07
Aug
Just What We Needed
As if the health care debate was not already stupid enough, America’s dumbest quitter chimes in:
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
Every time Sarah Palin opens her mouth I think of the old joke country song- “How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away.” I’m seriously ready for our Chinese overlords to take over. We’re just too stupid a country to function.
Downpuppy
Hard to beat McMegan in a dumbness pissoff-
http://meganmcardle.theatlanti.....ing_tu.php
mcc
DEATH PANEL
Michael
So little Buttcrack (or whatever the fuck its name is) is now going to be the poster child for imaginary death panels?
Can I please volunteer to run the death panels? I’m so looking forward to consigning conservatives to their doom.
JR
“Death boards” sounds nice. I’ve been calling them “ObamaCare Octogenarian Assassination Squads,” but I worried I might be a bit on-the-nose.
John Cole
@Downpuppy: Yeah, that was a full Goldberg rebunking right there- “I’m so wrong it proves how right I am!” and then she goes on to quote different time periods than originally discussed, ignore the KFF study in the link she links to, and conflate group vs. individual rates. Just ridiculous.
JR
“Death Panel”: the best alternative to vinyl siding at a fraction of the cost!
Fencedude
@Downpuppy:
I caught the tail end of Megan and some other hack on Marketplace today.
Stupid stupid stupid
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
They’re so far off the reservation that they’re in another galaxy. At least in the case of Palin we know that she probably believes what she says—she’s really that freaking dumb and ignorant. For godwin’s sake, she quotes Michelle Bachman in her latest anti-healthcare reform screed on facebook.
Shalimar
She’s confused. Liberals are the bleeding-heart ones who actually want to help other people in need, including children with disabilities, whereas Conservatives are the ones who think it’s God’s will that you should die if your parents aren’t hard-working enough to pay for your care.
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
Whatever you do don’t look at Sarah Palin’s wall on facebook—it’ll make your head explode.
Tattoosydney
And eventually it will all join up in one huge, swirling vortex of stupidity. And then Gozer the Gozerian will come.
We can haz Friday night open thread, Mr Cole?
I’m tired of the wingnuttage, and want to talk about doggies, or music, or books, or some shit that doesn’t involve screaming morons.
MikeJ
Whenever I see a group of old people sitting together at the local starbucks, I like to get one of my friends to sit with me at the next table/sofa and discuss whether we should build the reëducation camp at Hanford Nuclear Reservation or Moses Lake. I guess we’ll have to add oven availability to the criteria in our discussions.
General Winfield Stuck
And it will be a free Death Panel. Sockalist to the core.
Anon
The worst part is that after they make you abort your Down syndrome fetus, they force you to eat the fetus while chanting “Kill whitey!”. And then they go through your email and if you’ve sent anything critical of The Chosen One, they put you into a re-education camp and force you to get gay married. And then they take away all your guns and shoot you with them.
That’s not the America I know. Not at all.
(And then they make you convert to Islam.)
Xel
Oh Sullivaaaaaaaaan…
mcd
Yes! This just keeps getting better.
I still say the best way to deal with these people is ridicule … “Your side is so far out in rightfield you lost to a socialist, terrorist, Muslim, Madrassa-schooled, Democrat Party, black dude! That’s leadership we can believe in, my friends!”
I’m not sure how close we are to Peak Wingnut, but we’ve got 3 more years to go (at least!). Thank you, Al Gore. You’re super awesome.
Awesom0
On a non-infuriating note, I give you James “One of the only reasons I continue to read the Atlantic” Fallows: WIN!
DonkeyKong
“This country doesnt need less Trigs, it needs more!” -Sarah Palin
Awesom0
http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/
utters obscenities to self…
SiubhanDuinne
O/T
Just heard on the nooz that autopsy results on Billy Mays show cocaine in his system.
It saddens me. Doesn’t surprise me, but it does make me sad.
4tehlulz
DEATH PANEL WILL BE OPENING FOR DETHKLOK BUY YOUR TICKETS NOW
mcd
(Sorry, stuck in moderation)
Yes! This just keeps getting better.
I still say the best way to deal with these people is ridicule … “Your side is so far out in rightfield you lost to a s ocialist, terrorist, Muslim, Madrassa-schooled, Democrat Party, black dude! That’s leadership we can believe in, my friends!”
I’m not sure how close we are to Peak Wingnut, but we’ve got 3 more years to go (at least!). Thank you, Al Gore. You’re super awesome.
Michael
I did. it did.
It was everything I could do to not sign up and rage at the stupid fuckers, because I don’t want it to pop up on my news feed that I signed up for the page.
mcd
I’m stuck in the hell of moderation!
Lyle4
That would be so fucking funny…...if it wasn’t already true. Don’t millions of sick Americans already have to stand in front of “death panels” (aka insurance companies) and explain why they need life saving procedures?
Shut The Fuck Up, Wasilla Dumbass.
