neoclown welfare warfare

new york times editorialist david brooks waxes rhetorically:

Don't take people at their word. Don't listen to them when they tell you how to be virtuous.

They're faking it. They don't care about virtue, or you or the common good. They're just taking opportunistic potshots under the guise of sermonizing. They're just a bunch of hypocrites.

This little bit of moral philosophy is drawn from the political events of the past few years.

now, without looking, which political party is brooks describing?

if you said "republicans," you'd be forgiven, since they are the poster party of faux morality and vulgar opportunism (see "schiavo, terri"). brooks, a slurping, gargling suck-up of the worst kind, actually was describing democrats, and their "failure" to rescue the president from his social security crapwallow.

george will spews in as well, describing most effectively the republican vision of this program...

Whatever is done, or if nothing is done, to reform Social Security, it will be increasingly perceived as a welfare program, important primarily for the least self-sufficient minority.

so much for "the common good" envisioned by the founders, not to mention the party of compassionate conservatism.

then there's debra saunders, who apparently was out sick the day they taught journalism at j-school...

While 99 percent of Washington pols have been talking as if Americans have a sacred right to expect something for nothing, Bush backed a plan by a Democrat, lawyer and mutual-fund executive Robert Pozen, called "progressive indexing." Pozen's plan would maintain Social Security benefit increases for lower-income workers, while limiting increases for high-income and middle-income workers, by tying the growth in their benefits to a price index. The White House claims this plan would fix 70 percent of the system's projected shortfall.

Bush "definitely put his neck out and he deserves a lot of credit for offering a concrete suggestion for how to rein in benefits," said Zeeve. No lie.

is it any wonder that professional journalism is respected every bit as much as a good case of vaginal warts?

in those two paragraphs debra disgraces herself more often than in her entire career as a crack whore. something for nothing, debra? limiting increases? bush deserves credit?

once more: bush deserves credit for failing to produce anything resembling a plan to "fix" social security. that's because bush is not interested in "fixing" social security, he's trying to drive it over a cliff and blame the democrats for faulty steering.

in refusing to "save" bush and his non-plan, the democrats are doing exactly the right thing. the sooner middle class voters realize this president is stealing their futures so the richest 1% of americans can have lavish tax cuts, the sooner the neoclown circus will fold up and scurry out of town.