BriWi’s Pulitzer nominee, Nooners, salutes the teabaggers:
We have entered uncharted territory in the fight over national health care. There’s a new tone in the debate, and it’s ugly. At the moment the Democrats are looking like something they haven’t looked like in years, and that is: desperate.
They must know at this point they should not have pushed a national health-care plan.
[….]You know what would happen if he did this (nixed health care legislation)? His numbers would go up. Even Congress’s would. Because they’d look responsive, deliberative and even wise. Discretion is the better part of valor.
Absent that, and let’s assume that won’t happen, the health-care protesters have to make sure they don’t get too hot, or get out of hand. They haven’t so far, they’ve been burly and full of debate, with plenty of booing. This is democracy’s great barbaric yawp. But every day the meetings seem just a little angrier, and people who are afraid—who have been made afraid, and left to be afraid—can get swept up.
This is a variation on Douthat’s argument that Americans should surrender their reproductive rights if they want pro-lifers to stop murdering people. It’s setting the stage to blame Obama if the teabaggers do something terrible. It’s part death threat and part snake oil about how REAL AMERICA feels.
beltane
I must be really stupid because I don’t understand the allure of paying extremely high prices for an inferior product. Our health care system is like taking on a Ferrari sized debt for a Hyundai type car. Why are today’s conservatives so against the concept of getting value for one’s dollar?
asiangrrlMN
Fuck you, Peggy. Fuck you and your faux genteel attitude and wholly morally corrupt soul. Fuck you upside down, sideways, and twice on Sundays. This time, you need to just walk on by and shut the fuck up. Just because you use pretty words doesn’t mean you ain’t a thug.
Michael Scott
This is democracy’s great barbaric yawp.
Funny. To me, it stinks of the beerhalls . . .
JR
Yes, when I heard the angry man in the mob yell at the lone cop Open the fucking door!”, I too found thoughts of Whitman.
asiangrrlMN
@beltane: Ok, see, now this was the reasonable, measured response that I wanted to give. Really.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
I’m wondering if anyone can explain something to me. Lately, we’ve been getting a lot of variations on the argument that medical innovation in the world only happens because of the absurd amount of money people in the US pay for healthcare, and if the US were to reform healthcare it’d kill the profit and medical innovation.
Basically, this is saying that we’re subsidizing healthcare for the rest of the world; we’re paying extra money so dirty frenchies or eye-talians can get cutting edge medical care. If this is the case, why are we supposed to continue giving a freebie to the rest of the world, when it doesn’t result in a net advantage for us? I’m sort of surprised no “smart” republicans have brought this up…
Fulcanelli
Nooners rattles her jewelry yet again in disdain at the great unwashed liberal rabble from her lofty perch. I got yer barbaric yawp right here, Peggy. Go ahead, pull my finger.
Yawn.
RedKitten
That’s right, Peggy. How dare Obama get above himself like that and try to improve peoples’ lives?
Exactly. If we wouldn’t mouth off to them so much, they wouldn’t HAVE to beat us like that. Why do we make them do that to us? They just love us and want what’s best for us, but when we don’t listen to them, they’re left with no choice.
dmsilev
That article plays into this, by Sara Robinson, which was probably the scariest thing I’ve read all week:
-dms
El Cid
What Peggy understands, and I really, really wished I could be confident that elected Democrats understood, is that the passage of a real, decent health care reform program, something which actually made peoples’ and business’ lives better and easier, would lead to lots and lots of victories because Democratic politicians had done what they’re supposed to do: help make our lives better.
But this would make it much, much harder for crazy Republicans to keep overfetishizing the short-term worship of crazed capital, and it would lose them lots of elections, since, everyone would go, “Hey, weren’t you people against the health care bill that made our lives better?” And they would say, “No, not really,” and then the voters would say, “Yes, yes you were, I saw your moonbats screaming at town hall meetings against it and marching with signs that Obama was a Nazi Joker soci_alist,” and then Republicans would say, “Um, yeah, but, um, that was a really divisive time and Obama was mean to us…”
I wish to high heaven that I could be confident that Democrats had the ability to think about (and care about) that time scale — i.e., good bill passed –> lives improved –> winning lots of elections.
