Monday, November 04, 2013

MY EYES... ZE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!

The election's not till tomorrow,  and one should never count one's chickens etc., but let's start early celebrating the reign of Mayor de Blasio just because it makes wingnuts so mad.

I want to focus a minute on their Big Bill's a Red thing, which they seem at one point to have thought would stop the juggernaut. Wall Street Journal:
Bill de Blasio Should Ask Me About the Sandinistas 
The New York mayoral candidate still fondly recalls a regime that I fled in terror for my life.
Yelling at di Blasio for "fondly recalling" the Sandinistas makes as much sense as yelling at someone for saying he liked The Motorcycle Diaries.
Twenty-five years is a long time, and people change. But on this subject, Mr. de Blasio has made clear that he has not.
Clearly! He's always demanding people call him El Caudillo and brandishing a machete.

Cliff Kincaid at Renew America:
The media whitewash Obama-backed Marxist candidate
...Incredibly, De Blasio says he still supports the Sandinistas and remains influenced by liberation theology, which was manufactured by the old KGB to dupe Christians into supporting Marxism.
Tell it to Pope FrancisNational Review's resident pencil-neck Jay Nordlinger:
The man who will probably be our next mayor, Bill de Blasio, is almost a perfect leftist. He and his wife even honeymooned in the Castros’ Cuba. This reminded me of Pierre Trudeau, of whom it has been said, “It tells you everything that he honeymooned in the Soviet Union"...

Here is an uncomfortable question, liable to be damned as McCarthyite by those who don’t want to address it: If the likes of Trudeau and de Blasio were born under Communist dictatorship, what would they do in their adult lives?
Those of us over a certain age will recognize the tropes, including the "So how about that, Mr. Smarty-Pants Communist?" bit at the end that just assumes de Blasio's Communism (he's just like that Trudeau, you know), done with confidence that it'll get the citizens pulling their chins and going, "Say, 'de Blasio' does have sort of a Red sound to it!"  Ditto Deroy Murdock:
... the ad reinforces the fundamental mythology that fuels de Blasio’s campaign: The filthy rich refuse to pay what they should in taxes, and must be shaken down to benefit poorer New Yorkers, whom these dandies have stiffed.
It’s a truly touching narrative — worthy of Charles Dickens or perhaps Karl Marx.
We got rid of the Commies, and it's only a matter of time before we get rid of literature and empathy too. Then the conservative revolution will be complete!

But as de Blasio has racked up the points, even Kincaid has had to catch on that his red-baiting was getting him nowhere -- "But there's more to this story than Marxism, which most people think is a dead ideology that has no relevance today," he sighs -- and switch to the new attack line about di Blasio inviting hoodie-hood boys to bum rush the show and take your daughter to Plato's Retreat.

It looks like that's not working, either.

Quick, there's only a day left -- someone tie de Blasio to Obamacare!

UPDATE. I was kidding about Obamacare, but on Twitter Mike Di Paola informs me that the New York Post's Bob McManus actually went for it in August with "De Blasio's Big ObamaCare Problem." di Blasio had complained about the winnowing of New York's hospitals (e.g. St. Vincent's), and McManus informed him that it was his own fault, and Obama's, because
New federal, state and local laws and regulations — soon to include ObamaCare, with a vengeance — are vaporizing the financial incentives for unneeded and extended hospitalizations, for example. Hospitals are now sharply penalized for such practices. 
The changes have slashed patient populations — and so pushed many financially marginal institutions straight over the edge. (See above, Long Island College Hospital.)

Meanwhile, both the government and insurers have been heavily incentivizing “wellness initiatives” — quit-smoking and diet programs and so on — meant to dramatically cut hospitals out of the picture.
Trying to improve healthcare ruins everything! There are also some ravings about how di Blasio wants hospitals to stay open so he can funnel phoney-baloney jobs to his pals at SEIU, but really, it's just the typographic equivalent of someone throwing whatever rock, mudball, or candy wrapper he can find at a target he can't hit.