Olly McPherson
Jesus. I am honestly stunned by that quote.
EconWatcher
This is absolutely true, I was just thinking to myself earlier today: “I’m bored. I wish Sarah Palin would reappear with something good.” And bless her, she did.
You have to admit, our public discourse will be duller when her fifteen minutes are finally over. She’s like the insane girlfriend I could not quite bring myself to dump when i was a freshman in college because, well, she kept life interesting.
joe from Lowell
Let’s keep in mind, John, this country rejected this woman, and holds her in very low esteem.
YellowJournalism
Holy shit. The stupid almost made my water break.
parksideq
“Obama’s death panel”? Is that akin to the health insurance industry’s practice of “murder by spreadsheet”?
Someone wake me up after the Wingnut Event Horizon. Hopefully all of the stupid will have collapsed upon itself once it’s over.
PeakVT
@Fencedude: I just heard that segment. The dumbass continued to push her thoroughly eviscerated (by Ezra) concerns about “innovation”. It was nails-on-the-chalkboard stupid.
tc125231
“>Give some serious thought to a more or less benignly motivated military coup. It’s starting to look possible. We just CAN’T function.
bvac
pfft, that baby isn’t even hers.
Just Some Fuckhead
I know it’s seems pretty cool to imagine a system whereby masked officials of a government bureaucracy decide who dies and then carry out the elimination with sterile efficiency but the best euthanasia is the downhome kind you do yourself in the privacy of your own death chamber.
When my uncle got Alzheimers he pulled me aside and said, “Opie, I don’t wanna go out shitting myself and wandering around Mayberry naked and shitty. If I can’t be sheriff anymore, I don’t wanna live.”
We hugged and cried and hugged some more and then I killed him with his own .45 and made it look like a suicide. I may be old fashioned but I wouldn’t trade those precious last hours for all the Obama Death Panels in the world.
parksideq
@4tehlulz: Now THAT’S a brutal set line-up
mcd
Classic from Digby: Right Charlie. “Out here” we see that there is one party that has gone apeshite insane and has unleashed a bunch of bloodsucking zombies all over the country and another party that even with the best interpretation available, so ineffectual it can’t hit water if it falls out of a fucking boat. I guess you can say that they are both to blame, but I don’t think my solution to that problem would be to his liking.
freelancer
Such a system is downright evil.
Not to mention, Nonexistant.
Palin/Frankenstein’s Monster 2012!
EEH
Does she not realize that in the America she knows and loves, it was once perfectly acceptable to warehouse a child like Trig with the full approval of society?
I was born in 1962 to older parents and I’ll never forget the day when my mom told me that if I or my siblings had been a Down’s child, they had been prepared to immediately put us in an institution. I don’t know that my dad would have followed through with it, but I know without a doubt that my mother would have.
Perry Como
They got the wrong guy to do the slap chop commercials.
lamh31
I figured out what my prob is with some of the more extreme elements of the GOP (and sometimes on the left, just not as much it seems)... STUPIDITY.
I have ONE real pet peeve in life, that I just ain’t got the patience for, and that STUPID people. I don’t mean ignorant people, I mean STUPID people. Contrary to popular belief, there is a difference between people who ar just ignorant of the particular a specific subject, hell I’m pretty darn ignorant when it comes to some of the fiscal issue, and some of the nitty gritty healthcare legislative issues too, but I am certainly, not willfully ignorant i.e. STUPID. Most people who are ingnorant ont a subject, give opinions on theory, but do not try to state these opinions as FACTS. The willfully ignorant (STUPID) tries to take opinions and innuendos and state them as FACT, i.e. Obama is a Muslim, Obama refused to say the pledge of allegiance, Obama is the anti-christ, Obama health care is like Nazi health care, ya get my drift.
The willfully ignorant takes prides in their ignorant, and WILLFULLY take strides to remain IGNORANT.
Ugh, as a scientist, it pisses me off when people when given actual damn near 99.9999999% proven facts will still believe the non-factual elements of an issue.
You cannot have REAL conversations with the willfully ignorant. They refuse to budge. You CAN have REAL discussions with the simply ignorant, because they at least are open to learning enough so as not to be ignorant anymore.
Thoughtcrime
I think we now know what percentage of idiots it takes to destroy a society. By strange coincidence, it’s the same percentage that composes the Republican base.
parksideq
@Anon: You win tonight’s edition of “The Internets”
steve s
Death Board. Ha. For some reason it reminded me of Death Blow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkwJ_Iyvilk
wasabi gasp
The old folks and disabled are gonna be shot from planes. They won’t even see the shit coming. What the fuck is her problem?
Blue Raven
@wasabi gasp:
If we’re going to do this, we have to do it right. I demand Carousel.
JGabriel
It sounds like a fifties SF movie title:
Or a Jerry Springer episode.
