Tuesday Open Thread
Welcome to your Tuesday open thread. Today’s edition is a special UI is traveling edition of your open thread so you’ll have to entertain yourselves. Behave! (Wait – who am I talking to? I know you won’t.)
Digby digs up this gem of Pat Robertson giving marriage advice:
Ladies, just so you know, if your man is stepping out it’s because you’re a bitch and you’re just not attractive enough.
TERRY MEEUWSEN (co-host): Pat, this is from Anne who says, “My husband has always been a flirt and loves to talk with other women he finds attractive. He says he would never cheat on me but his actions are starting to get to me. What should I do?
PAT ROBERTSON: Anne, first thing is you need to make yourself as attractive as possible and don’t hassle him about it. And why is he doing this? Well, he’s doing it because he wants affirmation that he is still a man, that he is attractive — and he gets an affirmation of himself. That means he’s got an inferiority complex that’s coming out. And he’s not gonna cheat on you. He’s just playing.
But you need to not drive him away or start hassling and hounding on him, but make yourself as beautiful as you can, as fun as you can, and say “let’s go out here, let’s go there, let’s go to the other thing.”
Yes, it’s always the woman’s fault. I’m really not sure how to be a proper woman in the conservative world. You can’t look too pretty because then that means that the uncontrolled lusts of childish men will want to attack you. But also don’t not look pretty because then these childish men will find another woman with the proper amount of prettiness.
Michael Tomansky wrote a really interesting piece about liberal disappointment with Obama. Tomansky talks about how liberals have tended to romanticize their own history, including the New Deal. Matt Yglesias picks out a key passage:
From Mike Tomasky’s excellent article on trying to mitigate progressive disgruntlement by understanding the messiness of real history, a slice of the Secret History of the New Deal:
It’s worth noting, for example, that the second act to become law under the New Deal, after the Emergency Banking Act, which was a progressive piece of legislation, was a conservative bill, the Economy Act. It cut salaries of government employees and benefits to veterans, the latter by 15 percent. Arthur Schlesinger, in The Coming of the New Deal, writes that literally an hour after signing the banking act, Roosevelt outlined this bill to congressional leaders, saying the next day and sounding more than a little like some Robert Rubin progenitor had been whispering in his ear: “For three long years, the federal government has been on the road toward bankruptcy.” (And maybe one had: Schlesinger notes that Roosevelt’s budget director, Lewis Douglas, was certainly no Keynesian.) Just imagine Obama having tried something like that, alienating both veterans and AFSCME within a week of taking office. The Economy Act was opposed by many liberals in the House, so FDR turned to conservative Democrats and Republicans, who passed it.
I wonder if FDR had his allies turning on him within months?
Tags: Open Thread
Obama talked like a populist to get elected, but he governs like a corporatist. His “liberalism” is incremental, at best. There is no reason for liberals who were allied with him in the beginning to remain allied with him now. He has deceived them and sold them out at virtually every chance he’s had.
The Tomasky article is truly excellent, UI. I was going to write about this myself, but am glad you caught it. Too bad it won’t get the considered argument or discussion it deserves here.
I can’t wait for tonight when BP’s spokesperson addresses the nation from the Oval Office. Like he said yesterday, he’ll probably say that the oil clean-up will actually make the Gulf better than it was before the spill, and everything else will be normal.
(I made up the part about the BP spokesperson, but the rest is true. Not kidding.)
Sixty foot Jesus struck by lightning, burns to ground.
Allah has spoken.
Awesome World Cup Calendar
That is freaking amazing.
Seen in the parking lot of the Middletown ACME (so sorry I didn’t snag a pic of this):
Greenpeace bumper sticker (don’t stereotype me, bro…Greenpeace has received donations from me before) on the oil spill: “Spill Baby Spill,” in direct reference to the Gulf of Mexico disaster. OK, fine and good, I understand it. It added in smaller print to stop our thirst for oil. Makes sense with the message. This bumper sticker? Placed on a mid-2000’s era Cherokee. It seemed carefully placed, so I am thinking it wasn’t an attempt of protest by someone who didn’t own the car.
Brain freeze without ice cream. That’s what that was.
DelawarePolitics and CRI team up to bring us a return engagement of granny killing and death panels.
Placed on a mid-2000’s era Cherokee.
Better to drive ’em into the ground than to smelt new steel and plastics for a brand new $30K hybrid.
Of course, all that new Afghanistan lithium should bring the price of batteries down eventually.
So, what’s the plan?
what’s everyone’s thoughts on obama wanting to buy all news organizations? sorry, I mean tax breaks and subsidies.
I don’t know the plan, but there’s no reason to give tax breaks and subsidies to news organizations. The shrinkage of mainstream media is happening because their corporate owners refuse to shrink their profit margins.
anyone going to talk about how that whole speech was recycled “Health Care Reform Rah Rah Rah”? no clear cut plan, no actual updates. It was awful for a GWB speech and at the worst possible time.
big fail, O