121 comments:

  1. sharculese10:59 AM

    When I think of Marxism I definitely think of modest increases in taxes for the wealthy to expand access to education. I mean, that's like half of Das Kapital right there.

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  2. The media whitewash Obama-backed Marxist candidate


    It's almost adorable how he's so unable to see past his own politics that he doesn't grasp that associating a candidate with Obama, a man who was elected by a majority of American voters, is not going to destroy his candidacy.

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  3. No to mention those notorious communists Adam Smith and Thomas Payne.

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  4. Mr. Wonderful11:15 AM

    "Here is an uncomfortable question, liable to be damned as McCarthyite by
    those who don’t want to address it: If the likes of Trudeau and de
    Blasio were born under Communist dictatorship, what would they do in
    their adult lives?"


    Here is another uncomfortable question, liable to be damned as McCarthyite by those who don't want to address it: If Karl Marx were alive today, would he root for the Yankees, or the Mets?

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  5. Here's another uncomfortable question: if Picard had spent eighteen hours a day under the lash of a Romulan guard, would he not have been exactly like Shinzon?

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  6. The filthy rich refuse to pay what they should in taxes, and must be shaken down to benefit poorer New Yorkers...It’s a truly touching narrative — worthy of Charles Dickens or perhaps Karl Marx.

    Or a narrative worthy of a certain plucky capitalist country during the 1940's, '50's, '60's, and '70's when it valiantly resisted the efforts of Communism by using marginal tax rates of up to 90% to create a strong, modern nation with functional if barely adequate social safety nets.

    What? You're not familiar with it?

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  7. “If the likes of Trudeau and de Blasio were born under Communist
    dictatorship, what would they do in their adult lives?”

    The same things Reagan, Chaney and Friedman would have done:
    worked within the system they found themselves in and try to get ahead.

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  8. Derelict12:09 PM

    Shorter NYC Republicans: Why don't you stupid, stupid voters understand our references to a now 20-year-dead ideology and simply hand over every dollar you have or will have to the plutocrats who should be in control?

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  9. BigHank5312:09 PM

    Adam Smith called for the regulation of capitalism. It's true! Look it up! He was so brazen about it that he even wrote it down.

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  10. You know I actually learned my anti tax "soak the rich" philsophy from the pages of that commie rag the New York Times when it described the billionaire head of SAC and how he got his money, and how hurt he is that he might have to fork out a billion of it in fines for lying, cheating, and fradulently aquiring it doing illegal trades. My eyes rolled back in my head and I began thinking that I, and the city of New York for that matter--hell, the entire country--would be better off expropriating one or two billionaires rather than raising taxes on everyone. Fuck taxing people at all--lets just nationalize the property of the one percent.

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  11. I also had a lot of trouble parsing that question. Is it MCarthyite in its accepted sense (that is: a person who wrongfully abuses the political and legal process to harm hundreds of people and take away their rights of free speech and assembly) if I guess that the answer is that they might have grown up to be unfair and abusive of the political process just like McCarthy? Its a bit oroborubrian but I can't actually figure out what else it could mean.

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  12. Nordlinger emended:



    I sometimes joke – and everything I write here is a joke – that the problem with the world is that people keep being hatched. Here at National Review the likes of us hatchlings, of course, is we still know nothing. And it’s up to others to pass along what they know. For various reasons, this process always fails. The history of lessons doesn’t take…



    …Here is a question that’s uncomfortable in that it came out of my ass, and I’m liable to stamped a sodomite because of the frequency of this act, but what if Bush and Cheney were really born on a distant planet, what would they do with their lives? I’d certainly like to join them there, in government, squeezed between them like a turd between nates and a diaper...

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  13. carolannie12:37 PM

    Time for Don Camillo and Peppone

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  14. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.12:38 PM

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43GChXc6RVY

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  15. whetstone12:39 PM

    It’s a truly touching narrative — worthy of Charles Dickens or perhaps Karl Marx.


    Yeah, fuck Charles Dickens.

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  16. carolannie12:47 PM

    And also, you know, Christ and all those malingerers.