.
helenkwan
lamh31: A term I use is “aggressively dumb”-The ghastly Palin and her freakish supporters are perfect examples.
matoko_chan
Palin/Bachman 2012
Lets start a PAC!
;)
malraux
@mcd: I’m pretty sure there’s a drug for that, but I can’t really mention which one now can I? Also shoe-s!
Thoughtcrime
Obligatory link to America’s future if we continue down this path:
http://www.matttrailer.com/idiocracy_2006
Pasquinade
National Down Syndrome Congess’ statement on health care insurance reform:
Why do we need health care insurance reform?
People with Down syndrome have been and continue to be discriminated against with regard to access to health insurance, solely on the basis of the diagnosis of Down syndrome and without consideration of their individual health status or health histories.
For those people with Down syndrome who do have congential or other health conditions requiring medical intervention, insurance companies have denied them access because of their preexisting conditions.
The whole issue of access to health insurance places an extraordinary burden on families and persons with Down syndrome and other disabilities. Families and adults with Down syndrome are forced to consider issues of obtaining or maintaining health insurance coverage above career and other significant life decisions. Even when they are able to access health insurance coverage, the financial cost can be exorbitant.
Both historically and within the context of reform movements, people with Down syndrome and other disabilities face considerable challenges to accessing quality care. People with Down syndrome are entitled to receive any and all treatments that are medically indicated. Proposed health care delivery systems which involve rationing of services threaten to have a disproportionately negative impact on persons with disabilities. Quality of life defined by persons without disabilities is not an acceptable rationing criterion.
http://www.ndsccenter.org/resources/position6.php
h/t to: http://www.democraticundergrou.....94#6247798
freelancer
OMG! They’re already training government employees and armchair airmen to do this via Simulation!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPuUsEKgxsk
wasabi gasp
Ah…very good.
Carousel, that’s a food processor, amirite? ;)
shelley matheis
“Death Panels????” God fucking help us. I think Palin sat up too late watching ‘Logan’s Run’ on the Sci-Fi channel.
I have an idea, a ‘Basic Competency Panel’ for folks looking to run for public office. You know, just to verify that they have enough working brain cells to ensure they don’t embarrass themselves and the rest of the nation.
Meyer
I’m sorry, I laughed and laughed at that quote. I mean, seriously. Who the hell could possibly not see that quote and realize that she’s nuts, that the entire GOP has been taken over by dangerous loons. Really. Nine months ago, this woman was in line to be president of the most powerful country in the world. Really!
And then I noticed that my boss’s boss is a member of the “Sarah Palin Prayer Circle” on Facebook.
I’m building a fucking bomb shelter. Or moving to New Zealand. Or something. Get me the fuck outta here.
bobbo
Dear God people! Don’t you see the opportunity here? We need Sarah out front and center leading the charge against health care reform. She will do for the opponents of reform what she did for John McCain.
Free Sarah Palin!!
Jay in Oregon
@wasabi gasp:
What, no love for Bill Hicks?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYydV4fTWgg
Jaquestraw
Wow, you guys really know how to gloat,but I guess you braniacs have the right after all your VP is a freaking genius.
Cat G
Jaquestraw at 58 – you’re damn right, compared to Palin he IS a freaking genius. McCain saw the same star bursts as Rich Lowry…idiots…
jcricket
So I just got back from seeing GI Joe (sue me, I’m between jobs right now) and it’s clear what’s going on. Obama is Cobra Commander. Or maybe Destro.
Red State Strike Force and the teabaggers are just like GI Joe. Real American Heros. Knowing is Half the Battle.
It’s all so obvious.
General Winfield Stuck
@Cat G:
That’s what you call a big fat softball, served up with ribbons and bows by Mr. Straw.
Meyer
...and here we go:
#deathpanel on twitter.
I like this.
SammyB
“Jaquestraw
Wow, you guys really know how to gloat,but I guess you braniacs have the right after all your VP is a freaking genius.”
I don’t remember anyone saying Biden wasn’t the best at the gaff but that doest mean Sarah Palin is not completely freakin nuts. I also checked out the facebook page there is some scary shit there. Makes me feel good that I’m tucked away here in Canada, luckily i still got exactly 35 years before my government decides I am no good to society and shoots me a from a helicoptor. You know ‘universal health care’ and all.
JK
Yet again, further proof that Sarah Palin is dumber than a horse’s ass.
Dave C
@Jay in Oregon:
Sometimes I get sad that Bill died so early, and then I realize that if he had been forced to live through the GWB years he probably would have killed himself, and then I don’t feel as bad.
lamh31
This just reasserts, one of the problems I had with Sarah Palin, and her brand of wingnuttery. It’s not that I consider her not bright (but I would be surprised if she was “smarter than a 5th grader”), it’s that instead of trying to lay low and supplement her ignorance with some knowledge, she chose instead to be steadfast and proud of her stupidity.
