…that a straitjacket and a lot of alone time in a padded cell wouldn’t help.
Basically, if you thought Cenk jumped the shark with that hilarious “RAWR! FEEL THE WHINY WRATH OF ME, OBAMA!” rant at the Huffington Post, our boy is here to tell you: you ain’t seen nothing yet.
So yeah. For defending Obama, putting his actions as President in a rational context that actually, you know, makes a lot of sense, Andrew Sullivan is more dangerous than, to name just a few: the actual 9/11 plotter currently rotting in an American jail cell; the 20 to 50 serial killers that are on the loose at any given time; the Republican candidates who would start World War 3 in Iran, Dick Cheney, Nancy Grace. and the people who take this deranged, uber-retarded mush-mouthed clown seriously. Whoops – that last one’s dangerously stupid, not dangerous. My bad.
Oh, by the way, Cenk’s foaming-at-the-mouth response to Sully’s Newsweek article puts him in the company of Fox News and Andrew Breitbart. Now, I’m not saying that Mr Uygur has a predilection for engaging in sexual relations with a particular variety of rodent, but those rats sure don’t fuck themselves, ya know?
[via View Across the Pond]
***You can find Danielle Blake aka DCPlod on the Twitters and at her blog, View Across the Pond.
When does Keith have Cenk on?
Did Barack Obama piss in his corn flakes this morning?
Did he snatch his milk shake and drunk it all up in front of him?
The “left” are scrambling like crazy to put down the fact the things they’ve been bitching about and sure this dictator of a president would approve, isnt going to be approved. So, their mode of whining has been made irrelevant, and they’re lashing out like a 2 year old with the shit fits
I’m waiting on Glen to weigh in and be Debbie Downer on all this in 5…4…..3…2……
He makes me sick & his show is terrible. Typical Blowhard.
Wow.
To paraphrase Harlan Ellison: “He couldn’t have been born yesterday, because no one can get that f**king stupid in only 24 hours!”
Loud, sustained applause…
Cenk’s sountrack is a continual repeat of “What is Love” by Dr. Alban.
Cenk thinks Sullivan is dangerous because most of the British observers of Purotopian behaviour (most – I discount Katty Kay because she was too bad to be on the BBC proper so they gave her to us) talk common sense, and Cenk’s afraid too many people might listen to them.
It takes a Brit to show a lot of people in the US their stupidity. Boy, I never ever thought I’d say that, but it’s true. Our media sucks.
Agreed.
In his book WHAT’S LEFT?, the British journalist Nick Cohen described a lot of the Purotopian behavior that he observed in England. It’s ironic that what he saw over there is happening to the emoProgs over here.
Andrew Sullivan is dangerous because he is one of the little playing cards who “paint the roses red” with both-sides-do-it false equivalency. The Newsweek article, while ably defending Obama as someone who has navigated the Scylla of Congress and the Charybdis of the corporate media, was still wrong to enable the myth leftist critique of the administration is equally wrong.
Criticism can and should be made of this administration from the left that should be based on reason and evidence (as opposed to maligning his character and impugning dark motives. This criticism should have more media attention because it allows for the debate on paths forward occur.
Cenk is a dumbass. People use hyperbole on Twitter all day, but my god how is Andrew Sullivan’s “reasonable conservative” hokum more dangerous than Justice Scalia, Sheriff Arpaio, Governor Walker, Senator Rubio, etc,? Does Sullivan’s garbage help enable the right’s extremism? Yes. Does not that make him more dangerous than the extremists themselves? No.
In modern conservatism, there are two types of people: those who wear the boots, and those who lick them. The bootlickers are the lesser evil and Cenk is off his nut.
You mean, those who wear the jackboots.
If Obama wins this year then he will be able to write the history books that say ‘
Yep, I meant to do that’.
But what if Obama loses? Sullivan claims that the American people understand Obama and see that the Republicans are the losers who are obstructing everything. The problem with this logic is that Obama’s approval ratings are below 50% with higher disapprove than approve and in head to head match ups Obama is tied with Mitt Romney.
