See Zero Hedge for a timeline of fiscal policy since January, 2009. My interpretation is somewhat different from his: I think the last several years have seen the worst Senate in the history of the institution and, yes, I include Reconstruction in that. That’s what ideological polarization and extreme partisanship gets you. Not to mention extreme seniority, too much wealth, and too many lawyers.
I think the problem is and has for a while been, the voters. A larger proportion of the population is as involved with politics as they once were with their sports team. And they are just as lousy at running politics as they are Monday morning quarterbacking.
Talk radio with its emphasis on rage and paranoia, 24 hour news networks with their round-the-clock ratings-driven sensationalist fare, the death of newspapers with their professional editorial class, the rise of single-issue voters and the organizations that feed and water them, political/business attack ads, the proliferation of polling, I think it’s all come together to create a larger number of poorly-informed, angry, excited, vociferous voters. The Senate’s not a club anymore, it’s a reality show with 100 preening, posturing, pandering individuals, all scared to death of being voted off the island.
Leaders can’t get a Senator to take a tough vote anymore for fear of a Limbaugh or Kos eruption, or some corporate or single-issue attack squad. I don’t know that our Senators are dumber, but they sure are less amenable to leadership. Can you imagine LBJ in his Senate years reduced to the kind of impotence displayed by McConnell and Reid?
The Senate needs a professional class of politicians. It needs a class of men and women who are genuinely devoted to service — however pompous that may sound — and the people, the voters, the media, with their facile cynicism and their paranoia and their emotionalism, and their empowered ignorance, make that impossible.
How much more professional can they get? Half the Senate is made up of people who’ve served three or more terms and before that had been members of Congress for six or more terms.
I think the problem is almost the diametric opposite of that: the Senate is full of apparatchiks who have little in the way of experience or interests outside of holding office.
I’ve never been a fan of the idea that experience outside of government was particularly useful. Running a government has nothing much in common with running a business or a medical office or writing kid’s books. The people who have come to the Senate from medicine or business have not proven to be any better than the lawyers. There’s no reason they would be: they’re still representing the same constituency, they’re still ambitious to stay in office, and still therefore willing to pander and avoid hard choices.
Many nations that are better-run than our own seem to rely successfully on a class of professional politicians.
But in the end we’ll get the government we deserve. We demand to be told lies, we demand to avoid harsh reality, we want to be flattered and frightened by turns, and we sure as hell don’t want to pay our bills, so we get the politicians who will deliver on those demands.
On the flip side if we the people suddenly demanded reality-based government we’d get it whether we had 100 lawyers or 100 talking chimps. The problem is us.
The age of officeholders is much lower, the term in office much shorter, and the diversity of experience much higher in Canada and the UK, countries with whom we have more in common with than, say, the PRC or even Germany.
I think the problem is, as I have written extensively before, a lack of moderation without which anything resembling democratic government is impossible.
I think the problem is and has for a while been, the voters. A larger proportion of the population is as involved with politics as they once were with their sports team.
Pot, meet kettle.
Have you ever NOT called a Republican a racist? Or for that matter, anyone who dares question the perfection of Obama? I have never heard you acknowledge that ANY criticism of Obama is valid. Have you ever not claimed that Obama by his very nature would cure all the wounds of the nation? (What did you claim the unemployment rate would be in March of 2010? It would be “7.5% and falling.” I’m sure that it’s just evil racist Republican fear-mongering that has caused it to not fall to those levels.)
Has anything bad ever happened that you didn’t blame on Republicans? On this very website you practically accused everyone who wasn’t a lick-spittle Democrat of being GUILTY of provoking the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, not to mention children.
You are some slimy piece of work, Michael. It’s bad enough that you engage in all those practices, but then to bitch about everyone else doing it while pretending to be a saint is appalling. Par for the course, though.
and the people, the voters, the media, with their facile cynicism and their paranoia and their emotionalism, and their empowered ignorance, make that impossible.
Yes, clearly the public shouldn’t be so cyncial and paranoid about their leaders. Clearly we need to be more trusting and “amenable to leadership.”
You would have people abdicate their citizenship to a bunch of Lords who would be set up as our masters. Again, typical of you.
I think the last several years have seen the worst Senate in the history of the institution and, yes, I include Reconstruction in that.
Don’t worry, Dave. I am sure it will get worse after the 2012 elections.
Icepick:
I’m going to assume you’re having a very bad day.
Have you ever NOT called a Republican a racist?
I’ve said that the GOP has willingly harbored racists. That’s a matter of historical fact, read about the Southern Strategy. Or read former RNC chairman Ken Mehlman in 2005. Or notice that blacks almost never vote GOP. Or notice the number of racist emails etc.. that come — inevitably — from Republicans.
In fact I don’t think most Republicans are racist. I just think they’re willing to pander to get and keep racist votes.