And let’s face it, some of the member of the wingnuttery have the same problem. I’ll admit, 1 or 2 % of them, will at least seem to willing to “re-assess” things if supplied with new factual information, but some of their more “willfully ignorant” brethren are not so willing to do so.
Besides, Sarah Palin, this is my general philosphy about everything, not just politics. I like intelligent conversation, not ditsy small talk. it’s the geek/nerd/scientist in me, I’m just as willing to have a meaningful debate on a subject, I know something about, and those I don’t, I deem to learn. There is no reason, outside of learning disablility, or mental disability, or social disparity, for some of these people to be so unwilling to see the facts.
Ripley
Trig / That Dog In A Bucket That Cole Likes To Post, 2024! Another PAC to form, sheeple!
(As en encore, Gog / Magog, 2028!!)
Chuck Butcher
People who come to work for me get an orientation presentation – fancy name for how to keep your job – a part of which is, “I can cure ignorance, I can’t cure stupidity.” In my line stupidity gets people badly hurt or killed or messes up someone’s largest investment – their home.
That speech involves being a construction worker, not making decisions regarding something as large as health reform – which is obviously much easier… Sarah.
Lavocat
Palin always reminds me of that old chestnut: “I’d Rather Have A Bottle In Front Of Me Than A Frontal Lobotomy”.
She’s a walking, talking lobotomy.
demimondian
@Jaquestraw: Actually, he is a freaking genius. Have you looked at his academic record, dude?
Sarah Palin is not only a revanchist, hate-mongering, preening, self-righteous would-be thug, she’s a quitter, a liar, and a fool. Joe Biden, by contrast, has stuck to his last through catastrophes which would level almost anyone, continuing to be productive through being widowed and losing a child, successfully raising several children under adverse circumstances, and eventually earning the role of Vice President of the United States.
wasabi gasp
@Jaquestraw:
He can be your VP, too. Just give’m a foot rub or something.
cheatcode: when he says “Scranton” do Little Piggies. You’re in.
The Populist
Wow. She said that. It does take a dummy to say be the puppet for the rich and powerful.
So what is Obama? Terrorist? Muslim extremist? Brownshirt? Fascist? Communist? Socialist? Hitler II? Satan?
Wow, I feel my IQ dropping to ignorant hick level now.
As for Palin, I hope her parents have their own insurance. After all, wouldn’t want them to “die” by using that damn medicare now would we???
Hey Sarah, at least I have a brain and can think outside of what a partisan tells me to think! Yee-haw to that.
RedKitten
It’s from a dogsled (or at the very least, a Skidoo) that they’ll shoot us. C’mon, man…we have to do our part to keep the stereotypes alive!
Lesley
If I were the Health Care Overlord, I’d let Trig live and flush his mother down the Outhouse.
Tonal Crow
I’m sure she’d rather go to her insurance carrier’s Death Panel, and have them tell her that they won’t pay to save her baby’s life because it would reduce their profitability.
I have had it up to HERE with the GOP’s lying rhetoric.
The Populist
“Wow, you guys really know how to gloat,but I guess you braniacs have the right after all your VP is a freaking genius.”
130 IQ here. I guess it’s better than acting like I know shit and have no concept of this great country’s history. Making shit up as you go, as all good GOP’ers do, is why China is kicking our asses.
This country used to be proud of it’s smarts. I guess it’s too much to open your mind beyond NASCAR rallies, what your church pastor tells you to vote for and what the GOP tells you to DO with your thoughts to read a book or learn a bit about this nation’s history, warts and all, once in a awhile.
If being smart makes me an elitist, than hey…I am an elitist. Just don’t come to me begging for a job, okay?
Laura W
@demimondian: Thank you.
That made me feel better than anything I’ve read or heard all day.
Beautifully put, with the heart and humanity it deserved.
JGabriel
The Populist: Uh, you do realize with a guy whose handle basically means: strawman?
.
JGabriel
Err, that should be:
Uh, you do realize you’re arguing with a guy whose handle basically means: strawman?
Redshirt
That quote sincerely shocked me – such outright lies. Does she even know she’s lying, though?
And now I foresee Miss Sarah appointing herself head of this gathering mob. It’s gonna be swell.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W:
You don’t meet a lot of guys on the internet with that kinda heart and humanity.
The Populist
Time to be fiscally sane:
Close Medicare. Why keep it? It’s socialism!
Repeal all the clean water laws. Who cares if the fish die, your water is tainted and you get cancer.
Allow companies to pay zero taxes and let them merge into powerhouses. I wonder if the right care that Microsoft controls the world or Google for that matter tracks you?
? Who cares!
Dump the SEC. Who cares if that 401K of yours gets manipulated into worthless pennies. After all, the markets can do it better than the gov’t!