But instead they’re probably more worried about the next few months of meetings and how some large-headed idiot on the TV will talk about them being ‘radical’ and insurance companies will complain about how Democrats are attacking good, caring, loving businesses and their investors, and centrist Democrats will b*tch out all us crazy fringe liberals for wanting things in the legislation just because it makes sense & shit and would make our lives better and cost less money, the fringe extremist fools.
syl
The fact that Nooners is probably only the 20th or 30th biggest piece of shit among the villagers is extremely depressing.
General Winfield Stuck
Them’s some mega wingnut turds Peg is polishing up to sell as Obama fertilizer. It took me two full years and a misbegotten war to get as worked up as these people. They tripped the night fandango right out of the gate.
That evil Obama, wanting to give everybody health care. I just hope he doesn’t do any thing really bad, like get the economy moving, or start a green job revolution. EE gads, the shit’ll hit the fan then.
Demo Woman
@asiangrrlMN: I almost just posted fuckity, fuck, fuck, Peggy Noonan before I read the comments but you said it all. Thanks!
JR
@General Winfield Stuck: They already hated us. Now they hate us and they’re jealous. So they tell themselves we’re trying to murder their mothers.
Bad things begin such ways.
JK
I can’t decide who’s more full of shit at this point.
Peggy Noonan, Ross Douthat, Mark Halperin, Marc Ambinder, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Megan McArdle, Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Sean Hannity, or Rush Limbaugh.
Noonan’s latest piece of drivel underscores the breathtaking cluelessness of Brian Williams.
Sentient Puddle
Just keep walking, Peggy. Keep on walking.
Malron
@dmsilev: You know, you could have figured all this out sooner if you’d have just listened a little closer to the warnings of the brown people. We’ve been telling you there was a definite link for years.
Malron
Peggy Noonien Singh is the mint julep sipping southern belle who sits on the shaded porch and warns the Negroes in the sun-baked fields that they better be quiet if they know what’s good for ’em. Just sayin’…
freelancer
Fractal Wrongness is the better part of Punditry.
JK
OT
Which fucking Sunday show will have that warped, frustrated asshole John McCain on this week so they can shower him with softballs?
JGabriel
JR:
And euthanize their Down’s Syndrome babies, don’t forget.
.
Comrade Darkness
@JK: Which fucking Sunday show will have that warped, frustrated asshole John McCain on this week so they can shower him with softballs?
Teabagging?
El Cid
I remember how much Bill Clinton’s numbers went up when they gave up on health care reform in 1993 and decided to push the industry-pushed NAFTA instead. Truly the Democratic loss of the House from 1994 – 2006 proves Nooner’s point.
jcricket
This.
If Democrats learn one thing it’s that compromise is worthless and listening to the Villagers is even less than worthless. The modern-day GOP cannot be appeased. Rolling over doesn’t even make them happy (remember 2000-2006? Did they seem like they were happy then? barely).
I ignore what Libertarians have to say because they are idiots, and represent a tiny fraction of America. I ignore the American communist party for similar reasons. The GOP is now in that category.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
@JK: I posted this in the last thread. You should have heard McArdle on Marketplace tonight trotting out her BS that Ezra Klein killed her on this week. What a wretched human being.
Svensker
This is democracy’s great barbaric yawp.
And Peggy is democracy’s great nitwit cunt.
Jay-sus.
(And I’m a girl and I HATE that word. But… Also.)
Waingro
You have to listen to a Noonan interview to really understand how fucking annoying she is. She always. Takes These. Long, Faux Meaningful. Pauses Between Her Sentences. To Illustrate How Thoughtful She Is.