I have never heard you acknowledge that ANY criticism of Obama is valid.
I’ve said — here IIRC — that I find Obama’s leadership style very frustrating. But yes, I do like Obama. I’ve never said any criticism of him is racist. I don’t like him on drugs and I think he’s been too cute by half on gay rights. I think so far he’s been a solid B.
Have you ever not claimed that Obama by his very nature would cure all the wounds of the nation?
Since I am completely non-religious, non-superstitious, secular to the bone, I doubt you’ll find any statement of that sort coming from me. I don’t do faith.
I was definitely too optimistic on unemployment, which does not differentiate me from most Americans.
On this very website you practically accused everyone who wasn’t a lick-spittle Democrat of being GUILTY of provoking the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, not to mention children.
Can you provide a link? “Practically accused?”
I do think inflammatory rhetoric is dangerous. But that’s a long way from your claim.
As for pretending to be a saint, um, I’d love you to show me that. On the contrary, I’ve always been very upfront about having a checkered past. And unlike you “Icepick” I do it under my own name and my own picture.
As for being pot or kettle, I’ve long favored means-testing Medicare and raising the retirement age on SS, (since before the late Bush meltdown) and raising the contribution cap on SS and favored having my own taxes raised to help balance the budget. I’ve also favored matching our military spending to a re-examined set of priorities. I was against the Bush tax cuts when I was a beneficiary of them.
So, other than you being angry that I don’t like racists, I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I was for fiscal responsibility — paying for what we spend — before it was cool.
On the subject of race, yes, Icepick, I despise racists. I don’t like them. I haven’t been fond of them since the KKK delivered a warning to my family when I was a child. I think they are evil people. I think a man who will hate another because of the color of his skin is a man who will march a Jew to Auschwitz. And no, I don’t think they all suddenly disappeared from American life. I think they’re still out there, and still a big part of the GOP. When I see them, I’ll point a finger at them.
You would have people abdicate their citizenship to a bunch of Lords who would be set up as our masters.
Actually, that was pretty much the Founder’s model for the Senate — the sober, slow-moving, less-volatile, less populist body whose members were appointed by state legislatures rather than being directly elected.
Icepick:
I honestly don’t know why you do this. We can have civil exchanges and then suddenly you decide to hold a Mike Reynolds hate fest. You say a bunch of stupid things and you end up making yourself look bad.
I’m not responsible for your unemployment, Ice. So why don’t you focus elsewhere because I’m getting really tired of pulling my punches with you.
That’s what ideological polarization and extreme partisanship gets you. Not to mention extreme seniority, too much wealth, and too many lawyers.
Has the Senate ever NOT been composed* of people with too much seniority (the Old South made a habit of that from the start, IIRC), too much wealth (How many truly poor Senators have their been?), and too many lawyers?
For that matter, are we really more polarized now than we were both leading up to the Civil War and the period after the end of Reconstruction, to mention just two eras of many? Or during Woodrow Wilson’s Administration? Or in the aftermath of the enactmnt of the Constitution? (How many duels have the current batch of idiots fought?)
As for the polarization, besides rhetoric I’m not sure I buy that at all. Both sides have voted for more spending and less taxes. Both sides have complained about the other side running up large deficits, but only when out of power. Both sides agreed to bail out the financial industry when the shit hit the fan. Both sides are now basically agreeing (as JP points out correctly) that we need to shave off a few trillion from the deficit in the coming decade. Both sides also agree that most of those “savings” should come in the outer years. Both sides are amenicable to the desires of the largest businesses in the land.** Both sides favor a more and more complex tax code. (Some say they don’t, but the proof is in the pudding, and both sides are guilty of egregious abuse of tax code writing.) Both sides ultimately favor more government intrusion into our daily lives. (Neither party really wants to lessen the power of the TSA, for example.)
The polarization all seems to be kabuki theatre designed purely for small-time gamesmanship. Abortion, closing tax loopoles, steroids in baseball, raising the debt ceiling, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. Even on immigration the two parties have been rather close, with the exception that Republicans have had to deal with an outraged base – if it weren’t for the clamoring of the people that Michael dismises so readily, we would have already made a good ten to twelve million more Mexicans honest-to-God voting citizens. For that matter, both parties have tried to kick-start the economy from various stimulus proposals, rather than from fundamentally changing anything else about how the country functions.
There is polarization at the state levels, but that doesn’t translate (except as rhetoric-only) to the country’s Capitol. And the rhetorical part has become merely rote – it’s funny to see Obama paint Republicans as supporting corporate fat-cat tax loop-holes when some of those loop-holes are ones that Obama insisted on and that no Republican voted for. But such is the state of our media that they can’t tell the difference.
I think the problem has more to do with a lack of real differences in the parties. The only current difference is that the parties disagree on who should be in power, and that they disagree how the spoils from the looting get distributed.
