You Think They’re So Dumb, You Think They’re So Funny
I don’t have much of an opinion on S-CHIP. I know what I think of mob rule, though.
What we’re seeing here is the same tactics of personal destruction Movement Republicanism previously justified as necessary to winning The Greatest War Ever, now normalized as appropriate to handling a budget dispute. They wanted to get Jamil Hussein arrested or killed. They wanted Scott Beauchamp ruined or even fragged. They clearly want to destroy the Frost family. That’s why you just show up at someone’s workplace implying to their bosses and co-workers that they are liars, that they are trouble. To ruin them.
They wanted a war. Now they want everything to be a war. Any war.
Comment by y81 —
October 8, 2007 @ 10:00 pm
You don’t have an opinion? First, the government makes it illegal for private companies to offer health insurance for children (it’s called community rating), then it claims that there is a market failure justifying another boondoggle program using our tax dollars, and you don’t have an opinion on that? But you do have an opinion that criticizing people who make partisan TV commercials is beyond the pale?
You know, when I was a law student, Mark Tushnet always used to say “politics ain’t beanbag.” Doesn’t that apply to both sides?
Comment by MMGood —
October 8, 2007 @ 10:08 pm
y81:
“criticizing people who make partisan TV commercials!=”personal destruction.”
Complain about the commercial! Complain about the cynical use of a child! Don’t go to his family’s place of work and badger them.
Comment by graeme —
October 8, 2007 @ 10:13 pm
I don’t think y81 actually was a Law student. I think he made it up just so he could use that anecdote.
Just like those dastardly Democrats.
Except his anecdote is worse.
We should stalk him to determine the truth of the matter.
….Of course, I could just be taking Graeme Frost’s side because he shares my name.
Comment by Anonymo —
October 8, 2007 @ 10:18 pm
I just wish I still lived in a world where I could get pissed about things like expanding SCHIP, and I’m a freakin’ an-cap.
Comment by Rob —
October 8, 2007 @ 10:47 pm
The thing is, this was a freaking radio address that nobody ever listens to! Nobody listens to the President’s weekly address and nobody sure as hell listens to the response. This was being mean to be mean because they could. It shows they have power to ruin people if they want to and nothing more.
Comment by The Mechanical Eye —
October 9, 2007 @ 12:07 am
The thing is, this was a freaking radio address that nobody ever listens to!
That’s what I find interesting — for all the dick-waving about “citizen journalism,” an actual journalist – someone who’s actually skilled enough to write, investigate, make deadlines and get paid for it – wouldn’t have spent more then 10 to 15 minutes of actual work into a non-story about the legitimacy of some kid making a statement on what amounts to a 5 minute political radio spot no one pays attention to.
The movement conservatism I ended up running away from a year ago is full of misplaced priorities like this. All the so-called power of the Citizen Journalist and his mighty Fact Checking of Asses amounts to petty bullying.
DU
Comment by Tony P. —
October 9, 2007 @ 1:15 am
Remember Terri Schiavo? Now _there_ was a case where the best way to defeat the asshole wing of the GOP was to let them talk. The present case may be similar.
– TP
Comment by NYT —
October 9, 2007 @ 4:24 am
Whats strikes me is how they’ll go straight from outing Plame, starting an investigation of Paul O’ Neill or whatever (cause politics ain’t beanbag), to demanding apologies over a botched joke, or someone else’s ad or whatever.
I think its normal for revolutionary organization to have a line in viscious rhetoric against their opponents but the combination of viscious rhetoric and preciousness of the current Republicans is, I think, unusual.
Comment by Kevin Hayden —
October 9, 2007 @ 5:36 am
Meanwhile, they’ll defend General Petraeus by calling his critics ‘traitors’, for pointing out how many people will die because of his advocacy of What Bush Wants Him To Say.
The kids suffered life threatening injuries and are glad they got medical care. Tens of thousands of people won’t die because of their opinions.
So yeah, attack the kids, stalk and harass their parents. In Mark Steyn’s own words, this is a ‘game’ where such bullying is ‘fair’.
Which can only mean that extraordinary rendition for the child molesting parents of Jesse and Michelle and Mark is fair play, too, because they hate God and disembowel kittens.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 9, 2007 @ 6:36 am
y81, Here’s the thing – your response reveals you to be depraved. If you’re lucky, at some point you’ll think to yourself, “Oh man! My ideas had become diseased and evil!”
I don’t know how much luck there was in the world.
Do note that, those of us who were alive in the 1990s remember the efforts the Clinton White House made to personally smear Monica Lewinsky. That was what I hated them for most. Same deal here.
