Tag: brooks

[David] Brooks begins [his column today] by noting that the Grand Bargain on the deficit, which he has spent the last two years relentlessly touting, is not actually possible. Why is it impossible? Because, he writes, “A political class that botched the fiscal cliff so badly are not going to be capable of a gigantic deal on complex issues.”

Oh, the political class? That’s funny. In 2011, Obama offered an astonishingly generous budget deal to House Republicans, and Brooks argued at the time that if the GOP turned the deal down, it would prove their “fanaticism.” Naturally, they turned it down. Obama continues to offer a bargain including higher revenue through tax reform in return for lower spending on retirement programs, but Republicans refuse to consider higher taxes. So, in summary, this proves “the political class” is to blame.

Jonathan Chait thoroughly destroys David Brooks. You should really treat yourself to the whole thing.
Source: New York Magazine

The trouble with moderate Republicans

John Chait looks at “moderate” Republican apologists and doesn’t like what he sees:

[Michael Gerson] wants a specific assurance that Ryan doesn’t plan to roll back government at the expense of the poor and vulnerable? We already have a specific, written assurance that it will come at the expense of the poor and vulnerable. That assurance is called “the Ryan plan.” It details absolutely enormous cuts to programs for the poor. And it’s not like Ryan was backing away from those cuts in his speech. The Ryan poverty speech was about how throwing poor people off their government-funded nutritional assistance and health care would force them off their lazy butts and make them go get a job, plus private charity something something.

It is remarkable how Republicans have managed to hold together a coalition of not only voters but leading public intellectuals who simply refuse to face up to what their party actually stands for.

Not only do the Serious People refuse to face up to their own blind spots; that would be bad enough but ultimately tolerable…just don’t bother reading them. Far worse, though, these self-appointed Serious Ones are group that provides the political oxygen for the increasingly right wing nutjobs that are standing for office around the country by painting them with an air of reasonability and acceptability.
If (to name but one example cited above) they would face the harsh, detailed in black and white reality of the Ryan Plan, and then call these folks out early and often on this kind of nonsense, it would end. You wouldn’t be able to talk about it in Serious company, because you’d know you would be called out nationally, explicitly, point-by-point, and painstakingly made to defend it all. Or, perhaps, the nation would collectively decide “yes, that’s what we want.” But this crap of pretending none of it exists, that there is no factual proof that this is the plan, or intimating that it isn’t what they’d really do when given the chance is the worst of all possible worlds. And, most infuriatingly of all, these fuckers self-aggrandizingly think of themselves as the Serious People in the room. They are nothing of the sort. They are, perhaps, the least serious people in all of American thought.

Intellectual honesty. Empirical reality. Rigor. None of these things are hallmarks of David Brooks, Michael Gerson, or any of these so called moderates. When are we or they planning to do something about that? Looking at you, New York Times.

The trouble with moderate Republicans

To the ChristieChopper!

Turns out getting Chris Christie to little league games is a National Security Issue:

Gov. Chris Christie arrived at his son’s baseball game this afternoon aboard a State Police helicopter […] the 55-foot long helicopter buzzed over trees in left field, circled the outfield and landed in an adjacent football field. Christie disembarked from the helicopter and got into a black car with tinted windows that drove him about a 100 yards to the baseball field.

I guess we should be happy the car didn’t take him to another, smaller chopper that could land on the dugout or somesuch.

As for the chopper, it’s one of two $12.5 million helicopters purchased for the state police. The intention was to use them for “homeland security duties and transporting critically injured patients.”

GOP: trusted on the economy and National Security. Who among us doesn’t rest assured that the GOP is always taking the common sense line on spending and the appropriate limits of government. Thank FSM that folks like Christie are out there on the ramparts, Defending Freedom with Our Tax Dollars.

Keep in mind, this is the guy the GOP Commentariat are begging to get into 2012. Need more helicopter fuel? Chris Christie suggests we cut Medicaid or dump infrastructure projects. These are, after all, the only reasonable, Serious Person approaches to funding the truly important things in life.

To the ChristieChopper!

[The Republicans are being advised to spend] 2012 accusing the Democrats of sponsoring death panels. The Democrats will spend 2012 accusing Republicans of ending Medicare. Whichever party demagogues best wins.

David Brooks, outdoing even his own unusually high standard for making exceedingly stupid statements. One of these is simply not like the other. “Death panels” have been fully, categorically, absolutely, and completely made up from whole cloth. Lies. The biggest lie of 2009, in fact.
The Ryan plan, on the other hand, demonstrably ends Medicare. It transforms the program over the course of ten years from a government-run, single payer system into a voucher-based private insurance steeplechase for Granny and Gramps. If they can’t make the difference between the voucher payment and the cost of coverage, then they can go die in the streets.
Yes, David, a program called Medicare will still exist, and I know it’s terribly hard for you to square that circle inside that mind of yours, but it’s clear to a four year old that that Medicare, the one described in the preceding paragraph, will be nothing like the Medicare we have today.
Furthermore, that David Brooks feels confident pitching this sort of brazen false equivalency from his airy perch at the nation’s finest newspaper is a big indication of just how punishingly stupid our discourse is. Is there an editor in the house? George Will routinely spouting horseshit at the Washington Post is one thing; you’d think the Times still has a standard or two.

