Rip Van Goldberg
I was going to do my job, but then, I ended up with this hot dog and well… that’s clearly going to take all day.
Jonah Loadpants, National Hey Can Someone Do My Homework for Me:
I’m Starting to Forget it Already
…
I work at least 8 jobs.
If you add onto that projects I am actively working on or have plans to start soon, that workload starts to scream into the stratosphere. Tomorrow, or rather what is rapidly becoming today I have various tasks and duties and job stuff from 8 am to midnight. That is not an uncommon day for me.
And I try to do right by my obligations. I mean, yes, I gotta eat, but if I’ve promised somebody something, I aim to deliver, because at the end of the day, I want to be known as a woman of my word. In point of fact, I’ve just posted something on my personal blog. A little asexual polyamorous manifesto, simply because a friend of mine wanted help finding something like that for her grey-asexual boyfriend and there just wasn’t a good one online that I could find.
I don’t say these things to brag or to beg sympathy when I leave you all hanging for days. But rather because of two reasons.
1) That’s rather quickly become the new normal for my generation and a lot of working poor, working unsustainable workloads in order to pay the rent and feel like a full human with something to offer the world and I want to relate that honestly.
And 2) Jonah Fucking Goldberg.
Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):
- Huh what? That State of the Union thing that it should be my top job to respond to right now? But it’s like… early…late… in the morning… evening… afternoon, something like that, anyways, why don’t one of you do the job of responding for me so I can get back to my nap?
See, people like Jonah Goldberg make more money in a year than I’ll ever see in my life.
They are paid that much to perform a job so simple that I start punching up the ledger on just how much a soul is worth and yet, consistently, well…
They just utterly fail to give a fuck.
I mean, they are paid to sleepwalk through the world, collecting a blank check to ease the conscience of rich assholes and tell them up is down, black is white and everything that conservatives are doing wrong is actually the fault of evil progressives and STILL…!
We get this phoned-in “dog ate my homework” bullshit.
I’m almost half-tempted to just call it a day here, get an early night’s sleep, but fuck it, this shit is personal now. I’m going to go over every last begotten shred of this lazy ass mango because fuck if I’m going to let sheer failure of craft to go unanswered!
I’ll leave it to others to fact-check the thing.
… Oh dear fuck, what have I signed myself for… back button. BACK BUTTON!
Ugh, fine, okay, yeah, I seriously could stop here, because this is everything that is wrong with this post.
I mean, he is literally asking his readers to do his homework.
No jokes. No exaggerations. That is his literal action. Over an event that he had months to prepare for and which he was fully expected to have a response (even if it was a fumbling IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION thing). And yet he still couldn’t be arsed to give a single fuck.
It’s possible that someone will devise a way to be lazier, but Bob-damn if I’m hard-pressed to think of one.
There were more than a few statements that struck me as the sort of thing that wouldn’t bear up well under close scrutiny — particularly on Iran’s nuclear program, women’s pay, and domestic energy — but I’m too tired to do the scrutinizing now.
Oh hey, something even lazier… I… okay, fair play, Jonah, I have to give you a golf clap for exceeding my expectations at the very least.
Yeah, burp, all that liberal commie talk is wrong because… ungh, coming up with one of the same five reasons we always come up to hand-wave away reality is so hard that I’m just going to go, yeah, there’s probably a response to reality and then literally go take another nap.
Fuck, if you’re not going to bother to care about your delusional and self-serving counter-reality bullshit, how the fuck are we poor starving snark-merchants supposed to care in response?
My general impression was this was a remarkably boring speech, intellectually and rhetorically. Not every idea was terrible. But no idea was particularly exciting, or all that significant. Because it lacked ambition, it was a far less offensive speech that I thought it would be.
Huh. Did he manage to actually sleep through the speech itself? Cause his points seem awfully tellingly vague.
Which would be one thing if Obama had given a meandering worthless speech instead of one that at times seemed designed to tweak up wingnut outrage and get them boiling at full froth.
But with that context burning in one’s mind like a fledgling phoenix, Jonah’s ambivalence is rather revealing of a whole new level of laziness that one is almost forced to offer a slow clap in appreciation. I mean, it almost takes effort to fail to do one’s job THAT HARD.
He soft-pedaled the inequality schtick, preferring instead to talk the more optimistic topic of “opportunity.” I thought this fell flat, at least in part because he tried to make it sound like the economy was going, if not great, then really well. That’s a hard message to sell against the backdrop of Americans’ lived experience, not to mention the White House’s insistence that America desperately needs “emergency” extensions of unemployment payments, etc.
Heh.
Yeah, little fucking late for you assholes to try to play a “hero of the poor” shtick. I mean, you fuckers have intentionally prolonged this Great Depression II: Electric Boogaloo. You’ve fought against extending even a modicum of support those brutalized by this collapsed global economy, cheered on criminals who have stolen billions, claimed that the rich simply are better than us poor, and demanded that us walking wounded need to “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” and magically undo the massive factors working against us.
But now. Now, you want to suddenly pretend that you’ve been our bestest buddy now that you want to pin your many crimes against our economy on the blackity black man who keeps trying to insist he’s our president even though you know that can’t be right.
