As I’ve told you before, I was banned from commenting at the Times for writing that the only possible good that could come out of the Gail Collins/David Brooks discussion feature would be a murder-suicide. They’re at it again today, concern trolling about the foreign money issue. I’ll just give you a taste:
The second reason Obama’s behavior is depressing is that it shows that the administration is getting mentally captured by the lefty blogosphere.
Bobo also claims that no one on the right bitched about outside money when it was on the Dems’ side in 2004. Of course that’s not true, Republicans nurse an obsessive hatred of George Soros to this day. And, anyway, half the fucking Republican attack on Gore was over “Chinese money” and the Buddhist temple fundraiser.
Mind you, I have heard a reasonable critique of the White House criticism of the Chamber. The reasoning goes: a lot of 501c’s have some money from foreign sources, why single out the Chamber? That’s an awful lot like “everyone speeds, how come I get a ticket?” The argument that the Chamber doesn’t apply foreign money directly to ads means nothing. If you, say, pay your staff with foreign money and run ads with domestic money, that’s just accounting: the foreign money is defraying costs and giving you more money to spend on ads.
Anyway, what’s striking in general about the hot Brooks-on-Collins action is how lacking in wit and polish it all is. It makes you realize, as bad their columns are, if you met them in person, they’d seem even dumber and more smug.
Mark S.
Ugh, I didn’t get too far
The Nazis have been killing people for decades, and now suddenly they are allegedly responsible for the Holocaust?
jl
“Bobo also claims that no one on the right bitched about outside money when it was on the Dems’ side in 2004. Of course that’s not true, Republicans nurse an obsessive hatred of George Soros to this day.”
Is ‘DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice’ talking about George Soros the international drug dealer and kingpin? That George Soros?
I heard several GOP pols positively identify Soros as a big time international drug dealer in interviews at a recent GOP convention, and they wondered why no one was looking into his foreign blood drug money flooding into the US and affecting our precious bodily fluids, or, I guess I mean, elections.
Technically, that is not bitching. They just think the world is flat, is all, and within their rights to express that opinion.
(note: no snark was killed or injured in the creation of this comment)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The Chamber is also flat out lying about the health care bill in its ads. That’s treated like business as usual, which I suppose it is. Of course, if reporters/pundits started mentioning that, they might also have to point out that Sarah Palin, John McCain, Chuck Grassley and the usual dimwits in the GOP House caucus are also lying. And it’s very partisan to point out that Republicans are lying.
Nick
Clearly, if Obama had used the bully pulpit…
Elia
I’m sorry but this post is just simply uncivil.
I see no reason why we can’t disagree without becoming disagreeable.
Gail and David do it and ideologically they’re night-and-day, after all!
This is the kind of stuff that gives the internet a bad name.
BGinCHI
I wish the Sassy Gay Friend would pop up during their folie a deux and sort those bitches out.
In case you’ve never seen his work:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4211570/sassy_gay_friend_hamlet/
Not sure even the SGF could approve of Bobo’s hair.
Wile E. Quixote
@DougJ
That would be a happy day indeed. I can see it now, Collins realizes what an empty headed hack she is and that she’s nothing more than a fluffer for Bobo and she just snaps, brings a shotgun into work, jams it in Bobo’s mouth like a big black cock of death and “Boom”, decorates the wall with an interesting new color called “hint of brain” and then turns the shotgun on herself. Bonus points if she does it on camera like R. Budd Dwyer. That’s the kind of content that could make a paywall work.
tom factor
“mentally captured by the lefty blogosphere.”
and like 84% of the general populace, who believe they have a “right to know.”
tomvox1
Sorry, Doug, but I like Gail Collins. Of course, even being in the same room with Bobo and being forced to be civil in the face of his inanities will knock about 20 IQ points off of the best of us…
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@Elia:
The whole comment was very good, but that in particular is inspired snark. I may use it myself in some form later.
BGinCHI
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.: Bonus points if this comment was written by Lee Elia.
JPL
I can’t believe I clicked to the site. Yuk…Obama the Attack Dog? Wasn’t it just yesterday that he showed no emotion and lacked empathy?
