Sunday, February 28, 2010

If You Can't Beat Them, Call Them Poopyheads

Shorter Ross Douthat:
Six Hours of Hot Air!

My peers have no intellectual capabilities and act like little children. My opponents are jerks for pointing this out and no one should get healthcare because of it.
In the article, he actually says that Obama is "too professional." Yeah, we need more leaders who fly headlong into decisions based on gut reactions. Screw this thinking shit. It has never worked.

Megan's website redo seems to have messed up my Google reader, as I haven't been seeing any of her posts. I'm too lazy to go to her URL, click on the read more button and then actually read her drivel, so, fuck that. This might be the end of me. Go over and read her columns yourself, imagining a smug ass guffawing and calling her stupid periodically, and you'll have an experience similar to what you get when reading me. A quick glance shows she has an article about the killer Shamu, which has got to be amusing. Apparently she's qualified to discuss marine life now. Those MBAs are fucking handy.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

From Green To Blue

I haven't been in the mood even to look at McArdle lately, but a visit to Snark-Hunting Susan's informed me that there's a new site design at The Atlantic, & it appears (So excited that we had to post this w/o too much investigation.) that commenting will be easier.

Obviously, if one's not in the mood to read MMcA, reading the comments is even less likely, & Susan advises that it's all pretty much droolers eating the slightly less drooly now. We'll see.

Also noted: Megan can now double post her stuff, under "Business" & "Politics." (And "National" as well.) New favorite category? "Personal." Oh boy.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Annals Of Himalayan Salt

As NoT noted. Credit where due, even if we rec'd. none.

This One Doesn't Even Have Guns

Breaking News! Leaked transcripts of secret NBC discussions regarding Olympic coverage:

NBC Executive: Should we play women's gold medal hockey today or women's cross country skiing?

Total Moron: Cross country. Nothing's more exciting than that.

NBC Executive: Well, you're the brains of this outfit. Let's do it!
I knew it!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Back on the Horse

Hey, check it out! Uninformed musings from a delusional idiot with a following about the uniformed musings of a delusional idiot with a following! It's like looking at a mirror in a mirror in a mirror in a....

Ann Althouse suggests that liberal magazine sales are down now that Obama is in office. From what I understand, that's not exactly surprising; the conventional wisdom around here is that political magazines do best when their party is out of power. On the other hand, there is this recession on, and I don't know that conservative magazines have seen their circulation rise. Personally, I just decided not to renew our subscription to Harper's, not because it's run out of anti-Bush hate, but because I've been reading it less and less. On the other hand, I guess you could argue that Bush hatred infused the magazine with an energy that it's now lost.
So, Megan, tell us about the magazines you read!

And -- so as to save brad the trouble of making the note -- as far as we know, neither Megan McArdle, nor myself, nor brad, nor M. Bouffant, nor Connor Friedersdorf, nor Ann Althouse is, in fact, Ann Althouse.

Update: She doesn't even read her own links (like me!)! From the Vanity Fair article Ann Althouse links:
The year 2009 was a tough one for magazines in general, with circulation down 2.23 percent overall, according to ABC (the decline in advertising revenue was far greater and more detrimental, but that’s another story). The three leading liberal political magazines, however, fared particularly badly. The Nation’s circulation in 2009 was down 7.4 percent from 2008, Mother Jones was down 6.7 percent, and Harper’s was down 5 percent.

(...)

What about the conservative magazines? The most prominent and biggest-selling, The National Review, definitely seemed to experience an Obama-hatred bump in 2009. Paid circulation was up a solid 4.8 percent from 2008, and was 16 percent greater than the magazine’s 2003-2008 average. The Weekly Standard rose by 8.4 percent, with an especially big spike in the second half of the year. As for relative newcomer Newsmax, which has less name recognition than the Standard but a higher circulation (an average of 101,370 copies in 2009 versus 77,470), its circulation held steady.

Credit Where It's Due

I actually think McArdle is being pretty mature at taking a risk in writing this articles. Kudos!

In Case You're Bored

Ima pimp Dr. Boli one mo' time.

Monday, February 22, 2010

USA!

So the women's hockey team will be fighting for the gold in a few days, as they usually do. Women's soccer is also a sport at which America excels.

Though it's only two data points, I wonder if this is perhaps because women have more equality here in certain regards? I have no idea how other quantifiables line up, like income disparity and such, but I find the dominance in those two sports interesting. The soccer is especially note worthy, given our general mediocrity in the men's field.

