Just Too Easy

The fail parade that is Jennifer Rubin at the WaPost continues with 76 trombones.

http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2013/02/26/aipac-attack-hack-cracks/

Basically, Rubin lead the snit fit because Chuck Hagel said that the "Israeli lobby" intimidates US Senators and that he's a US Senator, not an Israeli Senator.

(When Lindsay Graham challenged Hagel to say which Senators had been cowed by the Israeli lobby, I would have loved for Hagel to toss him a mirror.)

Anyway, now Rubin is saying, "Only if AIPAC had opposed Hagel more vociferously, he could have been defeated."

For a host of reasons - ideology, anti-science, reflexive anti-Obama positions - the GOP has entered a phase where it literally cannot make sense from one day to the next.  On the sequester they are simultaneously arguing that the sequester is no big deal, but it is also going to kill us all in our sleep and it's all Obama's fault.  Rubin is arguing that Hagel is an anti-Semite for saying that pro-Israel lobbyists exert too much influence over our foreign policy and then turns around and say that the pro-Israel lobbyists could have defeated him if they had exerted more pressure.

Rubin is on quite the losing streak.  Her unfailing flogging of Romney's campaign helped sustain the illusion in some quarters that Romney was viable.  That must have been a rough night when the returns came in.  Romney at least has his millions to console him.  Rubin has to keep churning out incoherent and spectacularly wrong columns.

Bless her heart.

Wednesday Morning Takedown

I haven't done this in a while, and technically it's not the morning anymore, but this is awesome:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/hitler-alive-and-well-owning-liberal-magazine.html

Paul Ryan, Meet Charlie Pierce

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/paul-ryan-heritage-foundation-speech-6530510

As TBogg says, Pierce's blog is rendering the rest of the internet superfluous.

As usual, Jon Chait is a little more thorough and wonky in his fisking of Ryan.  Still worth a read, even if it lacks the acerbic, biting wit of Pierce.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/10/the_ideological_fantasies_of_i.html

Depressed? This Won't Help.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/09/super-committee-riven-by-major-divide-over-basic-fact.php?ref=fpa

So, Doug Elmendorf goes before the Super Congress and explains some basic facts about expansionary and contractionary economic policy.

The Republicans don't agree.

With the facts.

My favorite moment was when Kyl said he was worried that defense contractors might layoff workers if we cut defense spending.  But he was unimpressed with the idea that cutting state or infrastructure spending would have the same effect.

Why?

Ask him.  I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that military contractors spend hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying fees and laid off construction workers spend considerably less.

Someone, maybe Mary Chestnut, said that the Confederacy's inability to coordinate national policy led to its defeat.  "The Confederacy was killed by a theory."

Fitting that the neo-confederate party of 2011 is trying to do that to the national economy.

Required Reading

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/06/25/acknowledging-the-recalcitrant-elephant-in-the-room/

I ran into an ex-student of mine and we were discussing just this issue.  The GOP really seems willfully intent on wrecking the economy.  The sooner people start pointing this out, the better off the long term prognosis might become.

Might.

Your Wednesday Morning Takedown

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/05/24/coming-soon-to-a-theatre-near-you/#comment-2602921

There's apparently a movie about Sarah Palin coming out.  Amazingly, it's favorable to her.  OK, not amazingly, it's her reclamation project.

The commentariat at Balloon Juice have come up with titles for it.

My suggestion: Snowbilly Madison

Your Wednesday Morning Takedown

tbogg takes on the National Review's mancrush on Paul Ryan.

http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2011/04/26/james-pethokoukis-is-now-totally-gay-for-paul-ryan/

Your Wednesday Morning Takedown, Now With More Tuesdayness

Objectivism in a nutshell.

You could hear the knives being sharpened as soon as the news came out.  Ayn Rand's magnus crapus Atlas Shrugged was being rushed into production by a bunch of people no one had heard of before in order to preserve the option on the material.

Just as no one could have predicted that bin Laden would strike in the US, that the levees would fail or that the housing bubble would burst, so, too, no one could have predicted that this would be a steaming pile of feces.

http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html#3402858641747286348

http://www.ginandtacos.com/2011/04/17/battlefield-train-an-atlas-shrugged-movie-review/

Which leads to the finest summation of Rand I've ever heard:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Your Wednesday Morning Takedown

http://www.ginandtacos.com/2011/04/06/bundled-mediocrity/comment-page-1/#comment-55935

This is a truly epic and righteous rant.  Good for insight, good for a chuckle.