* Absent the early years, of course, when no one had seniority yet.
** One exception is that Dems seem to be opposed to Big Carbon, while Republicans looooove Big Carbon. That is probably more an accident of political geography than anything else.
A quick glance at the list of those who’ve served as senators strongly suggests to me that serving more than two terms was relatively rare and more than three terms very rare until fairly recently. Indeed, the closer you get to the present day the more likely extreme seniority appears to be.
It’s pretty difficult to research it but a quick scan down that same list should reassure you that senators once had a greater diversity of backgrounds and incomes than they do now.
Who in the present Senate would you consider actually statesmanlike? Two I can think of: Richard Lugar and Dianne Feinstein. But the number is very, very small and one party isn’t a great deal better than the other in that regard. I don’t believe that there was ever a Golden Age in which all senators were wise statesman but I think we’re making progress in reverse.
We can have civil exchanges and then suddenly you decide to hold a Mike Reynolds hate fest. You say a bunch of stupid things and you end up making yourself look bad.
Michael, as far as I am concerned every day is Hate Michael Reynolds Day. You should approve – I am getting radicalized about the nature of the political machine in this country.
And making me look bad? Shall I pull quotes from you from the past? (The ones you didn’t delete off your own blogs, that is.)
Here we go:
Ignoring the ad hominem, let’s consider the fundamental dishonesty involved in the above. Of COURSE the stock market and housing would hit a bottom over a 365 day period. If it never did anything but go up, it would have bottomed at the start. If it did nothing but go DOWN, it would have bottomed at the end. Under ANY scenario there would be a bottom over 365 days, or any other closed period of time. That part of the “bet†was clearly designed as a cheat. I note that it is a disgusting idea for a rich man to cheat a poor man in a wagering situation. In fact, cheating while gambling is just plain despicable no matter the situation. No doubt your favorite “charity†would have been the DNC.
Here’s another one:
That one was good. It caught it all – calling Republicans racist AND claiming that they fetishize violence. Hearing you complain of demonization of opponents is also good stuff. And I doubt you have ever complained of Obama’s speaking in that manner, as when he has said that “if they bring a knife, we’ll bring a gun.â€
Here’s the best one I could find in this limited amount of time, restricting myself to Shuler’s blog:
Yep, that’s the best one from Shuler’s blog, anyway. In one fell swoop you call Republican rhetoric racist and imply that Republicans were all-but-guilty in the shooting of Gabby Giffords. Good stuff. I note that you didn’t mention all the rhetoric from 2000 to 2009 from Dems calling for the death of Bush. Of course, you never do. I also doubt that you bothered to apologize when it became clear that Loughner was completely off his nut.
I won’t bother looking for one of your many comments dismissing TangoMan (in particular) of being a racist. That would be redundant after the above.
But this is exactly what I mean: You complain about the language other people use despite comments like the above from yourself. You accuse other people of being partisans despite the fact that you hate all Republicans reflexively, and have told me on more than one occasion that all the good programs in the country come from Democrats. In fact, you have told me that I should kiss your feet in gratitude since you are a Democrat and thus get credit for things done before you were even born. I could take the time to look up the comments on Ambiance or here in which you’ve claimed to be better than everyone else because you are richer than the rest of us, but this gets tiresome. You complain and complain and complain, always about other people doing the stuff you so revel in.
As I said, “Pot, meet kettle.â€
Who in the present Senate would you consider actually statesmanlike?
Who in the Senate should ever be considered statesmanlike? As one writer put it, “Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight.”
Check out “The Famous Five”. A lot of the “great acts” by those gentlemen seem more like kicking the can down the road than actual statemanship, at least to me. (Or perhaps that is the definition of statesmanship.)
But I can’t think of any generation that has had leaders that faced the problems head-on BEFORE they became crises. If they had, we would have strangled the Nazis before they re-armed Germany. We would have actually done something to end slavery by legislation before it led to the greatest Constitutional crisis ever seen. Heck, the only Congress I can think of as actually getting well ahead of the ball was the one that started the Mexican-American War. You know, the one that U. S. Grant later called “one of the most unjust [wars] ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.” Gotta say that Grant lacked foresight: Not only did we get away with stealing half of Mexico, we stole the half with all the paved roads.
A quick glance at the list of those who’ve served as senators strongly suggests to me that serving more than two terms was relatively rare and more than three terms very rare until fairly recently.
I notice that guys like Calhoun, Webster, and Clay bounced around from Office to Office, coming back to the Senate with some regularity. J. Q. Adams, too.
And I’m not buying the “served their country” rhetoric any more. When people go out and get shot at by people from some OTHER country, then they can claim they are serving their own country. Or if they are making some real sacrifice for what they se as the betterment of the country. I don’t think it much of a sacrifice for career politicians to get one of the highest political jobs in the country. (And arguably the best.) They served their own interests. Really, do you think Clay and Calhoun and Webster were any less interested in their own interests than JFK and RMN? They were just better because even though they never attained the highest office in the land, they (a) didn’t get shot in the head, (b) didn’t resign from the highest office in the land in disgrace, and (c) got out of office well before the Civil War got started.
