime’s worth of difference” argument in 2000.

There are a number of bloggers who are operating within a pleasantly self-reflective bubble, pounding away at their keyboards heroically! And what is the thanks they get for it? Fie, chosen adversary! Eat my vote and know me! This is the real setting up of straw objects, I think. And they don’t fool anybody but their creators.

I’m late to the party and he may have already left, but I just wanted to chime in and thank the Dark Avenger for his kick-ass work on the McGovern campaign.

I worked on it too Allan - don’t I get some thanks??

I just wanted to chime in and thank the Dark Avenger for his kick-ass work on the McGovern campaign.

Did he pass HCR?

Too soon?

Crap, lawguy and his buds just shoulda worked harder for Kucinich or Edwards.  With the amount of history re-writing and wishful thinkingness, it could certainly have been done.

Imagine how well 2008 would have gone with Dem nominee Edwards at the helm!

lawguy: But do tell me how do you know a better HCR couldn’t have gotten through congress, since Obama prevent any attempts at something better and made it clear he would not support it and so strangled it in it’s cradle as it were.

Pure bullshit narrative. Cincinnati rally Sept, 2009 Obama said: “I continue to believe that a public option within the basket of insurance choices would help improve quality and bring down costs.”

It was conservative votes (including Blue Dog Dems) in the Senate and Senate Finance committee (Sept 29, 2009) that blocked the Rockefeller and Schumer PO amendments. PO was put back in by the Senate in Oct and taken out by the Senate in Dec.

At no point did Obama strangle the PO in its cradle or prevent attempts at its inclusion. It was included up until the very end. It was fools in the Senate that finally strangled it.

Of course, you can still throw a little tantrum and withhold your vote and help elect more conservative and teatard morons if you like (great strategic thinking there) because that will really help improve HCR in the future (not).
One-trick Pony Emogressives, always looking for a get rich quick scheme. Not to good with long term investment strategy which builds on the future.

But do tell me what your big true progressive plan is for getting a better health care reform package if you help turn the Senate or House or both back over to the wingnuts? March around in a snit parade behind a giant Jane Hamsher puppet?

*

LBJ and FDR were the greatest progressive leaders EVAH! They knew how to twist arms and use the bully pulpit and build narratives and leap tall buildings in a single bound!

March around in a snit parade behind a giant Jane Hamsher puppet?

farmer, that’s exactly the plan.

I love the image, though. The Hamscher Head will be a Felliniesque masterpiece, esp coupled with the big Grover operating it!

btw, Digby’s hippy-punching thread is now tragically bedecked with purity pony manure. I tried mucking it out, but were they grateful? They were not!

I’m a neoDemcon hack, also. And j’accuse Tom Paine Nader monsters hate little hungry children EEP EEP EEP.

If only Democons would stop using TERRORIST TACTICS against Firebaggers!!!!!!1!!! also too. Really.

Sadly enough true, Mrs Polly. And I’m really beginning to think that many of these so-called progressives that clog up the Digby threads or squirm around in Hamsher’s veal puddle probably spend their weekends answering a phone in a Lyndon LaRouche hidey-hole.

*

probably spend their weekends answering a phone in a Lyndon LaRouche hidey-hole.

I don’t know that I’d give ‘em that much credit. I just picture them stomping around mom’s kitchen with li’l fists clenched, growling “I’ll teach them a lesson” before adding a comment on a blog vowing to withhold money and votes. Then, they go check if there’re some oreos left in the mangled package and settle down with some reality show about dorks trying to dance that’s rumored to have Sarah Palin in the audience. It’s surreal, really.

OK, this post’s now off the front page.

I think it’s probably run more than its course, so I’m closing the comments. There are plenty of others where these discussions or whatever can be continued - we just don’t feel like babysitting an old thread for the next couple of weeks (and besides, the sucker’s taking a while to load!).