The Note last week:
The (stimulus) bill will be judged a political success not simply if it becomes law, but if it’s deemed ‘bi-partisan,’
Despite some public opposition to Congress’s action (see below) the Republican leadership seems to have succeeded in framing the discourse around a moral question: if Congress can do something to prevent a woman’s death, shouldn’t it?
[…]Simply saying that “Congress has no business here” does nothing to get those butterflies out of our collective stomach when we see the image of a smiling, very alive, woman in her hospital bed.
[….]Once again, clearing away the personal part, the Republicans are on the offensive and the Democrats are on the defensive. That’s a Notable fact.
At least we can take pleasure from the fact that the two people who wrote The Note in 2005 have disappeared from our public discourse, right?
Zifnab
They were right about that, at least.
Dave
Yeah..except for the fact she was brain dead and withering away in real life.
God, Halperin needs to be strapped to a rocket and shot into deep space.
John Cole
Wait til DougJ sees this.
Lev
No, they meant that the Republicans are offensive.
Ash Can
Whoever wrote this needs to get hold of a decent dictionary and look up the words "political" and "success."
jenniebee
Not only is being able to pass a bill over Republican obstructions bad news for Democrats, but all of the reporting on the bad news for Democrats is also bad news for Democrats.
We’re through the looking glass here, people.
Lev
How dare you truncate Halperin’s post…you didn’t include his explanation of how the Schiavo mess benefited John McCain! I’m assuming he put one in, as he seems to put that in everything these days. It’s like cutting off The Ring Cycle after only 14 hours!
bootlegger
@John Cole: Well, ya gotta love Brooks’ first line:
Zifnab
@John Cole: My god, I’ve read more mature articles as a five-year-old.
Are the pundits getting dumber or have they always been like this? Please, I need a frame of reference.
Incertus
@John Cole: He gets paid a lot to write that shit. I could do that, if I were just a little dumber.
Ash Can
@John Cole: David Brooks really is a babbling idiot, isn’t he?
bootlegger
@Zifnab: @Incertus:
Are you sure you guys could have written something this smarticus?
(If) Isaiah Berlin, Edmund Burke, James Madison, Michael Oakeshott =self-loathing intellectuals =epistemological modesty
(then) There’s nothing more dangerous than a propeller head who doesn’t know his limitations.
Come on, show us your epistemological modesty and admit the boy’s wicked intellect.
demkat620
@John Cole: You can just see him bouncing up and down in his seat as he wrote this.
Steeplejack
I hate seeing Gail Collins on the same page with Brooks, and being forced (I assume) to do these extracurricular "chat" things. I think she’s actually pretty good, and reading her stuff is a relief after the week’s diet of Brooks, Friedman and MoDo (and formerly Kristol–shudder).
different church-lady
OK, now I’m depressed.
kay
Sen. Gregg stated, “I’ve been asked by the president, along with a number of other Members of Congress, to join him next Monday for a Fiscal Responsibility Summit".
Obama is now all but stalking the shy and deeply troubled Senator Gregg.
TenguPhule
The answer is both.
jibeaux
I’m not very familiar with Gail Collins, but she certainly seems, you know, sane. My husband who works on contract at a library has never understood why the private sector has a reputation for being at customer service. Keeping your eyes down while working at the desk rather than being completely approachable is a good way to not get your contract renewed around there. When I contrast that with my last interaction with Time Warner Cable or the imbeciles now holding my Visa account, well, good grief. I can only assume they actually get bonuses for reaching new creative peaks in previously unknown ways to deliver bad customer service.
Oh, now I’m reminded of a This American Life about phone companies which was definitely in the top 3 things I have ever heard on the radio in my life. Must try to find.
Edit: On Hold, No One Can Hear You Scream. Listen to it.
Reverend Dennis
These insular, ossified, pundits are, in some small way, responsible for the decline of print media. They’re the ones who get paid to give an informed interpretation of things and most of them are just out of touch and consistently dead wrong. When they get caught, as George Will did on the climate change column, they throw a tantrum. It’s hard to believe that you couldn’t get better stuff out of the average Journo 101 student or any decent blogger.
jenniebee
@John Cole: who was that and what did they do with David Brooks? Because that doesn’t sound like the same opinions showing up in the NYT under Brooks’ by-line lately.
And he’s arguing against expertise based on Burke? Burke was writing at a time when Europe was dealing with a whole ‘nother level of people thinking that they could wipe the slate clean and rebuild a better society. The idea that Burkean criticism can be legitimately applied to any "egghead" activity more complicated than first-grade math is so preposterous that it is itself the kind of societal re-imagining that Burke was warning about in the first place.