Anyone have anything to add?

One Good Apple Saves a Rotten Bunch

Take a look at this video. What is the crowd's reaction?

Sounds to me like dissension. Some booing and some cheering. I don't know how you'd go about guessing as to which was more predominant.

Let's hear what Megan hears:

Andrew Sullivan has been doing a lot of blogging about Ryan Sorba, the [expletive deleted] who got up on stage at CPAC to condemn them for inviting GOProud. Andrew's mostly given a lot of space to illustrating what a [censored] [redacted] Ryan Sorba is, and I fully agree. One can only cherish the hope that thirty years from now he will writhe in shame at this performance, and given the vagaries of youth, there is a good chance that eventually, he will.

But [expletive deleted]s getting up at political conferences and saying asinine things are not exactly a surprising happening. To me, the news story was this: Sorba got booed off the stage. At CPAC.
Well, he didn't seem to leave the stage. Maybe the "booing off" happened later. Maybe it's just an expression.

Or maybe that a handful of people at CPAC have part of their hearts and brains still intact doesn't change the fact that the GOP has been championing gay-hate for as long as I've been paying attention. So have a number of assholes Dems. So fucking what? America hates gays; the Republicans slightly more so -- or maybe just more honestly so, but whatever. A handful of fucktards at CPAC that are fucktarded in a different way doesn't change the fact that an open homophobe was invited to talk at CPAC. Does she think Sorba didn't make his stance on homos known before he hit the podium? I'm gonna guess he did, though you can prolly guess whether or not I will bother to look it up.

Anyway, this is what booing sounds like:

I wish I had the chance that Gomez did to tell Palin what a horrible person she is in front of thousands. Alas, Scotty appears not to have taken the opportunity. Fucking Alaskans, always sticking together.

UpdateHere's a video showing that he did, in fact, leave the stage. Immediately the MC started saying "freedom of opinion" over and over. That has nothing to do with anything, though. Skip to 1:30.

... what?

English major strikes again.

Despite having declared the death of the health care bill before almost anything else, I don't want to say that the thing's impossible. [My emphasis]
Context doesn't help, it's just plain ole piss poor writing. I honestly don't know what she's trying to say. Before anyone else, I guess?
Thank goodness she's also an editor and will catch this before it's published, heh.

As for her commentary on the prospects of reform being enacted, I think she manages to dismiss her own views far better than I ever could.

Megan is From NYC.

So apparently a Brooklyn accent drops "r"s. Next story, people from Boston say "soder" instead of "soda."

Fucking morong.

Love that she's on top of this. It reminds me of those times when she called out the conservatives for calling Obama/Sotomayor/every-liberal-ever a racist based on absolutely nothing.

brad adds:

Look, Megan became an expert on Brooklyn by dint of having ridden through it on the way to Coney Island once. In no way should someone assume that an 80s era overprivileged daughter of Manhattanites grew up terrified of Brooklyn and only going there on mandatory school safaris to dark lands trips. Oh, and that one time she went to Williamsburg in 2006 to visit a friend who was being all bohemian for a year, that totally counts, being surrounded by hipsters from Kansas and Nebraska teaches you lots about Brooklyn.

Remember This Fucker?

Back in the day when he blogged for Teh Atlantik (and we weren't terminally lazy), we used to make fun of Fatty-Y a bit. I came across this short little bit of idiocy via LGM and it makes me just want to slap that stupid fucker up and down the playing surface of your god damn choice.

America The Beautiful
One of the things that’s great about the United States is that we have the ability to sometimes casually beat other people at their beloved national sports—speed skating, hockey, whatever, we put up a good fight in everything. On to the world cup!

Canadians will have to console themselves with their efficient and equitable health care system.
I really hope that the problem here is that Matt identifies more with sports that use round balls and so has not watched much hockey. I did not see the game (thanks NBC!) but when you win 5-3 while being outshot ~46-22, you're not really eligible for bragging rights. Certainly not when you do it in the round robin.

And what is this "speed skating as a beloved national sport" shit? Who the fuck has speed skating as a beloved national sport? Who the fuck thinks that Americans are the perennial underdog? WTF is wrong with this stupid, doughy fucker?

