Monday, January 26, 2015

BUT OLD MAN GOLDBERG, HE JUST KEEPS FARTING ALONG.

Jonah Goldberg tells us he had to house-husband for a bit and, after some humorous padding about how what a slob he is, does one of those pirouette-off-a-cliff segues for which he is justly famous:
But I also think about how hard it must be to be an actual single parent. It seems to me that this is the ground-floor argument conservatives should build up from when talking about marriage.
Maybe they should start with jokes about male housekeeping too. "Ah wipe mah ass ohna floor lahk a wormy dog," chortles Rick Perry.
Raising kids is just easier with two committed parents around. Put aside the moralizing for a second (moralizing I often agree with, by the way) and just talk logistics. It’s very hard to do all the things you want to do for your kids without a wingman (or wing-gal).
For example, his wife keeps a stick with a hook on it in the Subaru, for when Goldberg drops a bag of Funyuns under the brake pedal.
I’m not even talking about the financial part, which is huge. It’s simply harder to help with homework, show up at games, serve home-cooked meals, and generally participate in your kids’ life if you’re the sole breadwinner and sole parent. (Charles Murray has been making this point for a very long time.)...
I imagine Goldberg's comrades sitting around the McManse, marveling at how inner city single moms get their kids to soccer and ballet practice. (With our tax dollars via the socialist subways!) Inevitably Goldberg gets to his Murphy Brown section -- liberals are all rich white people who want blacks to breed unwed because something something plantation, whereas conservatives are racially indistinct reincarnations of the Founders, in whose world black families stayed together until sold off separately -- and then offers the traditional solution:
When Hillary Clinton & Co. talk about how “it takes a village to raise a child” they’re invoking wisdom from what P. J. O’Rourke called the “ancient African kingdom of Hallmarkcardia” to make the case for vast new federal bureaucracies, taxes, programs, regulations, etc. But the phrase itself contains a lot of truth. Unlike bureaucrats in Washington, neighbors, teachers, pastors, coaches, coworkers, and friends can help raise your kids, in ways large and small. Real communities involve extended networks of trust and goodwill. Fake communities have regulations, fees, subsidies, and checklists...
While Obama would rob the mega-rich of their precious savings -- savings they need to complete their yacht flotillas -- to subsidize community college, which will only cause the poors to get above themselves reading Derrida, Republican policies will nourish real communities by destroying all safety nets, forcing the poors to huddle for warmth with grampa and all the brats in their slums, thus reinforcing family feeling.

But much as Goldberg enjoys helping the underprivileged with morality lectures and tax breaks for the wealthy, he's really interested in Murphy Brown -- or a similarly well-aged avatar of liberals' refusal to join in the hectoring:
But elites won’t come out in favor of marriage as a social ideal (except for gays, of course), because as Charles Murray likes to say, they refuse to preach what they practice. 
Speaking of preaching, this reminds me of something I’ve been griping about for years: Madonna. Here’s how I put it in The Tyranny of Clichés....
Madonna! I wonder if, before settling for this, Goldberg spent five minutes bugging his intern: "You're young and with it. Who can we call a whore these days?" (He also tries to tart this nonsense up with "hypocrophobia," a perfect Goldberg neologism, in that it disguises incoherence with pretend erudition.)

Then comes a truly breathtaking argument:
This raises a fundamental problem for democracy. When certain lifestyles multiply, they become political constituencies rather than cautionary tales. If we didn’t have so many people in prison, there’d be no movement to give felons the vote. If so many people didn’t smoke pot, the legalization movement wouldn’t be doing so well. George W. Bush lavished praise on single mothers for the simple reason that there are lots of single mothers out there. If enough people go on the dole, then we stop calling it the dole and we stop shaming able-bodied people who turn it into a lifestyle. 
It doesn’t really matter what you think about the specific issues to understand the point. Everyone likes to think they’re principled, but principles can get overwhelmed when enough people violate them...
You're a bunch of whores and moochers and that's why liberals get away with it.
This was the real point I was trying to get at in my column earlier this week. We make all sorts of allowances for Islamic extremism because we are cowed by its numbers (and its willpower), not its arguments. If there were 1.6 million, not 1.6 billion Muslims around the world, there wouldn’t be nearly so much fumfering and fooferall about Muslim sensibilities.
In Goldberg's world, you're only nice to people -- blacks, single mothers, Muslims -- because you're ascared of them. After some more padding which contains, it should be noted for the record, the clause "JFK and Teddy were scummy dudes," comes this:
Principled people can deploy cost-benefit analysis too. For instance, I’ve long argued that if we could do it cheap and without losing any American or allied lives, we would be right to topple the North Korean regime. I believe that. I also believe that we should have wiped out the Soviets once we were done with Hitler provided doing so wouldn’t have meant a long and bloody third world war. But those options aren’t and weren’t on the table.
My fantasies are more righteous than your fantasies!
The trick is to uphold the principle while allowing for the fact that reality often doesn’t let us fully implement our principles without cost (a useful thing for Republicans to remember in their internal squabbles as well)...
Over years of following Goldberg's work, I'm noticed some patterns in it, and this is one: Usually when he leaves a hanging curveball, he won't take the effort to rewrite it into something better, but will instead try to confuse his reader with a barely-relevant parenthetical -- as here, where he clearly hopes you will associate a "reality" that "often doesn’t let us fully implement our principles without cost" with GOP squabbling instead of, for example, the multi-trillion-dollar Iraq War.

The rest is just dribbling, but I have to note this:
There’s a corruption of the soul at work when you can bleat and whine about the “Taliban wing of the Republican party” while effectively making apologies for the actual Taliban.
No link on "effectively making apologies for the actual Taliban," you may have guessed.

UPDATE. Goldberg's column is a rich vein for enthusiasts, and in comments mark f says he can't believe I left this bit unmentioned:
...liberal writers give [the Kennedys] a pass because . . . Camelot! Or something. 
It’s not just writers, though. It’s all of us. And that’s not always wrong (though it often is).
I agree  it's wonderfully Goldbergian -- especially the parenthetical pee-dance -- but, you know, I'm doing this in my spare time and can't do all the glosses Goldberg deserves, so thanks, mark f -- and thanks Yastreblyansky, who takes the trouble to source some of Goldberg's misapprehensions, e.g. one about Obama's community college plan, to which Goldberg objects in part because it requires "raising taxes on college-savings plans":
The college-savings plans in question are the 529 and Coverdell plans used by a little under 3% of the nation's families to pay for their children's tertiary education (the families have a median income of around $142,400 per year as opposed to $45,100 for the rest of us, and median financial assets of about $413,500, or 25 times the median financial asset value, $15,400, of families without the plans). 
I'm not clear about how keeping them tax-free helps the impoverished single parent in a more efficient way than free community college, since the impoverished single parent doesn't actually have any of the money involved. Perhaps the owners of the accounts plan to donate the interest money to the poor...

