Apropos Sebastian Mallaby’s stupidity and lack of empathy, Atrios sez:
I’m not going to claim to have a deep understanding of living life as a member of the working poor - and, no, years of being a relatively impoverished grad student don’t really qualify - but I do know the experience of someone in that situation is exactly like Mallaby’s… not. To eat and feed their kids - let alone keep their insurance if they have it - they’ll have to keep working as much as possible in jobs which require a bit more physical activity then flicking fingers across a keyboard, and a bit more contact with other people than a telecommute.
Clueless pundits.
Mallaby: epitome of technocratic, little-glasses ‘realism’
Now this is in the context of Mallaby’s “centrist,” sneering, sociopathic positions on health insurance. But the objections work just as well against Mallaby’s “centrist,” sneering, and sociopathic positions on trade policy. To wit:
Sebastian Mallaby lives in Dupont Circle and all his friends are writers, software engineers, economists and advertising executives! So what if South Carolina has lost 17% of its blue-collar manufacturing jobs since January 2001 and North Carolina 22% — the two states most affected by Chinese textile and furniture exports. Sebastian Mallaby saved $10 at Pier 1 this month!
But at least Mallaby recognizes that China’s low-wage manufacturing economy is putting an end to the hopes from Central America and Africa and South Asia of climbing the development ladder via textiles. After all, getting the retail price of that Wal-Mart shirt down from $8.63 to, say, $8.58, is worth shutting down plants in coddled over-wealthy Bangladesh, not to mention in Columbus, GA.
Just as insurance company- and HMO-whores will eventually end up on the right wing where they belong, so too, I think, will the Tom Friedman and Sebastian Mallaby types who have steadily advocated economic war on the working class via Free Trade. Mallaby and Friedman are to trade policy what Joe Lieberman is to foriegn policy. Wherever General Glut’s at now, he has to be happy that there are signs that a “heightening of the contradictions” is in effect: the consensus of the bullshit “center” is breaking down and purveyors of fake Third Ways are increasingly seen as the de facto wingnuts that they are. “Liberal” laissez-faire will go the way of “Liberal” Hawkery, which is just-so, for the former position is untenable on the grounds that it is actually Libertarian just as the latter is untenable because it is actually batshit-wingnut.
Check out this quote about blogging and vacation time from the Instaperfesser in the WSJ:
Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, experienced a similar blow this month when he took a weeklong break from his site, the popular political blog InstaPundit. Unique visitors fell to 115,000 from around 150,000, according to Site Meter.
Even so, Mr. Reynolds is glad he took the week off. “I need a vacation more than I care about the traffic,” he says.
I’ve got a simple solution, Glenn: it’s called the “heh”-bot. Basically, program a bot to link to any new post from Confederate Yankee/Patterico/Powerline/Malkin/Jeff Goldstain/Ace and then add a “heh,” “indeed,” “feh,” “read the whole thing,” “more crushing of dissent,” or “fake but accurate” to the end. No one would notice you’d left.
OK, Dems, it’s crunch time. The White House has thrown down the gauntlet, and you need to get out there and punch them right between the eyes:
President Bush and his surrogates are launching a new campaign intended to rebuild support for the war in Iraq by accusing the opposition of aiming to appease terrorists and cut off funding for troops on the battlefield, charges that many Democrats say distort their stated positions. […]
Pressed to support these allegations, the White House yesterday could cite no major Democrat who has proposed cutting off funds or suggested that withdrawing from Iraq would persuade terrorists to leave Americans alone. But White House and Republican officials said those are logical interpretations of the most common Democratic position favoring a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq.
“Fake but accurate,” as the Ole Perfesser might scoff.
Since it’s again fashionable to quote the Master, I offer this oldie but goodie, still very relevant in an age of crackpot libertarians, wingnuts, Randroids:
Publicly, no American politician can admit that we have anything to learn from the experiments of another society. The ritual dialogue between office seeker and electorate is one of mutual congratulation, and to suggest that perfection has another home is treasonable. But privately our more conscientious legislators do ponder other countries’ penal reforms, medical programs, educational methods. From his book and speeches I suspected [Barry] Goldwater had done little or no homework. He was firmly against socialized medicine, but he seemed to know nothing about how it worked in Scandinavia, West Germany, England.
Goldwater was honest. No, he didn’t know much about European socialism. “But I did meet this Norwegian doctor, matter of fact her name was Goldwater, which is how she happened to get in touch with me. She said the thing seemed to work all right, but that being assured of a certain income every month from the government kept her from feeling any real urge to study harder — you know, keep up at her profession. There was no incentive.” I asked him if he thought that the desire to be good was entirely economic in origin. He said of course it was. I then asked him to explain how it was that two people as different as ourselves worked hard, though in neither case money was the spur. He was startled. Then he murmured vaguely and slipped away from the subject.
If Democrats prove that they can hold their leads against the vulnerable GOP districts in the third and fourth columns, then they will press their advantage effectively and probe for more weaknesses until they start winning in seats in the second column of the chart (leans GOP) and even the first (likely Republican Retention). If this happens, it will be like a dike bursting for the GOP. Too many holes will appear to be plugged up, and Democrats will almost certainly take the House. Then we will have concrete reasons to expect a 25 or 26 seat GOP loss.
Shorter Terence Jeffrey: If it were up to East Coast elitists, we wouldn’t even have the forward pass.
Shorter Jacob Sullum: As a libertarian, I don’t think doctors should be convicted of drug trafficking for prescribing pain medication unwittingly to drug abusers.
