Wingnuts do tend to stamp their little feet an awful lot.

Of course, as usual, I have to marvel (as I’m simultaneously disgusted) at the finely-honed wingnut ability to accuse the Democratic POTUS they’ve tied into knots of being Most Radically Leftist President Of All Time, Bringer of SocialFascist Destruction!, while ignoring the last 40+ years of the Republican reign of terror and the death and destruction left in its wake.

What a sickeningly priapistic bunch of homunculi…

This is related to what David Frum was writing about yesterday.

Just like with Clinton’s economic program in the early ‘90s, they didn’t just express some skepticism and vote for the parts they liked and join the negotiations; they stood up and said “This. Shall. Not. Pass.”

And it passed.

As big a jackass as Newt Gingrich is and was, the one thing you must say for him is that he came up as a backbencher in a minority. He knew that Democrats can and do win elections and majorities. The generation of idiot cousins he helped raise literally does not think those things are possible. If the Democrats win it was ACORN. If it wasn’t ACORN it was the media. If it wasn’t the media, then people just didn’t understand how evil the Democrats are. Probably all three.

They literally don’t know what to do now.

I was just thinking along these same lines.  I have a friend whose response to small children complaining about something trivial (and for those without children, this is something they do constantly) was to make a huge deal about it and finish with the sentence “That is the WORST thing I’ve ever heard happen to ANYONE!”  My five year old is smart enough to be embarrassed by this.  My FIVE YEAR OLD.  I think you have to willfully destroy some part of your brain to really believe the “this is tyranny!” shtick, because we all seem to be born with more innate common sense.

—TP in UT

But John, the Republican Party isn’t the party of no, or so I’ve heard tell.  I just hope they keep it up, so people can see them for the pure obstructionists they are. 

The kicker is that the state of the economy will determine how many seats the sitting President’s party loses in the mid-terms.  Hopefully not many.

Representative Steve King is proposing secession (although, to be fair, it seems like Republicans increasingly propose secession as a solution for everything).

Still not seeing this as a drawback for liberals…

They fancy themselves heroes against tyranny

They fancy themselves all kinds of things—usually of the movie-hero variety—that are typically beyond their abilities and/or understanding.

WOW.

John McCain has promised that the GOP will obstruct for the rest of the year.

What, like they weren’t going to do that anyway?

Megan McArdle is theorizing that Republicans will end Medicare and Social Security just to get back at Democrats.

I gleefully look forward to how the “get your government hands off my Medicare” crowd is going to react should they try.

The nation’s first black teabagger (complete with 1995’s sweetest Marvin the Martian hoodie), rather than exploding as matter meets antimatter, decided to threaten Barack Obama’s life.

I wonder if anybody put him up to this, on the grounds of “they can’t say it’s racist if YOU say it.”

PowerLine is legitimately afraid of death panels.

Which only exist when they’re government, and recission practices and lifetime caps and claim denials/slowdowns don’t count.

Representative Steve King is proposing secession (although, to be fair, it seems like Republicans increasingly propose secession as a solution for everything).

Does this mean they’d actually shut up about what us liberals want to do, or would they keep badgering us about our evil sinful abortions and gay marriages and OMG TAXES, and eventually try to pull on us what they did to Iraq? I swear, the instant they figure out that the subterranean tax levels they prefer to put up with* won’t pay for a bloated, state-of-the-art military, they’d start pushing to “liberate the poor Americans from liberal tyranny,” and when a nation divorces, who gets the nukes?

*and wouldn’t THAT be a lovely conversation, when the no-taxes-at-all libertarians and the we-need-the-world’s-most-kickass-military armchair generals collide over how to run their new nation. Almost as epic as the Mormons, Catholics, and Evangelicals discussing the finer details of the Christian Nation Amendment in their constitution.

Watching the Republican hysteria and exploding heads is actually the most satisfying aspect of this whole business.  I do rather worry about a revival of rightwing violence like we had in the late 70s and again in the 90s.

I’m sick to death of the whining about how liberals killed democracy with this vote.

HELLLLLOOOOO!  They ran campaigns on health care reform.  We elected them.  We called and badgered them to pass a bill.  It sucks for the most part, but pass it they did by a majority in a democratic vote.

