The Velveeta is Too Damn Scarce in a #cheesepocalypse #fail

Image of food-like substance at The Consumerist.

Pardon me for not being sufficiently alarmed that we might (or might not) be facing a shortage of a food-like substance that might (or might not) be artificially ginned up by Kraft just in time for the Super Bowl.

Curious how there's no shortage of actual cheese, isn't it? Curious how there's also no reported shortage of generic Velveeta.

Both the Yahoo story above and The Consumerist, which led me to it, note that ginned-up food shortages around times of their highest purchase, aren't new.

But, just to prove this intersection of cheap economic manipulation is exactly that, there's only one person right for the job.

Matt Yglesias, author of a book-like substance called "The Rent is Too Damn High."

"The Velveeta is Too Damn Scarce!" Matt Yglesias journeys into the heartland to look for Sons of the Boboes, singing "Vibrating Velveetawurst" and looking for Trigger's remains. Oh, and he uncovers David Brooks' still half-smoked joint. Brooks, unlike Clinton, did inhale. But, when he realized that Boboes' dime bags always cost less than $10, he promptly put the joint back down and walked away.

More seriously? Yglesias really cares about as much about service workers as Kraft does about making real cheese and Brooks does about talking about real people. And, as for the "Sons" part? Maybe Brooksie did something after that joint toke that we don't know about. I mean, put a beard on him, and put him next to Matty Y and ???

God, I love the look of being snarky to multiple entities in the afternoon! Thanks, Lt. Col. Kilgore.

David Brooks tells new lies about oil, ignores #PeakOil

I don't care that the International Energy Agency claims the US will pass Saudi Arabia in oil production by 2020, or that it will become energy independent in five years, according to Citigroup, as David Brooks breathlessly reports.

Both (all three, counting Brooks himself) are wrong.

The shale gas boom appears Ponzi-like. As blogged here before, Chesapeake is drilling for gas because lenders are forcing it to, based on previous reports.

Oil? Even with the fracking boom, we still import 40 percent of our oil needs. Bakken in North Dakota, and Eagle Ford in Texas, are not THAT big of plays. Neither are renewed finds in the Permian Basin. 

More Brooks:

Joel Kotkin identified America’s epicenters of economic dynamism in a study for the Manhattan Institute. It is like a giant arc of unfashionableness. You start at the Dakotas where unemployment rates are at microscopic levels. You drop straight down through the energy belts of the Great Plains until you hit Texas. Occasionally, you turn left to touch the spots where fertilizer output and other manufacturing plants are on the rebound, like the Third Coast areas in Louisiana, Mississippi and Northern Florida. 

In short, this is where Brooks wants to believe he'll find "heartland boboes." Rather, he'll find "Cancer Alley" on the Louisiana (and Texas) part of that Third Coast. He'll find well-paying, for blue collar, but grinding, drug-use-heavy oilfield jobs by people who have no use for his boboism.

Beyond that, Brooks lies about the IEA lies. Its full report says the Saudis will surpass the US again after a short US "triumph" of less than a decade.

Here's IEA details, per the top link:

The IEA said it saw US oil production rising to 10 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2015 and 11.1 million bpd in 2020 before slipping to 9.2 million bpd by 2035.

Saudi Arabian oil output would be 10.9 million bpd by 2015, the IEA said, 10.6 million bpd in 2020 but would rise to 12.3 million bpd by 2035.

That would see the world relying increasingly on OPEC after 2020 as, in addition to increases from Saudi Arabia, Iraq will account for 45 percent of the growth in global oil production to 2035 and become the second-largest exporter, overtaking Russia.

OPEC's share of world oil production will rise to 48 percent from 42 percent now.

Of course, Brooks thinks incestuous prognosticators like IEA, EIA and Daniel Yergin are just the starting point, anyway, I'm sure.(And I wrote that without reading all the way through his column to see if he had mentioned Yergin or not. He did, prominently.

Brooks also lies by omission by not mentioning the rising EPA fuel standards in years ahead as a factor.

