Brad DeLong is Shrill (But We Knew That Already)
It's unfortunate that the demands on my time the last couple of years have reduced the number of worthwhile blogs that I read, Professor DeLong's being one of them. So I was happy to be reminded of not only how right he can be but also how funny by Kevin Drum. After being asked on very short notice to be a talking head on BBC/Newsnight, he found out that he was on with Grover Norquist...I trot over to the J-School TV studio as part of the sober, sensible, bipartisan consensus, intending to carry water for Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson.And what do I find also on BBC/Newsnight when I get there?
I FIND THAT I AM ON WITH GROVER-FRACKING-NORQUIST!! I FIND THAT I AM ON WITH GROVER-FRACKING-NORQUIST!!! WHO HAS THREE POINTS HE WANTS TO MAKE:
- Barack Obama wants to take your money by raising your taxes and pay it to the Communist Chinese.
- Oil prices are high today and the economy is in a near recession because of Nancy Pelosi: before Nancy Pelosi became speaker economic growth was fine--and she is responsible for high oil prices too.
- Economic growth is stalling because congress has not extended the Bush tax cuts. Congress needs to extend the Bush tax cuts, and if it does then that will fix the economy, and if it doesn't then the economy cannot recover.
I am not paid enough to deal with this lying bullshit. I am not paid enough to deal with Grover Norquist and his willful stream of defecation into the global information pool.
Now go back and read that line again, only in the voice of Samuel L. Jackson in his Jules Winnfield character from "Pulp Fiction" and it's even better. Fuckin' A, brah! Of course, Winnfield would proceed to pull out his piece and shoot Norquist in both kneecaps, an activity that I cannot in good conscience advocate, but it would not bother me in the least to see Mr. Norquist get a nice cream pie in the face.
Brad reminds us of the obvious ploy that the Repuglicans have used quite successfully for at least the last 15 years - pick a problem, say teen pregnancy, that everyone will agree is a bad thing. Now pick something totally unrelated that you favor - say making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Now claim far and wide that the problem you've picked (teen pregnancy) is getting worse (it has actually declined, but that doesn't matter), blame it on liberals, claim the thing you favor (tax cuts) will improve things, and step back and watch it work. In no time the mediots on the cable news channels will be asking Obama why he doesn't care about teen pregnancy since he's not for extending the tax cuts. We're so fucked.
3 Comments:
This rant about Grover F. Norquist sounds as shrill as a lot of the Bush bashing that I hear from the left. I think I'm going to have to read about things other than presidential politics until November. Which November, I'm not sure.
Norquist is an idiot. But I appreciate the shrill comment and take it as a compliment (although I'm not sure whether it was aimed at Professor DeLong or myself). Ever since Faux News and other mediots labeled Al Gore's antiwar speech of a few years ago "shrill" (it was of course a brilliant speech of great foresight, but of course nobody cares), shrill is a badge of honor. In fact, the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill was formed of "those of us who have been driven into shrill unholy madness by the mendacity, stupidity, incompetence, recklessness, and idiocy of the Bush administration and its allies."
the really surprising thing is that people believe the spill he and others like him are saying. We are not a very sophisticated society.
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