Bon appétit

From "The Delusion of Indispensability" by Christopher Badeaux (links added by Φ):

The problem is not merely the corruption of power. It is the flip side of the coin — the delusion of indispensability, a delusion brought a politician’s inner circle, by the legions of his fans (brought closer by today’s mass, instant communication streams), and, frankly, every fawning article in the nominally independent press reinforcing that image. A brave man will stand in the face of the worst storm if he perceives he is needed on the battlements. This, I suspect, is why Anthony Weiner continued for as long as he did. . . . 

As an aside, I suspect this is why President Obama — whose approval rating is trailing, and whose every domestic initiative has either been an expensive failure or an expensively unpopular ratings-killer — is seeking re-election. His fans basically called him the Messiah, and he did nothing to dispel that perception. When he came into office in 2009, he let everyone know that he believed we were essentially in another depression, and when his adoring fans in the press told him he could fix it, you know he cried in his head, Yes we can! His utter failure to accomplish anything is actually totally irrelevant to his self-perception, and that is why he is out now re-enacting Al Gore’s successful 2000 campaign. 

Is the president's approval rating trailing? Well, according to Gallup, it's at 46%, which is up from a low of 41%, and better than the approval ratings of Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter at the same point of their administrations.

Usually when Republicans talk about the president's expensive, job-killing domestic initiatives, they're talking about health care reform. According to Politifact, the law is not job-killing, it does not "[crush] small businesses 'with billions in penalties,'" and it is not "the biggest tax increase ever in the history of our country." Politifact rated Paul Ryan's claim that the health care law "is accelerating our country toward bankruptcy" as barely true:

Almost every expert from every side on the health care law would agree that there's a lot of uncertainty involved in projecting its budget impact. Looking strictly at the CBO's analysis of the budget effect of the health care law, it is a deficit-reducer, both in the short and long term. But Ryan points to several legitimate concerns about the assumptions made by the CBO -- particularly whether reduced Medicare payments are sustainable -- assumptions that even the CBO and Medicare's chief actuary noted may be suspect. The fate of those cuts may largely determine whether the new health care law ends up in the red or black. For now, though, those cuts are law. Congress would have to act to reduce or eliminate them. So Ryan is overplaying his hand when he claims the law is "accelerating our country toward bankruptcy." We rate his claim Barely True.

Last year, Mike Pence claimed that the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill will kill jobs. Politifact also rated that statement as barely true:

Ultimately, even the supporters of the bill we spoke to acknowledged that some jobs will likely be lost, or never created, due to passage of Dodd-Frank. However, many of the experts we spoke to agreed that not passing the bill would put even more jobs in the greater economy at risk, not to mention countless nest-eggs, homes and other non-job-related concerns. Would potential job savings offset job costs? Unfortunately, there is no way to know. Still, Pence's comment ignores the principle that preventing financial shocks is job-saving. On balance, we rate the statement Barely True. 

Badeaux claims that every domestic initiative has been an expensive failure. Just one counterexample is enough to prove that he's wrong.

Did the president claim that we were in another depression in 2009? Well, in December of 2008, he said of the economic crisis, "as tough as times are right now, they're nothing compared to what my grandparents went through, what the greatest generation went through." He did say that "when you think about the structural problems that we already had in the economy before the financial crisis, this is a big problem and it's going to get worse." Well, what the hell do you expect him to say? Should he have declared the economy is fundamentally sound, as his opponent did? Besides, even if we were not in a depression, it was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. It was very very bad. Perhaps Badeaux doens't remember or simply didn't notice.

Has the president failed to accomplish anything? As the links above show, the president has accomplished much. So Badeaux's ridiculous claim is obviously false.

What I think happens to people like Badeaux is that they repeat their politically motivated bullshit so frequently, to others and to themselves, that they begin to believe it. They assert it freely in their own echo chambers where it goes unchallenged. It is eventually accepted as the gospel truth as a consequence. Bullshitters have no regard for the truth or falsity of their claims anyway, since the whole point of making claims for them is to achieve this or that goal; the truth or falsity of the claims is irrelevant.

Sadly, in the case of Badeaux, we have a man who is not only shoveling the bullshit, but is also gobbling it up.

Bon appétit!

Congratulations, sir.

I finally got around to writing my response to CSBadeaux. It is as follows: 

CSBadeaux, It's good to see you got all of that smug out of your system.

Your reasons for refusing to even read the post strayling linked to are as follows:

1. The writer of the post is a C-list lefty blogger. 
2. You were made aware of the post in a "drive-by" comment. 
3. The writer of the post is desperate for hits and graduation to the B-list. 
4. The writer of the post doesn't matter, and neither do his opinions. 
5. Responding to it would aggravate the mental illness of the writer of the post. 
6. The writer of the post attributes a certain legal view to all Republicans in a different post. 
7. The post is written in "Middle Gibberish." 
8. The comments expressed in the post are irrelevant to Wolf's review. 
9. The writer of the post falsely attributes to Wolf some view that is irrelevant to Wolf's review. 
10. There is no way that the blogger in question could have knowledge of Wolf's ulterior motives. 

Items (1) through (6) are all irrelevant to the actual merits of the blogger's post. A course in rudimentary critical thinking would have made you aware of this fact. Fortunately, your ignorance of such matters has given you an outlet for your sociopathic need to abuse those who have committed the terrible crime of disagreeing with you. While your critical thinking skills have suffered, your ability to abuse others has clearly flourished. Bravo!

