Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
To be added to the ever-thickening file marked “‘The Debate Is Over’ means ‘I am telling a much bigger lie than usual'”…
“The debate over repealing this law is over,” President Obama declared last Tuesday in reference to ObamaCare….
:
[Paul Krugman] asserted that “7.1 million and counting signups is a huge victory for reform.” And not just a huge victory but a definitive one: “The nightmare is over. It has long been clear, to anyone willing to study the issue, that the overall structure of Obamacare made sense given the political constraints. Now we know that the technical details can be managed, too. This thing is going to work. And, yes, it’s also a big political victory for Democrats.”“My advice to reform supporters,” Krugman continued, “is, go ahead and celebrate. Oh, and feel free to ridicule right-wingers who confidently predicted doom.”
That last one explains a lot. “Reform supporters” don’t need any prompting to ridicule their opposition, but you can still tell when they’ve been prompted to do so. There is a perceptible up-tick, and an odd mixture of things they know how to do & other things they don’t know how to do. My stock answer to the “ridicule” has been to inquire whether or not they were trying to say ObamaCare was a good law, whether they’d go so far as to say this is a model of how legislation should be passed, and of what new laws should be doing. I never did get a straight answer to that.
As such, I’m not “confidently predict”-ing doom, I’m casually and sadly observing it.
The column continues, circling back to directly address this “debate is over” chicanery…
A demand for silence is not a sign of intellectual self-confidence. And this is not the only subject on which the left is demanding that its opponents just shut up. For years we’ve been hearing that the debate about global warming–or “climate change” or whatever they’re calling it this week–is settled. Early in the 2000s some news organizations declared they would banish dissenting points of view from their pages. The debate goes on.
It’s almost as if — let us say, exactly as if — the whole point to leftist policies enshrined into public law, is not to spare the public from disaster or to improve their lives, but to engage in this “ridicule” and act smug and superior to the opposition, results be damned.
Well, that explains Detroit.
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Yup. The debate is over, and your contrary evidence doesn’t count, because la la la I can’t hear you!!!
It’s brilliant politics, though. You build a movement by increasing buy-in, and “all smart people agree we’re right” is great for that. To acknowledge contrary evidence — any evidence at all — is to tacitly admit that one isn’t as smart as one claims to be. And who here, in this glorious year 2014, is going to admit that?
Which is why I’ve been arguing for some time now that Republicans need to start arguing, not that liberals are wrong (though, of course, they are), but simply immature. I’ve met some brilliant teenagers in my time. I’m talking off-the-charts IQs. If you need some complicated math problem solved, they’ll have it done in their heads while I’m still trying to remember where I put the calculator.
But out in the real world? Where there’s actual money riding on the outcome? You’ll come to me, every time. I might not always get it right, but I’m far, far likelier not to get it disastrously wrong. The whiz kid can run circles around me, cereberally, but there’s no substitute for decades of real-world experience. And its a truth universally acknowledged, at least by anyone who has ever been around teenagers, that the smartest kids make the dumbest mistakes, because they overlook the most obvious points.
That’s how conservatives should argue. Yes yes, Moonbeam, your universal healthcare plan is brilliant. Just brilliant. The brainpower that went into that one must be….just…. wow. But still, you’ve overlooked the following five factors that make it inoperative. Now, can you put your big brain to work on those? In the meantime, we’ll just be shelving this trillion-dollar boondoggle, mmmkay? But we look forward to hearing your ideas on fixing human nature and repealing the basic laws of math.
- Severian | 04/09/2014 @ 07:07“The debate over repealing this law is over,” President Obama declared last Tuesday in reference to ObamaCare….”
- CaptDMO | 04/09/2014 @ 12:35“Ooo….you don’t want to go there….buddy.”
[…] But there’s one serious problem with these Smart People: […]
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