Althouse: "Glib, thoughtless . . . uninformed . . . mean and insulting . . . uncalled for in any contest . . . demeaning . . . inexcusable arrogance.”

December 9, 2014

"Glib, thoughtless . . . uninformed . . . mean and insulting . . . uncalled for in any contest . . . demeaning . . . inexcusable arrogance.”

Gruber, describing himself.

57 comments:

Carnifex said...: could also be used to describe the dear leader; 12/9/14, 9:23 PM
Achilles said...: Progressives looking in the mirror.; 12/9/14, 9:23 PM
Original Mike said...: "Glib, thoughtless, uninformed"

His comments were none of those things. He's clearly thought about this a lot. If he hadn't, why would anybody be paying him millions?; 12/9/14, 9:29 PM
traditionalguy said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/9/14, 9:33 PM
traditionalguy said...: He is acting silly in hopes we will pardon him now .

What he did was sell his MIT Credentials to he highest bidder to perform as a fake EXPERT beyond all questioning in a TV show put on by Pelosi, Reid and Obama.

He is not stupid unless he returns the money.; 12/9/14, 9:34 PM
Rob said...: He was too easy on himself.; 12/9/14, 9:42 PM
MikeR said...: Amazing what someone will say about himself when he has to.; 12/9/14, 9:46 PM
Original Mike said...: One of the more incomprehensible moments today was when Gruber claimed that passage of the ACA was "transparent", while in his most famous video he's extolling the virtues of the lack of transparency that was necessary to get the bill passed.; 12/9/14, 9:46 PM
Patrick Henry was right! said...: Did he add " bought and paid for"?; 12/9/14, 9:48 PM
David Duffy said...: A man is honest in front of his friends (where his original comments were recorded) and coached to speak to the masses. Not much difference between Gruber, the man he worked for, and the folks who questioned him.

Now, if we could get a health plan that actually benefited the middle class who aren't working for the government. That would be cool.; 12/9/14, 9:52 PM
David said...: The man knows how to pretend to grovel.; 12/9/14, 10:01 PM
Michael K said...: He knows that it is time to look humble, whether he is or not.; 12/9/14, 10:08 PM
pm317 said...: "Get over your damn glibness" from the hearings today..Obama crowd is nasty and disgusting.; 12/9/14, 10:24 PM
madAsHell said...: Soooo....this guy has a job at a state supported institution.

MIT should fire this bastard.; 12/9/14, 10:26 PM
madAsHell said...: Let me think.....if he's not a politician than he's not very bright.
MIT should dismiss him.; 12/9/14, 10:28 PM
m stone said...: Cummings said that Gruber said some stupid things that were false while Issa and others said that Gruber spoke the truth.

I'm betting the "false" claims will stick and Gruber actually won the show for Obama and the Dems. The ultimate deflection.

The price of being a fool, a very rich fool.; 12/9/14, 10:30 PM
LilyBart said...: He's not sorry, he's sorry he got caught.

If the videos had never surfaced, he would never have thought differently about his words.; 12/9/14, 10:45 PM
Original Mike said...: Gruber had a new explanation today for what he meant when he told audiences that the law was written to force states to set up exchanges or lose the subsidies. Here's an analysis of his new excuse.; 12/9/14, 10:47 PM
Steve said...: He was a well coached witness at his own show trial. Willing to abase himself for his political betters. Embarrassing for him.; 12/9/14, 10:49 PM
Anonymous said...: If I ever need a lying economist or a business professor who is an aggressive righter of wrongs I will book the next flight to Cambridge!

We don't have anybody like that in flyover country.; 12/9/14, 11:03 PM
Pianoman said...: "... caught ... being honest ..."; 12/9/14, 11:12 PM
Kansas City said...: It drove me crazy today that the congressmen allowed him to talk about himself each time he was asked about what he said. We need congressmen who listen and can think on their feet. Someone should have said:

Dr. Gruber, you keep on talking about yourself and how you shouldn't have tried to make yourself look smart by calling others stupid. You might be as bad a person as you describe yourself, but this is not about you. It is about what you said and what you meant when you said it. So I am going to read you statements you made and then have you explain what you meant by the statement and the basis for it - please don't apologize again and please don't repeat again how you did a bad thing. I don't care about that. I only care about what you meant when you said these things and what you based it on. Number 1:; 12/9/14, 11:20 PM
Sebastian said...: Glib, yes, in a way. Uninformed, no. Inexcusable, no -- as he showed by his performance.

So did he offer to return his consulting fees?; 12/10/14, 12:12 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: You can make say all kinds of things about myself, but you cant undo what I helped create.

