Professional Left Podcast #156

"Keep the Government out of your Underpants."

-- Frank Zappa

Links:

• From the outright takeover of the GOP by fascists to the rise of dark money Super PACs, in 1995 Wallace Shawn showed us the shape of things to come:

Da' money goes here:

One Child Left Behind

"Mr. Luther King had a dream. Dreams are where Elmo and Toy Story had a party, and I went there. Yay, my turn is over." 

 -- Ralph Wiggum

In a few days when I'm trying to remember the context for today's spectacularly goofy Tom Friedman bad-drug-interaction column, I will look here.

On November 6th

Americans sent Fox News Conservatives a very simple, very clear message (Not Safe For Work.)

Which, unsurprisingly, they now show every sign of being far too pig-ignorant to comprehend. 

As a Liberal, let me say that I strongly approve of stupid, bigoted asshats learning nothing from slamming face-first into electoral brick walls at 60 mph but that they should back up and try the same sweet move again at 90 mph.

In Which Mr. Charles P. Pierce

Kills Ross Douthat:

...

Where in hell does this cosseted layabout get off lecturing people about "work and thrift and upward mobility"? It's like listening to Ann Romney talk about carpet samples. The people who actually have to practice these virtues — which is to say, those who are not the beneficiaries of ideological affirmative-action in our nation's great newspapers — also would just as soon not die of starvation in the cold when they hit 70. They also would like not to have to work when they are 80. If this outrages His Eminence, he can go whistle. But, eventually, we get around to what's really going on. Social Security is a government program that works. It is a government program that people like. Douthat's conclusion that the Republicans can gain back the loyalties of "the middle class" by turning it against Social Security is the funniest political advice since Jonah Goldberg presumed to give the GOP "Negro lessons" last week. By all means, Ross, go out among the many "middle class" workers of your casual acquaintance and tell them that it's Social Security, and not the obscene imbalance of our tax code, that's screwing so many of them. Persuade them that it's really their parents who are bleeding them dry...

Mr. Douthat is survived by one million wormy Ross Douthat imitators just itching to take his place as the New York Times' auxiliary, backup Conservative toady.

He will be missed.

Noblesse Oblique

In today's New York Times, David Brooks explains why no one should judge David Brooks and why it is useless to try to change David Brooks' bad behavior:

How People Change

...

The problem, of course, is that no matter how emotionally satisfying...tirades may be, they don’t really work...

People don’t behave badly because they lack information about their shortcomings. They behave badly because they’ve fallen into patterns of destructive behavior from which they’re unable to escape.

...

The way to get someone out of a negative cascade is not with a ferocious e-mail trying to attack their bad behavior. It’s to go on offense and try to maximize some alternative good behavior.

...

See!  See!  No matter how dishonest or fraudulent or generally godawful Mr. Brooks' "New York Times" columns may be year after year after year, Mr. Brooks has "troves" of research proving that telling Mr. Brooks about his bad behavior isn't going to change anything.  Even if he is perfectly aware of how deeply dishonest his body of work is -- how weasely and craven and wrong  -- pointing it out over and over and over again won't work.

Writing mean emails won't work (From Mr. Brooks' 2012 "Playboy" interview):

After my first six months on the job, I cleaned out my e-mail folder, and there were 290,000 messages with the core message “Paul Krugman is great; you suck.” For the first six months on the job, I was bothered by it. I’d never been hated on a mass scale before, but my skin got thicker. I’m still bothered by it, but that’s part of the job.

Filling his comment section with thousands of rebuttals and refutations won't work.

Penning hundreds of essays and blog posts over the years won't work.

Dozens of pointed columns by colleagues at the "New York Times" disassembling his silly assertions?  Won't work.

You know what will work?