If Obama loses then all of the concessions that Obama has offered to Repubs, especially on entitlements, become the new left wing starting point in negotiations with Republicans.
I agree with Sullivan that Obama has accomplished a lot. Turning around the economy. I supported him on the bank bailout and the auto bailout. I supported what he did in Iraq. I supported his getting healthcare reform passed.
The problem I have with a lot of what he has accomplished is that a lot of what he has accomplished would have been considered to be centrist to right wing five years ago. Healthcare reform turned out closer to the McCain/Palin plan than to a Democratic Plan. The War in Iraq was drawn down in three years according to the timeline set by the Bush administration. The bank bailout was designed and implemented by the Bush administration. Obama cut taxes on working people yes, but in a Supply Side cut taxes in a recession as opposed to government spending way. He was even boxed into extending the entire Bush tax cut.
Obama comes across as a more successful version of George W. Bush than an FDR.
Something else to keep in mind is that Sullivan is an old school conservative. When he praises a so called liberal/progressive President for how successful he’s been perhaps being liberal/progressive isn’t what he’s being successful at.
“Obama comes across as a more successful version of George W. Bush than an FDR.”
are you fucking kidding me?
Not in the least.
Like I said the Bank Bailout was enacted by George W. Bush.
The draw down in Iraq took place on the timeline of the Status of Forces agreement as negotiated by George W. Bush.
The Bush tax cuts are still 100% in effect.
Obama’s original push for a stimulus was something like 40% tax cuts and cut in payroll taxes is supply side economics at its best/worst.
Healthcare reform consists of tax credits and healthcare exchanges with no public option at all. McCain/Palin.
The drawdown was happening at 500 a day
Plus no president can snap their fingers and magically transport all soldiers back into the country, so stop acting like it’s possible. How insane can people get.
Wanna suck FDR’s cock don’t ya?
Ahhh, more concern trolling, I see its your turn to do it.
Then if Obama loses, they will learn when the economy crashes again from where it wont easily recover once the Republicans have their way.
You’re gonna learn one way or another
W didnt get bin Laden
W didnt do a heathcare reform that was in play since Teddy Roosevelt
W didnt stop the depression, he caused it
W didnt save the economy, he crashed it
W didnt end the wars he started, or bring down the deficit
So, no, stop please
“Healthcare reform turned out closer to the McCain/Palin plan than to a Democratic Plan.”
I hesitate to engage with you because that one sentence demonstrates a genuine (and hopeless) lack of understanding on your part, or a disingenuous, bad-faith argument. It doesn’t matter what the McCain/Palin plan was (and by the way, I vigorously reject your characterization of their “plan”) because Republicans have never intended to address healthcare reform in any way, EVER. The only way the healthcare crisis was ever going to be addressed–let alone reformed–was through a Democratic Party agenda, empowered by a Democratic President and Democratic control of the two chambers of Congress. Period. So Republicans’ “plans” can’t even be used for meaningful evaluations/comparisons/contrasts among progressives, because Republican “plans” were always offered in bad faith.
I’m glad you noticed this fine post by @DCPlod and featured it here.
Sully’s being discussed hourly on FoxNews but his name is never spoken, and no one there will respond to his requests to come on air and speak for himself.
I tweeted Sully that he should attempt to get on Cenk’s program as well to have a face-to-face conversation with the blowhard.
KwAwk:
“The problem with this logic is that Obama’s approval ratings are below 50% with higher disapprove than approve and in head to head match ups Obama is tied with Mitt Romney.”
Your logic is a bit flawed because you are drawing conclusions from faulty or inapplicable data. An approval rate that hovers at or below the 50% mark is tied into a lot more factors than whether the public buys the argument that GOP obstruction is the problem. Further, the public has had little time to get to know Romney and his disapproval is already relatively high given how early we are in the election year. Romney is an unknown quantity, Obama known. We’ll know a lot more about whether the public buys the obstruction argument by summer.