203 comments:

  1. Martin Pollard9:44 AM

    Shorter Doughy Pantload: "FAAARRRRRRRRRRTTTTT!!!!"

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  2. M. Krebs9:49 AM

    I also believe that we should have wiped out the Soviets once we were done with Hitler provided doing so wouldn’t have meant a long and bloody third world war.


    That settles it. Jonah's smoking the wacky tabacky.

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  3. carolannie10:01 AM

    You read this so we don't have to.

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  4. Halloween_Jack10:11 AM

    I’ve long argued that if we could do it cheap and without losing any American or allied lives, we would be right to topple the North Korean regime.


    I'll remember that the next time someone on, say, LGM accuses someone else of Green Lanternism.

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  5. GeniusLemur10:15 AM

    "reality often doesn’t let us fully implement our principles without cost"
    Hey Jonah! If there's no cost, how exactly does it qualify as a principle?

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  6. coozledad10:18 AM

    He's written more books than he's read.

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  7. DN Nation10:22 AM

    "But elites won’t come out in favor of marriage as a social ideal"


    Cheap and accessible child care, cheap and accessible child healthcare, maternity leave, paternity leave. Which group is fighting for those, again?


    But yeah, J-Dawg, you guys certainly do support the right of a woman not to easily divorce her abusive husband, for example.

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  8. DN Nation10:23 AM

    Yep, let's open up that Ark!
    http://i.ytimg.com/vi/X3KV4fLSNoU/maxresdefault.jpg

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  9. Tehanu10:23 AM

    I especially liked the part about the "home-cooked meals." The mind boggles at the thought of Jonah actually cooking anything more complicated than frozen pizza.

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  10. So, in a nutshell, we have: "Being a single parent is incredibly difficult. Which is why being a single parent is so popular these days. Similarly, living in grinding poverty is now overwhelmingly popular. These are the realities that prevent Republicans from implementing their favored policies that would making being a single parent impossible, and make grinding poverty fatal."

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  11. "Ah wipe mah ass ohna floor lahk a wormy dog," chortles Rick Perry.Jeez, Mr. Edroso, if you had mentioned you were attending Steve King's Freedom Summit, I would have had my folks say hi.

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  12. For conservatives like Goldberg, history is nothing more or less than a simplified mind game in which you can easily re-arrange both the pieces and the sequence of moves in order to win every time.

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  13. +1 don't open your eyes marion

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  14. tigrismus10:31 AM

    What drives me crazy is when rich liberal single parents think they have legs to stand on when speaking on behalf of low-income single parents.

    In contrast to rich conservatives whose wives are out of town for a family emergency?

    People with lots of financial and social capital can afford to make bad choices that would be devastating for others.

    The solution is obviously to do away with all assistance and require people to marry.

    Fake communities have regulations, fees, subsidies, and checklists.


    Hilarious.

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  15. also, KILL STALIN

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  16. Magatha10:35 AM

    Ooh. Suddenly I just flashed to Twilight Zone and found myself thinking, Jonah, that column is very good, it's really very good, now wish it to the cornfield, Jonah.

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  17. The solution is obvious: Get government out of the boardroom and into the bedroom. If only we could free business from the shackles of law while shackling women into procreative sex solely within the confines of rigidly enforced laws regarding marriage. No place outside Somalia has ever known such sweet, sweet freedom!

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  18. If enough people go on the dole, then we stop calling it the dole and
    we stop shaming able-bodied people who turn it into a lifestyle.On the other hand, what if we start calling it "Mommy was enough of a well-connected vicious immoral shitbag to get me a lifelong sincecure at an intellectually bankrupt cesspool of a publication that couldn't survive without massive subsidies"? What then?



    ... Oh, wait, he said, "able-bodied."

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  19. Cheap and accessible child care, cheap and accessible child healthcare,
    maternity leave, paternity leave. Which group is fighting for those,
    again?Exactly his point. Think how even easier it would make life for overbreeding sluts single parents if we had those things. The point is to punish the slatterns and force the poors into marriage, not help them and their parasite offspring with the tax dollars of people who matter. In conclusion, Choose Life!!!

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  20. JONAH: [Looks up from pizza] "Cooking"?

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  21. No link on "effectively making apologies for the actual Taliban," you may have guessed.Oh, come on, it's obvious from the context. Think of how much the Taliban glorifies and financially supports single mothers. Coincidence?

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  22. I didn't get out of the boat and follow the trail of sharts, but I assume Goldberg stopped short of actually saying society's problems are due to the fact the wrong sort of people breed like bunnies.

    Other than that, I just note he isn't the first man to take pride in the fact he's a slobbish outsized child (because cleaning and cooking is girlz work) and insist that he plays a vital role in making life easier for his wife.

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  23. And able-bodied is now the weird Rand Paul definition, which means you have at least one functioning limb.

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  24. coozledad10:54 AM

    I keep seeing Goldberg as 2nd lieutenant "Guppy" telling some veterans of the Ardennes we ought to be kicking some Russian ass.
    "Give him another chocolate bar, Lou. It's the only thing that'll shut him the fuck up."

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  25. Ellis_Weiner10:55 AM

    "while effectively making apologies for the actual Taliban."

    I will buy Jonah an actual bag of those Funyans if he can provide a single example of "elites" making apologies for the Taliban.

    Meanwhile, this: "Usually when he leaves a hanging curveball, he won't take the effort to rewrite it into something better, but will instead try to confuse his
    reader with a barely-relevant parenthetical..." is exactly right. Jonah's artistic credo is, "Anything worth writing is worth writing exactly once. Never apologize, never explain. Never question, never correct. Fill as you go. Besides, my readers already know what I'm going to say."

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  26. "Hypocrophobia" is presumably the fear of being stuck in one of those prison cells too small to sit or lie down in but too low-ceilinged to stand up unbent, such as they had in the Grand Châtelet fortress in Paris in the mid-16th century, mentioned in a footnote to the Letters of Calvin as the poche d'hypocros. I think Roy has short-changed the breakfast-food theme in this column, which lends it a poetic unity from GloZell to Madonna.

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  27. Because we've had so many wars that were cheap and resulted in zero deaths on one side.

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  28. mark f10:59 AM

    I can't believe you left out this awesome double-take-backsies that rests between JFK being a scummy dude and Jonah's fantasy of costlessly bringing down Stalin:

    liberal writers give them pass because . . . Camelot! Or something.

