Man, are we embarrassed. We have no excuse and can only hope that you accept our apology. In a previous Wonkette post about a b-list columnist’s take on the important issue of our time, we incorrectly referred to health care reform as, in part, a “moral” issue, for everyone. Had we done our research, we would have known that every expert and scientist had quashed this argument years ago. We thank the very thorough Politico for bringing this fact to light: “And this week, [Barack Obama] returned to an argument Democratic strategists said shouldn’t be part of the pitch this year — trying to convince Americans they have a ‘moral obligation’ to help people without insurance, a discredited argument from the reform effort under President Bill Clinton.” There are so many real, important arguments in this reform effort — would the House plan mandate euthanasia for old people, would Stephen Hawking have to leave America to escape the brownshirts, etc. — that we shouldn’t be wasting any of our time reiterating the previously discredited ones. [Daily Dish]
THIS ISN'T EASY
August 21, 2009
{ 87 comments }
This is good news for John McCain.
Politico wins another news cycle! (They are a bunch of douchebag hacks over there, esp. overweight, greasy headed, no-neck Jonathan Martin). But good to see you are reading Sully again … even though he is on sabbatical & technically not there right now.
Politico insures there will never be a recession in Douchelandia.
I thought Conor Clarke phrased it nicely in the Daily Dish article you linked to:
I would be quite curious to hear how the “moral” argument for health-care reform has been discredited. Actually, I would be curious to hear how one would go about discrediting such a moral argument at all. The existence of death panels, on the other hand, can be easily discredited by making reference to the bill in question. But perhaps Politico has special access when it comes to issues of morality.
“Let em eat double fried chicken sammich with bacon grease cheese and secret sauce, & cake”
Marie Anoinette
Thank you Politico, for this important reminder about Health Care, which is immoral.
If we convince Politico that the “Public Option” regards the right to eat dick in an airport bathroom stall, they’ll find healthcare an extremely important moral issue.
That’s it – you’re fired!
Pack up your TruckNutz and hit the bricks, Scruffy!
it’s a category mistake. morality has no meaning in the realm of financial discourse, and as anyone who can watch a cocktail-napkin slide show can attest, this is an issue of dollars, not do-gooders.
though it may also be about having a black president who must be quashed, as his party of tolerant, intelligent, free- and forward-thinking fellow travelers must also be quashed. could be about that, too, a little bit. also.
[re=392945]qwerty42[/re]: The greasy headed, douchebag hacks at Politico (thanks Texas B) have special knowledge and deep insight. Conor Clarke should bow his head in humble acquiescence and you would be well advised to do the same.
Oh sweet, innocent Jim. Everyone knows if God wanted the poors not to die in the streets of curable illnesses due to lack of insurance, he would have made them rich.
Will Jim Newell disappear into obscurity as a correspondent for HDNet now, like discredited reporter Dan Rather?
I suppose it’s discredited in the sense that it uses concepts unfamiliar to Republicans. Not very useful as a debating tactic.
Damn straight the moral argument for health care has been discredited. I mean, read your bible. Jesus took a hard-line, free-market based approach. The meek didn’t get a government handout, they only got what they inherited.
Politico is a boil on the ass of civilization.
[re=392949]Whitey Did Katrina[/re]: Nearly damaged my laptop with lemonade on that one. This is why I need a POLITICO staffer nearby, so I would just spray the top of their head when this happens.
I’m starting to lose faith in Wonkette. First, we learn there’s a thing called the “non-denial denial”, but today in one fell swoop, you coined a new fuck-up marker called the “non-rebuttal revision.” It’s people like you who keep Umberto Eco and the sad-clown Woody Allen lookalike Chomsky from eating their refrigerator parts and drinking freon.
God dammit.
Morality cannot be used as the basis for an argument unless that argument relates to fundamentalist religious views. “A zygote is a human being with full rights under the Constitution, especially the right to bear arms” is a valid argument in our political discourse. “It is immoral for the richest society in the history of the world to allow its citizens to die for lack of healthcare” is just discredited, invalid, naive nonsense that is deeply unserious. Get with the program!