And you want to do that while cashing a check that will probably be bigger than my monthly total earnings for a post you literally spent less than 10 minutes thinking about or composing.
There are not enough fucks in the world to add up to the “fuck you” burning an ulcer-like hole in my gut right now.
His defense of Obamacare was short and almost perfunctory.
Because the debate is over. You lost. A long fucking time ago. Deal with it already, you sore losers.
I did find his mocking of GOP alternatives nothing less than galling.
Well, to be fair to him, your “alternatives” are “everyone who isn’t currently a millionaire can just die in the streets”, so I’m not sure what response is possible outside of mocking laughter or repeated curse words.
“So again, if you have specific plans to cut costs, cover more people, and increase choice — tell America what you’d do differently. Let’s see if the numbers add up.” First of all, there are plenty of GOP ideas out there, which he’s been ignoring for years.
And those are…?
I mean, you and the other dead-enders have been whining for years now that you just got shut out and all your wonderful ideas were left out in the cold.
And seeing as how your main ideas served as the backbone that ACA was built out of and you’ve yet to elucidate any of these wonderfully complex ideas you were sure got shut out just because you are an insignificant minority party of completely immoral fucks who didn’t have the votes to matter when ACA got passed, I’m not sure why we’re supposed to give you a mulligan so you can ensure that Obama accomplished literally nothing during his presidency.
Sorry, douchebags, but you’re not just going to be able to excise Obama out of your minds and pretend these 8 years were some elaborate bender. Or rather, you can, but reality will still stubbornly continue to exist and have effects that will continue to fuck your party of people-hating psychotics for years to come.
Entirely because you were too hostile to the notion of poor people living to get ahead of the game and propose something that would help people instead of continuing to ensure they suffer and die.
And that’s on you.
Second, and more important, the smug insinuation that the math and the serious ideas are all on his side is absurd.
Just because reality has a liberal bias, doesn’t mean that reality is on your side, liberals!
Because… um… we don’t want it to be? Yeah! TAKE THAT!
None of Obamacare’s numbers have added up as it has thrown American health care into chaos. A little humility — or maybe some generosity toward his critics — would have been well-advised.
This paragraph is proof that there is not a functional atom of self-awareness in Goldberg’s body. Because if there were, it would have set itself on fire in protest.
Given the disaster of Obamacare’s implementation and the extent of his dishonesty in getting it passed, he’s lost the right to mock the GOP about the unseriousness of their health-care ideas.
Waiter! I’m sorry to interrupt, but it seems the sauce you delivered is quite weak compared to what was advertised. Now I’m not one to complain and I realize you have no control over the menu, but it just seems to me that when something is advertized as a Habanero Inferno Blast, I just sort of expect something stronger than a wet fart in a gallon of mayonnaise.
The highlight of the address was, of course, the tribute to Cory Remsburg. It was a moving and bipartisan moment. But it had very little bearing on his desired policies or his agenda. Remsburg’s sacrifices are heartbreaking and inspiring. But they don’t make me feel any more inclined to support Barack Obama’s stated desire to pull an end run around Congress.
Shock of shocks, the party whose sole action is to block any and all actions by the president is not tickled pink by said president finally getting tired of trying to reach them and just reaching over their head to the American public.
Next you’re going to say that serial killers aren’t happy when their victims manage to dig their way out of the hole and run off to the police.
Besides Remsburg and the president’s shout-out to John Boehner’s “barkeep” dad, I think the whole thing will disappear down the memory hole awfully quickly.
The only things that mattered in his speech were the one or two bones he threw to our decrepit soon to be obsolete asses.
Everything else can be forgotten.
Like us, a fleet of lazy assholes only sustained by the ill-spent and ill-gotten gains of criminals and thieves, soon to be remembered only as context surrounding the bravery of those who fought against us. With even those who fit our role in the future distancing themselves from us.
Which…
You know what? Maybe I’ve been too harsh on Jonah.
No, no, hear me out. See, maybe the problem isn’t that Jonah lacks self-awareness, but is only too aware of what he is. A mediocre mind, whose upper-class lifestyle was literally bought for him as a birthright and whose only mote of celebrity was in publishing a comedy book for History professors. Writing endless examples of hackneyed bullshit, over and over while the pool of contemporaries shrinks and shrinks. A prisoner of a gilded cage, tired of selling himself, but too aware that he could do nothing else.
And maybe… just maybe I could eke out some small bit of sympathy…
…
No. Sorry.
Even if it were true, it’s also true that Jonah has enough to retire, today. But instead, he continues to trudge forward, knowing that he receives free paychecks for doing nothing and still insisting he is better than those desperate poor who have to work for a living to have only a fraction of what he has.
It’s much like Bobo Brooks. No one is putting a gun to these hacks’ heads and forcing them to release regular mediocrity and be paid multi-million salaries to do so. To laze through life producing nothing of value with platforms the rest of us could only dream of.
But they do so, because they are, at their core, cowards. Sad, pathetic, lazy, cowards, unwilling to accept that which meritocracy would have in store for them.