Admiring him more!  (emphasis added):

"It’s foolhardy to try to persuade people to see the profound errors of their ways in the hope that mental change will lead to behavioral change. Instead, try to change superficial behavior first and hope that, if they act differently, they’ll eventually think differently. Lure people toward success with the promise of admiration instead of trying to punish failure with criticism."

Mind you, Mr. Brooks landed his gig at the "New York Times" based on working at Bill Kristol's wingnut grindhouse for years, happily cranking out column after column mocking and excoriating Liberals for being stupid, demagogic posers, whiny simpletons and Birkenstock-wearing dupes who don't understand (for example) that, in George Bush's new economy, there is money enough for every tax cut one could ever want, with plenty left over for surpluses as far as the eye can see!

Perhaps it was after Mr. Brooks uptraded his years punching hippies at Bill Kristol's neocon hog-wallow for the NYT's rarefied heights (a mere quarter mile down scenic cobblestone roads from Cleveland Heights) that Mr. Brooks suddenly discovered:

...perpetually bellowing at each other to be better [is]...a lousy leadership model. Don’t try to bludgeon bad behavior. Change the underlying context. Change the behavior triggers. Displace bad behavior with different good behavior. Be oblique. Redirect.

Or perhaps not (from me back in 2010):

... 

Matt Taibbi was dead right when he pegged Bobo as a "professional groveler/ass-kisser" and "spineless Beltway geek" forever on the "pencil-pusher’s eternal quest for macho cred".

What Bobo really wants is the freedom to be a lavishly overcompensated Defender of the Conservative Faith in some faraway Alternate Universe where the heirs of Hamilton and Burke bestride the evergreen Reagan Revolution like stoic philosopher kings, while Eisenhower and Buckley and Milton Friedman rise early every day to lay waste to good-natured but intellectually outgunned hippies in one Glorious Conservative Victory after another. 

... 

Five short years ago when wingnut camp followers like Bobo were still entertaining the exciting idea that they'd never see another Dirty Hippie in the White House, still feeling emboldened enough to get their vicarious ya-ya's out by publicly reveling in their Dear Leader's warrior/stud exploits (and still referred to Judith Miller as a "reporter") the allegedly "reasonable" David Brooks was gleefully taking shots like this at Democrats from his New York Times snipers nest:

The Harry da Reid Code

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: November 3, 2005

Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m., writing important notes in crayon on the outside of envelopes. It's been four weeks since he launched his personal investigation into the Republican plot to manipulate intelligence to trick the American people into believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Reid had heard of the secret G.O.P. cabal bent on global empire, but he had no idea that he would find a conspiracy so immense.

Reid now knows that as far back as 1998, Karl Rove was beaming microwaves into Bill Clinton's fillings to get him to exaggerate the intelligence on Iraq. In that year, Clinton argued, ''Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons.''

These comments were part of the Republican plot to manipulate intelligence on Iraq.

Reid now knows that in the late 1990's, Dick Cheney and other Republican officials used fluoridated water in the State Department and other government agencies to brainwash Clinton administration officials into exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

...

Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m., writing important notes in crayon on the outside of envelopes. It has been four weeks since he began investigating this conspiracy and three weeks since he sealed his windows with aluminum foil to ward off the Illuminati. Odd patterns now leap into his brain. Scooter Libby was born near a book depository but was indicted while at a theater. Karl Rove reads books from book depositories but rarely has time for the theater. What is the ratio of Bush tax cuts to the number of squares on a frozen waffle? It is none other than the Divine Proportion. This proves that Leonardo da Vinci manipulated intelligence on Iraq and that the Holy Grail is a woman!

Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m. He knows now that seven centuries ago at a secret meeting of the Bilderberg Society-Trilateral Commission-American Enterprise Institute, the six High Lords of the Secret Order of the Neocons decided to implant alien life forms into potential Democratic officials that could be activated in case there was a need to manipulate intelligence on Iraq.

...

So how did it come to pass that Mr. Evenhanded J. Anti-emotion felt so at ease with his own hysterical rage that he thought nothing of penning this hateful, petulant tantrum and putting into the pages of the NYT?

