When You Use the Terms “Fiscal Cliff” or “Grand Bargain” a Veteran Gets Punched in the Mouth

Part 1: The Set-Up

– One consequence of inhaling the fetid gases arising out of the DC centrist swamp is the uncontrollable urge to express support for the “Grand Bargain”, a wide-ranging budget deal that would fiddle with tax rates and cut social spending programs in order to lower the long-term deficit.  Here’s the mad cow pen at Kaplan Test Prep lowing at it’s necessity.  A failure to come to a “Grand Bargain” was in part what led to the stalled negotiations to raise the debt ceiling in 2011.

– A result of the debt ceiling fever-dream was that spending cuts to programs awkward to cut (ie, the military and social spending whose rescission is most likely to cause blood to flow in the street) are to be enacted at the start of 2013.  Ben Bernanke (hereafter: The Lorax) warned last February that the combination of those cuts and the expiration of the Frank Booth* Tax Cuts would create a “fiscal cliff”.  His point in invoking the metaphor was to emphasize that we shouldn’t be enacting these austerity policies, because they would kill the economy.  He said this forcefully.  When the Treasury Secretary says something like “I think you also have to protect the recovery in the near term,” it’s measured policy speak for “you fucking twats, don’t cause another recession by cutting spending.”

* ‘cuz he fucked everything that moves, get it?

Part 2: The Sting

Now.  Centrists think going over the “fiscal cliff” is bad.  Just ask Politico.  But they also think a “Grand Bargain” is good.  Just ask Politico.

Everybody say it with me: THAT DON’T MAKE NO FUCKING SENSE.

The economy will be destroyed if we don’t avoid spending cuts and tax increases, but we need to enact spending cuts and tax increases right away in order to save the economy.

You can’t possibly believe that statement, and worse, you can’t manipulate it somehow to get it to make sense without running into another moat of centrist bullshit.  It doesn’t make sense to consider both dismantling the “fiscal cliff” and reaching a “Grand Bargain” together, but ok, first we avoid catastrophe and then we phase in long-term deficit reduction over time, right?  WRONG says Erskine Bowles in his best McLaughlin voice, doing so would “show markets we can’t put our house in order”, both have to be done nownownow.  Why the prescription for saving the economy is the same as what we have to stop in order to avoid tanking it, or why interest rates in 2020 will give a shit whether a deal was hammered out in January or October of 2012, are left as exercises to the reader.

Well ok but at least then there will be deficit reduction, right, that’s the whole point of this exercise? WRONG says Peter Orszag, in his virile high-pitched voice, “the most promising approach may be to compromise on Social Security — even though it is not a significant driver of our long-term deficits.”  The “fiscal cliff” needs to be used as an opportunity for a “Grand Bargain” of deficit reduction, even if there’s no deficit reduction.

Part 3: The Highest Form of Patriotism is to Punch Veterans in the Mouth

“Austerity will harm the economy, so we need to avoid it, but in the process of avoiding it we need to do it in order save the economy.  And even if it won’t save the economy, we have to do it.”  How much clearer could it possibly be that the centrist braying for dealing with the “fiscal cliff” and in the process instituting a “Grand Bargain” does not come from sober or reasoned economic analysis, and that looking for a through-line of logic from centrists in their incessant neighing for austerity is like trying to follow a single trail of slime in a slug orgy.

The purpose is not deficit reduction, or economic stability.  It’s what it always is: the transfer of wealth and security from the public to the private, from the masses to the few, from the base to the top.

How these broken-down jackasses are able to whine so incessantly for their plutocratic nightmare while holding up as paragons of virtue and civic responsibility the very people that will be destroyed by their policies is beyond me.  Two things are certain, this Veterans Day: David Gregory will blither staggeringly through his list of talking points to obscure the above analysis as much as possible, and he will praise veterans as the highest form of humanity yet attained, and I will vomit.  Three things.

Everyone’s Like Rilly Impressed With Your Sarcasm, Like Totes Fer Reals You Guys

Of all the cheap little tropes these centrists use to obscure their moral and intellectual vapidity the absolute fucking worst (well maybe a tie with the self-absorbed circle-jerk that is the concern about “tone” and “civility”) is humor.  Not quite humor, I think we can all agree; maybe parody.  Hell it’s not even that.  It’s just mean-spirited empty sarcasm.  Tina Fey Mean Girls style.  Always.

And lo how the examples stack up when reality presents them with a situation that no amount of quibbling and hair-splitting can keep them from claiming that “both sides do it” and to plead for “civility”.

