Vast swathes of policy are based on the correct presumption that people don't know what's best for them. Nothing new. http://t.co/RmKSaIPP3p
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) October 29, 2013
Elitist technocrats are also the ones making you buy pasteurized milk and buy cars with seat belts.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) October 29, 2013
Every once in a while Vile Prog Fascists let the mask slip. They claim to be pro-choice, but that’s only if you make the correct choices. The truth is they don’t think the rest of us are smart enough to manage our own lives. So they want to do it for us.
It’s for our own good. Really, it is. If we were and smart and informed like they are we would agree with them. Unfortunately we are “low-info” types who don’t know what’s best for us. Basically, we’re like big third graders.
If you give a third grader a choice between junk food and a healthy nutritious diet, they’ll binge out on junk. So you have to make rules for them. And if they get some money for Christmas or their birthday you take most of it from them and save it cuz otherwise they’ll just blow it.
Of course in order to protect children you have to control them. You have to have authority over them. If you have to spank your kids it’s only because you love them. That’s why modern progressivism is paternalistic at it’s core. After all, father knows best.
It’s the modern version of the White Man’s Burden. It’s the Progressive’s Burden. (It’s just a coincidence that most progressives like Josh Barro are white males.)
Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.Take up the White Man’s burden–
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.Take up the White Man’s burden–
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper–
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.Take up the White Man’s burden–
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard–
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:–
“Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”Take up the White Man’s burden–
Ye dare not stoop to less–
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.Take up the White Man’s burden–
Have done with childish days–
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
FYI:
See, he’s a special snowflake!
An “opinion journalist” ? I guess that’s what we all are, so wear the label proudly guys 😀 We’re not just bloggers, we’re opinion journalists!
I wonder if DiFi’s shield law also protects “opinion journalists.” In another time, they were called editorial writers.
BTW: The plural of “swath” is “swaths”.
Yup. Swath is the noun, swathe is the verb.
Like breath / breathe.
I guess Barro isn’t as edumacated as he thinks.
What’s with the Hahvahd edumacation? Twinkles down for the cost of that education that produces morons (see: Barack and Michelle).
Hahvahd is “selective” about who gets in, but compared to the other colleges and universities in the Boston area, it’s a pretty easy ride once you’re there. There’s a famous video in science teacher circles where random Harvard students are asked at their graduation ceremony why we have seasons in Cambridge, and very few of them know. Which is middle school science. The video is called “A Private Universe”. It would be good for a laugh, if it wasn’t so sad.
😆
Good Wednesday thought…
Such an interesting and ironic poem,too…Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden”…. In September 1898 Kipling wrote to Roosevelt, stating ‘Now go in and put all the weight of your influence into hanging on permanently to the whole Philippines. America has gone and stuck a pickaxe into the foundations of a rotten house and she is morally bound to build the house over again from the foundations or have it fall about her ears’.[19] He forwarded the poem to Roosevelt in November of the same year, just after Roosevelt was elected Governor of New York.
Ironic in that Roosevelt was a Republican but also part then of the progressive reform movement of the GOP and the short-lived Progressive Bullmoose Party. How time can twist things….
Policy as a noble undertaking…now it has also become the calling of a black president….how ironic…and writers like Josh Barro have fallen right in line….
LOL
On a related note, have been wondering why the insurance companies have been so quiet since ValJar’s scathing tweet blaming them for Ocare’s problems….been given the SIT DOWN and SHUT UP order 😉
http://m.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/10/30/cnn-white-house-pressuring-insurance-companies-not-criticize-obamacar
🙂
His daddy is Robert Joseph Barro is an American classical macroeconomist and the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University.
