It’s time for James Fallows, TNC, and every other self-respecting employee of the Atlantic (there are others, right?) to say the words “I am ashamed to work with Megan McArdle.” The truth will set you free.
When Obama extends the Bush tax cuts for the rich under pressure from Congressional Republicans, that disappears from his side of the ledger, because after all, he didn’t want to do it. When Bush enacts Medicare Part D under pressure from Congressional Democrats, the full cost is charged against his presidency.
The notion that Bush passed his prescription drug bill “under pressure from Congressional Democrats” is bizarre. Republicans controlled both houses of Congress at the time, and exerted massive pressure to pass the bill. The coalition that squeezed the bill through after the vote was held open for hours consisted of 207 Republicans and 9 Democrats. Some pressure!
How many fucking factual errors does this moron have to make before she is fired?
I only hope the Chinese have “economics bloggers” of the same quality. That’s our only chance.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Yeah, but I think the Chinese would have probably executed her by this point. They only tolerate so much error. Ask the people who inspect food.
JPL
How many fucking factual errors does this moron have to make before she is fired?
that’s a joke, right… I’m sure she will issue apologies and all will be forgiven. I still love when she talked about how kitchen’s were equipped in the fifties and sixties.
Zagloba
The Atlantic still needs ad revenue from pageviews. The right wing echo chamber generates clicks. It’s gonna take more than Jon Chait to get the Big A to cut off its own diseased, syphilitic nose to spite the healthy remainder of its face.
kindness
Damn….I got 86’d from commenting on anyone at The Atlantic for telling Megan what I thought of her….And I never cursed at all. Just used words like hack, moron, idiot. Jeez…some folks have thin skins.
jwb
I thought Levenson had the McArdle beat these days and you took Bobo and Chunky Bobo.
PeakVT
Which reminds me, what ever happened with the Goldberg kerfuffle?
reflectionephemeral
Innumeracy in defense of glibertarianism is no vice.
dmsilev
From that incredibly obscure website Wikipedia:
She’s right, if you remember that Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert have been redefined as Democrats.
pragmatism
she has been running a pink himalayan jihad against the CBPP and their handy deficit charts for a while now to further the whitewashing of bush the younger’s track record. so transparent. casperesque.
Benjamin
Yeah, because if anything characterized the Bush era, it was the GOP’s truckling subservience to Democratic priorities.
Mark-NC
Doug J:
You have made a HUGE error in this piece. You are confusing YOUR facts with FOX facts.
She’s just picking an “alternate” set of facts that don’t exist in your world.
Or mone!
Montysano
Along the same lines, Luke Russert brings some weak shit to Dylan Ratigan’s show and gets smacked around. But the smirk on Russert Jr’s face indicates that he knows his sinecure is safe, no matter how big a dumbass he is.
JR
Well, as we learned from Jennifer Rubin’s ombudsman at the Washington Post, it doesn’t matter if a writer pulls everything from her ass as long as she’s writing as an “opinion blogger who would appeal to conservatives.”
Bender
Some mild Chait bullshit there.
Of course the Democrats voted against Med D. They wanted a much larger, much more costly bill. Advertised at $400B, it was a bargain compared to the Democrats’ proposal, which costed out to more than $800B.
So sure, Bush could have done nothing in 2006, but then the Democrats would have passed a bill twice as expensive when they took control of Congress in 2007. That was the “pressure.”
Jay in Oregon
@reflectionephemeral:
Well done. Where would you like your internet delivered?
@Benjamin:
On second thought, we may have to have a tiebreaker…
Southern Beale
Doug, it’s worse than that. The House Republicans had to strong-arm actual fiscal conservatives to get all of their own party on board!
From the memory hole,
This was EPIC. How does Megan McFuckStick NOT remember this?
scav
@jwb: Christ, Levenson does need to sleep every so often so they’re forced to trade off once in a while. Imagine them poking each other at 3am and grumbling “It’s your turn. I beat her last time.”
max hats
The Atlantic wants to be a center-right rag, and the lights on the right just aren’t very bright. Thus, someone like McArdle attains that position. Fallows and TNC are just there to lend ideological cover, and between those two, only Fallows routinely covers political matters.
