It’s David Brooks Fisking Day Again!

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The World’s Worst Newspaper Columnist descends from Olympus to favor unworthy mortals with his esoteric wisdom:

Human beings, the philosophers tell us, are social animals. We emerge into the world ready to connect with mom and dad. We go through life jibbering and jabbering with each other, grouping and regrouping. When you get a crowd of people in a room, the problem is not getting them to talk to each other; the problem is getting them to shut up. . . .

After hundreds of words of such blather — “Nazi and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi, Sunni and Shiite,” and a dollop of Trollope — he finally gets around to making his point:

Once partisan reconciliation is used for this bill, it will be used for everything, now and forever. The Senate will be the House.

Kazart! He’s talking about the health-care bill! The man went seven paragraphs before bothering to mention Congress and didn’t mention “health care” until the 11th paragraph! No one is interviewed, no one (except Trollope) is quoted, and there isn’t even a pretense that anything we might call reporting or research was involved in this column.

Brooks extracted his 802-word opus directly from the ether, or from his frontal lobes, or perhaps from some less cerebral region of his anatomy. This is why Sulzberger pays him the big bucks.

The comprehensive nature of Brooksian douchbaggery, which has been a regular topic at this blog for two years, attracts the notice today of Ezra Klein and Jonathan Chait — a pair of Johnny-come-lately Brooks-bashers who actually try to argue with the pompous fool.

Amateurs! Brooks should never be argued with — he should be mocked, and often, and by someone who knows how.

LIVE: People’s Surge vs. ObamaCare 2.0

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UPDATE 10:42 a.m. ET: Smitty reports that he just saw the Washington Post‘s Bob Woodward — of “All the President’s Men” Watergate fame — covering the Capitol rally. Somehow, “Woodward and Smitty” doesn’t ring quite like “Woodward and Bernstein,” but . . .



Activists chant “Kill the Bill!” under supervision of Capitol Police

Smitty on the scene via Twitter at 9:40 a.m. ET:

At the freedomworks protest, taft memorial. #th2dc

Smitty is on the scene at Capitol Hill for the People’s Surge, sponsored by FreedomWorks, and we will have more photos shortly . . .

There is also the Code Red Rally at 10 a.m. at Taft Park.

Michelle Malkin has a post about the rally.

NBC has coverage of the rally, which is also being covered by liberal blogs HuffPo and TPM. Here’s an interesting headline:

House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it  

Nice trick, that.

Linked by Nice Deb, Da Tech Guy, King Shamus and Bunkerville.

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Heading Down To The FreedomWorks Protest On The Mall Today

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by Smitty

I’m about to head down to take in at least the first couple of hours of the FreedomWorks protest.

As is customary, I’ll be sporting my USS Constitution ballcap and a bow tie, which is absolutely not an expression of Tucker Carlson-ism.

It’s also worth pointing out that Grandpa John’s vision of me, likely a side-effect of peyote in the lutefisk, is rather distorted. My fingernails are more trim, and the wife disallows facial hair.

On the topic of facial hair, I will admit that hanging out with His Road-tripping Badness, Stacy McCain, supports this blog’s claim to being both bad and nationwide.

Apropos the seriousness of ObamaCare and this atrocious 111th Congress,

“Degüello” means The Beheading or “no quarter” (as in “no surrender to be given or accepted–a fight to the death”).

One hates to argue a zero-sum game, but, as with a malignant tumor, there isn’t much room to negotiate with Progressivism.

Stay tuned to this blog for updates.

Hey, Howard Kurtz: Any Anonymous Fox News Employees Dissing Geraldo Rivera?

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Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post had a column yesterday in which he allowed anonymous Fox News employees to portray Glenn Beck as a liability to the network who “undermines their credibility.” To which I responded at the Hot Air Green Room:

OK, so Beck can be wrong and when he’s wrong, it looks bad for Fox News. On the other hand . . . Geraldo Rivera.
Why am I suspicious that Geraldo is among those “Fox journalists” most worried about Beck’s impact on their “credibility”?

You can read the rest of that. After I posted it, I got an e-mail from a reader:

I just read your article, Success, Envy and Glenn Beck and found the Geraldo digs extremely amusing. . . .
I met Geraldo when I was sixteen (am now 39). He was the featured speaker at our local MADD conference, and I was a SADD delegate from my highschool. Nancy Reagan was supposed to be the featured speaker, but alas, cancer surgery, so we were stuck with Geraldo. He walked into the Cajun Dome (Lafayette, LA) with escorted by State Troopers. Into a MADD conference. Because, y’know…those crazed anti-drunk driving mothers… He then proceeded to talk. And talk. And talk. Mostly about himself. It started to all sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher after a while, but I am fairly certain he talked about his past drug and alcohol use. I know he lectured the attending students about staying clean, which highly ticked us off. I mean, hey, we were the SADD delegates. Idiot. So, I got to meet him in person, and he came across as a total ass. But I got my picture in the paper with him, so not the total loss.
My opinion of him has not changed. When he comes on television, I switch channels. If you ever meet him, please tell him I remember meeting him, and that I watch Glenn Beck.