And I can only dream of the day the nightmares come true, when they receive the meritocracy they constantly claim to support and have to compete against us filthy starving poor on a fair playing field.
Because, frankly, it would be more than they could possibly deserve.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. I feel I made a mistake somewhere not choosing to be born the cissexual white son of an accidental millionaire. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
I namechecked it in the post, but for those who are interested, I wrote a post on my personal blog about asexuality and polyamory.
I know it’s not the usual Sadly-fare, but I’d figure I’d give a head’s up in case it actually was up anyone’s alley (insert Takei-ism here).
Second!
Just a reminder to Mr. Goldberg and the other Right Wing apologists:
The ACA is the needlessly complex and deliberately limited mess it is because A) It’s based on a Heritage design and B) It was deliberately weakened (no “gold” plans are offered on the exchanges to GET those Unions) in an (unsuccessful) attempt to get GOP votes
In other words, it’s basically a Republican program, and your continued temper tantrum (is the GOP aiming for a nice, round 100 “stop the ACA” votes, or will this be something they’ll still be doing when our Sun dies?) is just more (unneeded) proof that you cannot accept anything coming from our black/Democrat (not sure which bugs you more) President. Who was re-elected without having to rely on locked room shenanigans (I’m looking at you, Ohio).
Yeah, it’s pretty obvious that Jonah did not watch the thing. As Cerb points out, it was chockablock full of wingnut bait. Executive orders, climate change, the social safety net, gun control, solar power, pay equity, retirement savings for the blahs, and a near continuous slagging of the GOP controlled House.
The only thing Pantload got worked up (if you can call it that) is Barry calling out the GOP on the forty repeal votes. Seriously?
Here’s an observation. Barry can deliver from the podium. Dude speechifies with mad pro skillz. An hour long monologue is tough enough to deliver poorly, but he managed it while being fully engaged and actually engaging throughout. No awkward pauses, no point where he seemed any less than 100% in control, I only caught the one verbal slip, corrected in real-time on the pronunciation of “MyRA”. It was clearly an excellently delivered speech. And yet, a lot of folks received it as “meh”. Mostly because we are jaded by Obama’s ability to orate. He’s gonna be a tough act to follow.
I did find his mocking of GOP alternatives nothing less than galling.
“So again, if you have specific plans to cut costs, cover more people, and increase choice — tell America what you’d do differently. Let’s see if the numbers add up.”
Telling the GOP to let the voters know the details so they can decide for themselves is galling mockery? Maybe any call for effort strikes him that way.
re: the GOP has ideas and proposals on healthcare.
They don’t. Grayson was exactly right about the GOP health care platform:
1. Don’t get sick
2. If you do get sick, die quickly.
Consider the current Senate GOP proposal. At 8 pages, they could keep it vague and leave out specifics which they of course did. It came out on the 27th. They’ve amended it already. Almost as if they don’t have an actual plan and are scrambling to throw together whatever shit they possibly can so as to look like they care.
She blames conservatism for every problem known to man, and known to her.
And perhaps that’s because every single thing that’s ever been done to benefit the non-rich has been done despite the vehement opposition of conservatives.
Example # 1—- the Paris sewer system
http://books.google.ca/books?id=frq_w65jYZsC&pg=PT334&lpg=PT334&dq=paris+sewers+opposed+by+the+rich&source=bl&ots=ZjtsGnsAbj&sig=uwcNAF-02sAL83fkPoJ7ojNsfj0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4q3rUpuSA4u0sQT55oGwDg&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=paris%20sewers%20opposed%20by%20the%20rich&f=false
I’ll leave it to others to fact-check the thing.
That’s pretty much sums up his entire oeuvre.
but I’m too tired to do the scrutinizing now.
He was tired, for Christs sake.
Don’t any of you besides Pennis have any compassion for the Doughy Pantload? He was probably yawning and couldn’t stay up another 15 minutes to use Google and check out the claims that Obama made in his speech.
Research is hard work, people, are you slave drivers or something?
I did find his mocking of GOP alternatives nothing less than galling
It’s like Obama wrote a book called Conservative Fascism.
Hey, give Jonah a break! It’s tough work having your Mom get you a cushy writing gig.
I think the funniest part is that Slobah McSlobberg knows he’s fucking screwed if he actually fact checks the speech.
Never has a SOTU been refuted in such detail or with such care.
Liberal Factism. Meh. Facts, Schmacts. Where is my sammich?! Lazy interns. Look it it up yourself! Burp.
or such savoir faire…
i would love to hear jonah’s body of work read aloud by gaffigan…’i’m tired! my back hurts!’
also, pup…i’m glad you found that treasure! no outfit is complete without a pbs tote to snazz it up…
Jonah always strikes me as a kid who just hangs with the wrong crowd. If his mom had been a liberal or even a TNR centrist, he’d be OK (not great, but not the festering boil he is). But Mom was a wingnut and introduced him to other wingnuts, so now he’s just someone collecting a paycheck for typing out template opinions.