Steve
If you keep the foreign money in a segregated account and don’t do any political spending from that account, you’re right that it’s still just accounting, but nevertheless I don’t think we can ask any more of people than that. However, the Chamber of Commerce isn’t even doing that!
They have an account that takes in foreign money. They engage in political spending from that same account. Therefore they are spending foreign money on domestic politics, period, end of story. The argument that “you can’t prove it’s the same dollars” is meaningless. Bank accounts don’t work that way, the dollars are completely fungible.
debbie
The right never bitched about outside money? Excuse me, David Brooks, but here are two words for you: Charlie. Tree.
Alex S.
No matter what Gail Collins says, David Brooks goes on and on how everything is bad for Obama and the Democrats in general. He’s using one republican talking point after another while Gail refutes all his arguments, except for one. If this was supposed to be a conversation, they should have put David Brooks in front of a mirror. This way, there would at least have been an appearance of two people acknowledging each other.
Tom Hilton
As I said on Twitter: the very same people who had fainting fits at the thought of pseudonymous bloggers/commenters are entirely sanguine about anonymous campaign donations.
Except I said it with fewer characters.
Lev
I like the Times, but that Op-Ed page is just a horror show. Dowd, Friedman, Bobo, and Bobo-in-training are all just dead weight and ought to be cleared out ASAP. Then again, they did clear out Bill Kristol, and they seem to have some standards, unlike Hiatt’s joint.
jl
@Alex S.: As the election approaches, looks like Brooks goes into full bore hack mode.
His latest column was about how unions and pensions and high wages for ‘the lesser people’ are the reason why America can no longer do great things, because pampered workers cost too much. Not like the old days when we built the Erie Canal and Grand Central Station.
Brooks is peddling fantasy history.
Interesting trivia questions might be
Why was Grand Central Station built in the first place?
Did Grand Central Station, come in on time and under budget?
I read an interesting paper showing how construction cost overuns have been present throughout modern industrial history. And our ability (or more accurately inability) to estimate the cost of grand construction projects has stayed about the same over time.
Lev
@jl: Correction: he’s always in full-bore hack mode. Or maybe that idea of interviewing John Thune with the nearly pornographic description of the guy was just a random idea that just popped into his head one beautiful day?
eemom
This is another example of where the “savant” part of my Bob Somerby as lunatic-savant theory comes in. He sees through the clowns (Collins) and concern trolls (Rich) that — unlike, say, Bobo or Tweety — do get taken seriously by smart people. I’ve discovered I pretty much agree with him about both of them.
Steve
@jl: Arguably an entire century of economic progress – you know, the one where America’s economic engine became the envy of the world – was attributable to union labor and the “high wages and pensions” that created a robust middle class. But don’t tell David Brooks!
gwangung
@debbie:
Two more. John Huang.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@eemom:
I agree with you about Somerby. Idiot-savant is right.
Corner Stone
Why don’t you just ask Just Some Fuckhead if you can borrow his proxy server?
gwangung
Unlike the unionized workers in Germany.
Steve
@eemom: Collins is the classic example of the “oh dear, a policy discussion, how dreary!” school of political journalists. My preferred analogy is the sportswriter who finds sporting events boring. Would such a person be hired at any newspaper in the country?
Stuck in the Funhouse
Obviously, someone hasn’t been reading the real lefty blogosphere.
But it is becoming obvious that Obama et al has hit a major nerve in the right wing borg princess Chamber Pot of Commerce. As well as their allies in the real lefty blogosphere, salivating at a dem loss for gawd noes what reason. Carry on O, both barrels.
Ash Can
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
No matter how many times you mention this, it makes me laugh every time.
And so does that.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Corner Stone:
Doesn’t he full time serve your proxy?
BGinCHI
This is good news.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/democrats-press-attack-on-secret-money/
Keep that shit up.
bkny
george soros is an american citizen. it mystifies me the insane hatred directed towards him. esp considering he provided invaluable support for dissident groups in eastern europe and pressing for recognition of peoples’ rights. and continues numerous programs thru his open society inst.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@bkny: He is a leftist with money, lots of money. That is all it takes.
