McMegan weighs in on Jeffrey Goldberg’s Komen-tary below. She uses the word “fungible” without irony, if you wanted a hint as to where she comes down.
I’m still snarked out from Rubin, myself.
Open thread then.
by Zandar| 128 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, We Are All Mayans Now
McMegan weighs in on Jeffrey Goldberg’s Komen-tary below. She uses the word “fungible” without irony, if you wanted a hint as to where she comes down.
I’m still snarked out from Rubin, myself.
Open thread then.
Comments are closed.
trollhattan
Nuh-uh, not gettin’ off the boat.
Also, too, “Gasland” filmmaker gets arrested trying to film House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/house-republicans-order-j_n_1246971.html
The Republican House acts more like the Cheney administration all the time.
General Stuck
I just read that, and my jaw is still on the floor. Megan outdid any records she may have previously set for inane circular logic. And example
Sack of hammers
Napoleon
I refuse give her a page view to figure out what you are saying.
schrodinger's cat
Well as is her wont, she is comforting the comfortable. Idiot.
Culture of Truth
“Fungible,” meaning
ZOMG MAH DOLARZ HAZ PAD 4 ABORSHUNZ!1!!!111!!
Sammi
Buffalo Beast posted his 50 most loathsome Americans for 2011.
Tom Levenson
Got out of the boat. Am now dumber. Hope to recover. But I blame you, Zander.
trollhattan
@Tom Levenson:
It’s hard to drive past McMegan without at least slowing down, because not only is she like an interstate wreck in flames, the flames are purple and green.
Culture of Truth
All flames this week must be blue and red
Chyron HR
And yet the very board of the Ribbons for Fascism Foundation says the opposite. Go figure.
R-Jud
@Tom Levenson: There’s usually something interesting here.
Or, if not, there’s the old standby. I’m sure the piglet in the banner has more insight into business and economics than McWharrrgarble.
JPL
I am so disappointed that the rumor about Trump endorsing Gingrich is wrong. I was so looking forward to the two campaigning together. Sarah could join them for a threesome. Some would want to pay to watch that I suppose.
Rusty
Was there a word count required on that piece that she had to include this throwaway line which only makes her look more McMegan-ish?
jl
I hate to pollute this very dignified blog of refined political commentary with news about egregious and dangerous political clowns.
But Trump endorses
NewtRomneyNewtRomney?And Romney is going to make a big appearance with a multiple bankrupt, ethically sketchy, reality show tycoon who is famously associated with the tagline ‘You’re Fired!” ? ? ?
Is this real? I don’t remember eating any funny mushrooms last night, so?
Will Chuck Todd be very very worried and highly concerned about a sleazy reality show fake tycoon (who apparently shaped his presidential campaign stunts to fit his effing TV contract) corrupting the laughable dignity and fetid integrity of our political institutions, which Todd respects and loves? Enguiring minds want to know.
JPL
The Komen Foundation said that the fact that Planned Parenthood provided abortions had nothing to do with their decision. I guess McMegan couldn’t take the time to read their statement. She had a tendency to just jabber on inanely.
jibeaux
To the extent I can decipher Rep. McWhackadoodle’s statements, there are 2 possible interpretations of this “fungibility” argument —
“Here, son, take this $10, but spend it on books, not toys.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Son is playing with a new toy.
“Didn’t I tell you to spend that on books, not toys?”
“I did. I spent all $10 on books. Here they are, see? And here’s the receipt. I bought this with my lawn-mowing money.”
1. “But how do I know you didn’t spend MY $10 on the toy and YOUR money on the books?
or 2. “But you were probably going to buy books with your money anyway. MY money has enabled you to instead buy the toy because you didn’t have to use your money for books!”
Both are monumentally idiotic legal arguments, but I can’t figure out which one they’re trying to sell.
kindness
Sadly I can not comment on McMegan’s site. They didn’t approve of me calling her a hack. Obviously, she’s still a hack.
ruemara
Drive stolen/lost. Faith in humanity diminished, as is my wallet. The petty nonsense of American politics pales in comparison to my own dramas. Because I’m as narcissistic as any politician. But I would like my drive back from wherever it is.
scav
@trollhattan: All those burning salts.