Because it was 2005, and it was safe to punch Democrats and Liberals in the face. Hell, it was a sport, and as a "spineless Beltway geek", Bobo always follows wherever the mentality of the upper middle class mob that buys his lunch takes him, and the Villagers were backing Bush, and so it was safe to call Harry Reid a fringe crazy.

But now it is 2010, and Democrats are, for the moment, back in power. And since David Fucking Brooks is a professional groveler, suddenly screeds against the paranoid Left are out, and being the "reasonable man" who "fetishes balance" is in. 

...

And now it is 2012 

And, once again, Democrats are, for the moment, back in power. 

Which is why Mr. Evenhanded J. Anti-emotion has once again returned.  And is once again saying things like this on "Meet the Press":

...you can't humiliate the Republicans on your way to a deal. You have to give them a pathway to yes...

But maybe, just maybe, if we could all agree to admire and reward and recontextualize and oblique the shit out of Mr. Brooks a little more each and every day...

Hilariously Clueless Shit Andrew Sullivan Says, Ctd.

"...[Bruce Bartlett] was shocked again when he observed that not only were criticisms of such recklessness not allowed, they were not even heard because the right had created its own media chamber, which kept any dissidence or intellectual challenge firmly out of earshot. So Bruce wrote a book, explaining Bush's attack on core conservative principles: balanced budgets, just wars, individual liberty and states' rights. The result? He was swiftly fired from his think-tank job, banned from Fox News, and turned into a non-person like an airbrushed-out member of an intellectual Politburo. (Bush tools, mediocrities and war criminals, on the other hand, were gladly ushered into AEI and the op-ed pages of the Washington Post.)

"I endured the same kind of thing, although I was much less polite than Bruce and had an independent platform. But it's still remarkable to me that I have not been invited on Fox for a decade - even to discuss or debate my book on, er, conservatism and fundamentalism. My book, The Conservative Soul, was not reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, and given a formal excommunication/evisceration by National Review's Jonah Goldberg. Compare this with my first book, Virtually Normal, which was reviewed positively in the Wall Street Journal and got a review in National Review that any writer would die for by a distinguished professor of political theory, Kenneth Minogue. So a radically conservative book about homosexuality was admissible, even welcome, in conservative media in 1995, but a critique of modern conservatism's decline was verboten in 2006. No links to this blog were allowed at National Review's Corner. No mention of my name ever crossed the lips of a Republican loyalist."

-- Andrew Sullivan,  November 26, 2012

As Liberals, don't you just hate it when the "Wall Street Journal" petulantly refuses to review your latest book?  I mean, where the fuck do they get off?!?

And don't you just hate it that the National Review refuses to even link to your stuff?  

And don't you just hate it that your employer only gives you six or seven "Newsweek" covers a year?

And the president only invites you to White House galas once in a while?

And you're only invited to share your views on teevee once every few weeks?

Honestly, what can you say about someone who has salvaged his own career as a Fearless, Truth-Waving Conservative by frantically bootlegging virtually the entire Liberal critique of Conservatism while at the same time maintaining his media credentials by joining the media embargo on acknowledging that Liberals even exist?  

Mr. Sullivan doesn't engage or debate real Liberals for exactly the same reasons that David Brooks doesn't engage or debate real Liberals and Fox does not debate Andrew Sullivan: their respective well-documented pasts hang over them swords of Damocles, and after two minutes of very pointed questions from anyone who is not bound by the Beltway mutual non-aggression pact, they would publicly shit themselves and/or run away crying. Which, in the end, may be Mr. Sullivan's most truly Conservative characteristic of all.

Sunday Morning Comin' Down

On Dancin' Dave's "Olde Tyme Both Sides Do It Hour", 

three more nominees for "Pundits most in need of losing a significant digit" put in their bids.

