So I punched into the David Fucking Brooks Demolition Company bright and early this morning only to find my stuff had been packed up and some guy named "Cartman" or "Kurtz" or "Kugelmass" or something like that was at my desk.
Man, you know things are bad when you start losing your unpaid gigs :-)
Still, even as the guard escorted me off the premises I had to admit that the new guy was pretty good. And rather gutsy: traditionally, one NYT employee taking on another by name is almost unheard of.
Arguments From Authority
A quick note on David Brooks’s column today. I have no idea what he’s talking about when he says,
The Demand Siders don’t have a good explanation for the past two years
Funny, I thought we had a perfectly good explanation: severe downturn in demand from the financial crisis, and a stimulus which we warned from the beginning wasn’t nearly big enough. And as I’ve been trying to point out, events have strongly confirmed a demand-side view of the world.
But there’s something else in David’s column, which I see a lot: the argument that because a lot of important people believe something, it must make sense:
Yes, I am. It’s called looking at the evidence. I’ve looked hard at the arguments the Pain Caucus is making, the evidence that supposedly supports their case — and there’s no there there.Moreover, the Demand Siders write as if everybody who disagrees with them is immoral or a moron. But, in fact, many prize-festooned economists do not support another stimulus. Most European leaders and central bankers think it’s time to begin reducing debt, not increasing it — as do many economists at the international economic institutions. Are you sure your theorists are right and theirs are wrong?
...
Personally, I think his prose would be improved with the judicious application of words like "slunkmeat", but as the Romans said, "De gustibus non est disputandum".
So, anybody know what Peggy Noonan is up to these days?
4 comments:
Sorry Drifty. The ignorance of the public at larges leads me to believe that we're shoveing shit against the tide. Barely literate, unable to distinguish an inference from a statement of fact(indeed, it wouldn't occur to them that there might be a difference), attention-deficited to the max, all we can do is preach to choir and hope for a few more converts.
In the meantime, they'll see the next shiny object and run over there.
You are a sick piece of shit.
You've probably seen this before, but it seems appropriate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q&feature=player_embedded
Just received an email from by brother, hating the deficit,hating "The Annointed One", and all the other shit he reads on StormFront, Freeper, blah blah blah. He signed off his discussion of deficits with "...though I see the price of watermelons and turnip greens keeps going down."
My guestimmate is that about 60% of the populace is at his level.
Together with the wildly increasing ratings of ClusterFox, I think it safe to conclude that we cannot win. Well, not conventionally.
Post a Comment