Unsaid things...; 12/10/14, 12:20 AM
Christy said...: I saw a word cloud over his head during testimony: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done ..." as he threw himself under the bus. He testified that he was not speaking truthfully before and the progressives will run with that unbelievable story. All the usual trolls will show up here, echoing that incredibly stupid congresswoman who spoke on how transparent the passage of the ACA was. I fear the WH may have won this one.

I would like to see Gruber being questioned while water-boarded.; 12/10/14, 12:33 AM
Anonymous said...: When you're a Democrat, you can get away with this. The networks and the New York times aren't going to pound this for weeks and weeks on end. It'll get scant coverage.

If you're a Republican, this kind of talk is like blood in the water for sharks. The networks and the New York Times wouldn't stop talking about it for weeks.; 12/10/14, 12:53 AM
n.n said...: eric:

The path is mostly clear of moral hazards for the selective religious. Unfortunately, that reality is wielded as a hammer and sickle to cut moral people down. It's not nearly as effective against the former.; 12/10/14, 1:19 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Milbank? A link to a Milbank piece?
Milbank is a total hack. Utterly predictable.; 12/10/14, 1:20 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Gruber is a Harvard grad and an MIT economist.
This tends to impress people like Milbank. The truth is that a BS physics undrgrad at small state university knows more math than a Harvard econ grad. Econ is a humanity, fer God's sake.; 12/10/14, 1:24 AM
JamesB.BKK said...: @Madashell: MIT seems to regularly turn out just this sort of person especially among its economics and finance types - central planner, avid state controller, not only skilled at but a true believer in the need for deception and mass manipulation. Many central bankers seemingly spent time at that institution. It might consider splitting with him for violating the deception principle and actually saying what he really thinks about such things.; 12/10/14, 1:48 AM
sdharms said...: I suggest that every learned commenter here write a letter with an ethics complaint to MIT. It is clear to me that he violated their ethics policy published on their website. In the policy, they state that "employee" can mean non-employee or member of the community. I intend to write one.; 12/10/14, 3:52 AM
tim maguire said...: What Original Mike said. These claims were too practiced, too often repeated to be glib and thoughtless. They were calculated and they are what he believes.; 12/10/14, 5:08 AM
Jaq said...: "We have to pass it to find out what's in it" is clearly how extremely transparent laws are always described.; 12/10/14, 5:19 AM
Vet66 said...: Gruber knew exactly what he was doing while speaking to an audience of like minded elitists. He supported lying because he believes citizens are too stupid to know what is good for them. We are now supposed to believe his penance because we are too stupid to recognize 'glib and thoughtless' as another lie. He is a better liar than the IRS spokesman who lied about the lost e-mails from Lerner. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. What a cesspool these people come from.; 12/10/14, 5:51 AM
Jaq said...: There are millions of internet comments from lefties which make the same kinds of claims of the stupidity of anybody who doesn't agree with them. Gruber is just one of a large crowd of anti-democratic scum.; 12/10/14, 6:04 AM
iowan2 said...: Concerning the subsidies accessed through exchanges established by the states, Grubers explanations as captured on video on several different presentations, Grubers explanation accurate, logical, and explained as a carrots to States to set up state exchanges.

After is testimony before the congressional committee, I am supposed to believe that his first explanations are fabricated explanations, without thinking about the motivations to prompt the lies.
And conversley now think he is being truthful, with the plain motivation to lie right in front of us.

The Democrats tell us repeatedly that facts and truth are not required when the goal is pure. Repeatedly this is the explanation. The explanation when laws, rules, traditions, ect are ignored, even when the the majority of the citizens agree with the need of the laws, etc.

We are now at the service of the federal govt, with no recourse.; 12/10/14, 6:06 AM
sinz52 said...: The constant harping on Gruber's insulting the American people is actually secondary to the question of whether his statements about the ACA were factually true.

Gruber had also said that ACA was deliberately constructed to obfuscate so as to keep the GAO from scoring it as taxes.

Those statements, not "the American people are stupid," are what is significant.

Even if Gruber had put it this way:

"The American people have a lot of common sense. So we had to be VERY careful to construct a bill that would fool even the brightest of them."

That would have been less insulting--but the claim would have been the same:

Obamacare was deliberately designed to be deceptive about its financing and ultimate cost.; 12/10/14, 6:26 AM
JAORE said...: sinz52 for the prize. The focus on calling citizens stupid made for interesting sound bites and raised the ire of those already opposed to the ACA. The statements about the need to NOT be transparent and no subsidies without state exchanges are the key comments of Gruber.; 12/10/14, 6:47 AM
rhhardin said...: I don't see the problem. The voters are stupid, and he did deceive them. That was his job.