Brooks on energy? A kinder, gentler Dick Cheney.

And Yergin's told his own oil-related lies over the years.

"Independents" who want "more respect" than Biden should be barred from voting

I am reposting this with some updated information in italics.

After the vice-presidential debate, I said that I was so tired of this bullshit claim that Joe Biden was too disrespectful, or whatever.

Especially when it comes from "independent" voters who have either never seen a GOP Congresscritter on C-SPAN, Jon Stewart or YouTube, or else are actually not independent, but GOPers in either conscious or unconscious drag.

Well, it turns out that most of those "independents" are actually Republicans in drag, as exit polling and other surveys show.

That, in turn, leads to another question. Why are more and more people who clearly identify politically with the GOP refusing to admit that that is who they are?

My answer? They're embarrassed to be associated with the frequent bits of covert racism or covert sexism, and occasional bits of overt comments, especially on sexism but occasionally on racism, that come too often out of too many Republican mouths. 

'll venture most of these "independents" are middle-class, middle-aged, reasonably educated white women in small, but not too small, towns and suburbs who grew up Republican. They still accept most Republican values but are embarrassed at what today's GOP — and perhaps including their own husbands in that — has become.

Most of the blast that follows I originally directed at the clueless, while making a nod to the GOP-lite, too. However, I now address it to these "skirt-hiders." Just like conservative but non-nutbar Christians who don't do more to call out nutbar Christians, until these women do more to call out their party (and being women, threaten a Lysistrata if necessary) they deserve the blast, the contempt, that follows.

"True" independents who think politics should be "more respectful" than Joe Biden allegedly wasn't last night ought to be barred from voting until they read some actual American history. They should still be barred for about five years after that, until we determine that they've actually learned what old-time politics was about, first, and that they don't have an IOKIYAR meme floating in their minds somewhere. The combination of stupidity, naivete and self-righteousness of swaths of the American electorate is staggering, and belies the claim that the US is the "cradle of democracy."

Fake independents ought to be forced to have Todd Akins and Robert Mourdocks win every GOP primary in their region and state until they speak up.

Oh, and can we ban David Brooks from pontificating, too? He claims to be talking about Ryan in this paragraph, but the last sentence is clearly directed at the wrong person:

He was strong on Obama’s economic failures, strong on the Libya debacle (though why do candidates always cram too many topics into their answers early in any debate), and he did have a few chances to highlight the Obama campaign’s crucial weaknesses: the relative absence of any positive agenda and the relative absence of any large plans for the next four years.

David, we all know that it's Ryan/Romney that has not a relative, but an absolute, "absense of large plans." Raddatz repeatedly asked Ryan for some and he refused to give any. I think you, not Joe Biden, has visited Neptune ... and left part of your brain there.

Seriously, have these "independents" read nothing of Jackson et al in the 1924 presidential race, or Lincoln, even more in 1864 than in 1860 at times? Or, with substance as well as rhetorical heat, Lincoln-Douglas?

Or .... Ronald Reagan's "I paid for this microphone, Mr. Breen"?

More seriously No. 2 — on the other hand, many Democrats, including Dear Leader, want to be post-partisan politicians. No LBJ cut off Obama's pecker; he did it to himself.

More seriously, was moderator Martha Raddatz "partisan"? This left liberal who isn't voting for either Ryan/Romney or Biden/Obama says no, at least not in "normal" ways. More below the fold, some of which will be expanded into a separate post about her bipartisan partisanship.

Brooks, Cowan, tag-team economic stupidity

David Brooks, riffing on Tyler Cowan, claims that a new American economic boom is around the corner. Not necessarily immediately, but in a decade or two.

 

Are they right?

 

Even if not all wrong, they're not as right as they think they are. With Brooks, of course, that's no surprise. And, on a more intellectual level, it's really not a surprise of Cowan. I'm realizing just how much of a libertarian he is, and how he's willing to let his thinking be driven by this.