You’re not fooling anyone, Peggy. If I want to take advice from someone with a halting speech manner, I’ll go with Captain Kirk.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
A couple days ago JC asked if things are crazier now than before. I really think they are. Definitely I’m paying more attention, only becoming political in November 2000, but holy shit it is breathtaking out there. It’s way past the stupid now. But I think the worst part is the total disconnect of NO ONE on the right, or hardly any one in the media outside MSNBC, admitting what is happening at these town halls. And we’ve got Nooners who is supposed to be one of the rich/smart ones vs the poor/ignorant ones mouthing the crazy mantra. We’re all being gaslighted by the denizens of the insane assylum. Fuck.
jcricket
You know what’s funny (not really), conservatives are the ones who are aborting their down’s syndrome babies – left and right.
Judging by the stats I’ve read somewhere north of 90% of babies diagnosed with down’s (through one of those tests you can get in the late first/early second trimester) are aborted. Given that this country has (supposedly) 30%+ self-described conservatives, that’s a whole lotta conservative’s murdering them there special snowflakes.
asiangrrlMN
@Malron: Yellow peeps, too. I felt it right after 9/11. It’s just unleashed in full force now because now, one of y’all are in charge of them all. Teh horrors!
@Demo Woman: No prob. She really chaps my hide.
El Cid
@Svensker: DEATH PANEL FOR YOU !!
El Cid
@jcricket: Every now and then I remember the phrase “snowflake babies” and I just start laughing, and it’s odd because you have to be among a tiny group of internet-reading liberals to have ever known what psychotic fundamentalist right wing lunatic pseudoscience weirdness that even was.
jcricket
@El Cid: I believe ACORN eats SNOWFLAKE BABIES for breakfast before they head out to their day jobs flying BLACK HELICOPTERS and manning OBAMACARE COMMUNIST NAZI DEATH SQUADS
No doubt.
JK
@Gordon, The Big Express Engine: McArdle is clueless and proud of it.
Regretably, I watched the 1st 15 minutes of Morning Joe today. I was hoping to hear Joe Scarborough denounce Limbaugh for his comments comparing Obama to Hitler. Instead, Scarborough said that while Republicans have crossed the line with some of their recent comments, the President ultimately sets the tone for the rhetoric used in discussions of public policy issues. He also blasted Rahm Emanuel for pushing Obama too far to the left. Scarborough is a bigger douchebag than I thought possible.
Mike in NC
All of them. He really gets around, don’tcha know?
freelancer
So, like, moderate GOP position yeah?
JGabriel
El Cid:
And then there’s US Rep. Kathy Castor, grinning her little head off as she screams above the crowd:
To keep going in the face of that kind of opposition, to keep pressing your point while shouting over a crowd of a few hundred wingnuts, and to do it while smiling …
That’s grace under pressure. The people of Castor’s district should be proud.
We’ve seen that video all over the place today, and while everyone has pointed out the vociferousness and ugliness of the attacking teabaggers, I haven’t seen anyone yet praise Castor for her forbearance, strength, and courage under what must have been an extremely trying circumstance. She deserves it.
.
SPF
All of the sudden we negotiate with terrorists?
Mike in NC
On what planet would this happen?
Zandar
The logical endpoint is that I eventually expect people will go bankrupt…
… from inability to cover the hospital bills…
…thanks to an insurance company denying a claim…
…that resulted from injuries sustained while at a town hall meeting…
…where the people who advocated affordable health care insurance and accessible health care for all Americans…
…were attacked by people who were duped by paid representatives of the health care industry…
…into believing that accessible, affordable care is such an intolerable tyranny…
…that it absolutely was worth committing physical violence to another human being over…
…so demoralizing the advocates of reform…
…that it results in the eventual failure of the reform effort…
…and leading to even more expensive health care and insurance for everyone…
…including the people duped into sabotaging their own self-interests…
…by non-accountable, non-elected insurance industry lobbying groups…
…whose main goal in life is to bankrupt people…
…and starting the cycle anew.
Mark S.
Could someone explain to me why national health care is cheaper? I mean, all of the countries that have a national health care system spend around 7 to 12% of GDP (and cover everyone) while we spend 16%. My guess is that it is the buying in bulk effect, but are there other reasons?
Also, does anyone know of a good study that compares the various health systems in language a layman can understand?
