Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Deploy the moving finger of emphasisity!

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

We can agree to disagree, but i’m right.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Nevertheless, she persisted.

I personally stopped the public option…

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

The willow is too close to the house.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

There will be lawyers.

We need fewer warriors in public service and more gardeners.

Verified, but limited!

Militantly superior in their own minds…

Yes we did.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Tick tock motherfuckers! Tick fucking tock!

All your base are belong to Tunch.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

I can’t take this shit today. I just can’t.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Reality always wins in the end.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Open Thread: GOP “Still Evil”, McMegan Still Wrong

Open Thread: GOP “Still Evil”, McMegan Still Wrong

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Jon Chait at NYMag finds McArgleBargle’s argument indefensible, because “Subsidizing Farmers But Not the Poor Still Evil“:

House Republicans are fighting to impose a $40 billion cut to the food-stamp program while also fighting to lock farm subsidies in place at a higher level than Democrats want. The combination of positions strikes me as indefensible. After all, farmers earn more than the average American, and there’s no rationale for handing government money to somebody just because they own a farm as opposed to a convenience store or a hot-dog stand.

Megan McArdle stands up to say the Republican position is perfectly defensible. McArdle doesn’t like farm subsidies but is even more outraged at disparagement of Republican fiscal priorities, urging, “It seems worth trying to answer the question, rather than merely marinating in our own moral and logical superiority.” The Republicans have a perfectly defensible basis for cutting benefits for poor people but giving them to farmers, she explains — reciprocity:

Here’s one reason Republicans might support farm subsidies, but not food stamps: the sense that you have to do something to get them… They’re not being given money just for breathing.

Actually, that’s not true. The Department of Agriculture does hand out money to people to do nothing. So, yes, they are being given money just for breathing. In fact, breathing is optional — millions of dollars in farm subsidies go to farmers who are dead. This underscores the fact that farm subsidies are a reward for people who own farmland, which they may well have inherited….

Bill “Always Wrong” Kristol better look to his laurels, because McMegan shows real determination to assume his Wingnut Wurlitzer crown for insistent plausibility at a 180-degree angle from the truth.

Reader Interactions

124Comments

  2. 2.

    Comrade Luke

    Borrowing from the article, can we just call her Megan “Actually, That’s Not True” McArdle?

  4. 4.

    Elizabelle

    Not more McMegan! Aargh.

    (Seriously. It’s like talking about Sarah Palin all the time. Which we don’t, although teatards project that we do.)

  5. 5.

    geg6

    Geezus fuck. She really is the stupidest pundtwit out there. I guess I always knew that, what with the pink Himalayan salt and Thermomix silliness, but this really takes the cake.

  6. 6.

    NotMax

    Shorter Megan: Farmers (ostensibly) grow stuff suitable to be put into her super deluxe kitchen appliances.

  8. 8.

    Just One More Canuck

    GOP still evil, McMegan still wrong

    Sun still rises in east

  11. 11.

    Mino

    Farm subsidies historically have been price supports and backdoor food stamps, of a sort. A balancing act to keep food prices in bounds and make exports attractive. So there is a logical connection between the two–or there used to be. Now that commodities are the hot new toy for hedgies, all bets are off.

    But she is stupid as a brick not to even wiki before writing her piece. Jesus.

  12. 12.

    danielx

    Megan McArdle stands up to say the Republican position is perfectly defensible. McArdle doesn’t like farm subsidies but is even more outraged at disparagement of Republican fiscal priorities, urging, “It seems worth trying to answer the question, rather than merely marinating in our own moral and logical superiority.” The Republicans have a perfectly defensible basis for cutting benefits for poor people but giving them to farmers, she explains — reciprocity:

    Here’s one reason Republicans might support farm subsidies, but not food stamps: the sense that you have to do something to get them… They’re not being given money just for breathing.