Canceled my subscription last year. I loved the Atlantic. Getting an Atlantic subscription after I graduated from college made me feel like an adult. Years later when I deployed, my parents sent me copies of The Atlantic to cheer me up. It’s been sad watching that great magazine replace writers and columns with more and more right wing hackery. Last I checked, even the literary reviews were only a page, presumably to make space for Goldberg’s HILARIOUS* personal advice column.
Just like what happened to U.S. News and World Report, there’s a definite sense that the magazine of ideas became the magazine of social standing and ideological presuppositions.
*it is really not hilarious. It is not even kind of funny. It is, however, extremely embarrassing.
Gex
@reflectionephemeral: Rather, innumeracy is ESSENTIAL in glibertarianism.
Bender
@Zagloba:
That is so nonsensical that it makes me wonder how you operate a computer.
Megan supported Obama, you moron. You think the right loves her for that? You guys read her thrice as much as we on the right do, guaranteed. And the fact that she supported Obama kind of undercuts your “echo chamber” bit, doesn’t it?
burnspbesq
@Bender:
“They wanted a much larger, much more costly bill.”
Which they had no ability to move through either house of Congress. Which makes it irrelevant to anyone with an IQ higher than 12.
themanintheguyfawkesmask
Whee!
pragmatism
doug, both links are to tnr. which is fine if you want to deprive mcmegs of links.
Stefan
How many fucking factual errors does this moron have to make before she is fired?
Huh…when I read this my mind somehow converted it to “How many facking fucktual errors does this moron have to make before she is fired?”
Which, actually, may be somehow more accurate…
David
Bender encapsulates everything a McArdle defense might include.
Disbelief in budgets? Check.
Conflating larger with costly? Check.
No understanding of how deficits happen? Check.
Getting the FOXified numbers for advertised costs? Check.
Pretending the GOP in 2003 were forced to act out of fear of the Dems in 2008? Check.
Astonishingly hackish, even for a troll.
John X.
The Atlantic went downhill when it moved from New York to D.C. Almost overnight, it went from a decent peer of the New Yorker to a clone of one of the multitude of political mags like The Nation and New Republic that no one actually reads.
Real people buy The New Yorker because they like it. Political offices stock the others because they look good in the waiting room. The Atlantic chose to throw its lot in with the latter.
Captain Haddock
I am so freaking sick of the Obama apologists here! If he did not invade Iraq we wouldn’t be in the position we are. Own up to it people!
reflectionephemeral
@Jay in Oregon: Thanks so much! You can deliver it straight to the consistently witty & insightful commentators at poisonyourmind.com, one of whom may or may not be me.
Jay in Oregon
@reflectionephemeral:
I will have to check that out. Until then, have this:
http://rlv.zcache.com/you_win_one_internet_seal_gold_sticker-p217784919322442013qjcl_400.jpg
thefncrow
I’m surprised you didn’t touch on the other part of her idiocy.
“When Obama extends the Bush tax cuts for the rich under pressure from Congressional Republicans, that disappears from his side of the ledger, because after all, he didn’t want to do it.”
What she’s complaining about is a chart that shows the items that increased the national debt over the last 10 years. If you actually read the chart, yes, the Bush tax cuts appear under Bush, but there’s an section listed for Obama for the extension of the Bush tax cuts.
This is especially damning because her other idiocy at least required that she knew who controlled Congress several years ago. This only required that she actually read the chart she was complaining about to not make that factual error, and she couldn’t even do that.
some guy
Megan supported Obama, you moron.
the stupid, it BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRNNNNS.
McMegan, November 4th, 2008: I’m not voting because I forgot to register. But that doesn’t absolve me from whatever happens next, because I wanted Obama to win.
Stefan
McMegan, November 4th, 2008: I’m not voting because I forgot to register.
To be fair to McArdle, the election that year wasn’t very well publicized. I can see how it would slip her mind, especially as she’s not paid to keep up with current events.
And Another Thing...
@Bender: And then some mystical power put a gun to Bush’s head and made him sign the bill.