I'm all for the Olympics and all, but if you want to use as a metaphor for our geopolitical actions, I have a better one that us unexpectedly going faster on ice than the Norwegians. How about; We spend shit tons of money on useless crap like bobsledding and biathlon and then get all happy-crappy cause, hey, the richest, 3rd most populous country in the world wins stuff! Go us! We're so talented.

Meanwhile, we can't spend a damn dime to alleviate the suffering of millions of people who can't even fathom the Olympics and their grandiose waste and misplaced sense of importance. OK, that's not really a metaphor, but Matt Ygelsias is not really intelligent enough to write, either, so we're square.

In the US, even our national sense of importance is better than in other countries!

EWE-ESS-AY!

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Fatality

This Poor Man thread is toxicly cute. Here's a small taste -- for the strong only:




Seriously, there are videos of fucking bears and tigers play fighting on the internet. Someone needs to step in and shut this fucker down before we all pass out.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Oh Lord

The Majesty of the Law:

I've read a lot about prohibition, but I never read about the government's deliberate effort to make industrial alcohol undrinkably poisonous. Thousands of people seem to have died as a result.
Thousands of people die from drinking an industrial solvent and it's the government's fault.

It's called denaturing, Megan. We still do it!

BONUS FUN: From the article:
Poisonous alcohol still kills—16 people died just this month after drinking lethal booze in Indonesia, where bootleggers make their own brews to avoid steep taxes—but that's due to unscrupulous businessmen rather than government order.
So, in Indonesia, selling industrial solvents for human consumption is the sellers fault. In America, it's the government's.

God bless the reasoned discourse at Slate.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Random Mischief

soooooo, it seems John Stossel has a new show on the Fox Business Channel.
What's interesting about this is it features a studio audience. Seeing as it's filmed in NYC, and considering his (lack of) popularity here, I'm betting I could find my way into the audience pretty easily.
The question, obviously, is how to make them regret allowing me in, and since no worthy ideas spring instantly to mind, I thought I'd open it up for suggestions.
Short of committing a violent felony, I'll consider it. I'm sure I could find excellent free representation against that shit were any real problems to arise.
So whatcha think?

All the Facts in This Blog Post Are True

Wooo, boy, am I feeling a bit sheepish. Better crack out a post that isn't verifiably stupid so that I can continue to rule my little part of the intertubes. What's this? A post stupid regardless of facts? I'll take it!

Megan is fond of playing the centrist. She voted for Obama! Yet she chides her liberal opponents so much more oft than her conservative opponents cohorts well, whatever they ares.

Take for example, her most recent call to civility. Oh, how those liberals do ignore her well thought out arguments and immediately start with the rending and gnashing and expressioning. Then compare it to her take downs of Rush or Beck, which occasionally might start out strong, but always end up with a walk back "I don't HATE Rush." (Links not inserted to protect the lazy.)

One is left to wonder; who does she love? Well, she finally shows us with her full length quote of RobM1981, who intelligently still uses an AOL screen name from 1998 as his blogging handle:

We have experimental data here: the Smart Car.
Here was a car that was large enough for two people, or one person and a fair amount of groceries. It was driveable, if just, at highway speeds.
And it got relatively horrible mileage because physics is physics.
The Honda Fit seats four and has room - even with 4 people in it - for some decent cargo. Yet it gets much better mileage than the Smart, and is generally considered more fun to drive. Why?
Because it's large enough to have crumple zones. The human cargo is surrounded by some degree of space, and that space can be used to dissipate energy in a collision.
A Smart Car is built like a tank, because it has to be. It is essentially a roll cage on wheels. Even with the best air bag technologies available, merc had to build this thing with a relatively large amount of steel.
That means weight.
You can have a light one seat car that gets crazy-good gas mileage, or you can have a heavy one seat car that gets mediocre (for it's size) gas mileage.
But you can't have both. And given our regulations, you really aren't allowed to sell the first one.
Motorcycles would never, EVER be approved by NHTSA if they were invented today.
At some point all of the fun things will be illegal, and we can all go on to live dreary Orwellian lives, free of fear...
Yes, this is the man to whom we should all aspire. A man who thinks an anecdote is "experimental data." A man who writes several paragraphs in a row with only one or two sentences in each and yet still manages to be verbose. A man who thinks that safety laws ruin all the fun; like driving in a car without a seatbelt or having your small child locked in a refrigerator that doesn't open from the inside or having said child eat lead paint or any of the other myriad safety regulations that industry swore would bankrupt them.