Also, point of order, nobody who supported the Iraq war is ever allowed to favorably cite Burke again, ever kthxbai.
Gaaahhh!
GAAAAAAHHHHHHH!
sarah
OT: politico’s intense internal memo
this is why i hate mainstream media
headpan
Um, well, if that’s the case, shouldn’t Congress do something about preventing people from dying from lack of health care, starvation and/or cold because they have lost their jobs and have been kicked out of their homes?
ksmiami
Anyone here have a good recipe for tomatillo/habanero salsa? I have a perfect jar to store it in
Reverend Dennis
@sarah:
Nice catch. The writer’s profligate use of ALL CAPS convinces me of the power and dynamism of Politico. I still won’t read it though.
Zifnab
@headpan: Socialist.
Reverend Dennis
@headpan:
If we just cut taxes to zero those things wouldn’t happen.
/Republicans
John S.
Marc Ambinder really is a fucking moron.
As if I needed any further evidence than his most recent chats with Andrew Sullivan (particularly about Gregg withdrawing from Commerce Sec), DougJ provides evidence that he was a moron 4 years ago (and probably much earlier than that).
Ash Can
@sarah: Now those are some dandy priorities for news reporting there. Shorter internal Politico memo:
1) Pull pin from grenade
2)
????Swallow grenade3) Profit!
bootlegger
@sarah: Yuck. That is one of the most vapid office memos I’ve ever read. I will never hit politico.com again.
joe from Lowell
I like these stories, because they keep the Republicans complacent.
headpan
RevD: Let’s not get carried away: cut taxes to zero for the mega-rich and mega-corps only. After all, even the very rich and corporate interests still need good roads, bridges, sanitation, etc. so we need the middle class and working poor to fund all that.
Heavens, can you imagine if they had to pay independent contractors to do all that stuff, at the same rates we’ve been paying independent contractors to fuck up over and over in Iraq?!
gil mann
Normal Person: Hey, The Note, how will we judge whether or not the stimulus is an actual success?
The Note: Muh?
NP: Well, are we looking to see a significant economic turnaround, or is keeping the country from turning into a supersized version of the mall from "Dawn of the Dead" by 2010 be about the best we can hope for at the moment?
TN: Urmph?
NP. (sigh) Eric Cantor: up or down?
TN: Oh, he’s having a great week, but these things can always change in the crazy, dynamic world of politics!
NP: Choke on your page hits, you cynical sons of bitches.
TN: You’re welcome!
sarah
@Reverend Dennis: yeah i’ve disliked politico for awhile but now i feel like i have a NEW UNDERSTANDING for my hatred. their priorities are all about SPIN and SURVIVAL. OMG PLZ TALK ABOUT MAI STORIEZ!! they are clearly a
SERIOUS NEW ORGANIZATIONVAPID SPIN MONGERING CESSPOOLComrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
gil, may I stalk you?
gwangung
FTW!
Calouste
I said a while back that Politico was trying to overtake Drudge, and ths just confirms it.
They’ll have fancier flashing lights though. But not as many scoops.
MikeJ
I seem to recall that at the same time they were fighting over Schiavo a hospital in Texas was disconnecting a kid who couldn’t pay. Never heard a peep out of them about that. The pro-lifers never took up a collection to keep him plugged in either.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
OriGuy
@sarah: Maybe I’m naive, but I thought that somewhere in that list of priorities would be getting the facts right. I guess that’s why I’m an engineer and not a journalist.
bootlegger
@OriGuy: You cynical bastard! It’s not about the facts, it’s about the story!!!
gil mann
Sure, Mary, but I’ll just tell you what I tell prospective dates who find me through my online profile: if my mouth had a backspace key, I’d be quite a catch.
Comrade Dread
I’m not clammoring for bipartisanship.
In Washington, bipartisanship means that a really bad idea is about to get a whole lot shittier.
Martin
Ok, can we all try, at least for a moment, to acknowledge how capitalism works?
The Note, like NYT, like WaPo, are businesses whose sole commission in life is to make money. That’s job #1. Getting facts right only matters if it helps job #1, and I think we’re all clear that it doesn’t help that much. GM making energy efficient cars and BofA helping homeowners aren’t job #1 either, so stop thinking that they’re doing something wrong. They’re doing it exactly right – it’s a shitload easier to get a handful of lobbyists to extract money from Congress than it is to get an army of salesman to extract $25K from someone with an old, if perfectly functioning car.