Tom Levenson
@R-Jud: Thanks.
I needed that.
jibeaux
@General Stuck: Not the brightest crayon in the box. More of a navy, maybe.
fasteddie9318
Nice try, but I knew exactly where she would come down after I read “McMegan.” You could do Mad Libs to her writing.
chopper
@jibeaux:
the next day, dad gives the kid 10 bucks for books. kid buys 10 bucks worth of books and also a dime bag with his own money, gets caught and dad gets hauled in as an accessory. cop says ‘sorry pal, money is fungible!’
MattF
Good old McM. When she gets to run an organization, all the money goes into one pot and gets spent at will. Hey, fungible-fungible.
jibeaux
@General Stuck: By this “logic”, any funding anywhere, any time, to any organization, that isn’t in the form of sheep and bolts of cloth, can be investigated and found wanting.
Mnemosyne
@jibeaux:
I think they’re trying to sell argument #2 — “If I hadn’t given you the money for books, you would have spent your own money on books and not been able to buy that toy!”
jibeaux
@chopper: Someone tried to argue on a friend’s FB feed that previously Komen was exposing itself to liability because if someone died during an abortion, the family could file a civil suit against Komen. How many blows to the head do you have to have had to believe that?
Nancy
This question is sincere. Why do the xtianist get to control what tax money supports but pacifists don’t get to decide that none of their money can go to support war?
Paul in KY
Was she talking about her vajayjay when she used ‘fungible’?
jibeaux
@Mnemosyne: That’s the way I took it too, because he made some statement that read to me that way. But they also talk about commingling of funds, and it doesn’t make any sense to try to get them to produce a bunch of financial documents unless you’re trying to show commingling or mismanagement of funds. *GASP* Is it possible they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about and this is a politically motivated witch hunt?
fasteddie9318
My favorite new piece of knowledge to come out of this whole thing is that Komen apparently spends about a million per year suing smaller charities that use some variation on “for the cure” in their names. I don’t know about anybody else, but this seems like a perfectly reasonable and not in any way abusive or frivolous use of my donation money. I’d ask Komen to assure me that they’ve never used my donations for that purpose, but, gosh, money is fungible, amirite?
jl
@chopper: Thanks. I was going to type something like that, but you beat me to it with a better example.
Taken to the extreme that the McArdles want to, and I think also the bad faith artist anti choice forces (though they won;t admit it) then reasoning like
“you are murdering poor people when you eat a nice restaurant dinner” is around the corner. After all, money is fungible. Even if you gave 10 percent of your income to charity, you could have given 10 percent plus 50 bucks if you had not hogged down the eatery grub.
I hope some one can come up with an example that will infuriate the anti choice wingers, and lure McArdle into humiliating herself over several posts parsing the periods and splicing the idiot logic.
I can’t right now. Events have fried my brain. I just looked out the window and the sky is bright orange, the sun has turned into a fluorescent beach ball bouncing off the moon. I think something has gone wrong.
daveNYC
I’m actually OK with the whole fungible argument. It basically brings even more focus on the fact that Komen is throwing women under the bus because abortions (and if it weren’t abortions, what are the chances that they’d be screaming about birth control) are double-plus ungood.
R-Jud
@Paul in KY: “Fungal”, surely?
dmsilev
McMegan proves that stupidity is also fungible.
pseudonymous in nc
Since money is fungible, we can conclude that buying Pink Himalayan Salt is probably helping to fund the Pakistani Taliban.
Paul in KY
@R-Jud: Or ‘fungus’. This enquiring mind does not want to know.
Steve
It is truly amazing how many liberal positions Megan claims to support without managing to care the slightest bit about whether any of them actually succeed. She’s such a principled moderate!
jl
@Nancy:
” Why do the xtianist get to control what tax money supports but pacifists don’t get to decide that none of their money can go to support war? ”
Because the God granted the Xtianists the power to determine, from their armchairs, what is innocent and what is non innocent life.
And because, Shut UP!, that’s why.
And Chuck Todd will be concerned about some idiot confusion and massive clot of ignorance in his head.
