ThinkingMeat

Shorter Paul Mitchell:

• Lookie! I can write nearly 800 words criticizing a proposed state law! Why is that so astonishing? I haven’t read the bill, and I’m not going to read the bill! Yet I can blather on and on and on and on about a bill I know nothing about! Gawd DAMN I love being an ignorant assclown!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard, and shamelessly pilfered from Sadly, No.

The wingnuts are busy shrieking at the top of their lungs about the horrors of reconciliation. Of course, if reconciliation is the abomination they pretend it to be, they might want to explain why it is that Republicans have most often voted in favor of reconciliation:

(hat tip: Daily Kos)

October 6, 2009: Thirty Republican Senators vote to reject an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies that require employees to forgo their right to seek redress in the courts under certain circumstances — such as being raped by coworkers. In effect, those thirty Republicans voted in favor of corporate-sanctioned rape.

March 3, 2010: 153 House Republicans vote to reject a bill that would prevent the use of dangerous forms of restraint and seclusion (including the use of drugs) to discipline schoolchildren.

The Republican party has now officially become the party that is in favor of anything that decent people would recoil from in horror. They are the party of moral incompetence.

As we all know, Widdle Jeffie Schreiber never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever lies. No sirree. Not once in his entire life has Widdle Jeffie said or written anything that isn’t 100% true and factual. Just ask him.

Too bad those who contribute to the sewer that is Widdle Jeffie’s blog aren’t held to the same high standards. Some delusional asshat calling himself Rick Saunders posted a well-debunked lie:

For a great expose on the abuse of the reconciliation nuclear option by the Democrats, check out this great primer by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich…

Reconciliation is not the “nuclear option”. It never has been. The wingnut press and their blogger hangers-on are furiously pushing this mendacious meme, trying to conflate what was called the “nuclear option” (a tactic once threatened by Republicans) and the thirty-year-old reconciliation procedure, in order to smear Democrats as “hypocrites”. It’s total hogwash.

Media have misrepresented or ignored history of reconciliation

Fox News falsely conflates reconciliation with “nuclear option.” Throughout the health care reform debate, Fox News has repeatedly falsely described the reconciliation process as the “nuclear option.” Fox News also recently seized on a Breitbart-promoted video to falsely accuse Democrats of hypocrisy for considering using the reconciliation process to pass health care reform because they had previously opposed the “nuclear option.” But, in fact, the nuclear option referred to a Republican proposal to change Senate filibuster rules on judicial nominees and was not related to reconciliation.

Media have pushed GOP claims that reconciliation “strange,” “extraordinary,” “arcane,” “lightly used,” “unusual.” Reporting on the Democrats’ possible use of the reconciliation budget process to pass health care reform, media outlets have advanced the Republican criticism that reconciliation is “an end-run around the normal legislative process.”

Media have not challenged GOP criticisms of reconciliation process. Media Matters for America has documented a pattern of journalists uncritically quoting Republican senators criticizing the decision to use reconciliation, without noting that those same senators — including Alexander, Grassley, and Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) — voted to allow the use of the budget reconciliation process to pass legislation during the Bush administration, including tax cuts.

I am certain that Widdle Jeffie Schreiber is ecstatic that Rick Saunders has taken on the challenge of posting lies like these to America’s Right. It must be a great comfort to Widdle Jeffie that he can keep his lily-white hands clean of the nasty business of perpetuating falsehoods like this.

In the debate over health care reform, one stunning fact should be put front and center: Every Republican Congressman or Senator, every political pundit, every wingnut blogger who agitates for the defeat of health care reform is acting as a shill for the insurance industry. They are tools, wittingly or unwittingly. The one sure outcome of the defeat of health care reform will be the preservation of the profit margins of insurance companies, and those companies are using the wingnuts to accomplish exactly that (and nothing more).

And make no mistake, the insurance companies are in this for profit. No other motivation need apply. The runaway health care costs in this country are due primarily to the greed of the insurers [PDF]:

[T]he insurance industry’s actual medical costs have grown far more slowly than premiums. An analysis of data covering the period 2000 to 2008 shows that:

• Premiums for families enrolled in employer-sponsored health plans increased 97 percent, while premiums for individuals enrolled in
  employer-sponsored health plans climbed 90 percent.
• Private insurers’ payments to health care providers rose 72 percent.
• Medical inflation increased 39 percent.
• Family premiums grew more than three times faster than wages, nearly five times faster than general inflation and more than twice as fast as medical inflation.
• Profits and administrative costs consumed $716.4 billion of the premiums insurers collected, a sum nearly equal to the entire 10-year cost of health reform.