“The problem I have with a lot of what he has accomplished is that a lot of what he has accomplished would have been considered to be centrist to right wing five years ago. Healthcare reform turned out closer to the McCain/Palin plan than to a Democratic Plan. The War in Iraq was drawn down in three years according to the timeline set by the Bush administration. The bank bailout was designed and implemented by the Bush administration. Obama cut taxes on working people yes, but in a Supply Side cut taxes in a recession as opposed to government spending way. He was even boxed into extending the entire Bush tax cut.”
Healthcare reform hasn’t been accomplished whatsoever in a century. The canard that the ACA is what the GOP proposed in 1992 is false because the GOP killed reform in its entirety. The plan the GOP proposed was purely a political move to fig leaf their essential opposition to any reform whatsoever.
Bush only created a timeline due to local and Iraqi insistence on one in spite of (wait for it) opposition from his own party. It was the antiwar movement and the Democratic party who helped facilitate that timeline. And who is to say that McCain would have withdrew… if you ask McCain today (or any GOP candidate) we should still be there.
TARP was a Bush remedy. However, was the banking bill that followed a Bush remedy? No. Was the creation of a Consumer Agency a Bush remedy? No. I could go on, but to say that the entire bailout plan was Bush is wrong. Look no further than the bailout of the automotive manufacturers and the GOP (wait for it) opposition to the plan to demonstrate that your statement is incorrect.
He extended the Bush tax cuts in exchange for the passage of important extensions of unemployment benefits. Further, you are neglecting the entire stimulus package that helped staunch the wound of the Great Recession.
In fact, your entire set of statements ignore so much of what actually happened that it makes me wonder just what you witnessed all these years. I witnessed a president expend a lot of political capital to help a broken legislative branch pass a lot of crucial and helpful legislation that is turning this country around.
Look at the legislative record of the Pelosi Congress and what they passed. If that had been allowed to come to pass without the “cooling saucer” of the Senate, then nearly every “progressive” critique of Obama would have been moot.
WTL – The Status of Forces agreement has nothing to do with the anti-war movement. It was the negotiated end to the Iraq War in which we returned sovereignty back to Iraq. It stated that US could only have troops in Iraq with Iraq’s permission and the permission to do so ended at the end of the 2010.
Your argument that Obama has given up a lot of political capital to pass the legislation that we’ve seen contradicts what Sullivan is saying in that Sullivan argues that Obama has been deliberately saving up political capital by being conciliatory to the right. I just don’t think the polls bear this out. Conventional wisdom is that a politician who is polling below 50% in an election year is considered to be in trouble. Romney isn’t as unknown as you’d like to make him out to be as he’s been running for President for 5 years now.
Obama may win in 2012 and I actually think it is likely at this point, but if Romney runs a strong campaign Obama could very well lose.
And if my aunt had a dick, she would be my uncle
Nice try at concern trolling, come back now, ya hear
Supply side economics at its worst would be 100% tax cuts and total deregulation because of the Laffer Curve.
Quit overheating your rhetoric. Could the stimulus had been better? Sure. I remember the original argument was that he should have asked for so much more and not lost so much in the bargaining. Could be, but we’ll never know and the stimulus had a definite positive impact on the economy.
And the ACA is so much more than exchanges and credits. You know that. Did McCain/Palin mandate insurers accept applicants with preexisting conditions? Did McCain/Palin reform Medicare Part D?
Your mischaracterizations of things in order to score a cheap Obama=Bush foamfinger smack of trollery.
(Grrr I want to reply directly but I can’t. LIBERAL SMASH)
Actually McCain’s plan would have put those with pre-existing conditions on a State run high risk pool medical plan. A public option if you will.
Sorry if you feel my rhetoric his heated. I’ve grown tired of all the if you disagree with Obama you just don’t understand Obama rhetoric too.
It’s nice how you’re holding up FDR as goalpost. The same FDR that authorized the Japanese internment camps and the same one who excluded blacks from Social Security when it was first introduced.
Sorry, but I prefer progress over perfection. No politician is perfect and the only politician that agrees with you 100% is you.
“Actually McCain’s plan would have put those with pre-existing conditions on a State run high risk pool medical plan. A public option if you will.”