Culture of Truth
I get the fungible argument. Indeed, crediting it, Komen pulled their funding because they don’t want even the possibility that their money would make it easier, and not, say, harder, for some women, somewhere in the world, to get an abortion they decided they wanted and/or needed. That’s Komen’s right, but it’s an ideological choice, and one not without some consequences.
pseudonymous in nc
And it’s a testament to McAddled’s witlessness that she doesn’t give a fig about the structures that PP has in place to keep its operations separate. This isn’t the same as logging into your bank and transferring funds from the Pink Himalayan Salt account into the Overpriced Kitchen Appliance account.
Culture of Truth
Indeed, some portion of your donation goes to protecting the Komen brand legally.
burnspbesq
@ruemara:
Sorry to hear that. Sucks. Hope you didn’t lose any mission-critical data, or can reconstruct.
Since I’ve been out on my own, I have become utterly paranoid about data security. I chose Wuala as my cloud storage provider.
scav
Jaysus, I just clued in on the whole Trump dating debacle and I could have used a laugh in real-time.
pragmatism
from mcmeg’s comments: BofA is under investigation, will SGK cease partnering with them?
Zandar
McMegan is breathing my fungible air. I demand air integrity.
burnspbesq
Jeez. And I was just going to compliment Megan for a good piece of reporting on AMR’s attempt to screw all of its union employees by terminating its pension plans while in bankruptcy. Oh well.
Note to Zandar: any insight on whether Good Dre or Bad Dre is showing up tonight?
liberal
Sadly enough, many commenters under her post agree with her.
Re fungibility, I liked this comment:
Culture of Truth
The claim that Komen pulled its funding because of a new investigation policy is so stupid no one even pays attention to it.
prufrock
I’m a defense contractor who works for a very large defense company. I’m sure the government auditors won’t mind if I misuse the five or so charge numbers I have for different tasks. After all, it’s government money and it all comes from the same place, right?
gogol's wife
Since this is an open thread, I just want to say what a great blog this is, which provided a place to mourn Don Cornelius with all those wonderful videos. I’m still sad, but was able to relive part of my youth here. No one else would know what I was talking about if I tried to mourn Don Cornelius in my real world.
jl
@liberal: Thanks, that is good one. By this extreme use of the fungibility argument, ANY dollar put under the control and ANY institution with ANY relationship to a religious organization is a violation of church and state.
And, any tax break given to any church.
jibeaux
@Culture of Truth: But it’s not Komen making the fungibility argument. It’s Rep. McWhackadoodle. Say the feds give a grant to a university to study a promising new cancer treatment — money is fungible — voila the taxpayers have paid for Zumba classes for undergrads. It’s beyond idiotic.
trollhattan
@prufrock:
I demand you spend all that money and more, preventing any potential cost savings from going to climate change research.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Napoleon:
This. The sooner her page hits dry up to nothing, the sooner she’ll be shit canned. Of course she’ll end up somewhere else to spew the same nonsense…
jl
@prufrock: You bring a point that I wondered about.
Is McArdle confusing fungibility wtih comingling?
Seems to me that she is either making a very extreme and implausible claim about the implications of fungibility.
Or she is accusing Planned Parenthood of fraud: comingling funds and using them in violation of its agreements with contributors.
Culture of Truth
Suppose you found out a local soup kitchen was also funding an anti-choice group. Would you still give them money?
Culture of Truth
I don’t believe them.
burnspbesq
@prufrock:
Well, no. Part of the reason why your contracts are thousands of pages long is that the restrictions on what you can do with which funds are spelled out in excruciating detail.
If you make a contribution to a charity and don’t earmark it for a particular program or activity, it goes into the big pot. And contrary to what some folks around here would like to believe, the contents of the big pot are fungible. Every dollar in the big pot is the same color and the same value.
Look, y’all, if you want to hate Megan, fine. But don’t do it for stupid reasons. Why play down to the level of the opposition?
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq:
I wish I could come up with a snarky analogy, but my head hurts too much from the dissonance here. “Paranoid about data security” and “cloud storage” in the same paragraph. Ha!
jl
All the logic chopping about comingling and fungibility and counting ethical angels on a pin head should not obscure another angle.
Which is, it appears that Komen bald face lied to the public about their action.
They didn’t have the guts to say that they decided not to fund any organization that is related to abortion in any way.