    It’s not just writers, though. It’s all of us. And that’s not always wrong (though it often is).

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  29. susanoftexas11:01 AM

    They want politics to be like church: the leader says his piece and everyone responds in chorus. Belief is not questioned, the leader gets his authority from God, blah blah.
    And being unwilling to kill innocent people for God and Country s the same as supporting your enemy because enemies are never innocent.

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  30. tigrismus11:02 AM

    Maybe if we call the regulation checklist the Top 10 Conservative something or other we won't be condemned to a fake community.

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  31. Clearly we have been doing this all wrong putting links to job search sites on our unemployment and welfare websites when really these should be links to OKCupid and Tinder.

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  32. coozledad11:12 AM

    making apologies for the Taliban.

    As opposed to funneling cash to the Taliban in exchange for a proposed pipeline. See: Republicans.

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  33. DN Nation11:15 AM

    All those things I mentioned can apply to married couples as well. These people want marriage, but also for marriages to suck. I mean, why don't these married couples just buy some more money? Why don't they get wingnut welfare?

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  34. dstatton11:16 AM

    Are white bigots a constituency? There are a lot of them.

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  35. But no one ever caters to THEM.

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  36. DN Nation11:17 AM

    Hahaha. Hahahahahahahaha. God, this guy.


    In fact, central to my point, then again, surely there are exceptions, though maybe not, though perhaps probably so, though I'm not really familiar with the story because on deadline fart.

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  37. GeniusLemur11:18 AM

    BRITISH OFFICER: Chap with the lard-ass there. Five rounds rapid.

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  38. mortimer200011:20 AM

    If Swift were alive today, Goldberg would be a featured twit at the Academy of Lagado, where he would divine insights about the world gleaned from a 1992 Game Boy whose AA batteries died sometime during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. We should never forget that Jonah is the spawn of the evil Lucianne, which explains much of his truly offensive persona.

    This latest bellyful of gas was a glut of stupidity, and you turned it into laughs. Bless you, Roy.

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  39. Jaime Oria11:24 AM

    Frankly, I wonder if he's ever bothered to read the books he's written.

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  40. Not screaming for the blood of all Muslims = Apologizing for the Taliban.

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  41. Single parents have got it hard, let's make it harder for them!

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  42. The Taliban are Muslim, therefore Muslim=Taliban, liberal elites defend the rights of Muslims to ram Sharia down our throats. It's basic logic and thus does not require actual examples. If I can conceive of it in my head it must therefore be true.

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  43. Choose life! Choose better parents!!!

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  44. It's conservatives who regulate private behaviors, collect fees to make up for revenue shortfalls (Mitt was Gov. Fifi), subsidize private providers to undercut the public sector, and all of their bullet-point bullshit is nothing more than checklists.

    Yep, conservatives prefer fake communities, just like they prefer fake heroes and fake Christians. Thanks, Jonah!

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  45. If grinding poverty weren't so popular, that "Thrift Shop" sing wouldn't have been such a hit.

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  46. Oatler's Passion11:44 AM

    "I also believe that we should have wiped out the Soviets once we were done with Hitler..." I have a similar fantasy about what we should have done with the south after the Civil War, and I guess it comes from me and the wacky tabacky.

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  47. If enough people go on the dole, then we stop calling it the dole and we stop shaming able-bodied people who turn it into a lifestyle.

    There's this book, Growing Up Empty, that's basically a series of case studies on hunger in America today. The book opens with a chapter entitled "Hunger and the Middle Class," which follows a woman whose well-to-do husband ran out on her and the kids and then employed some legal trickery to avoid paying child support. She went looking for one of those wonderful jobs that conservatives insist are just laying around, but what she could find was not enough to support the household. To make ends meet, she volunteered at a pantry so that she could steal supermarket vouchers.

    I always thought that it was very canny to start the book with that case, rather than one of the much more disturbing ones (such as the stuff from the Mississippi Delta area in the following chapter). It would be easy to dismiss some of the other stories as alien tales from a world of systemic poverty that we, the Charles Murray Uberclass, can't understand. But here we have a woman who did everything right - got married to a man with a good job, settled down, didn't fool around before or during her marriage, went to church (or synagogue, in this case - observing Jewish dietary laws didn't make things easier on the family) - and yet everything still collapsed.

    How is this relevant to Jonah's latest fart, you ask? Well...how isn't it relevant?

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  48. You know, I can't think of many "elites" (read: liberals) who are really down on marriage. Now, I can think of some people who feel that using marriage as a form of social engineering has a weird, pre-Industrial Revolution vibe to it, and that our current system - in which people marry out of a desire for companionship - seems pretty nice. But if you start talking about love, then you have to let queers into the club, and we can't have that.

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  49. Lurking Canadian11:52 AM

    In my dream world, there's a test required before people can vote, hold public office, or even speak in public. It has one question:


    Do you believe that getting married automatically makes people rich. Yes/No


    Anybody answering "Yes" not only has their political rights stripped, but also we take away any sharp objects in their home for their own protection.

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  50. Ellis_Weiner11:56 AM

    Not only that, but, as in church, the more you ignore facts that refute your belief, and the more you believe in spite of the absence of evidence, the more virtuous you are.

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  51. It's the compassionate thing to do. Helping them out would be the response of some callous liberal elite.

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  52. M. Krebs12:42 PM

    Wait, hold on. He's bitching about a plan to raise taxes on college savings plans, and then

    I'm not clear about how keeping them tax-free helps the impoverished single parent in a more efficient way than free community college, since the impoverished single parent doesn't actually have any of the money involved. Perhaps the owners of the accounts plan to donate the interest money to the poor...



    What?

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  53. j_bird12:52 PM

    That quote is from Yastreblyansky's blog post, not Goldberg. Hence the suspicious amount of sense-making.

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  54. J Neo Marvin12:55 PM

    For instance, I’ve long argued that if we could do it cheap and without losing any American or allied lives, we would be right to topple the North Korean regime.

    What is it about conservatives that they can't distinguish between a vile dictator and his victims? I don't think it's particularly controversial to point out that Kim Jong Un is a vile little pig. I fail to see how bombing the fuck out of the starving, oppressed North Koreans is going to help their situation.

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  55. +1 reverse the polarity of the neutron flow

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  56. I fail to see how bombing the fuck out of the starving, oppressed North Koreans is going to help their situation.

    That's only because you don't get off on the suffering of others.

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  57. j_bird12:58 PM

    When Hillary Clinton & Co. talk about how “it takes a village to
    raise a child” they’re invoking wisdom from what P. J. O’Rourke called
    the “ancient African kingdom of Hallmarkcardia” to make the case for
    vast new federal bureaucracies, taxes, programs, regulations, etc. But
    the phrase itself contains a lot of truth.