When you encounter a wingnut railing against health care reform ask them this: “Why are you so adamant that the insurance companies should be allowed to sate their greed by continuing to raise premiums?”

(hat tip: Firedoglake)

For months, professional asshole Andrew Breitbart has been pushing the myth that workers at multiple ACORN offices gave business advice to a couple of wingnut “filmmakers” dressed as a pimp and a whore. Alas, the hoax is coming apart:

Brooklyn prosecutors on Monday cleared ACORN of criminal wrongdoing after a four-month probe that began when undercover conservative activists filmed workers giving what appeared to be illegal advice on how to hide money.

While the video by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles seemed to show three ACORN workers advising a prostitute how to hide ill-gotten gains, the unedited version was not as clear, according to a law enforcement source.

“They edited the tape to meet their agenda,” said the source.

Andrew Breitbart’s credibility has now been completely demolished. Breitbart stands exposed as a liar and a fool:

Recall that for months Breitbart personally vouched for the ACORN videos, braying loudly that they could not be ignored and that they represented the unvarnished truth. Breitbart claimed he had
told “the truth” every step of the way about the controversial ACORN clips and bragged that ”[t]hroughout the ACORN story I applied my conscience to the material.”

But now it turns out that Breitbart was fooled by the ACORN pimp hoax and mistakenly assumed, after watching deceptively edited clips from his protégé James O’Keefe, that O’Keefe strolled into ACORN offices wearing the outlandish pimp outfit.

Now Breitbart, the chief promoter of the ACORN sting, claims he “didn’t know” the truth about the tapes. Although he’s quick to insist it doesn’t really matter anyway.

And yes, that sound you hear is Breitbart throwing O’Keefe under the bus. Because it’s O’Keefe who Breitbart now blames for the “discrepancy” regarding the pimp hoax. It’s O’Keefe, who Breitbart once touted as a should-be Pulitzer Prize winner, who created the false impression that he walked into ACORN offices last summer dressed as a garish pimp.

…

The dressed-as-a-pimp storyline was one Breitbart, O’Keefe, and others eagerly pushed last fall. And it was one the press quickly embraced. (In truth, O’Keefe was often dressed rather conservatively—slacks and dress shirt — when he talked to ACORN staffers, and he often presented himself as a law school student and an aspiring politician trying to rescue his prostitute girlfriend from her abusive pimp.) The outlandish costume was used as a prop to both mislead viewers, and to make ACORN staffers look like idiots for not being able to spot the obvious ruse.

But it was all a hoax. And for weeks now, ever since the trick was highlighted by blogger Brad Friedman, Breitbart has been wrestling with the glaring contradiction and struggling to explain his own role in the hoax. He’s been straining to explain why, for instance, in a September 21 column in The Washington Times, Breitbart specifically claimed O’Keefe had been “dressed as a pimp” while receiving tax advice from ACORN workers.

That claim was categorically false.

Truly, it couldn’t happen to a nicer moron.

DougJ at Balloon Juice:

The Catholic Church has spent the last 50 years raping children. Doesn’t there come a time when they ask themselves if it’s really such a good idea for a bunch of would-be celibates to spend every waking moment worrying about other people’s sex lives?

It seems that Widdle Jeffie Schreiber, he of the unstainable “reputation”, has been giving lessons in being an ignorant tool. Behold Michelle Zhang, one of Schreiber’s groupies. Trying to support her thesis that the recent case of a school district spying on its students via laptop webcams must be an outgrowth of liberal philosophy, Zhang babbles:

Immediately a famous quote, often attributed to American Socialist Norman Mattoon Thomas, came to my mind.

“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism,” Thomas wrote. “But under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Golly, here’s a surprise… Zhang is spewing yet another dubious, unsourced chunk of wingnut propaganda. There’s no evidence whatsoever that Thomas ever made this remark.

But why should that stop Michelle Zhang? After all, isn’t it a wingnut’s God-given right to use whatever fantasies may be needed to shore up a shaky thesis?

Way to enhance your credibility, Michelle. Stay ignorant, now.