They have the right to do that. But public has the right to ridicule and condemn them for their stupid actions and corrupt dishonest statements.
Linda Featheringill
@ruemara:
Sorry, Babe. Did/do you have good insurance?
I’ve been through the stolen-car-with-only-liability-insurance thing. Don’t want to do that again.
[hug]
jl
@burnspbesq:
” And contrary to what some folks around here would like to believe, the contents of the big pot are fungible. ”
Dude, I think everyone here understands that. The question is what is a reasonable ethical implication of an organization having access to fungible resources from other contributors, when you have restricted the fungibility of your contributions.
The reasoning of the Komen suporters is very extreme, and I think it is fair to point that out.
But, as I said above, looks like Komen downright lied to the public. They did not have the guts to explain their decision honestly and they lied. That might be more important focus.
burnspbesq
@Gin & Tonic:
Someday you might want to engage brain before turning fingers loose on keyboard. Alternatively, you might want to actually make an effort to understand the differences between the security measures taken by the various cloud-storage providers.
Culture of Truth
I think it’s ridiculous too, but to me it’s obvious Komen and the people pressuring them this is about more than fungibility, they are trying to send a message, which makes sense for a boycott based on ideology.
burnspbesq
@jl:
That, to me, is a very simple question. Donors rule. If you as an organization can’t abide by the restrictions they want to impose on how you use their money, don’t take their money.
Ben Cisco
I just got sent a link to this column (it’s from last November), but DAMN!
__
Kinda fits what’s going on at the moment…
__
McMegan wouldn’t even need her calculator, which is OK, given the gastritis and all…
Mark S.
@pragmatism:
No.
kay
@Culture of Truth:
The problem with fungibility is if it’s about abortion, then they lied to their donors yesterday.
Not that Megan knows that. A lot of the facts here seem to have sailed right over her head. She’s defending something Komen denied doing.
pragmatism
@Mark S.: SATSQ indeed
The Moar You Know
I’m refusing to provide McArgleBargle any page hits.
She manages the feat of being simultaneously illiterate, innumerate, and a crazy hoarder – and consistently manages to prove all three in every single column she pens. Not sure how you can fail at so many things at the same time, but somehow that’s what has happened. Kind of a damning comment on the Atlantic that she’s one of their “crown jewels”.
Supposedly she’s got some kind of degree. What a disgrace to that institution of so-called higher learning.
Culture of Truth
I would also add, forcefully arguing that PP does in fact segregate funds, even if true, tacitly endorses the idea there is something wrong with funding abortion.
JGabriel
McMegan:
It’s hilarious. McMegan walks right up to the problem, looks around each side of it, looks right through it — like someone in a movie looking at a person with an invisibility ring/cloak/spell — then turns around and walks in the opposite direction.
Yep, Megan, the person who hired Mandel, the SGK board, founder and GOP power fund-raiser Nancy Brinker, et. al., all knew what they were doing and consciously chose to defund Planned Parenthood. SGK is the only one denying it.
The decision is political, but the issue, you rich clueless twit, is branding.
Prior to this incident, most people perceived SGK as a non-political foundation for the support of breast cancer patients, pursuing a cure and working to prevent breast cancer deaths through awareness and early diagnosis programs. This was despite mounting evidence and reports that SGK was a conservative-leaning organization with a hidden agenda of lobbying to protect corporate use of carcinogenic pollutants and block government funding of health care measures in favor of private giving like that from SGK.
SGK’s defunding move against Planned Parenthood broke the dam on that information. Until now, most people ignored it in favor of SGK’s pro-cure messaging. But since SGK’s and Planned Parenthood’s core givers broadly overlap, the move to defund was bound to be controversial among the very people who have funded SGK with their individual donations and efforts for the past 30 years.
The result is that what SGK signifies as a brand has now changed — from a non-political breast foundation to a politically conservative Republican foundation with a hidden agenda masked by a cynical manipulation of women’s breast cancer concerns.
So McMegan walks up to this fiasco, looks at it, says, “Well, it’s okay, they knew what they were doing,” and completely misses the issue that SGK utterly changed the way people perceive it — it’s brand — and may well have destroyed itself in the process. That SGK’s brand was deceptive and misleading, and that this results in a more accurate view of SGK is what makes it so schadenfreudeliciously (and if it that’s not a word it should be) fascinating.