 

Let's go to Cowan as the source of what needs to be refuted, starting with this:

To put it simply, the closer other nations come to our economic level, the more they will want to buy our stuff. Indeed most of those nations are growing rapidly, so we can expect their attentions to shift toward American exporters. The leading categories of American exports today—civilian aircraft, semiconductors, cars, pharmaceuticals, machinery and equipment, automobile accessories, and entertainment—are going to be in the sweet spot of growing demand in what we now call the developing world. 

Nonsense.

 

On traditional manufacturing, China's already shown plenty of penchant for stealing know-how, design blueprints and many other things. Add that to its growth in military aircraft, there's nothing to stop China from building civilian planes that it at least deems worthy for its interior market, and sooner rather than later.

 

Semiconductors? Cowan must be dreaming here.

 

Pharmaceuticals? In the last decade, they've been more and more outsourced to India, at least generics. Name brands likely will be soon enough.

 

Entertainment? Bollyworld will continue to grow, not shrink. Ditto for Chinese-made entertainment. And Bollywood at least will probably find a growing market outside of India, due to the English-language factor.

 

Cars? China is continuing to expand its domestic manufacture, like Cherry Motors. And Cowan acts like he's never even heard of India's Tata. Then, he adds the part about Japan losing its creative edge here. Excuse me? Never heard of Prius? Which is going to become a whole line of Toyota's?

 

Meanwhile, it's nice, or "nice," to see that Cowan is not only a libertarian of sorts, he's a libertarian hawk:

As a major exporter (among other strengths), the United States can be expected to maintain and even extend its investments in its Navy and Air Force. The current defense budget austerity won’t last very long, meaning, among other things, that it won’t be a fun time to be a pirate.

Austerity? In the middle of fighting one land war in the "war on terror" and giving open ends to the actual military departments, and private mercenaries, to fight more? Austerity?

 

And, it's even more "nice" to see that, in terms of hard-heartedness, Cowan is a libertarian indeed on the home front. He talks about what all the above (whether he's right about it or not) will mean for American jobs:

The class of elite labor will grow, and protest against the “one percent” will seem anachronistic. ... (S)ignificant segments of the American workforce are likely to continue suffering falling real wages, even in a time of rising export prowess. ... We will continue to cut a proverbial “deal with the devil”, in which ever more jobs will be created in the relatively protected service sectors, while much of the economic dynamism and income gains will accrue to the capitalists, CEOs and managers who dare to export.

And here's the kicker. This is all happening because we're not libertarian enough:

A lot of people complain about this deal from both sides of the political spectrum, but few observers are willing to countenance a truly open, competitive set of educational, governmental and health care institutions as a remedy. Libertarian-leaning recommendations for open competition everywhere may or may not be acceptable to us, but they have a bracing way of pushing the truth before our eyes.

Of course, for Cowan, this too is OK, because he's a (mildish) sort of Internet utopian. He's nowhere near Ray Kurzweil, but he does believe that the Internet is going to transform, for the economically better, the net income bottom line for many.

 

I hadn't read Cowan in much depth very often before now. And, I likely shan't in the future. In fact, I think I have a mild loathing for the man

David Brooks' rose-colored fiscal morality

Brooks, in comparing the U.S. and Germany (wo bist du, Herr Bobo?) says this nuttery:
Why are nations like Germany and the U.S. rich?...

It’s because many people in these countries, as Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute has noted, believe in a simple moral formula: effort should lead to reward as often as possible.

People who work hard and play by the rules should have a fair shot at prosperity. Money should go to people on the basis of merit and enterprise. Self-control should be rewarded while laziness and self-indulgence should not. Community institutions should nurture responsibility and fairness. 

Well, lemme see, the 1 percenters believe exactly nothing of that, David! And, to be honest, a certain amount of non-1 percenters probably have the same unbelief.

Beyond that, long before the meltdown, America's economy, more than Germany's, was built NOT on "self-control" but self-indulgence.

That said, while Brooks is right about Greece, and somewhat right about Italy, Krugman has a more nuanced picture of the whole Eurozone. And, labor retrenching of the last decade aside, Germany in general still rewards regular old labor better than the U.S. in many ways.