Like now.  For instance, dafuq is Brooks doing in this column?  It’s a series of exaggerations of Romney’s biography, hitting the main points of Romney’s narrative: his childhood, teenage boarding school years, the dog on the car, the Olympics, the governorship.  Bain is given short shrift, comparatively.  The details are so outlandish (Mitt converted to being Amish but left after he found out about the ban on hair cream, nyuk nyuk nyuk) that such venerable writers as Susan and Doug mistook it at first as satire about Romney, or didn’t understand the fuck it was trying to do.  Letters to the editor also share that interpretation.

You need eyes attuned to the absolute black pitch of centrist thought to be able to parse what’s going on here.

Bill Buckley told me I had wit and style that means I have them everyone agrees

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because Brooks thinks he’s making fun of the rest of the media and Democrats.

He’s saying, “Oh my goodness gosh, the insane things people are saying about Romney.  Look at how insane they are.  This insane!”  But take two seconds to think about it.  What is the actual content of the critique he is satirizing?  “Romney doesn’t care about people who have little or no wealth.  He doesn’t know how they live, he doesn’t care, and he doesn’t care if they get hurt.  His immense family wealth bought him the ability to lead a different life than most anyone else, and to not care about what happens to most anyone else.”

Is there any doubt this is the case?  At all?  How many different senses do you need to lose before you start doubting those propositions?  His preferred policies are an economic holocaust for people without stocks, capital or car garages.  In every single instance they favor increasing the wealth of the wealthy instead of the economic, health, environmental, or any other concerns of any other group.

Brooks could be using his column to be shedding light on under-reported issues, or to rally support to address specific issues of injustice, or to brag about his shitty kids.  Anything would be better than this too-confused-to-even-call-it “satire” whose targets are complaints that a nominee for president wants to dick over everyone without money.

So you see the basic format: there is a proposition or a practice that is as clearly against the sensibilities of the centrist pundit as it is true, which puts the centrist pundit in a quandary.  What to do, what to do.  Incoherent sarcasm is the answer.  Especially when it’s being applied in defense of other centrist pundits.

This’ll show ’em you need arguments and facts, not childish name-calling, to carry an argument

Glenn Kessler, as discussed, is a gaping scumbag asshole who needs to be fired for incompetence at discussing politics in a national forum.  Clive Crook disagrees with that statement, but cannot provide any reasons for disagreement, so he lapses into ohp you guessed it:

Of course I could criticize Kessler without calling him the filthy liar that he is. You know, exercise a little “restraint”. On the one hand, on the other hand, all that crap. But leading scholars have taught us that in politics things aren’t complicated, and when somebody builds a career on a lie, we need to say so . . .

Some of you may find that distinction hard to grasp. It’s Two Spocks difficult. Paul Krugman helped me see that people are divided into three groups: the ones who know I’m right (I call these “excellent”), fools and knaves. Possibly, you’re a fool, so let me spell it out for you. When a fact is wrong, it’s not some number of Pinocchios, it’s just wrong . . .

Angry? You bet I’m angry. I’m crying tears of rage right now. We don’t tolerate people who torture small children and we shouldn’t tolerate atrocities like this. I can’t think of a penalty too severe . . . And I know calling him a brazen liar and wishing him to be set upon by ravening dogs isn’t going to open any channels of communication between us. Good. That’s just how I want it. You can be “civil” and have your nice debates, and that’s all fine and dandy if you want to be a filthy traitor in the war of ideas. But when you engage with liars, you validate their lies–lies, lies, lies–and you’re no better than they are.

I guess there are “reasons” in there, that certain ages of child might accept.  I don’t really see how claiming “politics is difficult” is a defense of Kessler’s refusal to condemn what he admits are lies.  I don’t see the value in a type of nuance that says “this consistent series of political stances based on an incoherent budget plan may enrich every millionaire at the expense of every non-millionaire, but really, every politician fudges things a little.”  And I don’t see why getting angry at people who refuse to acknowledge that the consistent actions and stated intent of a segment of elites are to enrich themselves as much as possible by making life as desperate for as many other people as possible is a vice.

The “channels of communication” thing is the biggest crock of shit.  “Yeah, these guys want to take away your pension and medical support and basically force everyone to live paycheck to paycheck shackled to debt their entire lives, and are lying about it, but it’s not that important.”

“Hey, fuck you too, buddy, it is important.”

“HOW DARE YOU CLOSE THE CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION. I don’t see how I can discuss, IN THIS HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT, how fucking you and your kids and your parents over isn’t important.”

