Open Thread for Wednesday, August 14, 2013
President Roosevelt, on this day in 1935, signed into law the Social Security Act. By far, it has been the most successful and most beloved government program in history. Here is the President said 78 years ago:
“We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.
This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.”
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Byron York’s column at the conservative Washington Examiner confirms that my long held opinion — that the Dems can actually take control of the House next year — is starting to take hold in the conservative zeitgeist:
Behind the scenes — in whispered asides, not for public consumption — some Republicans are now worried that keeping the House is not such a done deal after all. They look back to two elections, 1998 and 2006, in which Republicans seriously underperformed expectations, and they wonder if 2014 might be a little like those two unhappy years. “The majority is at risk,” says one well-connected Republican strategist.
York goes on to say that the reason why is that they have no agenda. That’s wrong. They have an agenda. And that agenda appears to be 1) Repeal Obamacare at all costs, 2) Destroy the Country, and 3) Accomplish 1 by doing 2. Seriously, when they are not making racist remarks about Latinos, Republicans are talking about shutting down the government AND/OR not raising the debt ceiling if the President does not repeal and defund his own law. That is all they are talking about. And it is all their conservative base is talking about at Town Hall meetings.
Indeed, Rep. Tom Cole (R) of Oklahoma said some months ago that the “only way Republicans will lose the House is to shut down the government or default on the debt.”
So what does the base and many, if not the majority of the Republican caucus want to do? Shut down the government and default on the debt.
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Polling Goodness:
NEW YORK CITY–MAYOR–DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY–Quinnipiac: Public Advocate Bill de Blasio 30, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn 24, Fmr. Comptroller William Thompson 22, Fmr. US Representative Anthony Weiner 10. The rest of the wide field of candidates gets under 10%.
If De Blasio wins, it will be a huge deal, as Booman points out…
It’s going to matter a lot who wins the mayoral contest and then how they perform once in office. This is a point that Benjamin Wallace-Wells touches upon in his piece on Bill de Blasio and the New York Times. […] So, what is de Blasio talking about? Turns out, he’s talking about “neglected hospitals, a swelling poverty rate and a broken prekindergarten system.”
It is the campaign season’s riskiest calculation: that New Yorkers, who have become comfortably accustomed to the smooth-running, highly efficient apparatus of government under Michael R. Bloomberg, are prepared to embrace a much different agenda for City Hall– taxing the rich, elevating the poor and rethinking a Manhattan-centric approach to city services. […]
Describing what he calls a tale of two cities,rife with inequalities in housing, early childhood education and police tactics, he promised those gathered at the Brooklyn bar that this year’s mayoral race wasgoing to be a reset moment. A major reset.
De Blasio is also riding the wave of the Stop and Frisk news this week (where the Court has struck down the Bloomberg policy as racist and wildly unconstitutional). De Blasio’s own adopted son, Dante, has been a victim of the policy that signals out black men for unwarranted racial profiling.
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Associated Press: “Joe Biden may run for president in 2016, or he may not. But he wants you to know he could. Iowa. New Hampshire. South Carolina. Michigan. Three years out from the next presidential election, the vice president is polishing his connections and racking up favors in all the right states to ensure he stays part of the conversation, keeping his name near the top of a list of likely contenders even if the prime spot seems to have already been claimed by Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
Obama is the only one talking about shutting down the government. BTW, you idiots hate and defile GOP office holders as know nothings unless their stupid statements match yours dumb ideas.
That is an outright lie, LAI. Obama has talked about the GOP threat to shut down the government and the only reason he has talked about it (at his Press Conference last Friday) is because Republicans, like Senator Mike Lee, like Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Marco Rubio, like countless insane House Republicans, have demanded that any budget or continuing budget resolution that is passed to fund the government and/or raise the debt ceiling contain a provision that defunds Obamacare. Otherwise, no deal, no funding of the government (which means govt shutdown) and then we default on the debt.