And, neither one of them has totally tackled this issue: Many Germans' lingering fears of 90-year-ago hyperinflation means that Germany is not liable to go too far in working with even non-Greek parts of the eurozone. Booting Greece from the zone might work. But, the rest of the eurozone would be hugely weakened without Germany.

And, all the fractions of blame that lay out there, it's clear both on this side of the pond and inside Europe that the whole eurozone is in trouble. Most economic pundits are saying if Italy caves, that's it; that's too much burden for the eurozone.

That said, I'm not a professional economist, and I don't play one on TV. But, I don't think a eurozone collapse is as bad as the 2008 global financial turmoil. Now, coming on top of a slow recovery from that, it could extend a "lost decade" in fair parts of both Europe and the U.S.

On the other side, China has said it wants to invest sovereign wealth fund money in both areas, in infrastructure improvements. One hundred and fifty years ago, their labor built our railroads; now, their money might rebuild them.

David Brooks fails at bobo impersonation

It's not enough for David Brooks to write lies and myths about his mythical "boboes." Now, he has to pretend to be one himself, from the first line of his latest column:

Foreign tourists are coming up to me on the streets and asking, “David, you have so many different kinds of inequality in your country. How can I tell which are socially acceptable and which are not?”

Yeah, right. You're hanging out at the Starbucks nearest Lady Liberty, Ground Zero or the Brooklyn Bridge, and foreign tourists immediately recognize you.

That said, he gets most of the details wrong, as to what types are acceptable. Large swathes of Brooks' GOP are perfectly fine with church inequality, including using Jews like Brooks as a fig leaf for anything allegedly "Judeo-Christian." And, if this is his idea of humor, well, he fails even more there.

#DavidBrooks: There's no boboes in #99ers at #OWS

Well, the folks at Zucotti Park? You've really done it now; you've made David Brooks mad, mad enough to call you small thinkers.

That said, he's only about 80 percent wrong, or maybe 90 percent.

See, in part, that's because the top 10 percent have been getting economic separation from the other 90 percent for a full decade. And that top 10 percent, even, has felt relatively little economic pain the past three years. It's even true to a degree of the top 20 percent.

Of course, none of that is mentioned by Brooks; he's just lucky to be 10-20 percent right and give me a narrative hook.

He is, though, right about the Adbusters affiliation. (Brooks' column links to an Adbusters' story from 2006 that is at least borderline antisemitic.) You have "look at me" types a-plenty there, even if to rely on that narrative hook too much is stereotyping. Then you have Anonymous, which likes protest and monkey-wrenching for their own sake. And, you have the 99ers themselves, not leaderless at all, since the official website was started in June, 2010.

Whether it's founder(s), too, believe in protest as art form remains to be seen.

One friend kind of wondered if the situation wasn't somewhat equivalent to ANSWER's involvement in anti-Iraq War protests. No, not really. It was not a primary organizer of any protests as much as it was a piggybacker. Adbusters and Anonymous, though, are major propellers of Occupy Wall Street. And, should OWS gain more traction, more David Brooks-type columns will appear. Given that a person affiliated with Adbusters blatantly photoshopped a picture to inflate crowd size claims two weeks ago, this could be a problem.

No, it is a problem. It's just not that public a problem yet.

But, let's not forget that Brooks is still at least 80 percent wrong. That's because he's a fake centrist, as Gene Lyons points out so well, along with Teapot Tommy Friedman. It's no wonder the two of them are leading pushers of a fake third party "centrist" movement, that's really as conservative as late-70s Republicanism.

Oh, doorknob, #DavidBrooks is writing about the NCAA

Just when you thought David Brooks couldn't get more vapid and vacuous, he does. It's Bobo-esque, of course, in that it's just as firmly grounded in the 1950s as are his fictional suburbanites.

