One of the strongest critiques of the Iraq effort--as this column acknowledged in September, in a different context--is that it took hubris to suppose that the U.S. could simply export democracy to a distant land and expect it to have a quick, benevolent and transformative effect on the entire region. That was frequently characterized as the "neocon" view. If so, isn't ObamaCare the perfect example of "neocon" hubris in domestic policy?Because it's hubris to think you can implement a national health care system -- just ask most of the civilized world -- whereas invasions are always cash money.
Taranto also addresses the Katrina-Obamacare analogies that have been a key element of current wingnut schtick, and attacks Joan Walsh for saying most of the dead in Katrina were black; in one estimate, they were only 44%, "well short of 'most,'" says Taranto, and in another they were 51%, but Walsh is still wrong because "it was a bare majority." Plus which, three-fifths of 51% is 38%.
Taranto also accuses Walsh of racism against white men. I can see why this would upset him.
There is one important similarity - in both the Iraq war and the ACA, there's a hard-line group of anti-democratic religious fundamentalists that are hell-bent on fucking the whole thing up.
ReplyDeleteCuriously Obamacare wasn't even given a Friedman Unit or two before it was proclaimed a failure by WIngnuts.
ReplyDeleteIf Obamacare is the Iraq War, does that make Ted Cruz the (objectively pro-terrorist!) ANSWER protester in the rear end of a giant puppet?
ReplyDeleteTaranto admits that Iraq war skeptics may have had a point. All it took was ten odd years and an occasion for self-serving analogies. Look who's a big boy now!
ReplyDeleteBest place for him.
ReplyDeleteIf you imposed an argument-by-analogy ban on conservative pundits, what would be left of their columns? That one would disappear entirely.
ReplyDelete"as you know, you go to war with the analogies you have. they're not the analogies you might want or wish to have at a later time." - donald rumsfeld.
ReplyDeleteFor all of Taranto's crap, this is what stood out to me:
ReplyDeleteLike Yglesias, she insisted that "there have been zero deaths as a result of the ACA [Affordable Care Act, the euphemism for ObamaCare] woes
No, ACA is not a "euphemism," it's the name of the law. You don't get to whip up a snarl term and claim it's the official title (although on a related note, I am amused that you're still insisting that neoconservative is a snarl term and not a word you guys stopped using post-Iraq).
This is what made me realize that Taranto - despite being at a "respectable" position at the WSJ - is kind of the worst blogger ever. He has all the worst traits of conservative amateur pundits. Aside from the insistence on using internal lingo, you've got the callous disregard for the suffering of others, the slamming of opponents using stuff he pulled out of his ass (calling Joan Walsh a racist on the basis of the title of the book she wrote, having clearly not even read the Amazon synopsis), the persecutory complex (ditto above on pundits who allegedly hate white people), and the really weird hyperbole ([Regarding Iraq comparisons]"We would argue that the former replaced a horrific regime with a better, albeit still flawed, one, whereas the latter appears on its way to replacing a flawed regime with a horrific one"). Oh, and let's not forget the terrible jokes:
We Blame Global Warming - "Low Obamacare Enrollment Figures Turns [sic] Up Heat on White House"--headline, Reuters, Nov. 13
BLAR HAR HARRGH!
Paging through Taranto's gag headlines section, we find this joke:
ReplyDeleteSomeone Set Up Us The Bomb
A Zero Wing joke. In 2013. James, do you think memes can bloom on the battlefield?
There's also the matter that the reasons for invading Iraq were 100% pure unadulterated bullshit, while it is demonstrably the case that Americas pay the most and get the least for their healthcare, it was only getting worse, and some changes had to be made.
ReplyDeleteGah. Who can read thie piss that comes out of this dick's brain? Not me. But I bet you all one thing - Taranto mentions John Kerry at least once in this, his latest puddle. Because if there's one thing everyone in the world of political blah-blah-blah knows, it's that James Taranto has a huge man-crush on John Kerry.