Too expensive to repair roads, let’s hand them all over to private industry so they will charge you at every stop and too bad! Don’t drive if you don’t like it
Put teenage girls in jail if they are caught having sex. No…let’s stone them per the bible. After all, we are a Christian only nation
Like Playboy or porn? Too bad, it’s outlawed as it’s bad for you and indecent (but don’t tell my wife I watch the banned copies
).
Hey….no more school for kids
Fuck the poor ones, they don’t need no learning. Them Mexican peasants learn reading and basic counting and then pick in tha fields and they do okay!
Let’s do what they want and then I want to laugh outloud when the middle class is officially dead.
The right slays me.
Matt
Every time I call this lady and idiot and my dad gets mad at me I bring up the old country song line “I ain’t wrong, I ain’t sorry, and I’ll probably do it again”.
The return of Sarah’s “Will it blend”: death, bureaucrats, evil : Galt Gone Wild
[...] LOL: The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil. [...]
The Populist
JGabriel: I know…Us populists tend to do that. Stupid doesn’t sit well with me. It’s no way to go through life!
The Populist
“I’m sure she’d rather go to her insurance carrier’s Death Panel, and have them tell her that they won’t pay to save her baby’s life because it would reduce their profitability.”
But it’s okay because the free market can decide who lives and who dies, right? Fuck the government. Ain’t nobody done did anything good for people up there.
The Populist
“This just reasserts, one of the problems I had with Sarah Palin, and her brand of wingnuttery. It’s not that I consider her not bright (but I would be surprised if she was “smarter than a 5th grader”), it’s that instead of trying to lay low and supplement her ignorance with some knowledge, she chose instead to be steadfast and proud of her stupidity.”
These people firmly believe if you go up and say it with some ‘straight talk’ people will accept it.
MY hope is Americans tire of this nonsense. As a nation, we tend to have ADD on this kind of stuff.
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Needless to fucking say.
You still married?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W:
Yeah, but only for tax purposes. You new around here?
freelancer
Compared to Palin, I just flushed down my toilet what one could call a “genius”
IndieTarheel
@Jaquestraw: “Your” VP? You renounce your citizenship, jackass? And yes, before you ask in a totally “unexpected” knee-JERK reaction, I would, and DID, say the same during the previous administration. And the one before that, and the one before that, etc. But let me stop right there, this guy says it better than I can.
Left Coast Tom
@Redshirt:
Probably not…she’s pretty much a pathological liar. Andrew Sullivan has done a fairly decent job of documenting this.
Just assume that if her mouth is open she’s lying and you’re pretty much assured of getting it right.
jcricket
60% of America’s already tired of it. Another 10-15% are on the fence. Sadly, the remaining 25% are part of that “crazification factor” and can’t be converted.
But 65-75% of America voting for Democrats and favoring Democratic policies (or at least opposing the bat shit insane GOP ones) is good enough. It’s a far cry better than the 50% + 1 that Rove was able to scrounge up for a year or to.
El Cid
RUN
RUN
I HEARD ONE OF THE DEATH PANELS’ IS A COMIN’ NEAR
RUUUUUUUNNNNNNN
!! IF’N THEY CATCH YOU THEY EAT YER BABIES AND THE ONES WHAT GOT DISABILITIES FIRST
! AND THEN THEY KILL GRANDMA! RUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNN
J. Michael Neal
Yes, but aside from the aqueducts, the roads, the bridges, and the ability to walk the streets at night, what has the government ever done forus?
JasonF
I wish I could laugh at this quote, but in all honesty, I find it to be downright evil. I’d say that Governor Palin ought to be ashamed of herself, but she long ago established that she has no sense of shame.
Chris Johnson
Brought peace?
trollhattan
Sweet pogopsticking Jesus, I just listened to McMegan on PRI’s Marketplace radio program spewing the same crap about a public plan suppressing medical research that she has been repeatedly eviscerated over, all fucking week long.
Confirmed: she is functionally incapable of learning and adapting to her environment; thus, not a sentient being. Or at least she’s not as smart as my dog.
Not only am I not subscribing to The Atlantic, I’m billing them for the brain cells they’re costing me.
Texas Dem
What shocks me about the health care “debate” is that people are actually surprised there has been violence. Practically nothing ever changes in American society without bloody and protracted social conflict. Let’s review our history: 1) Slavery (brutal civil war; over 300k dead); 2) labor rights (see Homestead strike; Haymarket Square riot, etc.); 3) civil and voting rights (see Emmit Till; Medgar Evers; murdered 1964 civil rights workers, etc.). Trust me, before this is over someone prominent is going to get killed. Perhaps a congressman or a senator. Who knows? But there will be conflict. Count on it.
jcricket
I wish I could laugh at this quote, but in all honesty, I find it to be downright evil.
This is the point I’m at too. Elected representatives and public figures deliberately lying beyond all bounds of decency (I know, our history is full of this stuff). And we all try and laugh it off with a sarcastic Jon-Stewart-esque shrug. Tee hee. Aren’t the wingnuts funny?