Comment by Ripley —
October 9, 2007 @ 8:32 am
First, the government makes it illegal for private companies to offer health insurance for children (it’s called community rating)…
What planet do you live on? Do they even have health insurance there?
This latest RightWing debacle has nothing to do with SCHIP or insurance – it’s about wingnuts trying to intimidate Democrats and liberals, and protecting their chosen leader, George W Bush, while they dance around and sing “We’re right! We’re good! Mommy loves us best!”
They’re pathetic, every last one of them.
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
October 9, 2007 @ 8:58 am
4: Full agreement. I remember when I loathed Clinton and Gore because of extraordinary rendition. Now I’d be happy to have them back.
Comment by Joe Strummer —
October 9, 2007 @ 8:59 am
Bush proposed a massive expansion of Medicare, and the right wing swallows hard and eats that one.
Bush said he opposes a modest expansion of SCHIP – the reasons why he’d support one but not the other are beyond me – so the right wing goes into overdrive, attacking people who support SCHIP as socialists.
SCHIP expansion isn’t even the worst health care bill that’s gone through Congress since Bush took office, I’m not sure why it’s engendering this kind of fanaticism on the right.
Comment by BigHank53 —
October 9, 2007 @ 9:12 am
Well, a lot of the ungly Republican base has always been tepid about our foreign adventures killing the darkies. All of that ammunition going to waste when there are so many targets here in America: feminists, abortion providers, atheists, tax-and-spend liberals, immigrants, etc.
The domestic eliminationists are just taking advantage of the bigger soapbox they have now.
Comment by Patriot —
October 9, 2007 @ 9:59 am
Let’s give them what they want. Shoot the fuckers dead on the street like the rabid animals that they are. God, a picture of Glenn Reynolds, for example, lying dead in a pool of blood would make my day. No, it would MAKE MY YEAR. Fuck them, kill them.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 9, 2007 @ 10:07 am
Nothing like jumping from the frying pan of “Let’s bully our political enemies by harassing them at work” to “Let’s gun our enemies down in the street!”
Note: If you’re not trolling or trying an especially ham-handed satire, the word “depraved” applies to your “proposal” too.
Comment by Flippanter —
October 9, 2007 @ 12:55 pm
Everyone on the Internet is so tough. How’d everyone get so tough?
Comment by kvenlander —
October 9, 2007 @ 1:00 pm
Jim, prepare for somebody going nutpicking in this thread…
Comment by jlw —
October 9, 2007 @ 2:16 pm
I just got back from five days with my hardcore Republican parents, both of whom gave the same reason for opposing a measure designed to give children access to health insurance: some poor parent somewhere is anecdotally spending money on beer and cigarettes instead of buying health insurance. Deprive real children because of imagined parents.
I love my own parents and don’t like to think this of them, but the desire to rub people’s noses in their misfortune is evil. There’s a “nanny state” instinct on the right that is just as strong and far more harmful than anything libertarians can find on the left. Liberals may want to keep you from smoking in bars, but conservatives want to keep your kids from getting subsidized health insurance because someone else might be smoking.
Comment by Nell —
October 9, 2007 @ 2:43 pm
@Joe Strummer #13:
The reason is the politics of it.
When the Republicans were pushing for the prescription drug benefit, the idea was to steal the issue from Dems so they’d be unable to use it in 2004. The regime lied to Congress about the cost in order to get it past their fiscal guard dogs (plus holding the vote open for hours, bringing a cabinet official onto the floor to lobby, threatening members, etc. etc.)
Now, this is a Democratic initiative that has solid appeal. No way to prevent its initial passage, hence no way to prevent its use as an election issue by Dems. The fight now is to prevent an override of the veto, to which end the 30-percenters are going crazy to muddy the waters. The targets are Republicans who voted for the bill, but might be peeled off to avoid the override.
Comment by jlw —
October 9, 2007 @ 2:45 pm
OK, calling terminating S-CHIP isn’t exactly a right-wing nanny state–I mean, we’re talking about the absence of government action. But there is a sensibility on the right that government power ought to be used or withheld based on how morally deserving one is that is every bit as coersive as the desire by some on the left to do things for you “for your own good.”
What’s disgusting in this case is that this punitive drive is trying to stick it to deadbeats by punishing kids–even kids whose parents are moral citizens. Unless not being able to get health insurance for your kids is evidence of one’s moral failings.
Comment by KCinDC —
October 9, 2007 @ 3:25 pm
Yes, jlw, the current line from the Bushites is that the Frosts are morally inferior because they haven’t sold their house to pay for health insurance.