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  17. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.12:48 PM

    Especially in New York City where Obama carried over 80% of the Vote.

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  18. redoubt1:01 PM

    The Green Bay Packers. Because socialism.

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  19. BigHank531:07 PM

    Yeah, fuck Charles Dickens.


    Check to see where all those royalty checks are going--he's been fucked for a long time.

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  20. Mark_Bzzzz1:10 PM

    Yeah, the Contras were the good guys, with all of that nun killing and disappearing of undesirables. Reagan giving them weapons to kill people with was totally justified.

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  21. Gromet1:13 PM

    I'm still in shock that the good people of America's greatest city seem poised to vote for a man named "di Blasio." It sounds so... so... ethnic!

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  22. Gromet1:17 PM

    This is why I stick to Ayn Rand. I prefer Fictional Capitalism, with its thoughtless, consequence-free perfection.

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  23. PersonaAuGratin1:24 PM

    ...This reminded me of Pierre Trudeau, of whom it has been said, “It tells
    you everything that he honeymooned in the Soviet Union"...



    Okay, give a middle-aged guy a break: you're honeymooning with 22 year-old "flower child" Margaret. I doubt you would even get out of he hotel room long enough to notice or care what country you're in, let alone make an ideological statement. I think his motive was to get as far away from the Canadian press as possible, though I imagine the KGB has some pretty hot sex tapes in the archives.

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  24. PersonaAuGratin1:26 PM

    Give me back that All-American triumvirate of Rudy, Julie, and Annie.

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  25. Haystack1:30 PM

    This is just anecdotal, but I know a guy who called this other guy I know a commie. The thing is, I still like the guy who got called a commie and the guy who called him that, he came off looking like a real dickwad. Just figured I'd mention it.

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  26. merl11:36 PM

    Are people still worrying about Communism? I can't imagine anyone over 40 caring about it or even knowing why they should fear it. Because they really shouldn't.

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  27. merl11:39 PM

    did the guy who was called a commie laugh? i would have.

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  28. Oh how I LOVE those books. I'm ashamed to say it but they are wonderful. Especially the one where Don Camillo goes to the Soviet Union. A book which neatly ends with a murder which apparently is just peachy with god.

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  29. Does anyone not Canadian remember Pierre Trudeau? This cite is like reading an old Bartlett's Quotations and discovering that it is 8/9ths people that no one remembers at all.


    Also: diBlasio is such a typical New York political schmoozer you just can't rhetorically turn him into a scary commissar, or an elegant French/Candian amalgam of a metrosexual elitist. The guy looks like he never passed up a pastrami on rye in his life.

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  30. J Neo Marvin1:59 PM

    Incredibly, De Blasio says he still supports the Sandinistas

    Why isn't the WSJ praising his pro-life stance, then?

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  31. J Neo Marvin2:00 PM

    "Oroborubrian" is my new favorite word.

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  32. I'm hoping we can vote it up and Roy can use it in his next column.


    "Is it McCarthyite of me..." He orobused enthusiastically.

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  33. Jay B.2:12 PM

    Liberation theology? Sandinistas? Cuba? Shit, I don't remember di Blasio being this cool when he was my city councilor in Park Slope. Come to think of it, I wasn't that cool either.

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  34. PersonaAuGratin2:12 PM

    Well, you're making me feel old, but he gave the spring Charter Day speech when I was at Berkeley in 1977, just at the awkward time when he and Margaret were in the midst of splitting up:



    http://goo.gl/Qysqkd


    Some wags sitting near me unfurled a handmade banner saying "We Loved Margaret" which prompted a harrumphing letter to the student newspaper a few days later complaining, among other things, of the phallic suggestiveness of the heart-with-an-arrow-through-it that was the "O" in "Loved."

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  35. smut clyde2:23 PM

    Brian O'Roboru is the protagonist of my next piece of pseudonymous fanfic.

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  36. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person2:25 PM

    Might be better called "Rand-Hickmanism"
    What a guy. What a gal. A match made in heaven...