No, they’re not.
They are preventing this country from addressing our very real problems. As much as I like Obama’s seriousness in his responses to this kind of BS, we need about 10,000% more of that from everyone else that isn’t a GOP tool. Make it clear the stakes are high, the issues are serious, and idiotic blather from the likes of Sarah Palin.
Sure the 25% crazy-brigade will shout “help help, i’m being repressed”, but there’s nothing we can do to appease/reach those people. It’s the other 75% we need to care about.
El Cid
Speaking of Megan McArdle, I enjoyed this Alternet article on McBlargle’s publicly-funded and mob-profited upbringing, along with her Freedomworks fiance.
jcricket
This describes all Libertarians. The entire philosophy is as bankrupt as full-on communism, as it fails to adequately address like 90% of real world scenarios (except via hand waving). The problem with economics and policy and government is that the real world is complicated, and people and corporations have different motivations, strengths, weaknesses, power-levels, etc. Nothing as simplistic as Libertarianism will ever offer solutions to the kinds of problems that face us. And more often than not, the Libertarianism ends when it comes to social issues and is fundamentally just “I don’t wanna pay taxes” surrounded by a lot of fluffy rhetoric.
It’s a convenient, simplistic set of unworkable principles and useless pronouncements. And yet we treat Libertarians more seriously than the GOP because, what, they’re not as racist? It’s mind-boggling.
Old joke from my college days: You know the difference between theory and practice? In theory, there is no difference.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
There’s more to this than the health care debate. They’re using this because health care is what’s being debated, but in my opinion, the real strategy is getting the crazies in such a lather that an assassination attempt on president Obama becomes inevitable.
A lot of their knuckle-dragging base think that if they can get rid of Obama, Sarah Palin becomes president by default. (They’ve forgotten McCain ever existed by now.) For those who know better, there’s the constant denigration of Joe Biden (such as Strawman up above buys into) as some kind of bumbling fool they can walk all over.
I pray to the FSM every day that nothing happens to president Obama, but if it does, anyone who thinks that president Biden wouldn’t come down on them like the fucking Wrath of God™ is completely delusional.
Warren Terra
This reminded me of the two best things I think I’ve read this week, about the real bureaucratic “death panels” deciding whether sick people get care. The first was a snippet of Ezra Klein’s online chat, in which he talked about the problem of confusing society’s desire to extend care to the uninsured with the actual workings of the free market and where there incentives drive the results:
The market isn’t failing to solve the problem here. It’s just that we don’t want the market’s solution. We want people to have health care. So we need to go beyond the market. It’s the same as fire departments or national defense or roads. There are things we want people to have even if they can’t pay for it.
The second, and by far the most important, was about Rescission. It’s really a vitally important post, and one I don’t think was linked here at B-J, at least not on the front page, though as it’s not a blog I read I must have seen a link to it someplace:
I listened to the same hearing, and I had the same reaction – 0.5% pf policies cancelled is a huge number given how few policies cost the Insurance companies money in any given year.
Want bureaucratic “death panels”? I’ve got your bureaucratic “death panels” right here, and they already exist. The people trying to abrogate them are the Democrats.
Warren Terra
Hm. I’m in Moderation, for a comment that I don’t think had any of the banned words, but it did have three blockquotes, one of them very long, and two hyperlinks.
To reproduce its main point
Palin sez Obama will create bureaucratic “death panels”? I’ve got your bureaucratic “death panels” right here, and they already exist, and they’re the Insurance industry, not some imaginary government plot.
JK
@El Cid: Great link about Megan McArdle. She’s an unbelievable, arrogant, smarmy airhead.
JK
@Warren Terra: Sarah Palin still has her head stuck up her ass.
Warren Terra
@ El Cid #101
I thought Ezra Klein’s dismissive response to the Alternet article you cite was quite correct – let’s leave her family out of it (and that goes for her fiancee; yes, she chose him, which we can’t do for our parents, but he’s no longer an astroturfer, and mabe he’s got redeeming qualities we don’t know).
Much better to go after her actual posts on the strength or weakness of their own merits. In this vein, I loved Klein’s two other posts in the last week in which he absolutely shredded McMegan’s actual substantive claims, and which gave him a strong moral position from which to criticize the Alternet article.
JK
@The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge:
With each passing day, I grow more concerned about violence being carried out against Obama. There’s also the escalating verbal assault on Pelosi. Glenn Beck had one of his staffers hold up a Pelosi mask in front of her face while he offered her a glass of wine that he pretended was laced with poison.
What does this jackass Glenn Beck have to say for Fox News to suspend him?
Warren Terra
Well, maybe if he cost them money?
You can always sign the petition threatening his advertisers with a boycott, a threat that seems to be working on some.
jcricket
@JK: Ha ha. That Beck. Such a kidder. I’m chuckling at his jocularity!
