Around the blogosphere - Joe Klein edition

Some others talking about Joe Klein, as I did earlier...


Mark Steyn:

Having elected the Smartest Administration of All Time, the Obammysoxers are understandably drawn to the notion that the problem right now is that you knuckledragging rubes are too dumb to understand all he's done for you. If I were Mr Klein, though, I'd surely be smart enough to wonder if stating it quite so explicitly is really the way to go.

The Philipic:

Do I think a “magical” $60 a month is nice? Sure. Do I think it actually solves anything? No, and neither, it seems, does Klein. So why is he so dismissive of the argument that adding $288 billion to the deficit, when we’ve managed to add several trillion over the last two years, is probably a bad idea? Because he’s a partisan and an arrogant elite without a sense of hubris (except to point out the flaw in others).

I “get” the idea behind the stimulus. At it’s basic core, it’s Keynesian economics. That doesn’t mean that I agree with it, or that I think that even within the framework of Keynesian economics it would work, but I at least understand the intellectual ground from whence it sprang. It’d be nice if Klein at least gave those of us in opposition to it the same courtesy and at least conceded that we aren’t just a bunch of ignorant hicks that take our marching orders from Roger Ailes. Of course, I get the feeling that Klein isn’t too upset at the idea that we’re ignorant hicks, but that we aren’t taking our marching orders from *him*.

The Jawa Report:

Joe, let me put this in terms that someone like you, a sheltered ultra-liberal media parasite, can understand. The stimulus package operates on the economy in a zero-sum manner. If the government, which produces nothing, decides to spend however many tens of billions of dollars on "shovel-ready" boondoggles and buy-the-vote projects, that money comes from taxpayers, the people who are actually producing things.

So the wealth gets spread around the way the politicians see fit, with a big healthy dollop off the top to support the grotesquely inefficient government bureaucracies administering the socialist money grab redistribution of resources. Instead of letting market forces steer the money to where it will do the most good for the economy, the stimulus funds are steered by bureaucrats to where they'll give the best spin for the political party in power.

In other words, it's rearranging the deck furniture instead of manning the lifeboats or trying to fix the big, gaping hole in the hull.

Doug Ross

You can almost visualize the drool gumming up Klein's keyboard as he secreted this pathetic paean to his Democrat overlords. A Democrat leadership, by the way, that is in so far over its head it needs scuba gear.

The bureaucrats, the public sector unions and the trial lawyers are ripping Americans off and Joe here is telling us we're not paying enough.

No, Joe, the real dodos are the legacy media propagandists that publish state-approved press releases straight from the mouths of Axelrod and Emanuel. And judging by the circulation of your noxious rag, it won't be long before you're officially on their payroll.

VerumSerum

Maybe three out of four Americans are smart enough to realize that the “magical” money isn’t really magic. It’s all being borrowed from China and will have to be repaid with interest. Maybe 3/4 of Americans would rather not run up the national credit card right now for the sake of $60 a month.

Rick Moran:

Sure it would be great if everyone could intelligently discuss cap and trade or the latest Commerce Department regs dealing with sales of restricted items overseas. We could all sit down in Klein’s drawing room, good cigar smoke wreathing our heads, a glass of Courvoisier giving everything an agreeable blurriness around the edges, while Klein and his friends could tell us what we should be thinking.

Until then, Joe is just going to have to put up with people and their own, flawed perceptions of government and politics. After all, we can’t all be as astute and brilliant as Joe Klein. If that were the case, who would pay him too much money to write like an elitist pig?