If you want facts, go somewhere that facts are job #1.
Tom Hilton
And "judged".
ricky
What, you gotta problem with Mickey "Three Fingers" and Walt "Freeze Dried?"
TheHatOnMyCat
Obama is right, they’re wrong. The whole "issue" is a jackalope. Luckily, the blogoyotes are ready to howl at the first whiff of the elusive creature.
ricky
John Cole @ 3
Alternate Title: Airheads on Propeller Heads
burnspbesq
@John Cole:
When Brooks has one of his rare lucid moments, we should celebrate it, not mock the guy. Reserve the mockery for the 98 percent of the time when it is justified.
burnspbesq
If you want to mock someone, mock the D.C. Circuit for its absurd decision overruling the District Court’s order requiring that the Uighurs held at Guantanamo be released in the U.S. I am generally in favor of judicial restraint and judicial deference to the political branches, but this decision just re-creates a vacuum that should never have existed in the first place.
The Moar You Know
@John Cole: That is a mountain of stupid higher than Everest.
DougJ
@John Cole
I thought Collins was pretty good this time. I love when Brooks writes crap like this:
Good Lord, I hear enough about those fuckers reading Sully. Give it a rest. If Burke and Oakeshott where so great, then how come the only people I’ve ever heard talk about them are Sully and Brooks? It’s as bad as the New Yorker and their campaign to make people read A Man Without Qualities.
Stuck
If the jobs the stimulus creates were real, it would be a good bill. What happens when the new school gets built and the carpenter can’t work there anymore? did that job ever really exist or can it be counted since it fell from government makework tree.?/wingnut
Propeller Heads; The worker gets his salary and buys apropeller head, and buys one for his kids and wifey. The money he spends makes the PH store a profit, pays it’s rent, hires a new worker, gets more PH’s to sell and can advertise them at The Weekly Standard.
Then Bill Chrystal shows up on FNS with one and before you know it, every wingnut in the country wants one. Which makes the PH company more profit, and more hires to sell more PH’s . Pretty soon every one will who hates the stimulus will want a Propeller Head, which makes more jobs of many kinds and the workers will spend their salaries on groceries, beer and flat screened TV’s to watch David Broder tell them Ike has been too long in the sun. The rest of us will sigh and be glad for non-real jobs.
The Moar You Know
@bootlegger: I wouldn’t bet a dime on Brooks’ continued survival if someone told him there was a free pony inside of a running woodchipper.
jibeaux
@The Moar You Know:
Oh, chusquito!
/Joy, My Name is Earl, blogcommenting from Mexico
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@jenniebee:
Uh oh, Jenniebee, I hope you don’t read Andrew Sullivan much because he supported the war and cites Burke about every 15 minutes.
I think instead of waterboarding or stress-positions we should subject terrorists to hours of Andrew Sullivan opining on conservatism or "religious faith."
AnneLaurie
Shorter The Note/David Brooks: Ignorance and hysteria is what drives our page hits. How fortunate that we have an unlimited supply of those commodities right here in our well-appointed offices!
Truly, all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds!
jenniebee
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: I know, that’s just one of the reasons why I don’t read Sullivan. The other one being that, if somebody figured out a way to commoditize air and sell it at a profit, Sullivan’s reaction wouldn’t be to say "this is nonsense, all living things are entitled to breathable air," it would be to say that if the government were to guarantee that all people can breathe then that would make us all dependent on the government and it’s like slavery and economies will collapse because why should anybody work when they can sit on their asses and still get all the oxygen they want?
TenguPhule
Haven’t they suffered enough?
satby
@MikeJ:
Mike, that baby was black and on Medicaid.
If Schiavo had been on Medicaid, I doubt that the forced birthers or thier Repub stooges would have raised a stink about her either.
It’s "life is sacred" only if you can pay for it.
TenguPhule
Corrected.
Tom Hilton
I read A Man Without Qualities, or at least what Musil wrote of it. It probably would have been great if he had bothered to finish it.
DougJ
If he has no qualities, then why is the book so long? That’s what I want to know.
different church-lady
@OriGuy:
Well, you see, when you get your facts wrong things collapse and blow up and people die.
When a journalist gets their facts wrong, they just get prime spots on the Sunday chats and a big advance from Regnery.
Jim in Chicago
What do you have against deep space?
ThresherK
@Jim in Chicago:
Isn’t deep space our best shot for pressure equilibrium w.r.t. inside and outside Halperin’s skull?