He seems vaguely aware that his ideology just doesn’t match the facts as evidenced by his constant appeals to vagueness and call outs to his audience. He has looked at the evidence and can tell that things don’t add up. But then he looks at all his stuff and thinks, “Meh, I’ll just write down any old thing. No one knows the difference anyway,” then cashes his giant check.
This in no way justifies Jonah or what he does. He is an entitled asshole who would be less damaging to the world if he just went to the Hamptons or Monte Carlo and partied with rich fucks as their personal court jester or whatever. Cerb is right that no one is forcing him to do this and he is still convinced that somehow he must be brilliant because he’s rich. So fuck him and the horse he came in on.
He seems vaguely aware that his ideology just doesn’t match the facts as evidenced by his constant appeals to vagueness and call outs to his audience
Hmmm.. you might be on to something there.
Never has a SOTU been refuted in such detail or with such care.
This is central to my point!
If his mom had been a liberal or even a TNR centrist, he’d be OK
He’d be slinging popcorn in a movie theater, and cutting seriously into the profit margins.
Disclosure – I work for CMS (aka the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid). I have nothing to do with the exchanges. Yes the roll out of the exchange was a disaster on many levels but this annoys me.
Given the disaster of Obamacare’s implementation
ACA is much more than the exchanges. There have been other ACA initiatives related to improving quality of care, providing visibility to what perks suppliers give to providers, etc. that have been successfully implemented and are running smoothly.
There have been other ACA initiatives related to improving quality of care, providing visibility to what perks suppliers give to providers, etc. that have been successfully implemented and are running smoothly.
i don’t think joberg could be arsed to check on that…but i agree, there have been many good implementations that nobody seems to bring up…it’s all EXCHANGES…WEBSITES…ZOMG…WOLVERINES!!!111!
(insert Takei-ism here).
Have to share this bit I saw the other day:
[…] Jennifer Kroot, who described Takei to the Tribune as “sort of a cross between Mr. Rogers and John Waters.”
because it made made laugh.
bbkf – Is that not a Minnesota Public Television tote?
bbkf – Is that not a Minnesota Public Television tote?
hmmmmm…idk…i don’t know that i’ve seen a minnesota one before…i’ve seen tpt (twin cities public teevee)…if that is a mn one, it’s an oldie!
That’s not even a Faaaaaaaaaaaart. More like a Fft.
I see it as more proof of my theory that the GOP will ultimately be destroyed from within, by its many welfare recipients.
That’s not even a Faaaaaaaaaaaart. More like a Fft.
l.o.l…
I see it as more proof of my theory that the GOP will ultimately be destroyed from within, by its many welfare recipients.
twould be delicious irony…
Disclosure – A lot of my job involves writing about Medicare (hi!) and this is true.
To listen to these schmucks, Obamacare is the launch of the exchanges and Good Catholic Companies being forced to pay for Aborto-Pills.
They won’t even address the fact that co-pay free oral contraceptives are in the same part of the law that includes co-pay free cancer screenings and many other forms of preventive care. Charles Krauthammer is attempting to claim that it is unfaaaaaaair that women can get co-pay free baby-blockers, but a woman can’t get co-pay free antibiotics for her sick child.
That’s right, her kid, not herself, because women don’t get sick. And if they do, who cares?
Of course, there’s also the little issue of antibiotics not being preventive care, but it isn’t like they’re letting facts slow them down.
Goldberg made some money off Liberal Fascism but I bet he’s appalled at how inefficient the process was. In his other capacities he’s been well-paid for minimal effort. But the book was tough for him to finish (as you can verify). Goldberg, either as a quite necessary public stance or in earnest, committed himself to the notion that he was writing a serious, scholarly work of nonfiction for an audience that might read, say, Guns, Germs, and Steel. Not a book-like object for wingnuts who think themselves too smart for the works of Michael Savage. Not a flimsy, hard-to-assemble Rube Goldberg device for extracting money from morons hopped up on nonsense and paranoia.
Insights about plagiarism come to mind. Plagiarists get caught because doing a really good job of it is as hard as, or harder than, writing your own material. Goldberg struggled with Liberal Fascism for vaguely similar reasons; being lazy and dishonest is not all fun and games. It would be easier to do this sort of thing as a stunt than as a po-faced cornerstone to your monument. “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”
You guy’s…when did it become a thing to put apostrophe’s on every single plural word one the whole internet’s?
It’s making me twitchy and stabby and I DON’T LIKE IT. I also don’t like that I get all twitchy and stabby about things like that.
***le sigh***
dumblefuck? i have to remember that one…so how does one comment on shakezula’s blogthingy?
You guy’s…when did it become a thing to put apostrophe’s on every single plural word one the whole internet’s?
It’s making me twitchy and stabby and I DON’T LIKE IT. I also don’t like that I get all twitchy and stabby about things like that.
i have embarked on a new eating lifestyle (14 lbs gone so far!!!) and as such, spend some time on a particular website and also a fb page and i swear to all that is, someday i am going to go berserk if i read ‘loose’ instead of ‘lose’. i can no longer amuse myself with images of a woman just ‘loosing’ the pounds off her body like magic…
… Jennifer Kroot, who described Takei to the Tribune as “sort of a cross between Mr. Rogers and John Waters.”