    Goddamn but that’s some logic you can get your teeth into, from the world’s #1 purveyor of machine-produced bechamel sauce. Every time I see one of these McMegan gems, I know that somewhere along the line I missed my calling; if I had a strong enough stomach, the right connections and no moral qualms whatever I too could be paid six figures for producing complete horseshit for the edification of “reasonable Republicans”, whateverthehell that means these days…not much, since “reasonable Republicans” – like, say, David Brooks – have been encouraging and enabling the insane mean crazy portion of the electorate for the last forty fucking years.

    But this evening the Wizard of Oz is playing with narrative commentary by the daughter unit, the humongous stockpot of chicken and sausage gumbo is simmering on the stove, and the Chianti Classico Reserva is excellent. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof, so let us all enjoy what we can.

    Also, too – Andrew Breitbart is still dead. In these parlous times, one must seek whatever little consolations life affords.

  13. 13.

    jl

    McArdle is all over the map in that post. Starts with a statement of her libertarian principles, and ends with endorsement of a new CCC and WPA?

    I think Kristol is more coherent, and also more wrong and more evil than McArdle.

    Kristol has lead the GOP on a crazy death march for decades, and caused a great deal of social and political dysfunction and suffering in the meantime. Entertaining incoherence is preferable. My faint praise for McArdle.

  15. 15.

    Chris

    @danielx:

    if I had a strong enough stomach, the right connections and no moral qualms whatever I too could be paid six figures for producing complete horseshit

    Really puts into perspective that complaint about people being “given money for doing nothing.”

    Kind of boggles your mind to compare the salary of the immigrants growing our food with the salary of those fucking blowhards who’ve never produced anything of value in their entire lives.

    Ah, well. ::crosses self:: Blessed be the Market, the Righteous Judge.

  20. 20.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Chris:

    Blessed be the Market, the Righteous Judge.

    ….as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Market are true and righteous altogether.”

  25. 25.

    Goblue72

    All you need to know about McCardle is: 1. She had a crappy summer job canvassing at PIRG which left her permanently angry at liberals and 2. dispute growing up rich in MANHATTAN, going to an Ivy League school and an MBA from U Chicago, she STILL couldn’t get a real job and had to go on Wingnut Welfare.

  34. 34.

    beltane

    @Chris: McArdle really likes to flaunt her privileged place in society by being so ostentatiously stupid and lazy. The fact that this dimwitted, morally bankrupt, and work-averse woman has been given a lifelong seat on the gravy train is proof that this country has degenerated into a parody of its former self.

  37. 37.

    cckids

    @danielx:

    But this evening the Wizard of Oz is playing with narrative commentary by the daughter unit, the humongous stockpot of chicken and sausage gumbo is simmering on the stove, and the Chianti Classico Reserva is excellent. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof, so let us all enjoy what we can.

    Also, too – Andrew Breitbart is still dead. In these parlous times, one must seek whatever little consolations life affords.

    Your priorities are in order. And I like the way you think.

  38. 38.

    Sloegin

    Just because I can never see this quote enough…

    “Major Major’s father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a longlimbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major’s father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counseled one and all, and everyone said, “Amen.”

    Maybe they should add a job requirement to farm aid.

  39. 39.

    Citizen_X

    @jl:

    Kristol has lead the GOP on a crazy death march for decades, and caused a great deal of social and political dysfunction and suffering in the meantime.

    Yes, he helped lead us into the Iraq war, so there is that. But, arguably, he fatally sabotaged the McCain campaign by promoting Palin, which saved us from another three wars or so.

    I try to see the good in people.

  42. 42.

    danielx

    @efgoldman:

    It’s true – I’m sure it would have tasted ever so much better If I’d used the right accessories.

    No, actually it was wonderful just the way it was.

  43. 43.

    The Dangerman

    @Alex:

    The House GOP is preparing their debt ceiling bill.

    The House will pass a CR and the government shutdown this time will be averted (or it will be very, very short if there’s a process delay).

    The debt limit fight will basically be to the death and will be ugly on a scale that makes Summer 2011 look like a picnic. We might still be fighting it well past Thanksgiving.

