There’s That Word Again

November 3, 2013

In his interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, White House advisor Dan Pfeiffer used the word “inexcuseable” twice, proceeding to make excuses for a) the poor debut of Healthcare.gov and b) the White House’s overselling the web site just days before its debut.

inexcuseable, adj: too bad to be justified or tolerated

Stop making excuses. Move on. Just make it work.

13 comments… add one
  • Red Barchetta Link

    Heh. Well, Obama went from just campaign style BS to being recognized as a bald faced liar – news to some – this week………….but certain commenters here couldn’t care less.

    Speaks as much about them as Obama.

  • ... Link

    This is another case of the government picking winners and losers. Losers

    appear to include some relatively healthy middle-income small-business owners, consultants, lawyers and other self-employed workers who buy their own insurance. Many make too much to qualify for new federal subsidies provided by the law but not enough to absorb the rising costs without hardship. Some are too old to go without insurance because they have children or have minor health issues, but they are too young for Medicare.

    By design, this favors large organizations over small businesses. They want a country of aristocrats and peasants.

  • Dave Schuler Link

    Ellipsis:

    That’s my interpretation of immigration law, too.

  • ... Link

    Regarding immigration “reform”, I don’t think that interpretation can possibly be disputed by anyone that has an IQ over 85 who is being honest. And it’s funny to see all the billionaires from Silicon Valley protesting for more H-1B visas to make certain middle class wages get suppressed as well as working class and lower class wages. As Steve Sailer likes to state, how can American sleep at night knowing that Mark Zuckerberg is in danger of only being worth ten figures instead of eleven?

    But there is a key distinction between ObamaCare and immigration “reform” efforts: namely that the elites of both parties want immigration reform. The only reason it didn’t pass in Bush’s second term was because the Republican base put the fear of the ballot box into their representatives. Eventually that fear isn’t going to stop them.

    And I should be clear that I think Republican elites want a country of peasants and aristocrats as well. And libertarians claim they don’t want that, but the policies they end up supporting tend to work that way.

    I think a Perot-type could probably get over 30% of the vote in a Presidential election now. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen. Hell, I think someone running on the reforms that that arch-conservative Douglas MacArthur insisted on in post-war Japan could score about 30% of the vote. But both parties are wedded to one-way free trade, and both parties are wedded to Big Finance, and they’re not going to let anyone else crowd their space.

  • ... Link

    Lord, I’m tired. That would have been much more clearly stated thusly:

    I don’t think that interpretation can possibly be disputed by any honest person with an IQ over 85.

  • ... Link

    It is inexcusable that in a country with a surfeit of workers and a long term trend of both increasing wealth disparity and stagnating or declining median income that the elites would favor polices that favor both increased levels of unemployment and suppressed wages.

    Did I use the word correctly?

  • Red Barchetta Link

    Here is how you prepare to go play golf.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUAIPfC1cX4

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eabefjsJsAQ

    Too bad the skaters in Boston Bruins colors, I think the Hawks dispatched those guys……..

    And to calm your putting stroke:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqi4C36AaTw

    Practiced yesterday. 50 degrees, sunny, no wind in Chicago. Balls flew straight and pure, fell right 2 yards after apex. Perfect.

    Have a good week, folks.

  • sam Link

    Yes.

    On the other hand, Plutocrats vs. Populists:

    [T]he same economic forces that have made this technocratic version of plutocratic politics possible — particularly the winner-take-all spiral that has increased inequality — have also helped define its limits. Surging income inequality doesn’t create just an economic divide. The gap is cultural and social, too. Plutocrats inhabit a different world from everyone else, with different schools, different means of travel, different food, even different life expectancies. The technocratic solutions to public-policy problems they deliver from those Olympian heights arrive in a wrapper of remote benevolence. Plutocrats are no more likely to send their own children to the charter schools they champion than they are to need the malaria cures they support.

    People might not mind that if the political economy were delivering for society as a whole. But it is not: wages for 70 percent of the work force have stagnated, unemployment is high and many people with jobs feel insecure about them and about their retirement. Meanwhile, the plutocrats continue to prosper. And for more and more people, the plutocrats’ technocratic paternalism seems at best weak broth and at worst an effort to preserve the rules of a game that is rigged in their favor. More radical ideas, particularly ones explicitly hostile to elites and technocratic intellectuals, gain traction.

    Maybe the jig is up. Now, what the new jig might be, well…

  • ... Link

    A funny article that keeps talking about how sinister the Koch brothers are but is completely okay with the like of George Soros buying up the entire Democratic Party (including the President) for his own private use.

  • Red Barchetta Link

    Is this message understood??

  • Red Barchetta Link

    From simply the most magnificent musical mind in history: WA Mozart. If you have any musical bent, indescribable genius.

  • sam Link

    “A funny article that keeps talking about how sinister the Koch brothers are but is completely okay with the like of George Soros buying up the entire Democratic Party (including the President) for his own private use.”

    You and I must have read different articles. Where does it say the author she is completely OK with…? Or are you just inferring that from the fact that she doesn’t say anything about that (hypothesis)? Interesting logic.

  • CStanley Link

    I thought it was a good article overall but I can see the bias that triggered that comment. The author does seem to agree with the progressive technocrats policy preferences but is pointing out the limits of their political methods, whereas the Koch/right wing equivalents aren’t credited with having similar benevolent motivations.

    Of course appropos of our times, I noticed that many of the commenters at the link were making the opposite criticiam, that the author was dissing left wing plutocrats by drawing a false equivalency to the right.

    Generally the theme ties in with much of Dave’s recent postings about PPACA- that it is unprecedented to pass such sweeping policies without bipartisan (or grassroots) support, and we are now reaping the rancorous results.

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