    "When liberals use a phrase, it's bullshit, but when conservatives use it, they've actually got a point."

    But those options aren’t and weren’t on the table.

    . . .

    The trick is to uphold the principle while allowing for the fact that
    reality often doesn’t let us fully implement our principles without cost

    "In every argument, remember to consider the possibility that your grandmother has wheels, while allowing for the fact that she is not in fact a wagon."

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  58. You forgot grenada--well,not cheap.

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  59. satch1:13 PM

    Restated Jonah (edited for clarity):

    "Home-cooked meals? Yeah... the little woman will get right on that when she gets back from that "family emergency".

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  60. satch1:14 PM

    "I'm not sayin' we wouldn't get our hair mussed..."

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  61. Geo X1:14 PM

    Well I'VE long argued that if war never had any negative consequences whatsoever and instead of killing anyone resurrected dead people and always made everything better and improved your health and gave you free money, we should do it ALL THE TIME. This is because I am a great conservative thinker. Thank you.

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  62. Geo X1:22 PM

    I think by "apologize" he means "recognize that there are comprehensible geopolitical reasons why people get radicalized and join terrorist groups." Remember, understanding the reasons for stuff and not just marking people down as inexplicably evil in a Skeletor-like fashion is a thing that librul moral relativists do. True Americans just shout GAAH! HAAALP! MONSTERS!

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  63. He's trying to show the world that he is able to see both sides of an argument! Or ten sides if there are that many.

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  64. "It would have been a good idea if it had worked!"

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  65. I’ve long argued that if we could do it cheap and without losing any American or allied lives, we would be right to topple the North Korean regime.


    Well, DUH!

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  66. susanoftexas1:37 PM

    Exactly. Virtue is based on obedience, not facts. Actions and most especially their consequences are irrelevant as long as one's motivation is virtuous, that is, as long as one gives one's obedience to the authority.
    So if your leader says that his party is virtuous, the virtuous act is not being virtuous, it is agreeing with the leader that he, his party and you are virtuous. Any of the leaders' acts that are not virtuous are thereby deemed as having no consequences and must be carefully ignored to maintain obedience to the leader and membership to the group.

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  67. KC45s1:39 PM

    "they’re invoking wisdom from what P. J. O’Rourke called the"
    Some days, the only thing that gets me through is knowing the day will come when Jonah, too, is an unfunny has-been. Instead of just unfunny.

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  68. Jay B.1:40 PM

    Raising kids is just easier with two committed parents around. Put aside the moralizing for a second (moralizing I often agree with, by the way) and just talk logistics. It’s very hard to do all the things you want to do for your kids without a wingman (or wing-gal).

    Holy Jesus this is rage-inducing. It IS hard you fucking asshole, which is why the moralizing is ESPECIALLY cruel and stupid.

    I'd say he should kill himself, but we all know he'd miss and kill an innocent bystander, who would be driving a bus and then the bus would hit a clutch of school-kids crossing the street, one of the dead students' dad would be a city councilor who would then pass a bill outlawing buses, which would then lead to further poverty and misery because people couldn't get to their jobs, which would then turn into a regional recession, which would probably end up costing billions of dollars and the deaths of 2,986 people due to successful suicides. He's a fucking plague.

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  69. susanoftexas1:41 PM

    The Jo-bola. Immediate quarantine for the mental health of the nation.

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  70. bekabot1:43 PM

    "'Ah wipe mah ass ohna floor lahk a wormy dog,' chortles Rick Perry."

    "Ah wipe mah ass ohna floor lahk a wormy dog, and then Ah have The Girl clean up the mess."

    Fixed that.

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  71. satch1:48 PM

    This argument (by Jonah) pisses me off more than I can say. The thing is, I live near Holyoke/Springfield, MA, which has bad schools, poverty, and a huge unwed teen birthrate. And of COURSE, it would be easy to put in thirty seconds of thought, which is about twenty more than Goldberg usually does, and then say: "Well, not only are the Wrong Sort breeding out of control, but... and then comes the cheap shot... liberals WANT them to do it to keep them dependent and suck more and more resources away from Hard Working Americans(tm)". The 60 Minutes three way with John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and staff fluffer Scott Pelley last night should disabuse anyone of the idea that Republicans have any plans for addressing the conditions that plunge people into poverty and keep them there other than tax cuts and unshackling the private sector to create jobs by eliminating regulations. And being lectured to about how we're "apologizing for the Taliban", "encouraging single parenthood", and his unctuous "But elites won’t come out in favor of marriage as a social ideal (except
    for gays, of course), because as Charles Murray likes to say, they
    refuse to preach what they practice." makes me want to go back in time and obliterate the day that conservatives discovered oleaginous smugness as a weapon. I'll admit, I can't quite grasp the appeal of parenthood, single or otherwise (I'm married, no kids), and of COURSE, if you're already living in poverty, having children on your own can make a bad situation worse. It's just hilarious to see that Jonah thinks he's some kind of genius for pointing that out.

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  72. In the conservative mindset, poverty is something people consciously choose. As though some rational, able-bodied adult sat down and thought it all out, and came to the conclusion that he or she wants to be poor.

    Conservatives are incapable of understanding that life happens--at least until it happens to them personally. And even then, it's just whatever narrowly defined aspect of life has just bitten their very own ass. Nonetheless, life happens, and people who were solid middle-class folks with jobs and marriages and kids and houses and all the trappings, actions, attitudes, and behaviors people like Jonah endorse one day suffer some calamity beyond their control--job disappears, house burns down, child has massively expensive illness--and they're suddenly impoverished. And once you're poor, everything gets exponentially more expensive. Sad how that works.

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  73. I've got nothing to say about this Pantload column. It's the same stupid shit he always writes so just refer to any of my past insults of him. If he can't be bothered to write more original stupidity, I can't be bothered to come up with any more original put downs of his stupidity. Good day.

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  74. satch2:04 PM

    "I’ve long argued that if we could do it cheap and without losing any
    American or allied lives, we would be right to topple the North Korean
    regime."

    This is what you get from people who are paid by the word.

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  75. BigHank532:15 PM

    If you run around the argument fast enough, you can make it unspool all the way back to first principles, and then you can re-argue it all over again and make it come out the way you want.

    Worked for Superman in that movie, didn't it?

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  76. I have long argued that if I had a ton of money and a huge penis, I would do much better with the ladies.

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  77. I don't want to hear ANY conservative complain about people drawing wisdom from the fictional land of Hallmarkcardia.