It’s Courageous To Go Die in the Streets

David Brooks:

Today, Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, is scheduled to release the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes….His proposal will set the standard of seriousness for anybody who wants to play in this discussion….This budget tackles just about every politically risky issue with brio and guts….Paul Ryan has grasped reality with both hands. He’s forcing everybody else to do the same.

Kevin Drum responds:

Courageous. Serious. Gutsy. I imagine that within a few days this will be the consensus view of the entire Beltway punditocracy. A plan dedicated almost entirely to slashing social spending in a country that’s already the stingiest spender in the developed world, while simultaneously cutting taxes on the rich in a country with the lowest tax rates in the developed world — well, what could be more serious than that?

I think I’m going to be sick.

He’s right, but it didn’t take a few days and it’s not just Our Punditocracy; here’s the generic Democrat legislator last night on Hardball (sorry, no transcript yet):

[it was] “courageous” [for Paul Ryan to put up a plan to abolish Medicare and other federal social programs]

This is deadly serious. It’s easy to say we drugged bloggers out here are simply another example of the smelly hippies flying off the handle on something. Rest assured: We are not. You are going to be fighting 100% of the GOP caucus, some non-zero percent of the Democratic caucus (exactly 100% of the Democrat caucus), the entire Beltway elite media, and the do-nothing defensive crouch of the President and his administration heading into 2012. Keep in mind where that “sensible compromise” is going to land when the Overton Window has been set far, far to the right. Every possible outcome other than status quo within the current frame of the debate is going to be a major GOP win, far beyond anything that’s happened in recent political history. And that’s with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic President faced with a politically daunting 87% public approval of either continuing or increasing Medicare coverage relative to today’s levels. This is why they fail.

The public’s real anxiety is about values, not economics: the gnawing sense that Americans have become debt-addicted and self-indulgent; the sense that government undermines individual responsibility; the observation that people who work hard get shafted while people who play influence games get the gravy.

David Brooks, positing (apparently without irony) that all those long-term unemployed folks are really just concerned about the nation’s long-term moral footing. Is there anyone more out of touch than this man who, it’s important to note, is Obama’s preferred “conservative.”

What They Won’t Tell You

I’ve heard at least a half dozen media reports on the boom in “anonymous” campaign financing, mostly of the “a pox on both houses” variety, e.g. utterly misleading. Then there’s this email that was sent to Glenn Greenwald in reference to a bit of crap logic from David Brooks:

There are 435 House seats, and 37 Senate races being run.

Average Cash on Hand for Democratic House Candidates: $430,153
Average Cash on Hand for Republican House Candidates: $376,720
Average Cash on Hand for Democratic Senate Candidates: $2,937,267
Average Cash on Hand for Republican Senate Candidates: $2,998,816

So, the average House race has less than $1 million cash on hand to spend for advertising in the last month, between both candidates.

The average Senate race has less than $6 million between the two.

So, let’s say that Rove and his $60 million wants to target 30, close house races, and 10 close Senate races.
He could spend $3 million each on the 10 Senate races, DOUBLING the amount candidate spends.
He could also spend $1 million each in the House races, and effectively spend 3 TIMES more than the candidate.

Just $60 million is a HUGE amount targeted at just a few races.

And of course the “chamber of commerce” is spending even more than that.

And, of course, the vast majority of all this class of contribution is going straight into GOP pockets. Not that anyone would ever deign to mention it.

What They Won’t Tell You

Oilbama

unsolicitedanalysis:

Obama WILL be blamed for the plight of poor MAJORITIES in the Gulf fishing and tourism industries.

Via the unfair, unrelenting criticism that Obama is about to receive – it’s coming, you best believe it’s coming, especially when those businesses die – liberals will atone for that sin.

This is utter nonsense. Look no further than noted asshat David Brooks:
(via chuckmore) for a moment of clarity on this:

“I persist in the belief that unless Barack Obama has a degree in underwater engineering that he’s not telling anybody about, there’s really not a lot, post-spill, he could be doing. Like you, I’m not a huge fan of presidential grandstanding. The idea that the president is the big national daddy who can take care of all our problems is silly.”

David Brooks

Yep

This crisis is the fault of BP and the total regulatory capture on the part of the oil industry. All of which happened over the past 20 years of conservative rule. But, sure, let’s just blame Obama and require “liberal atonement” for an event totally out their purview. After all, everything is always bad for The Democrat.

Can’t be said enough, apparently: contra David Brooks and seemingly every other Conservative hack, healthcare insurance reform does not pull some 10-6 stunt by funding later against tax or other revenue streams now. Just doesn’t. This chart proves that. Again. For the 47th time.

Not that we’ve proven a country that lets the facts get in the way of a good, whiny rant and a misspelled sign or two…