Speaking of healthcare, I have it on good authority that the whiny subject of Barney Frank’s townhall rage was in fact not shamed enough to stop showing up to them. A colleague said he went to Congressman Jim Langevin’s town hall in Warwick, RI and saw her there. Apparently she is no longer asking questions but still uses this as an outlet for her screaming, angry social life. I’ve checked a video of the meeting, but the quality is so terrible that it makes Zapruder look like he was using an IMAX camera. So if you’re in New England and you like being ashamed of your countryfolk, keep an eye out for our favorite dining room table.
Shortly after the Reaganization of the Republican party, conservatives abandoned the morality of their faith and adopted the ethical standards of a Borg collective.
So in that regard, Pundit 134 of 12,345 is absolutely correct and resistance is futile
[re=392945]qwerty42[/re]: I think Politico uses the Dubya approach, which is if your opponent doesn’t actually have a discredited argument, make one up for him. Thus: “There are some who say that if we don’t pass universal healthcare, then we are condoning mobs roaming the streets ripping out the kidneys of the innocent. This is false. Why right now John Yoo is crafting a memo allowing us to deploy the Army within our borders to stop just such a circumstance.”
If I had a twitter, I’d tweet this big fail and make you the laughing stock of Twitterers. Nice researching, Wonkett.
Don’t explain, don’t say sorry,don’t complain…
Oh fuckitall, what’s that expression again?
We still love you, Wonkette.
Apology grudgingly accepted. The authorities at the politico Web site with their fancy doctorates in ethics and morality have spoken.
[re=392976]SayItWithWookies[/re]: You’re teeeeechnically right. Only the Dubya approach would contain smaller words, bigger pauses, and enough grammatical errors to cause eyes to melt.
The only moral arguments worth having involve invading foreign countries and causing mass suffering and death for the lulz.
In part, it’s a moran issue.
Health, well-being, and morality. Sounds like Jesus and Jefferson. Fuckin’ commies.
Morality is like bukkake. Everyone wants to be the spooger, not the spoogee.
This from a nation of Christians. Mostly.
Some homeless dude who hangs out by the bus stop in front of my apartment passed out today. The ambulance came to pick him up. Had the paramedic remembered that THIS IS AMERICA he would have left as soon as he saw that an unwashed, one-armed, homeless man was the reason he was called out and just let him die like a good Christian.
I’m going to be unpopular and disagree with Politico. It is most certainly a moral issue when the White House is threatening to literally invade nursing homes and drag seniors from their craftmatic adjustable beds to be summarily executed in the streets by a panel of Santeria voodoo priestesses and Nazis.
Politico comments are comedy gold. It’s like a Freeper thread.
[re=393001]itgetter[/re]: You are not up in the latest trends in olds. Sleepnumber or GTFO.
Shame, Wonkette, shame. Just because Glenn Beck is on “vacation” is no reason to forget your Nine Principles, especially that anti-Good Samaritan one about the right to refuse to be charitable.
I think we need to start apologizing to Sully soon because linking to his smackdown of POLITICO will force Limbaugh to make crude jokes about Sully’s rectum. Because he’s gay. Get it?
[re=393004]Rodney Badger[/re]: Typical librul, answering perfectly SANE arguments with non sequiturs. Stop LITERALLY dumping paraplegics at my feet!!! Heil Hitler, etc.
Universal health care is a moral obligation? How could I believe that? I feel my shame, and it feels good.
[re=392995]hobospacejunkie[/re]: Win.
[re=392959]HomoSuperior[/re]: N.B.: We have a moral obligation to keep our streets clear of the decaying bodies of the uninsured, particularly with regard to our better neighborhoods. Let them die in the woods.
[re=392974]doxastic[/re]: I should specify, the Langevin townhall on Wednesday, the 19th
[re=392975]dijetlo[/re]: Yep – a complete hive mind – only they don’t make honey.
From the politico thing, about how Obama’s “messaging” on health care got fucked up–“The whole debate drifted in a direction that was disconnected from the core concerns of the American people.”