David Brooks:

We have a lot of potential for fracking from innovation. We’re one step away. If we get this-- if we can prove our nation as governable, we are really the golden spot in the world and the way you do that-- first, the Republicans have some homework to do. They got to figure out which taxes do we least want to oppose and so that’s rates, that’s capital gains or that’s deductions. I think they’re going to end up with capital gains. They're going to say, okay, we’ll raise that, we’ll get the revenue that way. But the president has homework too. His posture on spending has been very passive, I’m all ears, you give me what you’ve got. You got to (Unintelligible) together. The Republicans will not give on taxes unless the president is aggressive and leads on spending...

Mrs. Alan Greenspan:

But I think that requires a different posture from both Congress, from the Republicans, and from the president. The president showed that he really can work with the legislators. And remember the health care proposals where he just gave them guidelines? It would have been a much easier process I think if he had really presented something, worked it through, sold it more. He has to show a different kind of leadership. And it’s not clear whether or not he’s going to spend the political capital. Remember, the president that you covered so intensively, George W. Bush, when he was re-elected, and he said he had that capital to spend, and tried it at least on Social Security and failed. I mean, these are very, very tough decisions. There is a moment here. We are at an inflexion point and if this president and this Congress can get past their talking points, get past the populace rhetoric...

Carly "America's auxiliary Peggy Noonan" Fiorina:

And, look, I-- let us accept Reverend Al’s point and the president’s point about fairness. But equally it is not fair that public employee union pensions and benefits are so rich now that cities and states are going bankrupt and college tuition is going up 25 and 30 percent or police and firefighters are being cut. There’s a lot that isn’t fair right now...

Aaaaand David Brooks, one more time:

You can't cut — you can't tax your way through a budget deal. You have to do it both ways. You can't take the country off the fiscal cliff. First — because you just can't control it. You don't know what's going to happen in the world if we have another budget crisis. It could be cataclysmic. Second, you can't humiliate the Republicans on your way to a deal. You have to give them a pathway to yes...

Dancin' Dave did change things up a little bit:  instead of his usual practice of reading aloud from David Brooks' latest awful "New York Times" column 

and asking David Brooks and the rest of the panel what they think of it, he read aloud from Tom Friedman's latest awful "New York Times" column 

and asked David Brooks and the rest of the panel what they thought of it.

In other words:

From Charles P. Pierce:

The fact that the Dancin' Master is quoting Tom Friedman on this makes it worse, not better. There is not a single proposal under serious discussion of which I am aware that would bring the slightest amount of significant "pain" to either Gregory or Friedman, but there are dozens that will make the lives of middle-class and poor Americans more difficult. Let Friedman and Gregory live for a week on Social Security. Let them live an hour on food stamps or unemployment benefits. Then let them preach civic duty to the people who pay their honoraria, or to the people who actually collapsed the economy, and not to the millions of people out in the country who are struggling to get by on what clowns like these tip the valet.

Elsewhere, Mitt Romney continued to fade from existence so fast you'da thought that he'd traveled back in time and accidentally prevented his granddaddy 

from hauling the ass to Mexico with a bandwagon full of sisterwives.  

"Face the Nation" talked about books, which was nice.

Want Better Pundits?

Every time they blow a big one or try to pay the rent by floating one slab of fact-free happy Centrist horseshit, they lose a finger.

From Roald Dalh's almost-forgotten series, "Tales of the Unexpected"

R.I.P. Larry Hagman

Who was more than a sitcom astronaut and a soap opera villain.

Professional Left Podcast #155

"The most interesting letters I received about 'The Name of the Rose' were from people in the Midwest that maybe didn't understand exactly, but wanted to understand more and who were excited by this picture of a world which was not their own."

-- Umberto Eco

Da' money goes here:

A Reader Asks:

On the list of 'Why don't the Democrats do the easy stuff', driving a wedge between the finance and tin foil hat Rush types has always been at the top of my head scratching list.

