It wouldn’t be hard to write an artificial intelligence type program that produced this kind of idiocy:
This week, President Obama called him a social Darwinist. The conservative Club for Growth criticized him for wimping out on Medicare and military spending, and Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican, blasted him for not cutting tax rates more drastically.
I figure Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who is head of the House Budget Committee, must be doing something right.
It’s not that “if both sides are complaining you must be doing something right” is incredibly fucking stupid the first time someone says it — though it is — it’s that these morons think it’s clever to repeat it a thousand times a day.
Can you imagine thinking such a thing? I simply cannot.
It’s hard for me to have much optimism about a future in which the “paper of record” prints this kind of pap.
General Stuck
That’s out of state, man.
It’s going to be an ‘up is down’ kind of election, with all the pretty flow of colors from dropping a hit of strychnine laced Purple Micro-dot acid.
Egg Berry
I bet David Brooks is sooo jealous he didn’t come up with that.
Cacti
What makes Paul Ryan such a revolting hypocrite is that he used his father’s Social Security survivor’s benefits to pay his way through school.
Having climbed up the ladder to a better life, in good Randian fashion, zombie-eyes wants to pull it up behind him.
middlewest
Stalin was criticized by both Hitler and FDR. He must have been doing something right!
Villago Delenda Est
Mr. Stewart, your reservations for an early tumbrel are confirmed!
Baud
@middlewest: You stole my line. [Shakes fist vigorously.]
David Koch
You talkn to me?
You talkn to me?
I don’t see anyone else around here,
you talkn to me?
JR
I threw a kitten off a cliff. Everyone condemned it, so it must have been right!
Hill Dweller
The AP told me Obama’s embrace of the insurance manadate was moving to the left. Both sides!
WereBear
Gee, I remember the days when pissing people off was a sign of “doin’ it rong.”
I’m so damn quaint.
MattF
Just to underline the problem here– Stewart’s argument normalizes the arguments of right-wing crackpots. And yes, indeed, Club for Growth-ers and Ron Paul are right-wing crackpots. And when Obama notes this and points out the background of their crackpot ideologies, it’s brutal partisanship, needless to say.
Baud
By the way, the person who’s doing something right in that story is President Obama.
bogdan
“It’s hard for me to have much optimism…”
Which is the whole point of these posts of yours DougJ gloom porn addict. Maybe there is an evening group in your town on tues, and thurs for others with your problem
Put this in your “shitty jobs report” and smoke it btw.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/04/setting-record-straight-on-jobs-report.html
butler
Not to get all Godwin on this, but couldn’t this apply to the Axis powers? Getting attacked (quite literally, as well as philosophically) from both sides must have meant they were doing something right?
the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady)
Who the fuck is James B. Stewart and why would anyone give a flying fuck what he thinks, and after Judy Miller and Curveball, anyone who believes anything because it’s printed in “the paper of record” or any other corporate media deserves the ass fucking that they’re going to get as a result of that belief.
jl
What kind of article is this thing anyway? Here is the heading:
Common Sense
For All the Furor Over Ryan’s Plan, It’s a Place to Start
By JAMES B. STEWART
Published: April 6, 2012
Is this a blog, an opinion piece, a ‘new analysis’.
This is an example of tendentious infotainment crud which masks third rate advocacy as news, or analysis for something informative.
Seriously, what is this supposed to be?
It is the intellectual equivalent of a puff piece for a magic paste that you rub on your belly to make the flab go away. At least that has to be ID’s as an advertisement in small type someplace on the page.
magurakurin
All the animals come out at the convention – manwhores, caribou pussies, dog buggers, drama queens, bond market faires, oxycotin dopers, jesus junkies. Sick, venal. Someday a real rain’ll come and wash all this scum off the streets.
Suffern ACE
Who is this Stewart fellow? And where do they keep finding them?
schrodinger's cat
If everyone thinks you are wrong, may be you are wrong. Speaking of Stewarts, is it just me or is Jon Stewart sounding more and more Broderite these days.
magurakurin
If a brain farts on the Internet and nobody smells it, does it still stink?
eemom
@the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady):
This. O This.