Hmm, I wouldn’t use the word “drifted” here. How about instead “careened wildly like a three-wheeled hummer driven by a meth-addled teabagger”?
It’s funny they never ask the “What would Jesus do” question when discussing universal healthcare. But that’s because Jesus was a strict free-marketer who believed that “what you do to the least of me is OK, as long as you’re getting great stock options.”
Since when is making Hermann Goering the Surgeon General not a moral issue!!11!!!??? Do you not understand that the President has expressly, this policy. . . expressly the support. President. Nazi. . . Planet Fox, Representative Frank (you gay Jewish Nazi). . . I think of myself more as a dining room floor.
[re=392974]doxastic[/re]: Perhaps someone should come to one of these upcoming townhalls and hold a poster of her with the Hitler mustache, to accompany her own. It would be so meta.
Reminds me of a recent Pride Fest here in town where a couple Jeebus folk staked out a street corner with huge wooden crosses. Other festgoers soon realized there was a typo in need of correction, and later appeared with a large ‘W’ and ‘A’ between the crosses to complete the word.
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” – Jesus of Nazareth (discredited)
I’m glad Politico cleared this up for me, or I might find the heartbreaking stories on Bill Moyers right now, about Americans caught in the health care nightmare that is the American system, worth getting so pissed off over that I would hunt down Spooky Doktor Tom Coburn and beat him to death with a large-print edition of the Bible–St. James, I mean, King James Translation, of course.
[re=392962]user-of-owls[/re]: “The meek didn’t get a government handout, they only got what they inherited.”
I am so going to steal this line and use it on my pinko, poors-loving, theological scholar preacher Sunday. She’ll laugh in that way she has that you can tell she’s thinking, “Wrong. Evil. My peacenik friends would NOT approve of me laughing at this. And what would Jesus think?”
[re=392971]Chickensmack[/re]: “It’s people like you who keep Umberto Eco and the sad-clown Woody Allen lookalike Chomsky from eating their refrigerator parts and drinking freon.”
Is that humor beyond my understanding, or just nuttiness?
[re=392959]HomoSuperior[/re]: You might not realize how close you are to the truth of it, pal. The ultra-jeebussy screamers tend to flock around the idea, promoted by the likes of “Fat Pat” Robertson, that wealth is a mark of divine favor, and that it’s the bounden duty of the faithful to get their share and FLAUNT it, by golly, as a way of showing the “unsaved” the error of their ways.
[re=392974]doxastic[/re]: “Speaking of healthcare, I have it on good authority that the whiny subject of Barney Frank’s townhall rage was in fact not shamed enough to stop showing up to them. ”
Honestly, when I was the Veep of the Seattle Chapter of NOW and the union representative on the Seattle Women’s Commission, I never, ever foresaw the day I would say this, but here goes:
That little bitch needs to get laid. layed? Like I said, never planned on using that particular phrase so I haven’t checked the spelling.
Politico’s argument is simple logic. If universal health care were a moral imperative, it would have passed under Clinton. Since it didn’t, it wasn’t. Congress can still pass it now, of course, but it would just be goofing around, not doing anything important.
Similarly, when the Supreme Court ruled the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, and Congress failed to pass any substantive civil rights legislation for the next eighty years, it made it clear that civil rights weren’t any kind of moral imperative. So all those civil rights acts of the 1960s were of the same moral significance as declaring April to be National Grilled Cheese Month.
[re=392977]HipHopOpotamus[/re]: ” you the laughing stock of Twitterers”
Twitticuled. (Apologies to the wonkeratti I stole that from. Used it with my daughter and she stole it from me, so the beat goes on).
[re=393028]serj![/re]: “Hmm, I wouldn’t use the word “drifted” here. How about instead “careened wildly like a three-wheeled hummer driven by a meth-addled teabagger”?
8 points for the win.
If the Founding Fathers had wanted America to have national health care they would have put it in the Constitution. Medicare is just a socialist plot. Like women getting the vote!