And, of course, the long-running misappropriation of people’s trust is what makes the incident so tragic and infuriating to the people who supported SGK over the years.
.
trollhattan
@burnspbesq:
I used to work for a community development nonprofit and “unrestricted funds” were almost non-existant, less than 5% or total finances. Funding came from federal (several departments), state (ditto), corporations, foundations and the community (via fundraisers). That 95+% was for certain activities and expenses and had an accounting trail. We accounted for where every dollar was spent (and followed discrete sets of rule for federal, state and private sector monies).
It would be SOP for PP to track precisely how any SEK dollars were spent–adhering to whatever guidelines were attached to the funds–and for McMegan or anybody else to imply otherwise is either dishonesty or barking ignorance.
slag
Yes. Money is fungible. I’m glad Planned Parenthood is there to help poor women who would otherwise have to choose between feeding their unplanned children or getting that mammogram they need. Thank you, Planned Parenthood!
JPL
I am so impressed with the number of posters who attempted to analyze McMegan’s post. All I got from the post was yadda,yadda,yadda abortion, yadda, yadda, yadda abortion. You guys are truly exceptional.
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq: I don’t comment on the law, which I know next to nothing about. Data security, on the other hand… let’s just say my brain is regularly engaged.
Culture of Truth
I believe they did lie, and that is worse. But I can’t prove it, so it’s not worth fighting over.
jibeaux
@Culture of Truth: Are they the only soup kitchen around and can I successfully specify that my donation is for food? Then yes. If Komen had wanted to give that pool of money to a competing national organization that provides health services on a sliding scale to women in need but doesn’t do abortions, I wouldn’t care. The women could still get the services Komen was funding, which is the issue, not abortion. Komen cannot do this, even if it wanted to, because there *is* no nationwide competitor for Planned Parenthood.
batgirl
All you need to know about McMegan is that she can afford an abortion, even if it were to become illegal. Or in other words: IGMFU
shortstop
Kind of silly to argue about “big pots” and unrestricted donations and fungibility and commingling at all. McArdle is the only one making the suggestion — pulled, as is her wont, from her ass — that the funds PP got for breast cancer screening were used for anything but breast cancer screening. Certainly SGK has made no such suggestion despite having aired at least two contradictory rationales for defunding PP.
ABL 2.0
Oh fuck you, lady. It’s more likely that a considerable portion of their donor base, at one point or another, couldn’t fucking afford health insurance and went to Planned Parenthood for yearly paps and other non-abortion services.
But I guess Miss 1500 Dollar Food Processor wouldn’t know anything about that.
Fuck her. Repeatedly and with prejudice.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
As the Sages say… so the fuck what?
Abortion is LEGAL in this country. So it is LEGAL to ‘fund abortion provision’, regardless of the particular superstitions of certain Congresscritters.
Just in case McMegan wasn’t aware.
More proof that MBA skillz, unlike money, are not ‘fungible’.
JGabriel
SGK says it defunded Planned Parenthood’s breast screening program because of it’s (brand new!) policy not to give money to organizations under investigation by political bodies.
Question: If a Democratic Rep. opens an investigation into whether SGK has broken any laws in its political giving or lobbying efforts, with SGK have to defund itself? Or turn down all contributions until the investigation clears them of charges?
Curious minds want to know. Perhaps some enterprising House Rep. could open up an investigation of SGK to find out?
.
JGabriel
jl:
Maybe Trump doesn’t like Mitt and thought that would be the best way to hurt Romney?
.
Tonal Crow
@trollhattan:
As one gets from burning chromated copper arsenate-treated wood. Yet more evidence that Republicans are toxic.
KG
@jibeaux: they’re trying to sell a third argument. The argument goes: even if you’re not using this money for A but rather for B, the money used for B frees up additional money to be spent on A. Basically, by giving them money that they use for rent or to pay the electric bill or for office staff wages or for anythingotherthanabortion, that frees up money that can be used on abortion.
Personally, I think it’s stupid. Abortion is legal, it should be safe and it should be rare. And from everything anyone with an IQ above room temperature in Wisconsin in December can figure out, abortion is a small part of what PP does anyways.
jpm
@Culture of Truth.