I have to quote this whole long string of stupidity to illustrate his use of straw men, too:

There were two sides to the amateur ideal. On the one hand, it was meant to serve as a restraint on some of the more brutal forces of the day. Social Darwinism was in full flower, with its emphasis on ruthless competition and survival of the fittest. Capitalism was rough and raw. The amateur ideal was a restraining code that emphasized fair play and honor. It held that those blessed with special gifts have a special responsibility to hue to a chivalric code. The idea was to make sport a part of the nation’s moral education.

On the other hand, the amateur code was elitist. It was designed to separate the affluent sports from the working-class sports, to create a refined arena that only the well-bred and well-born could enter.

Today’s left-leaning historians generally excoriate the amateur ideal for its snobbery and the hypocrisy it engendered. The movie “Chariots of Fire” popularized their critique. In the film, the upholders of the amateur ideal are snobbish, anti-Semitic reactionaries. The heroes are unabashedly commercial and practical. Modern and free-thinking, they pay people so they can win.

Thus did the left-wing critique welcome the corporate domination of sport.

Yeah, right, on that last graph.

First, left-leaning historians of sport (which aren't all left-leaning historians) find a variety of faults with amateurism of nearly a century ago. Second, the heroes are not "unabashedly commercial."

Third, WTF on calling "Chariots" a left-wing movie? I've always seen it 110 percent the opposite, as a gauzy conservative Christian paean to idealism.

And, speaking of paeans, Brooks offers a sweet wet kiss to the NCAA of today after that.

And, doesn't even understand the capitalism he claims to support.

He offers a "practical" objection to paying college athletes:

How exactly would you pay them? Would the stars get millions while the rest get hardly nothing? Would you pay the wrestling team, or any of the female athletes? Only 7 percent of Division I athletic programs make money, according to the N.C.A.A.; where would the salary dollars come from?

You would do exactly that, and they'd learn the capitalism you so tout, you freaking moron. That's why, in the (current official) pro ranks, we have baseball, basketball and football galore, but no wrestling, little female sports and such. Or, separate money-earning sports away from college. If wrestling, etc., don't make that much money, the programs can be cut back.

And, of course, Brooks doesn't realize how he kneecaps his own political beliefs, because he's still dreaming of "Boboes in college."

NYT op-ed roundup on freedom and America

The good Joe Nocera defends Cyrus Vance Jr. against Bernard-Henri Lévy. Why can't he write more op-eds like this?

Even David Brooks thinks the modern Congressional GOP is pretty stupid on its rigid no-tax stance on debt negotiations.

Meanwhile, one Senate Republican and two Democrats are pushing for Afghanistan withdrawal.

And the usually good Roger Cohen is, again, with a solid look at the present and future of Brazil.

Dear NYT: I was afraid of that

The gray old lady, the New York Times, is going to present to inflict upon its readers a new section next week, called Sunday Reader.

Here's the huzzahs and hallelujahs PR announcement.
Starting Sunday, June 26, 2011, The Times will bring you a new section, Sunday Review, that reinvents, reimagines and reorganizes the Week in Review to offer new features and a new way of presenting our finest analytical and opinion writing.
Oh, goody.

Even MORE David (Bobos in Pop Ev Psychville) Brooks? And MORE Thomas (My Head is Flat, Teapot Tommy) Friedman?

Will we get analysis defending the paper's regular suck-ups to the D.C. Village? Please?

Can we, instead, get the best of outside writing as part of this new section?

That said, Teapot Tommy actually has a good idea for trying to implement a two-state Israel-Palestine solution.

Ahh, must be stopped clock time.

Dear David Brooks: It's called "unemployment"

Even for him, Brooks is teh stupid today.

He bemoans that, while in 1954, 96 percent of American men 25-54 were working, today it's only 80 percent.

Without noting that we're in the worst economic situation since the Depression. Without noting why the "structural changes" he cites later occurred.

To be fair, he does talk about structural changes in the economy.

That said, let's look at his proposed solutions:

It will probably require a broad menu of policies attacking the problem all at once: expanding community colleges and online learning; changing the corporate tax code and labor market rules to stimulate investment; adopting German-style labor market practices like apprenticeship programs, wage subsidies and programs that extend benefits to the unemployed for six months as they start small businesses.