    Hell, the Right INVENTED Hallmarkcardia. That's the fictional land of the "Good Ol' Days" that they're always talking about, when everybody went to church on Sundays, you didn't even have to lock your door at night, and everything looked kind of like a Thomas Kinkade painting.


    That's on THEM.

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  78. People who know him probably call him "Captain Obvious" a lot.

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  79. redoubtagain2:33 PM

    In contrast to rich conservatives whose daughters are out of town for an abortion emergency appendectomy?
    Fixed

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  80. That's true alright.


    It's kind of ironic that it's very expensive to live the poor life.

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  81. M. Krebs2:37 PM

    Oops.

    ReplyDelete
  82. That kind of obedience is what conservatives are talking about when they talk about "character."


    That is their definition of the word.

    ReplyDelete
  83. redoubtagain2:37 PM

    I believe this is called "shit-of-the-pants thinking".

    ReplyDelete
  84. JennOfArk2:38 PM

    I successfully trolled him on twitter, in a reply to some moron who was claiming that Nazis were socialists because that's what Jonah's book said. My comment was something along the lines of "oh, so all these fusty history dudes are wrong, and the guy who owes his career to a cumstain is the only one who's gotten it right?" This brought Jonah out of the woodwork to feebly "defend" the stupid premise of his book. The cumstain comment? He avoided touching that one with a 10-foot pole.

    ReplyDelete
  85. Steve-O2:42 PM

    Thanks Jonah.

    ReplyDelete
  86. Steve-O2:42 PM

    ahhh was working on the meme and you beat me to the punch

    ReplyDelete
  87. Brother Yam3:09 PM

    simplified mind game

    For Jonah, it could be nothing else.

    ReplyDelete
  88. I will buy Jonah an actual bag of those Funyans if he can provide a single example of "elites" making apologies for the Taliban.Well, I'm a liberal elitist (*SNIFF*), and I make apologies all the time for the Taliban. For instance, just recently I published a column suggesting the Taliban have the right idea when it comes to enforcing religiously-based traditional roles on women.

    ReplyDelete
  89. Brother Yam3:23 PM

    the guy who owes his career to a cumstain

    Fuckin' awesome. Like, 50 Shades of Awesome.

    ReplyDelete
  90. Brother Yam3:26 PM

    I also believe that we should have wiped out the Soviets
    once we were done with Hitler provided doing so wouldn’t have meant a
    long and bloody third world war.

    "Here, hold my Foreign Policy, watch this..."

    ReplyDelete
  91. redoubtagain3:35 PM

    Isolationist ideologue says what?

    ReplyDelete
  92. susanoftexas3:35 PM

    Yes, the characteristic that the conservatives promote are the characteristics that serve their leaders best. Patriotic parents send their sons and daughters off to fight for oil-rich countries. God-fearing Christians are afraid to disobey. Self-reliant, independent, proud, competent people don't need public assistance.
    "American Sniper" was an orgy of self-affirmation. The hero finally!! was exactly what the right says they are. Just going by the commercials, we see a man with a pregnant wife (virile, sexually desirable) in the military (brave, strong, alpha male), choked up by the immorality of war (moral), and so on.
    The characteristics that the right does not want to encourage are missing, at least in the teaser. The struggle the audience is supposed to undergo is not the struggle of a man who is part of a force invading an increasingly deadly people. It is the struggle to make something moral out of an immoral disaster, a much more acceptable struggle. So we see the internal struggle instead, of the sniper having to deal with his unchristian acts, a struggle that the real sniper did not undergo.
    The right undergoes its catharsis and some Hollywood lie-berals make millions.

    ReplyDelete
  93. That may well be why Charles Murray (the latest in a long line of shitty things from the 90s that are inexplicably back) factors so heavily into Jonah's argument. Murray's current argument is that rich people are just superior in general. Poor people are trapped in a cycle of poverty, but not because of a shifting economy, or poor health care and malnutrition, or a societal presumption that there's something wrong with them. No, it's their filthy gutter values, which means that they personally are to blame for their own circumstances. "Marriage makes you rich" is, of course, a part of this. The whole things is like a movement conservative version of the fucking Secret.

    ReplyDelete
  94. JennOfArk3:49 PM

    Simplified, and simple-minded.

    ReplyDelete
  95. KeithOK3:50 PM

    "..liberals are all rich white people who want blacks to breed unwed because something something plantation..."
    Doesn't this conflict with the liberal goal of genocide through abortion?
    Sometimes it's just hard to keep up.

    ReplyDelete
  96. Megalon3:52 PM

    "Principled people can deploy cost-benefit analysis too. For instance,
    I’ve long argued that if we could do it cheap and without losing any
    American or allied lives, we would be right to topple the North Korean
    regime. I believe that. I also believe that we should have wiped out the
    Soviets once we were done with Hitler provided doing so wouldn’t have
    meant a long and bloody third world war. But those options aren’t and
    weren’t on the table."


    He's long argued this? What the fuck does that mean? Is there really some long running foreign policy debate about if we had Kirk's assassination machine from that "mirror universe" Star Trek episode, whether we should have used it on Stalin? This is just... wow. It truly is the stupidest thing ever written (until Jonah writes something else).

    ReplyDelete
  97. JennOfArk3:56 PM

    What's even more awesome: because he couldn't resist engagement, even though he had nothing to say about the most damnably true statement I had made, he made sure that every one of his twitter followers could easily see that someone had referred to him as a guy who owes his career to a cumstain.


    Awesome own-goal.

    ReplyDelete
  98. J Neo Marvin3:57 PM

    Again, what would it have meant to "wipe out the Soviets?" Does that mean we would kill all of them? Or just a lot of them? And then what? Boy, I wish I had the vision to seize the moral high ground like Jonah. I guess I just lack "principles."

    ReplyDelete
  99. JennOfArk4:08 PM

    I also believe that we should have wiped out the Soviets once we were done with Hitler provided doing so wouldn’t have meant a long and bloody third world war.



    By the same token, he believes that people who are poor wouldn't be poor if all that was required to not be poor was deciding you'd rather not be poor, and sees no conflict between the two beliefs.

    ReplyDelete
  100. J Neo Marvin4:44 PM

    Notice the category of lives that are not mentioned in this pulled-out-of-the-ass scenario.

    ReplyDelete
  101. tigrismus4:46 PM

    Is there really some long running foreign policy debate about if we had
    Kirk's assassination machine from that "mirror universe" Star Trek
    episode, whether we should have used it on Stalin?


    It is true that principled people can argue that, it's just that their principles are a little... different.

    ReplyDelete
  102. satch5:17 PM

    "The trick is to uphold the principle while allowing for the fact that
    reality often doesn’t let us fully implement our principles without cost."