How soon we forget the comic genius of Ann Coulter and her wishing death upon the NY Times staff, and willingness to make jovial metaphors about liberals and baseball bats.
Conservative humor cracks me up.
kay
I love, love, love when people refer to Palin as a “quitter”.
Nothing makes Republicans madder.
I have a suggestion though. Add this, but only as you’re walking away: “Hillary isn’t a quitter”.
El Cid
@Warren Terra: Bullsh*t. I don’t care how many peers she has in these little blogging circles who like hanging out with her.
I don’t care the slightest bit about her or her existence—she’s an incompetent nitwit treated like a serious public intellectual by a variety of media sources. The fact that her fiance works for the organization pushing for the astroturf anti-health reform mobs is some sort of minor personal detail she need not admit? What the hell is this?
I can’t even imagine anyone stupid enough to extend that ‘courtesy’ to me. If I were a public author writing against health care reform and my fiance were working for the corporate astroturf group funding an attack on health care reform I would expect to be exposed for this, continually.
And, no, absolutely not, not on your or anyone else’s life will I ever fail to point out that some ‘libertarian’ schmuck espousing a world view about how we’re all supposed to be rough and tumble products of the free market were actually the product of generous public employment.
Forget that it’s Megan McArdle and that for some reason people feel like responding like she’s some peer or little sister.
Imagine that anonymous right wing male hack working for the Cato Institute is going out there and all the time barfing up the standard crap about how government is evil and does nothing for the individual and how he is a great example of self-propelled success, and then you find out that the family which raised him were successful public employees, and whose publicly-funded success led to all the opportunities that now Cato loudmouth wishes to deny others.
Would you restrain from pointing out the glaring contradiction because someone said, “Buh, oh gosh, don’t involve the family.”
There’s something weird going on here. There’s some sort of sentiment toward this writer that I just don’t see being extended to the typical right wing hack, and I don’t get it at all unless it’s just some weird peer group thing.
Amy
I’m not sure what kind of security Pelosi has but I’m quite sure it’s much, much more than any other member of Congress. And I’m worried that one of them could be assaulted and killed. I’d name some who the wingnuts might target, but that creeps me out too much.
By the way, the cognitive dissonance must be huge. Old folks would have no public pensions (Social Security Act, 1935) or health coverage (Medicare, 1965) were not for the Democratic party, yet the Democrats (
) want to create death panels (???) to consider whether they deserve to keep alive???
Shygetz
@Texas Dem: When Medicare and SS passed, was there violence?
Amy
FDR has some world-class demagogues going after him as he worked to create and implement the New Deal.
Comrade Darkness
@Redshirt: No. The beauty of having a moron for a spokesperson. They sound earnest even as they spout talking points 180° from the truth.
She’s off the government dole and country club benefits now, ain’t she? Hm. If that book deal doesn’t fly, might be fun watching her TRY to get coverage for little everyone-loves Trig. She’s quickly find that the profit-loving capitalist spreadsheets don’t love Trig. Man I’d love to be there when she discovers that. I’d be ready with the soundtrack from the gopher clip.
Waingro
@El Cid:
Megan is a member of the same tribe as Yglesias and Ezra. She’s a blue stater who happens to spout glibertarian horseshit, but she’s also got the same social signifiers as those guys. Priviledged, upper-middle class upbringing in a blue state coastal area, elite education, etc. They obviously disagree with her, but I think they essentially see her as ‘one of them’.
Meanwhile, I happen to be all too familiar with real-live, actual right-wing assholes and hence have little patience for the professional wingnut-welfare variety. I think progressive who have lived outside of blue enclaves tend to have far less patience for McArdle’s type.
I had no problem with that article. McArdle is a shill for reactionaries and plutocrats and I don’t give a shit that she could also be a post subject for Stuff White People Like.
Left Coast Tom
@kay:
Most excellent! And better yet, true.
Though, there are the untold murders she and/or Bill allegedly caused in Mena, AR. It’s amazing how the people of that town, a year ago, pulled together to rebuild from a tornado, just 15 or so years after the Klintons murdered the entire population for entirely unexplained “reasons”.
asiangrrlMN
@demimondian: Seconded, with great feeling. Beautifully put.
P.S. For Sarah Palin to quote Michele Bachmann is…well, I can’t find a stupid enough comparison. She needs to just go away—and take Bachmann with her.
ChrisB
I laugh at Tina Fey. I don’t laugh at Sarah Palin.
She’s stupid about a lot of things but she knows Obama does not have death panels and that no one’s going to kill her baby. So why does she spread such despicable lies?
Because she’s a cynical, manipulative, power hungry demagogue. Ridicule may be the best way to deal with her but make no mistake: she’s the enemy.
El Cid
@Waingro: I thought it was only me seeing this weird setting up of in-groups among the liberal blogging communities.