Indylib
Who exactly does Noonan think would be more approving of the Dems and Obama if they just dropped healthcare reform? The same whackjob, racist jackasses screaming about gov’t run health care and their love for “real” ‘Merica would still hate our distinguished African-American President and the Dems in Congress and Obama’s numbers would tank with progressives. For God-fucking-sake, Obama ran on and got elected in a large part on healthcare reform. This apprears to be another wingnut version of heads-I-win, tails-you-lose.
JK
@Mike in NC:
Scarborough did actually denounce Glenn Beck for calling Obama a racist (although he did it on Twitter and not on television).
Mark S.
@Waingro:
She always seems to me to be on heavy doses of prescription drugs.
Demo Woman
@RedKitten: In the imaginary pool, I have Sunday by the way. I’m not sure that you and yours will wait that long though.
Joshua Norton
See, according to the conservatards, we’re really, really happy to higher premiums than the rest of the world for for the 37th best health care system. We really, really, having pencil pushing drones tell us that our MD can’t change our heart medication because there isn’t a generic equivalent for it at a lower price. We really, really love fighting about ER coverage because it wasn’t “pre-aproved”.
The people doing getting the wingnut rabble all wound up are the ones who will probably face tax increases to pay for it.
Tuff titty. Ante up deep pockets. It costs money to be an American.
El Cid
@Indylib: Yeah, but all the majorities in the Northeast, Midwest, West, and Pacific Northwest who support Obama strongly don’t count, particularly not the overwhelming support of Democrats and liberal-leaning Independents.
No, clearly, Obama should really be working toward trying to get more support from the Southern Republican white conservatives who deeply, deeply despise him and who wouldn’t vote for a Democrat even if the alternative was to have the planet Mars crash directly into the United States and destroy the Earth.
Only Southern white conservatives count in U.S. politics, down to their last, tiniest aesthetic preferences. All those scumbags who happen to form a majority of the U.S. population, and their stupid votes, are irrelevant.
Unabogie
@Mark S.:
Read this:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18802
General Winfield Stuck
She’s deep.
How deep is that?
Deep as Dick Cheney’s Jelly Rolls/
Kryptik
@Mark S.:
Part of it is expensive emergency care done for complications of things that could have been treated MUCH cheaper, but wasn’t for lack of insurance or ability to pay out of pocket to do so.
Jim
@Waingro:
I know exactly what you mean about the phony pauses and the drawn out words as if she’s just…..foooound the one she’s looking for…. but I think you need to watch her mugging and simpering to get the Full Noonan. Scrunching up her face, leaning her head on her hand as if. The weight. Of her serious thoughts. Weighs on her. Really weighs on her.
Her “walk on by” comments about torture, on the Stehpi Show, were a prime example. If she’d had Carrot Top’s box of toys, she’d have been a Prop Pundit.
JK
@Mark S.:
Noonan is a drama queen who delivers every word as if she expects it to be carved into marble.
Mark S.
@Unabogie:
Thanks!
El Cid
One of my favorite ever Wonkette pieces, involving little more than direct quotes from Nooners herself, thinking she’s acting magnanimously (“Peggy Noonan Saw A Mexican!”).
It sure is weird.
***********************************************
* “It is late afternoon in Manhattan on the Fourth of July, and I’m walking along on Lexington and 59th, in front of Bloomingdale’s. Suddenly in my sight there’s a young woman standing on a street grate. She is short, about 5 feet tall, and stocky, with a broad brown face. She is, I think, Latin American, maybe of Indian blood.”
* “You might have seen this person before. She’s one of a small army of advertisement giver-outers in New York.”
* “And then, half a block later, I turned around. I thought of a woman I’d met recently who had gone through various reverses in life and now had a new job, as a clerk in the back room of a store. She was happy to have it, a new beginning. But there was this thing: They didn’t want to pay for air conditioning, so she sweltered all day. This made her want to weep, just talking about it. Ever since that conversation, I have been so grateful for my air conditioning. I had forgotten long ago to be grateful for it.”