Suffern ACE
@butler: They had some good ideas. They just went too far. Or so I used to be told by apologists until it became trendy to rewrite history to make the axis into progressive ground zero.
butler
@the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady): I’d never heard of him, but apparently he’s quite the accomplished writer for the Times. He even has a Pulitzer for journalism for exposing insider trading and other Wall Street Shenanigans, about which he later wrote a book. But that was 25 years ago, so maybe he’s settled into a life of getting paid a lot to churn out the occasional shitty column.
butler
@schrodinger’s cat:
He has recently had one of his temporary spells of Broderitis. I’m not too concerned, they flare up occasionally but the GOP can be counted on to cure it by doing something crazy.
eemom
@magurakurin:
There was green alligators and long-necked geese, some humpty-backed camels and some chimpanzees….
Particularly a propos given the rain imagery, if I do say so myself.
PeakVT
Listen you screwheads
Amir Khalid
@jl:
I found the “COMMON SENSE” thing a bit ironic, meself.
Tonal Crow
How about “If Republicans are doing it, it’s overwhelmingly likely to be wrong”?
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
If it’s not a corollary to the Golden Mean Fallacy, it should be: If you’re told you’re wrong by ‘both sides’, sometimes you really are just wrong.
David Koch
Colbert >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Stewart
beltane
@middlewest: And Hitler was likewise criticized by Stalin and Roosevelt which means he was full of bipartisany goodness.
schrodinger's cat
It seems like Ryan, has replaced McCain as the Village’s crush.
the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady)
@butler:
Ruth Marcus has a Pulitzer “for her intelligent and incisive commentary on a range of subjects”. LOL.
ETA: Correction: she was a finalist. Still a fucking joke.
msnthrop
Nice quote = Travis Bickle – Taxi Driver, or at least pretty close
David Koch
In truth, Hitler was criticized by both the left and right, which can only mean he was a moderate.
eemom
@the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady):
Pulitzers are ALL a fucking joke, period.
MoDo has one. So does Kathleen Parker. Nuff said.
Phil Perspective
@the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady): He’s the guy who wrote: Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America And no, I am not kidding.
wasabi gasp
That quote up top is a Jeopardy contestant introduction.
Peter
“if both sides are complaining you must be doing something right” is a direct corollary to to the South Park Fallacy, which is:
“if two sides are fighting, they’re both wrong.”
RSA
((Democrat (?* ?x) criticized Republican (?* ?x) for (?* ?z) period (?* ?y) responded (?* ?w))
(Do you often feel that both sides do it?))
Joseph Nobles
You know who else both sides complained about?
RSA
@RSA: Jesus, I can’t even program in Lisp any more.
Judge Crater
Stewart really is a turd. He appears occasionally on CNBC to proffer the same kind of smarmy rationalizations for why the super rich are wealth creators and how the rest of us should just worship them and keep our proletarian mouths shut. He’s entranced by the powerful and thinks that the bullshit he spews is erudite and contrarian. He is the salmonella that our rancid world of elite journalism produces.
mclaren
Meanwhile, Obama hits a new low — authorizes indictment of a waterboarding whistleblower.
The torturers go free, never indicted…but the people who leak the news of the torture to the press? Why, THEY get indicted and sent to prison!
Celebrate the HOPE and CHANGE! It’s CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN!
Gex
What a novel new idea. If EVERYBODY thinks you are wrong, you must be right.
Contrarianism is all that matters. What will happen when we are all contrary? Can we get back to studying things and then trying to learn from our studies? Or are we forever stuck rejecting what we learn so we can be cool?
mainmati
@Suffern ACE: Haven’t had a chance to read this article but FWIW here’s a short bio: http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/profile/66-james-stewart/10
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
A guy who goes on TV to claim that waterboarding totally worked and we got valuable information from it is not a “whistleblower.” He’s an apologist. He’s a defender of the Bush torture regime. But I’m not surprised that you would defend a serial liar and a torture apologist as long as you think it makes Obama look bad.
Mnemosyne
Yep. Clearly he was a whistleblower trying to bring down the torture regime, and now he’s a poor innocent being railroaded by the evil Obama administration. The fact that his claims were immediately picked up and promulgated by the right wing media as proof positive that torture works is just a co-inkydink, right, mclaren?
Steve S
That’s what I think every time some dipshit repeats ‘also, too’ or ‘wait for it’ for the 19,000th time.