  44. 44.

    jl

    @Citizen_X:Back in the 90s Kristol also persuaded the GOP to oppose any healthcare reform at all because it would eliminate a nice wedge and resentment issue for election politics. Also would distract the GOP from drumming up pretexts for foreign wars, which favored the GOP.

    So, that’s a little something to put on the other side of the scale.

    But, he has led the GOP down its dead end road to a long despaeate twilight death struggle. So, I guess some long run good.

    The corporate GOP would have done much better by pretending to go along and watering things down even more. They could have played out the wedge issues longer, calibrated the misery wedge more carefully. if things keep going this way, the party will be narrowed down to crazy people.

    If this country can pass some good mental health reform, soon they will all be in for observation, at one time or another.

  45. 45.

    celticdragonchick

    @The Dangerman:

    Assuming that the capitals of the world have not been burned down and we are all being chased by the biker gangs from the Road Warrior.

    That appears to be the desired outcome for over half of the GOP voting base.

  46. 46.

    srv

    @raven: Well, now you know how all the DFH’s here feel about this Hamshter woman. Pot. Kettle.

    @Goblue72: You do know that she insists it was her little obscure blog on economics when she couldn’t get a real jerb that got noticed and into the media circuit?

    Just the other day she was saying how she doesn’t get anything from the Koch’s, but her husband might (she’s not sure, must not be bedtime conversation), but he of course works for Reason makes all sorts of money selling fruits and vegetables or something and not big welfare checks from the Galts.

    So not only is she stoopid, she’s too stupid to be making any money off the full-time fluffing.

  48. 48.

    Goblue72

    @The Dangerman: I fully expect the debt ceiling to be raised. It will be last minute. The Teabaggers will threaten to take everyone to the Castro to teabag them. The big money boys will scream bloody murder about not screwing with the capital markets. And Boehner will cobble enough votes, make nice with Nancy and get it done at the 11th hour.

    Nothing is getting done in DC. Its all status quo kabuki until the 2014 elections.

  49. 49.

    mclaren

    If McArdle ever decides to write about physics, the universe may end, because if she writes something correct about basic physics, like “The gravitational constant is 9.8 kg-meters/sec^2,” a singularity may open up in spacetime.

    I’d still tap that ass, though. Even though she’s evil and stupid.

  50. 50.

    mclaren

    @celticdragonchick:

    I wonder when McMegan gets walloped with that 2X4 if she will learn “how very effective violence can be when it’s applied in a firm, pre-emptive manner.”

    No such luck. It’d just double down on McArdle’s already severe brain damage.

  51. 51.

    SFAW

    @efgoldman:

    The Supremes say they’re people. What else do you need.

    I need to have the Supremes declare that Soylent Green is corporations!

    Or at least certain corporations and their “leaders.”
    Like AIG and Moshe Benmosche, or JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon, or Goldman Sachs and Lloyd Blankfein, or …

  53. 53.

    beltane

    @mclaren: The world would be a better place if she made her living by having her ass tapped. Alas, honest work of any sort does not suit her.

  54. 54.

    srv

    Boy, these emails from Mr. Blackwell at Conservative Intel:

    Dear Conservative,

    At this very moment, even as you are reading this, Harry Reid and Senate Democrats are trying to ram ObamaCare though over the objections of the American people.
    …
    Their strategy is simple – jam ObamaCare down the throats of the American people, hook them on even more Government dependency
    …
    That’s because he doesn’t want the American people to know what they are really doing, and so they are trying to ram this bill through in
    …
    Remember, your gift of 50 dollars means 2500 calls into Senate offices, and your gift of $100 means 5000 calls to kill ObamaCare.

    What, are they paying foreigners 2 cents a call?

  56. 56.

    SFAW

    @mclaren:

    I’d still tap that ass, though.

    You need to get out more.

    Although, I have to confess, her near-total makeover certainly was an improvement. Amazing what a pink-Himalayan-salt exfoliation will do, I guess.

