Yesterday, in the comments to DougJ’s post about Dahlia Lithwick’s excellent Supreme Court piece, I wrote the following:
I read that this morning and it was a point by point clear indictment that, by the end, you felt it came to an inarguable conclusion.
And then my first thought was “How long before Nick Gillespie or Matt Welch or one of the Reason half-wits tells us everything we just read was wrong?” Useful idiots.
The answer was four and a half hours, and it was tasked to Damon Root.
In the words of Edroso, “Nowadays libertarian’s just a word to use when you want to say “conservative” but need an extra syllable.”
jwb
Whatever else they may be, libertarians are just smart enough to know who signs their paychecks.
Paris
and Poof! Damon Root can’t think of what they are either or mention one or two of them.
geg6
FYJC for making me click on that. Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck.
Libertarians are literally the stupidest people on the planet. Every.fucking.one.of.them.
schrodinger's cat
John Cole@top
I don’t understand your obsession with the Reason folks, why does it matter so much what they say and do? They seem to real get under your skin. Were you a libertarian before you had your political epiphany? Just curious.
BTW I think your criticism of these folks is accurate and spot on.
cleek
@Paris:
yeah, was thinking the same thing…
what were the “big liberal victories” ?
Dennis SGMM
@Paris:
Well, they certainly liberalized the definition of “speech.”
RSA
@cleek:
__
I’m puzzled, too. In the comments to the article, someone brings up the unconstitutionality of executing juvenile criminals. That’s a big liberal victory? Only if by “liberal” we mean “having the ethics of normal human beings”.
Warren Terra
Y’know, when I want to say “Conservative”, I usually want fewer syllables, not an extra one. In fact, a good old fashioned monosyllabic expletive often seems to work.
Keith G
@geg6: Yeah I avoid reason.com. I figure it takes a month of two off the live of my cpu every time I click it.
But geg, I doubt most are stupid as much as (the sincere ones) they are so invested in a frame of reference that they cannot see beyond it. The most of the rest are intelligent, but as jwb points out above, their avarice leads them to dishonesty (Gillespie).
And then there is Megan who writes as if she is mortally stupid, so *she* probably is.
ChrisS
@cleek:
Citizens United.
Desargues
‘Libertarian’ is poli-sci for ‘asshole.’
Brick Oven Bill
Every time I go to the Department of Motor Vehicles, to pay like $50 for a new driver’s license, or $110 for an annual registration sticker, and then the bloated lady behind the counter with the polyester, after a prolonged wait, demands to see my insurance papers, which cost me three times what they should because of stupid rules, and then I hand them to her and she grunts.
noncarborundum
@Warren Terra:
Or, for those more formal occasions, perhaps a two-syllable word ending in “head”.
Keith G
@Keith G: No typing before coffee,
artem1s
@RSA:
I would imagine that requiring Bush-Co to actually try
POW’sdetainees at Gitmo and not allowing the great state of TX to prosecute individuals for private acts performed by adults in their private homes counts for them.Kryptik
@schrodinger’s cat:
My guess is it’s because the Reason folk are the most visible Libertarian folk not in or running for office. It’s not so much about the Reasonoids themselves, so much as it is the infuriating naivete and lack of self-awareness Libertarians tend to have.
dmsilev
Speaking of entirely predictable reactions, TPM had a nice find this morning. Seems that the Tea Party and Joe The Plumber are joining forces …to rally in support of puppy mills.
Favorite quote:
dms
bkny
@geg6:
i don’t know about that — they’ve got some pretty stiff competition with missouri teatards – via tpm:
Well, according to the Alliance For Truth, the main force behind the anti-Prop B movement, there is something much more nefarious afoot (er, apaw) in the Humane Society’s measure. The Alliance For Truth claims that the Humane Society of the United States has a “radical agenda” and is “misleading the public with its intentions on Prop B. The society seeks only to raise the cost of breeding dogs, making it ever-more difficult for middle-class American families to be dog-owners.”
Anita Andrews from Alliance For Truth told TPM that it’s a “deceptive, lying bill” that is “trying to purposefully get rid of the breeders.” The state of Missouri, she said, has been given a bad rap as “the puppy mill capitol” of the U.S. but “in truth we have the best ribbon breeders in the country.” And, Andrews said, the state already has anti-cruelty laws on the books.
“They don’t like animals,” she said of the Humane Society.
WereBear
@dmsilev: Christ on a rubber crutch.
There is really, really, REALLY something wrong with these people.
