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You are here: Home / Economics / Austerity Bombing / Oh Fuck off, You Whiner

Oh Fuck off, You Whiner

by John Cole|  May 1, 20139:04 pm| 53 Comments

This post is in: Austerity Bombing, Free Markets Solve Everything, Assholes

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Clive Crook spends a couple thousand words noting that K-Thug has been right about everything, but then gets a major sad because Krugman is shrill and tired of dealing with idiots.

We seriously need to bring back the guillotine. I’d give anything to spit in Crook’s gimlet at the Russian Tea House Room.

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Reader Interactions

53Comments

  1. 1.

    JDM

    May 1, 2013 at 9:07 pm

    I’m surprised he didn’t get on Krugman’s case about blowing up that car.

  2. 2.

    Gin & Tonic

    May 1, 2013 at 9:08 pm

    It’s Russian Tea Room, not House. Puh-leeze.

  3. 3.

    JeremyH

    May 1, 2013 at 9:10 pm

    I see that Crook has succumbed to acute Broderitis. Count me unsurprised.

  4. 4.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    May 1, 2013 at 9:11 pm

    Shorter Crook: It’s Krugman’s fault I keep choking on his massive and delicious cock.

  5. 5.

    PsiFighter37

    May 1, 2013 at 9:11 pm

    Yeah, I read that column at work. “Yes, he’s right about everything, but he doesn’t say it in the same soothing tone as…”

    As who? If you are right on virtually every point, you almost have an obligation to rub it in everyone else’s face all the time, repeatedly. He’s not a fucking politician; he’s not there to soothe anyone’s fee-fees.

    It’s the kind of column that David Brooks would write if a) he could ever own up to the fact that his worldview sucks, but b) he had to find SOMETHING wrong to write about so he didn’t feel like his world had disintegrated before his eyes.

  6. 6.

    raven

    May 1, 2013 at 9:15 pm

    @PsiFighter37: That’s the first time I’ve seen a post by you where you didn’t babble about booze. You OK?

  7. 7.

    Omnes Omnibus

    May 1, 2013 at 9:17 pm

    @raven: He is drunk on Bobo. He is not okay.

  8. 8.

    PsiFighter37

    May 1, 2013 at 9:18 pm

    @raven: It’s been a long time since that’s happened. Perhaps you are ignoring 55-60% of my comments here as a result…

  9. 9.

    beltane

    May 1, 2013 at 9:19 pm

    No need for guillotines. The thing that would work best for these overgrown WATBs is some old-fashioned discipline with a paddle or belt. I would never recommend this for children, but when it comes to our public thinkers I am definitely of a “spare the rod, spoil the pundit” mindset.

  10. 10.

    Aimai

    May 1, 2013 at 9:19 pm

    My grandmother used to take me to thevrussian tea room…30 years ago. Now *that* was glamour.

  11. 11.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 1, 2013 at 9:20 pm

    Did anyone read MoU this morning? I had this reaction.

  12. 12.

    Hill Dweller

    May 1, 2013 at 9:21 pm

    Krugman’s response to Crook’s whining: Not Everything Is Political

  13. 13.

    Chris

    May 1, 2013 at 9:23 pm

    And that’s fine. Vigorous debate on the subject is not just desirable in a healthy polity but also essential. Reverence for scientific niceties belongs in academic journals, not the public square. But it shouldn’t need saying that reasonable people can disagree about how big a role the government should play in society, and about where the burden of proof should lie in discussing proposals for more or less government intervention.

    Bullshit. Krugman isn’t attacking these people because they have a “different vision of how big a role the government should play.” He’s attacking them because they’re deliberately lying about the consequences of their vision (and his).

    If you want to say “the government should impose austerity measures because [insert Randian philosophical screed about How The World Ought To Be here],” knock yourself out. If you want to say “the government should impose austerity measures because they will end the recession,” that is a demonstrable fucking lie, and there’s no reason Krugman should call it anything else.

    People are entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts, something conservatives and wishy-washy both-sides-do-it professional moderates alike refuse to understand.

  14. 14.

    beltane

    May 1, 2013 at 9:26 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    We now live in a 401(k) world — a world of defined contributions, not defined benefits — where everyone needs to pass the bar exam and no one can escape the most e-mailed list.

    I have read this eight times now, and I still have no clue as to what he is trying to say. Friedman is starting to make less sense than Sarah Palin.

