McArglebargle, GG, and Taibbi will be among the first to welcome our new fascist overlords. They will couch it as "strong forthright leadership", and nary a negative word about right wing authoritarianism shall we hear.
Bad enough they want to help other people.They expect other people to do the same thing. Without pay! That's the true meaning of Nazi right there. And slavery too. Nazi slavery.
Now that you mention Dreher, a couple of days ago there was a Twitter exchange about his obsession with LGBTQ representation in children’s TV programs between two of my favorite writers, NYT opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie and the great Adam Serwer. We all know Serwer coined THE phrase to sum up the Trump era: The Cruelty is the Point (btw, his book of the same name containing his Atlantic essays as well as new material is phenomenal and I highly recommend). Anyway, Serwer also summed up Dreher’s whole schtick brilliantly:
Bouie: That guy is the most dramatic person on this website.
Serwer: Every post is him tossing himself weeping on his canopy bed as the orchestra swells.
That description of Dreher is....perfect. Just perfect LMAO.
I don't understand the obsession with any pundit. Outside the small industry of pundits and their employers, who cares? The pundit who provides insight is the rare exception of the rule. So, Greenwald. Or, I should say, a gay expatriate sympathizing with conservative parents. Why is his opinion of any importance. BTW: If he's referencing the cohort of parents with both essential (relatively shitty) jobs and cannot get coverage for the kids nor, maybe, even computers for Zooming®, he has a point. Then again, he'd lose that point by his tacit support for the wing nuts opposed to doing anything good for people if it includes benefits to any POC.
As for Taibbi, even now, he has his moment, albeit rarely. Still, sad to watch. The disasters of (in no particular order) of the First Look debacle (partially self-inflicted maybe); bad behavior in Moscow coming out; and his last two books tanking (others done similar media criticism better and Eric Garner maybe isn't the stuff of a best seller) apparently broke him some way. Regardless, his importance is, shall we say, not what it once was, in part because of his own choices.
Okay, but I actively stan Molly Ivins, and you will not take that away from me by calling her a pundit. For that matter, I'm completely into Bill Moyers too.
Well, my theory is that there are no fewer than ten pundits worth shit. So Moyers, sure, but Ivins is of course disqualified for being dead. Died far, far, far too soon. I shipped her loonnng before shipping was a thing.
McCardle and Greenwald both going to "well, NOBODY wants low speed limits!!!" argument is the classic deployment of sophistry that Rightwingers absolutely adore when arguing. It's the kind of "reasoning" your 8-year-old brings on when arguing to stay up late ("Well, you wouldn't want me to be asleep FOREVER, so why do you want me to go to bed now?").
What gets me is that they're always so proud of themselves for making these arguments--like they've just proved Fermat's theorem by hard-boiling an egg.
Greenwald has also fully embraced the wingnut mantra of never admitting that you might not be 100% right because any admission of that is a sign of weakness.
Well, we can't give Covid credit exactly, but look at the way the pandemic has brought us together as a society - united as we fight and sacrifice without reservation to battle the common enemy....never mind.
My goodness. This latest batch of weed is the funk!.
Funny how they're all reaching for automotive analogies, but can't find the one that's a near-perfect match to mask mandates: Laws that require people to wear a seat belt. Wonder why that one never comes to mind?
Here in the land of “we don’t need no motorcycle helmets,” the nightly news reports of fatal car accidents always mentions “thrown from the vehicle,” never “dumbass didn’t use his seatbelt.” It’s not an oversight by either the local news or the libert-aryans; mustn’t remind the dumbasses they’re most truly “personally responsible” when they refuse to follow elementary lifesaving rules and die.
I checked, and NHTSA claims about 90% of drivers use their seat belt. I'm skeptical, the kind of people who refuse to wear seat belts probably also refuse to respond to surveys about whether they wear a seat belt. Nevertheless, seat belt usage seems pretty widespread, all the more surprising when you consider that all modern cars have air bags. Wondering why the "How come we need masks when we got vaccines?" crowd isn't saying "Why do we need seat belts when we got air bags?"
Context is easy, often requiring a sentence, no more than a few. The failure to provide context is obviously deliberate and has nothing to do with any difficulty.
Being libertarians, they probably call it "shared reasoning," but I, too, must hail Roy's line that nails it for what it is:
"I’d call it plagiarism, except it’s not a crime to take something out of someone else’s garbage."
Even aside from McArdle's ugly "argument," she's too lazy or too dishonest to even get her own facts right.
McArdle (and Greenwald): "In the U.S., tens of thousands of people were killed in auto accidents last year. We could probably eliminate most of those deaths if we simply made sure that no one ever piloted their personal vehicle above some prudent speed -- say, 25 mph."
