I got the link from atrios, and tapped, to a libertarian economic blog that is funnily enough, written by my former AP Stats teacher, Arnold Kling. In addition straight from talk radio right wing bullshitting: "hundreds of billions into teachers unions and others" (must have missed that part of the bill), I'm still wondering what "it makes sense from a reparations perspective" even means.Stimulus Bill or Reparations Bill?
I think that President Obama set the bar ridiculously low when he said that 75 percent of the stimulus should kick in within by the end of 2010, but the House bill did not even get over that bar. Why is the stimulus bill so filled with non-stimulus while it omits real stimulus measures, such as cutting payroll taxes?
I think the answer is that it is a reparations bill, not a stimulus bill. People who pay income taxes tend to vote Republican. People who live off taxes tend to vote Democratic. To the Democrats, the Bush tax cuts were a heinous evil, comparable to Germany's violation of Belgian neutrality in World War I. Now, they are demanding reparations, with hundreds of billions of dollars to be paid into teachers unions and other members of the coalition that won the election.
Most of the bill makes no sense from a stimulus perspective. But all of it makes sense from a reparations perspective.
And while tapped was mostly critical of him for cherry picking statistics to match his point, the idea of bringing the ever so slightly charged word "reparations" into his post is pretty absurd.
So after the increased traffic from atrios, he posts this update that can go straight into the "who could have ever imagined" file:
[UPDATE: comments have been turned off. Apparently, some other blogger decided that my reference to "reparations" was a reference to reparations from slavery and hence a reference to the color of President Obama's skin. That had not occurred to me. I really was thinking about the Treaty of Versailles. But the comments were getting ugly.]Yeah, cause when most people think of reparations in this country, they think of the Treaty of Versailles.
This is as good of a time as any to start a new (or semi-stolen from atrios) game. Is the person genuinely that stupid, or are they lying?
Which is it Train of Thought readers:
Stupid or lying?
oh, you have got to be shitting me... go ahead, tell me you're shitting me!
ReplyDeleteholy fuck.....
ReplyDeleteboth? coining a new term here: "lupidity"
ReplyDelete