ReplyDelete2nd best. 1st is a wood chipper.
ReplyDeleteOr, being skullfucked by a tapir.
ReplyDeleteConservative cartoon ideas, free of charge:
ReplyDeleteObama pretend-playing guitar while millions drown from Rate Shock.
Or...
Obama landing on a hospital roof wearing a speedo and a surgical mask, a giant sign in the background: SUBMISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
That was frequently characterized as the "neocon" view. If so, isn't ObamaCare the perfect example of "neocon" hubris in domestic policy?
ReplyDeleteNo.
Rhetorical questions are supposed to encourage rhetoric, right? They can't even do those right.
Considering that the GOP rules the Senate with a 41-59 majority (as Obama once said quoting someone), I'm not suprised Taranto can't fathom that 51% is an actual majority. Of course, I think it was the "most" that threw him. It's a word that resides in Gooper vocabulary north of the transverse colon that they pull out whenever they want "most" Americans to agree with them on some godawful right-wing policy. Also, in GOP math, when it comes to say, blacks committing crime, "most" means any percentage above zero, but only in their usage.
ReplyDeleteNot enough dolschtosslegende.
ReplyDeletethe Katrina-Obamacare analogies that have been a key element of current wingnut schtick
ReplyDeleteKatrinacare!™
Jeez, do we have to do everything for you guys?
Also, lots of half-innumerate brainfarts about epidemiology, most of them from Megan McArdle.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, the Dow briefly rose about 16K, which should have made most of these guys happier than pigs in shit, but they still employ Taranto to make these ridiculous screeds, Why? Well, probably to give all of the WSJ readers whose boats aren't being lifted by the proverbial rising tide (which is to say, a growing percentage of them) a convenient whipping boy, and also to satisfy the straight-up racists who, per your previous post, equate Bernie Goetz with a guy who organized a boycott of a grocery and Harry Belafonte.
ReplyDelete[Affordable Care Act, the euphemism for ObamaCare]
ReplyDeleteOh, snap. Wingnut "humor". You can always tell when a wingnut's trying to make you laugh. You don't...
Even the much revered Apple has problems with their original rollouts of products and software. It would have been quite extraordinary if the Obamacare site had worked perfectly. Pity the whole thing was poorly implemented, but not really a disaster.
ReplyDeleteNice scare-quotes around "neocon" there, as if it were a weird slur made up by liberals to describe some imaginary ideology they ascribed to people like Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, rather than a term that they and their colleagues were quite happy to apply to themselves.
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right: it's astonishing that you can go to some wingnut's personal blog, and then hop over to the National Review or the Wall Street Journal's editorial section, and see the exact same level of "thought" and "commentary." The bar for quality in the world of wingnut punditry is just set incredibly low. I presume this is because as long as they hit the appropriate soundbites and reach the correct predetermined conclusions, their employers don't really care about the quality of the writing or the argumentation.
ReplyDeleteThe bar is set so low, in fact, that when David Mamet engages in wingnut punditry of his own, it's indistinguishable from the rest of the cesspit. Here you have arguably one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century, so you assume that he can write well and has a modicum of intelligence, but you will question that assumption if you read his political commentary. He doesn't bring anything new or insightful to wingnut punditry; he doesn't even appear to bring his own full potential to it. He simply writes columns that could just as easily bear a byline that reads "Kathryn Lopez" or "Jonah Goldberg."
I'm surprised they haven't made a big push for "Commiecare" or "socialist medicine." Perhaps they have more restraint than I thought.
ReplyDeleteWhereas if you're on the floor in tears, you've probably hit upon their thesis statement.
ReplyDeleteThey'd still have the classic Goldberg maneuver of accidentally refuting their point, being too lazy to erase the previous paragraph, and simply adding, "Indeed, this is central to my point."
ReplyDeleteHa! Incoherent rants don't have thesis statements
ReplyDeleteI think they exhausted those terms in the Hillarycare days.