* “So I turned around and went back. I wanted to say something — I don’t know what, find out where she was from, encourage her. I said hello, and she looked at me and I patted her arm and said, “Happy Fourth of July, my friend.” She was startled and then shy, and she smiled and made a sound, and I realized: She doesn’t speak English. “God bless you,” I said, because a little while in America and you know the word God just as 10 minutes in Mexico and you learn the word Dios. And we both smiled and nodded and I left.”
* “I went into Bloomingdale’s and wrote these words: ‘We must speak the same language so we can hearten each other.’”
jcricket
@Mark S.: A lot of it has to do with risk pooling. If you throw everyone (healthy or not) into a single giant pool, you can use the money saved on the healthy people (who pay premiums but require no care) to cover the sick people (who require care).
It also comes from the fact that the other systems have a lot of regulation in place to limit (or eliminate) private industry profit from the system. And they drastically reduce administrative overhead (far less paperwork, far less marketing, lower executive salaries, etc.).
Plus, some of these systems cost less simply because they do. That is, the countries decided to spend less (consciously or because they don’t want to raise taxes). This leads to a very different system than ours, but interestingly, higher spending doesn’t lead to macro-level better outcomes (there are a bunch of graphs floating around the interwebs providing this).
At any rate, Ezra Klein once wrote a long series comparing the various healthcare systems, and here’s a good excerpt
JGabriel
@Mark S.:
More importantly, reduction in administration costs, because the various gov’ts that have single payer or other gov’t funded health care / insurance don’t waste so much money on trying to deny care, or on executive compensation.
Also they don’t need to make a profit, whereas insurance companies are usually trying to clear 35% profit.
And then there’s bargaining power for pharmaceuticals, etc.
.
Joshua Norton
These are the same crackpots who built panic rooms and stocked up on bullets and top ramen because the millennium was approaching and they were bound and determined to get as hysterical as possible.
Terry Schaivo, also.
ninerdave
How to form a conservative argument circa 2009….
Look at the facts, then assert the direct opposite as if it was a fact.
Mark S.
Thanks everyone for answering. This worked out so well, tomorrow night I’m going to ask about quantum mechanics.
Darkrose
@Malron:
So can we just dump her on Ceti Alpha V? I hear it’s nice this time of year, and the wildlife is breathtaking….
JenJen
@SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta: That’s the part that’s really getting to me, too. Just finished watching two GOP Congressmen on Bill Maher (Issa was one, can’t remember the other except that he represented a district in Georgia), and in talking about the mobs at the town halls, all they’d say is, “Well, it’s just like Code Pink. Both sides do it. I never heard you complain when… (insert gross exaggeration of something totally unrelated here).
But what is even more disturbing than the disconnect we’re getting from the media (outside of MSNBC primetime indeed, because Rachel Maddow has been stellar all week) is what Doug said… It’s setting the stage to blame Obama if the Teabaggers do something awful. This is really starting to shape into something tangible, and Noonan adds cred to the meme. First heard it from Joe Scarborough this morning, when he kept blaming the town halls on Obama, insisting “The President sets the tone! The President sets the tone!”
Trying to keep my chin up, but yeah, this is feeling a lot, lot worse than November 2000 right now.
rob!
I’ve come to learn that, when it comes to the GOP, there are no “less crazy” ones–its just a matter of when that crazy reveals itself, and in what form. Some days, Peggy Noonan sounds measured and reasonable, and then she writes shit like this.
asiangrrlMN
@Waingro: Yes, I saw her on The Daily Show, and I saw that “Walk on by” bullshit she was spouting another time, and I had to refrain from punching a wall. She truly is odious.
Mnemosyne
@El Cid:
You’d almost think Nooners was giving bad advice on purpose for partisan reasons, wouldn’t you? Nah, can’t be. Otherwise they’d stop asking her to appear on the Sunday talkshows, right?
asiangrrlMN
@JenJen: Yeah, I echo your sentiment about feeling much more discouraged now than I did back then. I’m having a really bad feeling about all this.
david1234
Conservatives would see that thuggish tactics work, and use them over and over again.
BFR
Thanks everyone for answering. This worked out so well, tomorrow night I’m going to ask about quantum mechanics.