  15. 15.

    Howard Beale IV

    May 1, 2013 at 9:26 pm

    Ya mean LIke this?

    Hey, you
    We got your war
    We’re at the gates
    We’re at your door
    Hey, you
    We got your war
    We’re at the gates
    We’re at your door

    We got the guillotine
    We got the guillotine, you better run
    We got the guillotine
    We got the guillotine, you better run
    We got the guillotine
    We got the guillotine, you better run
    We got the guillotine
    We got the guillotine, you better run

    We wanna thank you for flyin with us
    We know you coulda stayed home, just cried and cussed
    May all your guns go off if it’s time to bust
    May all their tanks have time to rust
    They got the armies turnin bullets into gold
    They got the hookers turnin tricks in the cold
    And everytime the police kicks in the do
    An angel gas-brakes-dips in The O
    And even if a D-boy flips him a O
    It ain’t enough to buy shit anymo
    Sleep in the doorway, piss on the floor
    Look in the sky wait for missiles to show
    It’s finna blow, cuz
    They got the TV- we got the truth
    They own the judges and we got the proof
    We got hella people- they got helicopters
    They got the bombs and we got the- we got the

    We got the guillotine
    We got the guillotine, you better run
    We got the guillotine
    We got the guillotine, you better run
    We got the guillotine
    We got the guillotine, you better run
    We got the guillotine
    We got the guillotine, you better run

    Don’t talk about, it’s not a show
    Be about it, it’s bout to blow
    Don’t talk about, it’s not a show
    Be about it, it’s bout to blow

    I just spit the dope lines
    I don’t snort em
    Tell the boss to call police to escort him
    You don’t write all them lies, you just quote em
    Get offline, plug in to this modem
    No you can’t out-vote em
    The rules are still golden
    Only jewels we holdin
    is if we guardin our scrotum
    If you press your ear to the turf that is stolen
    You can hear the sound of limitations explodin
    Please, sir, may we have another portion?
    We’re children of the beast that dodged the abortion
    Neck placed firm tween the floor and their florsheim
    We’ll shut your shit down- don’t call it extortion
    Caution- we’re coming for your head
    So call the feds and get files to shred
    Every textbook read said bring you the bread
    But guess what we got you instead

    We got the guillotine
    We got the guillotine, you better run
    We got the guillotine
    We got the guillotine, you better run
    We got the guillotine
    We got the guillotine, you better run
    We got the guillotine
    We got the guillotine, you better run

    Let’s keep it bangin like a shotgun
    We’re in a war before we fought one
    Now if you’re tired of workin so they can play-
    A common enemy, we got one
    Now keep it bangin like a shotgun
    We’re in a war before we fought one
    Now if you’re tired of workin so they can play-
    A common enemy, we got one

    Don’t talk about, it’s not a show
    Be about it, it’s bout to blow
    Don’t talk about, it’s not a show
    Be about it, it’s bout to blow

  16. 16.

    MattR

    May 1, 2013 at 9:26 pm

    @Hill Dweller: This pretty much sums it up.

    So where’s this stuff about the scale of government coming from? Well, in practice it turns out that many conservatives are unwilling to concede that Keynesian macro has any validity to it, or that you can sometimes run the printing presses without unleashing runaway inflation, because they fear that any such admission would open the doors to much wider government intervention. But that’s exactly my point! They’re letting their views about how the world works be dictated by their vision of the kind of society they want; they’re politicizing their economic analysis. And that’s why they keep getting everything wrong.

  17. 17.

    Chris

    May 1, 2013 at 9:27 pm

    @Hill Dweller:

    Damn. I see Krugthulu himself beat me to it.

  18. 18.

    mdblanche

    May 1, 2013 at 9:30 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: You read MoU willingly? Do you also enjoy hitting yourself over the head with a hammer?

  19. 19.

    Kay

    May 1, 2013 at 9:31 pm

    Best post title ever :)

  20. 20.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 1, 2013 at 9:31 pm

    @beltane: It is not English, it is MoU speak, like lolspeak but not as funny.

  21. 21.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 1, 2013 at 9:33 pm

    @mdblanche: I did not read beyond the first paragraph, that was punishment enough. I like to check NYT columns just to know what the VSPs are thinking.

  22. 22.

