Capture The Brooks

As the Beltway game of "Capture the Brooks" continues, let me note this flawed detail at Newsbusters:

It has been only ten days since the New York Times house conservative, David Brooks, suddenly discovered that "Barack Obama is not who we thought he was." As a result, the White House sent out a special team of four high level officials to get Brooks' "mind right."

Brooksie is being coy in this on-line chat with Gail Collins but apparently one of the Four Horsemen of the ABrooksalypse was The One his bad self:

Ms. Collins:  ...I was so impressed when you reported having been summoned to the White House by top members of the administration who wanted to convince you that they were moderates, too. More so, since I have it on good authority that one of those four unnamed Obamites was the man himself. Cool to have the president ask you to come over for a long policy discussion. So very much cooler not to mention it. Fess up...

Broooksie-boo:  ...You ask if the Big Man himself was one of my four unnamed sources for my column last week. I actually wasn’t clear on the ground rules for some of those conversations, so I decided to play it safe. Let’s just say when I say I speak to senior administration officials, I take the meaning of the word “senior” very seriously, and I now have a very cool autographed copy of a chart showing non-defense discretionary spending as a percentage of gross domestic product. It’s signed, “To Comrade Brooks” and then there’s a name underneath.

Ms. Collins took that as a "yes", and in light of the Brooks' subsequent fawning over Obama's education proposals I think she is correct to do so. 

We can also detect a hint as to sources in Brooks' follow-up, where the emphasis is in the original:

Besides, the long-range debt is what matters, and on this subject President Obama is hawkish.

He is extremely committed to entitlement reform and is plotting politically feasible ways to reduce Social Security as well as health spending.

It took a high powered team to win this round of Capture the Brooks.

ON EDUCATION REFORM:  Does anyone other than Brooks think that Obama will actually oppose Pelosi, Reid, and the NEA?

[end of thread]

Comments

[kim]

So does he explain why he bought their garbage wholesale and then retailed it in the Times?
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[matt]

maybe they'll put a tinfoil helmet on his head to ergolize him.....

[kim]

Why does Brooks allow himself to talk about entitlement reform when the workfare rules are being relaxed? What an idiot.
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[Dan Collins]

Yeah, actually Bill Maher seems to think so. End of this segment, following in second.

[kim]

Yo Dan, fresh from the Burge Blowout. I'm immortal, now, I slipped a comment in. Thanks to both of you.
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[Jim Glass]

Besides, the long-range debt is what matters, and on this subject President Obama is hawkish.

This is why his post recession deficit projections start at $1.1 trillion -- dwarfing the Reagan deficits, and a level unimgainable in the past without a major war going on -- to eventually, it is hoped (on very optimistic assumptions) only a little more than 3% of GDP ... which is 50% larger than the evil, grossly irresponsible Bush deficits of 2005-2008.

That's some kind of hawk!

It had better keep flying high, or a mouse might catch it!

[verner]

Obama doth protest to much, which means he knows damn well he's a socialist and is scared to death that he will correctly be labeled as such.

Don't be fooled Brooks, it's only going to get worse.

[bad]

When he was a boy, his mother would wake him up at 4:30 to tutor him for a few hours before he went off to school.

Geez, how hard was his grade school?

[Rick Ballard]

"is plotting politically feasible ways to reduce Social Security"

The dirty Dem socialist thieves are going to try and means test it when they start having to use the general fund for the deficit.

[Dan Collins]

Thanks, kim. Glad you had fun!

[bad]

He's reducing my security everytime he gets on TV.

[Ignatz Ratzkywatzky]

Don't be fooled Brooks

He is a willing fool. The proof being:

...I now have a very cool autographed copy of a chart showing non-defense discretionary spending as a percentage of gross domestic product.

Any hack of any political stripe that can write that without shame is obviously in the tank far enough to be subject to the bends.

The dirty Dem socialist thieves are going to try and means test it...

Aren't all pensions means tested?
Guess maybe it was really more of a Madoff scheme when FDR sold it than a supplemental pension.

[verner]

You're right IR. Brooks has definitely gone native.

[Fresh Air]

Brooks works for a paper that has committed treason at least four times in the past five years. He is at minimum a willing accomplice. As such, he cannot be trusted on any subject. I have been ignoring him since he got to that rotten hole in Times Square.