    ETA: Yes, I know – each to his/her own. Who am I to judge?

  58. 58.

    The Dangerman

    @Goblue72:

    I fully expect the debt ceiling to be raised. It will be last minute.

    Therein lies the problem; there really isn’t a last minute. There are lots of ways to stretch things out without a default…

    …and there surely won’t be a default and the DL will go up. Getting there, however, should be WWE cage match ugly.

  61. 61.

    Villago Delenda Est

    What food stamps DO is actually drive economic activity that would otherwise not take place.

    Which is actually good for farmers. Except those who are parasite assholes like those shitstain reps from Tennessee and North Dakota.

  62. 62.

    Keith P

    It’s about reciprocity for sure, but it’s about votes. Farmers are “from the heartland”…red state real ‘Merka, while the poor are liberal city-dwellers. Feed the GOP voters while hoping the poor will be too hunger-weak to go out and vote.

  63. 63.

    Chris

    @Sloegin:

    Fucking LOL! Where’s that from? That’s the best character description I’ve read since Dr. Evil in the father/son therapy session.

  64. 64.

    gbear

    @srv:

    she doesn’t get anything from the Koch’s, but her husband might (she’s not sure, must not be bedtime conversation)

    Every time she brings up Kochs, her husband claims he has a bit of a headache.

  65. 65.

    SFAW

    @burnspbesq:
    It’s been clear for awhile that self-described non-liberals actually hold positions more liberal that their label would otherwise suggest.

    I think that’s due, in part, to the demonization of the word Lllllliberal by Reagan, Bush Sr., and the rest of those evil bastards. But I imagine there are other contributory factors as well.

  67. 67.

    El Cid

    If there’s one subject Megan McAddled knows about, it’s hard work, and to create value from one’s productivity.

  70. 70.

    Mike in NC

    @SFAW:Do you mean that fugly McMegan had a wingnut welfare funded makeover, to fix the ratty hair and Coke bottle eyeglasses? Still a wingnut skank by any reasonable metric.

  71. 71.

    mclaren

    @Chris:

    That, my friend, is a passage from Joseph Heller’s immortal Catch-22.

    Highly recommended. And (sadly) even more relevant today than it was in 1956, when it was written.

  72. 72.

    SFAW

    @Mike in NC:

    Well, the old hair and glasses didn’t do her any favors, certainly. Her new look is (to my eyes, at least) significantly better. But if I were forced to pick a stupid/crazy wingnut, and could ignore the crazy shit issuing from her mouth, I think Bachmann is better looking.

    Although, that may be because I’m an old fart, and my braim cells is ossifying. (To test that theory, we’d probably need raven to weigh in.)

    ETA: And, no, I don’t mean Marcus Bachmann.

  78. 78.

    The Dangerman

    @hilts:

    To any NY Yankee haters out there…

    Can’t hate the Yankees.

    Can hate Arod, but he’s going to have a shitty 2014.

  80. 80.

    Meanie-meanie, tickle a person

    It’s like talking about Sarah Palin all the time.

    Yeah. Mooselini was fun…for a while.
    Lessee how long Megan McWrong lasts…

  84. 84.

    Kay

    @srv:

    What, are they paying foreigners 2 cents a call?

    No, they’re just taking the money and not calling.

    I can’t get over how they won’t just end it. It’s been going on forever. The huge Tea Party creation and mobilization. Ted Kennedy dies. Scott Brown is elected. They win the House. They start repealing it once a week. They lose at the SCOTUS. They lose the 2012 election. Scott Brown isn’t even there anymore! Now it’s Cruz. They think something magical will happen for the last 48 hours..

    Really, they have these people whipped into a frenzy for years. At some point it’s just unconscionable, and these are their supporters.

  85. 85.

    burnspbesq

    @SFAW:

    I find it comforting to think of Gilliard and Molly Ivins as BFFs for all eternity, spending their time listening to the John Coltrane/Jimi Hendrix Revue.

  86. 86.