So LAI, you just lied. Why did you lie? Are you so embarrassed to defend your Republican Party that the only way you can do it is to lie about what they are saying and doing? Why are you a liar?
Right on DD. It’s that LAI and others of his ilk have to lie, if the facts are not on their side. They hate the media because it deals in facts, unless the media is Fox of course.
LAI shame on you and your dishonest ways why should we take any thing you say seriously?
bbraawwwww obama obama socialism!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dont call my fellow PATRIOT a liar, you LIBERAL FACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Go back to whatever SOVIET STATE liberals come from and keep your GOVERNMENT HANDS off my MEDICARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LOL. Good satire, yeahLAM.
oops sorry. I accidentally posted under my fire-bomb conservative handle that Hannity pays me to use to anger sane people.
Im not quite sure why “people” (im not saying conservatives aren’t humans, I’m saying LAI is a bot) even still get a response. It’s like the bully in school. They come from homes where no one loves them and they do it for the attention. If you give them the fightin’ words response they want, they win. It doesn’t matter if you use “truth” or “sense” or “better vocabulary” or “their own painfully ignorant words against them”. All paid-trolls, or bots, or sad former varsity QB’s who never got through their first semester of college and now work at Denny’s, want, is to get the reaction. dont let the terrorists win.
LAI is just here to tag this site with his bullshit. He doesn’t even read any response to his BS, much less how I’ve been re-tagging his posts. He’s pretty close to earning a banning, I think.
In other news, Peggy Noonan continues to indulge in Drunk Punditry. She thinks that it would be “classy” of President Obama to defend the rodeo clown in Missouri who dressed up as the President of the United States to get run down by a bull. No matter that no one involved in this thing thought it was appropriate, Noonan asks for a level of grace that neither she or her wingnut fellow travelers are willing to extend to the President himself.
Peggy Noonan probably would want Abe Lincoln to go defend John Wilkes Booth, too. Hey, Peggy… retire.
On the rodeo clown bit….. here is my uber unpopular opinion.
I remember being at a punk rock concert in ’02… The last song played by one of the bands was called “The Idiot Son of an Asshole”. It was accompanied by an animation on the big screen of everyone’s favorite JR (drawn in a style that would be horribly offensive to people with cognitive development challenges) doing doppy things and getting hurt. Pretty sure he got thrown off a building at the end. A large gathering of stupid people cheered and cheered while a mock-up of the current president died…. sorry, was KILLED. ….for entertainment. what a bunch of racists?
WHO CARES what a bunch of morons do at their moron gatherings? It wasn’t a political rally. It was a bubba convention for people married to their siblings. It should be totally legal and acceptable to make whatever kind of parody you want about the president. “but oh no! they said stomp!!!!!!!!!!!”
The only reason this appeared to be racist is because Obama is black and ALL SOUTHERNERS ARE RACIST…. (wait, what?)
serious question that i know wont be answered seriously. Is it possible to be white, republican, from a red-state, really really really dislike obama, and NOT be racist?
If you say no…. you are prejudice. you are a bigot. You make an assumption about a large group of people.
“but socialist ben, you fool, you teabaggin both sides hatin punk… i KNOW all Southerners are racist. I SAW IT ON THE MEDIA!!!!!!!!”
Oh, the media…. the same place where you hear that police are seeking a black male between the age of 24 and 40 in connection with whateverthehell?” THAT MEDIA? Well congratulations. you are a mirror image of BillyRay who thinks Obama is takin his guns because Rush said so.
Peggy Noonan would probably want a prominent lawyer from Boston aligned with the rebels to defend the soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre *scoff what an idiot.
serious question that i know wont be answered seriously. Is it possible to be white, republican, from a red-state, really really really dislike obama, and NOT be racist?
If you say no…. you are prejudice. you are a bigot. You make an assumption about a large group of people.
The first thing you need to do even be taken seriously here is inform yourself on the difference between racism and prejudice. Seriously, if you are using these word interchangeably, you can’t accuse anyone about making faulty assumptions about anyone.