BGinCHI
@Stuck in the Funhouse: Same reason my mother-in-law hates Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn.
flounder
My new line on this is “I’m so old, I remember when secret campaign donations were called ‘bribes'”.
bkny
@Stuck in the Funhouse: i know … but you’d think he’d get a pass for his efforts to subvert the (former) soviet republic thru support for the assorted helsinki groups.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@bkny:
John Kerry got three purple hearts a silver star and a bronze or two. Didn’t help him. Wingnuts have no soul, end of story.
bobbo
Isn’t it be pretty to think so.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
But, by gawd they have a point that Gibbs is a hypocrite about the Chamber, 2 weeks before an election/firebagger
Wag
We have a winner!
bkny
@Stuck in the Funhouse: ugh … and max cleland.
Wag
…and by the way, I liked how you could read the steam coming out of Gail’s ears over the drivel that David was spouting. It was all she could do to keep from saying STFU!
Dennis SGMM
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
Max Cleland lost both legs and one arm in Vietnam. That didn’t keep Saxby Chambliss (May a flaming 2X4 be shoved all the way up his ass) from impugning Cleland’s patriotism.
ruemara
There’s too much stupid in America’s water.
Zifnab
@Mark S.: Godwin in one? Slow down there, some of us want to maybe enjoy the evening before popping the cork.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Zifnab:
Godwin’s law has been suspended by executive order till further notice
morzer
In case anyone was wondering, the gibbering idiots really are gearing up to impeach Obama:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/10/the_latest_in_conservative_direct_mail_impeach_obama.php?ref=mblt
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Dennis SGMM: Man, I wish you hadn’t mentioned my hero Cleland, now I want to go out and hunt wingnut. wonder what a Coulter pelt sells for these days?
stuckinred
@Dennis SGMM: Draft dodging shit eatin dog fucker Saxby if you please.
tomvox1
@Steve:
Simply disagree.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/opinion/17collins.html?_r=1&ref=gailcollins
She doesn’t find politics boring. She finds politicians idiotic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/opinion/02collins.html?ref=gailcollins
Sort of like enjoying Baseball the Game but mocking the steroided, video game caricature it became in the late 90s/early 2000s.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@flounder:
You don’t need a milkman to know which way milk prices are going to go
/old Nixon era joke
Poor old Tricky Dick – all that trouble he went to trying to maintain covert-ops secrecy regarding activities that would be openly bragged about on Fox News and in the pages of the WSJ today.
Ash Can
@bkny: No can do, Bucko. Everybody knows that the Most Holy One True Ronald Reagan destroyed that Evil Empire all by hisself, single-handedlike, with no help whatsoever from anyone else. Which is why every knee shall bend at the mention of his name. Amen. And now we shall pass the collection plate, and, brothers and sisters, please be generous.
lamh32
At MTV/BET/CMT townhall, Obama: Being gay is not a choice…
Video at link.
Mark S.
@Zifnab:
Godwins in one are immediately signed and sent off to the Internet Hall Of Fame.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ash Can: I have told you people before, I won the Cold War. Please remember this; I do not want to have to tell you again.
slag
Braggart!
Dennis SGMM
@stuckinred:
I’m a Vietnam vet. I hold no animus toward anyone who chose to sit out that war – anyone who didn’t turn into a flag waving, “we” gotta get them suckers, Republican son-of-a-bitch. If fate ever puts Saxby Chambliss in my way I will delight in kicking him in the junk so hard that it will require NASA to locate his nuts.
El Cid
Well, at least this isn’t going to be heard until after the election…
flounder
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I like the Nixon mention. It might be worthwhile getting some journos/pundits to explain how the new millionaire/corporate slush funds are different than the ones Nixon had.
bemused
Well, well, Brooks sure has his panties in a bundle about Dems jumping on the Chamber. He usually tries to act intellectual and cool but he seems pretty worked up. This has hit a big, raw nerve with the conservatives and villagers and they’re acting kind of panicky. Dems better not let up.
flounder
@Dennis SGMM: Someday I’ll dig up scumbag draft-dodger Mike Enzi’s quote for you, where he says something to the effect of the reason we lost in Vietnam is we didn’t fight long enough…with “we” being the poor schmucks who fought while he was hanging out in the Wyoming National Guard.
Mark S.
@El Cid:
I’d like to see that part of the ruling.
stuckinred
@flounder: Imagine if he had been in one of the 8 guard units that did go to the Nam!