[daddy]

I do not have a problem with guys changing their minds when new facts dictate changing one's opinion. I welcome it. But I do have a problem with folks who change their opinion, not because of facts, but because of some gutless personality deficit that drives them to pretzel contortions of logic in order to avoid being scorned or sneered at by those they psychologically consider their "in-crowd" of intellectual peers. This is what I observe from Brooks, and this is simply the latest example of him falsely straining his intellectual muscle to contort to such disingenuous nonsense simply to prevent the popular in-crowd from publicly scorning him. We have all seen this in Junior High, and it is no more complex a situation than that. In a week or so he will respond to the Right correctly viewing him as a toady by penning some mildly anti-Obama commentary in order to recapture some favoritism from Conservatives, and the cycle will continue on down the road all over again. Today Brook's is simply David Gergen with a better haircut. Tomorrow he'll be Peggy Noonan in pants.

[bolitha]

Oh, PLEASE!!!!!!

[sbw]

Ahh, who has the bottle of visual image bleach?

[narciso]

I've given up David Brooks and Frum for lent, someone has to. It cuts back on the stomach upset. The small doses one gets here, it's kind of like the Jenner smallpox vaccine, it builds up an immunity. R.S. McCain has come up with his own alternate
construction, the FrumDreher,(gesuhteit) polite variety of pundit, the kind that died with the New York Herald Tribune, which the Canadian sophist wants to use as the blueprint back to electoral dominance
or something. So how goes it in the Far East
,Flynn, or are you back at home base.

[matt]

actually, narciso, Lent is a time for self mortification, so we are to act in the spirit we should all be reading a column by Brooks or Rich or Krugman or Dionne. And then publicly rip it to shreds.....nobody said anything about that....

[narciso]

I know Matt, fisking is good exercise, but he really offers very thin gruel. Maybe Douthat will be more of a challenge.Frum is
actually better for the purposes therein, because he seems to be so fundamentally wrong, drifting into the Huff Po like his
'better half' the fair Danielle. As for Rich and Krugman, have a heart, man

[Danube of Thought]

What a pussy.

[Porchlight]

What a pussy.

Says it all, really.

[daddy]

Hi Narciso,

Back home and just trying to re-acclimate my body clock to this side of the world. Once the kids and I catch up on the new episodes of SpongeBob that I missed, things should be back to normal.

[Captain Hate]

Daddy, good luck in the NCAA tourney as both our teams got bounced today. I think Eric Hayes secured a dance ticket for us by hitting 11 points in the last 62 seconds to keep what was threatening to be a blowout to Los Diablos Azure to a mere 6 point loss and probably kept Kazooski releasing eff bombs until the final buzzer. Good luck on getting Ty Lawson back to close to 100%; I know the Holes like to win the ACC tourney because of the historical Carolina bragging rights thingy, but you guys are better off being well rested for next week.

[Neo]

Does anyone other than Brooks think that Obama will actually oppose Pelosi, Reid, and the NEA?

The one irony of labor's support for "The Won" is that he and Ayers started out trying to loosen the grip of the unions in Chicago.

Now that Obama is POTUS, he seems to be returning to his "roots" .. so I'm really in a funk as to exactly where Obama will go now.

[narciso]

I think that might have been, because unions were more blue collar and socially conservative, back when they started. They
have been gradually more white collar (in terms of govt) and more progressive.

[davod]

"More so, since I have it on good authority that one of those four unnamed Obamites was the man himself. Cool to have the president ask you to come over for a long policy discussion."

[Cecil Turner]

This bit just slays me:

Besides, the long-range debt is what matters, and on this subject President Obama is hawkish.

What's that supposed to mean, anyway? "I know we're busy flushing a couple trillion down the toilet, but I swear we're going to stop!"?

I guess the question of "when?" was a bit too hard. (Oh, that's right, "long range" is after "the One" is out of office.) But at least the misapplication of the martial metaphor implies it was actually one of the clueless inside the White House that said it, so we've got that going for us . . .

I'd just like to say, hard-hitting journalism like this is what inspired me to renew my NY Times subscription.

[Sue]

To Comrade Brooks

Geeze. And he's proud of that?

[DebinNC]

It wouldn't surprise me if this group allowed Brookes in.