A man who thinks the lessons of Orwell are about crumple zones....

So today is RobM1981 (aka sparklesexyboy69) Day. Let us all be RobM1981 for a day. Let us ride motorcycles without helmets and drive cars without antilock brakes. We shall hike in forests blissfully free of birds thanks to DDT and swim next to the orange glow of the Cuyahoga river. We shall cry "God bless the perfect, self-regulating industry!" and everyone shall say a little prayer for it as they fly through their safety-glassless windshield, and land with a thudding "Amen" on the pavement, smiling ear to ear.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Another Holy Crap

UPDATE:Whoops, I'm retarded. I've been doing that a lot lately. I never thought it was possible to get lazy enough to fail at this job, but I guess we all sink to low expectations. America had malaria and got rid of it, so her point still stands. None the less, I'll leave this up merely because Megan is simultaneously saying we can't afford to help those not well off while touting how lucky we are to be able to help ourselves so thoroughly. It's still a case of healthcare for me and not thee, even if it is a case of "Toast is being a bit of a knee jerk idiot, lately" as well.

HOLY CRAP!

Scientists now think that King Tut may have died of malaria. As the fellow who sent me the link dryly noted, King Tut did not have good comprehensive health insurance.

All kidding aside, this is a good excuse to meditate on just how rich we are. King Tut was probably the wealthiest man in the world during his time. He died of something that wouldn't kill the most abjectly immiserated welfare mother in the United States today, because of a combination of public health efforts, and cheap antimalarial drugs.

You always need to factor in things like this when you talk about changes in living standards over time. All the positive changes in society mean that the absolute difference between the income of Bill Gates and the man who valets his car is larger than it has ever been in history. But the actual difference in comfort between the two of them is probably much smaller than the difference between JP Morgan and his stableboy. And both Gates and the valet are almost immeasurably better off than their predecessors.
How many people die from malaria each year, Megan? Only a million!

How much malaria is there in America?

NONE!
For someone who recently traveled to Vietnam, she sure has the knowledge of someone who's never left America.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

I Know I Am But What Are You?

Shorter "The Benefits of Health Benefits"

Ezra Klein says "If you hate health insurance so much why don't you divorce it?" Hah! Joke's on him! If I could, I'd get rid of my health insurance and get a different kind of health insurance, proving my hatred of health insurance isn't hypocritical. Also, I'd only do this because I'm an upper class white person, and all those studies that show lower class brown people dying from lack of insurance are therefor flawed.


And because I like things I like more than I like things I hate (What?!?!! I DO?!?!?!):

BONUS FUN!

Monday, February 15, 2010

Wagers Anyone?

I will bet my left kidney that this is another such is blogging moment:

While looking for information on Deval Patrick's new idea for controlling costs in Massachusetts (more on which later), I came across this opinion piece in the Huffington Post, titled "New York City Sinks If Health Care Reform Fails." I find this a bit surprising, because first of all, New York City already has a third of its residents on Medicaid; and second of all, the city already has all the main features of the proposed insurance plan except the mandate. (bold mine ~ed)
Although, I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with an extra left kidney when I win.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Because I Like Making You Look At Things

BAM

More Plinking

I know that I've just been taking a lot of pot shots lately, but you'll forgive my flagging enthusiasm for sweeping back the ocean. The stupid has always been with us and there's nothing we can do but sit back and smirk, trying hard to forget the misery that our selfish and idiotic tendencies bestow upon the less fortunate.

Anyway, in another post whose end I have no inclination of reaching, Megan starts out strong with the stupid, self-defeating debating tactics of which she's so fond.

Step 1) Decry the rhetoric of your opponents without citing any of them:

For some reason, everyone I've seen who has so far responded to my piece on mortality and the lack of insurance has pulled exactly the same debater's trick: they restate my argument in maximalist form, and then proceed to really kick the hell out of the strawman they've created.
Step 2) Spew a bunch of nonsense and evocative language meant to depict your opponents as absurd, wailing harpies who've lost all reason:
I mean, there's hay and shreds of fabric on the ceiling of offices three floors above them. Button eyes flying off so fast that several have achieved escape velocity. Crows shrieking in terror as far away as Fresno and Marseilles. It's a stunning display of . . . something.
And thus concludes another opening paragraph to another post I won't read.

I suppose you could accuse me of some form of argumentative fallacy here, but that's just something you'd do because you're a fucking asshole.