We need to leave huge insurance companies alone so that they, and they alone, can deny people the health care they so desperately need. And the obscene profits the insurers make will return to the economy sooner or later.
[re=392987]4tehlulz[/re]: Don’t forget moral arguments that allow you to rationalize the use of torture. Those have yet to be discredited in Politico’s eyes.
And bedrooms for that matter. Also.
I just want Politico to come back in time with me and discredit my high school girlfriend’s argument for not having sex with me.
Thank you Jim Newell. I take back all the retarded things I said about you after you downplayed the rise of right-wing violence during in the first few months of the new admin. Still, you might want to revisit that one.
Morality is something for Xtians to tell others about. Repeatedly. Ruins all the fun if they accidentally find out THEY have moral obligations.
Take a burger wrapped in bacon and velveeta, then place it between two fried pancakes;
THAT’S MORALITY MR. NEWELL!!
[re=392945]qwerty42[/re]: special access = buttsecs.
[re=393021]doxastic[/re]: The crazy town hall table is no ordinary crazy — she is that special flavor of crazy, a Laroucher. Followers of Lyndon Larouche are like Paultards, in the sense that they pride themselves on their keen, independent intellects and while being completely clueless.
Check http://www.larouchepub.com/ for their deep, spicy thoughts. I can’t decide if my favorite is “LaRouche Declares War on the British Empire” or “The Other Shoe Will Now Drop by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.”
[re=393108]HuddledMass[/re]: I’m always the last one to find these things out:
“Aug. 15—The British imperial interests have suffered a serious blow at the hands of Lyndon LaRouche, and they are reeling from the impact of that unanticipated strategic setback….The British elites suddenly found themselves facing a significant strategic defeat, in the face of the massive and spreading American popular revolt against the Obama Administration, and they were forced to launch an all-out defense of their own deeply flawed health-care system, as their last chance to salvage their Obama project…The single biggest cause of hysteria from British quarters is the fact that Lyndon LaRouche has been publicly identified as the catalyst of the revolt against the Obama White House’s efforts to shove a Hitlerian euthanasia scheme down the throats of the American people.”
Glenn Beck is starting to seem pretty mainstream compared to this.
[re=393067]JooJoo Bee[/re]: That “wealth is a mark of divine favor” is also the basic tenet of the C Street philosophy. But they’ve expanded it to include the belief that the rich may hike the Appalachian Trail to their heart’s content, all the while condemning the poor for not practicing family values.
[re=393112]chascates[/re]: Shit, the paultards seem mainstream compared to this.
[re=393067]JooJoo Bee[/re]: It speaks volumes that all the mega-church preachers are obscenely wealthy. Obviously they are righteous men, and all the poor schlubs sitting in the pews are willing to foist over money hand over fist to try to learn to be holy/rich by their example. A sick mutation of Capitalism and Christianity.
[re=392974]doxastic[/re]: The fact that we don’t even know her name either says something horrible about the laziness of American journalists or something even more horribler about her angry, screaming social life or complete lack thereof, that is, the woman is such a complete non-entity that “dining room table” was actually a step up, a move to give her some definition.
Or maybe both.
If morality has been discredited, that makes what I want to do to the Politico a purely logistical issue.
[re=392959]HomoSuperior[/re]: Everyone knows if God wanted the poors not to die in the streets of curable illnesses due to lack of insurance, he would have sent his only son to heal them, like he did for those middle easterners a long long time ago. So there.
[re=393072]DustBowlBlues[/re]: Yes, because a righteous hate-fuck is a terrible thing to waste.
There is nothing moral about healing the sick…no, wait, I mean Christian about…We just can’t have communist health care in this country. That’s what I meant.
I thought it was a discredited argument ever since Socrates blasted the Sophists for appealing to emotion in their flawed arguments.
Didn’t we all agree that government shouldn’t push it’s morality on anyone? Or did that just apply to neo-cons whose morality we don’t agree with
[re=393138]gurukalehuru[/re]: We do know her name. Her name is Pamela Pilger.
