Saturday, October 17, 2009

Sunday, August 9, 2009

WaPo Equivalence: Wingnut 'Deathers', Dems who criticize insurance industry

And guess which side they come down harder on?

Yep - the Dems. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

After the pox-on-both-houses setup ("If this moment is squandered, it will be a sad indictment of the political system -- and there will be plenty of blame to go around"), the WaPo's lead editorial today summarizes the piles of craziness we've heard from the wingnuts about healthcare - euthanasia! government-run hospitals! compiling enemies' lists! - in a mere eight lines.

Then it spends the rest of the editorial - 43 lines, over five times as much ink - in dumping on Nancy Pelosi for criticizing insurance company practices, and - get this! - on Obama for not doing enough to prepare "some patients who have become accustomed to getting every test or procedure they want" that they may have to settle for the most effective procedure, rather than the one they want.

One, two, three: awwwwww.

And of course, regardless of the insurance companies' willingness to acquiesce to a bill where they "accept all applicants and generally charge the same amount, in exchange for a requirement that all individuals obtain insurance," the fact is that now, in the absence of a bill, they're still practicing insurance as they always have: by not insuring people that need it, by dropping people from their rolls the minute they need to be insured, and by refusing to pay claims that their policy covers.

Why the Dems shouldn't run against what the vile practices the insurance companies are doing now, and will continue to do way into the future if this bill doesn't pass, in order to drum up support for the bill, is certainly lost on me. But even yielding that point to the WaPo, for sake of argument, it's crazy that they find this five times as worthy of criticism as the wingnuts' outright insanity.

It's as if the WaPo has decided: it's okay for conservatives to be batshit crazy - we expect it of them, and it's not worthy of much comment. But if the Dems commit much more mundane political offenses, we'll jump on them with both feet.

The WaPo Keeps Giving Op-Ed Space to Amity Shlaes

Today's paper. No, I'm not gonna link. Just felt the need to point out that the WaPo continues to give op-ed space to this fraud. It's already hard to take the WaPo seriously, but such things make it even harder.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Broder: Bush's Worst Moral Failing Was...

No, you're not going to believe this.
In [Bush's] valedictory interview...I listened in vain for any admission of what I and others consider the greatest moral failing of the Bush presidency -- his refusal to ask any sacrifice from most of the American people when he put the nation on a wartime footing after the Sept. 11 attacks.
To Broder, that was a bigger moral failing than "Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo [and his response to] Hurricane Katrina and the neglect of the environment and the working class." And he doesn't even mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed in the past six years.

Who are these people - these "I and others" that Broder knows? What sort of Body Snatchers pods did they emerge from?

Sometimes, all you can do is shake your head at the idea that someone like this has such a prominent role in our national discussion. The day when "Dean" Broder's too senile to string sentences together into the semblance of an op-ed column can't come too soon.