Kryptik
@dmsilev:
Because apparently treating pets like something other than a wholesale commodity is ‘Puppy hating’ and obvious a nefarious plot to kill the working man.
Good fucking god, seriously, just seriously, why can’t they just admit what is obvious. They don’t want government. They don’t want to win elections. They want a corporate anarchic state, because obviously the Free Market is god and will make everything better long as there’s no chain of common sense or decency to rein them in.
Like asked last night: How the fuck are we actually losing to these clowns?
cleek
@dmsilev:
you gotta read all the out-of-context quotes on that astroturf org page.
then search on some of those quotes and see how often they’ve been repeated.
then read what Pacelle was actually talking about. took me a few minutes to track that down, because the out of context quotes are everywhere.
people are pretty fucking disgusting.
burnspbesq
@cleek:
Depends on what you mean by “big” and “liberal.” I would say that Hamdan and Boumediene fit that category. YMMV.
In one sense, it was a big liberal victory that the Second Amendment decisions didn’t go any farther than they did.
Face
@dmsilev: My jaw hit the ground when I read that. They’re against puppy-mill regs.
It really, truly is: whatever pisses off libtards is acceptable politically. Also, Joe the Not Plumber is still getting pub?
Get me to a new country, stat.
Zifnab
Yes. What about them? So many and so obvious, they barely require listing much less mentioning. Silly liberals.
geg6
@bkny:
Since when has any group of teatards not included a significant number of “libertarians?”
(The scare quotes are because none of them are against government when it benefits them directly. Thus, they are not really libertarians…for the most part.)
David Hunt
@RSA:
Actually that’s the definition of “extreme far-Left liberal” nowadays.
daveNYC
Forget losing, these guys shouldn’t even be keeping it close. It’s like they showed up for a golf game wearing speedos and carrying a tennis racket, and yet somehow they’re six under par.
Kryptik
@Face:
It’s also what makes a lot of the ‘Pox on both houses’, ‘Both sides have their extremists, they’re all just as bad’ bullshit so much…well, bullshit.
The Left-Wing fringe can’t be pushed far away enough.
The Right Wing fringe currently has about 50 candidates running for national office.
There’s no comparisons to be made, unless you’re looking for false equivalences.
geg6
@Keith G:
Sorry, but anyone who buys a libertarian vision of the world is too stupid for words. Doesn’t mean they don’t have a decent IQ or aren’t able to write in proper sentences. Just means they are stupid. Stupid is not always just about intelligence. It’s about dreaming up a fantasy world and thinking the real world can work like that. Same as religionists, IMHO.
dmsilev
@cleek: I know. It was obvious even from the summary that TPM did that the “Alliance for Truth” (which, in a just world, would have [sic] appended to every mention of its name) is working straight out of the Rove/Atwater playbook. I’m just surprised that they managed not to blame “community organizers” for this referendum.
Still, I guess it’s official. The Tea Party hates puppies.
dms
Kryptik
@dmsilev:
No, no, no, you see, LIBERALS are the puppy-haters! See, all that puppy-mill stuff isn’t about actually caring about the animals! It’s about stiffing businesses and instituting communism! Don’t you get it?! Oh god, you’re one of those commuzombies, aren’t you! AWAY! Away, I don’t want you eating my hard earned capital, away!!
Dennis SGMM
@David Hunt:
The fortunes of the Democratic party would improve immeasurably if the DFHs would just vote for the party when asked to do so and keep their filthy mouths shut the rest of the time.
arguingwithsignposts
@Brick Oven Bill:
FSM, that almost sounds like the old BOB. Almost.
dcBill
Libertarianism is just a dodge for being a jerk.
Edward G. Talbot
Yikes, if that thing from Root is the best Reason can come up with, I’d say Litchwick nailed it. Those counterarguments (and I use that term loosely) barely amount to a single buffalo chip identified in a field frequented by a 10,000 head herd.
Judas Escargot
@Desargues:
‘Libertarian’ is poli-sci for ‘asshole.’
…I am so stealing this. Apologies.
Josh
@art, I don’t think the Roberts Court can take credit for Lawrence v. Texas.
SB Jules
latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-chemerinsky-scotus-20101004,0,3541336.story
Chemerinsky wrote, independently about the same thing yesterday in the L.A. Times.
Jose Padilla
Root’s article is ignorence on roller skates. He tries to argue that Roberts doesn’t game the system by deciding who’ll write the court’s opinions. This is woefully stupid. Every chief justice since John Jay has tried to manipulate the system by deciding who’ll write the opinions.