Ben, I am seriously confused. Are you agreeing with Peggy Noonan? That Obama should embrace those behind the Rodeo Clown business, because that’s what John Adams did for the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre? The two incidents are not even comparable. If the attendees at the Rodeo incited a riot and the Rodeo Clown people reacted by mowing down the rioters in a hail of gunfire, and then Obama defended them so that they would get due process, well then maybe the analogy would be on point or at least comparable.
The comparison to Bush is more apt. And I do not remember Bush ever embracing those who went too far in protesting him (i.e. the Punk Rock concert).
Further, opposition to Bush was not even in part based on racism or prejudice. It was based on his actions and policies.
Opposition to Obama is in part based on race and racism. There is no denying that. How many links to racist protest signs and racist emails forwarded from Republican officials do I need to provide here? There is a long and documented history of racism being at least part of the reason why some oppose Obama.
Now, I completely agree that you can oppose the President just because you disagree with his actions and policies. And I readily admit that many do oppose Obama because of his actions and policies. But, at the same time, the presence of the latter does not eliminate or disprove the former.
There are those who oppose Obama based on his policies and actions.
There are those who oppose Obama based on his race.
And there are those who oppose Obama based on both his race and policies and actions.
Those three statements are all true.
I was getting a little bit hyperbolic (shocker) with the Boston Massacre…. mostly because I like do the Dennis Miller thing and show how “smart” I am by making obscure historical references.
I disagree with the premise of the rodeo clown dustup.
What I’m disagreeing about is the idea that a gathering of mostly white people in clear opposition to Obama is inherently racist. DD, I agree with you that there are people who oppose Obama for racial, nonracial, and both reasons.
BUT
The way i see it, IMHO, FWIW, by shouting racism at every group of white people opposing Obama… even in objectively un-funny kinda-rednecky ways…… you are suggesting that MOST of the people who oppose Obama do so because they are racist. Which a, if true says something very deeply troubling about our nation and b, is, in itself, bigoted…
by the way,
Yes casandra, racism IS prejudice. it is just a specific intense form of it. Thinking all black people are criminals is prejudice AND racist. Thinking all gay people are good hair dressers is prejudice but NOT racist.
Anyway, DD. were there racist people in that audience applauding the whole thing because they are racist? probably. Should we realize that racism is a serious thing and not throw it around every time we see a lot of white people in obvious opposition to the president? yup.
What if….
IF the rodeo clown was in Blackface and called “Obama” yes. you bet your ass it would have been racist. The fact that they used a president mask… and not “any old black guy”, tells me it could have been ANY democratic president.
Want to know what I found horrible about it? the implied rape and sodomy with that broom stick bit. Forget the color of the guy’s skin, these people were cheering assault. BUT it isnt the lead, it isnt the thing we’re supposed to get outraged about. oh well.
What I’m disagreeing about is the idea that a gathering of mostly white people in clear opposition to Obama is inherently racist.
Is is possible for you to have discussion with people based on what they actually wrote? No one here certainly made that claim.
Yes casandra, racism IS prejudice. it is just a specific intense form of it.
That’s it? Just a “specific intense form of it”? This must be white-splaining day here at DL. 🙄
Imma let you and DD have this discussion, then, because you certainly aren’t talking about anything I recognize. From experience.
Oh… oh my.
And then there’s this (as if it’s relevant, or important), “I remember being at a punk rock concert in ’02…” Yeah, that matters.
Seriously, Ben, let’s let the people (ya know, black and brown people) involved speak to this issue. Seriously, seriously, white people (like us) need to talk less and listen more.
so help me here……. Because i consider myself a thoughtful and sensitive person who tries to understand the entire issue. I understand that racism is….. never mind I did the examples bit.
How is lobbing a jab at me (or DD… or whoever you were responding to) for being white (you said whitesplaning?? mmk) NOT racist? Is it because it’s just “prejudice?” Is it because you have ” experience”?
