Merci...

Sweet burn on David Brooks by Josh Marshall here. The running theme of Brooks columns appears to go something like this: U.S. and specifically Bush fuck-ups in foreign policy and on the ground in Iraq can be blamed on the all-American virtues that run so strong in Bush and Co. that they end up sabotaging policy. As if we needed more confirmation that there is no end to the absurd contortions the administration and its supporters will do to escape meeting responsibility for their missteps. You start to wonder what would happen if one time they didn't take a partisan line at the expense of all other considerations. Will they spontaneously combust? Maybe a rip in the time-space continuum? It better be something good.

P.S. Sorry to rip on David Brooks so much. I just can't help it. Maybe it's intellectually lazy, since his columns don't require any real dissection, just pointing and laughing. But he claims to be the voice of a 'new conservative conventional wisdom,' and when someone uses the Times op-ed page to make a claim on the conventional wisdom, it can be really, really dangerous and distorting, and needs to be blown apart and ridiculed at every turn.

Obviously, a great deal of very angry people don't agree with most of what Paul Krugman puts in his column. But he's only promoting his personal interpretations of economic and policy developments, no one else's. If you want to take issue with Krugman, you can directly argue with his assertions (which admittedly can be wrapped in a snide tone, but we allow that of columnists). With Brooks, you don't know where to start. You understand that the endpoint will be either a nice bonus for the president or a sense of how liberals are passe and just don't understand people in the red states, but as to why that is true or not is anyone's guess.