Awesome display of Republican Victimization Syndrome.
What a load of BS you’re peddling.
Bender
@burnspbesq:
Of course, they had some ability. They would’ve had every Democrat and some Republicans. But the presiding party usually gets first shot.
They certainly would’ve passed the >$800B version the next year.
Roger Moore
Not all errors are created equal. Errors that favor the powers that be are rarely punished and often rewarded, while those that favor the little guy are often punished severely. As long as McMegan’s
liesmistakes lean the right way, they’re unlikely to cost her anything more than a bit of embarrassment- assuming she has enough shame to feel embarrassed.matt
Pink Himalayan Salt !!!!!
matt
Pink Himalayan Salt !!!!!
Downpuppy
For the Levenson doubters: He torpedoed this rowboat on Monday!
B W Smith
@Bender: What next year, Bender? The bill was passed in 2003. It went into effect in 2006. I don’t think the Dems got the House until January 2007.
Comrade Javamanphil
Let’s be fair here. Those were 9 REALLY BIG Democrats!
Amir_Khalid
Spare yourself the pointless high dudgeon, Ol’ Dirty DougJ. It’s shameful that the Atlantic Monthly bans blog commenters who point out Megan McArdle’s errors, but it shows how little they care about those errors. If by now they still haven’t sacked her for being constantly wrong, most likely they never will. She’s a poseur (poseuse?); the people who read her credulously are likely poseurs and poseuses too. Most likely it’s a demographic that pulls in the big advertising bucks.
Pointing out her errors is worthwhile and entertaining. Don’t stop doing that. But as for hoping that the Atlantic will sack her, as much as she deserves it, you and Jonathan Chait and Tom Levenson could huff and you lot could puff until the cows came home, and you still ain’t gonna blow that house down.
Zagloba
Is there a reason you aren’t linking to this quote? In any case, McMegan did endorse Obama in the primaries, which doesn’t change the fact that she has consistently shit on everything Democrats have done since November 4th in the most fact-free fashion possible. And judging by the memeorandum trees, responses to McMegan posts are three parts RWEC-thisses and one part lib facepalmery.
KadeKo
@Stefan: Maybe she got one of those special mailers from some right-wing non-aligned independent issue PAC reminding her to “vote on Tuesday, November 11th”.
trollhattan
@JPL:
Has she ever apologized for anything, ever? I mean other than the standard, “I’m sorry you misunderstood what I wrote so let me apologize on your behalf for your obvious shortoming in this regard” non-apology apology.
JPL
@Bender: Really, Really, I can make up shit because if I had voted I would have voted for him?
Really, Really
Southern Beale
Look. There are two rules of our modern political discourse:
1- Everything is always the Democrats’ fault.
2- IOKIYAR
That’s really all you need to know.
Bender
@Bender:
I was in the process of editing my last comment when I had to take a call…sorry.
It’s not irrelevant if Chait is somehow trying to paint the Democrats as “the party that didn’t spend $400B on Plan D.” It’s more than a little dishonest never to mention (or perhaps he is ignorant?) the Dem’s proposal and that Bush was criticized from the left for this bill being too small.
Did Bush cover himself in glory with conservatives for Medicare Part D? Of course not! Is Megan an idiot? Of Course! But for Chait to plan the wide-eyed innocent card here is silly. He knows exactly what Megan meant.
Another Bob
Fired? That’s how conservative hacks get hired or promoted nowadays. And I don’t think they’re “errors;” I think it’s completely intentional. If they were honest errors, they’d go both ways. As it is, her “errors” only ever end up supporting her “libertarian” (i.e. Republican) ideology.
pragmatism
someone get bender a shovel. he’s digging a hole.
David
@pragmatism: He appears to have no concept of a budget or what the deficit is…pretty typical for today’s GOP unfortunately.
Ken
JR @13:
Indeed, making everything up is necessary to appeal to conservatives. You can’t use facts since reality, as we all know, has a liberal bias.
Fencedude
@Bender:
I’m pretty sure this falls under the heading of being a disingenuous asshole.
But thanks for playing Bender.