The first? Many U.S. jobs don't need college or even associate's degrees. In many cases, there's a glut now. This is the faint neolib, or more accurately, for Brooks, technoconservatism answer. Or, nonanswer; it's no more an "answer" comiong off Brooks' lips than off Obama's.

Neither one addresses, meanwhile, how college costs are spiraling out of control even as the federal government has cut back on financial support for college students over more than a decade.

The second? Brooks is saying put even more loopholes in the corporate tax code, and probably saying, make it easier to fire people in more unionized states. So, totally wrong.

The first part of No. 3 is great, but, Brooks ignores that we do have a certain amount of vo-tech at the high school level and more at the community college level. He also ignores that there's no way in hell conservatives will sign off on "social engineering" at the high school level or paying for the number of and quality of high school career/guidance counselors to actually make this work. It also ignores the degree of labor-management cooperation in German-style apprenticeships; in America, the business class would convert this into serfdom.

Wage subsidies? Especially for small-biz startups? When one out of three fails per year in a good economy? Sand down a rathole. Besides, the recession has already driven many into small-biz startups.

Damn, Brooks forgot to talk to his boboes.

I have a better idea.

Let's force every bank that got bailout money to hire unemployed construction workers. They'd surely be more honest than the bullshit peddlers who got us in this mess in the first place.

There, Mr. Bobo. How's THAT for societal transformation?

Because, societal transformations are about societies, which are made up of people, not Taylorite units of work.

Beyond stupid, a fair amount of Brooks' proposal is ... well, sterile.

We could say that about both the neolib and the technocrat conservative sides of this issue, pretty much.

Finally, showing its own level of dummitude, or inside-the-corridor thinking, Atlantic considers this one of the five best columns of the day.

Trump spreads backside, Brooks inserts head

I think not just David Brooks, but New York Times columnry in general, has hit a new level of suck-up-itis after Brooks' new paean to Donald Trump. One quote, from near the end of the column, should suffice as proof:

A child of wealth, he is more at home with the immigrants and the lower-middle-class strivers, who share his straightforward belief in the Gospel of Success, than he is among members of the haute bourgeoisie, who are above it. Like many swashbuckler capitalists, he is essentially anti-elitist.

Brooks' Bobo-ism, married to a Trump lovefest. Does it get any more saccharine?

Let's deconstruct this.

First, Brooks has probably never even met, let alone interviewed, any "lower middle-class strivers."

Second, Brooks obviously hasn't read about Trump's boasting about how much more money he has than Mitt Romney.

Oh, Trump's an elitist all right. His "elite" list starts with one person: Donald Trump.

Is this the type of drivel the NYT wants to paywall? Good luck with that.

Boboes, fictionalized to the second power

I've always thought David Brooks wrote fiction whenever he talked about his stereotypical suburban "boboes." (And, if you Google, there's websites that document instances of lying about and making up details of bobo life.)

Never did I think he would go novelistic on the world, though. But, given the stupidity, insularity, conventionality and timidity of the New York publishing world, I shouldn't be surprised that moment has happened.

His new Pop Ev Psych through bobo consciousness book is excerpted here.

And, really reviewed here, far more snarkily than even I might do, courtesy Pharyngula!

Die, bobo, die!

David Brooks, Gail Collins, defend the MSM against WikiLeaks

Or, at least, that's what they claims to be doing, in one of their "Crossfire" type situations. The inanity that follows is, of course, nothing new from Brooks.

I expected better from Collins, though, based on some of her columns. Sadly, I'll have to revise my rating of her.

Anyway, both fail.

Samples:

Gail Collins: The worst president we ever had was maybe Warren Harding, who had sex with his mistress in the Oval Office coat closet. You’re right, it doesn’t really make the grade.

Wrong. Buchanon, Andrew Johnson and George W. Bush were all worse. And, if sex with mistresses is the standard, then Jack Kennedy is far, far worse than Harding.

David Brooks: I fervently believe that and find myself repulsed by the folks at WikiLeaks. They are bad for the world because they destroy trust, which isn’t in great supply to start with, and I wish the establishment still had enough self-confidence to marginalize this sort of behavior and protect the social ecology.