    Well, of course! In Conservative World, there can be no moral uplift without pain, and the Poor will be unable to demonstrate their righteousness unless school bus loads of their children are wearing bread bags on their feet.

    ReplyDelete
  103. Something written today that is dumber than what Jonah has written.
    http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/obama-gum-chewing-india-114590.html

    ReplyDelete
  104. We are all limo riding welfare moochers and Obama is a tyrannical pussy. Liberals are complex.

    ReplyDelete
  105. Rugosa5:31 PM

    Somewhat OT, but hey. When I was out of work for a few months last year, it occurred to me that there was a reason that none of the jobs listed on those sites paid more than $15 an hour - the employers knew they had a captive audience of unemployed who are required to apply for 3 jobs a week as a condition of getting their meager dole. Since I'm about to be laid off again, I should check if one can refuse a job that doesn't pay enough to live on. (Boston, high cost of living, yadda yadda.)

    ReplyDelete
  106. tigrismus5:32 PM

    And as dumb as that article is, holy crap is it ever outdumbed by the comments.

    ReplyDelete
  107. Howlin Wolfe5:34 PM

    That's what gets me about these Cons. They say, "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!", then they make those bootstraps as short as possible. Then, to top off their assholery, they scold the people whose bootstraps they've diminished as much as possible - cut all the aid for families such as SNAP, try to cut SSI benefits, trash public education and aid for higher education, refuse to increase the minimum wage, but scold the parents for working 2 jobs.

    The great Libruhl media, meanwhile, sits by, picking its institutional nose with one hand and an institutional thumb up its institutional rectum, and attributes such attitudes to real Americans. Far be it from a village idiot reporter to point out this contradictory feature of the great Snake Oil sales plan called movement conservativism.

    ReplyDelete
  108. BigHank535:35 PM

    It's not ironic, It's fucking deliberate. Who could be safer to screw than people who can't afford to sue you? Who could be better to cheat than people the entire culture is already tilted against? They deseerve to be cheated. All those payday loan outfits and rent-to-own clip joints make money hand over fist. They don't need to have any nice furnishings. Fuck the customers: it's not like they can go down the street and pay cash or get a loan from a credit union with carpeting on the floor. The underclass has been tied over a barrel, and the only time people who have mortgages and car payments fret about it is when the shrieks of despair interrupt the fourth round of breadsticks at Olive Garden. And then the response is usually only to require the usurers to carry a rag to cram in the noise-hole of the screwees.

    ReplyDelete
  109. Sad, but true.

    I remember when those rent-to-own and payday loans places sprang up everywhere... it was during the Reagan era.

    I reckon it was because of the loosened regulations on such businesses. Man, those folks are shameless. A friend of mine bought stuff through one of those rent-to-own deals, and ended up paying much more than the stuff was worth.

    She swore she'd never do THAT again.

    ReplyDelete
  110. TEN sides to an argument...?

    It makes me wonder how many sides an argument can actually have.

    ReplyDelete
  111. National Review should have hired the cumstain.

    ReplyDelete
  112. Indeed:

    http://www.lwcurrey.com/pictures/144021.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  113. I'd say, "Roll for initiative," but it's Jonah we're talking about.

    ReplyDelete
  114. "Real communities involve extended networks of trust and goodwill. Fake
    communities have regulations, fees, subsidies, and checklists..."

    Christ, does he not think the local Boyscouts have fees? Has he not noticed that the church planning committee has bylaws, and even Podunk City, Heartland has a mayor? Yea, even the Mom and Pop diner requires their employees to wash hands.

    Is this a symptom of inveterate nepotism? Maybe Jonah just thinks everything should run on a wink and a nudge for the right people, and checklists are only for those whose output could possibly matter.

    ReplyDelete
  115. "I also believe that we should have wiped out the Soviets once we were
    done with Hitler provided doing so wouldn’t have meant a long and bloody
    third world war. But those options aren’t and weren’t on the table."

    I believe Kant called this the phantasmagorical imperative.

    ReplyDelete
  116. JennOfArk7:24 PM

    Maybe Jonah just thinks everything should run on a wink and a nudge for the right people, and checklists are only for those whose output could possibly matter.


    If he thinks this, it's a tacit admission that he's aware his output doesn't matter.

    ReplyDelete
  117. John Wesley Hardin7:37 PM

    For instance, I have long argued that if we could do it cheap and without using any rocket fuel or spacecraft, we would be right to colonize Mars. I really believe that.

    ReplyDelete
  118. Brother Yam7:41 PM

    And there are lots of poors, so the mine is nigh bottomless.

    ReplyDelete
  119. Gromet7:42 PM

    I have long argued that if we could ensure they would never break the Three Laws of Robotics, or go insane trying to follow them, we would be right to build a massive population of robots to do our bidding. I really believe that.

    ReplyDelete
  120. John Wesley Hardin7:50 PM

    I have long argued that if we could do it cheap and without using Satanic rituals, we would be right to resurrect (and then re-elect, natch) Zombie Reagan.

    ReplyDelete
  121. John Wesley Hardin7:54 PM

    It only causes severe flatulence, it sounds a lot worse than it really is.

    ReplyDelete
  122. John Wesley Hardin7:58 PM

    'effectively' is the weasel word that Jonah can lean on if anybody calls him on his bullshit. "They're metaphorically making apologies, dude. Don't you know what 'metaphor' means? Here, I've got a Simpson's episode where Lisa explains it to Homer. It really helped me."

    ReplyDelete
  123. John Wesley Hardin8:02 PM

    I want to calculate this comment's THAC0.

    ReplyDelete
  124. ken_lov8:04 PM

    Time to bring on Obamadate: the scheme that helps Americans find their perfect partner by registering in a national online database. Who could object to using taxpayers' money to increase the marriage rate?

    ReplyDelete
  125. Jay B.8:09 PM

    A mere six years after he was already dead, that's when I knew I had the chance....

    ReplyDelete
  126. ken_lov8:10 PM

    But professional pundits like Jonah know what liberals are 'effectively' arguing, in contrast with the plain meaning that normal people would give to their words.


    I see this a lot in comments threads. "What you're really saying is [substitute hackneyed conservative stereotype of what they believe liberals think for what someone has actually written]".

    ReplyDelete
  127. Jay B.8:16 PM

    It helped usher in welfare reform, after all.

    ReplyDelete
  128. Oh I don't think he's aware of it. He wouldn't think in those terms because that would be thinking of some sort. It's just such an abysmally asinine comment I can't muster up the sarcasm to do it justice.

    ReplyDelete
  129. Tiger Beat on the Potomac draws 'em like flies.