For the record, I stole the paved road crack from P. J. O’Rourke.
I don’t believe that there was ever a Golden Age in which all senators were wise statesman but I think we’re making progress in reverse.
Agreed, but I think this has more to do with the ever-expanding role of the federal government more than anything else. (Well, that and the Seventeenth Amendment. That Amendment threw off some structural balance in the federal government – the states have no representation of their interests AS STATES now.) With an ever expanding government, we have an ever-expanding realm for Senators to act in. Also, their actions become ever more important. Do you really think Nullifiers and Anti-Masonics and Know Nothings (those would show up as “American” party members in Dave’s linked list) would be doing much better than the traditional partisans?
“Calhoun, Webster, and Clay” — The golden age of the Senate. I think it would be interesting if someone committed political science to Dave’s critique. It could be true, for instance that the golden age of the Senate was established by a small group of influential and eventually elderly statesmen with a high turnover cast of second seaters.
I think it tends to start with gerrymandering, so you have people like Pelosi and Cantor who will never have to leave unvoluntarily, alternating in leadership with lightweights like Reid and Hassert that are put in power to allow committee chairmans the run of the place.
I’ve argued the lawyer thing with Dave before. There were roughly as many lawyers in the early Congress as today. We just disagree on what constitutes “a lawyer.” I think Dick Durbin might be less a lawyer than Thomas Jefferson, the difference though might be that Jefferson had so many another descriptions/occupations that could be attached to him.
(I’m not suggesting Dave should commit political science; he is not a political scientist, he might hurt himself)
Sure. They read law. I’ve probably read more law than Thomas Jefferson (at least judging by his library). However, by that standard there were more farmers in the Senate then, there were more engineers, there were more philosophers, there were more scholars.
Lincoln was a lawyer. Jefferson?
Ice:
I’d go through point by point, but why bother?
You’re a loser looking to play victim and find someone to hate. I’m it? Fine.
As for the bet, I lost. Name your favorite charity, I’ll write the check. Even if it’s to you.
Fuck you, I never agreed to that bet. I wouldn’t take money from you under any circumstances.
And yes, Michael, I am a loser. I’ve been told that countless times, by people better than you. (In fact, according to the President and his minions AND according to the Republican leadership and their minions, I am a loser.) As have millions and millions of others. We’re all fucked, and those of you on your Olympian Heights can piss on the rest of us all you want. It’s not like we can stop you. But the least you could do is acknowledge that the asshole you insisted was going to fix everything instead failed miserably, and continues to do so.
As for responding point by point – to what? Those are your words. They are inflammatory and highly partisan. They haven’t been taken out of context – I included the links so people can see for themselves. You are just a shill for the Democratic party in general, and for this asshole of a President in particular. No amount of contextualizing can change that.
An interesting point is that a recent poll showed that 53% of American families think their own personal situations are getting worse. That’s a lot of people. As are the growing numbers on food stamps, almost 45 million last time I checked. The most telling stat of all is how much of personal income these days is derived from government transfer payments. The number is staggering and sickening, and I’ll let the interested reader find it for themself. (Actually, I imagine that in this crowd everyone already knows it.) No doubt it is all the fault of us LOSERS who aren’t famous children’s book authors. If only we had known….
As with your other links and quotes that don’t say what you pretend they said, I never insisted Obama would “fix everything.” I’m not a faith-based individual. But yes, Obama has failed to make the jobs situation better. How could I deny that? It’s true.
Happy?
As for my Olympian heights, nah, that’s not what you hate about me, Ice, neither is the politics. You hate me because I’ve been a loser and stopped. I get why that’s irritating — it’s the same reason drunks hate reformed drunks.
I waited tables for 10 years, collected rents in the slums, painted houses, worked at a bowling alley, was a library grunt in a law firm, cleaned toilets for two years. You’re the one with the college education, not me. Post-grad too, right? You’re the one who thought he had life wired. Don’t pull that Olympian heights crap with me.
The difference is that I never saw myself as a victim of anything but my own stupidity. You on the other hand, you need someone to blame. Much easier than going out and taking one of the shit jobs I took, isn’t it? Would you take a job cleaning the homes of rich people? No, no, no, not you. I did, and I would again if I had to.
It’s the man, keeping you down, Ice. It’s the system and Obama and me, of course, from my Olympian heights.
Michael, I could go back and dig through all your crap from 2008, but why bother? You, like all the other Obama fanatics, made outrageous claims for your man’s abilities. He hasn’t lived up to any of them. The only thing he has done is make certain that the stock market has done well for the moneyed class. Hell, he has even managed to have net job losses DURING A TWO YEAR LONG RECOVERY. He has been an abject domestic policy failure.