ReplyDeleteOddly, not-quite-51% was a huuuuuge majority in the presidential election of 2004.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Jimmy Taranto is on record some time in pre- September 2001 telling us that "most Americans support" W's proposal on....when, of course, most Americans didn't vote for him
ReplyDeleteNot to mention that it's a misquote: http://narwhaler.com/original/ob/c/marakis-somebody-set-up-us-the-bomb-complacent-rey-ObcFRV.gif
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of hi-tech and all that, I think I'd like to hear a lot more on the distributed denial of service attacks on the heathcare.gov website by wingnut hackers. Umm, Congressman Issa, sir? Any interest? Oh... who am I kidding...
ReplyDeleteI think I'd like to hear a lot more about the denial of service attacks that wingnut hackers have been mounting against the healthcare.gov website.
ReplyDeleteFuckin' man date, it was...
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of tech stuff, I'd like to hear a lot more about the denial of service attacks on the healthcare.gov website by wingnut hackers.
ReplyDeleteI read about that, but it sounded pretty amateur hour. On top of which, DDoS attacks are quickly resolved as long as the webmaster's decent. It's possible that those guys snarled up the site for a day or two, but I don't see them bearing any responsibility for any of the other bugs.
ReplyDeleteJesus, what's wrong with this website? Alicublog is a FAILURE, I tells ya!!11!!
ReplyDeleteThe only attempted DDoS attack I've heard about on the ACA site was a script that essentially performed the equivalent of hitting F5 a few times a second. "Amateur hour" is an understatement, and the chances that it had anything to do with the site's troubles are roughly zero.
ReplyDeleteWhen I say it essentially just refreshed the page a few times a second, I'm being literal. It just called the URL for the home page and the "about" page of the ACA site through the user's browser, several times per second. It made no effort to, for example, ensure that the browser wouldn't simply begin pulling those pages from its cache, thus lessening the load on the ACA site to zero after the first refresh.
Nah, just the smartest of them realise red-baiting only sells to the rubes rather than the general public these days.
ReplyDeleteIt really undermines the entire liberal blogosphere.
ReplyDeleteWe would argue that the former replaced a horrific regime with a better,
ReplyDeletealbeit still flawed, one, whereas the latter appears on its way to
replacing a flawed regime with a horrific one.
Great, so what you're saying is that we should stick with the ACA for at least seven years at a cost of up to a trillion dollars? Awesome! Let's do it.
The Ally McBeal dancing baby would've been holocausted by a mandatory death panel abortion under Obamacare!
ReplyDeleteIs Obamacare Obama's Travelgate?
In Obama's America, all men will be forced to be kissed by Mahir, and then gay-marry the Peter Pan guy!
The Obamacare website is basically just an animated GIF of a guy shoveling that says "Under Construction"! LOL! (that's "hacker speak" for "laugh out loud".)
Be that as it may, it just goes to show that the wingers will leave no rock unturned.
ReplyDeleteJeez... I've heard that Obama wants to "socialize one sixth of the American economy" so often that I probably mumble it in my sleep... when the brain's rationality centers are taking a break.
ReplyDeleteThey usually fall back on argument-by-assertion.
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, the main objections to the Iraq War were the human and monetary costs, as well as the outright lying that the Bush Administration was doing to get itself in said (easily foreseen) catastrophe.
ReplyDeleteI mean yeesh, Taranto is doing hippie-shadowboxing, and he's still getting his ass kicked.
As far as Hitlerybummercare... eh? All programs start off badly. Wingnuts have no sense of history (and rather wish we didn't as well) so they'll bleat about it until whatever aspect they're bleating about is fixed. At that point, either the ACA will prove so popular that they'll have to be subrosa about it a la Social Security or Medicare or it'll become another part of the Welfare-Young Bucks-Cadillacs-ACORN complex that they rage against.
No fear.
Not so sure. Didn't Michele Bachmann, she of the Faraway Eyes, call it "the Crown Jewel of Sochulism" a couple of years ago?
