Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t try, don’t do @#$%ing anything

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 5 Comments

"Everybody calm down. We're going to wait until this whole opposition party thing blows over."

Lately, watching the Democratic senatorial caucus has been like watching your toddler take his first few tentative steps forward, only to see the cat, shriek in terror and sit down until someone tells him what to do. Yesterday, the Senate voted 56 to 43 to begin debate on the Pentagon spending bill that would have ended Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. If you’ve been unfamiliar with the last two years of Senate proceedings, 56 to 43 is a loss. Because of the threat of filibuster, Democrats need 60 votes to win anything, whereas the Republicans need 41. Never mind that the filibuster hasn’t actually been used since the Democrats won the Presidency and both houses of Congress. Republican senators might do it, and that’s why Democrats scrambled and compromised to get 60 votes to pass health care, 60 votes to pass financial reform, 60 votes to pass anything more significant than a renewal of Flag Day. So, having won the vote to move forward with a plan to repeal DADT supported by the President, the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff, Democrats in the Senate conceded defeat.

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

By Dan Brooks in Invective 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.

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Something d-o-o economics. Voo-doo economics

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 7 Comments

How young you were, Ben Stein. Also how ironically cast.

John Smick sent me this excellent column by Martin Wolf on the political genius of supply-side economics. For those of you who did not hire me to help you prepare for the US History SAT II, supply-side economics is the theory that the best way to foster economic growth is by making it easier for people to produce (supply, natch) goods and services—primarily through reducing taxes on the rich and deregulating industry. Ostensibly, the increased economic activity generated by these policies offsets the decrease in revenue caused by the tax cuts; one gets 17% of $8 trillion rather than 34% of $4 trillion, and everybody wins. In practice, that’s never happened. Proponents will tell you that’s because supply-side economic policies have never been consistently implemented for a long period of time, but it might also be that the whole thing is hooey. Still, while the economic value of supply-side economics has yet to be demonstrated, its political value to the Republican Party is so significant as to have made it an article of faith.

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Michael Steele: Still just sayin’ stuff

By Dan Brooks in Just Sayin' Stuff 2 Comments

Striding boldly forward onto his dick, Michael Steele told the crowd at a Republican fundraiser Tuesday that Afghanistan is a “war of Obama’s choosing.” “If he’s such a student of history,” Steele said, “has he not understood that, you know, that’s the one thing you don’t do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?” First of all, Steele clearly watched The Princess Bride last week (4:30.) Second, I don’t know if you remember this, but the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, shortly after the September 11th attacks and technically, you know, seven years before President Obama took office. It’s difficult to argue from that chronology that Afghanistan is not a war of George W. Bush’s choosing or, if you have a lot of stickers on your truck, Osama bin Laden’s. It does, however, remain totally easy to say.

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Brit Hume: Just sayin’ stuff

By Dan Brooks in Just Sayin' Stuff 3 Comments

"...for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life."

Recently, Britt Hume took material form to go on Fox News Sunday and imply that the BP oil spill was not really a big deal. “There’s a good question today if you are standing on the Gulf,” the former anchor said, “and that is, where is the oil?” In addition to baffling Juan Williams in an extremely amusing fashion, Hume seemed to be arguing that media reports of thousands of gallons of crude forming an oil slick larger than Delaware were somehow exaggerated. “The ocean absorbs a lot,” he kept saying, after pointing out that the largest source of oil in the ocean is “natural seepage from the ocean floor.” That’s true, in the same sense that the largest source of cocaine in our daily lives comes from residue on dollar bills. That doesn’t stop the plume from damaging our synapses/making us spend hours talking about what cable television will be like in the future, though.

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