    MomSense

    So tonight my 4th grader starts a conversation with “I don’t think it’s fair that we are not allowed to share snacks at school”. When I ask him why, he then told me that his new friend is part of the “backpack” program at school. Our local food bank gives food donations to the teachers of the kids on the school lunch assistance program that the teachers discreetly put in their backpacks on Friday before they go home for the weekend so they will have something to eat. His friend gets a school lunch but the problem is that my son watches him go without snack and then look sad and get sort of sleepy before lunch.

    We came up with a plan because when your kid comes to you upset because he recognizes that a hungry kid is a fucking injustice, you have to do something. So we are going to buy a bunch of snacks and email my son’s teacher and ask that she discreetly make sure he has a snack every day. Not sure how she will manage this, but we are going to try.

    McMegan can *)(*(*&(*^* &^*(&*(&(*I^R^# %$&^$#$## @#$%^!!!

  88. 88.

    Goblue72

    @hilts: I’ve been celebrating since the Red Sox swept the Yankees in their final season series and then sewed up the AL East.

    Yankee Elimination Day on day Oakland loses and Sox on track (so far) to beat Rockies and add a game to best in AL lead? Priceless.

  95. 95.

    eemom

    hmmm, appears screechy psycho mclaren, who many of us presumed to be female, is just a regular old dude jerking off at his computer after all. Who’d’a thunk.

  96. 96.

    Narcissus

    @Kay:

    Really, they have these people whipped into a frenzy for years.

    This is the point, though. frenzied people don’t think.

  98. 98.

    fuckwit

    Dare I say Rethug projection again?

    McMeagan, who gets paid insane amounts of money for doing nothing of value, complains about poor people getting pittances and brradcrumbs just to keep themselves alive?

    Bring on the tumbrels.

  99. 99.

    the Conster

    @MomSense:

    I heard about that program on CLZ. If you figure out how to manage getting snacks to every kid, I would love to contribute. I’ll send a check.

  102. 102.

    MomSense

    @the Conster:

    Thank you. I’m going to call the woman who runs Midcoast Hunger Prevention and see if we can figure something out. Ethan Minton is a friend. His daughter and my son are good friends and I bet he would spread the word if we can put something together.

    When I talked to one of the volunteers who collects the food for the backpacks he told me that peanut butter is a really good choice because it has lots of protein and calories and is filling. And that is great but then the weight of the reality that we are just trying to keep bellies less hungry and achey settles in and that is when I have to sit in my car and swear and cry.

  104. 104.

    Ash Can

    @MomSense: You and your son rock the house down.

    Not sure how she will manage this

    If the kids have hallway cubbies or lockers, she can have them leave their snacks in their cubbies, then retrieve them (or have a teaching assistant retrieve them) for snack time — after said teacher or assistant has discreetly left a snack in the cubby of the classmate chronically without. Or she can have the students drop off their snacks with the lunch room people, under the guise of some “safe keeping of food” excuse, with the lunchroom personnel adding the snack before delivering the whole lot to the room for snack time. At any rate, by all means talk to the teacher about this. I’m sure she and the rest of the school personnel will bend over backwards and then some to work out an optimal solution.

  105. 105.

    johnny aquitard

    @Kay: Like zombies it’ll take a baseball bat to the head before they’ll cease their mindless motion and moaning.

    Seriously though, the harmfulness of the teabag generation won’t be neutralized until enough of them have died off so the younger generations can amelioriate ther baleful influence on american politics.

    Nothing’s gonna change them. We just have to outlast them.

    Fortunately time is on our side. It just is so damn unfair and wrong in the interim, and it gives cold comfort to the many people harmed in that time frame.

  106. 106.

    gene108

    @Goblue72:

    I fully expect the debt ceiling to be raised. It will be last minute.

    I don’t.

    In 2011, sequestration was offered up to get the Republicans to stop their tantrum and do their jobs.

    There is nothing they can get to calm their tantrum down this time.