I haven’t yet seen anyone claiming their kids wouldn’t have been in a car accident in the first place if they’d been more careful, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Comment by ParatrooperJJ —
October 9, 2007 @ 3:36 pm
Your comparisons suck. Beauchamp made everything up and commited treason. Hussein nas never been proven to exist.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 9, 2007 @ 4:04 pm
Three sentences, four untruths! You, Paratrooper JJ, are bracingly efficient.
Comment by Cala —
October 9, 2007 @ 4:11 pm
On the upside, we may finally have the answer to how many children a gasbag blogger could fight. n
Comment by Walt —
October 9, 2007 @ 4:41 pm
Four untruths, and a typo. Their comment-bots are close to perfection.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 9, 2007 @ 4:47 pm
Agreed. That’s like a Michael Moore stunt.
I remember when Reds hated Michael Moore and called him a dishonest bully. Of course, now they still hate him, but they like to emulate him en masse.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 9, 2007 @ 4:52 pm
Actually, I have an opinion on S-CHIP. I just don’t much care about S-CHIP.
I’m all for letting folks like Hesiod do the caring about mine and other libertarians’ opinions on S-CHIP for me, though.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 9, 2007 @ 4:56 pm
Comparative advantage in action!
Comment by Jay B. —
October 9, 2007 @ 5:23 pm
Of course the Medicare boondoggle Bush passed wasn’t merely expensive — it was a complete sop to Big Pharma that had all kinds of odd and unnecessary features that made it both user-unfriendly and more expensive than the much simpler Democratic expansion.
The GOP has morphed into a cult of personality. You’d think they would have picked a better personality.
Comment by the talking dog —
October 9, 2007 @ 5:25 pm
I remember when Reds hated Michael Moore and called him a dishonest bully. Of course, now they still hate him, but they like to emulate him en masse.
I remember those Halcyon days when the red menace came from across the Iron Curtain… funny, how the ideology of the new red (state) menace is similar to the old red mance… coming down to “We know what’s best for you, comrades; kindly confess to the error of your ways. NOW.” Funny, that. If it were funny.
Comment by sglover —
October 9, 2007 @ 5:28 pm
Simple. Geezers vote. And the AARP lined up behind the big gift to Big Pharma. AARP cares fuck-all for for anyone but geezers — and their own bureaucratic well-being, natch.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
October 9, 2007 @ 6:52 pm
John Holbo nailed the underlying conservative movement pathology in his mammoth 2003 review of a David Frum book. The essence of it is that an important strain of thought in the current conservative movement prefers that people be afraid and feel helpless except insofar as they are of servile use to the authorities and those at the top of the heap. People who feel confidence about their prospects for coping with trouble are much harder to stampede. So anything that suggests to the masses that there’s something they can stop fearing will seem particularly dangerous to the whole teetering edifice – leaders attack it as a threat to the system they’re preaching, and followers attack it to protect themselves from facing the possibility that they too could be better off than they are.
The worst thing in the world for this movement is for people to have confidence and happiness that didn’t come as revokable boons from the right leaders.
Comment by Brian C.B. —
October 9, 2007 @ 8:09 pm
You’d think, you would, as I (a liberal) do, that making it so that someone might start a business without fear that a family member might sicken and bankrupt him would be the sort of thing onto which a staunch capitalist would glom. After all, if Bill Gates had been worried about health insurance, he wouldn’t have started Microsoft, and what then? Okay, we’d all probably be using computers and operating systems that actually worked. There’d be tons of open-source apps that were superior to what Bill might have sold. Maybe that wasn’t the best example. But, still, the idea of health insurance is that it does remove a worry that haunts the entrepreneur: not mere personal failure, but disaster that takes down the innocents with whom he is surrounded. We want risk-takers. We want innovators. And Michelle Malkin’s answer is to lash them, in a final confirmation of “GOP as Cult.”
Comment by Barry —
October 9, 2007 @ 9:05 pm
Brian, that was the point of the previous comment. I’ve heard that (a) the self-employment/small business formation rates are higher in the Canada, and that (b) a primary reason was health care – a 30-or 40-something with children could leave a company and start a small business with no worries about health insurance.
Comment by borehole —
October 9, 2007 @ 9:36 pm
So is it me, or was Patriot like the blog equivalent of some narc in a peace-sign shirt and a wig showing up at a protest and throwing a hackey-sack at a cop?
Having that level of incendiary hatred toward a weenie like Reynolds seems a bit of a stretch, is all.
I say Patriot’s a blogent commentateur. I coined that.
Comment by Darkwater —
October 9, 2007 @ 10:11 pm
@#22: How’s this:
Comment by Justin Slotman —
October 9, 2007 @ 10:22 pm
“Commentateur,” for wolves in spoof’s clothing. I like that.