Segregating funds doesn’t say anything about PP’s opinion of the matter. It only recognizes the reality that some donors (and the US Gov’t) are willing to fund some of PP’s activities, but not all. It’s a practice that is respectful of diverse opinions without expressing one.
And it’s not a “forceful” argument. It’s simply a fact.
Tonal Crow
@jl:
Why the hell not? Teatards love The Trump, especially when he sounds (off).
JMC
@Culture of Truth.
Segregating funds doesn’t say anything about PP’s opinion of the matter. It only recognizes the reality that some donors (and the US Gov’t) are willing to fund some of PP’s activities, but not all. It’s a practice that is respectful of diverse opinions without expressing one.
And it’s not a “forceful” argument. It’s simply a fact.
Culture of Truth
I’m not sure I would, but I see your point.
You make a good point, but I would guess some progressives would see it differently. Komen is acting like ideological jackasses, but what’s worse, for most liberals, obviously, they’ve also picked the wrong side, so it’s hard to separate.
In that sense, trust really is not segregable. You either have it, or you don’t.
prufrock
@trollhattan:
Well, I am responding to this at work.
In my defense, I offer this:
http://xkcd.com/303/
trollhattan
For open thread–in case anyone needed another reason to prefer Costco to WalMart.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politicsnorthwest/2017398133_obama_to_attend_fundraisers_at.html
Rosalita
…and Mayor Bloomberg is giving $250,000 to Planned Parenthood.
trollhattan
@prufrock:
“Opportunity cost!”
IM
Another 250,000 $ to PP from Bloomberg:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/bloomberg-politics-have-no-place-in-health-care
pseudonymous in nc
(Having scanned the comments, I do find it continually fascinating that Megan’s fanbase is basically a bunch of socially deficient young men who really don’t like women’s autonomy.)
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
Technically OT, but IMO this fits into the new “GOP War on the Women” narrative. Boehner’s claiming that the new ACA provisions regarding birth control are unconstitutional.
They really are going all-in on the same ole Culture War tropes. Birth control? Seriously? That’s the hill that the GOP wants to die on?
jibeaux
@KG: Right, I think that’s my #2. My problem with that argument is that it’s a philosophical argument, it’s an “it’s all in how you look at it” argumen, but it can’t possibly be an argument to investigate their finances. It’s an argument in favor of no federal funds going to PP, which is of course what Rep. McWhackadoodle really wants, and you could agree with it 100% but how the hell does that make any federal funding for PP in violation of the Hyde amendment? It can’t. Only misappropriation, comingling, that sort of financial mismanagement could be actionable, and my understanding is that their audits are just fine.
prufrock
@jl:
Entirely possible. She may be suffering from an attack of gastritis as I type this!
Louise
Like @pragmatism and JGabriel have said, why can’t we get an investigation going (or point out one that is already going) against an organization with which SGK *wants* to partner? I would pay good money, possibly even to SGK, to see Nancy Brinker asked about *that* live on the air.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@prufrock:
Heh, I have that printed out and on my wall.
(Though for me, it’s usually simulations. They take 15-20 mins apiece to run.)
jibeaux
@Culture of Truth:
Probably, but see Komen would have never given PP grants in the first place if there were anyone less “polarizing” to give them to doing the same work. It’s apparently something they’ve discussed for years to try to placate the righties, but they’ve never identified anyone else to give it to. So they just decided to stop altogether. And wake up that sleeping giant. Because unlike the House of Representatives blustering on and on about PP, there’s very little action to take there. We can’t boycott taxes until they stop being asshats. But there are how many different cancer charities we can give our money to?
DMcK
Shorter McMegan: “As long as the interests of the corporate cancer industry are protected, a few dead welfare queens are an acceptable price to pay.”
pseudonymous in nc
@jibeaux:
Example here: the PP in Waco, which co-ordinates with Medicaid over a 12-county area.
dogwood
@JGabriel:
Mitt Romney, who got himself in a shitload of trouble with “I like to fire people” is now hooking up with the “You’re fired” clown of reality TV. And it comes the day after he claimed not to care about poor people. He also is associating himself with America’s most high-profile birther. It’s just unbelievable at this level of politics that a candidate can be so tone deaf.
