Quote of the Day

"This whole episode has underscored an idea that's central to the GOP's governing philosophy -- government just doesn't work. It takes triggers, and committees and hostage taking to get anything done. Had deficit reduction come about in a reasonable manner, the GOP would have been a big loser. They exist to prove that government is inherently dysfunctional."

-- The Huffington Post's Jason Linkins in a piece called "What Does the Debt Ceiling Deal Mean for Ordinary Americans?"

This is a damn terrific point, and one that needed to be made. By engaging in the kind of antics they did, the GOP basically proved their point that government is a mess. It's near perfect, circular meta-reasoning. It's also complete horseshit. It's like a boyfriend or girlfriend picking a fight with you or otherwise doing something awful, then when you take the bait or react angrily saying, "See, this is why I can't be with you."

It also highlights the central paradox of the current crop of Republicans and why their motives and actions should be constantly eyed with suspicion: They claim to believe that the very entity they work for is hardly necessary; the more they're able to sabotage it from the inside the more they have to gain with their constituency. Put it another way: If you were a business-owner or manager, would you hire someone who made no effort to hide the fact that he thought your business -- and entire industry, for that matter -- sucked? That if he had his way there'd barely even be a need for you to hire him in the first place?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the overarching GOP ethos, circa 2011.

De-press-ing

I realize I'm kind of outsourcing the commentary right now. That's mostly because I'm busy as hell but also because there's so much good stuff already being written and said about this ridiculous debt deal. Like my BFF Jason Linkins's excellent excoriation of the political press currently running over at HuffPo.

"Way back when this whole saga started, the GOP's gambit was, 'Give us what we want or we will put the full faith and credit of U.S. Treasury bonds into default.' It shouldn't have been necessary to point out to the press that this was an utterly insane, from-the-furthest-reaches-of-Mars position to take. After all, the debt ceiling had been raised many, many times before, without any fuss worth mentioning. If you cannot say objectively that threatening to blow up the world's economy was an extreme position, then the word 'objectivity' is meaningless.

But far from taking an immediate stand against the insanity, the press treated the threatened demise of global society as just another interesting point of view among many. It was an exciting tactic, sure to cause waves in the political waters of the Imperial City. Pop some popcorn and let's see where this takes us! Well, where it's taken us is 'past the brink.' Our political culture has been permanently altered. It has now been deemed an acceptable tactic, in politics, to take hostages and make demands.

It's utterly bonkers. And the press just thinks it's genius! ...

Well... they should own this great mess. The media has ENDORSED: default threats on the American people as a means of making policy. The media has ENDORSED: a permanent state of governmental dysfunction. The media has ENDORSED: their own absolution in failing to adequately cover the unemployment crisis.

And their message to you? 'Kiss our ass, America. You're on your own.'"

He pegs this piece off of a typically self-indulgent discussion that David Gregory had the other day with NBC anchor emeritus Tom Brokaw in which Brokaw honestly said something so unbelievably out of touch with reality and laden with phony objectivity that, as Linkins says, I found myself questioning whether he'd finally lost his mind.

Assistant Quote of the Day

"Levy and Stein find themselves offering up the same response -- two of the World's Most Interesting Men, defending another Interesting Man, on the grounds that the privilege all enjoy makes the crime inconceivable on its face. Ahh, the vita is always dolce when you are an Interesting Man. And rape? This is not a crime that Interesting Men dismiss out of hand, necessarily. But it's a tawdry and declasse sort of thing that happens to downmarket people. It's not supposed to rile up the lives of the world's elite. Game recognizes game, after all. And shame? That's for lesser people. And so while it can be acknowledged that the possibility exists that DSK is the perpetrator of a crime (Levy: 'I do not know what actually happened.' Stein: '...it's possible indeed, maybe even likely, that he is guilty as the prosecutors charge.'), the important thing to do right now is remind the world that in this life, Interesting Men are never supposed to experience shame, let alone experience it publicly. Isn't that the greater indignity?"

-- Jason Linkins, on the sudden unimaginable alliance between Bernard Henri-Levy and Ben Stein (or as I like to call it, BHL-BS) in the defense of fellow Interesting Man Dominique Strauss Kahn

I still refer to Linkins as my BFF for ripping me a new one back when he was with Wonkette, but he's a damn entertaining and insightful writer -- as this piece proves.

Quote of the Week (Honorable Mention)

"CNN is facing pressure on a number of fronts to drop Lou Dobbs from their roster of on-air talent, a move that would force millions of Americans seeking out news about the conspiracy to spread leprosy throughout America via illegal Mexican immigrants to turn instead to the guy who lives under the bridge by the old tire factory."

-- Jason Linkins at the Huffington Post

Birth-Brains 4: The Meltdown

It's rare that I swipe something wholesale from a third-party source, but the Huffington Post's Jason Linkins -- who's my BFF by the way -- pretty much nails it in hilarious fashion on the set-up for the clip you're about to see:

"The conventional wisdom is that August is the slowest month for news, thus it's tailor-made for the 'Birther' movement -- crazies that come hand-delivered to the media in their month of need, like barrel-dwelling fish that shoot themselves. Today, they're waving around a supposed 'Kenyan birth certificate' for President Barack Obama without regard to the fact that it would have to have come from an alternate reality where Kenya became Kenya before Kenya was Kenya, and on which Obama is said to have been born in a city that was actually part of Zanzibar at the time of his birth. It's all pretty awesome and fun and now everyone's getting in on the 'let's all forge up some birth certificates' craze. It's August 2009, and America is precisely where our founders envisioned we would be.

On Monday, David Shuster and Tamron Hall hosted celebrated 'Birther Queen' Orly Taitz, who is a walking Saturday Night Live character, possibly played by Chris Kattan, come to life. The resulting discussion was, as you might imagine, pretty special! Taitz came on, speaking as if in a panic, presaging her answers with complaints about CNN, referring to David Shuster as a 'brownshirt,' and making oddball claims about how '85% of Americans think Barack Obama was not properly vetted.'

Anyway, this is like Shuster and Hall attempting to interview an angry Fraggle."



Just a reminder, by the way, that today is Barack Obama's "birthday."

Yeah, right. That's what they want you to believe.

Related:

Birth-Brains/7.23.09

Birth-Brains 2: The Wrath of Dobbs/7.23.09

Birth-Brains 3: The Reckoning/7.26.09