ReplyDelete"Taranto also accuses Walsh of racism against white men. I can see why this would upset him."
ReplyDeleteI can't.
it's astonishing that you can go to some wingnut's personal blog, and
ReplyDeletethen hop over to the National Review or the Wall Street Journal's
editorial section, and see the exact same level of "thought" and
"commentary."
Quantity, not quality. (Jonah, Cheetos &c.)
Exactly right on "Affordable Care Act" as a "euphemism" for Obamacare. It's "Obamacare" that started as a dysphemism, essentially because calling the proposed 1994 law "Hillarycare" had been so effective in sinking it. Obama embraced it so as to make the best of it, and whether that was the right move remains to be seen. What we do know is that Taranto is willfully ignorant of what words mean.
ReplyDeleteBTW I'm actually reading What's the Matter With White People now and I'm finding it quite worthwhile. I'd recommend it to Taranto, but even in print I doubt he's capable of listening to a woman for that long.
Oh, I certainly wouldn't put it past wingnuts to deliberately sabotage the ACA web site and then point and declare that government can't do anything right. Luckily for us, they're about as tech-savvy as a senile walrus.
ReplyDeleteisn't ObamaCare the perfect example of "neocon" hubris in domestic policy
ReplyDeleteSo, wait, Americans aren't ready for democracy?
Obviously not. We gave them democratic institutions, and where did that get us? With Obamacare, that's where.
ReplyDeleteMy point is, people only deserve democracy if they're going to vote for conservative policies.
"could simply export democracy to a distant land"
ReplyDeleteIs that what the kids are calling the killing of 100,000, the displacement of two million, and the collapse of an entire nation, in the service of a few assholes' "vision," now?
Every time I think Stephen Moore is the last word in bullshit analysis, wrong-on-their-face analogies, and obsequious-nerd prose, I read (or even, on the radio, hear) Taranto, and I have to go to all the trouble of revising my view! It's inconvenient!
ReplyDeleteJ.P., looks like you're just gonna have to slug this one out with yourself. Let us know who wins.
ReplyDeleteThey are still pretending it was about something other than lining their pockets, so it's not completely alien.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I think I saw Jonah Goldberg sloppy drunk on a train once. I should note that there are many pudgy, white, preppily dressed drunks on the DC metro late at night, so it may very well not have been him. Indeed, this only goes to prove that Jonah Goldberg makes a habit of sad drunk subway riding.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read about that, I was wondering if it ws a reasonably smart hacker who figured out a way to get idiots to voluntarily install malware on their computer by telling them that by doing so, they would do their part in stopping history's greatest monster. Easier than getting off your ass and actually doing something. Unfortunately it does nothing but installs some malicious software on their machine. If there's any justice, there's a Russian malware author who now has the credit card numbers and bank account passwords for a few thousand wingnuts.
ReplyDelete"it took hubris to suppose that the U.S. could simply export democracy to a
ReplyDeletedistant land and expect it to have a quick, benevolent and
transformative effect on the entire region"
Yes, the distant land known as 99%-America. A faraway land none of the Beltway blatherers have ever actually visited.
Especially let us know if it's the tapir, so we can be on the lookout for the little pervert.
ReplyDeleteEven the Onion's Kelly wouldn't touch those. Well, not without a figure labeled "BIG GOVERNMENT HEALTH DICTATORS" going "Heh, heh, heh!"
ReplyDeleteWhat you say !! Zero Wing jokes never get old. NEVER.
ReplyDeleteI a pretty sure Krugman used that too. In his blog, though,
ReplyDeleteAll your joke are belong to us.
ReplyDeleteWhat does he mean "white men?" I mean, "Taranto?" Isn't that a wop name?
ReplyDeleteis that it took hubris to suppose that the U.S. could simply export democracy to a distant land
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that the wingnuts always blame us? Harumph.
So we should give it another 6 months and see where we are.
ReplyDelete