I’m sorry, but that sounds prejudice. So, honestly. Would you please explain to me why you disagree with my statement that racism IS prejudice (but not all prejudice is racist) I think racism is a vial thing. so is bigotry. They both require prejudice to be a thing…. it is the basis of a lot of hate. That is my opinion…HOWEVER I AM capable of changing my mind/opinion/talking point/blog anger of the week. I think it’d be neat if you could change my views on the matter.
Pandora… a punk concert in 02 is probably the hostility-level equivalent to Bush, as a Missouri rodeo is to Obama. That was the reason for the qualifier.
Let me try a different tact… First, This is only about race because the president is black. You cant make fun of, or be openly hostile to, the current president WITHOUT depicting a black (also, a full half white….) man. Can we agree on that? if so… please read on….. Should’t we then see if they people making fun of the president are making fun of his presidency… or his blackness.e I’m not sure how that disgusting display would have been any different if it was Clinton (bill). They didnt do…. for lack of a better vocabulary…. the things white people typically do when they are mocking black people. So im open to examples of how they did.
Second….. and im serious here. How does my being white disqualify me from talking about racism and bigotry…. or at least require me to yield to “those effected….
but my Jewishness, which I’m SURE I’ve let slip, doesn’t give me “the right perspective” or whatever it is I lack to have a valid opinion? There are members of my family living today who survived. THEY know what racism and bigotry and prejudice are… and trust me Pandora… I have listened to those effected.
Here are my prejudices about your contribution to this thread:
1. Spinning up an argument based on a position that no one in this thread had is stupid and disrespectful. So that counts as two prejudices.
2. We’ve had this conversation re: racism vs prejudice before, so the fact that you neither remember my position here or can even rouse yourself to go check a dictionary pretty much countermands any claims you may make here of being either thoughtful or sensitive. And the prejudice here is against basic incuriousity.
3. The jab was “whitesplaining“. The prejudice here is against white folks who think that a paternalistic explanation of what you think is and is not racist is somehow useful. It might be useful to you, but *never* addresses my concerns. So the prejudice here is against folks who advertise themselves as thoughtful and sensitive, while they are pushing this bullshit.
4. The other thing I have a prejudice against is using the right wing misappropriation of the word *racist* as if it were the new gospel. They don’t get to re-define works just because they can’t wrap themselves around real injustice done to real people. Thoughtful people wouldn’t do this. Thoughtful progressives ought to be horrified by this. So the prejudice here is against an examined presumption and basic two-facedness.
I’m not in the business of changing your mind. That’s your business. As is the fact that you’d rather argue with me over something that a dictionary or encyclopedia could actually clear up.
Your Jewishness means I should listen to you about Jewish issues/being Jewish, etc. I haven’t walked in your shoes, so I should shut up and listen to you.
My problem is that you seem to want to divide these “issues” against Obama as individual, separate issues – and that simply isn’t the case. You’re a good guy, but this isn’t about you. You’re giving people doing this a pass. And, you know what? People participating in this behavior are capable of defending/explaining themselves. The fact they don’t is telling… no? Gotta love the dog whistle.
You can call bull on this if you want, or not. But saying that only the specific group referenced in a possibly display of bigotry is capable of making a call is preposterous. It only furthers to divide people. (is it, perhaps, a different view i have because of MY unique experience as a Millenial?) I have had a fair amount of (unearned and prejudicial) hate directed at me. Admittedly, not a whole lot for being Jewish, (i live in america post 60’s forfuckssake i havent earned ANY good thing in my life and i know it) but plenty of other appearance-based reasons i have no control over. Im perfectly capable of recognizing when one’s appearance, or weight, or sexuality is being mocked without having experienced every possible example personally. I really cant think of a nicer way to say it, but it’s part of being an aware person..?
Cassandra, so funny, i honestly almost typed this… I get that i what im talking about hasnt been mentioned IN THIS THREAD … it’s an open thread, im expounding on something that was said. I wasn’t being disrespectful (intentionally) Im sorry. Open thread.
http://i.imgur.com/1ZBYsEW.jpg