We’re also bombarded by a continuous flow of commercials telling us what’s wrong with us and what pill we need to take to make it all better again. I’m sure this goes on in other countries but there’s no way it does to the degree that it does in the US.
Unnecessary treatment is a big problem – conservatives blame it on defensive medicine to prevent lawsuits but I’m guessing it has far more to do with Dr. prescribing meds their patients’ request just to get them to shut up and go away.
ChrisB
@JK:
I knew he had it in him.
Without doubt, one of the better days in my life was when I stopped watching his show. As I said at the time, even a political junkie like me had no need to watch an asshole like him so early in the morning.
JenJen
@asiangrrlMN: I keep telling myself, “This intensity, it just can’t sustain itself. It never does, it’s not natural. Something will explode, and then it will all wane.”
That doesn’t make me feel better, obvs.! But at least we have this place. And if all else fails, alcohol, I suppose. :-)
Alan
So now can we call the Republicans fascists and traitors? Because two weeks ago, the owner of this blog thought that was over the top and unproductive.
Someguy
Obama is right. It’s okay for us to clean this mess up but the people who created it – Republican voters and politicians – should shut the fuck up. They don’t have any standing to talk – they made the mess and they lost the election. I’m tired of them acting like they’re still running things.
JGabriel
Mark S.:
I have to admit, Nooners does occasionally have a sort of Betty-Ford-before-rehab quality.
.
JGabriel
Someguy:
Ah, but you forget: they honestly believe they’re the majority and that Obama stole the election. Because that’s what black men do.
.
asiangrrlMN
@JenJen: Yes. Bourbon is my current tipple, and I have a hunch I will be drinking more of it in the next few weeks.
Mnemosyne
@david1234:
The thing that gives me some hope is that Obama is, for the most part, black. By marrying a black woman, he deliberately chose that culture. And the legacy of the civil rights movement — especially Rev. Joseph Lowery, to whom Obama just gave a Presidential Medal of Freedom — is not to back down when confronted with thuggery.
I dunno — maybe it’s the poison in the green potato I had for lunch*, but I really don’t think Obama is going to back down. He’s already seen what can happen if you don’t, and that was against the full majesty of the law.
* Handy tip: if your potato has green spots and/or is green under the skin, don’t eat it. It’s not an old wives’ tale — it really is potentially poisonous. I was stupid, but fortunately I just had a somewhat unpleasant afternoon and no worse effects.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@JenJen: I thought Maher was disappointing tonight – just let the 2 repub senators say whatever they wanted without much of a challenge. August 2009 can’t end soon enough. Tomorrow may require a self-imposed 24-hour restriction from news and internet so I can detox from the poison that feels like it’s everywhere right now.
Rick
Calouste
@BFR:
Nope. In most, if not all of the EU, public advertising for drugs is banned, unless it is over-the-counter (non-presciption) like painkillers, cough medicine and muscle rub. Similar for advertisements for doctors, hospitals and surgery.
Debbie(aussie)
As an outsider, I can’t help but agree with the sentiment of comment@76. It appears that the democrats have absolutely no desire for health care/insurance reform to succeed. They certainly aren’t willing to fight for it. I know your msm doesn’t help, but gee whizz. None of the arguments that immediately come to mind for me are given any air time or discussion.
Don’t get me wrong, our system ain’t perfect, but it works. Never heard of bankruptcy due to health bills. (of course we don’t have anybody over the age of 70 or any disabled people-haha)
Debbie(aussie)
@77 same in Aus too
Mike D.
She writes like an unhinged Megan McArdle.
latts
@Someguy:
It’s okay for us to clean this mess up
And that’s what the GOP– the professionals, I mean, not the whackjob base– counts on. Regardless of what Karl Rove said, most Republican pols know perfectly well they can’t hold the government forever, or even much more than a decade, if that. So screwing things up both extends their time in power because they’re not actually behaving responsibly enough to piss off giant numbers of people, and it cripples Democrats when they come to power because there’s no money or time to implement Democratic policies once the GOP’s raided the joint. That’s why they turned on a dime January 21st and went into what-about-the-deficit mode; they wanted to pressure Obama to give up any hope of progressivism. It worked on Bill Clinton, and he’s clearly been unhappy in recent years with how easily the surplus was blown, effectively wiping away the biggest accomplishment of his presidency.