FlipYrWhig
Sarah Palin’s parents have to be wishing they had been called before the “death panel” 40-something years ago. Just think of the misery and humiliation they could have been spared.
jcricket
@Waingro:
Megan’s Jewish?
No, seriously, I get what you’re saying. I wish reporters were more willing to call bullshit when they see it, no matter who is spouting it (fellow reporters, columnists, elected officials).
Waingro
Nope. There’s a definite cliqueishness (sic?) going on. Yglesias has gotten a little better since he left the Atlantic, but he still kind of annoys me at times. I’m not sure if he actually realizes that his lively comments sections are the main atttraction to his blogging, rather than his actual posts per se.
They’re all careerists at heart and we’re going to watch them become full-blown Villagers in real-time. It’s going to be fascinating and repulsive.
Brachiator
God bless ‘er, Sarah Palin certainly knows how to find the sweet spot of the stoopid. If she were a baseball player, she would be on track for a 60 plus home run season.
I wonder whether Palin herself will show up on any of the Sunday pundit shows to defend her absurd statement, or whether someone will be her designated hitter, explaining what she “really” meant.
Scott Parkerson
Don’t want to be in MENSA? Too smart? Just visit Sarah’s Facebook page and let the stupid wash over you. Soon, you’ll be eatin’ Cheeto’s in front of a big ass TV watching the latest Rob Schieder flick.
(Related: I visited. I felt that I would “add” to the dialog. My reward was being banned and having my comment deleted to the wall. And I thought I was being nice! -> http://www.reddit.com/tb/98nqk)
Debbie(aussie)
But of course, in all the other developed nations of the world, we routinely kill our elderly and disabled. Wont find anyone with down syndrome here, or over the age of 70. HA! Because we have some form of universal health care.
Allan
Sarah Palin is Charles Manson in fuck-me pumps.
When her cultish followers kill in her name, her fingerprints won’t be on any of the weapons.
Alan
Palin is pulling out a Schiavo argument. Gee, who woulda thunk Sarah would be one of those whackos.
0whole1
Here’s the death panel Palin built her own self:
http://campaignsilo.firedoglak.....e-waiting/
When it comes to killing people through negligence and malfeasance, Sarah Palin leads by example.
Wile E. Quixote
@Left Coast Tom
Hah! You fool! Those weren’t the real residents of Mena, Bill and Hillary did kill them all and eat their brains as part of a satanic ritual designed to lead to one world government under the UN and the establishment of an Islamic state in America run by a charismatic president who is secretly not a US citizen. No, those people were just actors sent there by Hollywood (because they’re all liberals) to pretend to rebuild Mena and that Bill and Hillary hadn’t killed them all.
How was that for a simulated winger response to your statement? I can haz three hour show on Fox?
pattonbt
Im with Comrade Darkness here. Isnt Palin off the dole now? I wonder how her search for healthcare insurance is going as an unemployed person? And I think it will be especially tough because I believe congenital stupidity is a pre-existing condition.
bellatrys
El Cid, Waingro, don’t underestimate the power of traditional chivalry, even on Teh Left, either. “You’re so mean to pick on a poor little girl!” is a strong note in the “Leave McAddled Alone!” chorus.
Which is of course well-known and shamelessly exploited by the winger noise machine: it’s a feature, not a bug, the way it would be to anyone with integrity, to demand to on the one hand be treated as “one of the boys” and claim to never want that feminist “special” treatment for merely being a woman, and simultaneously to take advantage of this ingrained chivalry towards women who successfully perform a certain sort of presentational “femininity.”
If Jane Galt were not conventionally pretty as well as young & white – if she were older, heavier, skinnier, looked like Phyllis Schlafly or Peggy Noonan or Ann Coulter or Mary Grabar or Orly Taitz or Michelle Malkin – I doubt very much there would be this constant chorus of “Stop picking on Megan” on our side.
bellatrys
Oh, and the “Liberals are gonna turn us all into Soylent Green/stick Granny on the Ice Flow/ gas the handicapped JUST LIKE TEH NAZIS ELEVENTY!” meme cluster was being used against Jimmy Carter and the Democrats generally in the mid-Seventies by the conservative pundits who were so much admired by my parents and their social circle at the conservative Catholic colleges we were at, back then.
It’s really fascinating to see it get a new coat of paint and sent back out on the road to tour, for a “completely horrifying” value of “fascinating”—
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
It’s like a turd quoting a fart on odor.
Docrailgun
I guess she’s forgotten which party has been trying to cut social programs like her special needs child ever since the first dollar was spent on them.
(Hint; it’s not the Democrats)
Sidslang
“This country doesnt need less Trigs, it needs more!” -Sarah Palin
My knee-jerk, non-PC riposte to this would be that it seems like the GOP is run and supported by an army of Trigs already.
But on second thought, that’s an offensive comparison. It’s unfair to people with Down’s Syndrome to suggest that they’re as mentally deficient as Republicans.