It's insulting women voters but they deserve it.

That's what they're walking back.; 12/10/14, 7:01 AM
Humperdink said...: "Out of the heart the mouth speaks, (Ensign Gruber's original comments).

"Dude, am I stupid" (Yesterday's handiwork, with nodding approval from Zeke).; 12/10/14, 7:11 AM
Jaq said...: The whole IRS ruling is just one more executive power grab. They simply will not give Congress any opening to make adjustments to the law. They reject the results of the election.

The SCOTUS is going to decide, IMHO, that given that the "speak-o" appears multiple times in the law, and can reasonably be interpreted as Congressional Intent, since in fact it was, that it is up to Congress to fix it. There is going to be a veto proof number of Senators whose states have a strong stake in fixing the problem.
It isn't that the law will collapse, it is that it will be opened up to modification by the Republican House and Senate that gives liberals the night sweats.; 12/10/14, 7:24 AM
Hagar said...: This administration is a very classy operation, all the way around.; 12/10/14, 7:26 AM
Tank said...: The thing about Gruber is that he is not some sort of exception. Gov't at all levels is full of people just like him. They think you are stupid. They think you are not competent to run your own life. They think they know better. They are going to tell you what to do, and if you don't like it, they're going to send five cops in short pants to take you down.

The way that gov't officials and employees talk in private is the way Gruber talked in those videos. He's just the usual.; 12/10/14, 7:46 AM
Skyler said...: He still thinks we are stupid enough to believe him.; 12/10/14, 7:51 AM
Jaq said...: The broader context of Gruber's arguments is that they seem to confirm a lot of what conservatives already believe about Obamacare: that it was sloppily drafted by out-of-touch technocrats who view the American people with contempt. - Vox

Almost there Vox, they don't "seem to confirm," they do confirm.; 12/10/14, 8:11 AM
Paul said...: When you are caught telling the candid truth that you lied, it's time to play dumb.

And of someone known for their education, he sure is forgetful, kind of like Hillary and her 'I don't recall'.; 12/10/14, 8:29 AM
PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...: Why is everyone talking about Gruber?

It is a distraction from the central fact that CO2 pollution is up to almost 0.0385%!!!!!!

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!

Gruber is just a distraction that those environment killing Republicans are throwing up.

FOCUS ON THE IMPORTANT STUFF, PEOPLE!!!!

John Henry; 12/10/14, 8:32 AM
n.n said...: Gruber describing the "best and brightest" and "good" intentions that preserve and progress the status quo: expensive, unavailable, and corrupt. But single-payer -- a political monopoly -- would fix that or something.; 12/10/14, 8:44 AM
PB said...: I'd like to see those enhanced interrogation techniques applied to this snarky weasel Gruber and see if we can't help him "honestly recall" a few things.; 12/10/14, 8:49 AM
Browndog said...: 2 in one day-

Glaring examples (Democrat Intel Report being the other) of Congress shielding itself from itself.

They have this Limbaugh Theorem down pat, I think.

Most the the people on that committee was either in on the Big Lie, or knew about. They could have drilled down on the substance, but they didn't.

Instead, they were all appalled that Gruber "Glibly told arrogant lies to bolster his own standing in front of an audience because he's not a politician."

An inside joke that had the entire West Wing slapping their knees every time he uttered that line.

Because, well, you know, no politician would ever glibly tell arrogant lies to bolster their own standing in front of an audience.; 12/10/14, 8:49 AM
PB said...: Of course, I think if you get a few drinks in this lightweight he'd spill the beans.; 12/10/14, 8:51 AM
furious_a said...: "Glib, thoughtless . . . uninformed . . . mean and insulting . . ."

You forgot "... and scot-free..."; 12/10/14, 8:51 AM
khesanh0802 said...: I assume that Gruber will be invited to visit the new senate after the first of the year. I hope Ron Johnson gets to work on him.; 12/10/14, 9:39 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: ...but not wrong.

He knows it was wrong to say it out loud (several times and in different ways), but he knows (and we should know) that what he said was not incorrect.; 12/10/14, 9:44 AM
pfennig said...: It took some time Googling, but the guy Gruber reminded me of is an actor named Eddie Deezen who specializes in playing nerds.

Jon Stewart apparently came to the same comparison.

What a weasel.; 12/10/14, 2:55 PM
josil said...: BS is BS, to put it bluntly. The man bragged about how opaque ACA was made. Now he claims, preposterously, that ACA was transparent and fully debated. Is university employment an affliction?; 12/10/14, 10:07 PM
Tarrou said...: Inexcusable honesty.; 12/11/14, 7:53 PM