Josh was not smart enough to be a Harvard business professor so he writes a blog. He was however socialized to be a nasty elite SOB and think he is smarter than everyone else. Mostly he has been employed at places that would be connected to his daddy and be interested in faux conservative dribble. Throw in current “radical chic” social commentary mixed with Harvard-esque economic babble and he’s noticed by the looter in chief.
another interesting post this morning…guess he doesn’t seem like Mr. Osmartypants so much any more…
http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/29/body-language-expert-obama-in-personal-crisis-mode-over-website-glitches/
That is very funny. He is upset with glitches? He is upset the whole thing is coming unraveled on the nightly news and CSPAN. ““The tension around the jaw is very prevalent, more than it was before. That signifies a lot of anger and a lot of tension and anxiety.” Anyone who has ever questionned closely a liar and fraud sees this exact behavior. They are pissed they got caught. They are angry someone is bugging them and stopping them from doing what they been doing.
Ah, The Burden of the New Black Man….
Yes and all his buddies are turning against him. Now the insurers are screaming. LOL. F them. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-30/insurers-oppose-obamacare-extension-as-danger-to-profits.html
They are going into the cost death spiral because their co-conspirator is incompetent. Tomorrow is the deadline that health insurers can pull out of the exchanges if the feds have caused a “material breach of contract”. I think a squeeze chute website that was supposed to funnels victims, er, customers that doesn’t work is a material breach. It was so much simpler in Chicago.
ValJar must be rationing the choom,
WOW so the insurers can still get out of this? This is such a fuck up it is going to require some emergency legislation. I hope Rand Paul is ready with it.
But seriously why should the insurers worry the government (taxpayers) will bail them out.
Obama is going to MA today to speechify how wonderful MA’s gubmint healthcare insurance exchanges are & Obamacare is gonna be just like it *coughRomneyCareCough*
What a farce!!! See, folks, why should Republicans and Tea Party people be opposing a healthcare system that is just like one that as a republican helped to create? Why, well, one works, I guess, and the other one doesn’t…
My first thought too, I doubt Romney’s system crashed, or he had to shut down his state to roll it out. So no, it’s not just like Romneycare.
Romney probably had binders of competent programmers at the ready.
The vile progs can’t get it in their head that what works for a couple of millions people via centralized planning (Norway, MA) cannot be simply extrapolated to work for 300,000 million.
Hee, hee, Obama’s going for Historic again…..
http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2013/10/30/obama-boston-visit-presents-security-nightmare/
If they would only get on their knees and pull their forelock when he passes everything will be just fine. I’m sure a bunch of fans and partyiers at a baseball game will just love it. He can throw out the game ball. It will be great I’m sure. /s/
Ah, a little Rudyard Kipling to start the day.
I’m surprised Barro didn’t call us peons. The best part is we heathen rubes were 100% right about what was in Obamacare (which our “betters” had to pass to find out what was in it), and yet they *still* think they are smarter than us.
Bob Beckel (who was Mondale’s best and brightest) called us “chump change” yesterday on Fox. What’s next “worthless eaters”, or soylent green? If you push their buttons hard enough a monster emerges. I hope they do it to “I don’t work for you” Sebelius today.
OT
Thoughtful speech from Mike Lee :
read the whole thing here
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/conncarroll/2013/10/29/text-sen-mike-lee-on-whats-next-for-conservatives-n1733032
Gosh how will they ever make time to talk about birth control, thoughtless irresponsible abortion and trans-vaginal ultra sound.
They don’t need to talk about stuff like that the democrats will say everything for them.
Ace co-blogger goes window shopping on healthcare.gov and finds himself auto-enrolled into Medicaid without his consent or knowledge
http://storify.com/tsrblke/ndh-marketplace
Good lesson there. Don’t go on the site even out of curiosity, sounds really effed up. It’s like dealing with Verizon Fios cable. Sign up for a free 6-month trial of a premium channel, but heaven help you if you forget, then it automatically subscribes you, then it takes months to cancel because you didn’t read the fine print they needed advance notice to stop the trial subscription….breathe….so you end up paying for 2-3 months before the cancellation drops the charge.
Yep, sure sounds like Healthcare.gov 😀
1948 short that 2013 should see
Make Mine Freedom
Absolutely ! Sometimes I even have to dig out an old Schoolhouse Rock video to remember how a Bill Becomes Law 😉
Cruella loves puppies. They’re so darling. As coats.
Best part, Obama gets to eat what’s left after she skins them.
So stealing that!
LOL.
LOLOLOL
Haw!