Tu Quoque!

Friday, February 12, 2010

Adventures in Not Reading the Post

Anyway, there are some words in this article. I haven't read more than the first few of them 'cause, well, fuck you, that's why. Managed to hang on long enough for this, though:

I think it is possible that the lack of insurance has no effect on aggregate mortality statistics. I do not think that this is likely, but I think it's possible.
McArdle's own admission is that it's most likely that her stand on health insurance will kill people. She graciously gives herself a low probability out, though. Good for her!

So spending money on certainly killing people = ok, whereas, spending money on almost certainly savings lives = we can't afford it. We wouldn't wanna waste money on something that isn't certain, eh lady?

Speaking of Superbowl Ads

These are two of the ones that got rejected for being too controversial. I'm not sure which I like more, but they're both awesome:


Ha Ha?

Blah:

Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks that Google Docs might be very useful for managing wedding planning tasks. The Official Google Blog notes all the ways in which they're trying to help you plan for that very special day.

However, Google's entry into the wedding planning business is uncharacteristically, almost comically, inept. These tools are free. This is not how wedding planning services work. The way they work is, they charge you $50 for things that are normally free, escalating rapidly if there is actual work or materials involved.
So either she's making a stupid joke about how ridiculous weddings are while she talks endlessly about hers, or else she's too stupid to realize that just about everything Google does is free to individuals.

One thing is certain, it's retarded. And by retarded I mean FUCKING RETARDED. Baby Trig, I'm looking straight at you! Across the hypotenuse!

Wow, I seem to have spelled hypotenuse right on the first try. Go me.

Megan IS Bad at Math

Shorter Megan McArdle:

Fannie and Freddie: Budget Busters:
30 billion times one is less than 60 billion divided by 9.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

OMG Fuck ALL of This Shit

YEAH, squealing seems to have invaded every single fucking blawg I read these days. This is why I just don't care about politics anymore. From the usually sane Brad at Sadly, No!

blahg blahg blahg

(...)

This is me saying our country will simply not survive if we can’t get the banks under control.
YES! Big banks pose an EXISTENTIAL THREAT to the EWE-ESS-AY! We'd best get to bombing 'em.

Remember, everyone who is white might be a bankerrorist, so we have to round them all up just in case.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Not That It Matters

Oh, yeah, I guess I can DO SOMETHING about the fact that we're still cold blooded killers for fun, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Bombs away:

BLAWG

There. That will stop him. So happy that my "maybe he's secretly as liberal as the kooks say" turned out to be as misguided as I knew it was.....

Anyway, I made a difference today. You do it, too!

A Lack of Infrastructure Equals Incompetence

Megan's all whiny cause she is too stupid to plan ahead. Naturally this means that the government is at fault.

You have never seen a city as completely incompetent at dealing with snow as Washington DC.

I mean, two feet of snow is inconvenient anywhere. But in DC, only the main streets have been plowed.
I'm gonna go ahead and guess that if DC kept the huge fleet of plows handy that would be needed to promptly take care of two feet of snow, Megan would call them wasteful for spending millions on something that is only needed once every 50 years.

UPDATE: I should have kept reading because we also have this beautifully thought out idea:
Here's a serious question: why don't more cities rent out their snow services? Upstate New York is apparently blissfully free of snow, and short of money. Washington DC is one of the flushest metro areas in the country, and in need of snow removal. Why not get some of the snow removal equipment--and talent--from Rochester and Syracuse and Buffalo on the road? They could be here in twelve hours at the outside, and have this place cleaned up in a jiffy.

It seems like this would be a win-win combination. But as far as I know, no one's even suggested it.
I just checked the forecast for Syracuse which will be "blissfully free of snow" for about 6 more hours. Then it will snow for a week. So, yeah, why not send all of your snowplows (which are only used for snow removal and recreational games of dump truck polo) and your personnel (which are apparently a group of volunteer snow fighters sitting around the snow house all day, waiting for a snow alarm to go off who don't need sleep)? That sounds like a fucking brilliant idea, Megan. So much better than making you walk a few blocks in the fucking snow because you're too stupid to plan ahead.

Is This An Ad Hominem Attack?

Poor Megan. Up since 1419 ET, but no one wants to discuss.

Or am I just being rude?

Monday, February 8, 2010

Dumbfounded Yet Again

Judging by this post, Megan hasn't heard of iTunes.

