Two birds with one stone. Here I get to go after two of my favorites - Rep. Paul Ryan, and the insufferable David Brooks , thanks to Brad Delonge's re-posting of Jonathan Zasloff:
Moment of Deceit: A few years ago, Mark told me that it’s easy to be a blogger on the west coast: wait until 9 pm Pacific time, look at David Brooks’ column, and point out how idiotic it is. He was right; it IS easy. But today, it’s necessary. Today (or tomorrow?), Brooks, who favored the extensions of all Bush-era tax cuts, and opposed the Affordable Care Act because it didn’t cut costs enough although he also opposed its cost-cutting measures, now hails Paul Ryan’s new budget in a column ironically entitled “Moment of Truth.” The column praises Ryan as “courageous” and “setting the standard for seriousness.”Where do you start?How about in the first paragraph, which lauds the Simpson-Bowles plan and conveniently neglects to mention that Ryan opposed it. Then:The Ryan budget will put all future arguments in the proper context: The current welfare state is simply unsustainable and anybody who is serious, on left or right, has to have a new vision of the social contract.No, that is not the proper context. The proper context is 1) that if we ended the Bush tax cuts, bringing us back to the socialistic 1990′s; and 2) stopped fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we could get a great deal of the budget under control. Moreover, every other advanced democracy is able to cover its entire population and control costs better than we do. That is the proper context.
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