Shorter Kathleen Parker: If local governments handed out compact fluorescent light bulbs, we might be able to forgo further sacrifices in energy consumption.
Shorter Tony Blankley: The world is such a mess that the Apocalypse is plausibly imminent, but I remain optimistic that maintaining fidelity to conservative principles may yet remedy the situation.
Shorter Michelle Malkin: Muslims should be denied ambulances until they learn to use them for their intended purpose.
Shorter Walter Williams: For decades, Americans have been willing to allow politicians to trample over – Pardon me? Say again? Phone call database? Warrantless-wire-who? That all sounds a bit far-fetched, my friend. I was merely referring to smoking, foie gras and endangered species.
Shorter Donald Lambro: Americans will vote on many issues that concern them, but they’ll continue to vote Republican as long as they’re scared witless.
Shorter Linda Chavez: Richard Armitage is a coward for not coming forward as the original source in the Plame leak, and Democrats are hypocrites for prosecuting Scooter Libby for perjury.
Shorter Brent Bozell III: The news media could regain some credibility by presenting opposing sides in a debate in ratios that reflect public opinion polls.
Shorter Bill O’Reilly: Hollywood liberals are obligated to provide recommendations on national security, but who wants to hear their ill-informed political views?
Shorter Ben Shapiro: Curtailing freedom during wartime has historically been a sign that we’re winning.
Shorter Paul Greenberg: No, I didn’t get the memo about ignoring Katrina’s anniversary. I wasn’t at my office, see – I was in Boston. I couldn’t even get my paragraphs to break properly.
Shorter Paul Weyrich: Oliver Stone deserves credit for making a movie about the World Trade Center, but he should’ve made clear who was responsible for that tragedy: Muslims.
Shorter Austin Bay: A shady Iranian neo-conservative wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Israel has defeated Hezbollah – which is certainly nice to hear.
Shock and dismay — that’s how pro-family groups in California are reacting to news this morning that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill that gives homosexuals new and far-reaching powers.
Arnold gave the gays reach-around powers? Yikes! I can see why the pro-family nuts are so upset!
Governor Schwarzenegger: Selling out his conservative base for a bunch of girly men.
The bill, SB 1441, adds sexual orientation to already existing provisions in the state’s law that prohibit discrimination on the basis of, among other things, race, national origin, ethnic group identification, religion, age, sex, color, or disability. The measure was promoted by a lesbian member of the California legislature and is now the law in that state, a fact that has filled many family advocates with outrage.
“We’re already barred from discriminating against the blacks, the Meskins and the crippled… and now we have to respect the gays too?!!!”
It’s probably helpful to think of the Corner as the webpage version of a glossy and plain-colored institutional wall, like the kind in lunatic asylums made so that noxious stains and inane crayon scribblings may be easily wiped-off when everyone is put to sleep, only to be soiled with drivel and excrement the next day: a grim cycle indeed.
Put another way, it’s like a palimpsest for the reactionary Id, whereby all the spittled hate and fear and mania and ..well, shit may be quickly wiped away and rewritten with often contradictory hates and fears and manias and shits: what matters is not coherence and consistency of thought but rather of tone.
So let’s see take a look with a janitor’s-eye-view at what was smeared on the walls yesterday:
Doughy Pantload weasels around Ezra’s point on Wal-Mart, accuses Ezra of weaselling, then solemnly declares that his friends Nick “Lysenkoist” Schulz and Tim “Crooked Timber’s reactionary troll not named Sebastian Holsclaw” Worstall will fix Ezra’s wagon.
Stanley Kurtz, apparently tired of framing arguments for anti-Gay marriage amendments metaphorically as political fallout shelters good Christian families must use against the filthy radiation of homofagfag culture, gets literal. Kurtz argues that since liberals have stabbed America in the back, there’s just very little chance that Jesus Bush will bomb Iran. So, now, with considerable relish masked in the tone of mourning he advocates the next best wingnutty option: Missile defense and a return to the halcyon days of CD drills and duck and cover routines. Sweetly and neatly, he argues that those who are against bombing Iran into the stone age should be most responsible for getting behind the new old CD plan.
Derbyshire responds to all this hysteria with sarcasm — I think. It’s hard to tell. At any rate Kurtz appears to take it that way, demurs in a poor-little-ol-me tone that if Derb doesn’t like it, he’s free to do better.
As I was eating my breakfast this morning — usually an uneventful engagement with a bowl of corn flakes, I pulled my face up out of the bowl long enough to glance at the television.
I’m picturing Marie sitting with her head flat down on the table, with her face completely soaked with milk and chunks of corn flakes. Suddenly, the television does something interesting! Marie jumps up and says “BLUGH MUGH MEEFOOO!” as milk and cereal spew out of her mouth and nose.
Alongside the 189 channels of “nothing good on,” the commercials tend to be over-done, or just plain insipid. However, this one got my attention.
Really? I kinda like the commercials myself. I have a huge man-crush on that Dr. Z asshole you see in those Daimler-Chrysler ads:
Oooh Dr. Z, with your freaky mustache and hottt German accent, u can get with Bradrocket anytime.
So I’m watching Brownie on Hardball right now, and it is not pretty.
I almost- ALMOST- feel sorry for the guy. He should be held up as an example to all other prospective Bush hacks. Because while it may feel good to accept a job you’re completely unqualified for, it could ruin the rest of your life- and the lives of many others- should disaster strike.
Gavin adds: Hey man, they’ve been telling me that since that disastrous Christmas Eve at Toys ‘R’ Us all those years ago. And yet, I feel I’m finding my level.