Obama doesn’t appear to be buying it, although he’s still very constrained by the crises they created. He seems to be trying to actually build stuff instead of making emergency repairs, though, so even if he can’t completely fulfill his ambitions, there should be a decent foundation for future Dems to build on.
Chuck Butcher
Piggy Noonan causes a red haze to close across my eyes, partly due to her attitude of superiority but mostly because she ought to know better and since she continues it must be a game.
That’s the galling point, your future is no more than a fucking game to her type. Christ on a crutch, Palin is no rocket scientist but what she saw was an opportunity to hop on a moving train not anyone’s welfare outside her gamesmanship. What they’d best watch out for that there is a theory of games and it isn’t friendly to their approach.
The hell of it is that the real world consequences for their victims, us, are a hell of a lot more severe than any they will face. Would that there were an equals sign in that equation.
Johnny Pez
@Mark S.:
It would be irresponsible . . . ahhhhh, fuck it.
White House Department of Law (fmrly Jim-Bob)
Peggy: Stop wearing skirts or we can’t guarantee you won’t be sexually assaulted.
(Same thing. Amirite?)
kommrade reproductive vigor
Yes and if teh ghey would all commit mass suicide the terrists wouldn’t want to bomb us no more.
We should all form a mob and shout angry, incoherent anti-Nooner slogans outside the WSJ’s offices. She’s bound to quit because we’re big and nasty and scary. Hell, the WSJ’s sales would likely shoot right up.
Edwin
Peggy Noonan is still 14 years old. Everything she sees has a grand, majestic design, no matter how tawdry in reality. Or she decides to see nothing at all.
Conservative ignorance takes many forms; hers is one of the more irritating.
bob h
What Peggy does know is that the fate of the Republican Party probably depends on the outcome of this fight. Cover tens of millions of the uninsured, and who really takes the Republicans seriously again?
We are seeing the desperation of cornered, wild animals.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta: Correction – 2 repub congressman
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
@SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta: I miss the preview feature. Correction: 2 repub congressmen
Jay
Uh. Shutting down the debate =/= democracy.
Jesus Republicans are stupid.
El Cid
That’s what this is about.
And you don’t just have to listen to liberals say that. Fake ‘libertarian’ radio jerk Neal Boortz bitched and moaned for years that once the government ‘soci_alized’ health care (a term he used no matter what the plan was), then the idiot masses would never want to give that up, and since people like Boortz deeply, deeply despise the vast majority of Americans and can only get it up when they think they’re among an extremely privileged elite, they hate it.
Steeplejack
@Jay:
The other Republicans are pretty stupid too, not just the Jesus ones.
sparky
@El Cid: yes, but you know, they should just take notes and chill. after all, they are the folks who convinced people on medicare to show up and say down with gummint health care. in other words, whatever screwed up plan passes will (a) not harm profits and (b) everyone will have forgotten about it shortly and (c) Ds will not get the “credit” for it anyway.
at least we can now say we are just as stupid with respect to ourselves as we are with respect to the rest of the planet.
Paris
Maybe I’ve been in a drug induced coma for the last couple of months but I haven’t seen a “national health-care plan” being discussed. I’ve seen plans for health care reform but nothing that resembles a “national health-care plan”.
El Cid
@sparky: If that’s what the Democratic legislators decide is most important to them — making a few idiots happy who will never vote for them, kissing up to “Blue Dogs” who will be the first to lose if Democratic voters start turning out at lower rates due to lack of interest, making some lobbyist and health insurance interest who really are laughing at them seem to like them for another few weeks — then there’s nothing we can do, really.
If they’re too stupid to see that the true electoral timeline is when a bill is passed and signed and enacted and their constituents either like it, can’t stand it, or don’t notice it, then the Party is basically done.