Seriously, WTF? She keeps an Apple product in every one of her orifices at all times and she still doesn't know fuck about it.

Floppy-Fliipies

Holy shit, transpose the first letters of Sarah Palin's first and last name, then hit the beach.

That's it. I'm voting for her.

If Less Is More, We're In Trouble

The Hunting of The Snark brings this to our attention, which disappointed founder/publisher brad.

Do I want to know who she follows? Sure I do: 'Tis herself. (Alas, not a heavy or recent user.)

Be nice, brad.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Not Even Himalayan Rock Salt

There is nothing sweeter than Peyton Manning's tears.

Update: Oh hai, Peyton:

What I Learned From This Year's Superbowl Ads

having a penis means I have to conform to banal, empty gender stereotypes which, by pure coincidence, serve the profit margins of large corporations.

I'm sorry for ever having listened to myself or women the ladiezz stupid girls.

Now where's Tebow to lie to me about his mother's pregnancy with him? Did I miss it?

Friday, February 5, 2010

Well That Explains It

I have often wondered how it is that Megan can be so incompetent about so, so many things. I think this provides some insight into that:

State Department vehicle hits journalist, breaking his knee, and gets the MPD to cite him for jaywalking. Note to State Department: if you hit a pedestrian walking anywhere near a crosswalk, you were at fault. The accident is bad enough. But trying to blame it on the victim is appalling.
Now, as usual there's a lot of stupid in there. The first is that, of course, she doesn't care about the jay walking. She's pimping this 'cause (and I'm hazy on the details on account of who fucking cares) this was some right wing guy and he was hit by a member of socialists Obama's government cabal so obviously coverupscandalomg. There's the fact that she, almost certainly, has no idea what actually happened and yet is sure the pedestrian is not at fault. That's not what I'm here for though. I'm here for the part that says:
if you hit a pedestrian walking anywhere near a crosswalk, you were at fault.
Which is like, really? What the fuck? Who told her that? What part of her brain is missing that she can't realize how stupid such a law would be? Does she not notice that people don't just walk out into the intersection no matter that status of the light or the traffic, confident that they won't be hit by cars? Does she really think that avoiding pedestrians is always the responsibility of the less maneuverable, larger, faster, lower field of vision having party? Fuck, planes aren't supposed to fly over active parachuting areas, but I can assure you that we still check for traffic before we fucking exit!

She continually blows my mind with the ignorant, poorly thought out nonsense that escapes from her fingers. I don't know which is more unbelievable an explanation; that she is so partisan even her views on jay walking are bent to fit the political agendas involved, or that she is so stupid she actually thinks that the car holds sole responsibility for avoiding pedestrians.

Update: Oh, yes, the explanation part. The point is that this clearly indicates that she is not in the same world that the rest of us are in. I don't know how she switched dimensions, and I'm not sure what part of our reality bleeds into hers and what part of her reality bleeds into ours. I just hope that they have nice music wherever she is, for her sake.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

"Before you pop off at me, would you please try to read all the words in the post? In order?"

Shorter 

Note to My Angry Liberal Interlocutors

I do too address your angry concerns!
I have spent a paragraph or so discussing exactly the problem that they are angrily demanding that I address.
Or so!

Shorters

kickin it old school in whitebreadia.

New PPP Poll Suggests Dems Should Pass Health Care?:

So what to make of the new PPP poll suggesting that Demcorats are marginally better off passing health care than not? I take it seriously. But not too seriously, for the following reasons:
Concern troll is concerned the Democratic Party might not choose the optimal electoral strategery for the mid-terms, which would be abandoning every element of the Party platform and calling for a new Cabinent level Department of Giving Rich People Free Cookies.
It's a national poll, but congressmen are running in local races.
Yah, they is. Smert.
Polls are an okay guide to public opinion about things (with the usual caveats about framing). They are not a good guide to what people will do.
Someone warn Nate Silver.
Another round of health care legislating might drive its popularity down even further in the polls. Which would make passing the legislation even more costly.
So you see, polls in suppport of health care reform... ummmm... bunnies!
Passing health care will refresh the public's memory of it. The longer ago an electoral initiative happened, the less salient it is. In an election year, even three months matter.
Why make people think your political party actually does stuff? Oh right, because everything Megan's party does fails miserably except in further enriching the already bloated.
In conclusion she warns that if we're pretending it's 1994 then Blue Dog Dems should.... stop doing what they're already doing to obstruct and water down the President's reform initiatives then restart it so she can notice.