Comment by Justin Slotman —
October 9, 2007 @ 10:24 pm
Wait–I missed blogent somehow. That’s great too.
Comment by Brian C.B. —
October 10, 2007 @ 10:00 am
@37
Welcome to auto leasing. It’s only stodgy old farts like me what buy a car and pay off the note in three years, then start saving up for the down payment on the next one. If I want to keep making a car payment forever, I could have a nicer ride. And, there’s this premium, if you have four kids, on having something that will haul all of them at once in relative security and warmth. It’s not like you can use the company pickup and pile them all into the cargo bed.
Comment by Jon H —
October 10, 2007 @ 11:04 am
“You’d think, you would, as I (a liberal) do, that making it so that someone might start a business without fear that a family member might sicken and bankrupt him would be the sort of thing onto which a staunch capitalist would glom.”
Exactly. Also, wingers have been suggesting that the Frosts could use some of that equity in their home to, I suppose, get loans to pay for the healthcare. That would require that the home not already be mortgaged to the hilt to fund their small business. Which may well be the case.
It seems to me that using home equity to fund an attempt at starting a small business is more economically productive than using it to pay unexpected medical bills.
And some form of publically-provided healthcare would certainly assist people in deciding to use their home equity for entrepreneurship, rather than as an emergency fund.
Apparently, the main sins of the Frosts are that they a) are Democrats, b) contradicted the Fuhrer, and c) have engaged in a ‘lifestyle’ of entrepreneurship.
Incidentally, I think I recall reading recently that New Zealand came in at the top of the Economist’s ranking of nations for being business-friendly.
Comment by cw —
October 10, 2007 @ 12:00 pm
#22 – check out the freeper site- every other comment either asks which parent was driving the car (apparently because the newspaper article didn’t adequately crucify the offending individual by announcing to the world which of them is personally to blame for their children’s injuries); accuses the parents of not buckling up their children (because obviously they provide iron-clad protection against all injury, & no child of a virtuous parent has ever unbuckled him or herself in transit); proclaimes that “black ice” is a lame excuse for losing control of your car; that they must also be driving without car insurance, because that would’ve paid all the medical bills; and that not having health care itself is tantamount to child abuse. So the consensus seems to be that, not only did these parents freely choose to deny their children medical care, they also intentionally drove their car into a tree. Obviously because they were planning this heinous attack on poor, delicate George Bush 2 years in the future. Those liberals are a crafty bunch. Misfortune being the infallible mark of
guilttreason, therefore, they must also deserve the harrassment at home & at work, & an IRS audit, to boot.Comment by clarence swinney —
October 10, 2007 @ 1:18 pm
BUSH ECONOVOMITS
SWINNEY FACT CHECK on Zoom Economy
1. GDP–very high growth.
Consumer spending is 70% of the total. Debt for that spending all time record. By Far. National Saving negative first time since Repub Great Depression. Govt spent 3,000B of money borrowed from foreigners to aid the spending.
2. Debt as % of National Income–In 2000 it was 80% and in 2005 it was 110%.
Also, check number 6 or Money Supply. Federal Reserve increasing money supply. Awesome.
This not a healthy economic growth. Except for ULTRA-RICH.
2. DOW–Clinton hit record 11,720 in 2000. Bush is less than 2,000 above that record. Bush has passed a 1,000 mark twice. Clinton 8.
Clinton increase to his top was 8,200 billion. That was big.
The S&P plus One-half Dow stocks are just now back to 2000 level.
Let us look at TOTAL STOCK MARKET not 30 stocks.
Per Year Increase
Clinton-41%
Bush I-21%
Reagan-17%
Carter-5%
Bush II-4% this is a zoom? Six years.
3. Nasdaq. Clinton record 5000 in 2000. Bush record is to cut it in half–ZOOM down is not good.
4. JOBS–Oh! How we practice to deceive say Conservatives. They tried using Reagan record as from 1983 to 1989. Six years. Omit two years? Come on! Integrity shall never meet me.
They are trying the same deception with Bush. Omit 2001 and 2002.
BUSH NET JOB INCREASE–70,000 per month over 6 years(less one month) This the Big Big ZOOM? He brags on this. Crazy or dumb?
Reagan-175,000 per month over 8 years.
Carter-218,000 per month over 4 years.
Clinton-237,000 per month over 8 years.
5.HOUSING–low interest rates did the boom. Big Money Boom by Fed. Tax Cuts had little effect. Bush big time Moogumboo.
Foreclosures ahead! Big Time.
The number of years of average income to buy a new home at average prices.SHOCKING
Check this closely.