From instance, not a peep from the Dems when Rush made that remark about poor (BLACK) people teaching their kids to eat from dumpsters.

The Dems just let slow balls over the center of plate go by, time after time.

I really don't get it.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that the value of running against Boss Limbaugh has already been priced into everyone's calculations. Remember that Limbaugh went national very shortly after Reagan, Scalia and Bork killed the Fairness Doctrine and never looked back, which means he has been on the air in syndication yapping about feminazis and welfare queens for a quarter of a century. 

He is, in other words, already such a known quantity that whole books have been written about him by people like Senator Al Franken, so the breakdown of groups who are aware of Limbaugh's existence is roughly as follows:

• Liberals, who already know what a toxic shitbag he is.


• Conservative Limbaugh fans, who are no longer capable of being affected by any facts that conflict with their idolatry.


• Mainstream media clowns, who will use Limbaugh's comments as a goad to get the black and and red ants fighting on-camera, but don't really give a shit about him past that:  after all, these are the same people who have let Newt Gingrich get away with verbal murder for decades and have never, ever called him on it on the air.


• Cringing Centrists, who deal with every critique of people like Rush by whining that "Both sides do it!" and stuffing their ears with old David Brooks columns.


• Finance and money people who, like German industrialists in the 1920s and 1930s, find Limbaugh's ability to motivate a crowd much more important than the fact that he is a hatemongering, racist thug.
  
  Because they still think they can control him:

And It's Too Late To Lose

The weight you used to need to throw around.

So have a good drown, 

Here comes the fight over Rush Limbaugh 

By Jonathan Bernstein

Conor Friedersdorf wrote a key piece just after the election arguing that Republicans have to choose between Rush Limbaugh and all the groups Limbaugh habitually sneers at...

As you go down all alone.

GOP civil war: Limbaugh vs. the consultants

A top Republican strategist calls conservatives "loons and wackos." Limbaugh is not pleased

BY ALEX SEITZ-WALD

The last time we checked in with the post-election GOP civil war, Herman Cain was threatening to form a new party to compete with the GOP, Bill Kristol sparked a schism over tax increases, and Grover Norquist, the high priest of anti-tax dogma, was losing his grip on congressional Republicans.

This week, the Republican soul searching and polite recriminations via anonymous quote exploded into an all-out war of words between representatives of two wings of the party that have never gotten along, but largely kept quiet for the good of the conservative cause.

In one corner are the consultants, Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain’s 2008 campaign, and Mike Murphy, who advised Mitt Romney. In the other corner is Rush Limbaugh, the embodiment of the conservative id in human form. We don’t have a dog in this fight as there’s blood on both of their hands, so just sit back and enjoy.

Schmidt threw the first punch in this battle on “Meet the Press” with a left, left combo strike against the right flank of his party. GOP leaders have “succumbed to the base,” he said last Sunday, arguing that “to too many swing voters in the country, when you hear the word ‘conservative’ now, they think of loons and wackos.” As if that weren’t enough, when host David Gregory played a clip of Limbaugh, Schmidt took the bait. “Our elected leaders are scared to death of the conservative entertainment complex, the shrill and divisive voices that are bombastic and broadcasting out into the homes,” he said in a clear reference to the radio host.

...

Dragged down by the stone.

The Nasty GOP?

For some conservatives, the labels “nasty” and “mean” are well earned.

By Jim Geraghty

There’s a word that accurately summarizes the perspective of Republicans who believe that Latinos voted for Obama because they want amnesty for criminals and endless welfare, that young people voted for Obama because they’re ignorant and want free birth control, and that blacks voted for Obama because they wanted free cell phones: contempt. And it’s hard to persuade people to adopt your perspective, join your movement, or vote for your candidate when you speak of them with contempt.

