Spins and Roses -- UPDATE

This time around and right on schedule, it fell to the vapid, unctuous Charlie Rose to let one of the Villager's favorite naughty clowns

back out of the penalty box (h/t Harvey Chess)

I guess since David Gregory

was tapped to retrieve the little lost lamb de jour last time -- expertly fellating disgraced Republican pervert Newt Gingrich back to Beltway Respectability at the tail end of 2010 -- it's only fair that Rose would have to be the one to lay back and do his bit for the Empire.

I also note for the record that Rose performed his duty almost exactly one month to the day after Halperin fell from grace from the Village which (for what I assume are accounting and HR reasons) is now the standard time-out for bad little Beltway monkeys who get caught flinging the wrong brand of poo and which (were I a better writer) I might describe as "In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed/ Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love/ Over the nasty sty...".

Here are some highlights of the conversation (that included Peter Orszag, Al Hunt and John Heilemann) which includes a fairly exactly transcription, an occasional aside from me, and some stuff I threw in to be mean because, frankly, until I saw the video I had almost managed to blot from my mind exactly how much of a zombie-affected waste of carbon Halperin is.


First comes the pure, Centrist chum.

Halperin: I think you can say that theres the glimmer of the possibility of bipartisan cooperation, which we need on almost every issue that's facing the country today.

Halperin: Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner voted for the same piece of legislation today. That's a good thing.

Halperin: Very challenge facing the country now going to require John Boehner and Harry Reid and President Dick to have an agreement on how to dick thing forward...

Rose: Does Obama have a plan?

Halperin: He has one or two things he trots out every now and then. Increasing exports. Patent reform. But they all suck and the public will think they're stupid.

John Heilemann: This has all been very polite, but I don't have anything like the optimism
of Mark Halperin.

driftglass: the "optimism of Mark Halperin"? This is my esophagus, filling with vomit.

John Heilemann: This whole thing has been an embarrassment...and a spectacle, that has ended up with a deal that's a sham. An object lesson in eveything that's wrong...everything that's dysfunctional about Washington...Both parties...everyone has made a fool of themselves in this process.

John Heilemann: It's great that we didn't have a default, but default should never have been on the table in the first place. Neither side really compromised. Democrats were beaten into submission on a few issues, but no one gave to accomplish something great here.


Rose: Who are the political winners here?

John Heilemann: The only political winner I see right now is the Tea Party. ... Which came in with a very clear set of goals. They kept demanding. They banged their hand on the table and serially for the last three months Democrats gave in on everything that they wanted to the point where the Tea Party got 95% of what it was demanding.

driftglass: You will note that Heilmann doesn't even pretend to reconcile his two, diametrically opposed observations. That "neither side compromised" but that "Democrats gave in on everything that they wanted to the point where the Tea Party got 95% of what it was demanding". And that this was somehow the fault of both sides.

But out of this cesspool of failure and madness, Halperin finds a hero.

Care to guess who?

Halperin: For what [Boehner] was trying to do, I think he did a pretty good job. ,,, [Republicans] largely controlled the contours and the terrain of this deal. A very cool customer as he always is in talking to his members, knowing where the votes are. It's a credit to his experience and his demeanor.

driftglass: Sure Boehner knew where the votes were, because most of the time they were in Cantor's pocket, and Boehner had to beg like a dog and fail repeatedly to get his own people to follow him before Cantor let him touch them. But facts never penetrate Halperin's big, Lucite noggin.

Observe now Halperin's complete, psychotic incomprehension at the motives of human beings.

Halperin: Its still not clear to me how Democrats are living with themselves over this deal.
Because they control more of the government. It's still not clear to me why they gave in...

...wait for it...

...wait for it...

...except that they weren't willing to default.

That's right. Mark Halperin genuinely does not understand why someone would not be willing to blow up the world economy in order to win a political fight. Which is why his next statement is no big surprise.

Halperin: McConnell is the Big Winner of inside politics; of enhancing his status among elites.

Observe now -- when asked the question of whether the GOP will appoint Teabaggers to the Super Duper Congress and thus destroy any chance of any tax increases of any kind -- how Halperin instantly and completely reverses his own assessment of the wise and strong leadership of the GOP.

Halperin: John Boehner and Mitch McConnell would be killed by their Party if the appointed anyone with the least bit of squishiness on the question of tolerating revenue... I don't think they can appoint anyone moderate.

Hey, what about progress in the Super Duper Congress now?

Halperin: Gonna be tough because Republicans are gonna insist on burning "Obamacare" to the ground and pissing on its ashes, and the crazy Left probably won't go for that. Also dick, dick, dick, dick ,dick.


Halperin: I am mystified... Every poll shows that the public is completely sympathetic to the "balanced way" Obama was proposing. And yet the Tea Party sensibility dominated...set the table for the terms of the discussion.

Rose: What could Obama have done differently?

Halperin: Obama should have played golf with Boehner 18 months ago, and every month since. Then he [and here comes the psychosis again]...should have...found a way to win this argument!

Rose: How? How could he have "won the argument"?

Halperin: I don't know.... It's strange that on the central premise of the dispute, a great public speaker had public opinion on his side and couldn't make that animate the negotiations.

And this is where Halperin genuinely creeps me out.

Paul Krugman succinctly and clearly described the key elements of the Debt Hostage Crisis here:

The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.

But Halperin's brain simply refuses to process that information. It just goes on strike. And because Halperin is not very bright -- an automaton, really, with a standard-issue, linear, doctrinaire Centrist liar CPU and without so much as an ounce of nuance or subtly -- he just goes full HAL 9000 when confronted with facts that directly contradict the lies he is hired to tell.

It is impossible for a robot like Halperin to accept or even acknowledge that his pals in the GOP took the global economy hostage. Or that taking the global economy hostage is, y'know, a bad thing.

Because to accept or even acknowledge that his pals in the GOP had done what they did -- or that it wasn't, in the end, really Obama who was the failure because it was all just politics and as Wizard-in-Chief he should have been able to magically talk them out of it -- would completely annihilate Halperin's degenerate world view at a single stroke.

So instead we get Halperin, staring blankly at nothing, smirk firmly affixed to the front of his skull, giving the talk-show equivalent of this response

to questions he dare not even think about honestly.

But Halperin didn't call President Obama a "dick" even once, which means we can all look forward to the full restoration of his Elite Villager Status, along with all the perks and privileges appertaining thereto.

UPDATE -- And like clockwork...

Mark Halperin to return to MSNBC after suspension
By Lisa de Moraes

After one month in the dog house, political analyst Mark Halperin will return to MSNBC Wednesday morning, returning to the scene of his crime — “Morning Joe.”
...

Beyond insulting my intelligence, the absurd pearl-clutching peek-a-boo theater our media overlords enacted to tug on Mark Halperin's corporate leash using the pretext of a mildly naughty word does not really offend me.

The existence of Mark Halperin offends me on too many levels to count.