As for my Olympian heights, nah, that’s not what you hate about me, Ice, neither is the politics. You hate me because I’ve been a loser and stopped. I get why that’s irritating — it’s the same reason drunks hate reformed drunks.
The only problem with this is that I have disliked, yes even hated, you for a long time, including back when I was making a pretty good living for myself. I didn’t have life “wired”, I just made a good living doing mindless number-crunching. I didn’t go to college to get my life wired, I went to study mathematics. That I did. When I realized that wasn’t likely to lead to a decent life, financially, I kicked around for other stuff. It worked for a while.
And then the world ended. I’m not blaming you for my problems, not much anyway. I got hosed by the worst job market since the Great Depression. (A fact of which you are blithly unaware.) But what I hear from asswipes like you is, “Well, way back when _I_ was able to find work, man.” Well, guess what, man? Life doesn’t work like that any more.
I have TRIED to get those shit jobs, which BTW I have worked in the past. (You seem to labor under some delusion that I come from an upper middle class background – wrong.) But those jobs aren’t available either, not in any great number, and not to anyone who’s been out of work for more than two or three months. The most famous stat of the moment is that Harvard has a higher acceptance rate than McDonald’s does – about 7% versus 6.2%.
The truth is that I can’t get a job cleaning toilets, or flipping burgers, and certainly not working in some rich person’s house – you fucking treasonous bastards only hire Mexicans.
THERE AREN’T ENOUGH JOBS. Over 14 million people are out of work and looking, and that doesn’t count the millions more that are working part-time and want fuilltime work, and it doesn’t count the several million who have dropped out of the workforce, or the millions more who haven’t dropped in, yet. (See the link above – there’s a story about a college student who can’t find anything now that she has achieved her Master’s degree – that’s not dropping in.) And that doesn’t include all the people like my wife, and my sister, and most of my friends, who have seen their hours and/or salaries cut.
Now, given all that, what makes you think that I can beat out all those millions? That’s trying to swim upstream in a stream that dried up years ago. The only reason people like you and Drew think that you could do it, if by some quirk of fate you were dumped into the gutter, is because you are fucking delusional. ESPECIALLY at your age, no one would hire you for any goddamned job at all – nothing. They won’t take the chance on you getting hurt and filing for disability.
I go to networking events – and I see the older people, those that got me beat by about ten years or more. They know that most likely they are never going to work again. And most of them are right. I know a few that manage to break through every now and then – of those I know of ONE that got a job without working some close personal connection.
But you don’t see that. You never will. Because you are special.
It’s the man, keeping you down, Ice. It’s the system and Obama and me, of course, from my Olympian heights.
What I see is that the Man is taking care of his own. How many trillions were spent bailing out banks? We don’t even know, because the Fed has managed to keep most of its records secret. And now The Bernanke is talking about more quantitative easing, to help out the hedge fund managers. (I must give Drew this much credit – he at least understands how that screws the rest of us.)
What I see is that the rich have bought up the system and have made certain that they are getting richer, and the Hell with everyone else. And that includes your boy Obama, who has made sure that Jeff Immelt gets his, and throws those lucky enough to have a job a table scrap of a temporary payroll tax cut. It helps cut into the rising price of gas. Those completely without work? We get nothing.
So yeah, bitter and resentful, especially when someone who got rich when times were fat tells me what it is like to live when times are lean. Your sob story about everything you used to do is bullshit, because you couldn’t do that these days, BECAUSE THERE AREN’T ENOUGH JOBS. And you and YOUR TEAM aren’t doing a damned thing about it. Not one thing. Not even really acknowledging how bad the problem is, except for the occassional Presidential monotone comment about how he reads letters from losers like us, and it makes him sad. Boo-fucking-hoo.
But you cheerlead, and cheerlead, and chearlead for your team – and then complain that everyone else is too partisan. It is absolutely incredible that you can’t understand why such rank hypocracy makes you so fucking hateable.
And in this corner, weighing in at 220 pounds…..Mr. Mighty, Rock’m Sock’m….Michael Reynolds!!!!!!!!!!!
Look, Michael, you have cheaply invoked the race card frequently, you shouldn’t sherk the observation. Its an unworthy debating tactic. And the notion that racism or race bating is a singular trait of Republicans is simply ludicrous on its face.
Separately, term limits, people. Term limits. Take a deep breath, stop invoking farmer/pols of 1824 and look at your gripes about the way the system has evolved over the years, the process. Single terms. No office, not President, Senator or Congressman over 6 years.
Drew, what good would terms limits for the elected officials do? That would still leave the staffers and lobbyists w/o term limits. I don’t see how that helps.
Also, look at how the system developed in California after they instituted term limits for state government – they developed lots of sinecures for “former” politicians by creating any manner of state boards and commissions.