    (I should probable apologize to honest, shit-eating flies for that one.)
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  130. mgmonklewis8:31 PM

    Let's see...
    Almost impossibly bad writing? Check.
    Mind-numbing inanity? Check.
    Monstrous, soulless assertions gibbered breezily? Check.
    A lack of talent so palpable, it's almost tactile? Check.

    How is it that the Doughy Pantload hasn't collapsed into a singularity of Shame and Cheeto dust yet? Oh, right:

    Utter lack of shame? Check.

    ReplyDelete
  131. mgmonklewis8:32 PM

    Worst Russ Meyer film ever.

    ReplyDelete
  132. mgmonklewis8:34 PM

    Yup. They loves them some Neo-Calvinism, because it means they're the bestest people ever.

    ReplyDelete
  133. Brother Yam8:37 PM

    They have an important job to do, unlike the writers and commenters of Politico.

    ReplyDelete
  134. mgmonklewis8:40 PM

    I waived my saving throw and was charmed by that comment.

    ReplyDelete
  135. mgmonklewis8:41 PM

    Or Captain Gelatinous.

    ReplyDelete
  136. mgmonklewis8:42 PM

    I would like to draw a Currier & Ives-style picture of the Happy Days cast for this comment.

    ReplyDelete
  137. reality often doesn’t let us fully implement our principles without cost


    What? What?

    ReplyDelete
  138. And liberals are all in favor of free birth control for poor people! Because we want them to- um. Adopt?

    ReplyDelete
  139. Loadpants is strongly in favor of (the government/other people) doing things that are easy if they have excellent outcomes. That's profound, man.

    ReplyDelete
  140. I suppose he means nuke 'em before they got nukes. Turn half of Eurasia into radioactive glass.

    ReplyDelete
  141. M. Krebs10:37 PM

    With some Calvinball, just for fun.

    ReplyDelete
  142. M. Krebs10:47 PM

    He argue long time.

    ReplyDelete
  143. They tried, but the stain got a better offer from

    ReplyDelete
  144. AGoodQuestion10:55 PM

    What drives me crazy is when rich liberal single parents think they have legs to stand on when speaking on behalf of low-income single parents.


    If I thought Goldberg was accusing liberals of talking out their asses about ways of life they have no idea about, I'd say he was skating on very thin ice. Fortunately I doubt he's thought it through that far. Or at all, beyond signalling hie's in the club.

    ReplyDelete
  145. M. Krebs10:58 PM

    I have long argued that if we could do it cheap and with no risk of explosions, we would be right to put all of our nuclear waste on rockets and launch them into outer space.

    ReplyDelete
  146. OT be but safe out there, BBBB

    ReplyDelete
  147. AGoodQuestion11:21 PM

    It's true. They've never gotten beyond You're poor because you're a bad person/We know you're a bad person because you're poor.

    ReplyDelete
  148. AGoodQuestion11:35 PM

    Fake communities have regulations, fees, subsidies, and checklists.
    Jonah realized that his piece was light in the "bitching about regulations" department, so he did something about it. Well, did something by his standards at least.

    ReplyDelete
  149. AGoodQuestion11:38 PM

    To me he'll always be an unfunny never-was.

    ReplyDelete
  150. AGoodQuestion11:39 PM

    It's pretty much Limbaugh's bread and butter.

    ReplyDelete
  151. If we could do it cheap and without losing any American or allied lives

    If my aunt had three axles, she'd be a semi-trailer.

    ReplyDelete
  152. AGoodQuestion12:03 AM

    Yeah, wiping out the Soviets is a breeze. Just ask someone like, oh, Hitler say.

    ReplyDelete
  153. freq flag12:03 AM

    a/k/a "Hold my beer and watch this."

    ReplyDelete
  154. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person1:20 AM

    If there were 1.6 million, not 1.6 billion Muslims around the world,
    there wouldn’t be nearly so much fumfering and fooferall about Muslim
    sensibilities.


    And if the Pacific Ocean was only a couple miles wide, we'd call it Lake Balboa.
    Whatever are they putting in his brownies these days...

    ReplyDelete
  155. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person1:29 AM

    Probably late with this one, but...

    I also believe that we should have wiped out the Soviets once we were done with Hitler provided doing so wouldn’t have meant a long and bloody third world war.

    With our ally. Who happened to be on the other side of that Eastern Front thing that gave Hitler so much trouble, and took so much from the German war machine that the Western Front finally fell.
    "There are no bad students, only bad teachers".
    Bullshit. The best teachers money can by couldn't have taught this stump-head a damn thing.

    ReplyDelete
  156. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person1:33 AM

    I always got the impression the Proliferators were more interested in making single parenthood mandatory. I mean they seem to be much more about the shotgun baby showers than shotgun weddings...

    ReplyDelete
  157. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person1:46 AM

    Maybe, if it's your first Jonah of the day. After a while, it doesn't make you laugh, but simply stare, mouth hanging invitingly open to the flies drawn by Jonah's fartistry, and ask yourself, what in the name of fuck is he using for a brain? And did he finally drop it in a mud puddle while playing with it?
    The only question I can formulate at the end of this one is..."checklists"? What?

    ReplyDelete
  158. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person1:51 AM

    the regulation checklist

    Aha! The Regulation Checklist! That's it, isn't it, that's...no, it isn't. Fuck.

    ReplyDelete
  159. Picardy.Third2:08 AM

    You know, Creedance Clearwater Revival really was a stink-o band.

    ReplyDelete
  160. JennOfArk2:13 AM

    Upvote for "fartistry".

    ReplyDelete
  161. Picardy.Third2:16 AM

    Can't read you anymore, Ed. For over 2 months I click on the blog every day and it's just not the same. The irreverent tone I appreciated when directed at others cannot be distinguished from it used against me. What used to be perceptive reads petty and trite. What used to be clever and witty just isn't anymore. Too bad really.

    ReplyDelete
  162. Thanks, dex! I have Monday and Tuesday off, so I don't have to leave the house. Thankfully, the gentleman who is stuck working my job tonight lives within walking distance of work- he packed enough food to last the night, and the only thing he has to worry about is a power failure.

    Oddly enough, there doesn't seem to be more than three or four inches of snow in my neck of the woods- it is a light powder, so shoveling will probably be a breeze tomorrow. I already discussed snow removal with my next door neighbor- we all pitch in to clean the block.

    My usual routine during blizzards is to put on a pot of coffee, then set a big pot of "Sunday gravy" on the stove to simmer for a few hours while I shovel snow. Life's not too bad.

    ReplyDelete
  163. And when you really stop to consider it, that rug did nothing to tie the room together.

