![]() WHAT MAUREEN HEARD! Maureen Dowd heard a very bad worda word she used to employ: // link // print // previous // next //
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2009 The price of corporate looting: In this mornings New York Times, its Reed Abelson with the bad news. In fairness, Abelson is simply passing on what the Kaiser Foundation has said:
Abelson presents a daunting datumbut he misinterprets it gravely. In fact, Obama could have a lot of trouble persuading those millions of people that the system needs to be fixed. As everyone but Abelson has heard, when you get your insurance through your employer, you may not even know how much your family policy costs. Beyond that, you may not understand that this expense is depressing your wages. Theres something else you surely dont understand: You dont understand how much your policy would cost if the United States spent as much on health care as other developed nationsdeveloped nations whose health outcomes are as good as, or better than, our own. In part, people dont understand such a thing because Democrats and liberal intellectual leaders never quite bother to tell them. The late Ted Kennedy never did so. Neither does the quite active James Clyburn. Democratic leadersand career liberal intellectualstend to wander about in a fog. They rarely develop and promote essential, boat-rocking information. People! It just isnt done! Lets try to develop some semi-information. To wit: How much would that average family policy cost if the United States spent as much on health care as other developed nations? Using the miracle of ratio and proportion, we have developed these figures, based on per-person spending in 2007:
The average family is throwing away gigantic sums. The average Democrat or liberal never quite remembers to tell themor to tell them where their money is going. Or to use such naughty words as looting. People! It just isnt done! In July, David Leonhardt presented a different set of figures in the New York Times. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 7/23/09. For Leonhardts report, just click this.) According to Leonhardt, this is the amount the typical household will spend on health care this year:
On July 22, Leonhardt described the difference between those figures as a stealth $6500 health care tax. Since that date, how many Americans have heard that figure? Lets form a quick guesstimate: None! The average American is getting looted. The average Democrat is too dumbor too lazy; or too store-boughtto say so. The average liberal shakes his fist at Joe Wilson (more below). Aint life in the idiocracy grand?
President Obama may not have much trouble? Heres our own incomparable question: On which planet will that imagined lack of trouble occur? PART 3WHAT MAUREEN HEARD: Last Wednesday, Barack Obama gave a high-profile speech, on a very important topic. Over the weekend, op-ed writers at our biggest newspaper shared their views with the world. On Sunday. Maureen Dowd took her turn. Amazingly, she passed on Serenas outburst/Lenos forthcoming debut and semi-discussed the presidents speech, which concerned a major issue. Before we consider what Dowd wrote, its important to understand how fatuous this Pulitzer Prize-winner is. Consider her account, at the start of this mornings column, of the proposed health reform:
Dowd writes, and thinks, like an eight-year-old child. And this year, shes on Obamas side! Translation: She has stopped comparing him to Scarlett OHara; she has stopped referring to him as legally blonde. She no longer derides him as a debutanteor even as a starlet. And she has even stopped calling him boy! She no longer derides him as Americas pretty boy. She no longer calls him the golden boyor the wonder boy, or the Boy Wonder. She no longer invents imagined dialogues in which Hillary Clinton calls Obama a glib pretty boy. Dowd has even stopped writing columns about what a big loud b*tch Michelle Obama is. Dowd has given all that up; she types on our team now! For that reason, she presents proposed reform as an attempt to provide health care for the have-nots in society. Thats as far as her mind lets her go. As she told Joe Klein long ago: Dowd doesnt do welfare reform. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/15/00.) For ourselves, we have no idea what Obamas motives or thinking might be at this juncture. We could imagine a wide range of novels. We will note this: One of the ways he is currently attempt[ing] to provide health care for the have-nots is by ordering the have-nots to buy health careat the grotesquely inflated prices we have described above. (For most have-nots, there would be subsidies.) In his speech, Obama didnt explain why those prices are so vastly inflated. (Didnt explain who is doing the looting.) And dont worry! Dowd wont ask! But people! Maureen Dowd doesnt do policy! She simply decides whose side she is currently on, then starts to dream and imagine. For years, she imagined things which savaged Big Democrats, helping send George Bush to the White House. (In November 2000, she imagined Candidate Gore before a mirror, singing I Feel Pretty. Two days later, Florida voted.) Now, she imagines quite different thingsbut she remains a cosmic idiot. A society whose major columnists reason this way will always be one whose have-notsand whose average peopleare looted by corporate elites. In this passage from Sundays Times, you read our dumbest columnist:
As weve noted many times in the past, Dowd at least is willing to cop to her method. To wit: She types things whether theyre fair or not. And she tends to type those unspoken wordsthe words she says she has heard.