Later, it's not even "most" deaths: "To avert 40,000 deaths..."
The first result of Googling "percentage of auto accidents caused by speeding" is this from the Dept. of Transportation:
"In 2019, speeding was a contributing factor in 26% of all traffic fatalities."
The joke is it didn't take me more than 10 seconds. They can't be bothered to question their own assumptions no matter how inaccurate, ever. Either that, or they're just lying. The very definition of hacks.
Strange I've got subscriptions to both those guys and I didn't get either of these. Although after reading these excerpts and then dropping into the articles I maybe shouldn't complain.
Oh well, they've already got my money so I will probably continue to check in with them until the end of my year, but damn.
"I’d call it plagiarism, except it’s not a crime to take something out of someone else’s garbage."
I like that.
It's like they are digging through someone's compost bin looking for that questionable potata frittata you threw out that was lost in the back of the 'fridge, you never took to work to eat, got some sort of mold on it and now is covered in three days of coffee grounds but for them? It's the perfect meal.
Yes, we had some assholes show up in downtown Portland from the hinterlands. My wife had mentioned it the day before. I didn't even know since I was hunkered down doing work. She mentioned that she suspected there was probably going to be a lot of tiny penis wagging out of windows of giant pickup trucks (raised to be completely worthless for hauling anything conveniently) with Trump and US flags attached to them.
There's a reason I love that woman. She's so demure.
McArglebargle, GG, and Taibbi will be among the first to welcome our new fascist overlords. They will couch it as "strong forthright leadership", and nary a negative word about right wing authoritarianism shall we hear.
When a liberal doesn't want you to get sick or to spread the virus to others, that is totalitarian.
Bastards.
Bad enough they want to help other people.They expect other people to do the same thing. Without pay! That's the true meaning of Nazi right there. And slavery too. Nazi slavery.
Now that you mention Dreher, a couple of days ago there was a Twitter exchange about his obsession with LGBTQ representation in children’s TV programs between two of my favorite writers, NYT opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie and the great Adam Serwer. We all know Serwer coined THE phrase to sum up the Trump era: The Cruelty is the Point (btw, his book of the same name containing his Atlantic essays as well as new material is phenomenal and I highly recommend). Anyway, Serwer also summed up Dreher’s whole schtick brilliantly:
Bouie: That guy is the most dramatic person on this website.
Serwer: Every post is him tossing himself weeping on his canopy bed as the orchestra swells.
That description of Dreher is....perfect. Just perfect LMAO.
When you're the Center of the Universe and no one else is really quite real - that must be the loneliest place possible. No wonder they go mad.
I can picture Taibbi and Matt Gaetz out cruising Chuck E Cheese's on a Saturday afternoon.
I don't understand the obsession with any pundit. Outside the small industry of pundits and their employers, who cares? The pundit who provides insight is the rare exception of the rule. So, Greenwald. Or, I should say, a gay expatriate sympathizing with conservative parents. Why is his opinion of any importance. BTW: If he's referencing the cohort of parents with both essential (relatively shitty) jobs and cannot get coverage for the kids nor, maybe, even computers for Zooming®, he has a point. Then again, he'd lose that point by his tacit support for the wing nuts opposed to doing anything good for people if it includes benefits to any POC.
As for Taibbi, even now, he has his moment, albeit rarely. Still, sad to watch. The disasters of (in no particular order) of the First Look debacle (partially self-inflicted maybe); bad behavior in Moscow coming out; and his last two books tanking (others done similar media criticism better and Eric Garner maybe isn't the stuff of a best seller) apparently broke him some way. Regardless, his importance is, shall we say, not what it once was, in part because of his own choices.
Okay, but I actively stan Molly Ivins, and you will not take that away from me by calling her a pundit. For that matter, I'm completely into Bill Moyers too.
Well, my theory is that there are no fewer than ten pundits worth shit. So Moyers, sure, but Ivins is of course disqualified for being dead. Died far, far, far too soon. I shipped her loonnng before shipping was a thing.
Libertarianism = a philosophy embraced by sociopaths to mask their inhumanity.
Not that it does a particularly good job of that.
And here I thought that a libertarian was just a guy who wanted to screw 13 year olds and smoke weed.
I think was just Derbyshire
McCardle and Greenwald both going to "well, NOBODY wants low speed limits!!!" argument is the classic deployment of sophistry that Rightwingers absolutely adore when arguing. It's the kind of "reasoning" your 8-year-old brings on when arguing to stay up late ("Well, you wouldn't want me to be asleep FOREVER, so why do you want me to go to bed now?").