The Sandra Fluke “slut” argument: When Democrats spotlighted Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke for her conviction that employers should be required to provide insurance that covers birth control, it was hard to imagine a more self-destructive reaction than Rush Limbaugh’s initial one:

What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.

Wait, it got worse:

So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.

Silly Shit Andrew Sullivan Says, Ctd

 

Joe Scarborough Is Part Of The Problem

...
"Instead of copping to his slander and his foolishness, [Joe Scarborough] now writes a Politico column that is so brimming with, well Politico-style Village media horse-shit you need a medical mask to keep breathing to the end. First off, he starts with mockery of Upper West Side limousine hippie liberals and all the usual, lazy, exhausted boomer tropes that make Scarborough and all his flunkies as irrelevant as they are desperate for attention:"

...

"Notice the old MSM I-Never-Screwed-Up crap. Notice the 'I'm not really apologizing' - but I'll add in a generic mea culpa to insure myself."  

-- Andrew Sullivan, November 21, 2012

Like every Conservative pundit, Mr. Sullivan is always in favor of professional retribution for thee and not for me.

Joe Bethersonton Knows Turkey

In The End, The GOP Failed To Learn

The most basic Thanksgiving lesson of all.

Turkeys.

Can't.

Fly.

Apparently I Am the Unwitting Tool

Of a vast Chicago Tribune/Asshole Boss syndicate that doesn't want you to Know the Truth about the manufacturing labor market.

Well OK then.

First, all kinds of factors go into local labor rates as well as the vitality of the local economy as a whole.  And second, imputing to an entire economic sector the experience of one anecdote or one company (however true that one example many be) is a mug's game, whether that company is run by an angel who will pick up the tab for sending her people to college (I know several such) or a vulture who will churn and burn his people without mercy to make an extra nickle (I have run across plenty of them too.)

Instead, here is a link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Your tax dollars at work!  

I haven't seen the BLS at any of our recent Chicago Tribune/Asshole Boss syndicate luncheons, so have a look for yourself and decide for yourself.  

Conservative Avengers Assemble!

Longtime readers know that one unifying theme behind most of my hundreds of essays about Mr. David Brooks and his terrible, terrible New York Times column is that Mr. Brooks is merely in the business of producing flaccid, fact-averse, revisionist drivel but that most of his columns are parts of a much large whole -- parts of Mr. Brooks' long-range project to create and enforce a completely fake, alternate history of the American Conservative Movement and the Republican Party.

In the past, using the considerable power that comes with being the NYT's resident "Reasonable Conservative" (and which, in turn, Mr. Brooks has multiplied many times over by leveraging his NYT position into a permanent presence on NPR, PBS and "Meet the Press") Mr. Brooks has simply airbrushed most of Conservatism's catastrophic policies (and his very vocal support of them) out of existence.  In Mr. Brooks' New Abridged History there was never any such person as Jerry Falwell and never any such thing as the Southern Strategy, the hippie and the 1960s ruined everything, liberals are comically hapless dolts, the sum total of the Bush Administration exists as a barely remembered dream and the signal failure of the Obama Administration -- the one that caused Mr. Brooks to tearfully and angrily break up with the President -- has been not capitulating sufficiently to Republican demands.

And what happens on those uncomfortable occasions when shredding the complex tapestry of the actual past and replacing it with pro-Conservative fiction leaves all sorts of the untidy loose ends?

Well, Mr. Brooks usually solves that little problem by simply lying about it.  And why not?  I mean, it's not like there any professional downsides to Conservative pundits lying anymore.

There are no sanctions for lying Conservatives.

No one shuns you.

In fact, just the opposite is the case:  in mainstream America political media, the only people who are routinely and rigorously sanctioned and shunned are people who persist in blabbing uncomfortable truths, which is why Mr. Brooks will almost certainly get away with his whitewash of history.