(7) is false. The post is written in English. Have you heard of it? I take it that it is not your mother tongue, since, by your own admission, you find it incomprehensible.

(8) is also false. This would have been obvious to you had you actually read (and understood) the post.

(9) is so vague that its merit cannot be assessed.

Your reason for asserting (10) appears to be this: the only way one could have knowledge of Wolf's ulterior motives is by either knowing Wolf personally or by reading his mind "at a distance." (Is there any other way of reading another's mind?) But this assumption is obviously false.

One thing we can say for sure: you are clearly a bigger asshole than Leon H. Wolf. Congratulations, sir.

Can you spot the fallacies?

The following exchange occurred today in comments on Leon H. Wolf's review of Meghan McCain's book Dirty Sexy Politics.

Note how steadfastly CSBadeaux refuses to read the review strayling mentions. 

strayling 2 hours ago

This review of your review says it far better than I could.

CSBadeaux 2 hours ago in reply to strayling

Goodness, a C-List Lefty blogger who can't carry his? her? its? own water. Wow. Never saw one of those before.

Thanks for bringing that to our attention!

strayling 2 hours ago in reply to CSBadeaux

You're welcome. I take it from your lack of specific criticism that although you dislike the person who wrote the review you can find nothing in it with which to disagree.

CSBadeaux 1 hour ago in reply to strayling

You take incorrectly, which really shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with practitioners of commenting-by-drive-by-pooping. 

Rather, I was noting that your drive-by consisted of giving us the (facially inarticulate) ramblings of someone either obsessive enough or desperate enough for hits (and a graduation to the B-List!) to write what appeared to be a screed that probably had something to do with Leon's piece (though what, I confess to not knowing), despite the incredibly low likelihood that anyone would read that ramble, care, or link to it. 

(I confess to not knowing because I skimmed across it, dipping oh-so-lightly into its fetid waters, occasionally grazing across thoughts on "anchor babies" and other matters neither really touched on by Leon nor indeed, from what I can see, Ms. McCain.)

I could doubtless find things with which to disagree, but as a rule, I don't spend time pretending that people who don't matter, do; and actually pulling out my Rosetta Stone, translating the Middle Gibberish in which that was written, then reading what he/she/it wrote, let alone formulating a response, would not only violate that rule, but would also encourage the poor dear in his/her/its insanity. Basic Christian charity compels me not to render a mental illness worse.

Hope that clarifies things.

strayling 1 hour ago in reply to CSBadeaux

I gave you a "like" vote for the wonderful phrase "facially inarticulate" and for taking the time to write all that out. I do, however, encourage you to be more precise in your use of language in order to avoid the ambiguity in your original response which led to this exchange.

I am a little disappointed that you failed to provide any pertinent criticism of the (excellent, in my opinion) meta-review which I linked to, but then life's full of these small irritations and we mustn't let them get us down.

CSBadeaux 1 hour ago in reply to strayling

I confess to presuming too often that sarcasm, even if in context, will slip the surly bonds of pixel and touch the face of God.

As for your second paragraph: Indeed, as a friend of mine likes to say, ours is a vale of tears; or if you prefer, life is pain, princess. Were this person or persons someone whose opinion not only matters, but could be and was written coherently and interestingly, I might be moved to care. As you can't be bothered to peel out those "excellent" criticisms and share them here (I'm particularly intrigued about the "anchor baby" thing, as I still can't find it in Leon's piece -- and a quick Google search would show that he's on record as opposed to changing the prevailing interpretation of the U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment -- and incoherent Lefty screeds definitionally believe that all Republicans are in favor of that), I have to conclude that, lamentably, you either lack the strength of the C-List Lefty blogger's convictions, or you, too, don't care, and are simply trolling.

Regardless of the truth, which is indeed doubtless out there, I am still unmoved to care.

strayling 29 minutes ago in reply to CSBadeaux

That was a fun little conversation, thanks. I do wish you'd read that review a bit more seriously because it does cut this one down to size rather well, and gives some useful insight into the unstated reasons why Mr. Wolf is so hostile to the book. I promise you I'm not trolling, but I'll admit to enjoying the spectacle of conservatives fighting amongst themselves. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.

CSBadeaux 21 minutes ago in reply to strayling

Sorry. As I said, I'm not fluent in Middle Gibberish; the "review" appears to purport to associate Mr. Wolf with a view to which a very quick Google search would give the lie, and which at any rate appears to have nothing to do with this review; and as you can't be bothered to do more than glowingly approve of it in the most general possible terms, I'll have to spare this person as he or she or they begin the long march to almost being cited and read by influential, or indeed, more than a few people. That you suggest the writer to whom you link either knows Mr. Wolf personally, or can read minds at a distance; and yet you still don't find the arguments worthy of regurgitation, is frankly a consistent surprise to me.

Well, not really. That was sarcasm again. I know drive-by commenting idiom.

In the context of Leon Wolf making fun of Meghan McCain, by both subjects' explicit statements, there is only one conservative. Your joy therefore does not make you a bad person, but it does make you, at best, an incorrect one, and at worst, a thick as a pile of bricks. I suspect it's the former, but you're welcome to prove it's the latter. 

Poor CSBadeaux.  His writin' sure is fancy, but his critical thinking skills bleaux.