US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

btw this is the same glitzy, incestuous party where David Gregory and Karl Rove did this routine, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYZre8kEsuw

i'm only about a quarter through this thing but it is great

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/08/power-struggle-inside-the_n_530247.html?view=print

Power Struggle: Inside The Battle For The Soul Of The Democratic Party

a master class in all the dumb shit we argue about itt constantly

The most recognizable members of the progressive caucus, the ones who spend more time tending to their committees than organizing, were elected amid the collapse of trust in American institutions during the mid-1970s. Watergate Babies Henry Waxman, Charlie Rangel and George Miller took the House by its bull horns: They upended the seniority system in a historic revolt aimed at breaking the hold on power that Southern Democrats had in the House. But as the fall of Nixon gave way to the rise of Reagan, they were forced to spend more than a decade on the defensive. The most effective Democratic legislator during the period was, not coincidentally, Ted Kennedy, who was renowned for his fine-grained, dynamic understanding of the institution and, more importantly, the personal pressures facing each member. He was always on the offense, even with a Republican in the White House.

The battle to make policy on Capitol Hill changed in 1994, when Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took back control of the House of Representatives for the first time in four decades. Legislating was no longer a priority. Undoing legislation was. And that didn't require intellectual infrastructure. Gingrich attacked the institution itself, wiping out funding for caucus staff, the intellectual infrastructure around which liberals in Congress organized. "It was a big blow," Miller says.

i mean, how can you not love writing like that.

this is from like a month ago btw!

ryan grim is great, huffpo has some terrific writers working

btw if you wanna get infuriated

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/04/29/fallout_from_videos_of_labor_course_at_university_of_missouri

I'm generally a fan of Sullivan, but this is too clever by half:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/05/about-last-night.html

Paragraph 1: Above the fray, seeing through the whole charade.
Paragraph 2: Gushing unabashedly.

(And paragraph 3's just weird--I thought she made a very public show of not attending. Is there a joke I'm missing?)

Can someone please explain the disconnect here? I'm not kidding--I don't get it.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/54018.html
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/04/white-house-correspondents-dinner-party-photos-201104#slide=1

I mean, what I don't get is that Politico would print the former without even alluding to the latter.

journalism!

is dead!

I won't click on a Politico link, but I glanced, dispiritedly, at the VF one a few hours ago: the usual marriage of journalism and sycophancy.

That vanity fair piece is... just the worst thing.

that's why I'm tired of all my liberal friends in the last 12 hours posting Obama clips. The time to applaud him isn't when he takes aim at dead enders like Donald Trump with no chance of getting the nomination -- it's when he does something unapologetically liberal.

^^ this. Are we really going to go overboard cheerleading him for this? "You know, he expanded warrantless wiretapping." "Yeah, but did you see how he went after Trump?!"

I thought Obama was fully justified in saying whatever he said about Trump, for obvious reasons. I think him being part of last night is, as things stand today, as much a part of his job description as fundraising or anything else. He can't not attend--you just can't do that. I don't think he's at his best reading scripted jokes, so I've refrained from the cheerleading.

But it's not our job as liberals to applaud him for providing facile Sunday morning talk show fodder for Cokie and Chris.

Look, if last night raised anyone's spirits, may the Lord of Hosts bless him. But I'm sure I'm not the only one whose Facebook updates, like, ALL DAY, were by Dems who've been silent on the White House's capitulations for months yet suddenly applaud the evisceration of...Donald Trump?

It's 2010 all over again. You're scared of Palin yet don't give a fuck about indefinite detention and extending the Bush tax cuts? Really?

i like jokes.

I love earned jokes, and Obama didn't earn them, especially when he capitulated by releasing his birth certificate for the second time.

I really have no idea how you expect him to handle events like last night. Re your comment this morning on a different thread, similar to the comment above: try to imagine the reaction if he had made jokes about Wall Street and indefinite detention--it's a non sequitur. I also don't know why you assume that to say Obama was funny for one night means you don't care about the other. (Or where you get "scared of Palin" from...to find her hypocrisy stunning is to be afraid of her?)

"Earned jokes"?

I don't care so much about him, clemenza -- I care about the constant YOU GO GIRL! I've read today.

a horribly unearned "joke"

(Or where you get "scared of Palin" from...to find her hypocrisy stunning is to be afraid of her?)

Do you really need me to repost ilxors' anxieties about her candidacy?