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@lamh32:
Is that good or bad?
Stuck in the Funhouse
@stuckinred:
My Nixon loving patriot daddy got me a guard slot, but I told him I weren’t nothin’ special. I think that convinced him for good, he had spawned a Soviet Red./wingnut
Midnight Marauder
@lamh32:
It certainly is pretty nifty to see the President of the United States say that during a nationally broadcasted event.
stuckinred
@Stuck in the Funhouse: Ha, I love it. I spent the last 4 months of my tour in this outfit from Providence, RI. About a quarter of them just said fuck you and didn’t get on the plane. It was strange being RA in a guard unit but they were good guys.
stuckinred
@Midnight Marauder: Especially after dumb-ass Valerie Jarrett’s comment yesterday.
Midnight Marauder
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
I’m sure Joe Beese will be by any moment to tell us how it’s really just a front for the savagely raging bigotry of President Obama.
flounder
My dad was WY Nat. Guard, don’t know he did it, he didn’t know anyone, and I am glad for it (I was born in ’73), but if he ever said, anything remotely as stupid as Enzi or engaged in any of that revisionist b.s., I promise I’d call him on it.
stuckinred
@flounder: Some people just got lucky, it depended on the specific need of a unit at the time. Not everyone pulled strings.
El Cid
@Mark S.: Ruling can be read here (PDF, 65 pp).
I have no legal insight, though I did find this interesting that I had not encountered before. From a note to the conclusion:
(Paragraphing added.)
ET
If there was one thing I could go back and time and stop – the development of talking heads. The damage they do and the nonsense they spout is at best stupid (case in point Bobo above) and at worse deliberately misleading and/or inflamatory.
Are there any, ANY lefty blogosphere types that think Obama has been “captured” by the lefty blogosphere? I would HIGHLY doubt that.
Midnight Marauder
@flounder:
I believe you are referring to this article:
Steeplejack
Gotta put in a word for Gail Collins. After Krugman (and Frank Rich, when he gets his rage properly stoked), she is the best of the Times columnists. Consistently funny and lucid.
I like to imagine that she hates doing the one-on-ones with Bobo. Haven’t read this one, but she usually manages to crack him over the head once or twice during the course of them.
stuckinred
@Midnight Marauder: “We were winning when I left” (common button found at Nam Vet events)
Stuck in the Funhouse
@stuckinred:
I had nothing against the guard and the guys who got into it, it was just a personal choice of mine to turn it down, though later as a US, i sometimes wished I had taken it. Nor did I, or do now disrespect those who dodged it in other ways, like going to Canada or whatever. They paid a price also too.
It’s the ones that grew up to be president, starting unnecessary wars with lies I despise, and those who mock heros like cleland I hate with the passion of a thousand burning suns.
stuckinred
Unless you live in Orange County!
stuckinred
@Stuck in the Funhouse: We’re on the same page bro. I did a tour in Korea and a tour in the Nam and got out 2 months before my 20th birthday. FTA all the way.
I was at a Vets day event in the capitol building in Atlanta and Max gave away copies of his book. He singed them for hours until the last person got one.
DonkeyKong
“Hey, Applebees has french dressing so what’s the problem?”- David Fucking Brooks
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“As I’ve told you before, I was banned from commenting at the Times for writing that the only possible good that could come out of the Gail Collins/David Brooks discussion feature would be a murder-suicide.”
Hey, you left out letting them breed and *then* having the multiple murder-suicide.
Chyron HR
@stuckinred:
They brew Pho at the sites of their conquests, donchaknow?
Mark S.
@El Cid:
Thanks, and I found this a tad surprising (p. 33):
I had no idea that FAA decisions were so final. That’s some serious shit. I don’t think the Ten Commandments were that final.
Suck It Up!
Dear God I hope not!
El Cid
@ET:
Exactly! Which just demonstrates how fiendishly clever our capture of him was!
El Cid
@Mark S.: It’s well known that the highest concentration of Maoists in the entire US government is to be found in the FAA leadership. It’s true.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Suck It Up!:
We’ll know for sure when he calls out Cole for killing the faggy PO>
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@Steeplejack:
I rank her fourth after Krug, Herbert, and Kristof. But I hate Kristof and I hate her more.