    And, if Republicans in state governments are any indication, they do not care about the amount of pain and suffering they inflict on people.

  107. 107.

    Ash Can

    @eemom: I’ve asked numerous commenters here numerous times why they concluded that mclaren was female, and never got an answer. I just assumed everyone I’d asked has pied me. :)

  109. 109.

    MikeJ

    @goblue72:

    (we love ya defense Jackie Bradley Jr. but ya got a noodle for a bat)

    His name is among the most fun to say in the major leagues. You simply can not say part of his name without saying the entire thing. Jackie Bradley Jr. I hope he gets it together and becomes a real part of next year’s team. I love to watch people come up from the minors and make it. He was supposed to have a hot bat, and maybe it will turn out to be true (although it never happened with Carl Crawford). At least we didn’t pay that much for him.

  110. 110.

    eemom

    @Ash Can:

    You are quite right to have questioned. In retrospect I don’t have the slightest idea why that was assumed, and I was certainly one of the assum-ors.

    Which just shows to go you……not sure what exactly, but something sorta bad about assuming stuff.

  114. 114.

    goblue72

    @gene108: Obama doesn’t have to run for re-election. And after 3 years of Tea Party nonsense, I suspect the public will quickly tire of the foolishness.

  116. 116.

    Joey Maloney

    @mclaren: “The gravitational constant is 9.8 kg-meters/sec^2,”

    That’s exactly what I’d expect McArgleBargle to write, because it sounds impressive but it’s dead wrong. The gravitational constant, G, is the fudge factor added to make equations in our particular choice of units balance out. Its units are meters cubed per kilogram seconds squared.

    9.8 kg m/sec^2 is the force exerted by gravity on a mass at the earth’s surface.

    /pedant

  117. 117.

    SFAW

    @PurpleGirl:

    When you invoke Gilli (he of blessed memory), you must do it correctly… F**k the F**king Yankees.

    I understand, but if you’re going to correct me, please at least ensure that you’re correct.

    1) It’s “Gilly,” not “Gilli.”
    2) “Fuck the Fucking Yankees,” not some prettied-up version. please. I believe he had also used “FTFY,” but I won’t quibble in that regard, because my memory is hazy regarding that.
    .

  118. 118.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    insistent plausibility at a 180 degree angle from the truth – that’s gold!

  119. 119.

    Matt McIrvin

    @goblue72: I fear they’ll let the country default for a simple reason: it’s the one way they really might stop Obamacare. They’re past all legal or political remedies by this point. But they could still stop Obamacare by destroying the United States itself.

  120. 120.

    Epicurus

    “… marinating in our own moral and logical superiority…” Project much, you dope? McArdle has officially jumped the shark, and is now trolling in territory previously only explored by the Doughy Pantload himself. Please just go away, the world now knows that this woman’s ignorance and chutzpah know no limits.

  121. 121.

    TAPX486

    Different target but same chutzpah . George Will is outraged that the slow heroin drip of universal medical coverage will begin in Jan. It’s terrible that public funds will be paying for that addiction.
    On the other hand he has written several times about how his son, who is autistic I believe, can get around Washington on his own without a car. He uses PUBLICLY FINANCED mass transit.

    I guess its ok to be addicted if you near and deal to Mr. Will

  122. 122.

    Ksmiami

    @Keith P: it’s even more pernicious . In California farmers aren’t eligible for the fed hva @MomSense: I think we need a shaming program of America sort of a James Agee vision of the fact that many areas of this so called rich country are 3rd world poor and dysfunctional. If we could build a better baseline of life for people- good infrastructure/schools etc., that is a worthy goal

  123. 123.

    MomSense

    Thank you everyone for your advice and encouraging comments.

    I’m all for a shaming program!

    My son’s teacher put me in touch with some other parents and we are going to handle the snack problem for a bunch of kids.

    I’ll follow up with everyone here about ways to support your local backpack programs. Would be nice to combine that help with some writing about our experiences and maybe some shaming of the elected officials who don’t care about hungry children in their districts.

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