Steve
The money is actually not fungible. Planned Parenthood applies for a grant so it can offer certain services. The grant money is specifically earmarked for those services. If it doesn’t get the money, it doesn’t offer those services.
Also, too, kudos to Mayor Bloomberg for announcing a $250,000 donation to Planned Parenthood. That’s probably equivalent to me giving them a nickel, but any public figure willing to step up and take a stand against this nonsense is okay in my book.
Phil P.
@jl:
I think you are correct. Maybe she is getting the Intro Finance and Intro Accounting classes from her “economics” schooling mixed up.
Given McBargle’s indifference to actual math, actual history, actual economics, etc., we can’t really expect her to be particularly concerned about the actual meaning of words either.
Tonal Crow
@dogwood: Romney’s road to the nomination is gonna be rocky [ETA: mixed metaphor removed] unless he gets substantial teatard support. Teaming up with Trump helps that goal. Please don’t stop now Romney! Pledge to make Palin Secretary of State!
Culture of Truth
@jibeaux
You convinced me. Now I have more contempt for SGK, and am more depressed over the decision.
If it helps, it appears PP donations are up.
fasteddie9318
I sent PP a donation in honor of Nancy Brinker, Queen of Failtopia. I hope she enjoys the little card they send her.
Gin & Tonic
Already mid-afternoon, and I can’t believe I’ve overlooked it, but how’s the juicitariat celebrating Ayn Rand’s birthday today?
Tonal Crow
@Gin & Tonic:
Obviously by Going Galt (sm) on Komen!
fasteddie9318
@Gin & Tonic: I caned a homeless person under a bridge this morning while screaming “DIE MOOCHER SCUM!” over and over, then paid the police not to arrest me.
jibeaux
@Culture of Truth: Damn, I argue with people all the time and I don’t think I’ve ever convinced them of anything.
Yeah, some oil guy (!) in TX gave $250k and Bloomberg gave $250k so that’s the vast majority of it right there. If they get a dollar for every complaint about it I’ve seen online (I went in for $50 so I’ve got some more complaints to spend), they’ll be in clover.
jl
@burnspbesq: I’m not aware of any serious charge that Planned Parenthood comingled funds against the wishes of contributors.
From what I read, the best evidence is that Komen used a flimsy Congressional investigation as an excuse to end any relationship with any organization having anything to do with abortion in a stupid and futile attempt to avoid political controversy and then lied to the public about why they were ending their support.
So, are you confusing the word ‘fungible’ with ‘comingle’? And if not, what are you talking about?
catclub
@Culture of Truth: More likely, suppose a church funded both a soup kitchen and an anti-choice group. Then I would make a designated donation to th soup kitchen. Gee, kinda like Komen foundation making designated donations to support breast cancer screening.
Not really that hard.
grandpa john
I don’t get it. Is it just the fucking arrogance of the bat shit crazy pro lifers. You would think that rule no. 1 in the handbook for charity fundraising would be” stay away from any possible suggestion of political involvement”
catclub
@Gin & Tonic: “I don’t comment on the law, which I know next to nothing about.”
You know, that really does limit your commenting, …
and more than many others here.
But your restraint is admirable.
ruemara
@Linda Featheringill: It’s a very small drive at about 1g and although the $100 price tag for replacing it is painful, but I got my tax refund, so the nest egg takes a bit of a hit. I think what I’m most pissed about is that:
a. this is a media drive for a library at work. it took nearly a week of hours (12 out of 20) to complete and fill so we would not have to lug 45 dvds of music and filler to various offices. Which means I have to start all over.
b. Either I can’t trust the housemate, the visiting children, or myself, because we can’t all swear we haven’t touched it and it just disappears. It’s a nice little drive, but I believe the mobility part was not growing legs and heading off to tea with a group of iBooks in Santa Clara.
I don’t think I’m a pollyanna, but I do believe that people should do the obvious right thing and not take stuff. Or at least recall where you put someone else’s stuff if you get the urge to “tidy”.
It’s Ayn Rand’s birthday? She was born? I thought it was only when an egg was brooded under a rooster atop a dungheap, one of those was spawned. Who. Knew?