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  37. Bill de Blasio Should Ask Me About the Sandinistas

    ASK ME!!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1LhlVtbW_U

    ~

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  38. smut clyde2:59 PM

    Sadly, propagandists and apparatchniks have no difficulty in switching from "This election is a referendum on [Policy X]!" one day, to "The winning candidate has no mandate from the people to implement [Policy X]!!" a few days later.

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  39. Kelly Jennings3:07 PM

    This does in fact seem to be their argument. Do they think all of us have memories as short as theirs?


    This revisionist history, in which Saint Reagan has become a hero, is really starting to get down my neck.

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  40. What? You're not familiar with it?


    Nope. I tried to ask my father about the 1950's part, but he growled "That pinko Eisenhower" and something about Earl Warren and impeachment.

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  41. smut clyde3:17 PM

    At what point did Trudeau enter the wingnut Duckspeak Lexicon as the Canadian Jimmy Carter, such that invocation of his name evokes rage and resentment? Is this new?

    The only reasoning process I can see here is "De Blasio is known to be Doubleplus Bad; therefore mentioning Trudeau in his context means that Trudeau = Bad also, therefore a serious rhetorical blow has been dealt against De Blasio by comparing him to that bastard Trudeau." Which probably works for the intended readership but I can't see it having much impact outside the epistemic bubble.

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  42. Fuck taxing people at all--lets just nationalize the property of the one percent.

    B-but that would be ....


    ... Damnit, since "socialism" and "Marxism" are already taken by things like the existence of income taxes and market-friendly reform of privately-provided health insurance, I'm all out of epithets to describe seizing the means of production from the capitalists. Curse that Obama for exhausting our strategic hypberbolic rhetoric reserves!

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  43. smut clyde3:20 PM

    To be fair, it may well be easier to find living people with negative memories of the Sandinista government than living people with negative memories of the Contras.

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  44. Just because yesterday's socialist society-destroying reforms are already here and firmly entrenched in the status quo doesn't mean we have to stop crying socialism and destruction of society about future reforms!

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  45. Good god, that update. We can't dare let people be healthier and need fewer emergency operations, because then hospitals would be less profitable! I'm not sure I've ever seen a more nakedly sociopathic statement of profit uber alles that wasn't coming from the mouth of a cheesy robber-baron movie villain.

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  46. gfburke3:40 PM

    If only Bloomberg could run for a fourth term, he's the mayor NYC needs, by God! A billionaire knows a thousand times more than your everyday millionaire.

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  47. FMguru3:42 PM

    It wasn't nearly as good as London Calling (not many albums are), and it
    had too much filler (as you'd expect from a triple-album), but it still
    has a bunch of great songs on it. Why the hate?

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  48. ... doesn't mean we have to stop crying socialism and destruction of society about future reforms!


    Yes it does, unless we want to end up in one of Dictator Obama's current FEMA camps for Christians and other undesirables.

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  49. I was thinking more like declaring them unpersons, de-citizening them, and then seizing their property under letters of marque and reprisal (I believe that was Rand Paul's solution for what to do instead of having a military capable of dealing with the pirates.) Or, we could just go straight to slavery and seize them and sell them to whoever wants them. I understand from listening to Republican representatives that this is totally do-able if enough of the voters want to do it.

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  50. Jimcima3:54 PM

    Sure, yuk it up - but you wouldn't if you had fled in terror from the Canadians.

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  51. I rather suspect that the intended readership doesn't remember Trudeau either, or thinks its Gary Trudeau and is surprised and annoyed to find out he had an entire secret history as a soviet stooge. But even the evocation of "moscow" strikes me as ...aged in wood. They aren't talking to anyone much under the age of 50 if they think any of these things have the slightest resonance.

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  52. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.3:58 PM

    No, that was Ron Paul, who wanted to issue the letters of marque. He might be somewhat smarter then his spawn but he sure is just as nutty.

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  53. Whereas Obamacare is a horrible breach of our democratic ideals no matter how many voters want it.