That IS funny. Dunno how accurate, but funny. I can imagine a warped parody — Mr. Waters’ Neighborhood. Featuring Divine, of course. Controversy and cancellation ensues when impressionable lads around the nation are discovered eating poop while wearing mommy’s underwear. The music would be exactly the same.
(Fun fact — Wikipedia just taught me that Fred Rogers’ middle name was McFeely. How awesome is that? I would so love to be able to say, apropos of some raunchy grope-related situation or repartee, “my middle name is McFeely,” and not be lying. I doubt Fred capitalized on his birthright in that manner.)
Tell me about it. I used to read a lot of fanfic on the ‘net. There was an author I enjoyed -stories I liked, decent writing and grammar, and proper spelling – except she never met a terminal ‘s’ she did not feel obliged to preface with an apostrophe. I think I wrote a macro. I also routinely ran a find and replace on commonly correctly spelled but wrong words (like loose for lose, a biggie) on almost all the fanfic I downloaded before I read it.
And congrats on your recent loss, too.
One of my favorite TV clips with the Pasty Doughboy:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-january-16-2008/jonah-goldberg
well, i thank you very much, v…the change of diet has been tremendous for me…blood sugars are good, i actually sleep at night, fibromyalgia pain has been mostly non-existent…just a slight flare-up when the barometer goes crazy…
speaking of good writing and mr. rogers, here’s a kick-ass piece which also shows just how freaking cool the man was:
Hey gais. Don’t loose your temper – just losen up.
I just read that too, bbkf.
I love(d) the show and wouldn’t change a thing about it. Helluva guy.
My favorite is when somebody on the net calls someone else a “looser.”
Why does TPM sometimes morp into cracked.com with money?
From the comments
i can no longer amuse myself with images of a woman just ‘loosing’ the pounds off her body like magic…
Respond as follows:
Dear Miss (xx); You’re a woman, and it is not a compliment to associate the word loose with yourself. The proper term for reducing your weight is LOSE (losing, lost).
Kthxbai.
(14 lbs gone so far!!!)
WELL DONE!! Time for bikini selfies.
I think I wrote a macro
I hope this macro opened a dialog box with ‘ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?”
Why does TPM sometimes morph into cracked.com with money?
7 Reason Why TPM Does Total Fluff Pieces.
The Big Secret Josh Marshall Doesn’t Want You To Know.
Before and After Shots of Celebrities Who Have Been Featured on the Golden Dukes.
Insiders Get Access to TPM for Free, Find Out How You Can Too
Irrefutable Superbowl Prediction. Congratulations tsam!
Edroso linked to this piece on the Food4Patriots etc. scam. Interesting. Tho I guess the fact that conservatives are being duped by online marketers is a dog-bites-man story that I’m only enjoying for prurient reasons.
Happy New Years!
Irrefutable Superbowl Prediction. Congratulations tsam!
SEE? I BEEN TELLING YOU GUY’S THIS DURING THE GAME’S
Dammit. I meant Happy New Year’s!
SEE? I BEEN TELLING YOU GUY’S THIS DURING THE GAME’S
oh my gosh! i don’t want the seahawk’s to loose! i would rather see the bronco’s loose!
Edroso linked to this piece on the Food4Patriots etc. scam. Interesting.
I despise these scamming motherfuckers, but I wouldn’t care a single bit if they only preyed on end timers, religious zealots and teabagger malcontents. I enjoy this whole thing a bit.
On the other hand, these fuckers have no conscience, and wouldn’t hesitate to scam the elderly out of their retirement savings.
The Sehawk’s R going to beat the bronco’s.
This is awesome. It’s immersion therapy for grammar Nazis LOL Nazi’s.
The postman always rings twice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Newell
I found some good band names here:
Sinceratrons
Jutting Saltwater Bosoms
Vanquished Children
Twitchy and Stabby
On the other hand, these fuckers have no conscience, and wouldn’t hesitate to scam the elderly out of their retirement savings.
Which’d be bad enough, but [emphasis mine] —
“The premium for the racketeers is always on the crazy and hyperbolic, because that’s what sells. “The problem,” as Pareene insightfully noted, is that these hucksters “exert massive influence, and they only ever push the Republican Party to get more extreme…[so] you should still worry about the influence of the scammers.” In other words: if you don’t particularly care about conservative activists wasting their money, it may be time to start.” — Alex Pareene
Paranoia can be deadly. The problem is that people living in a dystopian fantasy world don’t really go away — they live among us, voting and behaving as if some or all of the FEMA-camp type nonsense is real. As long as pushing them further is lucrative, they will be pushed further, and I’m not sure there are any limiting factors other than their bank balances.
Who do you think it is easier to scam? The population that is more trusting, tends to be lonely and doesn’t like to be rude, or the population that thinks that They can use credit card/banking information to track people down and stick probes up their asses?
All of which relates back to Goldberg.
someday i am going to go berserk if i read ‘loose’ instead of ‘lose’
Bbkf has Irritable Vowel Syndrome.