So fuck you, Clive Crook, with a rusty spoon, right in the eye.  You’re defending someone who’s saying, “I acknowledge these politicians are lying about fucking people over for decades.  It isn’t a big deal.”  And your only defense is childish sarcasm and meaningless buzzwords.  Who’s fucking blocking the lines of communication, here, dickwad?

Oh plus Clive Crook defends Mickey “I am literally the worst thinker Slate has ever published” Kaus.  ‘Nuff said.

Who Fucking Gets It Charlie Pierce Fucking Gets It. And David Brooks Should Get a Fucking Scrotal Poke with a White-Hot Wire.

The best development in the field of punditry in the past, oh, three or fours years at least is the application by Charles P. Pierce of his considerable powers to political analysis.

He is much less susceptible to the institutional careerism which is the Original Sin responsible for centrist bullshit, and he could give a fuck about civility or the social mores which act as regulating mechanisms if a centrist should slip here or there.  A bright spot in a bleak landscape.

He fucking gets it:

But what I’ve come to realize is that, from the first moment the first protester stepped onto the lawn of the capitol in Madison 16 months ago until the polls close tonight, the Great Wisconsin Recall has been an extended argument against narcotic centrism and anesthetic civility […] What we have here is a fight, out in the open, without nuance or euphemism, between two ideas of what self-government should look like, who it should serve, and how, and how wide the parameters of participation will be. That is serious business. It ought to be contested fiercely and to the last and without cosmetic conciliation. Scott Walker made a firm stand against public-employee unions, and did so in a way that ran contrary to a proud tradition of progressive politics in a state that takes those politics very, very seriously

As opposed to, say, this fucker: 

Fallout from the Americans Elect Implosion, AKA the Centrist 9/11

via LGM

I am the Cameron Frye to Rebecca Elliott’s Ferris Bueller: she’s my hero.

She compiled a nice little list of pundits making grandiose claims about the centrist equivalent of seasteading, Americans Elect, which after delaying their schedule of implementation by several planting seasons features a front-runner who is a mere 9,700 votes shy of getting the 10,000 votes needed to become the Americans Elect candidate.  Frye did little summarizing of the pundits’ views toward Americans Elect and just let the their words speak for themselves beneath tasteful photos.

Several of those characteristics will be kept in this post and several will not.

Dammit! Works every time

I love the way they use that word “if.
It’s like the centrist catechism: repeat it enough times and all your sins will be wiped clean.

As the sailor said to the native girl, there’s much more below: 

Charles Murray, Mickey Kaus and Thomas Friedman Walk Into a Bar

Via driftglass

One thing leads to another, they go back to Tommy’s place, they all make sweet love to and around each other, and 9 months later this bastard pops out of Friedman.

Guh-ross. The ideas, not the sex. Well that too.

Friedman’s reasoning is that ads are everywhere nowadays, which means rich people are interacting less with not-rich people (Kaus!), and there are obvious ways this distorts the political process (Murray!), though he will not even attempt to allude to any specific examples.  Because he’s pulling stuff out of the Ur-ass all centrists use as a source for their unsubstantiated bullshit.

Oh and of course Friedman cites a friend of his as an authority to back-up all the stuff he’s slinging.  Spread the love around, baby.

Being a Centrist Means Never Apologizing for Speaking Fees from Powerful Conservative Lobbying Groups

“And after that, a pile of stank this high delivered by a hooker with an ass this big. I’m three more purchases away from a free one myself.”

Via Balloon Juice, apparently David Gregory is the main attraction at a fundraiser for the National Federation of Independent Businesses.  A group which not only spread over $2 million around to Republican candidates in the 2010 elections to fight against collective bargaining, EPA regulations and such, but found enough left over between the cushions on the lounge sofa to bankroll the primary legal opposition to the PP-ACA through the Supreme Court.

But I’m sure Gregory, who’s life’s passion is obviously exploring interpretative lanky dance and the human response,  shan’t be swayed by the presence of something as mundane as currency at this event, even if there will be metric fucktons of it., and even when a non-negligible portion of those fucktons arrives at his house for a hosting job well done.

I Like Being Paid to Write Inane Nonsense. But I Must Receive Adequate Compensation for My Contributions.

When you’re a centrist, you have to have the courage to treat contract offers a mere 200% above the median wage as the insults they are. Fair compensation for recycled pap that is indistinguishable from most of your colleagues is essential to keeping the profession honest.