1950-2.5 years
1960-2.4 years
1970-2.5 years
1980-3.5 years
1990-4.3 years
2000-3.2 years
2006-5.4 years—this is a Zoom. Wrong direction.
A 68% Increase in six years is not a good ZOOM.
Wages have been too slow or prices too high or a combination.
Baby Boomers will create a genuine mess in our budgets.
Taking bets on Foreclosures. 5 million or 10 million over next five years.
6. MONEY SUPPLY
Bush Sr. claimed Greenspan policies cost him a re-election.
He was correct. Look at tight money supply for him.
Increases “per year†average in Money supply-In Billions.
Reagan-239—Bush I—56—Clinton—380—Bush II –760 (5 years)
Bush Sr. was correct. Greenspan did not attempt to stimulate the economy for him.
M-1 + M-1 Increase per decade.
1980 Decade-88%–1990 Decade—48%–2000(5 months) 55%
Monthly Average Increase in Decades—1980’s—120B per month—1990’s 64B per month—2006 (5 years + 4 months)-400 B.
Federal Reserve.gov 6-26-07
120-64-(400 in one half a decade is obvious favoritism).
If they continue that trend it will be 120-64-700.
It is obvious the Federal Reserve favored Reagan and now Bush II.
He opened the Printing Presses full time for Jr.
He shafted Clinton with 6.5% interest rate and gave Bush II a 1% rate.
6. SPENDING—Bush inherited spending at 18.5% of GDP and in first term took it to 20.3%. Eight years=disaster. Watch Conservatives try to remove one-half the budget by using Discretionary only. A President is responsible for ALL spending.
Do not let them Goering you with IRAQ the spending problem.
Last two years we spent over 5000 Billion in total. 500B in four years on Iraq. They will try to Goering us.
7. DEBT—all fault of Iraq War
Someone needs to check percentages.
Since inception of illegal slaughterama President Cheney and Puppet Bush have spent $12,379 Billion. $450 Billion on killings.
How has 3% created $3000 Billion of Debt?
8. CORPORATE PROFITS
Yes! Zoom Level. Buy overseas at $.50 per hour labor and sell to us as tho it is $10.00 per hour labor.
Whoever is President during 2010-2020 will be in deep doodoo.
Since 1980 this nation’s economy has been turned upside down.
From WWII to 1980 all Income-Wealth quintiles increased almost evenly percentage wise.
Since 1980 it has been rush to top with bottom 75% stagnated.
clarence swinney
political research historian of Reagan-Clinton-Bush II administration since 1991.
president-Lifeaholics of America
cCLARENCESWINNEY@BELLSOUTH.NET
Comment by Barry —
October 11, 2007 @ 7:03 am
“What we’re seeing here is the same tactics of personal destruction Movement Republicanism previously justified as necessary to winning The Greatest War Ever, now normalized as appropriate to handling a budget dispute. ”
Please recall that this was done against Clinton – it was suddenly necessary in 1993 to investigate a president’s business dealings from before he was a president. I don’t recall that being a priority during the Bush I or Reagan era’s, but then again, I’m a liberal.
And after the first investigation cleared him (or at least resulted in the prosecutor deciding that there was nothing worth persuing), it was necessary to have a ‘do over’, which lasted 6 more years, and ended up with the president being interrogated under oath about an affair, one which had nothing to do with the initial allegations.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 11, 2007 @ 7:12 am
Which is all well and good, Barry, but Bill Clinton was not a semi-employed woodworker. He was President of the United States. There is a big difference between “maliciously trying to ruin the President” and “maliciously trying to ruin an intern” or “maliciously trying to ruin a part-time woodworker.
Comment by Ernst Blofeld —
October 11, 2007 @ 5:40 pm
If a family is presented as an exemplar of what a government program is intended to address, and participates in the selling of it to the extent of having their kids read scripts written for them by flacks, it is not exactly dirty pool to find out if they really are what they claim.
Certainly if the Republicans presented a moppet reading a script about how they’ll lose the family farm to the death tax, and it was found out that the family is actually Bill and Melinda Gates and their spawn, there wouldn’t exactly be crocodile tears shed over making this information public, and in criticising the example presented as a need for the program.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 11, 2007 @ 7:22 pm
I think it’s good that you take your name from a cheesy, bullshit villain, Ernst. If you can’t tell the difference between “find[ing] out if they really are what they claim” and what the GOP’s Muttawahkin actually did in this case, then you’re not even an apologist. You’re a symptom.
Comment by graeme —
October 11, 2007 @ 8:53 pm
“not even an apologist. You’re a symptom.”
That’s pretty good, I like it