Emma
Dennis: Sir, may I hold your coat while you do it?
Steeplejack
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
I like Bob Herbert, but I kind of stopped reading him because he boiled down to one never-changing note. I know he was probably driven mad by the Bush administration and Whitey in general, but he needed to get some fresh air. And I didn’t see any sign of him snapping out of it once Obama was in the White House.
Kristof has had a case of creeping Friedmania for a while.
What’s your beef with Collins? The humor? Okay, she’s no Molly Ivins, but she’s miles ahead of MoDo. And she bashes the Republicans for their stupidity and usually avoids the knee-jerk “Dems do it too” balance.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@Steeplejack:
With Collins, at best, it’s Wonkette jokes dumbed down for a PG-13 audience. At worst, it’s Bob Somerby’s worst nightmare of a priggish Irish-Catholic wagging her finger at the world.
eemom
yes, Collins is better than MoDo, but talk about damning with faint praise.
Collins exudes the insufferable smugness that afflicts them all, except (at NYT) Krugman and Herbert. It’s all a game to them, all just a spectator sport, cuz their asses are gonna be rich and well fed and cared for until they die, no matter what fucking lunatics get elected or how bad things turn to shit — and IMO that comfortable certainty, that “above it all” smuggery, comes across very clearly in all of their sophisticated witticisms.
Steeplejack
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
I really think you’re getting some MoDo bleed-through there. That’s a perfect description of her. But I haven’t read anything mentioning that Collins is Irish or Catholic–not that there’s anything wrong with that–nor does she come across as priggish.
Do you have a sample of her at her Bob Somerby worst?
JITC
This is true.
This, BTW, is exactly the argument made to prevent people dependent on government services from having access to abortion services.
The problem is not that foreign money might be defraying costs, it’s that the Chamber is SAYING they keep funds separate but not PROVING it.
Mark S.
@Mark S.:
I guess all three courts that have looked at this issue have ruled the mandate plaintiffs have standing. At least I wasn’t the only one who thought this might be a problem. As they say, when you’re right 51% of the time . . .
John Bird
Wait, why should I hate Gail Collins again?
Steeplejack
@John Bird:
That’s what I’ve been trying to find out. I read her regularly, and I can’t remember her ever
risingdropping to the level of a MoDo, Bobo or Friedman bomb.wyliecoat
Hey,
Back off Gail Collins. She may be fluffy, but she is also pretty funny and her heart is in the right place. Not everybody on the op-ed page has to be an economist. She and Krugman are the only columnists I read and will miss when the paper disappears behind a paywall.
tomvox1
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
Aw bullshit, Doug.
Gail Collins (in this very discussion that you linked):
Your broad brush needs less paint on this account, dude.
Mike M
I very much enjoy Gail Collins’s sense of humor. She shines a bright light on the idiots on the right (and sometimes the left),. I get a good laugh nearly every time I read her column, which is something I could use given the sorry state of affairs. BJ is certainly not the place to come for satire.
There may be some smug columnists (MD comes to mind) at the NYT, but Collins is not one of them.
Anne Laurie
Gotta vote with the “Gail Collins is not the Enemy” bloc, DougJ. She covers the dread ‘women’s issues’ fairly often, in a way that no other NYT columnist is willing to do, and without losing her sense of humor. I’ve always assumed her freedom to do so is somehow connected to the requirement that she baby-sit BoBo. Read the horrible crapfest you’ve excerpted again — Collins keeps correcting Brooks, walking him back from his worst lies and misstatements.
cmorenc
@DougJ
How Bobo frequently takes meanders into stupid-land, I get. How you get that impression about Gail Collins is frankly dumbfounding – she’s by far the sharpest, funniest, most intelligent woman writing for any newspaper today, and the only stupid things in her columns are the targets of her barbed wit, which she regularly skewers with one sentence that is both absurd and dead-on accurate at the same time. OK, Krugman is also extremely sharp and point-on, but he makes no attempt to leaven his observations with humor.
Leave Gail Collins ALONE DougJ, frankly you don’t have any clue what you’re talking about on this one.
ArgumentativeAtlantan
Why does anyone want to criticize grandma-like Gail Collins? She has been one of our strong supporters all along. I enjoy reading her funny and intelligent columns.