Btw, healthcare dot gov is down right now. LOL
let’s stir some twitsh*t up
Sebelius saying I don’t know who made that decision is code for the White House.
I really wish that these hearings had a rule that if the witness claims not to know something and they will provide it later (out of site of TV cameras) that they be required to return 7 days later and read it out loud on CSPAN to the hearing committee members. At meetings I had to give information I was expected to call the office and get the info before the damned meeting was over and I was just a flunky. Why a cabinet secretary and corporate officers don’t have anyone available to get their shit together is unacceptable.
Absafuckinlutely!!!!!!
Jon Stewart: “I pretend I’m a character in a movie about the country falling apart”
When you lose The Daily Show, you’re f**ked
But he’s a crier, so. LOL.
Greta’s not getting a puppy coat either
Sebelius is blaming the insurers for canceled policies. Of course insurers love the excuse HHS gave them to cancel policies so they can be replaced with crappy more expensive ones. That was part of the lobbying. I wonder if they will push back?
Thank you for watching her bullsh*t for me and providing the comedy filter. I blame the insurers too, for the cancelled policies, since they wrote the law.
She is quite stupid. She garbles her terminology and obviously doesn’t understand much. I can’t believe she was ever an insurance commissioner except for nepotism.
Yes. A couple of days ago I read that she thought the Oct 1 deadline was in the law….no, Ms. Secretary, your office stipulated that.
She’s a figurehead, just like Obama. She likely has never had a real job.
There are lots of “commissioner” jobs out there that are sinecures and patronage jobs. They don’t do much but they pay very well. They get handed out to wives and relatives of politicians, and occasionally a politician who is between jobs or who the voters sent into early retirement.
You rarely hear about them but there are lots of them.
I watched a few minutes and turned it off. It is just another kabuki circle-jerk.
Sebelius only allows reliable data to be released so she can’t release any currently. Yes she really said that.
We don’t need comedians anymore. We have Kathleen.
The entire system is unsecure. No security tests done. Complete clusterfuck to make it go online on October 1. The contractors ratted them out after last weeks hearings.
I am muting the Democrats because it is nothing but craven butt covering. Waxman took his outrage pill this morning.
At least Barro identifies as an elitist, usually they call themselves “elite”.
What did you actually decide on anything? she was asked. I didn’t do the website, or the contractors, or numbers or stuff.
Now the insurers are telling Republican congressmen how many are enrolling for exchange plans. One insurer in PA cancelled 30,000 policies and which has been replaced by 10 exchange enrollees.
Cancelled policy holders cannot find plans they can afford and buy food simultaneously. What can they do? Sebelius: Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Dem Rep Doyle just testified that his 33 year old son, whose insurance they pay for, is getting a subsidy, so Ocare is just grand.
So since they were not ready to go to market with their stupid health care web site…..
WHY DID THE DEMS SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT WHEN ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS DELAY THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE which was one of the bills the House passed very early on in the stand off????
Now they look like a bunch of willful self-righteous idiots.
But if they did that, they’d have handed the Republicans a win!…..I’m pretty sure the Republicans knew that this sh*t was primed and ready for the fan and they were just waiting it out, popcorn in hand, of course. LOL!
Wish I didn’t have to suffer for it, but LOL!
Well what do they think this total failure of big government is but a win for Republicans and conservative theory that the government is wasteful and can’t accomplish anything but waste and fuck ups. How stupid do Democrats have to be to consider the current situation a win?
I am very sick of Progressive Paternalism. I would like the incompetent government to just leave me alone. I give what I can to charity and I make sure that those charities are effective charities. I would like the government and their corporate cronies to get off my back!
HONK! I’m fed the hell up. I’ve always been on board with helping the needy, and legitimate govt projects. But this whole “we are the benevolent elites who know how to run the whole world, including your life, better than you peons do” makes me ill. And DC is filthy with that attitude, in both parties and the press.
LEAVE. US. ALONE. I’m a grown ass woman, and my life and choices are my own.
Seriously the elitists are out of control and this is the sort of attitude that inspires bloody revolution.