Sincerely,
Susan

Thanks, Susan.

Rep. Jim Jordan Speaks Out Against ObamaCare 2.0, Defends Tea Party

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Philip Klein of the American Spectator reports:

The House Budget Committee has voted down a Republican motion in support of the abortion language favored by Rep. Bart Stupak on a 19 to 17 vote, with three Democrats voting in favor of it. . . .
Rep. Jim Jordan offered the motion for Republicans . . .

Who would have thought this Congress and this administration would again attempt to ram through this health care bill using a partisan reconciliation process? Simply put, Mr. Chairman, the American people have had enough. They told Democrats “no” in August, “no” in September, they told them “no” at Thanksgiving, “no” at Christmas when they tried to pass this bill, they said “no” when Democrats wanted to do it by the State of the Union, and they’re going to say “no” tomorrow, when thousands of Americans come to Washington again to say, “Enough is enough.”
During the past year, I’ve traveled around our district, throughout Ohio, I’ve seen first-hand the emergence of a grassroots movement fueled in large part by the arrogant and out-of-control federal government. Millions of Americans from every walk of life have stood up, in many cases for the first time, to make their voices heard. They gather in town squares, they organize, they pray, and they’ve marched on Washington.
Far from the dangerous extremists the other side and the elite media may characterize them as, these are ordinary citizens — moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas — who believe that America is an exceptional nation. They are freedom-loving Americans who feel like their government is ignoring them. . . . They believe that there are ideals and principles that make this country unique throughout history and they see those principles being assaulted everyday in Washington.
— Rep. Jim Jordan, 4th District Ohio

That’s just about the best defense of the Tea Party movement I’ve seen by any politician, and I certainly hope Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) gets re-elected. Meanwhile, Democrats have prepared their talking-points for tomorrow’s protests, and Allahpundit says:

Show of hands — who’s going tomorrow? And among those of you who are, who’s still so ignorant about the basics of the bill after month upon endless month of Obama speechifying that you need some Democratic backbencher to explain it to you?

More at The Hill, with blog commentary from Weasel Zippers, Adam Brickley, Ace of Spades, Gateway Pundit, Left Coast Rebel and Another Black Conservative.

Your latest Zombie Health Care Cramdown headlines:

Smitty will be attending Tuesday’s rally on Capitol Hill and relaying reports with photos and videos to me for posting in near-real-time, so if you can’t make it D.C., don’t miss this coverage.

TUESDAY: STOP OBAMACARE 2.0!
CAPITOL HILL 9 A.M.
BE THERE!

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Is There A Hint Of Rationale Amidst The Madness?

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by Smitty

Update: fixed HotAir link.

If the moves of the Democrats in Congress were not so despicable, one could nearly feel some sympathy, almost. They’ve worked so hard to drive the Progressive agenda, have so many special interests pulling their strings, that they have to pass something, anything, even if it’s a baby that aborts its own mother in the birthing.

So, given that heinous outcome, and the knowledge that the Faustian bargains that put you in power threaten the fabric of that very power, what do do? HotAir may offer a clue:

A former federal appellate judge appointed by Bush took to the Journal’s op-ed page today to declare the Slaughter strategy flatly unconstitutional, which means there’ll almost certainly be a court challenge to try to undo the legislation if they use this procedure to pass the bill. Given the potential downside of all that, I’m frankly amazed that they’re still considering it instead of simply biting the bullet and having an up or down vote on Reid’s bill.

One thing you could do is invent some parliamentary sleight-of-hand that, along with three shots of tequila, makes enough sense to get through the Congress, but is sufficiently riddled with Constitutional over-reach that the legislation won’t stand review.
That way, the Democrats can look to their owners and say: “Hey, we stopped at nothing to pass this,” while having poisoned the well enough to know it will be struck down.
Meh. I’m probably attributing too much intelligence to a bunch of Progressive religious fanatics.

American Glob links Mark Levin calling for Slaughter’s ouster.

My only quibble with Levin is that that he thinks that Slaughter is operating independently. I daresay she doesn’t pour coffee without checking with her overlords.