    Gex

    May 1, 2013 at 9:39 pm

    It always baffles me. The right is fueled by machismo. They talk tough about crime and international politics. Mock liberals for being effeminate.

    But if someone is sarcastic about them they completely fall apart with hurt feelings. Krugman noted that the facts aren’t politics. But even if it is politics, politics is a contact sport.

    Sorry about your fee-fees. But your policies get people fucking killed so suck it up you hothouse flowers.

  23. 23.

    Anne Laurie

    May 1, 2013 at 9:39 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: Friedman “means” exactly what’s he’s meant since the Bush Bubble burst and his wife’s daddy’s megafortune deflated by about 90%: We’re all screwed, and should expect to live hard and die at the whim of our corporate overlords:

    … If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone. But if you’re not self-motivated, this world will be a challenge because the walls, ceilings and floors that protected people are also disappearing. That is what I mean when I say “it is a 401(k) world.” Government will do less for you. Companies will do less for you. Unions can do less for you. There will be fewer limits, but also fewer guarantees. Your specific contribution will define your specific benefits much more. Just showing up will not cut it…

    I find a lot of this scary. We’re entering a world that increasingly rewards individual aspiration and persistence and can measure precisely who is contributing and who is not. This is not going away, so we better think how we help every citizen benefit from it….

    It’s dressed up with a fckload of MBA-friendly babblespeak, because Friedman’s been reciting babblespeak so long that it’s the only language his mustache can understand (also, now more than ever, he needs those corporate speaking fees!) but he’s the forlorn priest of a fallen liturgy — the world is not flat, and we are all trudging uphill to the salt mines with neither olive trees nor Lexuses to reward us.

  24. 24.

    rikyrah

    May 1, 2013 at 9:42 pm

    stop the whining, Clive.

    your side doesn’t have shyt for facts on their side.

  25. 25.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 1, 2013 at 9:42 pm

    @Anne Laurie: Forget MoU, but isn’t that orange kitteh full of win and awesome?

  26. 26.

    Amir Khalid

    May 1, 2013 at 9:42 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    And not as meaningful, either.

  27. 27.

    PeakVT

    May 1, 2013 at 9:44 pm

    @beltane: I don’t know what what Mr. Flatearth is saying either. But here’s one of many good responses to the column.

  28. 28.

    Chris

    May 1, 2013 at 9:44 pm

    @Gex:

    It makes perfect sense if you assume that they’re insecure little shits for whom the machismo is just a posturing attempt to compensate for their own perceived shortcomings.

  29. 29.

    NonyNony

    May 1, 2013 at 9:45 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    We now live in a 401(k) world — a world of defined contributions, not defined benefits — where everyone needs to pass the bar exam and no one can escape the most e-mailed list.

    I’m fairly certain that if you train a probabilistic language model on nothing but the Business section of the Times, a Freshman sociology textbook, and the technology section of any paper you’d choose to select, you would get a model that would generate that sentence.

    Which suggests that perhaps Tom Friedman has replaced himself with an android.

    Imagine the nightmarish dystopian future produced when the Tom Friedman android achieves sentience and becomes Skynet…

  30. 30.

    Baud

    May 1, 2013 at 9:45 pm

    I want to believe in gravity, but, damn, that Newton is an asswipe.

  31. 31.

    Kay

    May 1, 2013 at 9:47 pm

    @NonyNony:

    I read it this morning and it really made me laugh. It’s a new low. I hope he gets worse and worse.

  32. 32.

    Morzer

    May 1, 2013 at 9:49 pm

    @Anne Laurie:

    Don’t you actually trudge downhill to salt mines? I mean, that Miss Bianca movie sure seemed to be set underground, and since movies are now a valid source of economic data…

  33. 33.

    Chris

    May 1, 2013 at 9:49 pm

    @Anne Laurie:

    … If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone. But if you’re not self-motivated, this world will be a challenge because the walls, ceilings and floors that protected people are also disappearing.

    God, I hate that guy. All these guys.

  34. 34.

    Morzer

    May 1, 2013 at 9:51 pm

    @Gex:

    It always amuses me to see the bigots whining for tolerance when their whole intellectual raison d’etre is based on.. why yes, intolerance.

  35. 35.

    Omnes Omnibus

    May 1, 2013 at 9:53 pm

    @Morzer: Tolerate my Intolerance!

  36. 36.

    liberal

    May 1, 2013 at 9:54 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    See http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/

  37. 37.