Because as we saw with the Tea Party (There. Is. No Tea. Party.) and Fox News, this nation is packed to the rafters with Conservatives who are so desperate to wish away what they have said and done for the last 30 years -- so frantic to pretend it never happened or that they were never a part of it -- that they will pay people to whisper that sweet, sweet lie to them over and over again.

Conservatism's foot-soldiers and cannon fodder will handsomely remunerate people like Limbaugh and O'Reilly and Hannity and Beck and Coulter and Gingrich and on an on and on to tell them that their paranoia is patriotic, that their bigotry is heroic,and that all the Very Bad Things that have ever happened were caused by gays, women, scary brown people and Evil Liberals.

And to the meet the more refined tastes of Conservatism's think-tankers and moneyed  middle-management, they have bullshit purveyors like David Brooks:  oak-aged, well-marbled, top shelf lying at top shelf prices.

And so this week, Mr. Brooks first elides over both the entire 2012 Conservative cultural and electoral train-wreck and his place within said train-wreck by chalking it all up to the "political-entertainment complex ":

"Our political-entertainment complex makes it easy to caricature today’s G.O.P. But there’s an unorthodox crop of younger free-thinkers weaving a textured vision worth knowing."

And goes on to assert that in bright light of a new, post-Romney Conservative day, a constellation of new Conservative stars are rising.  A constellation of  new Conservative stars who may well now feel a rather large debt or obligation to Mr. Brooks for upping their profile in the New York Times (for extra fun-points, see if you can name all the "young" Conservatives pundits that Mr. Brooks conspicuously omitted from his roll-of-honor):

Writers like Rod Dreher and Daniel Larison tend to be suspicious of bigness...

Reihan Salam, a writer for National Review, E21 and others, recently pointed out that there are two stories about where the Republican Party should go next...

Henry Olsen of the American Enterprise Institute has argued for a Republican Party that listens more closely to working-class concerns...

* Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review has argued for family-friendly tax credits and other measures that reinforce middle-class dignity.

Jim Manzi wrote a seminal article in National Affairs

Some of the most influential bloggers on the right, like Tyler Cowen, Alex Tabarrok and Megan McArdle, start from broadly libertarian premises but do not apply them in a doctrinaire way.

Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago published an influential book, “A Capitalism for the People,” that took aim at crony capitalism.

Tim Carney of The Washington Examiner does muckraking reporting on corporate-federal collusion.

Rising star Derek Khanna wrote a heralded paper on intellectual property rights...

...unpredictable libertarian-leaning writers, including Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic...

Yuval Levin, the editor of National Affairs is one of the two or three most influential young writers in politics today.

The lawyer Adam J. White has argued for an approach to jurisprudence and regulatory affairs based on modesty...

In contrast to many members of the conservative political-entertainment complex, they are data-driven, empirical and low-key in tone.

Some politically unorthodox people in this conversation, such as Josh Barro of Bloomberg View, Meghan Clyne of National Affairs and Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute, specialize in puncturing sentimentality and groupthink.

Since Nov. 6, the G.O.P. has experienced an epidemic of open-mindedness...

First let me say that I do admire the way in which the Right promotes from within.  This is something at which Left often fails spectacularly (and which sometimes makes me wonder if flipping sides just long enough to sock away enough for retirement might not be the way to go.)

Second, the "political-entertainment complex" to which Mr. Brooks refers so flippantly is better known as the Republican Party and the American Conservative Movement, which are now basically indistinguishable from one another and which are bristling with layer upon layer of heavily fortified (and heavily funded) culture-war machines.  If you want to know where the center of Conservative power lies, look at where its billionaires just spent their money, look at the Rape Caucus they ran for the Senate, look at the collection of flakes and demagogues who ran in their presidential primaries, look at who they nominated for President and what he had to say to the base of the Party to secure that nomination. 

And if you want to know where Mr. Brooks stood on the policies and positions of the Republican Party and the American Conservative Movement during various critical moments in recent American history, you have but to read his own words.