That’s democracy.  The most people voting win.  Even if you don’t like it.  When they had a majority, they had no trouble shouting “Deal with it!” and claiming they had coattails and mandates.

the fact that any mandate came from the election by the majority seems to elude them.  Just b/c you want something and root for your team, doesn’t mean they win.  That’s why we play the game/vote.

I know McMegan and Erickson and the rest are full of shit when they spout things like repealing not only this bill but also Social Security and Medicare and that pi is equal to 22/7, but what I don’t get is why no one stops and takes the nanosecond it requires to see that even if Republicans take back both houses in November, there’s no freaking way they’re going to get the super-majorities necessary to override vetoes. I mean, what makes them think that they’ll get in, pass legislation, and that Obama will sign it? They’ve already cast him as the spawn of the Kenyan Musli-Devil—he’s going to work with them? Or are they going to get enough seats to impeach him as well? Why not just claim we’ll all be riding around on flying unicorns that shit platinum and whose farts smell like deep-fried Twinkies while we’re at it?

Representative Steve King is proposing secession (although, to be fair, it seems like Republicans increasingly propose secession as a solution for everything).

Still not seeing this as a drawback for liberals…

It depends on whether or not it would be geography based, or demographically based.

Texas is the state that always comes up in this silly secession talk, but keep in mind - the city of Houston just became the largest U.S. city to ever elect an openly gay mayor.  Obviously Houstonians can’t be all that bad if they were able to do something progressive that has yet to happen in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago, the only three U.S. cities larger than Houston.

So what do you do about the tens of millions of non-wingnut citizens who live in red states but do not have the wherewithal to just pack up and leave if we give a bunch or red states sovreignty so they can trample upon their poorest citizens even more?

Hell, the fact that we require Texas to be a part of the Union is probably the only thing preventing millions of Hispanic Texans from being sent to concentration camps.

The nation’s first black teabagger (complete with 1995’s sweetest Marvin the Martian hoodie), rather than exploding as matter meets antimatter, decided to threaten Barack Obama’s life.

I wonder if anybody put him up to this, on the grounds of “they can’t say it’s racist if YOU say it.”

Perhaps.  Though if Mr. Martin was stupid enough to fall for that, he probably deserves the world of grief I imagine he got from the FBI today.

The entire notion that they even could repeal this bill anytime soon is preposterous.

Let’s pretend their wildest fantasies come true and they win every single Senate seat this November - that would give them 59 U.S. Senate seats.  I realize there’s no chance in hell of that happening, but let’s just pretend for a moment that they pull off the biggest midterm election coup of all time (they seemed to be convinced that they will).

That’s enough to repeal, right?  Wrong.  Even if they pulled off such a thing via reconciliation rules, there’s absolutely no doubt that Obama would veto it, which means they would actually need 67 Senate votes to override the veto.  Ballgame.

These dipshits don’t even understand simple math.

These dipshits don’t even understand simple math.

Those dipshits can barely read the Constitution, much less understand math.  These are people who have problems wrapping their brains around the concept of a secular society.  They do not understand Article VI or the First Amendment.  Or they are like Religious fundamentalists, they pick and choose what part of the Constitution they like, For some reason, they really think that the Second Amendment applies to individuals instead of establishing the National Guard on the state level.

This, I think, is where the back-loaded nature of the bill is a really nasty trap for the republicans. Because agitating for repeal means standing up loudly in favor of rescission and pre-existing condition exclusions and making medicare patients pay for the donut hole again.

The big question for me is going to be whether this is going to be like the stimulus, with all the sturm und drang followed by republicans taking credit for all the good things congress brought to their communities over their dead bodies. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them campaigning on a repeal platform while sending out press releases about insurance reform successes.

paul,
Of course they will—they’re politicians, after all. And in a couple of years, no one will even mention how contentious this bill was when it passed, because there will be another “worst thing ever” to rail about, and it’ll be the fifteenth such worst thing ever since this one passed.

Re: Secession.

South Carolina has attempted to secede from the union twice.  The second time, we held a civil war just to stop them. I say, next time, let ‘em go.

Talking about secession is mental masturbation. Canada and Belgium are more likely to split up than the USA.

It’s stupid to assume all states will be liberal/conservative for all time,l anyway. Vermont never voted for FDR, Idaho voted for him all four times. Kansas and Nebraska were hotbed of progressivism in the 19th Century while Connecticut was uber-conservative.

