Thomas Sowell has estimated your intelligence

By Dan Brooks in conservative liars, help me kill zombies, obama, populism, Reactionary Populism 6 Comments
Dr. Thomas Sowell, who did not realize the sour candy was going to be this sour.

Dr. Thomas Sowell, who did not realize the sour candy was going to be this sour.

The logical question, of course, is “Who the [fudge] is Thomas Sowell? I mean [gosh] [darn] it, why are you wasting my time with this [sugar], you [fudging] [dinner companion for business travelers]?” It’s weird you’d ask that, though, because Thomas Sowell knows exactly who you are: some kind of idiot. Witness his most recent column at Townhall.com,* in which he speculates that the vaunted intelligence of Barack Obama and his team of advisors is, in fact, a disadvantage. “There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people,” Sowell writes. “For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs.” Specifically, you need people with high IQs to tell the dull and stupid how to think about politics—that’s when you can really started messing [shirts] up. I presume that part was cut for length.

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How the sausage is made: PhRMA, Billy Tauzin and the Baucus Bill

By Dan Brooks in health care, health insurance reform, obama, representative democracy 4 Comments
Former LA representative Billy Tauzin, who became the head of PhRMA the same day he left Congress

Former LA representative Billy Tauzin, who became the head of PhRMA the same day he left Congress

Since July, rumors have circulated that representatives of PhRMA—Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industry’s trade group and lobbying machine—were meeting with President Obama to discuss potential pharmaceutical pricing regulations in health care reform. Back in 1994, when Clinton tried to overhaul the health care system, PhRMA was instrumental in blocking reform and funding a subsequent Republican resurgence in Congress that, among other services to the nation, forced the President to admit to getting a blowjob from a fat girl on television.* The drug industry is one of the largest sources of lobbying money in Congress, and their opposition to Medicare price negotiations has been vigorous and longstanding. During the 2008 campaign, Obama cited such negotiations, along with the importation of inexpensive prescription drugs from Canada, as a major objective of his reform plan. Now, however, a deal has been struck, Medicare negotiations are off the table, and PhRMA has invested $150 million in advertisements supporting the Baucus bill.

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The Summer of Hate: Counterculture in 2009

By Dan Brooks in counterculture, health care, health insurance reform, help me kill zombies, inevitability of death, oppositional culture, populism, representative democracy, subculture, the crank factor, town hall meetings, town hall protests, widespread dumbening 4 Comments
Apparently if you go Hot Topic it's all Glenn Beck CDs and copies of The Wealth of Nations now.

Apparently if you go to Hot Topic it's all Glenn Beck CDs and copies of The Wealth of Nations now.

I was going to be angry about these kids, but one look at the profoundly sixteen-year-old-girl expression on that sixteen-year-old girl’s face and I didn’t have the heart. (If you’d like to get real sad, you can read a blog written by that poor girl’s mother, in which she calls Barbara Boxer a “moronic twit.” The badge on the right side indicates that she’s made the list of “best conservative blogs on the net,” which is apparently determined by total word count.) That’s her boyfriend on the left, proving again that teenage boys will do anything under certain conditions. And what are these desperate youths and the ragtag band behind them protesting for? Lower taxes on the rich, reduced social services, deregulation of business and conservative fiscal policy.

To hear Frank Rich tell it, protests like these are harbingers of a new era of cultural and political upheaval. Last weekend was the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, which television raised me to believe was the most important moment of the 20th century. It turns out that was all to promote The Wonder Years, though, because this year’s commemoration was overshadowed by the season premiere of Mad Men. First of all, if you don’t watch Mad Men, you should start immediately. It is the Cadillac of television shows, or the Combat! blog of television shows in that Frank Rich and I agree with it more than anyone else in America. Second of all, Frank Rich is right. The year that resonates with our present cultural moment isn’t 1969; it’s 1963.

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