(BTW, the size of the bill isn’t the problem, it was its unfunded nature)
NonyNony
@Bender:
Actually it was criticized from the left for being a giant giveaway to pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies while being a bad deal for tax payers. But you know, keep on dreaming the dream.
I mean it’s not like Chait even mentions this, or the fact that Republicans had to ditch PAYGO so they could pass this monstrosity on the credit card without having to pay for it.
Oh wait – yeah he did mention it. Smell that fiscal responsibility!
The trolls around here have become a joke. Back in the day DougJ could out troll any of the half-ass trolls we get here these days. And in those days I had to walk up hill both ways to read this damn blog.
honus
@Bender: even assuming arguendo (Burns will explain) you are correct, Bush could have vetoed the bill. I love your presumption that the republicans knew the democrats would displace their permanent majority in 2006. It barely happened in the senate. Webb won by a whole 3000 votes here in Virginia against GOP Presidential Hopeful George Allen.
Southern Beale
I’m sorry but it is the grossest distortion of historical fact to say Democrats are somehow responsible for Medicare Part D. It just is. This isn’t “agree to disagree” stuff, it’s I’m right and you’re wrong. End of discussion.
Villago Delenda Est
@pragmatism:
Shovel, my ass.
The stupid motherfucker needs a backhoe for the hole he’s digging himself into.
jimmiraybob
When faced with the trilemma of, they must be stupid or ill-informed or a moron, I will just refer to it as the Megan Syndrome. In the end, the cause of each incredible fact-challenged blow to reality really doesn’t matter. The end result is to melt through the containment and off gas extremely toxic radioactive spew while hoping the wind is blowing briskly in the direction of the enemy.
pragmatism
sully piles on:
“It took Megan a couple of years to pursue this meme. Glenn Reynolds was doing it from Day One.”
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/08/bush-caused-the-deficit.html
honus
@Bender: @Bender: “Did Bush cover himself in glory with conservatives for Medicare Part D? Of course not! Is Megan an idiot? Of Course! But for Chait to plan the wide-eyed innocent card here is silly. He knows exactly what Megan meant”
Maybe you and Megan know what she meant, but those of us in the reality-based community realize how ridiculous it is to suggest that the democrats forced the Bush and the republicans to do anything between 2002 and 2006.
Oh, and the Democrats wanted to fund their bill and allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, which would have not added to the deficit.
map106
@Bender:
Of course, the Democrats in 2003, when the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, was passed, part of which was the PDP, which went into effect on January 1, 2006, would know that they would control Congress after the election in November, 2006.
And Another Thing...
@Bender: “…But for Chait to plan the wide-eyed innocent card here is silly. He knows exactly what Megan meant.”
HaHaHaHaHa…
Chait’s pretty good, but reading Megan’s “mind”…. ha ha
And demonstrably, one of Megan’s problem is that Megan doesn’t know what Megan means….
Backing Megan is just stupid…you can’t rely on her “facts” and you have to seriously contort your “logic.” Leaving your credibility shredded on the floor.
Stop digging.
honus
@Bender: “Of course, they had some ability. They would’ve had every Democrat and some Republicans. But the presiding party usually gets first shot.
They certainly would’ve passed the >$800B version the next year.”
So your contention is the democrats would have passed their bill in 2004, after Bush received his mandate to dismantle Social Security, and they lost seats in the House and Senate. Good Point.
cthulhu
@Bender: The Bush II White House with strong-arming by Turblossom himself were a LOT more committed to Medicare Part D, not because they were trying to avoid a near-horizon Dem proposal but as another avenue to assuring Bush’s re-election in 2004. Remember, those guys were convinced that they were creating a permanent GOP majority and would not really need to worry about what Dems might want ever again.
TooManyJens
She won’t apologize. It’ll be all “gastritis broke my whip count!” and “you can’t expect me to remember all the way back to when Bush was President.” She’ll make it sound like it’s your fault for noticing. You big bully.
rikyrah
.
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA
As a Black woman, I don’t wanna hear nothing about Affirmative Action.
McArdle, like Palin, is like salt in the wound, because it’s one thing to know about White Privilege. It’s something altogether different, to see it in living color, in the physical personage of the White Mediocrity that is Sarah Palin and McArdle.