    NonyNony

    May 1, 2013 at 9:58 pm

    @PeakVT:

    Gawd that is a thing of beauty from Felix Salmon. I ‘specially like his response to this part of the Mustache’s random sentence walk

    Mustache: If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone. But if you’re not self-motivated, this world will be a challenge because the walls, ceilings and floors that protected people are also disappearing. That is what I mean when I say “it is a 401(k) world.”

    Salmon: This manages to be both incomprehensible and incredibly offensive at the same time.

    This, in fact, is how I feel about most of the Mustache’s columns. He’s both morally bankrupt AND completely incoherent.

  38. 38.

    Omnes Omnibus

    May 1, 2013 at 10:00 pm

    @NonyNony:

    This manages to be both incomprehensible and incredibly offensive at the same time.

    I am so stealing that.

  39. 39.

    Baud

    May 1, 2013 at 10:00 pm

    @Anne Laurie:

    I find a lot of this scary. We’re entering a world that increasingly rewards individual aspiration and persistence and can measure precisely who is contributing and who is not.

    If I were Friedman, I’d be scared too.

  40. 40.

    NonyNony

    May 1, 2013 at 10:02 pm

    @liberal:

    That is a thing of beauty.

    The only problem with it is that those columns, randomly generated though they are, seem to be more comprehensible than a Friedman column.

  41. 41.

    J.W. Hamner

    May 1, 2013 at 10:04 pm

    I’m definitely on the tote-bagger side of “reasonable discourse” compared to you and DougJ, but this is clearly a ridiculous argument by Crook. Krugman says that he knows people are going to claim it’s really him whose being political but then cites his track record in his defense. Crook addresses this point by accusing Krugman of lacking self awareness of his own political motivations while noting that Krugman has been right about everything. Frustrating to say the least.

  42. 42.

    Morzer

    May 1, 2013 at 10:05 pm

    @Baud:

    David Brooks is heading for the railroad station with a grip full of small gold bars as we speak.

  43. 43.

    Amir Khalid

    May 1, 2013 at 10:13 pm

    The Friedman column is basically The World Is Flat-era drivel, just more densely packed. It’s gone stale after all these tears, although I wasn’t aware it was so stale a random text generator could duplicate it.

    He should have developed some new drivel by now. Then at least people could say, “Thomas Friedman is not your father’s Moustache of Understanding.”

  44. 44.

    Mike in NC

    May 1, 2013 at 10:21 pm

    They hired Clive Fucking Crook because Megan McShithead was no longer available.

  45. 45.

    NotMax

    May 1, 2013 at 10:26 pm

    @Aimai

    Their blinis were to die for,

  46. 46.

    Scamp Dog

    May 1, 2013 at 10:36 pm

    @liberal: I opened that in a new tab, kept reading some other stuff, and forgot about it. When I finally got to that tab, it took me a few paragraphs to realize that it wasn’t actually Friedman, but that column generator that I was reading. Hilarious and scary at the same time…

  47. 47.

    Roger Moore

    May 1, 2013 at 10:44 pm

    @Amir Khalid:

    I wasn’t aware it was so stale a random text generator could duplicate it.

    It isn’t really a random sentence generator. It’s more of a Thomas Friedman Mad-Libs page. This becomes obvious if you generate a bunch. Eventually, you’ll get a repeat column with the major players replaced by a new list. Of course that appears to be how the “original” does it, so it’s not a bad model.

  48. 48.

    PeakVT

    May 1, 2013 at 10:54 pm

    @Mike in NC: The Atlantic featured both for a while.

  49. 49.

    johnny aquitard

    May 1, 2013 at 11:47 pm

    How does someone with the name of Crook get any where? Least of all when that person is a pundit.

  50. 50.

    hamletta

    May 1, 2013 at 11:55 pm

    @johnny aquitard: Because his ancestors were shepherds?

  51. 51.

    Joel

    May 2, 2013 at 12:32 am

    Crook, truth in advertising.

  52. 52.

    Lurking Canadian

    May 2, 2013 at 7:18 am

    @Baud: He’s been peddling this “no security”, ” everyone’s an entrepreneur” bullshit for twenty years, and NOW he finds it scary? Dude, it was terrifying when I was an undergraduate.

  53. 53.

    Lawrence

    May 2, 2013 at 11:55 am

    Hit the Davos summit with a daisy cutter.

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