No. Utter bullshit. There never was a real plan from any Republican candidate, because their real plan was to prevent healthcare reform. Period. Their plan has always been exactly nothing. It doesn’t matter what their rhetorical position was and what the fantasy outcomes would’ve been (“a public option if you will”).
And I call bullshit on your “I’ve grown tired of all the if you disagree with Obama you just don’t understand” crap too. You’re being called out on the flaws undergirding your criticisms. Clear those up and you may get a better response here.
Reading this, I note that as far as I could tell, McCain’s public health care strategy was “make a wish and it will go away”.
Cenk Uygur is entitled to his opinion. However his rant at Sullivan is no business of mine. I have as little concern for the rants of Uygur as I have for the rants of Sullivan. I am, though, a trifle surprised at the views of Sullivan; he is, usually, much more cranky. And, I really do not expect either the right wing or the left wing to have much use for PBO. He is, after all, a centrist trying to do what is possible.
Both the left and the right consider ‘politics as the art of the possible’ to be contemptible and corrupt. It is far better to ‘speak the truth to power’ and arrogate a position of moral supremacy over such trimmers and compromisers as PBO.
At the end of the day, I will take PBO over Cenk Uygur.
No thank you Cenk Uygur. I am not buying what you are selling.
“rats sure don’t fuck themselves, ya know?”
Hah! Cenk’s on the job–it’s the best he can aspire to, unfortunately. That and ferocious ankle biting.
Cenk’s just trying to cover his ass. He’s been exposed. If Cenk had any integrity he would put Sully on his show. He would either do that or break the article down and defend himself. This Cenk character is pretty dense.
So Andrew Sullivan is worse than smallpox in the eyes of chief flamethrower at the ‘Young Turks’ Wailing Wall, because he’s saying what most sensible moderates and rational thinkers are saying – Obama is a pragmatist with a long view and is the best option for our nation right now.
The other sensible dude, Jon Huntsman (who ironically, was running against his old boss trying to out-Obama Obama) is out. Romney is completely plastic and the rest are completely crazy.
But, because Obama hasn’t create bacon-flavored unicorns for all the thumbsuckers like Cenk Uygur, anyone who sees anything positive about the man is a criminal who deserves no less than death.
Amazing how all the anti-Obama Left have lost their minds and expect us to join the party.
The Health Care plan has that little Medical Loss Ratio thingy that is just now kicking in too.
I read the article and enjoyed most of it. I liked the way Sullivan laid out the reasons we should re-elect Obama.
Damn, we’ve come a long ways from the Bush years. now if we can only end the filibuster and send Boner packing! Because THAT’S the only reason we aren’t further along.
Life would be good.
Moderators, please ban Kempsternyc for his/her pragmatic insistence that Congress is a co-equal branch of government and has a big impact on what is possible to achieve. ;)
LOL! This reminds me a comment made to me on a PL website that said, “Congress needs a President that can lead it.” I busted out laughing and reminded the commentor that Congress is an equal branch of our government with its own powers. It’s amazing how so many of us need a refresher “Civics 101″ course.
I really have difficulty these days distinguishing between the usual EmoProg Whining Points and this: http://www.theonion.com/articles/ask-a-faulknerian-idiot-manchild,12248/
Oh my god, I’ve never seen that before. Holy stuff, I love that concept! I think this made my day. Maybe my week. I’m going to search the web for more faulknerian-idiot-manchild advice columns.
Thanks, Kerry! :-)
Ooh! You know who else would be a great advice columnist? Ignatius J. Reilly. Or some of the other characters from A Confederacy of Dunces.
Cenk is an idiot. Enough said!
Cenk Uygur is a complete idiot. The good news is that nobody watches Current TV. This blurb will give you a feel:
On the night of the Iowa caucuses, for instance, the average viewer of Current was 36 years old. Granted, there were only 47,000 of them at any given time that evening — but they were youthful, which might help Current attract higher rates for advertisements in the future.
The average age of the 1.3 million people who watched CNN’s coverage of the Iowa caucuses was 56. For Fox News, which had 2.6 million viewers, the average age was 63; for MSNBC, which had 1.2 million viewers, the average age was 65.
—//NYTimes