    ReplyDelete
  164. Christopher Hazell4:16 AM

    I also believe that we should have wiped out the Soviets once we were done with Hitler provided doing so wouldn’t have meant a long and bloody third world war.

    And I support the establishment of an unchallenged, world-wide dictatorship with me as the ruler, provided that absolute power doesn't corrupt and also provided that nobody challenges me and also provided that this doesn't cause any wars or unrest and also provided I only make good decisions.



    Given those parameters I don't see how anybody could disagree with me.


    Jesus fucking christ.

    ReplyDelete
  165. That made me laugh.

    ReplyDelete
  166. I have long argued that if i were five foot ten, willowy, with tigerish eyes and cheekbones you could cut youself on, that i would be a supermodel. I really believe that.

    ReplyDelete
  167. Mark_B4Zeds8:21 AM

    Because the best thing to follow a bloody war with is an even bloodier war. And, no doubt, all of our allies who were also allied with the Soviets would be sure to buy into this giant doublecross that we schemed to pull off as soon as the Soviets knocked off Hitler for us. I can just see Churchill signing off on that.

    ReplyDelete
  168. Actually this reduces itself to this:

    If there were six million muslims in the world instead of 1.6 billion ...and we could just get the trains running on time to the death camps there wouldnt be all this fumfering and fooferaw. Nothing but fahrfehnugen and final solutions as far as the eye can see.

    ReplyDelete
  169. Mark_B4Zeds8:23 AM

    Well, of course. They changed one letter so they could be a Creedence 'tribute' band, but nobody was fooled.

    ReplyDelete
  170. montag28:27 AM

    Exactly that, I would guess. Patton wanted to just rumble on toward Moscow, which would have caused immense casualties on both sides, while LeMay pushed for using the entire nuke inventory for the "clean" option of nuking 130 Soviet cities in thirty days (he was stone-dead serious about it for years). So, to Goldberg, the neat and principled and low-cost option, nuclear genocide, should have prevailed.

    I guess that makes him a holocaust apologist.

    ReplyDelete
  171. tigrismus8:37 AM

    With our ally.

    Principled!

    Of course, the whole thing just shows his refusal to be tyrannized by the cliche "hindsight is 20/20," as his hindsight is just as myopic as his foresight.

    ReplyDelete
  172. We need the poors to be on birth control because that's the only possible way to get them to have gay abortions after we make all the conservatives have same-sex marriages.

    ReplyDelete
  173. montag28:44 AM

    "Cooking," to Doughy can only mean transferring red-hot Cheetos from the bag to a bowl and calling it a flambe'.

    Cooking is yet one more thing I suspect Der Pantload will never, ever get right.

    ReplyDelete
  174. montag29:04 AM

    "... makes me want to go back in time and obliterate the day that conservatives discovered oleaginous smugness as a weapon."

    Was there ever such a time? It's part of conservatives' bylaws, isn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  175. I read that as:

    If they were more of a minority, we could abuse them with impunity.

    ReplyDelete
  176. Eh, the world's got enough supermodels.

    ReplyDelete
  177. True. Without using the strawman argument, Limbaugh would be left with very little to say.

    ReplyDelete
  178. I can't stop looking at that for some reason...

    ReplyDelete
  179. montag29:36 AM

    I'm guessing that a tour through the clutter in this guy's mind would look a lot like a couple of seasons of "Hoarders."

    ReplyDelete
  180. But no lack of Cheeto dust...

    ReplyDelete
  181. I have long argued that if were big, bad, bald, and a bastard I could... Never mind...

    ReplyDelete
  182. His output matters if you're using the office bathroom after he did.

    ReplyDelete
  183. And some Painball, just for the sport of it.

    ReplyDelete
  184. In other words, shit rolls downhill.

    ReplyDelete
  185. But i would be the best!

    ReplyDelete
  186. I'd like to point out the dramatic irony of the line " long argued. ". Does antone in the world but jonah think he has the attention span of an organism higher than a mayfly? Or the mental capacity to make an argument? You can almost see him posing in front of a mirror wearing a fake tweed jacket with artificial leatherette patches the elbow, with a candy pipe in his sticky hands. He gestures at the imaginary cambridge debate society audience and refers to "my learned colleagues " before he bangs his hand in the mirror and the candy pipe breaks.

    ReplyDelete
  187. Robert M.10:23 AM

    I know I'm very late to the party, here, but I think your comment hits the real (although subtle) problem with Jonah's analysis: he's confusing correlation with causation, just like conservatives do with the "marriage makes you wealthy" business.


    Healthy, mutually supportive, generous relationships make better environments for raising kids. That doesn't mean marriage creates a better environment for raising kids, unless you make the assumption that every marriage is a healthy, mutually supportive relationship.


    In the absence of that assumption, though, it's easy to see how policies encouraging marriage can backfire.

    ReplyDelete
  188. billcinsd10:23 AM

    No, it's their filthy gutter values,

    which is ironic because most all the poor people I know are extremely religious

    ReplyDelete
  189. And we must kiss the ass of this rich SOB because he must be BFFs with God. SHUT UP ABOUT WHAT JESUS SAID ABOUT THE RICH!! [jams fingers in ears]

    ReplyDelete
  190. JennOfArk10:34 AM

    alicublog: THIS time, it's PERSONAL.

    ReplyDelete
  191. I also believe that we should have wiped out the Soviets once we were done with Hitler provided doing so wouldn’t have meant a long and bloody
    third world war. But those options aren’t and weren’t on the table.



    I suppose the 1940 Jonah Goldberg writing:


    "I also believe that we should stop Hitler provided doing so wouldn't mean a long and bloody second world war. But that option isn't on the table, gentlemen."

    ReplyDelete
  192. Alicublog II: Electric Trollaboo

    ReplyDelete
  193. AGoodQuestion11:07 AM

    And at these prices you won't be seeing many more trolls in here either.

    ReplyDelete
  194. Sometimes it's pretty obvious that the only fight Jonah was ever in involved him dashing in and kicking a kid who'd been knocked down by someone else.

    ReplyDelete
  195. Hmm... I think I'm detecting a new trope here... one that could conceivably replace "To the dismay of some on the Left". Thanks, Jonah!

    ReplyDelete
  196. What... you don't remember Tom Brokaw insisting that after Germany and Japan surrendered, our soldiers were itching to march on Moscow to finish the job, and were stabbed in the back by cowardly liberals on the home front? Ooh, wait... he probably DOES think that...

    ReplyDelete
  197. J Neo Marvin2:21 PM

    Been a long time since I rock-and-trolled!

    ReplyDelete
  198. I suspect you're right about that.


    Believing whatever one wants to believe is a lousy habit to have while cooking.

    ReplyDelete