Well, that's why many of us are repulsed by you.

Meanwhile, has Collins actually read any of the cables?

Gail Collins: Yes, so far I’ve been amazed by how few surprises we’ve gotten.

John Kerry pushing Israel to give away Golan is one of several huge surprises. So is China being OK with a reunified Korea. And, many more.

Obama likes Teapot Tommy Friedman, Bobo David Brooks

Shock me that two of the NYT's mushiest, most inept, Peter-principle-promoting columnists are among Obama's favorite pundits:

Obama does reserve a certain respect for opinion writers such as Tom Friedman and David Brooks of The New York Times, Jerry Seib of The Wall Street Journal, E. J. Dionne of The Washington Post, and Joe Klein of Time. "My impression is that he reads a lot of columnists," says Brooks, "and therefore he sort of cares about what they say."

Dionne, as Greenwald notes, is an often-platitudinous liberal, who rarely will challenge the administration. Joe Klein? If he can't even understand the difference between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering, that says it all. Seib? The more rightwing-ish side of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment incarnate.

And, contrary to a commenter, I don't doubt it at all. Teapot Tommy is exactly the type of neolib whose thinking comports with The One's. Brooks' kinder, gentler rational bobos are the type of conservatives Obama thinks exists to engage in bipartisanship with him.

Oh, PROOF that GQ is onto something with Gibbs' comments? Bobo Brooks and Teapot Tommy were two of the columnists The One invited to his pre-inaugural pseudointellectual confabs.

Can David Brooks get any stupider?

Let me rephrase that. Can he get any more transparently dishonest as an adjunct Republican Party flak?

Readers here know that, from the left, I'm certainly no defender of Obama or the Democratic Party. But, the number of lies in Brooks' latest column is so great I'm not even going to bother counting.

Tom Friedman out-stupids himself

Taking off from his previous column about how he's found the real, centrist, "tea kettle movement," he now talks about how such a fictional critter could nominate a 2012 presidential candidate.

Friedman, among other stupidities (and, don't get me wrong, I'm not a backsliding Obama lover, all of a sudden), overlooks the Senate filibuster:

Obama probably did the best he could do, and that’s the point. The best our current two parties can produce today — in the wake of the worst existential crisis in our economy and environment in a century — is suboptimal, even when one party had a huge majority.

That's my emphasis, re Tommy Teapot ignoring the filibuster. X to block, Tommy!

That said, some of what Tommy Teapot says is true: Both the major parties are bankrupt. But, to have a centrist party, or so-called centrist party, split the difference between an already centrist party and a party tacking ever further rightward is the wrong prescription.

And, Tommy Teapot, looking for his Brooksian Teapot Bobos, is too stupid to understand that.

David Brooks, with perfect Meg Whitman timing

David, if you're such an op-ed genius, couldn't you have pulled another column out of your ass rather than touting Meg Whitman, violator of immigration law, and big fat hypocrite on Hispanic issues in general?

David Brooks, possibly his dumbest ever

Is this "stupidest column week" at the New York Times? Earlier this week, Tom "My Head is Flat" Friedman may have outdone his usual inanity.

Now, it's David Brooks with a double whopper in the same column.

First, Brooks claims to be a "centrist," then he blames Team Obama for starting a "war" of big government vs. small government, conveniently ignoring Medicare Part D, TARP, off-budget war spending and all the other BushCo big government moves.

Kevin Drum has more on the second half of the issue, the Obama started it angle.

On the "centrist" issue, maybe in Boboland, or else in Faux News/Tea Party worlds, but in the reality-based community, David Brooks is nowhere near being a "centrist."

The scary part, if something really is in the Times' op-ed drinking water? Mojo Dowd's worst-ever column could be lurking just around the corner.

David Brooks goes communitarian

And comes up with one of his better columns.

Are such changes likely here? No, not as long as a market-focused neoliberalism "informs" a large portion of Democratic leadership.