In a democracy the minority accepts the decision of the majority while minority rights are protected. You don’t get to leave just because you don’t like an election result, if you accept that principle that you can, representative government becomes completely impossible.

After all, when does it stop? Once Virginia seceedes because they don’t like Obama, does Fairfax County get top seceed because they don’t like McDonnell?

Partitions only make sense when they’re done on ethnic/linguistic grounds, like Yugoslavia and the USSR or Canada if it chose to broke up.

So what do you do about the tens of millions of non-wingnut citizens who live in red states but do not have the wherewithal to just pack up and leave if we give a bunch or red states sovreignty so they can trample upon their poorest citizens even more?

Give it two decades lead time, and arrange “swaps” to ease the pain - the wingnuts go south and the sane head north.

Talking about secession is mental masturbation.

Which describes the raison d’etre of the entire blogosphere. So there!

Give it two decades lead time, and arrange “swaps” to ease the pain - the wingnuts go south and the sane head north.

Cause, hey! That worked REAL well in the Indian Subcontinent and Palestine!

Really, you might want to re-think that.

I got a better idea while we’re doing the mental masturbation thing—Quebec becomes independent and the rest of the Canadian provinces become American States. Poof! Instant and permanent Democratic majority in the Senate and Electoral College. And likely filibuster proof. You got Wyoming? Well, Prince Edward Island gets two Senators now!

Oh yeah, and if the most conservative states left, they’d have a stranglehold on the energy reserves of North America. A wingnut Saudi Arabia. A Christianist OPEC.

Oh, and also a strangehold on, oh, our entire fucking food supply. And really, a good chunk of the WORLD’S food supply. They just take our coal, oil, uranium, wind power, solar power, corn, wheat, soybeans, cattle, our fresh water, completely under right wing control with no outside checks at all.

Yeah, no downside at all!

They are going to get rid of Medicare?  I thought that was was they said the Democrats were trying to do?  Those lying bastards!

I find it hilarious that McArdle insists that HCR is some sort of scorched earth policy.  When the Nov. elections come in I find it hard to believe that democrats won’t have whittled the best features out and smashed their republican opponents with it.  Course the funny thing is how she plans to have republicans elected to dismantle SS or destroy medicare (which would immediately get overturned in the next election).  Their best answer is to bitch, moan, and try to secede.

These attitudes just show how unsure they really are about November and how well the HCR bill will work towards helping everybody.

Give it two decades lead time, and arrange “swaps” to ease the pain - the wingnuts go south and the sane head north.

Man, fuck that. I’m not living in snow just because there’s a bunch of rednecks in the central and northern parts of my state. Why should the racists get the good shit?

@9:

Watching the Republican hysteria and exploding heads is actually the most satisfying aspect of this whole business.  I do rather worry about a revival of rightwing violence like we had in the late 70s and again in the 90s.

Well, yeah. When I remember the children who died in Oklahoma City, suddenly it all becomes a great deal less amusing.

“Not your entire food supply.  Last time I checked, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin and California still trend blue.  That’s a good chunk of food right there.”

I can’t speak for Minnesota or Wisconsin because I don’t know much about their demographics/geography, but it’s interesting/unfortunate that for the most part the strongly agricultural areas of Washington, Oregon, and California are pretty uniformly “Red”.  In California, the tension between the “liberal” (and highly populated) cities/counties/areas and the “conservative” rural counties/areas has lead to several attempts to split the state into two or more separate states over the last century or so. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing had been attempted in Washington or Oregon…

No, no, no, no, no, no secession. This secession talk is fucking GREEDY of them, and we should call them on it. When we went to war with Iraq and liberals didn’t like it, they didn’t tell us we could secede if we wanted to. They said “Love it or leave it” and they didn’t say JACK SHIT about taking our land with us.

If they want to not be part of the US anymore, they can pick their lazy asses up and MOVE OUT OF IT like they kept telling us to do.

Food:
Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming - they transport their food exports west, through WA and OR. That’s another huge chunk of food stuffs going nowhere easily unless they traverse Blue.  Then of course, who gets the Dept of Commerce?  Those red states are dependant on their exports to other states and countries.  That would be difficult as seperatist states - tarrifs can be useful things, just like bridles or clubs.
This was part of the reason for 2 Senators for every state, it helped bring the more rural states on board with the whole idea of a Congress.  Without the rural states, the industrial urban ones starve; without the industrial urban ones, the rural ones go bankrupt.  There needs to be a balance of interests.
Red WA or IA is not equivalent to Red AL or MS.  It really, really isn’t.

