Snake Oil

Half off!

Of late, the NYTs pet apologist for the vast criminal enterprise known as the GOP has taken to strapping on his enormous thinking cap, throwing the vast resources available at the NYT at the problem, squinching up his eyes, concentrating extra super-ooper-duper hard, and come up with a whole lot of advice...

...on how Democrats should behave.

Really.

His 02/15 column “No Apology Needed” begins

“Far be it from me to get in the middle of a liberal purge, but would anybody mind if I pointed out that the calls for Hillary Clinton to apologize for her support of the Iraq war are almost entirely bogus?”

Let’s stop the rodeo right there, pard.

The short answer is “Yes”.

Shut up and go away you trivial, talentless, annoying little bolus of tripe.

The junior Senator from New York could draw him baths and fetch him crumbcake and gin from now until Gideon’s trumpet…

The junior Senator from New York could let him dictate tax policy verbatim while giving him a Logan’s Tarsal Supremo foot massage…

The junior Senator from New York could service his shriveled member hard enough to suck a freight train back up through an event horizon...

...and come election day he’d still waddle into his local polling place and poop out a vote for whichever slab of tainted GOP meat got the Jebus Stamp of Righteous Approval from James Dobson.

And then he’d strap on his Deeply Consternated Beaver Face and in pastel-tones explain why, at the end of the day, he just though John McCain/Curtis LeMay/Torquemada had a better vision for America.

Or was less angry.

Or thought that trying JustOneMoreTimeInIraq v 9.0 just might work this time!

Or thought he was right enough on enough things that despite his controversial Pro Nuclear Winter stance as the Decent Christian Alternative to Global Warming, he got Bobo’s vote.

Newsflash to the Left: David Brooks is not your friend.

David Brooks serves only one function: to serve as the Party of God’s moon-faced edge of the wedge.

David Brooks can devote the occasional column to piddle in tiny, unhappy circles and he can make as many angry little doodles in his spiral binder about how he Hates James Dobson So Much! as he likes.

But in the end, always, the Conservative Whorehouse has many Mansions.

In the end, he who maintains his life, status, identity and ka by remaining a dutiful thrall -- forever an obedient fluffer in the Great GOP Cycle of Clusterfuckery -- will always wriggle his way back to the men who shit on his head. Because they are also the ones who foot his bills.

For those of your keeping score at home, this is the second consecutive column in which Bobo has helpfully offered his nuggets of advice to Democrats.

Last time, for example -- in another op-ed entitled "Who’s Afraid of the New Economy?" -- if you were to make a flip-book of his pronouncements, they would read like so…

But no major Democrat…

No major Democrat today…

In the Democratic Party today, neopopulists and economic nationalists…

The Democratic view of the global economy…

Democratic activist group Third Way…

Here is a group of Democratic economists and strategists…

Democrats tend to lose when they are relentlessly grim…

…at least some Democrats have the guts to take on the neopopulists…

The neopopulist caucus in the Democratic Party is like the anti-immigrant caucus in the Republican Party.

Here is the quote that is at the heart of Brooks’ deeply dishonest treatise:

“They [Democrats] vilify foreign governments for not living up to the rules of “fair trade,” even though developing countries could enforce every labor and environmental regulation under the sun and their workers would still be cheaper for low-skill tasks.”

Note the tiny caveat on which the whole pivot turns:

“…for low-skill tasks.”

Bobo sees a future for America festooned with shiny office towers full of people like himself: Pushers of electrons. Money managers. Lawyers. Process consultants.

All supported by a cheap labor force who raise their children, fold their towels, pick their tomatoes and wipe their asses when they get old.

It is a two-class system, and the central lie of that GOP Ponsi Scheme has always been that everybody will get rich. That if Americans will just agree to liquidating the government and letting corporations bestriding markets runs wild, everything will work out dandy.

What Bobo won’t tell you is that the game is not neutral.

What he does not mention is that his Party actually pays people to wreck American industries and ship jobs overseas.

That:

"The U.S. tax code definitely provides a strong incentive
for sending jobs overseas." Says Kevin Hassett, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

What he manages to somehow omit is that, for example, in one of the bluest of the blue-collar segment of the economy – manufacturing – that the "common wisdom" has written off, while there has been a little bit of a downturn in the last few months, manufacturing had grown for 41 consecutive months prior to November…

Now Bobo is quite right about “…for low-skill tasks”, but that fight is over. The battle now – a battle we can actually win – is the battle over creativity and innovation. But that is battle that would require a decent health care system, a radical improvement in education from kindergarten through retirement, a real energy policy, and a lot of other things that make War and Taxes Republicans shit themselves.

But David Brooks omits these trifling “facts” because although David Brooks is not your friend, that boy seems to have become positively obsessed with offering Democrats advice.

Something about shutting the fuck up and fixing the Sequoia in your own eye before getting all antsy-pantsy about the mote in your neighbor’s eye leaps to mind.

Bobo rounds out his February 15th Dear Hillary advice column by advising her to jettison her Moral Compass for a Political Triangle, and trying with every adjective he can borrow to push her further towards the wingnut precipice and into the Punji trap they have prepared for her the “Center”, first by simply lying outright and imputing that the reason

“most liberals went into full opposition” to Iraq was that they “[wanted] to see Bush disgraced.”

And, second, by furthering that lie by asserting that

“the liberal wing of the Democratic Party believes that the world, and Hillary Clinton in particular, owes it an apology.”

No, Bobo, the world does not owe the Dirty Hippies an apology: The Republican Party owes the world an apology.

The hack and looters. The liars and Plame-outers. Constitution-haters and Christopath freaks. The warrentless phone tappers. The giddily pro-torturers. The bigots and the buffoons. The “Impeach Clinton Now!” Personal Responsibility howler monkeys who couldn’t find the time in the last six years to hold a single, substantive hearing. The Party of Fake News, Fake Government and Fake Jesus.

Even poor little Bobo -- that crooked ship of unction floating on an ocean of stoopid.

You all absolutely owe the world a big, fat, fucking apology.

And anyone Left of Sam Brownback who would actually be stupid enough to listen to you for advice on how to comport themselves or act in good conscience in a complex world deserves what they get.