You will NEVER convince me that there’s not a Black person out there, with a Masters in Economics, that can put 10 sentences together in a paragraph that would, say, GET THE FACTS STRAIGHT.
You will NEVER convince me that she was the MOST QUALIFIED FOR THE JOB.
G-T-F-O-H.
Turgidson
@Southern Beale:
What’s that quote on “it’s hard to get someone to understand something when his (her) livelihood depends on him (her) not understanding it”…? I think that explains a whole lot of McMegan’s blog vomit.
That, and she’s a moron and a clown.
TuiMel
@Bender:
hahahahahahahahahahahahhahaha
That’s a real knee slapper that one is.
Turgidson
@pragmatism:
I have to admit – I was a strident member of the “stop expecting Sullivan to be sane” crowd and was thrilled to see him get recategorized to the mock pile on the blog roll. But he’s been working hard lately to get out of the doghouse, saying sane things, making sense. Sadly, we know from experience that it won’t last and he’ll remind us he’s an innumerate clown at any moment by developing a crush on some right-wing nutjob who can speak in complete sentences about fucking the poor like Ryan did.
Smiling Mortician
@Turgidson:
Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
pragmatism
@Turgidson: Well put. I expect him to disappoint so I’m pleasantly surprised when he makes sense.
Pat
Distorting the facts all the time, and in as many different ways as is possible is a job requirement if you are to succeed in American “journalism” today. She won’t be going anywhere because she is a very useful tool.
themanintheguyfawkesmask
True story. I once misspelled someone’s name in an article. I thought i was going to be fired. How McArdle keeps her job despite being demonstrably wrong over and over is a sad testament to the state of journalism.
Turgidson
@Pat:
It would be one thing if McMegan merely distorted facts. She just completely ignores them and substitutes ones she likes better. And then still gets the arithmetic wrong on top of it. Impressive stuff, eh?
El Cid
Clearly it was Obama’s fault that revenues — yes, revenue, which are scandalously related to deficits and debts, in this wacky world — collapsed after, well, the economic collapse.
HyperIon
@Downpuppy (god bless you for being present, reply thingy) wrote:
Thanks for noticing, Downpuppy.
But we’re a little slow around here. Got to post twice to be sure!
Of course, Levenson’s takedown was more substantive IMO. And lacked the “you Atlantic bloggers must denounce McMegan” angle.
Isidor
Not sure about Chinese economics bloggers, but they do have officials that say things like “Whether or not you believe it; either way, I believe it.” That might provide you some hope.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
That would be pink Himalayan salt, yes?
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
That would be pink Himalayan salt, yes?
Larv
Bender, you seem to be trying to claim that any spending on traditional Democratic issues like healthcare can be laid at the feet of the Dems because they would have done the same or more if they were in power (even if they weren’t). Nice try, but no. Bush and the Repubs didn’t pass Medicare part D to try and forestall the Dems from doing something more expensive, they passed it because they thought it would gain them political advantage. Plain and simple. Because they thought it would be popular with seniors and the pharma lobby, and also cut into the traditional Dem dominance of the healthcare debate. Any bullshit about they had to do it to keep the eeevil Democrats from spending even more of your precious tax dollars is just weak blame-shifting.
Southern Beale
@rikyrah:
LOL. Good point. Yeah let’s please remember these things next time some dufus talks about how awful affirmative action is? Let’s remember the legacy elites like Jonah Goldberg, Dan Quayle, George W. Bush …. people who were born to the “right” families and have had everything handed to them, despite their obvious unworthiness.
biggerbox
Poor McMegan.
Just when she was finally figuring out how to use a calculator, now you expect her to be able to use the Google machine TOO?
Sheesh.
Mayur
Are you guys really giving Bender so much of a pass as to not bother with asking for a fucking citation?
Go dismantle yourself and let Flexo take over, moron.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
One of the following statements MUST be true:
1. The Atlantic is a piece of shite for keeping her on the payroll.
2. She has a few dozen 8×10 color photos of the editorial board cavorting with goats.
Samara Morgan
@PeakVT:
the frontpagers had to drop it, because of Extreme Hypocrisy.
