I know, blah, blah, Halperincakes.
However, while acknowledging that the relevant points being made are much the same all over our side of the internets – Halperin is a douchenozzle, but perhaps we might want to concentrate more on him being a useless hack than his (not very) naughty words, and by the way has anyone in the media noticed that Republicans are holding the entire world economy to ransom? – I think some people deserve a front page mention for the sheer number of style points earned.
Steve Benen wins for plain speaking …
Let me say this as plainly as I know how: Republicans are threatening to deliberately cause a global recession. The president is willing to strike a deal that leans heavily in the GOP’s direction, and Republicans are refusing. Who, in this scenario, is being dickish?
Halperin’s choice of words pales in comparison to the fact that he’s offended by the president’s mild rebuke of political recklessness the likes of which American hasn’t seen in generations.
… while Alex Pareene at Salon just wins my undying devotion forever:
I don’t care what Halperin calls Barack Obama. But for the record, President Obama did not really act like a dick yesterday, which is unsurprising, because Mark Halperin is a horrible political analyst who is wrong about everything. (Also for the record, it takes one to know one.)
…
Being a professional observer of the “horse race” is bad enough, but Halperin doesn’t even understand the horse-race element of politics. He fails at being a hack. He’s too dumb to correctly parrot conventional wisdom. He is pretty sure Sarah Palin and Donald Trump are 2012 front-runners. He thought “suspending his campaign” to fix the economy and not knowing how many houses he has were both huge messaging victories for John McCain. He wrote a book about how to win in 2008 that predicted everything Hillary did, but in his world it all worked. He thought Bush’s political comeback would come any day now throughout the entirety of the years 2006-2008. He can’t interpret polls or see through the spin of GOP consultants who are much smarter than he. If I were revising the Hack list I’d put him above No. 1.
H/ts: Valvida and MattR
ETA: Just sticking a gratuitous “David Brooks is a dickhead” tag in there because DougJ left it off his post for some unconscionable reason.
EATA: Commenter ThatLeftTurnInABQ quoted for truthfulness:
From 2000-2004 we tried sticking forks, knives and spoons in whatever 110 volt outlets we could find around the house. That didn’t work so well, so from 2006-2008 we tried washing our hair. Then in 2010 the teabaggers decided that the problem with 2000-2004 was that it wasn’t enough, so now we are unplugging all the major appliances in the house so we can really get our freak on, starting with having sex with the 220 volt outlet behind the fridge.
Meanwhile, the backyard is on fire and robbers are hotwiring the SUV in the driveway, into which they’ve already loaded all of our clothes and money.