Great Moments in Campaign History:

Why deal with the truth when media narratives ignoring what actually happened better serve your purposes? Also, maintaining zombie lies about John Kerry somehow matters to... umm, someone. Her commentariat uses it as a chance to complain about how unfair it is that Democrats participate in elections too.

Toyota's Weekus Horribilus:
I cannot get too interested in the conspiracy theorists asking whether the US government doesn't now, due to its ownership of GM, have a conflict of interest when it starts publicly raking Toyota over the coals.
However, I am going to lead off with mention of the quite incredibly stupid idea which I don't even bother to dismiss. Plus I'm going to mention the UAW, those fuckers who dare to seek pay for their members in compensation for performing work.

How Unions Work:

When I need to learn about Judaism I talk to Nazis, and when I need to learn about unions I read Megan McArdle. Hi, Godwin!
Now read this, because I had to;
But compare either system to what now exists in our nation's schools. Every single teacher can stay on for years unless they do something direly wrong. Every single teacher can get a useless education degree, which basically requires a pulse. They have a system that spreads benefits absolutely evenly among all their members.
Did you know an MA in Education comes with guaranteed tenure once anyone anywhere hires you? Also, degrees in Education are not valid, because Megan doesn't like them. She got an MBA and couldn't find a job, how fucking dare someone both retain their soul and find a good job before she could.

I think the "monopolies are good" post deserves individual treatment, so back later.

Something About This Picture Terrifies Me

so let's see if it scares you too.


The eyes are the obvious answer why, but there's something more, there's just something about about Courtney Love's face that seems like bad cgi which couldn't possibly be real. I guess it's just bad plastic surgery.

(source)

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

I Remember My First Primary

Holy shit. I bring you the Comment of the Day:

I think that one of the biggest obstacles to reform is not one particular party ,but the simple fact that Iowa votes first in the primaries.
Next, Megan will be shocked -- SHOCKED I say -- to learn that the electoral college has it roots in slavery.

How does someone whose job it is to know things about politics find it SHOCKING NEWSWORTHY ZOMG WHYWASN'TIINFORMED to hear that Iowa gets more attention than other states?

Furthermore, there are about 65 other states in the mid-west which are pretty much giant farms and 1/4 of the food grown in America comes from California. So, what the fuck are you talking about, Walter?

Megan V. Megan

Megan McArdle on claims that the populace opposes health care because of misinformation:

If this becomes the party line, the Democrats are in big trouble. Every time something goes wrong with their electoral fortunes, Democrats seem to revert to the same defense mechanism: they are victims of crafty and vicious Republicans who use their secret mind control machines to spread a particularly powerful brand of lies.

You know what doesn't build a powerful electoral message? Telling each other that everyone actually loves your program, except for the fact that the other guy tells so many lies about it!
Megan McArdle on public support for farm subsidies:
Would that it were so . . . we might have a shot at killing off farm subsidies. Sadly, not the case. George Bush I tried to trim back farm subsidies. Bill Clinton "ended" them. Next decade, George Bush II also made a run at killing them off. Obama's freeze will founder on the same two problems: farm states wield disproportionate, bipartisan power in the Senate, and Americans think that farmers are really, really cute. In the American mind, all farms are run by the Ingalls family who skip around solving the problems of the townsfolk between picturesque striding through waving rows of corn. In truth, they're rather more apt to be high-tech sharecroppers for Cargill and ADM, but we can't shake the image.
Consistency is the hobgoblin of foolish minds. I don't know what that expression means, honestly. However, Megan isn't consistent, is rather foolish, and is a hobgoblin (wait, what's a hobgoblin? Fuck it. Sounds like something bad.) so I guess it must be true. Or is isn't. Whatever. I've already put more work than her into this shit so I'm calling it a win.

Fucking hobgoblins.

Just To Chime In

I'd like to mention, inre: Megan blithely dismissing the mental pain of millions that THE STUPID ASSHOLE TAKES PRESCRIPTION PSYCHOACTIVE DRUGS JUST TO FEEL UP IN THE MORNING. Drugs that she, in her own words, had to browbeat her poor competent sounding doctor into giving her.

Sorry for yelling, but what the fuck. Does she have the same basic reaction to mirrors as birds, and demand that the stranger she sees leave her house?