Finally, if you keep selecting the politicians from the same pool of people, all you will do is get more turnover of the same kind of scumbag. I laugh every time I hear about Tea Party “favorite” Marco Rubio – how more connected an insider could he be as a former Speaker of the House in the state legislature? He’s just another career pol (It doesn’t seem that he has ever held a full-time job that WASN’T political in nature.), but he talked the right game and picked the right opponents and choose the right moment, so he’s a favorite of the alleged anti-government Tea Partiers. I tell you, I will be shocked, SHOCKED, when he turns out to be just another turd.
Or let me put it to you this way, Drew – would YOU want to be a Congress Critter?
And because I forgot earlier:
RMA & FTW.
Ice:
I don’t have a cleaning person. Not Mexican or anglo. I do my own. I have in the past: one Mexican, one Pole. We’ve had various part-time nannies, all happen to have been white. So only a partial “treason” I guess.
I don’t know where you get the idea that I don’t acknowledge how screwed employment is. (In my overly-optimistic wager I bet 7.5%, not full employment.) Where do you get the idea that I don’t have compassion for people who are out of work? Actually I’ve written that I’m worried this may be the new normal and we need to accept we’ll have a more redistributionist society. And while I’m not thrilled about it, I’ve said “tax me,” if that’s what it takes to make sure Americans are okay, eating, getting medical care, etc….
Where do you get the idea that I’m on the side of the fat cats? I barely own any stock. I make a good income — more than I deserve — but I’m not rich, I work for a living. I don’t invest, I spend. If I stroke out tomorrow the family will stagger along on reduced rations for a year. Which is better off than most, but not rich.
You’re jumbling together a bunch of different things, a grab bag of right and left, Democrat and Republican. Is the president supposed to give everyone a job? How? I thought the private sector created jobs. Weren’t you just complaining about transfer payments? Are you for more government suddenly? I don’t get it. I’m just confused now.
And what the hell does any of this have to do with me taking on an overtly racist douche like TangoMan?
But you cheerlead, and cheerlead, and chearlead for your team
I confess to despising the modern GOP. I didn’t feel that way when there was still such a thing as a moderate Republican. But yeah, I despise this current incarnation of the GOP. I don’t like racists, I don’t like gay-bashing, I don’t like religious nuts and for those reasons I don’t like the GOP. But I don’t think I’ve ever been a cheerleader for anyone except as an alternative to something worse.
My first vote was for Nixon. I voted for John Anderson because I couldn’t stomach Carter or Reagan. I voted against George HW Bush but I respected him. My biggest early complaint about George W. was that he didn’t ask those of us who could afford it to pay for the war on terror instead of giving us tax cuts and telling us to shop, and my greater complaint was that he half-assed that unpaid-for war. I financed a documentary whose main thrust was to defend the war in Iraq. I wrote a kid’s biography of Colin Powell. In my current books the young capitalist is one of the central heroes. He establishes a freaking gold standard, for Christ’s sake, and refuses to feed anyone who won’t work. Since when am I the defender of radical liberalism? Because I don’t like racists? Listen, genius, I’m a Jew: we are as a people deeply opposed to racists. See if you can figure out why.
Sorry, I missed two of Michael’s comments. This must be my lucky day!
I’m going to assume you’re having a very bad day.
I never have good ones any more. The one bit of good news is that at least no one I know got screwed over by a doctor today. That must mean Mom didn’t see one today. But there’s always tomorrow. The reamings from the doctors come so fast these days one couldn’t even sit down if one wanted to, except on the weekends. So maybe I’m actually having a good day.
I’ve said that the GOP has willingly harbored racists. That’s a matter of historical fact, read about the Southern Strategy. Or read former RNC chairman Ken Mehlman in 2005. Or notice that blacks almost never vote GOP. Or notice the number of racist emails etc.. that come — inevitably — from Republicans.
In fact I don’t think most Republicans are racist. I just think they’re willing to pander to get and keep racist votes.
What drivel. Your party has in the recent past included a noted “former†Klansman, includes Jessie “Hymie Town†Jackson, has been more than okay with the intimidation of white voters by the New Black Panther Party, and even your own President speaks of “typical white people†without even realizing what an ass he is for saying that. Your own party is full of that kind of crap, so spare me the righteous indignation.
I’ve said — here IIRC — that I find Obama’s leadership style very frustrating. But yes, I do like Obama. I’ve never said any criticism of him is racist. I don’t like him on drugs and I think he’s been too cute by half on gay rights. I think so far he’s been a solid B.
Well, I guess you only feel that criticism of Obama is racist if it comes from a Republican. I’ve already quoted you on that crap.