Your Wednesday Morning Takedown

About a week or so ago, I launched an... intemperate... attack on David Brooks for being an asshat. You can read it if you want.  Anyway, Brooks went further down Asshat Lane with his latest column that eventually winds up with real, actual death panels for the elderly.  Which Brooks somehow equates with being the moral thing to do because it would allow us to spend more of our limited government money on education.  The moral thing, in Brooks' mind, is to kill grandma to pay for little Felix's education.

Not raise taxes, mind you.  Kill Grannie.

Rather than elevate my blood pressure, I'll just re-direct you to Tom Scocca, who is one of the best reasons to read Slate.  OK, close to the only reason.

Seriously, read it.  It's classic.

Your Day Late Wednesday Morning Takedown

E.J. Dionne does the honors today:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/16/AR2011021605464.html

A necessary corrective to the squawking of the deficit peacocks.

Your Wednesday Morning Takedown

I'll just let the straight news speak for itself:

Sarah Palin’s request to trademark her name was denied after the former Alaska governor failed to properly complete her application. Sky News has the story: “According to official records the bid, filed by her lawyer, was rejected on the grounds that she failed to personally sign the application. The records also show that two examples she had given supporting her application were ‘not acceptable’. Her application specimens were a story from Fox News saying she had been hired as a contributor for the network and postings about herself on Facebook. According to the official record the specimens ‘are not acceptable because they do not show use of the applied-for mark in connection with any of the services specified in the application’.” But there’s still hope: “The Trademark Office has sent a letter setting a deadline of the end of May for Mrs Palin to provide more information before the application is abandoned.

Your Wednesday Morning Takedown

This is a GREAT prank against a Belgian phone company with a terrible record of customer service.

Worth the time and the subtitles.

Your Wednesday Morning Takedown

This is about a week old, but entirely worth it.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/80140/nick-gillespie-responds-and-his-point-i-have-no-idea

Jon Chait is perhaps the only semblance of credibility The New Republic has left.  He is very bright, astute in his observations and a good writer.

Nick Gillespie is a libertardian who wears a leather jacket.  Someone (John Cole) dubbed him the "Fonzie of Freedom."

Gillespie wrote a piece of libertardian drivel about balancing the budget with magical arithmetic.  Chair pointed out that it was magical arithmetic.  Gillespie responded.

And then Chait hit him upside the head with a 2x4 of facts.

To dissect the takedown, I should note that Chait never "raises his voice" or employs any histrionical devices. He uses facts and knowledge as a cudgel to beat Gillespie about his head and neck.

A really good rhetorical takedown usually is reserved and calm.  To keep your head when all about you lose theirs is the sign of a good takedown artist.

Wednesday Morning Takedown

Wilford Brimley is pissed about something.

Trolling around for a WMT, I found this little gem at Gin and Tacos:
http://www.ginandtacos.com/2010/12/15/torpor/

It is something I've been mulling for a while.  Why don't we riot anymore?  It's clear our political system is rigged to benefit the few and not the many.  Are we so sated by material prosperity and so depressed by the relative inequality of its distribution that we do nothing?

The Brits rioted because the tripled university tuition... to $14K a year, or roughly a fraction of what we pay to go to community college.  Why can't we get suitably outraged?

Your Wednesday Morning Takedown

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/12/08/the-infallibility-of-the-professional-left/#more-54604

Wherein a former front pager at Daily Kos points out that they have become Faily Kos.  Ha, see what I did!

I guess this comes down to two camps on the left.

You either want what you want or want what you can get.

Obama seems to be in such a hurry to get things done, he often gives away too much to get it done.  On the other hand, he has gotten things done that are pretty damned impressive.

If liberals wind up killing the tax cut deal, they will likely end up with a double dip recession and we can all bemoan President Palin's attempt to replace tax payments with moose meat.

But bemoaning things seems to be the raison d'etre of the Internets.

Your Wednesday Morning Takedown

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/11/29/101129crbo_books_packer?currentPage=all

Yes.  It's a day late.

This is George Packer's review of Bush's memoir in The New Yorker.  It is exactly the sort of takedown one would expect from The New Yorker: polite, well-researched, authoritative and somewhat despondent that words like this must be written.  Packer manages to takedown Bush's pretensions of himself thoroughly and yet seems sad that he has to do so.

Your Wednesday MorningTakedown

So this might become a regular feature....

Today's Wednesday morning takedown is from Gin And Tacos.  In it, the last feeble remnants of Sarah Palin's dignity - previously detectable only by an electron microscope - are demolished.

http://www.ginandtacos.com/2010/11/17/at-long-last-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/

In this takedown, Ed uses a nice structural framework of an academician making a broad point about some cultural norm.  He then circles in like a raptor towards a mouse, finally culminating in a verbal evisceration that is both erudite and brutal.

Enjoy!