Twitchy and Stabby
Kids’ cartoon characters. As featured in a little-known mash-up of the Seven Dwarves and the Nine Nazgul.
well, thank you cra…after following the link you provided, i discovered the lovelines’s that is bateman…i know have a knew crush…
Bbkf has Irritable Vowel Syndrome.
ha! yes…and it makes me twitchy and stabby…
googling the bateman…
Yes.
i can no longer amuse myself with images of a woman just ‘loosing’ the pounds off her body like magic…
Cry havoc, and loose the pounds of flesh.
WELL DONE!! Time for bikini selfies.
Pekini selfies.
bbfk — Lt. Col. Robert Bateman, he of the Charles Pierce politics blog at Esquire?
He seems like a helluva guy.
bbfk — Lt. Col. Robert Bateman, he of the Charles Pierce politics blog at Esquire?
indeed…it leaves me in quite a quandary tho…clive owen…or lt col bateman?
Excellent takedown of doughpants Cerb, but I take issue with one thing from you:
And another thing from our good VCarlson:
These are things I used to think too, but they’re wrong.
While we can all agree that there are way better things we could be doing, the ACA is not a “Republican plan” and had only the tiniest, teensiest similarity to the “Heritage” plan in that they both had “mandates.” No really, that’s it.
I don’t want to go into the thousand words it would take to explain in detail, and thankfully Scott Lemieux of LG&M and The American Prospect has already taken care of all that for me:
Please read this and this if you have a few minutes.
Thank you for your indulgence.
Oh, and for tsam:
‘s
Pekini selfies.
and damn you smut…and damn b^4 also…registering with disqus has opened all sorts of commenting doors for me…as if i needed the distraction’s!
Although an ardent anti-ACA’er and shit sandwich hater, I gotta give props where due. I still think letting private industry be the gatekeeper to healthcare is dum but Obamacare has already shifted the Overton. Denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions is gone, never to return. In fact the general ideal of universal coverage is now seen as a worthy goal. That is a definite leftward shift relative to the angry Shout Them Down summer of Tea Party glory. So while I still feel betrayed over a Strong Public Option, I have to admit that it’s been a positive step. Even without considering that millions of folks now have coverage when they didn’t before.
Re: not the Heritage plan.
I disagree. Strongly. Here is the fundamental reason why Obamacare is the Heritage Plan.
Healthcare is gatekeepered by private enterprise. People who have incentive to deny care.
The individual mandate just makes it worse by saying that the State has a legitimate role in coercing individuals to buy a product.
The death of the Strong Public Option ensured that this would be a right wing conservative Markets! solution. Most of the rest of it – the “differences” as it were, are all things which are normally covered under administrative rule making. The specifics about what must be offered, the extent of regulation – this is stuff that is more under the control of HHS than Congress. A more industry friendly Administration could probably push interpretations through that would gut all of those vaunted “differences”.
Obamacare is as much not the Heritage plan as neoliberals are not capitalistic Markets! worshipping dickwads.
I’ll read the LGM link in a bit, and acknowledge that we may have to start with the baby steos of the ACA, but have no confidence that Big Insurance won’t get a way out of pre-existing conditions, lifetime caps, and all the other barriers to shoveling our money into their pockets the ACA has at present (remember, remember the Roberts Court).
But it should be
t’sam
I really think denial of coverage over pre-existing conditions is gone. Because it is the Obamacare version of ACA. The implementation (even with the FAILed web launch) was done in a way to ensure that, although probably not intentionally. The so called alternatives being proposed all keep this aspect intact because denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions is so odious that it’s less popular than tax increases.
That is a win.
It’s also a win that would have happened if ACA was killed because it is popular enough to pass as a standalone. Still, it did require that the US have the conversation about healthcare and the ACA ensured that the discussion took place.
I guess we’re going to have to agree to disagree. Our shitty commercial healthcare system was not going to go away no matter how much we wish it would have. Not without a violent revolution anyway.
That’s the only choice if the system remains private (yeah, that’s bad). Private reform won’t work unless you can get the young health folks into the system, and that was the only way to do it.
But yeah, I wish that wasn’t the case and we had something like what has been proven to work for, y’know, pretty much the whole rest of the fucking world.
I’m hopeful this is a step toward that, but who knows. America will probably be broken up into various corporate-owned city-states so we can be ruled over properly by our righteous all-knowing business overseers (all hail!) before that happens. I hope they give us decent healthcare.
Actually, I’m pretty sure that if the denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, the lifetime caps and other little things in the Patient’s Bill of Rights were ever on chopping block, they’d hear an uproar similar to the one they hear over Medicare and Social Security.
And I do agree that the ACA is likely to be (hopefully) the first milestone on the road to universal coverage.
Clearly.
Also, too: if that isn’t already Klingon for “the rage induced by shitty grammar” it should be.
And I’m almost entirely convinced that the mandate was a poison pill for some and a trap door exit for others. It’s an incredibly stupid way to insure the underserved, but it’s what is on the plate for the moment.
You’re right. It should be t’sam. The rest of the word TERROR is contracted.
heh…terror indeed…
The plot fattens – or – “If you throw me under the bus you better make sure I don’t survive.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/christie-knew-wildstein
awesome hulk smash picture of christie…well, hubbkf and i are off for a date weekend…catch ya later!