As for giving him a B – unreal. You are delusional if you think that lying sack of shit is doing a B job. “I can’t guarantee old people will get their Social Security checks if the Republicans don’t do what I say.†What a load of manure that is, to cite one example. As for the great job he is doing, the millions and millions of us that are unemployed would disagree that he is doing all that much. IIRC (and I’m pretty sure I do) Obama claimed that unemployment would be at about 6.7% now if we passed his stimulus package. That is an epic fail.
And unlike you “Icepick†I do it under my own name and my own picture.
How very brave of the independently wealthy man to use his own name and picture when no harm can possibly come to him for doing so. Your courage is a testament to all that is fine in humanity.
I was definitely too optimistic on unemployment, which does not differentiate me from most Americans.
It certainly doesn’t differentiate you from Obama’s failed economic team.
Can you provide a link? “Practically accused?â€
I do think inflammatory rhetoric is dangerous. But that’s a long way from your claim.
Asked and answered and linked, bitch. You did it, so quit trying to weasel out of it.
I think a man who will hate another because of the color of his skin is a man who will march a Jew to Auschwitz.
Right. I’m sure Michael Richards, and Barack Obama for that matter, agree. Too bad Richards hates blacks and Obama hates whitey. I am just so certain that if Obama had called, say, George Soros a “typical Jew†you would be just as forgiving as you apparently are – at least as long as it is a Democrat who’s transgressing.
Ice:
You’re just fucking nuts.
It may have been when you called me a loser for not having a job and said that it was entirely my fault. As if I made the fucking employment market. Or is a few comments ago too much for your mighty fucking intellect to handle?
Oh, boo-fucking-hoo. Annie Gottlieb, of all people, called you out a few months ago for always talking about how much more money you have than everyone else. Now you are claiming you HAVEN’T sold all those books? What about all that crap about expensive liquor, and not wanting the riff-raff in the airports’ fancy lounges?
As for being on the side of the fat cats – you support Obama, don’t you? He, like Bush, has done far more for people like Jeff Immelt than he has for people like me. We got tossed a few extra months of unemployment insurance (an idea Obama got from Bush, BTW), and that’s it. No, that’s not fair. Obama is also expanding the amount of regulations that are making it more and more difficult for companies to do business. No doubt you forgot his 1099 bullshit, but I haven’t. The only reason there has been any walkback on that is because he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
You support the Dems. The Dems support the bankers and the financial houses. They pretend to make up for it with a bunch of shitty regulations such as Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley, but when push came to shove, they saved the bankers instead of the rest of us. The only exceptions were their friends at the auto-unions.
No wonder you are confused. I do not like that the government is responsible for all those transfer payments. What I like even less is that it is the only lifeline for those getting them. And a good part of the reason for that is because the government has been working overtime to make certain bankers don’t get burned. BofA and Citi should be broken up, and the current management should be removed – at the point of a bayonet, preferably.
Government interventionism? Yes, and justified. You seem to think that everyone who isn’t a Democrat is opposed to all things government at all times. That is false. I view government as a necessary evil – and the necessary is at least as important as the evil part. Preferably government should try to keep “the little guy” from getting rolled over by giant concerns. That includes big businesses like the banks and quasi-banks (GE, GM, etc). big business blocks like Big Oil and Big Ag, and other governments. (Goldwater got it wrong on the major civil rights legislation in the 1960s – yes, it was the federal government intruding on the rights of states, but only because the staes were intruding on the rights of citizens, who MUST, in a republic, be the fundamental unit of the polity.)
And yes, we always need to be worried about the government crushing our rights. For example, the government shouldn’t be able to willy-nilly tell people what they must and must not buy. But you wouldn’t get those concerns.
But what we have now is something more closely approximating a one party system than we have ever had in out nation. The only real difference between the two groups is that they disagree on how the loot should be divided – Dems want it to go back to government workers and bankers, and Republicans want it to go back to other non-banking big businesses and bankers.
So we see the continuing push of ethanol subsidies, for example. We see stupid stupid STUPID (I tell you THRE TIMES) legislation like Dodd-Frank that will make banking and other financial transactions more expensive and painful for most of us, while not actually doing ANYTHING meaningful to correct the problem, such as bringing back Glass-Steagall and breaking up the big banks.
You see, Michael, I’m not complaining that government should take no action – I am complaining that the government should take actions that benefit the polity as a whole, and not just that narrow sliver of people at the top.
But any accurate analysis of the situation shows that only the wealthy are benefitting. Indeed, only they CAN benefit. And it is actions of both parties that make that possible. It is no accident that deficits have risen under Republican leadership only, Democratic leadership only, and mixed leadership. (Even the Clinton years were not as good as they look on first blush, but why bother with that analysis again? No one believes it except for the few numbers guys that have actually looked at the details, and all the ones associated with Big Whatever or the Democratic party refuse to admit it.)
Both parties, both of them, have been sold to the highest bidders. Which means that anyone cheerleading for EITHER of them is on the side of the fat cats, whether they know it or not.