“Butt out stupid.” That was the line told to a boss trying to break up a cat fight were I worked once. He left the room. I was standing by a window ready to crawl out. LOL.
Last nite Hannity – who I forced myself to watch – had a panel of opinionated pundits and “experts” and among them were a few who said practically that ——“We know better than you what is good for you, you simpletons”
I don’t know if this Barro child was one of them, but his face looked oddly familiar to me when I saw this post.
I’d like to tell these bullies to F off, too.
That is all they got left. “You’re too stupid to buy your own insurance but you are smart enough to pay for it.” is the last line of defense. It is a kind of hateful bravado when the jig is up.
I think there were several moving parts that had to hit sequentially. My husband called the health exchanges a “squeeze chute”. That is a contraption that traps cattle to be routed into a trailer, pen, to be innoculated, etc. The cancellation letters have to go out 90 days ahead of termination. So the timing had to hit correctly to force and confuse applicants into the exchanges before too much of the bad stuff leaked out. It was to give short timelines to hurry up the enrollment or face penalties and gaps in health insurance. Part of the plan was for it to be fait accompli and have everyone trapped, enrolled and extorted before they knew what hit them. Fucking up the website threw the timeline off which is always a critical part of a successful scam or sting.
Slaughtered, skinned and butchered.
Also extracted for semen or inseminated which is “screwed”.
And if it’s horses, also “glued”
Many of the Dem Congresscritters look depressed and like they smell something bad. They really don’t want to be there running interference for the Secretary of Idiocy.
The website completely crashed during her testimony. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/30/Minutes-Before-Sebelius-Testimony-ObamaCare-Site-Crashes
She said the website never crashed just a while ago. “The website never crashed. It is functional, but at a very slow speed and very low reliability.”
Technically, the Hindenburg didn’t crash. It burst into flames and burned up.
So are we to expect people falling out of a burning balloon in New Jersey when this mess hits critical mass?
I believe that is the perfect metaphor for Chris Christie’s presidential hopes.
And the Titanic didn’t sink. It just docked horizontally.
Vertically. Vertically! It’s called sleep deprivation!!
Who is it? A Center for American Progress principle? They run the theoretical claptrap end of the wealth transfer scams like green energy, carbon taxes, and now Obamacare.
They are saying it’s Silver. This guy:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/sep/14/administration-officials-grilled-on-solyndra-loan/
Third Way instead of Center for American Progress. He is the one that changed the loan repayment terms which is illegal to protect Kaiser (donated to Obama/Jarrett walking around money charities in Chicago) who is a big Jarrett pal. Common henchman. http://www.thirdway.org/staff/150
The other day someone on Twitter challenged people to name one country that was better off because of Obama.
I replied “Russia”.
I won.
😀 😀
LOL, that made me think of the Russian janitor on TBBT’s Physics Bowl and Sheldon being a little Obamaesque here:
My Repubilcan credentials are 0. I am not Republican in any way. But the Republicans are the ones stating the truth, and Roy here, states it in perfect, clear, and concise terms:
That’s why the Dems won’t debate the GOP, the truth may come out. It’s a shame.
I don’t claim either party, but I enjoy being in Ted Cruz’s back pocket 🙂
https://twitter.com/GeriatricPsych/status/395582029619683328
Jan Schakowsky will NEVER shut up. She is right there with Valjar. If she could get her head out of bronco’s butt, we’d all be better off.
Sebelius says only Vile Progs can define what is “true insurance”. Lloyd’s of London says “poppycock”./s/
Another WRONG article. The people getting stiffed with price increases and doctor losses are not just the 5% that are on individual plans. They are the 5% on individual plans AND the 15% without insurance altogether….20% of folks on the individual market are potentially getting screwed over by Obamacare:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/10/obamacare_and_republican_criticism_the_health_care_law_s_early_missteps.html
Just ever so slightly over the top. 🙂
Answering his own tweet:
interesting from Romney…
interesting read….comments, too…..up is down, over is under, left is right, right is left, the tower is babbling…
http://www.ijreview.com/2013/10/90919-romneys-facebook-post-something-barack-obama-needs-read/