Just want to point out that up here in socialest Canoodle-land without socialest healthcare (essentially Medicare for all) we still have a robust private health industry. Having a Strong Public Option, even one with a State guaranteed monopoly, is not incompatible with a commercial capitalist system.
F U Autocorrect. Not “without” but “with our”. Grrrr.
Well yeah, but your government is sorta almost sane and functional. We have Congress.
Yeah, we know. The problem is that we Americans are so fucking contrarian that even though it’s been proven beyond any reasonable doubt that a Canadian style system is far superior, we’re just not going to do it based on the fact that it works for the rest of you. Whether or not it’s better, we just DO it that way here.
It’s the same as the metric system. There is not a single defensible argument for still using our shitty British base 12 system. There are nothing but defensible arguments for adopting it. Still hasn’t happened. Still won’t for a long time–maybe ever.
This ties into our discussion about traditions and customs here in America. Everything is a thing, and people cling to them like–well, guns and Bibles and the mythology of being self-sufficient in a world that is in no way friendly to someone who wants to go it alone.
Funny thing–people look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them I learned to be a liberal in the US Army. We all succeeded or failed as a unit. Nobody got left behind. If someone fell, we picked him up. If you’re ahead of the pack, you lead, but you stay in sight of the rest of your formation. Nobody was exempt from the rules. Nobody went hungry. When it was time to eat, we all ate. We went to a free Troop Medical Clinic if we were sick or injured. We all relied on each other, and were all held to account for our individual behavior if it hurt the unit. This isn’t to say that the military was some sort of utopia–far from it. But those values apply to a neighborhood, a city, a state, a nation and the world.
BBKF and Pupienus – it is a Maryland Public Television Tote. I don’t know anyone in Michigan.
I figured it wasn’t Mississippi.
My reading of Christie (from the news and teh intertoobs, so literal reading -I don’t watch TV news) is he’s a bully and a micromanager (funny how those seem to go together), so I always assumed he knew about it, and approved, even if it was only in a “don’t tell me any specifics” way. And the pettiness of yanking Wildstein’s legal help pretty much guaranteed it would all come out – that’s the stupidity of arrogance for you.
Grayson was exactly right about the GOP health care platform:
1. Don’t get sick
2. If you do get sick, die quickly.
It’s amazing how much shit he got for that incredibly succinct, spot-on remark. I mean, it’s not like he was ever disproved.
It wasn’t Christie that denied the legal funds it was the Port Authority, not run by the NJ gov. In general I think Jerseyites feel the PA is Newyorcentric.
I tell them I learned to be a liberal in the US Army
Well said tsam.
It wasn’t Christie that denied the legal funds it was the Port Authority, not run by the NJ gov. In general I think Jerseyites feel the PA is Newyorcentric. To the powers that be it was perfectly rational to hang Wildstein out to dry.
FYWP. Again. Still.
Don’t worry, Governor Christie. the good ole “drunken stupor” defense works every time!
Well said tsam.
Yeah that was a good comment. Exactly HOW those values apply to a nation, state, town, etc. that’s not at total war is open to debate, but the wingnut rhetoric is currently at extreme odds. Example: Hillary’s innocuous “It Takes a Village” phrase was dangerous collectivism? It always took a village to raise a kid before, if by raise you mean bring them up in a traditional society to be a functioning member. Sounds conservative, even, but what do I know.
Insights about plagiarism come to mind. Plagiarists get caught because doing a really good job of it is as hard as, or harder than, writing your own material. Goldberg struggled with Liberal Fascism for vaguely similar reasons; being lazy and dishonest is not all fun and games
To be fair, making the case that liberalism is fascism would be difficult even with the best of authors. Reality’s bias and all that.
While we can all agree that there are way better things we could be doing, the ACA is not a “Republican plan” and had only the tiniest, teensiest similarity to the “Heritage” plan in that they both had “mandates.” No really, that’s it.
Probably the biggest difference between the ACA and whatever plan Heritage cooked up is that Heritage was never actually meant to be implemented. It was just something they threw out there so that they could technically say “yes, we have an alternative to Clinton’s health care reform plans” rather than looking like they were just shouting “DO NOT WANT!” in a five year old temper tantrum. (Though here we are a couple decades later and the party’s devolution has marched on, so now they’re totally on board with the temper tantrum).
Don’t get me wrong, though. I don’t think anyone should ever miss an opportunity to remind them that Heritage came up with the individual mandate. It’s funny to watch them flip a shit, and it’s a reminder to all present that they have no ideas for fixing health care (since none of the things they throw out there are things they take seriously anyway).
This ties into our discussion about traditions and customs here in America. Everything is a thing, and people cling to them like–well, guns and Bibles and the mythology of being self-sufficient in a world that is in no way friendly to someone who wants to go it alone.