Not only that, but I have never seen you NOT favor whatever scheme the Dems come up with for expanding the government. Expanding government run healthcare? All in! Bailing out shitty auto companies because their unions worked for Obama? All in! Funding of expensive projects to pay for Democratic payola on the local and state level? All in!
As for all your boo-hoo about how you’ve voted for Republicans in the past – well, that’s crap, or disingenuous, or you are an idiot. You voted for Nixon? Who do you think STOLE the idea of the Southern Strategy from the Democrats? A vote for Anderson was a waste of time. But after that all you have are a bunch of votes against Republicans because they weren’t Democratic enough.
Now you are claiming you HAVEN’T sold all those books? What about all that crap about expensive liquor, and not wanting the riff-raff in the airports’ fancy lounges?
Dude, really, a sense of humor would be of great help to you. Do you not get that that’s a goof? That I’m spoofing myself? Probably not since you take yourself so seriously.
How do you not get that a guy who used to live under a freeway overpass isn’t really upset over airport lounges? I scraped gum off the floors at Garfinckel’s. I scraped old lady shit out of toilet bowls. I lived in places that reeked of vomit and drove rusted-out Dodge Darts. You think I take myself seriously when I’m driving around in my (former) S500?
I (we) have sold roughly 40 million books. Royalty can be as low as 4% of cover on packaged series, 10% on hardcovers, various deals on foreign rights. Basically nothing on book club. I figure I’ve averaged 500k a year since 1989 when I quit pushing a vacuum. Some years a lot more, some years nothing. But the truth is I don’t really know. All the numbers are guesses. I recall getting checks in the 7 figures, and other years nada. Right now I’m doing pretty damned well. Next year who the hell knows?
Half of it was gone in taxes. I gave a bunch away. I did stupid things like live in a 2 bedroom corner suite at the Chicago Ritz-Carlton for weeks. I rehabbed a Victorian and sold it at a loss. I traveled. I had fun. I’m a poor kid who suddenly had money, and worse yet, I’m motivated by deep fear of poverty so I probably subconsciously blew a lot of it. When I’m scared I work, and I love to work, so I’m sure a shrink would make the connection and say I deliberately avoid being sensible with money. Mea culpa. Ask the IRS how rational I am with money. My accountants stare at me like they’re meeting an alien. They speak of me in the soothing tones reserved for escaped lunatics.
Like I said, I don’t invest, I spend.
I don’t take myself nearly as seriously as you seem to take me. I know what I am and who I am. I’m a guy who can come up with a million dollar idea for a book series in 5 minutes. I’ve done it. Repeatedly. I’m smart and imaginative. Actually, I’m incredibly imaginative. I’m a fucking god when it comes to concept or plotting (deathless prose not so much.) But it doesn’t mean I’m rational or sensible. The connection between imagination and schizophrenia is way too close for comfort. I’m in the arts: we aren’t necessarily known for our financial management. Know what I’m thinking about right now? Demodex (look it up) the comic possibilities in the Epic of Gilgamesh and human sacrifice. Oddly enough when you spend your days and nights in fantasy land having imaginary conversations with people who don’t exist, you don’t necessarily behave in ways that would be appreciated by an engineer or a mathematician.
Yeah, I enjoy good cigars and good booze. Know where I learned to appreciate them? Waiting tables in restaurants in Texas and Maryland and Florida. The better class of waiter knows a fair bit about quality goods. I have excellent taste and the ability to defer pleasure usually associated with toddlers.
Stop taking me so fucking seriously, Icepick. I don’t.
Okay, Dave,I’ve got 4,895 words for my next comment. Rather than test this system I’m just going to post it over to my place and link it up.
Here it is, if anyone wants to know what I think should be done, at least to start with. Nothing really new for any of this crowd, I think, but at least this way I don’t have to listen to Michael bitch that he doesn’t know what I am after. Of course, this is just the stuff off the top of my head in the middle of the night….
You’re just fucking nuts.
I won’t deny it. But you are a hypocrit and a liar.
Dave, saw your comment. I knew you would agree with most of it!
The truly discouraging thing is that so much of it is obvious to anyone that actually LOOKS at government spending, and yet only people faar on the outside even consider those options as a group. Washington just won’t even consider them.
The usual fallback position:
“You’re just fucking nuts.”
Cool. I’m in 7th heaven. Dave’s site has created a 35+ thread. I’m so inadequate, so inadequate, having tried to generate this so many times. Stick to my day job I guess.
Look guys, this thread encapsulates many of the important issues of the economic day. If I could be so bold, sling the mud but then consider each others views, take a drink or a good night’s rest, “depersonalize” it and come back tomorrow.
This site is designed purposfully to test ideas at a higher than the usual blog level. Use it as such. That’s why you are here, right…….. Right?
Now, Michael, you ignorant slut…….