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  54. The changes have slashed patient populations — and so pushed many financially marginal institutions straight over the edge. (See above, Long Island College Hospital.)



    Why won't Obama and his evil minions evict patients onto the street for being unable to pay for their care the old fashioned way! Letting Insurance Companies and Hospital Administrators pull the plug is moral. Paying extra to clinics and doctors and nurses to try to keep people healthy is just weird.


    This reminds me of a jaw droppingly stupid NPR piece I heard just yesterday about how despite handling the lunatic fringe of the evangelicals with kid gloves the Obama administration had failed to prepare to kiss the feet of the loosely constructed Amish community which is filled with really nice people who are incredibly stupid and don't understand that they aren't "against insurance" but rather are engaging in a particularly limited and socially problematic form of group insurance. Basically: they think its not manly or godly or something to pay up front premiums to the hospitals you are planning to use when you have an emergency. If you need to use modern medicine (which they support, btw) you go have your health care crisis and then you submit the part of the bill you can't pay to your religious community and hope they will hold a bean feast and raise the 100 to 300 thousand dollars you might need. Hopefully you don't have an illness or a problem that they don't consider worthy of their intervention!


    Be that as it may the Amish are working away with the bewildered Obama administration to somehow bring themselves into compliance with the ACA without actually going to the trouble of figuring out that they are "self insuring" and they could actually do that more effectively if they wanted to. The funniest part of the story was the way the Amish didn't like being lumped in with those crazy evangelicals. Our traditional incoherent way of life is perfectly rational and godly--you people are crazy even though we are going to take advantage of the carve outs you demanded.

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  55. One paul is really very like another.

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  56. Haystack4:14 PM

    Any album with Hitsville UK on it is allowed generous amounts of filler as far as I'm concerned.

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  57. BG, finally feck free4:20 PM

    Meanwhile, both the government and insurers have been heavily incentivizing “wellness initiatives” — quit-smoking and diet programs and so on — meant to dramatically cut hospitals out of the picture.



    Okay, that is one of the most jaw-droppingly stupid things I have ever read.


    "Keep on smoking and eating like a pig so we can keep the hospitals open! While you're at it, get stinking drunk and wrap your car around a tree ---- and make sure you're not wearing your seatbelt! Don't bother going to the doctor, but wait until you're so sick that you have to go to the emergency room like a REAL American!"


    As far as Long Island College Hospital is concerned, I live a block from there in what is now a very chi-chi neighborhood in Brooklyn. The hospital is in a prime location --- river views from three sides, including views of the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. I can tell you for certain: real estate developers are salivating at the idea that they could get their hands on it and convert it into apartments.

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  58. J Neo Marvin4:23 PM

    It's a great New York album too. "Broadway" is my favorite track.

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  59. KatWillow4:35 PM

    Jeez, I hadn't thought of those books since I was a teen... my parents had them all. "The Little World of Don Camillo". Yeah, the Soviet Union was a good one.

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  60. KatWillow4:36 PM

    Woah!

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  61. I read them as a teen, too. And then I used to read them out loud to my daughters when we still had time for nightly readings. Most of the short stories are really gems.

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  62. I think you mean "up my nose."

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  63. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.4:43 PM

    I can answer the something about Earl Warren. He moonlighted as a stripper.

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  64. Just ask Ted Cruz.

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  65. So is their solution to the problem of these hospitals that the government should, you know, subsidize them? Because I thought we were against that sort of thing.

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  66. Well, Margaret did fuck a Rolling Stone or two. Sure, not as nasty as the trains Nancy R. used to pull for Ronnie's pals, including Caspar "Ghost " Weinberger, Alex "A Pinch" Haig and John "Tusslin'" Block, to name but a few. But RR was a cagey buzzard, and when he saw (from far, far away) that that little Miss Priss Jane Wyman wasn't going to take on his cabinet in the Oval Office for his mastubatory pleasure, well, it was time to bring in the woman he called, "the fuck of my life, and she'll be yours, too, for a dollar!"
    So no, nothing new here at all.