Into the Memory Hole!
Samara Morgan
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: no….the Atlantic is a glibertarian chatt roul3tte c1rcle jerk, just exactly like Balloon Juice.
Kain and de Bore are Our Very Own McArdles.
Joe
This attack on McArdle makes no sense. All Obama needed to do was use his veto pen to stop the extension of the Bush tax cuts.
Megan’s absolutely correct. The moment Obama signed, rather than veto, the Bush tax rates extension, they became the Obama tax rates.
hells littlest angel
How many fucking factual errors does this moron have to make before she is fired?
Megan’s calculator doesn’t go that high.
TooManyJens
@Joe:
Which, contra McArdle, is accounted for in the graph she’s criticizing.
Samara Morgan
@Joe: read some game theory ‘tard.
ummm…..if you can.
:)
No one of Importance
@Mayur:
For why he likes pie so much? I’d have thought that was self-explanatory.
russell
McArdle is the Randian Marie Antoinette.
FlipYrWhig
@Zagloba:
At first I read this as
And I didn’t think twice about it.
Bruce S
I admit to being an Atlantic subscriber, but it’s a very mixed bag of a mag – and the publisher is a neo-con asshole. McArdle isn’t a flaw at the Atlantic – she’s a feature.
There’s a fair amount of good stuff there, and a whole lot of crap. “Scroll button…”
Bruce S
Didn’t the George W. Bush presidency pretty much put that one to bed? If that wasn’t affirmative action for white folks, I don’t know what the hell was…
Anne Laurie
Hahahahaha. Rickyrah has it half right — McArdle has her job because she’s a (white) woman, and the people who sign her paycheck want to believe that “girls can’t handle numbers”. Megan mouths her Wingnut Wurlitzer talking points very, very rigorously (which gives her paymasters a warm feeling Down There); we cruel DFHs lambaste her innumeracy; Megan bats her metaphorical eyelashes, pouts, and raises her voice another octave to whine about her gastritis and some peoples determination to punish their intellectual enemies via overrigorousness; the Glibertarian Boyz remind each other that (a) DFHs are mean, insensitive brutes; and (b) what more can you expect from a chick, really?, but hell, affirmative action!
If they hired a woman who actually put some effort into doing the numbers correctly — and, let’s face it, the male/female ratio among Libertarians is worse than that in the Alaskan bush, speaking of Gov. Half-Term — they wouldn’t be able to use her as an example of how “affirmative action just embarrasses its recipients”. You think Clarence Thomas got his seat because Little Nino expected him to take up valuable court time asking questions and raising issues about Fox News?
The Tragically Flip
2003- Republicans pass a major health bill. It is not costed or paid for other than through deficit spending.
2010- Democrats pass a major health bill. It is fully costed by tax increases and spending offsets.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the proposals by Democrats c2001-2003 did not specify costing mechanisms. They were policy proposals for debate, not governing pieces of legislation. But when it came time for Team D to do that, they costed and paid for their bill like how a serious governing party should.
TenguPhule
One of these words does not belong. One of these words is not like the others.
Put the Bong down and try again.
Howlin Wolfe
@Bender: Sure, Bender. And Bush would have signed it right? I mean, it’s not like he EVER vetoed the Democratic bills.
I’m not sure, but I think the Democrats’ bill would have been funded with a revenue source.
Raul
haha, that’s a pertinent clarification, but so is the observation that Medicare Part D was passed under pressure from industry, which stood to earn huge profit windfalls by neutering the government’s power to bargain with pharmaceuticals. Similarly, Obama’s health care plan will translate into huge windfall profits for industry, as he forces private citizens, for the first time in history I should add, to give their hard earned money to crooked insurance companies.
So, sure, McArdle is wrong in her argument, but Bush and Obama both legislate to benefit industry on the backs of the taxpayer. How are they not different in this respect (let alone foreign policy and civil liberties)?
You guys are such fanatics… all of you.
Tone In DC
@jimmiraybob:
Good one, dude.
Trilemma, heh, indeed.