Saturday, February 21

Trifecta!

ONE more big score and I can retire from blogging:

"And when I look at what Obama calls his 'Propellerheads'..."

--David Brooks, News Hour, February 20


Not sure how much I could have gotten for doubling down on "...and he'll do that simpering little half-smirk when he says it, as though he imagines the audience is wondering why a colossal intellect like David Brooks is sullying himself with a pop culture reference, and his answer is, 'Hey, I'm embarrassed about it myself, but it's the job.' "

And I'm no economist, and I've got no idea if this sort of thing could be made to work on a national, or global level, even, but it certainly looks like the surest investment one can make in our present environment is to gamble that careerist poltroons like Brooks, who've had the last twenty-five years to urge, to assure, to fucking guarantee that unfettered marketeering and unalloyed Republican rule would lead us all into Eternal Light and Great Deals on Consumer Electronics, will continue to say stupid shit. Apparently the idea is that their ability to nit-pick plans to clean up the horrific mess they are personally responsible for will at least keep them in the game until such time as they can Tell Us They Told Us It Wouldn't Work, and by then things'll be so bad we'll all have forgotten why we had to grasp at whatever desperate plan floated past in the first place. Brooks in particular, perhaps, or maybe it's just because he was forced into pretending for a living that he's a sort of personally tolerant version of David Frum. At any rate, he seems to be operating under the assumption that our current disaster means anyone ill-bred enough to bring up the cosmological certainty of his lifetime of previous economic pronouncements will be too busy scrounging for food to do so. Last night he found it necessary to mention twice that Obama "didn't have enough advisors in place" to handle the Crises, like a man who's just doused your vehicle with gasoline and set it afire pointing out a spot you missed last time you waxed it.

Bet on Stupid; that's my advice. Bet on David Brooks, "reasonable" "conservative", to keep saying shit like this, right up to the point where it doesn't look like it'll work in 2012, at which point he'll try to sound reasonable again, until they nominate Palin anyway:

"We have no consensus on the New Deal...how much it helped or to what extent it helped."

Because your bank may be a blasted pile of rebar tomorrow, but Stupid is eternal.

(Admitted, that one may be more Lie than Ignorance, but at this point for Republicans it amounts to the same thing.)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats! With such a golden nose you're gonna find yourself pulling slots next to our "hypocrisy is a virtue" former Drug Czar at the Taj.

Seen this?

The Little Fireplug actually has da noive to say this, "Some dumb Republicans are going to get some mileage by attacking the idea of a White House run by geeks." And then proceeds to... well you're the Nostradamus here. I don't need to tell you.

(On a borrowed newfangled computer just to offer my humble paeans.)

cavjam said...

"We have no consensus on the New Deal...how much it helped or to what extent it helped."

Since it's impossible to know what conditions would have been like without the New Deal, all I can say is, "Duh."

Anonymous said...

You had me at "careerist poltroons"

George Washington would be proud of ya.

Kathy said...

Why haven't these people choked to death in disgust after seeing themselves in a mirror?

Kathy said...

Baffling that a man with a 170-IQ would want intelligent people around him! Elitist!