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  67. KatWillow4:58 PM

    The changes have slashed patient populations — and so pushed many financially marginal institutions straight over the edge. (See above, Long Island College Hospital.)


    Perhaps someone should point out to the man that Obamacare MAKES insurance plans take on SICKER people and people with lifelong EXPENSIVE conditions, that will now be paid for by the ins. companies rather than being dumped at the hospital's ER door.

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  68. FMguru4:58 PM

    Somebody Got Murdered is a greatly under-appreciated little gem, too.

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  69. Uh, they honeymooned at Whistler Mountain. But there's snow there, so it's obvious how Nordlinger mistook it for the Soviet Union...which tells you everything you need to know about how intelligent is Jay Nordlinger.

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  70. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps5:07 PM

    I imagine it's an attempt at saying Bill de Blasio is even more red than a guy who was too red for Red Soviet Canuckistan. Some of these offhand references in NR are actually rich lasagnas of layered meaning.

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  71. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps5:12 PM

    With one day left in the race, I don't really think it's an attempt to convince or persuade. Kincaid's purely raging, Ignatius Reilly-style, at the idiocy of the general public, for not being able to recognize the obvious truth only he and his readers can see.

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  72. PersonaAuGratin5:24 PM

    It was probably the "socialized medicine" that threw him off, plus a lot of red in the flag.

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  73. StringOnAStick6:10 PM

    Most folks who got crosswise with the Contras certainly had enough time to develop a negative memory of the event, but not much time after that to do anything at all, including breathing.

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  74. tigrismus6:24 PM

    Here is an uncomfortable question, liable to be damned as McCarthyite by those who don’t want to address it: If the likes of Trudeau and de Blasio were born under Communist dictatorship, what would they do in their adult lives?



    It's not uncomfortable or McCarthyite, it's dumb as fuck.

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  75. XeckyGilchrist6:25 PM

    The "up my nose" was how the Reaganites paid for all of the South American shenanigans, IIRC.

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  76. JennOfArk6:29 PM

    The screed was composed, no doubt, hand-written on a sheet in a Big Chief notebook.

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  77. XeckyGilchrist6:30 PM

    I'd fear it if I were a youngster, seeing the mental damage it's caused to all these geezers.

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  78. Gromet6:36 PM

    That McManus skree is an amazing specimen. For years my GOP loved ones and acquaintances have been complaining that "Obamacare does nothing to bring costs down!" Now costs come down and they're freaked out that hospitals aren't making as much money? Adoyoyoy.


    Curious where the goalposts will be next week.

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  79. Mark_Bzzzz6:38 PM

    The New York Post is awesome:

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-bitter-end



    They don't have a shred of integrity left.

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  80. XeckyGilchrist6:49 PM

    Yeah, righties don't do dignity. I always flash on GHW Bush yelling incoherently "ozone, man, ozone!"

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  81. XeckyGilchrist6:50 PM

    The goalposts move in mysterious ways wingnuts' blunders to justify, or however that goes.

    +10 for "skree." Alicublog hasn't had enough "skree" lately.

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  82. Gromet6:53 PM

    I don't trust that Cuba. Sure, we've reduced Communism to a single island -- but one time, in a game of Risk, when I was playing Red, I was reduced just to New Guinea, and yet I managed to come back and conquer the entire world. It could happen again!


    (This foreign policy analysis brought to you with all the care that's typical of wingnut foreign policy analysis.)

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  83. Gromet6:56 PM

    I believe the great Roy Edroso himself used it just yesterday!


    No takebacks on the +10 though...

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  84. Mooser7:03 PM

    "This revisionist history, in which Saint Reagan has become a hero, is really starting to get down my neck."


    Is it? WELL, IT'S MAKING ME FUCKING SICK UNTO FUCKING DEATH!! So much of what is wrong now traces directly back to him. Sorry, sorry, but Gad, I can't stand Reagen.

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  85. Gromet7:12 PM

    Wait... lasagna is red... HAS NR BEEN INFILTRATED?