What gets me is that they're always so proud of themselves for making these arguments--like they've just proved Fermat's theorem by hard-boiling an egg.
Really brings to mind other specious analogies like gun nuts “how many people drown in swimming pools every year? Huh? Huh?”
More children choke on hot dogs than are killed by baseball bats and yet you won't let me swing a bat at your child. Curious.
Lynch mobs don't read, and they're trying to change that.
Greenwald has also fully embraced the wingnut mantra of never admitting that you might not be 100% right because any admission of that is a sign of weakness.
When you argue for a living, you don't want the arguments to ever end.
That concept of "anti-Covid absolutists"--like, "Really, you can't find anything positive to say about Covid?"
In the fight against brain damage caused by children eating lead paint chips, they're taking the side of the paint.
Well, we can't give Covid credit exactly, but look at the way the pandemic has brought us together as a society - united as we fight and sacrifice without reservation to battle the common enemy....never mind.
My goodness. This latest batch of weed is the funk!.
Funny how they're all reaching for automotive analogies, but can't find the one that's a near-perfect match to mask mandates: Laws that require people to wear a seat belt. Wonder why that one never comes to mind?
Here in the land of “we don’t need no motorcycle helmets,” the nightly news reports of fatal car accidents always mentions “thrown from the vehicle,” never “dumbass didn’t use his seatbelt.” It’s not an oversight by either the local news or the libert-aryans; mustn’t remind the dumbasses they’re most truly “personally responsible” when they refuse to follow elementary lifesaving rules and die.
I checked, and NHTSA claims about 90% of drivers use their seat belt. I'm skeptical, the kind of people who refuse to wear seat belts probably also refuse to respond to surveys about whether they wear a seat belt. Nevertheless, seat belt usage seems pretty widespread, all the more surprising when you consider that all modern cars have air bags. Wondering why the "How come we need masks when we got vaccines?" crowd isn't saying "Why do we need seat belts when we got air bags?"
Context is easy, often requiring a sentence, no more than a few. The failure to provide context is obviously deliberate and has nothing to do with any difficulty.
“I’d call it plagiarism, except it’s not a crime to take something out of someone else’s garbage.”
I nearly got third-degree burns just reading that.
You beat me to this comment 🔥
Same. I want to print it out and frame it, or something.
Damn, I wish I was better at needlepoint.
Being libertarians, they probably call it "shared reasoning," but I, too, must hail Roy's line that nails it for what it is:
"I’d call it plagiarism, except it’s not a crime to take something out of someone else’s garbage."
Even aside from McArdle's ugly "argument," she's too lazy or too dishonest to even get her own facts right.
McArdle (and Greenwald): "In the U.S., tens of thousands of people were killed in auto accidents last year. We could probably eliminate most of those deaths if we simply made sure that no one ever piloted their personal vehicle above some prudent speed -- say, 25 mph."
Later, it's not even "most" deaths: "To avert 40,000 deaths..."
The first result of Googling "percentage of auto accidents caused by speeding" is this from the Dept. of Transportation:
"In 2019, speeding was a contributing factor in 26% of all traffic fatalities."
They get paid for this.
And you just did more research in 5 minutes than McMegan does in a whole year.
The joke is it didn't take me more than 10 seconds. They can't be bothered to question their own assumptions no matter how inaccurate, ever. Either that, or they're just lying. The very definition of hacks.
The speed limit being too high is not the same thing as the amount that speeding was a contributor to traffic fatalities
Eating - a cost-benefit analysis.
Wow, Taibbi is dead to me now. This is utterly the last straw.
Strange I've got subscriptions to both those guys and I didn't get either of these. Although after reading these excerpts and then dropping into the articles I maybe shouldn't complain.
Oh well, they've already got my money so I will probably continue to check in with them until the end of my year, but damn.
"I’d call it plagiarism, except it’s not a crime to take something out of someone else’s garbage."
I like that.
It's like they are digging through someone's compost bin looking for that questionable potata frittata you threw out that was lost in the back of the 'fridge, you never took to work to eat, got some sort of mold on it and now is covered in three days of coffee grounds but for them? It's the perfect meal.
Yes, we had some assholes show up in downtown Portland from the hinterlands. My wife had mentioned it the day before. I didn't even know since I was hunkered down doing work. She mentioned that she suspected there was probably going to be a lot of tiny penis wagging out of windows of giant pickup trucks (raised to be completely worthless for hauling anything conveniently) with Trump and US flags attached to them.
There's a reason I love that woman. She's so demure.