Elizabelle
@fasteddie9318:
Good strategy, having PP send Nancy Brinker cards of thanks.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
You have cats, right? Make sure you check under all bookcases, end tables, refrigerators, etc. where a paw could have batted the drive to.
I’m assuming it’s something small enough that the cats could move it around. My cat Annie likes to try and haul away giant skeins of yarn that are bigger than she is, so don’t underestimate what they could push or carry away. They’re pretty strong little buggers for their size.
Culture of Truth
jibeaux well you make good arguments without being condescending.
Gee, not that hard.
Phil P.
Is anybody else getting a stanky whiff of dissonance between McBargle’s argument regarding the Catholic health care provider insurance issue…
(It is not OK for the federal government to withhold funding from religious health care providers who do not adhere to federal policy requirements regarding services provided)
vs. her argument regarding SGK and PP…
(It is OK for SGK to withhold funding from PP because PP did not adhere to SGK’s policy preferences regarding services provided)?
danimal
If Congressman McDemocrat launched an investigation into the Komen Foundation, would they have to defund themselves until the investigation completed?
fasteddie9318
@Elizabelle: That was TBogg’s idea, I can’t take credit for it.
Joseph Nobles
I watched most of Darrell Issa’s latest attempt to ensnare Eric Holder in the Fast and Furious controversy today. C-SPAN didn’t even run it live, choosing to go with the Chevy Volt battery hearing first and then Bernanke.
I’d long been thinking that the whole thing is pretty much specious, since Holder already has been saying from day one that the technique of gunwalking has no place in DOJ investigations. I also retch at the death of Agent Brian Terry being used as a banner to rally around for these cretins. Yes, it’s awful that guns from the operation were used to kill Terry, but it’s not like the sole source of Mexican drug cartel weaponry was the Fast and Furious gunwalking operation. Agent Terry would be just as dead today had those weapons been intercepted before delivery.
But I was really unprepared for the sick cloister of chucklefucks that were also watching and livetweeting the hearing. For instance, are you aware that Fast and Furious was designed by the Obama Administration in order to justify draconian gun control laws? Me, neither. Yet, this was tweeted again and again with the same sad certainty used by Truthers to pronounce the collapse of the WTC buildings a plot of the U.S and/or Israeli governments.
So you can imagine the reaction when Gerry Connolly, God love that man, started in on the lack of federal laws for gun trafficking, how the Mexican attorney general stated to him on a Congressional fact-finding mission that the best the U.S could do about the violence in Mexico was to reinstate the Assault Weapons Ban. Lord Almighty, just like clockwork, people start tweeting “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
And I suddenly saw it, the total hypocrisy. If guns don’t kill people, people kill people, then what in blue blazes are these people all worked up about Fast and Furious for? Did Holder or any ATF or FBI personnel pull the trigger on Agent Terry? No. A Mexican gang member killed Agent Terry. That person, and the gang he was working with, are responsible for the death of Brian Terry and them alone.
NEW RULE: If someone wants to blame Eric Holder for Agent Terry’s death, then they no longer get to say “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” It’s that simple.
LongHairedWeirdo
Look, pointing out that money is fungible is perfectly reasonable.
If you donated to the Republican Party, in the hopes that they would do more of the … um… damn. I know they do something useful.
Anyway, if you were to donate to the Republican Party, so that they could do *something* good that they like to do, you’d still be supporting the overall party. You can’t say “I just helped them do that something-good that they do” because your helping them do that means that they can now spend more money doing the other bullshit that they do.
So, if you support Planned Parenthood so they can do cancer screenings, you’re letting them spend *less* money on cancer screenings, and *more* money on abortions, because… um. Hmm. Fuck, I guess their abortion related services are entirely demand driven. Plus, it’s possible to demand that PP prove that none of the funds from a donation helps provide for abortion… I mean, you can even stipulate that they can’t use the funds to help ’em pay rent. In that case, the money wouldn’t be fungible.
Wow.
You know, that would only make sense if you thought that Planned Parenthood explicitly *wanted* to provide abortions, and, with more funds, would provide *more*, based upon their own choices, rather than, say, based upon an increased demand.
You’d have to be batshit insane to think that.
Okay. *Sometimes* it’s perfectly reasonable to point out that money is fungible, but this is not one of those times.