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  86. TGuerrant7:22 PM

    When I googled it, only you came up. I have never seen that before - a sole search return. Now I must worship you always.

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  87. Bow, bow, ye low and middle classes
    Bow, bow, ye tradesmen and ye masses...

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  88. You do realize that with luck, thirty years from now, the right wing will still be shrieking pretty much this about Obama, don't you?

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  89. AGoodQuestion7:49 PM

    Obama, a man who was elected by a majority of American voters,
    And a rather lopsided majority in NYC, if I'm not mistaken.

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  90. AGoodQuestion7:50 PM

    Or I could have just written "what Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq said."

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  91. AGoodQuestion7:54 PM

    Al Capone said "A kind word and a gun will get you further than a kind word alone." So think about the great PR you can get by ditching the kind words and doubling down on ammo!

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  92. AGoodQuestion7:58 PM

    Oh, they've probably had suspicions about the Doonesbury scribe for a long time.

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  93. AGoodQuestion8:04 PM

    Come to think of it, I've always thought that the word "McCarthyist" was always used in reference to Joe, while "McCarthyite" referred to Gene. Was Nordlinger a Clean for Gene before the Democratic Party left him (out of sheer ennui)?

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  94. AGoodQuestion8:07 PM

    And "Rebel Waltz", which ranks for me as one of the all time great Clash songs, or songs.

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  95. redoubt8:08 PM

    Something tells me Nordlinger wouldn't complain about all the red in this flag.

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  96. XeckyGilchrist8:10 PM

    As may be, but there is always room for more skree. Just like Jell-O!

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  97. phiiladelphialawyer10:06 PM

    Man, am I sick of these "I lived in Nicaragua (Cuba, the USSR, Eastern Europe, China, whatever) and so therefore I am the go to and only authorized authority on the subject." Dude, we have all heard the claims and counter claims about the Sandinista government. We also know that it allowed itself to be voted out of office. Why do you think your hardly unbiased account is going to move the meter any, at this late date?
    And, at that, despite his trauma, he seems to have gotten out OK.. And, what does he actually have to say.. .that the secret police were "harassing" him. Well, that word can cover a lot of ground, and mean a whole lot or nothing much at all, when it comes to repression. As far as I can tell, as tales of woe go, he ain't even got much of one. No one hurt, jailed, beaten up, much less killed. No specific action at all, towards him or his family, not even a threat, just that pseudo ominous "harassment." Shoot, the police harass folks in this city, systematically, and on the basis of race and class, and our (thank god!) soon to be outgoing mayor thinks that's not only just great, but an indispensable part of government besides.
    What else...that some of the Sandinistas were socialists. Yeah, we know that already too. But, unlike you, we don't think that means that they had cooties. Last time I checked, there was no a priori prohibition on folks in Nicaragua being socialists, if they wanted to.
    Like the Batista cry baby plutocrats. Wah, wah, wah, Castro stole my signed Mickey Mantle poster. Wah wah wah. Um, no, Richy Rich, you left your damn poster behind when you fled the country. And you fled the country so you could keep as much of your ill begotten, colabo gains as possible.. Even if that meant deserting your country, and countrymen and women (never mind your stupid poster), to go and live with their imperialist oppressors.
    Yeah, we should vote against our best interests and Di Blasio because you did not get quite as much out of the Sandinista revolution as you thought you were entitled to and De Blasio has nice things to say about them.. On that basis, because of your subjective, self serving account of what went on thirty years ago or more in a country just recovering from literally half a century or more of US sponsored dictatorship, domination and exploitation, we are going to reject the mayoral candidate who seems to share our values and politics in the here and now, and who espouses the policies we prefer, to vote for a Tea Party Republican instead? The absolute, self centered gall here is incredible.
    Frankly, I don't believe word one of his little story. But, even if I did, so what? Sorry man, but the Sandinistas are just not the issue in this election. Resentment of them may still be at the center of your emotional life, even after all these years, but that hardly means we do, or should, feel that way too.

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  98. What does Dobie Gillis have to do with Ayn Rand?


