I’ve suspected for some time that booman was stove-piping White House talking points.
I don’t think it’s violating any trust to reveal to you that I receive both on and off-the-record correspondence from the White House. On most weekdays, I’ll get a few heads-up about things the White House thinks are important.
Actually, if booman considers himself any sort of independent analyst, it would be wrong not to disclose such access, so I actually give him credit for doing so, even if it was inadvertently via bragging. To the extent that he actually remains quasi-independent is anyone’s guess. I personally think he’s drunk the access koolaid, as they say, and that if his “analysis” becomes any more shallow, you won’t even be able to get your feet wet at the frog pond.
Listen to this slapdash attempt at explaining the ongoing Greatest Heist Ever:
Why does America have worse economic inequality than almost any other developed nation? Because of the Republican Party. It’s that simple. Why is the Republican Party the way it is? That’s a more complicated question.
In booman’s world, there’s no mention of Clinton, NAFTA, the WTO, Rubinomics, Glass-Steagall, the transpacific partnership, etc. It’s “Republicans. That simple.”
Or his explication of the list of things we can’t do, due to crazy Republicans:
In light of last night’s debacle in the House, what do you think the chances are that we can:
1) pass comprehensive immigration reform.
2) pass a stimulus bill focusing on infrastructure.
3) raise the debt ceiling.
4) pass any legislation to address climate change.
5) restrict sales of assault weapons and high capacity clips.
6) restore cuts in discretionary spending (other than military) that is reduced in the Sequester.
7) do sensible tax reform, including on the Doc Fix and the Alternative Minimum Tax?You can add to this list anything else we need to do but won’t be able to do because the Republicans are crazy.
Yep. Republicans are crazy. Democrats have had their hands tied on gun control since the mid-seventies, and Obama never scuttled the Rio Earth summit. The WTO and Kyoto had nothing to do with globalization and China’s use of coal. Or outsourcing of jobs. Or trade deficits. Nope. Nothing at all.
On Obama’s continually “folding like a tissue in the rainstorm:”
Critiques of President Obama’s negotiating style are certainly warranted, but the most boring thing in the world is the suggestion that the president is really a moderate Republican who wants to move the Democratic Party to the right and gut entitlements. We have control of half of Congress, and any suggestion that we can get 100% of what we want if only we are more inflexible is moronic. The only real debate is over what we are willing to give up, not whether or not we have to give anything up. So, progressives should put themselves in the shoes of a negotiator and ask themselves honestly what they are willing to sacrifice and what they want in return. This talk of rainbows and ponies needs to end.
Ladies and Gents, I am fucking psyched by this block-headed, self-proclaimed “progressive” bullshit of pushing Oh, Brother!’s austerity agenda, and the ridiculous “Who blinked first?” framing. Blink, blank, blunk. Obama!
Now, booman ain’t stupid, in the sense that he does mine certain truths, but he speaks in the language of mountaintop removal: to get to that vein, you have to blow the top of your head off. This is the same reason I recently accused BTD of ignorant slutness. They know (I hope they know) better.
Did you ever stop to think that our problems in America are not partisan, but substantive? Systemic? Decades long structural problems that tower over party politics, partisan hackery and hemi-neglect? Energy, trade, and investment deficits? Resource wars? Environmental collapse? An American Ponzi economy/wealth pump beginning to run in reverse?
SCROTUS (Supreme Caver-to-Republicans Of The United States), the hare-brained economists and incontinent ubermensch master-class investment bankers have crashed the system (repeatedly), and as usual they are taking it out on the ever more penurious. There are reasons for this, stupid liberals. It’s Obama’s job to make penury “okay” with stupid liberals, and his performance on this “inside job” should garner him an Oscar.
Either booman (and his ilk) is stupid, or he thinks you’re stupid. I don’t cotton either way.
Oh, Brother!’s got the stoopid libruls also supporting Kerry and Hagel. Fer realz. Jus’ like he got ’em to hooray HillBill’s attack on Libya, and givin’ bin Laden cement galoshes (We killed Dillinger!), etc.. Jus’ like he got ’em to support Kagan on SCOTUS, which sounds like an astringent to be used on porcelain after you FLOTUS or POTUS in the bathtub. Next up, swear to god, he’ll get libruls to support Jamie Dimon at Treasury. Stoopid libruls will draw a line in the sand and fight to the last stoopid librul on cutting Social Security to ribbons. Swear. To. Fucking. God.
Oh, and Syria has mobile weapons labs containing weapons of mass destruction!
This is your so-called “reality-based community” giving you the straight poop.
The “reality-based community” is as drugged-up and strung out on American Exceptionalism as any winger.
All they really want for Christmas is genetically modified orgasms, but it wasn’t the spermaceti they were after: their motives were mad.
Merry Times.