I always knew David Brooks was an asshole ....

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-on-drugs-and-medicare

Dean Baker vs Brooks with a link to Brooks' piece yesterday on how the Romney Medicare proposal is better than the Dems because the Romney plan relies on the free market

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/11/todays-war-on-nate-silver-quiet-flows-the-don-edition.html

delong quoting someone else:

Brooks’ journalistic way of knowing

Ha.

I thought you were going to be mentioning Brooks' absurd reasoning behind his endorsement of Romney.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/opinion/brooks-the-upside-of-opportunism.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

if Romney wins, we’re more likely to get bipartisan reform. Romney is more of a flexible flip-flopper than Obama. He has more influence over the most intransigent element in the Washington equation House Republicans. He’s more likely to get big stuff done.

get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done get big stuff done

if anything needs getting done, it's big stuff

America: who do you think u r?
Romney: mr. big stuff B-)

'I certainly wasn't wrong about it provoking smart ass jibes.'

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/02/your-use-of-data-for-any-purpose-but-validating-david-brookss-lazy-intuitions-infuriates-david-brooks

On Brooks' attempt to argue with Nate Silver over baseball stats

Spectacular column.

its incomprehensible.

why isn't this guy recognized as the Murray Kempton of his generation

i think the nyt is just keeping him around now because it's rumored his head is filled with nougat and they're just waiting for the right moment to crack him open.

beautiful!

Was waiting for this to be posted. I don't remember if Taibbi made the point that marriage necessarily implies few of the constraints Brooks presumes it does.

incomprehensible yes and prematurely senile like kempton you bet and yet recognizable in the fog is a married-too-long middle age guy wondering about the "freedom" he was undoubtedly (in brooks case) too uptight to exercise/enjoy when he was single

haha m@rk: I was being sarcastic (I love Kempton).

me too and i shouldnt have been disrespectful but those last few years in the ny post he was the oracular rambler

and yet recognizable in the fog is a married-too-long middle age guy wondering about the "freedom" he was undoubtedly (in brooks case) too uptight to exercise/enjoy when he was single

This. If I was Mrs Brooks I would be making a bed for David on the sofa after reading his column.

I'd be strapping one on.

A decaying social fabric, especially among the less fortunate.

Taibbi rightly picked up on the stupidity and uselessness of this statement

"lack even the basic mental ingredients"

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/05/david_brooks_bigoted_rant/

Another blog re "mental equipment" phrase used twice by Brooks

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/david-brooks-is-racist-creep-by.html

Islamists might be determined enough to run effective opposition movements and committed enough to provide street-level social services. But they lack the mental equipment to govern.

A review of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age:

As someone who tries to report on the world of ideas, I’m going to try to summarize Taylor’s description of what it feels like to live in an age like ours, without, I hope, totally butchering it.

it gets better from there

i'll admit it, i look forward to David Brooks columns more than Krugman these days. i'm pretty sure he's some kind-of conceptual comedian like neil hamburger, and it just takes a while to get the joke.

I don't want to give David Brooks any credit, but when I read "seems to lack even the basic mental ingredients," I thought he was criticizing the Egyptian people's mentality, not their brainpower. Which is obviously still ignorant as hell but it's not on the level of saying Egyptians are cognitively inferior to Americans.

i initially thought that was up for intepretation, but you never know with him. he's sung the praises of Charles Murray so he's thrown his hat in with pop-sociology racists, but considering it's Brooks it could've been some ditzy, superficial make-u-think kinda shit.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/brooks-and-marcus-on-pbs-news-getting-just-about-everything-wrong-on-the-economy

if only alex rodriguez hadn't sullied the noble sport of baseball with his unseemly lust for money:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/opinion/brooks-the-a-rod-problem.html?smid=tw-nytsports&seid=auto&_r=1&

In response to which

http://deadspin.com/the-david-brooks-problem-1039691285

When he writes a column, he doesn’t seem like a man writing a column. He seems like a man giving a performance of writing a column.

O WOW

I thought it was good!

what are you talking about?

how everyone is a TED lecturer now when it used to be they aspired to be philosophers in Athens

Give me two minutes and forty seconds and I'll explain it to you. Give me four minutes and thirty seconds and you'll be in tears.

brooks read scocca while he was on vacation

http://media.mlive.com/grpress/news_impact/photo/david-brooksjpg-b2b8fa7c71cbd9dc_large.jpg

"Give me two minutes and forty seconds and I'll explain it to you. Give me four minutes and thirty seconds and you'll be in tears."

this is some andy rooney old man hates world because he senses his own mortality shit going on here.

I glanced at this thread right before bed and then dreamed about it. Brooks was speaking to a class, had long hair, vaguely Euro accent, and kicked a guy out for playing a marching sousaphone while he spoke.

bizzaro brooks

ok what is it now

something about weed? weed is bad? look i'm trying not to read it

read is bad

its more of a yeah i used to do weed type piece is my understanding, did not read, read is bad

http://i.imgur.com/NfaUcgz.png

in that case he must be stoned 24/7 right guys

The host's reefer madness was applauded by CNBC host Jim Cramer, but a question from Mark Halperin led to the most telling moment of the discussion.

"Does drinking make you dumb?" Halperin asked, prompting an unusual silence from Scarborough and Cramer.

"I think in large amounts it makes you dumb," Scarborough finally conceded.

Scarborough said he saw firsthand the best minds of his generation destroyed by munchies.

"I played with a lot of guys in bands and on football teams that smoked pot all the time," Scarborough said.

i seen some dark shit man

has someone posted a joke story about how they were in brookses choom gang and a black kid got wrongly busted for brookes weed and he was terrible and entitled about it and of course twitter thought it was real and got very upset

would love to vape with david vrooks