    Zelda! Now cut that out!

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  99. Here is an uncomfortable question, liable to be damned as McCarthyite by
    those who don’t want to address it: If the likes of Trudeau and de
    Blasio were born under Communist dictatorship, what would they do in
    their adult lives?



    no it is just a dumb question

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  100. now; now--there are no such things as dumb questions…




    …just dumb people.

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  101. tigrismus8:37 AM

    Now now, maybe we can all come together as one and agree there are dumb people who sometimes ask dumb questions.

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  102. "Earl Warren was never a stripper, and Bill de Blasio isn't a communist!"

    "Now who's being naïve?"

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  103. Jonah: "What lasagna?"

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  104. Halloween_Jack9:31 AM

    Why do you think your hardly unbiased account is going to move the meter any, at this late date?


    See Rand, A.

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  105. Halloween_Jack9:32 AM

    Wait--when did they have any?

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  106. Halloween_Jack9:36 AM

    Eventually, like living next to the El tracks, you get to where you don't notice it any more.

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  107. Halloween_Jack9:39 AM

    It was in the middle of that punk-to-pop transition that they were undergoing; obsessive types don't know where to file it.

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  108. Halloween_Jack9:40 AM

    He made an appearance in the Alpha Flight comic, so yes.

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  109. Halloween_Jack9:41 AM

    With a rubber hose?

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  110. Halloween_Jack9:45 AM

    what if Bush and Cheney were really born on a distant planet, what would they do with their lives?


    Cheney would become a Sith; Bush would never have been heard from because the Federation doesn't use money.

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  111. Halloween_Jack9:47 AM

    Whichever team Castro pitched for.

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  112. Halloween_Jack9:49 AM

    Wouldn't Mirror Spock be smart enough to know that a demilitarized Terran Empire would be vulnerable to a Klingon-Cardassian alliance?

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  113. Scott Lemieux10:25 AM

    I won't be able to resist posting about this, but I love the Trudeau "honeymoon in the Soviet Union" line. I didn't know that the Soviets had annexed British Columbia; my parents must have been pretty clever to find the border crossings without checkpoints.

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  114. Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

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  115. billcinsd11:59 AM

    they were the moral equivalent of our founding fathers

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  116. realinterrobang3:32 PM

    To be fair, I'm pretty sure the Amish aren't evangelicals. Unlike most nutty Christers, the Amish, as far as I can tell, keep to themselves about their nuttiness and -- to their great and eternal credit -- don't try to convince you that you should be Amish too. I cannot say that about any nutty funnymentalist Christians of my unfortunate acquaintance. So there is that, I guess.

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  117. Like a lot of people I "like" the "Amish" because of warm feelings about the movie Witness. I read a fascinating anthro article years ago about how and why Americans "love" the Amish and how they stand in for something, like charismatic megafauna, that we want to believe exists out there without actually performing the tasks associated with that lifestyle.


    But certainly they are not modern day evangelicals and the two groups must regard each other with the suspicion and hatred that is the natural product of the "narcissism of small differences"--both groups can't both be right about their shared god. That has to make some people very uncomfortable--not the Amish. I think they are comfortable believing what they believe--but I'm pretty sure the modern evangelicals prefer to claim the amish when they look popular and reject them when they are anti-war or when their brand of frugality and withdrawal make the excess of those mega churches look too whore of romish.

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  118. The refined expression is, "gets on my tits."
    Down the neck, up the nose, on the tits. A regular Ronnie Roger ending.

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  119. Matt Jones7:32 AM

    Shorter WSJ: "How dare somebody oppose OUR right-wing death squads in '80s Central America!"

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  120. Maybe hospital stays wouldn't be so expensive and short if we kept pushing the doctors and nurses to their breaking point and then tried to scalp every $5 pair of aspirin.

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  121. Also, that was what, twenty, thirty years ago? Are we to blacklist ever person who has some morally ambiguous choices or supported causes that didn't go well as youngsters?


    I fear this is another 'heads I win tails you lose' situation where IOKIYAAR.

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