For a country that’s so much younger than most European ones, it’s amazing how much more backwards-looking the American political culture is, with everyone required to reverently kneel at the altar of the founding fathers and invoke their name to sanctify whatever he’s proposing. Because God forbid we acknowledge that they were men, not gods, that even if they had the best ideas around 200 years ago it’s not like nothing else has been invented since, and that all the nice things in this country may be partly due to what they left us, but at least as much to the people who built on and improved on what they left us. (Also, that they were writing in a pre-industrial era when a whole shitload of the problems and solutions we have today didn’t exist and that there’s no way of knowing what they would’ve said about them).
On another note, agree that the military is probably the single most socialist institution in the country, which makes it deliciously ironic that they praise it so highly.
Any virtue turns into a vice the minute liberals promote it.
Yeah that was a good comment. Exactly HOW those values apply to a nation, state, town, etc. that’s not at total war is open to debate, but the wingnut rhetoric is currently at extreme odds. Example: Hillary’s innocuous “It Takes a Village” phrase was dangerous collectivism? It always took a village to raise a kid before, if by raise you mean bring them up in a traditional society to be a functioning member. Sounds conservative, even, but what do I know.
Sounds Christian, actually.
American conservatives are control freaks, whose paranoia has them printing an ever-lengthening, increasingly ridiculous list of things that are considered counterrevolutionary and proof that you’re an enemy of the people. Give it enough time, they’ll reach the Cambodian Maoist point where simply having glasses was enough to mark you as an intellectual and therefore dangerous.
And here I thought ‘Order of Canada’ was something to do with Labatt’s
Example: Hillary’s innocuous “It Takes a Village” phrase was dangerous collectivism? It always took a village to raise a kid before, if by raise you mean bring them up in a traditional society to be a functioning member.
Villages are totally passé … in today’s 21st century world, it takes a CORPORATION, baby!
Talkin’ ’bout my corporation….
GOP ideas on health care:
Tort reform. Translation: “Oops, your surgeon sure picked the wrong day to try to prove he was ambidextrous! Here’s $250,000, less attorney’s fees.”
Selling insurance “across state lines.” Translation: “The whole country will now live under the standards of the state with the most bribable legislature.”
Chris Christie says patience
Chris Christie says patience
and a fuck you autocorrect…
A terrible mischaracterization of the GOP position – everybody knows it’s “everyone who isn’t a millionaire can pay half their income to insurance companies and THEN when they get sick get dropped and go die in the streets” 😉
Before you flog your bishop, talk to your bishop!
How much is “too much”? No reason, just curious.
It’s like speeding; faster than me you’re a maniac, slower than me you’re an idiot.
There are people who’ve done it more than me, but they’re older than me.
Don’t those religious fuckups understand that masturbation is abstinence? C’mon, man
Don’t those religious fuckups understand that masturbation is abstinence?
Exactly. I can think of a way to keep them from masturbating but it’s probably not what they had in mind.
The Flogging Bishops had an impressive debut release.
I liked their second track, Who keeps leaving them on the landing?
Their concept album Tubesock Holocaust was disappointing.
“Dad, what did you do in the Great Culture War?”
“I ratted out my college roommate for masturbating.”
Their concept album Tubesock Holocaust was disappointing.
that one even made hubbkf snort out loud…
Unusual anatomies
In case folks might have missed this comment upthread, it is worth reading. (If you’ve already read it, it’s worth reading again.)
I agree with the Major:
Well said tsam.
The Free Marketeering Shirk Ethic, Exhibit “X,” in its natural habitat.
Saving Ryan’s Privates.
Full Metal Jackoff.
Spurt Locker…
“Battle of the Bulge”
Battlegroin.
Yeah yeah yeah, Facty McFactersons – go on, slag the pudgy fuzzfaced entitled git all you want, we could care less … he reliably pukes up soundbites real purty on your Intertrons & your mega-screen uber-def TeeVees, just teh way we like it … but whatever you do, don’t bring up that whole nasty little “National Review has been
dispensing sloppy cut-rate blumpkinscheerleading for capitalism while operating at a net loss for pretty much its entire lifespan” thing, mmmmkay?That shit seriously BURNS us.
My employer, too, is losing money.
So how do I make em give ME a gig just like Jonah’s— big bucks, no sweat, and free lunches and snacks?
I think there’s an “On Your Knees” prerequisite.
Would explain why he’s so tired.
It’s 4:30AM, and I’m listening to Live at the Deaf Club, an early recording of a Dead Kennedys concert, released ten years ago, after sitting in the vaults for 25 years.
DAMN!
New one folks.
…
Big Bad Bald Bastard: “Battle of the Bulge”
“Nuts.”
Ah, yes, one of Goldberg’s better recent articles.
This bit is brilliant: “There were more than a few statements that struck me as the sort of thing that wouldn’t bear up well under close scrutiny — particularly on Iran’s nuclear program, women’s pay, and domestic energy — but I’m too tired to do the scrutinizing now.”
Jonah’s going personal here. Being Jonah eats up most of his research/writing time. Scrutinize all you want but we are all just brain cells away from thinking that Jonah might be the Richard Foreman of Les Amis de la NRO.
Years ago, I got into an email “back-n-forth” with Goldberg over something particularly stupid he wrote (can’t remember the topic). He’s final witty remark was “do you know how much money I make?”.