Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

I think McCain's trying to set himself up as a fitting target for the next Carnival of the Elitist Bastards:

Right at the top of his remarks before taking questions from the Nashville crowd — where regular unleaded goes for about $3.85 — McCain said he wanted to discuss “what’s on everybody’s mind, the price of oil.”

McCain said he was struck by the loud opposition by “the elites in this country.”

What, you mean the trained economist "elites" who universally laughed their asses off at the fuckwittery of it all? Congratulations are in order for our own dear Goesdownbitter, whose article on the realities of gas for our Carnival would seem to be elitist bastardry indeed by McCain's standards. Outside validation! Huzzah!

So, my darlings, keep this little gem in mind as you're preparing for Voyage the Second. And you might want to enjoy Carpetbagger's article on this, which includes some first-rate snark:

And yet, McCain peddles nonsense anyway, hoping voters won’t know the difference. That his proposal wouldn’t do anything to help low-income Americans, wouldn’t lower the price of gas, and would boost oil company profits seems entirely irrelevant. A confidence man in the middle of a scam can’t be bothered with reality — it only gets in the way of the deception.

Beauty. Sheer beauty.

Moving on, then. More media madness: I knew David Brooks had left reality and charted a course for the Bizarro universe a long time ago, but this is fucking ridiculous even by his standards:

For over eight years now, we’ve been hearing that Democrats have been losing presidential elections because people don’t want to have a beer with the party’s nominees. This always struck me as an odd formulation, not the least of which is because George W. Bush is a recovering alcoholic who wouldn’t share a beer with voters anyway.

But the NYT’s David Brooks takes this one step further today, arguing that voters may not find Barack Obama comfortable at Applebee’s salad bar. Seriously.

“Obama’s problem is he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who can go into an Applebee’s salad bar and people think he fits in naturally there.”

First of all, I’m not sure why Obama would be out of place at an Applebee’s salad bar. Because he can’t bowl well? Because he’s well
educated? What kind of assumptions is Brooks making about people who eat at Applebee’s?

Second, Applebee’s doesn’t have a salad bar. As Hoffmania noted, “If you’re going to use this as a vehicle to test someone’s folksiness, at least know what the hell you’re talking about.”

The WaPo’s Eugene Robinson reportedly added, “I tend to take this sociology a little more seriously when it’s delivered by people who actually eat at Applebee’s more than once in a decade.”

You know something, Brooks is absolutely right. Barack Obama wouldn't fit naturally in the Applebee's salad bar. No one fits naturally in a salad bar that doesn't exist except David Brooks.

However, the media's attempting to make up for David Brooks's spectacular dumbassery by noticing McCain's:

“[Gen. Petraeus] is gonna come back in July, when our drawdown from the surge,” McCain said. Three of the five brigades are already back. There’s two more brigades that will coming back at the end of July…. But we are drawing back down from the surge. And then in July, he said that he wants to pause.”

Except we’re not really “drawing back down from the surge.” Before the surge, there were 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. There are 155,000 now. In July, there will be 140,000.

This isn’t a debate over “verb tense.” At the end of the current drawdown, we’ll have more U.S. troops in Iraq than before the surge began. McCain may find that politically inconvenient, but that doesn’t make his claims any less false.

And people are beginning to notice.

Carpetbagger goes on to note no fewer than five major news outlets that have apparently filched my Smack-0-Matic and are gleefully employing it. This seems like a fetish to me - they still love him, and when you spank someone in a loving relationship, isn't it to enhance your sex lives?

Eww. OMFG, eww. I'm sorry. I hope you didn't just get the same mental image I did.

Too late? Sorries. Here, have some brain bleach, and let's try to forget this ever happened.