Maureen Dowd types the things she imagines. This helps explain why your nation remains so dumba ripe target for corporate looting. All through the 1990s, Dowd was imagining things that killed liberal interests. Now, she imagines things which please your team. But a country with fools like this in charge will always be owned by big corporate interests. Silly boys like Josh will sing Dowds praiseand the PayPal donations will come rolling in. No one will note how odd it is that the unspoken word she heard last week is a word she herself used to aim at Obama! After all, that was thenand this is now! On the web, we brain-dead liberals now have our latest distraction! Two quick notes about Dowds inanity: In the following passage, Dowd nails down her ongoing transition from race-baiter to Brave Racial Giant. But if analysis like this doesnt make your skin crawl, you should go in the house, lock the door, and unhook your computer. Note the way Dowds tiny mind supports its racial thesis:
Regarding that highlighted passage: No, you cant get dumber. A nation whose liberals are willing to reason that way will always be shipping half its income off to the corporate interests. Note what Dowd does in that passage. In the middle of her Three Prior Examples, she positions a fairly obvious case of blatant racial insult. But like the screaming dimwit she is, she sandwiches it between two other recent eventsevents which plainly would have occurred if President Obama were white. How dumbhow thoroughly ahistoricalare we liberals willing to be? Many people have already noted that DeMints exhortation to make health care a Waterloo closely parallels Bill Kristols cry to defeat Bill Clintons health plan, no matter what. And guess what, losers? If Hillary Clinton were president today, Sanford would have rejected (some of) her stimulus money too! Are we really supposed to think different? Anyone with an ounce of sense knows these things are true. But were talking about the leading columnist in the dumbest nation on earth. You see, Dowd is chief pundit to the idiocray. Its a place where you already livea place the Big Interests adore. Is Obama at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension? Is he a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe? In a more intelligent nation, people would consider such statements more carefully. They might even do what Rachel Maddow did last night at the start of her programthey might observe that this same sort of calumnies have routinely been aimed at past Democratic presidents, all of whom were white. (Partial transcript below. More Friday.) In fairness, Dowd provided a bit of that history in Sundays column, lazily typing this:
And from Maureen Dowd against Al Gore, one of our analysts quipped. You see, an intelligent person might even note the historical continuity in Wilsons shout of You lie. No, no one ever yelled that at President Clinton during a speech to the Congress. But the entire decade of the 1990s was an attempt to turn Bill Clintonthen Hillary Clinton; then Al Goreinto the worlds biggest liars. And uh-oh! Despite her currently failing memory, Maureen Dowd lay right at the heart of that disastrous campaign. Forget about a pipsqueak like Wilson. At Dowds very important newspaper, the most famous columnist of that time called Hillary Clinton a congenital liar in January 1996, bungling various factual matters as he thundered. Dowd never complained about that cry, because she was playing on the other team then. (Dowds column began in 1995. In the early years, it was called Liberties, named for the thing she took with the truth.) Nor did Dowd complain in June 1999, when her clucking cabal pretended that Hilary Clinton had lied about the Cubs and the Yankees, creating a very loud pseudo-scandal. (To relive the gruesome events, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/16/08.) Of course, the major effort at that time was the effort to remake Candidate Gore as a liar. Its odd to see Dowd upset today when someone yells out the words, You lie, because she was present at the birth of that disastrous movement. In December 1997, she and Frank Rich invented the Love Story incident. (In fairness to Dowd, it was Rich who invented the notion that Gore had liedtwo days after it became clear that Gore had been misquoted. But then, Rich has always been a killer. In that era, he was killing youand people not yet born in Iraq.) Sixteen months later, in March 1999, this fantasized LIE became the foundation of the two-year propaganda campaign which sent George Bush to the White House. Dowd was there at the start. In her two columns about Love Story, she imagined why Gore said the (misquoted) things she apparently thought he had said. But then, this b*tch always imagines. Dowd is the dumbest person on earth. Unfortunately, she writes for the biggest newspaper in the whole idiocracy. Those have-nots are being looted today. With people as dumb as Dowd at the helm, they will be looted forever. Obama gave a major speech. So what did Kristof write? Tomorrowpart 4: Kristof reads Reid. Maddow gets it right: In the past few weeks, your DAILY HOWLER just keeps getting results at the Maddow Show! Last night, Maddow liberated some thoroughly accurate thoughts from our own pixels and pages. She put Joe Wilsons conduct in a larger context:
Maddow omitted the crackpot campaign to turn Gore into the worlds biggest liar. That campaign started with Maureen Dowd. Dowd luvved You lie at that point! More on Maddows effort this Friday. Well even throw our heads back and roar at Jonathan Alters expert reaction. Well also clap ourselves on the back for a result your HOWLER got last week!
But first! Part 4 of our series!
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