[re=393176]iolanthe[/re]: No, Pamela Pilger was the one in Vegas, who was shouting at the bald guy.
So many dining room tables, so little polish.
I wish they’d hurry up and get those death panels together.
The curvature of the Clenis has not thus far been discredited, may I point out.
Quick! Turn on CNN. Anderson Cooper is hosting something that he claims is going to be informational and not sensational about health care reform and Sanjay (Hot) Gupta is on the show! Anderson Silvery Fox AND Dr. Hotness– Eye candy for the boys, eye candy for the girls. This is a win, people!
BTW–Who the fuck is Surgeon General?
[re=393108]HuddledMass[/re]: “my favorite is “LaRouche Declares War on the British Empire””
Talk about being late to that party.
Okay, I hope someone else is listening. Dr. Hot just verified something I’d heard on NPR. Drug companies DO pay generic producers NOT to produce a drug when the patent has run out. What fucking bullshit. You’re telling me this wouldn’t be something the people in favor of reform might not mention?
[re=393212]DustBowlBlues[/re]: I just read on the BBC site that Britain is having shortages for some drugs. People buy them there because of their low cost and then sell them outside of the country. And Phrma has said the only thing they will NOT agree to is price controls.
[re=393213]chascates[/re]: And Vitter’s answer is drugs from Canada, so we can freeload off the seal-pup-bashing socialists.
Up to our old tricks: America, fucking over the world. Because Jeebus loves us best.
OT; I just posted a comment to the CS Monitor about a piece on the political blog: Sarah Palin moving to Rhode Island? My comment actually had to do with the fact the Monitor used [sic] after a text Bible Spice had twatted. She loves ALK because there is “so much to do and discover” [sic]. I asked for a clarification of the sic and whether is was because discover wasn’t done in the infinitive form.
Anyway (by the way, if someone on the sidelines wants to weigh in above question, please be my guest), I used twitticuled in my comment. The wonkeratti who coined the term really should have copyrighted it.
Whoever you are, I hope you are reading this because you may someday be famous as the person who keeps saying, “Fuck you. I invented that term. Give me credit, douchebag.” I would have said in my Monitor comment that the term was from wonkette, but they read all comments before posting them and I knew they would discard a wonkette reference.
BTW–The Monitor political blog is now using “interwebs”. That’s another one for which I think wonkette should be given credit.
The editors should be getting more respect from the MSM. If Faux News or the other wingers gave wonkette a kind word, however, I would worry.
NItey-nite, all you potty-mouthed losers like me who have nothing to do on Saturday night but prepare a Sunday School lesson and read wonkette. Hmmmm….maybe not that many of us are doing both.
Didn’t that Jesus guy try to run some sort of heal the sick for free scam…Obviously Jesus hates America, the free market and insurance companies God given right to receive gov’t welfare
Brit tards are complaining we are coarsening their own debate on their NHS.
The painful truth about the NHS Scaremongers in the US are distracting us from the real debate about British healthcare – we love the NHS, but it needs work
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/aug/23/nhs-america-healthcare
ROFL.
We are a christian nation, founded on christian values. The damned president Hussein had the gall to proclaim to the world that this is not the case. Now, if you will please excuse me, it’s time for golf. Christ told us to go the extra mile — on the links!!
Let’s not bite on the morality bait. Morals are very funny, morality is not. As William Shakespeare wrote in his famous Gettysburg Address, “Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight!”
[re=393255]Paul Tardy[/re]: And what’s more, the UK has gone some distance toward addressing some of the problems with NHS, mostly by throwing money at it, which seems to work: hiring more doctors and administrators and nurses, &c.
[re=392973]Below the Beltway[/re]: I’ve studied the Constitution, and I can tell you that in this great country, the fetus does have the right to bare arms.
[re=393113]Jukesgrrl[/re]: If memory serves, this “wealth is a mark of divine favor” thing was a basic tenet of Calvinism. The wingnuts have simply elevated this “religious” belief above all others except for maybe “Abortion is a terrible evil, but once a child is actually born we don’t give a rat’s pitooty what happens to him.”
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