If you are a Democratic legislator and you aren’t possessed of enough brains to tell when you’ve been given the opportunity for another New Deal style issue with perhaps 20 or 40 years of victories following the public’s faith in your ability to do something right, then arguing with you isn’t going to change much, is it, ’cause you’re either too corrupt, too lazy, or too stupid to be improved.
Comrade Darkness
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, potatoes are in the nightshade family. It’s nothing to do with wives, old or otherwise, just botany.
Personally, I cut the spots off if it’s less than 20% of the potato and cook it thoroughly. more info if you care to actually know your potentially toxic alkaloids. The side effects of the alkaloids are nervous system disruption. You may actually have an intolerance, based on your reaction. But, I’m not a doc, just a person with a serious intolerance to something unrelated. (Thank FSM, I worship tomatoes.)
amocz
@Mike D.:
So…um, what does a hinged Megan McA. write like?
Don
Well if you believe the numbers of about 30% of a healthcare dollar being consumed by administration and other bean-counting then that’s 16% * .7 == 11.2%
It’s also certainly possible another big chunk of our 16% is high-dollar tests and procedures which recent articles have shown tend to go up when doctors own the testing equipment/facilities. Perhaps that MRI is $700 rather than $1000 when it’s part of a government program and there’s less of them done because the doctor doesn’t have as big a motivation to do them in marginal cases.
Or maybe it’s from euthanizing the old folks. Those biddies are expensive, what with their new hips and all.
Comrade Darkness
@Don: Inexpensive regular treatments for chronic conditions (like diabetes, asthma, etc.) important preventative care like prenatal, rather than wickedly expensive ER visits and damaged children. (We aren’t 35th in the world for infant mortality for nothin’. Just ahead of Croatia… whooo hoo. Take that Dalmatian Coast…)
Will Danz
Shorter “Dolphin Lady” Noonan:
“Because a tiny minority of crazy, stupid, bloodthirsty rightwingers shout crazy, stupid, bloodthirsty things — and might do crazy, stupid, bloodthirsty things — Democrats should surrender to them.”
Nooners is pro-terrorism.
Chris Johnson
The real hell of it is health care no longer matters.
And I say this as a medicare/medicaid guy with a disability who has been fighting the private company ‘Unicare’ which I never agreed to be with. I won’t respond to a thing they send, I won’t sign off on anything, when they double-bill and send me a bill while still hitting up the government for their payment I ignore it. I know I have no health care the moment anybody there notices I exist, or the moment I actually need any. I am boned and I’m just trying to distract them and slip through the cracks as long as possible until I’m boned. Thankfully, I don’t depend on ANY medications, and haven’t been injured in any way I can’t tough out.
And even so, health care reform is now insignificant.
Why?
It’s merely the excuse for a fascist takeover. People are saying the Republicans are desperate. I don’t see that desperation, all I see is them thinking they have it all figured out at this point. They know exactly what they are doing and have convinced themselves that it’s OK.
At this point healthcare means very little compared to questions like “does blogging, the Internet, viral video etc. speed up information to the point where we can fight off a fascist takeover, debunk possible Reichstags, etc”.
Can we correctly identify situations as they unfold? In a lot of ways we’re doing pretty well, but can we keep pace if things start to seriously unravel, which could happen any day now? Can we sort out events fast enough to come up with tactics, rather than blindly reacting with mob psychology and being manipulated and demonized and intimidated into submission and a regime change?
Because that is the bottom line, an extension of the Birther angle. We are looking at a violent revolution by a small but organized minority being led by a lot of politicians who figure they don’t have anything left to lose, backed by mainstream media and gatekeepers who are used to submitting to those same politicians. Regime change is the real ‘policy’ here, not health care. Do you usually have to accuse people of killing old ladies and babies to argue a change in POLICY?
I’m not entirely sure what to do, but for starters, let’s not kid ourselves, OK? And I would like to hear any information coming out of the Air Force as to how wingnutty they are at the moment, they’re the most rogue of the armed services so far as I know.
slippytoad
@Mark S.: I’m guessing her reading speed is somewhere south of 100 wpm and she’s just struggling with the teleprompter.
I mean, she sure does seem to be that goddamn stupid.