The Best Republican Argument Against Health Reform

I'm not sure why the Republicans are comparing health reform to Hitler, Stalin, and Joseph Mengele, or why they're talking about euthanasia and "death panels."

What the should be talking about is themselves.

By far the strongest argument against Obama's health reform plan is that the Republicans might win another presidential election someday. If somebody like Mitt Romney or Bobby Jindal wins the presidency, that means there will be more determined lawbreakers like Dick Cheney and David Arrington and more incompetents like Mike Brown of Katrina fame or Doug Feith ("the dumbest fucking guy on the planet" according to Gen. Tommy Franks). There will be more Grade B GOP activists choking off research that offends the religious right.

And that's nearly not as bad as Sarah Palin becoming president. Then, we'd be getting her classmates from Wasilla or James Dobson coming out of retirement to run the health care apparatus.

If the Republicans want to scare people about health care, the best thing they could do would be to put Sarah Palin's face on a poster with "Do you want this woman in charge of your health care?"

That would certainly make me think twice.

Finally, a Republican president means that the people running Government health insurance will be people opposed to government health insurance. It will mean that the government will start looking for a variety of ways to raise prices and deny coverage in order to drive people back to private health insurance.

In other words, a Republican president means that the Government will become just like the private health insurance companies--

Only Much Worse.

And that's the best argument the Republicans could make against health reform.

Tom Friedman Must Take Dumb Pills

Today's NY Times op-ed shows once again that Tom Friedman is the Doug Feith of journalism. I owe an apology to the Slate writer I once called "the dumbest guy to ever put his hands on a keyboard."

Al Gonzales: The Mighty Make Good Adjuncts

It looks like Alberto Gonzales landed an adjunct gig at Texas Tech University.

Gonzales, who was Gov. George W. Bush’s lawyer, Texas secretary of state and then a Texas Supreme Court justice before joining Bush in Washington, will be working as an visiting professor in the political science department, teaching a “special topics” course on contemporary issues in the executive branch, according to Dora Rodriguez, a senior business assistant in the department. The university later said it will be a junior-level course.

Teaching one class--that's adjunct work. But it's not like any university that would hire Bob Knight as a basketball coach has moral standards anyway.

So why shouldn't Gonzalez teach at Texas Tech?

Besides Gonzales is an expert at "Gonzales Standard Lying" as was defined a couple of years ago on this blog:

But Al Gonzales has made his own unique contribution to the history of cronyism in national government--the Gonzales Standard Lie. When challenged about torture during his conformination, Gonzales simply stated that "I share (the president's) resolve that torture and abuse will not be tolerated by this administration." That's
simple and clean--no effort to define torture, no explanation of why the Bush administration's interrogation techniques don't fit definitions of torture, no messing with principles, rules, or facts at all. The Gonzales Standard Lie is not a hype, not a big bragging lie. It's a simple emphatic statement that puts the burden on the questioner to prove him wrong. This lying technique works particularly well in cases like where the questioner does not have access to relevant information. In relation to the torture controversy, Al Gonzales could state that "torture and abuse will not be tolerated" and rest easy in the knowledge that the facts in relation to torture were classified and that he could not be contradicted.

Given the Bush administration's commitment to lying--Bush's people disliked telling the truth so much that they actively avoided it--the Gonzales Standard Lie was a contribution to executive branch functioning and is worthy of study in any class on the "special topics in the executive branch."

I'd say something about Gonzales being an embarrassment to political science, but the less said there the better. Henry Kissinger was a political scientist. So was Zbigniew Brezinski. I even think that former Pentagon no. 3, Douglas Feith--"The Dumbest Fucking Guy on the Planet"--is teaching political science somewhere. According to Wikipedia, Feith is currently an embarrassment to Georgetown University.

One thing you can say about Alberto Gonzales is that he isn't embarrassing a "prestige university" like Georgetown.