Combat! - Page 349 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Close Readings: Gingrich on Obama’s “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading, Uncategorized September 14, 2010 6 Comments

Reason #378 why we do not miss 1994

I don’t know about you, but I like my Republicans shrill, vaguely racist and relentlessly accusatory. I was thus terribly disappointed when Newton Leroy “Newt” Gingrich left the House of Representatives in 1998, leaving that body unable to pursue its constitutionally-mandated function of investigating the President’s real estate deals, campaign financing and extramarital affairs in an endless attempt to remove him from office. Fortunately, President Bush assumed office shortly thereafter, and the Republican Party coincidentally decided that executive privilege was extremely important. Now, though, we have Barack Obama, a man “who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president.” That was Gingrich’s assessment of the President in a recent edition of the National Review, and it’s one of the least crazy things he says in the interview. The real money shot is after the jump, and it’s the subject of today’s Close Reading.

Reality versus what we claim to want

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas September 13, 2010 5 Comments

The Situation and Professor Plumpers from MTV's Jersey Shore, the highest-rated television show among viewers aged 18-49. Those are possibly not their real names.

Depending on how many Facebook photos exist of you holding up a sideways peace sign,* you probably bring a varyingly complex level of irony to Jersey Shore. The MTV reality show is currently the top-rated television program among Americans 18-49, which makes it perhaps the most valuable commodity on television. Americans aged 18 to 49 buy stuff, as Situation and Professor’s decision to wear necklaces and bracelets to the beach indicates. According to the New York Times, 15 of the 20 top-rated shows for that age group this summer were unscripted—America’s Got Talent, Big Brother, The Bachelorette, So You Think you Can Dance, et cetera. That’s interesting, since in a TiVo poll reported in the same article, reality television was also the genre that the most respondents called “overdone.”

Friday links! Towering inferno of Korans and stupidity edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links September 10, 2010 5 Comments

You know what I like about America? You don't see as much of this.

While the rest of us spent the week getting extremely angry about a tax break extension for the wealthy that never happened, Pastor Terry Jones was planning to burn a bunch of Korans. This demonstration would A) commemorate the September 11th attacks as tastefully as possible and B) as Ben Fowlkes put it, “make the daring dream of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace and lover of neighbors, finally come to fruition.” Jones shepherds a flock of about 50 in Gainesville, Florida, and achieved peak notoriety prior to this event by sending five children to school in shirt that said “Islam is of the devil.” After Gainesville elected a gay man as mayor, Jones also put up a sign that read “No homo mayor” in front of city hall. Clearly, we are dealing with a sophisticated religious thinker. Despite his obvious limitations, Jones captured the attention of many people who see the relationship among Islam, modernity, Christianity, secular modernism and liberal democracy as slightly more complex than G.I. Joe vs. Cobra, and everybody went crazy. Maybe that’s because it was a slow news week. Regardless, it’s been a slow week around here, so we figured we’d go ahead and dedicate this Friday’s entire link roundup to the fiasco. I call it the Bonfire of the Inanities. Clever, right? I’m still single.

Slate’s Timothy Noah on income inequality

By Dan Brooks in Plutocracy September 9, 2010 6 Comments

Slate is midway through what is threatened to be a two-week series on income inequality in America, just in time for the controversial announcement that the President will not try to solve the economy by giving more money to rich people. Timothy Noah looks at several putative dangers to America’s middle class, including immigration, racism/sexism, and computers, none of which accounts for the growing gap between rich and poor in the United States. That gap is enormous. Currently, the wealthiest 1% of Americans take home 24% of the national income. Between 1980 and 2005, more than 80% of the nation’s considerable increase in earnings went to that 1%. To put that in perspective, back in 1915—the era of the Carnegies, Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, as well as a generation of non name-brand robber barons—the top 1% only got 18%. Economically, ours is a less equal America than that of our great grandparents.

Obama to oppose tax cuts for rich, psychic suicide of Democratic Party

By Dan Brooks in Invective September 8, 2010 6 Comments

President Obama with various Democratic lawmakers, all poised to run out of the room and say they never met him if a scary poll comes out.

According to the Times, President Obama will officially come out against extending the Bush tax cuts for households making over $250,000 a year, offering instead to extend cuts for the 98% of Americans who earn less than that. He’s also presented a package of deductions and capital incentives for small businesses, plus infrastructure spending designed to boost the economy and encourage hiring. It’s not a stimulus, though, because people don’t like that word. That a government plan to stimulate the economy must never again be called a stimulus is one of the few things that Democratic lawmakers can agree on lately. The other is that not giving a tax cut to the the richest 2% of the country is politically risky, and maybe they should just do it anyway so Republicans will stop being mean to them.