DrDick (9):

I do rather worry about a revival of rightwing violence like we had in the late 70s and again in the 90s.

The amount of conserative domestic terrorism with a Democrat in the White House, versus the amount of liberal domestic terrorism with a rightist in the White House, makes me wonder if conservaties can be trusted with power.

Caren (10):

I’m sick to death of the whining about how liberals killed democracy with this vote.

That’s the new talking point, and I think it might work, frankly, particularly on the people who had no strong opinion on healthcare reform.

I think the Democratic talking point should be “this was a rare situation when the right thing to do intersected with the popular thing to do, and we asked the Republicans to join us in doing it over and over again, and every time, they refused.” I don’t think Democrats are capable of talking points, though, and they certainly can’t pull off that one.

makes me wonder if conservaties can be trusted with power.

The last administration already answered that question with a resounding “NO!”

You do not pray to George Washington.

I was chatting with a semi-random friend on an online game last night, and he started complaining about the healthcare bill.  He said that his biggest problem was with his money paying for abortions!  Now I’ve talked to him before and he didn’t seem to be that out of touch with reality.  I calmly explained to him that abortion coverage was never on the table because the Hyde amendment prohibits it, and Stupak made extra super-duper sure that it won’t be covered, for realz.  I have no idea where he got the idea that abortion would be covered, but I seemed to to have gotten through to him.  It just amazes me that the general public is so misinformed on these very basic issues.

I often wonder if the Republicans are only mad about this because they know the public wants health care reform, but their party won’t get credit for it since it’s happening under a Democratic president.

I often wonder if the Republicans are only mad about this because they know the public wants health care reform, but their party won’t get credit for it since it’s happening under a Democratic president.

Of course. And they’re especially frustrated because their base of slavering lunatics made it impossible for them to come up with a serious alternative that could appeal to moderate voters. And anyway they also know perfectly well that Obamacare IS a Republican plan, which must make this particularly galling.

This is brilliant and insightful, every word of it.

Not your entire food supply.  Last time I checked, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin and California still trend blue.  That’s a good chunk of food right there.

Well, but almost all of our corn and wheat, which is the most important foodstuff.

And again, they’d own our energy supply, whether fossil fuels, nuclear, or green. Also I’ll be damned if I see Yellowstone privatized and torn up to drill for oil and coal, as they would likely do

It just amazes me that the general public is so misinformed on these very basic issues.

Comment #39: catgirl

When you consider 90% of all talking heads and their guests are Republicans, are you really amazed?

Ben,
Not really true on wheat, the most productive area is the Palouse in northern ID (the “liberal” part of the state, such as it is) and eastern to central WA.
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Crops_County/pdf/AW-PR08-RGBChor.pdf
Especially not winter wheat.
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Crops_County/ww-pr.asp

And if you want to talk hay, the big players include OR, WA and NY.
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Crops_County/ah-pr.asp

A lot of farm land in MA, NY, CA, WA and other blue states is currently fallow, but that’s more because it would be more expensive to work and not bring in all that much while the land is considered more valuable for non-farm uses, not because it is wholy unproductive.

Yeah, secession is a dream given that the United States is more economically and culturally interdependent every year. It was a dream for the first Confederacy whose quaint notions of Jeffersonian landed gentry forgot that their entire economy was dependent on the industrial revolution in England and the North. A good chunk of the South now take their cues from Martin Luther King rather than Robert E. Lee and actively fight the forms of discrimination that still remain.

The cowboys also depended on railheads to markets, and by the time my grandfather joined the U.S. Cavalry in the depression, they were mostly shuffling troops and mules by rail. Colonization of “the west” was critically dependent on the flow of trade goods from the East.

Now, things are even more integrated. Even in so-called “farm” states, a large chunk of the economy involves small and highly-networked industrial plants that moved out of the rust belt to small cities. A Toyota assembly plant here, a furniture plant there, a condenser plant the next county over, engines and suspensions just down the highway. Those farms demand quick access to national markets and a steady supply of parts, machinery, chemicals, and fuel. And that’s not touching the highly-mobile information-economy workers, or the exurbans and snowbirds.

It couldn’t happen in the 1860s, and I don’t think it will happen now.