Finally, as all Brooks scholars know, one of the shiny objects Mr. Brooks uses to distract his readers away from his horrible record of being wrong about everything is to regularly predict that the Right is juuuuuust on the verge of leaving -- 

Pabulum with a Purpose

Beneath the much-mocked superficiality of the Philadelphia convention is a serious effort to transform the GOP

AUG 14, 2000

The GOP is not intolerant...

 -- the Past-Which-Cannot-Be-Mentioned behind -- 

Yes, There Is a New Economy

Thanks to once-in-a lifetime productivity gains, Bush's plans are easily affordable

MAR 19, 2001

...

This year's tax and budget debate really comes down to one essential question: Is the money going to be there? The Congressional Budget Office projects surpluses of about $ 5.6 trillion over the next 10 years. The Republicans insist that those projections are conservative, so the government can afford to return $ 1.6 trillion to the taxpayers and still have money left over for Social Security, Medicare, and an $ 800 billion contingency fund. The Democrats cry that projections are notoriously inaccurate, that the tax cuts will blow a hole in the budget, and that the Bush administration's risky scheme (which sailed through the House last week) would cast us back into the days of piling debt.

-- and leaping boldly into its bright -- 

The Reemerging Republican Majority

Will Bush's popularity transform his party?

FEB 11, 2002 

...

President Bush has broken the libertarian grip on the GOP.

-- Brooksian --  

Competent Conservatives, Reactionary Liberals

JAN 15, 2001

We seem to be entering a period of competent conservatism and reactionary liberalism. George W. Bush has put together a cabinet long on management experience and practical skills. But liberal commentators and activists, their imaginations aflame, seem to be caught in a time warp, back in the days when Norman Lear still had hair.

...

-- future.

*(Your humble scrivener cannot help but note in passing that Human Tadpole Ramesh Ponnuru made his media bones with a  book entitled "The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life".)

Jobs?

Did someone say jobs?

From the Chicago Tribune:

Shortage of skilled workers holds back Chicago-area manufacturers

Executives on panel discuss industry challenges

November 16, 2012|By Alejandra Cancino, Chicago Tribune reporter

Chicago-area manufacturers who participated in a panel discussion Thursday said the shortage of skilled workers will crimp their growth next year.

Tim Jahnke, president and chief executive of Elkay Cos., an Oak Brook-based maker of stainless steel sinks, faucets, water coolers and plumbing products, said the situation is so severe that his company may have to forgo about $10 million in sales — unless he's able to ramp up production.

Elkay is operating only one shift, and to increase production Jahnke would need more midlevel skilled welders, which he says he can't find.

Steven Kersten, owner and president of WaterSaver Faucet Co. and Guardian Equipment Inc., said the days when manufacturers could hang "help wanted signs" are over.

Companies need to get involved in worker training, and Kersten said his company is doing just that. In addition to in-house training, the company has hired an English instructor. The company also partners with Austin Polytechnical Academy, a West Side high school whose goal is to train the next generation of leaders in advanced manufacturing.

Kersten said many applicants for jobs at the Chicago-based company do not have basic skills such as being able to understand instructions or how to use a computer or measuring tools.

...

I have a two-minute speech, a 20-minute speech, a six-hour-speech and an epic, Der-Ring-des-Nibelungen-length opera on this subject.

Suffice it to say that, right this minute in the Chicagoland area there are around 30,000 manufacturing jobs going unfilled.  

Imagine that?  I mean, it's certainly not a magic bullet, but whatever cause consumes you -- antipoverty, social justice, salvaging the middle class, making sure every kid gets a great education -- the fact that there are a lot of decent, well-paying jobs going begging at the same time unemployment lingers around 8% like the party guest who never leaves should piss you off.

The good news?

All we have to do to fix this is to overhaul the entire, dysfunctional, underfunded, over-bureaucratized, patchwork "system" that gets people of all ages ready for the jobs that are really available.