I never found Dane Cook funny until I found out about his extensive charity work and can-do attitude.

no intelligent person is "afraid" of Palin or Trump. altho yes tbf a presidency for either one would be 100000000x worse than Obama and you know it.

Human nature. If you like Obama--which, as inconceivable as it may be for you, is still true for some (many?) of us--and you see him get beaten up left and right every day (and yes, I understand that goes with the job), it shouldn't be surprising that you'd be happy to see him look good at an event like this. (If that's what you think--again, I'm much more indifferent to his performance last night than most.)

If ilxor's were anxious about Palin's candidacy at some point in time (and I really doubt that's true anymore), doesn't that speak well of them? They knew it would have assured Obama's re-election, so maybe the anxiety was for non-political reasons.

and you know neither one of which was never going to happen, even according to 2009 polls.

xpost

If ilxor's were anxious about Palin's candidacy at some point in time (and I really doubt that's true anymore), doesn't that speak well of them? They knew it would have assured Obama's re-election, so maybe the anxiety was for non-political reasons.

I can't even dissect how awful this reads, clemenza -- as if Obama's reelection was assumed, no questions asked.

i get where albert is coming from but shit idk man

it's like getting mad at how so many of your facebook friends linked to cee-lo's "fuck you" video instead of hyping x or y track

shit I'm more insulted by your misnomer

It's like getting mad at how so many of your facebook friends linked to cee-lo's "fuck you" video yet not criticizing how much St Elsewhere blew.

I can't even dissect how awful this reads, clemenza -- as if Obama's reelection was assumed, no questions asked.

What on earth are you talking about? If Palin had been the nominee, she would have lost. Which I think--I'll have to check this--means Obama would have won.

With all due respect, Alfred, you really are sounding like a humourless scold these days.

too much greenwald will do that to you

clemenza your last post is full of shit tho

not that you're BSing, but it's just a shit post

i think it's okay to be all "hey obama landed some zings, he has some good timing" but what alfred is talking about & you're defending IS pretty ridiculous & extrapolated out also kind of indefensible -- personally i just don't see the point in getting worked up over it

You'll need to be clearer, because I honestly don't know what you mean.

I'm going to quote your post:

f ilxor's were anxious about Palin's candidacy at some point in time (and I really doubt that's true anymore), doesn't that speak well of them? They knew it would have assured Obama's re-election, so maybe the anxiety was for non-political reasons.

The assumption is that ilxors should welcome Obama's reelection because Palin is the nominee, without commenting on his merits.

but I know you believe in some golden land where a moderate, genial chief executive accepts praise from his claque because he doesn't incarnate "extremism."

alfred is right. we all know that Obama can talk the liberal talk when he feels he has to (we watched that during the 2008 campaign). and i even kinda like the lols from last night. but let's see him do something liberal before applauding him.

all I'm saying today is, "Settle down, Beavis. The guy got some good yuks at easy targets."

I mean, we should applaud him because he was funny attacking a guy who has no chance in hell of being the GOP nominee AND after a week in which he released his birth certificate for the SECOND TIME?

if some of us are sounding like humorless scolds ... or butthurt Morbz clones ... it's b/c of this administration's actions compounded with the continued disrespect that the Democratic Party at its highest levels shows to one of its core constituencies. people are only willing to be punching bags for so long.

and pardon me for acting like a Humorless Scold at an event which epitomizes Beltway Establishment Sleaze. I mean, really?!

Okay...I guess I am making an assumption there, that any ilx'or is (whether he/she would say so publically or not) going to prefer Obama to Palin. That does seem like a given to me. Maybe I'm wrong.

1) The dinner is a fact of life.
2) Obama must attend, he must make some jokes, he must sit there while jokes are made about him.
3) Some clown just spent a month questioning his citizenship (and has since moved on to his intellectual legitimacy); he got in a few mild jokes in response.
4) For a day or two, Obama will get some praise.

It just doesn't seem like something to get all worked up over.

As for the golden moderate land I supposedly believe in, the fact that I like Obama has much more to do with his temperament than his politics. Just not a fan of shrillness and stridency.

Let me guess--an indefinite-detention post is close at hand.

i don't wanna mention Hindenburg v. Hitler one more time, but that's really where i stand wr2 Obama's upcoming reelection. i would vote for him only b/c there's no viable alternative, and for no other reason.

Yeah, look, the event doesn't deserve anything more than a nod -- and would have been ten times funnier had Obama never tacitly acknowledged Trump's legitimacy by releasing his birth certificate for the second time. I can't repeat this enough.