I love his, “Yes conservatives fucked up the economy and instituted policies which totally fucked over the American people for the benefit of a handful of rich folks, but it is really all Obama’s fault.”

That picture makes Douthat look like he just came in 6th place in a Morrissey brood-alike contest.

If the Democrats have all those “constituencies,” who does that leave for the Republicans?

Did he leave anyone out?

If anyone ever wants to know why I call Mr. Don’t Douthat “The Pasty Little Putz” I send them to view the picture of him on his New York Times columnist page. Yuck.

Oh darn! Why couldn’t I fugure out all this mess was the Democrats fault? Not to mention the Mexicans. What a dumbass I am.

I’m undecided as to who the bigger pathological moron is: Douchehat or Kristol.

My wife thinks he is in the closet, she also said he has tiny doll hands which utterley “creep me out”

The Gooper demographic is the batshit crazy racist morons.

Ross Douthat comes close to bringing up the most taboo issue in the MSM, ‘Empire’, but he brings it up under the title of “Inequality as Usual” — which is, of course, what Empire is all about.

Any Empire, and particularly this guileful post-modern ruling-elite corporate/financial Empire which controls our country behind the facade of its two-party ‘Vichy’ sham of democracy, is entirely focused on unjustified hierarchy, inequality, and absolute power over the political-economics of a society.

As I have written extensively in Op-Ed News and elsewhere, traditional Empires have been overt in using ‘war booty’ for acquiescence to hierarchical elitist EMPIRE. But today pride or hubris in being a citizen of the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Nazi Empire, or the Soviet Empire no longer does it for any but naive and arrogant fools, and thus today’s only 21st century surviving Empire must be more guileful — and thus the massive unjust inequality of Empire must be defended differently than merely sharing a little war booty.

However, economic facts belie the “Illusions of Empire” (Hedges) that our disguised 21st century Empire propagandizes:

Economists’ ‘gold standard’ measurement of inequality in a society is called the GINI Coefficient of Income Inequality — in which on a simple scale of 0 to 1 a society is measured in terms of 0 being perfectly equal income, and 1.0 being all income held by one person. Based on this universally accepted measure of comparing countries the following table shows:

All ’social democracies’ of Europe and Japan — 0.23 to 0.31
Russia and Communist China — 0.41 and 0.46
‘Our’ United States of America — 0.49 (and rising fast)
Mugabe’s plutocratic dictatorship of Zimbabwe — 0.53

[Our own CIA’s country casebook warns that any society with a GINI Coefficient above 0.45 is in danger of civil unrest and revolution.]

Therefore, for the last Empire on earth to survive it must guilefully con its citizens into believing something other than the facts about their woeful status of inequality (as Thomas Frank documented about Kansans).

The way in which the ruling-elite corporate/financial Empire (nominally headquartered in our country) accomplishes this distraction and illusion can be understood by looking at the concepts of Roger Cohen and Alfred P. Slaon.

Roger Cohen suggests today regarding health care, “In America … There is endless worry that one’s neighbor may be getting more than his or her “fair” share.”

But the real genius of Sloan’s famous market segmentation of GM cars was not that it institutionalized a hierarchical system of deserved prestige of cars by income level in our ‘economic’ system — but that it began the shift of the entire US society to accepting the monetisation of the very definition of ‘equality’ within our whole political-economic existence. In other words, the monetisation of an ‘Empire’ system morphing and posing as ‘democracy’.

The unfortunate result of Slaon’s idea (”for good or evil”, as Keynes would say) was that the American people have become anesthetized to the meaning of ‘democracy’ and have had the real meaning of ‘Empire’ replace the meaning of democracy.

Thus, it is without shame or argument that George W. Bush could publically applaud America as the leader of ‘capitalist democracy’ whatever that moron meant by this oxymoron.

Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine

Why decide? They can co-hold the title. I suspect, though, that by the time Douthat is Kristol’s age, he (Douthat) will have far surpassed the idiocy that is Kristol. Batshitcraziness tends to increase with age.

Well! The wingnuts have finally stopped blaming EVERYTHING that went wrong during the Bush Administration on the Clenis. I’m sure the “Big Dog” is pleased as punch with this development. Unfortunately, they seem to have only replaced their former excuse with “Clenis-Lite.”*

*Or “Clenis-Dark,” depending on one’s viewpoint.

Smart girl, that Mrs. Paladin!

Douchehat should try out for those Geiko caveman commercials.

No way he can replace Kristol unless he raises his never-met-a-war-he-didn’t-like game a notch or two.

Slightly OT: What happens in the third generation, assuming there is one someday? Do Kristol III, Goldberg III, Wallace III, etc. get a seat at the table unless their Mom/Dad was as horrific as Bush II (inversion is the only way he gets to set the bar high…)?

Liberals, though, have spent decades telling a more simplistic story, in which conservatives bear all the blame for stagnating middle-class wages and skyrocketing upper-class wealth. So it’s fair to say that if a period of Democratic dominance doesn’t close the gap between the rich and the rest of us, it will represent a significant policy failure for contemporary liberalism.

as a child, Ross had a Connect-The-Dots book he named Rosebud

Coming soon to The InterNets near you, a new conservative PowerBlog!

Ross Douthat teams with Maxim Lott to bring you: MAXIMUM DOUCHEHAT

Douthat is right: tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the cap on Social Security withholding, the repeal of Glass-Steagal, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, the difference between the Minimum Wage and a living wage, 15% tax on investment income, etc., in no way contributed to income disparity. Income disparity is caused by people being too lazy to work four or five jobs.
Just look at all of the conservatives who hit town with only a few million in their pockets and made something of themselves and you’ll agree that he’s right.

What happens in the third generation, assuming there is one someday? Do Kristol III,

Kristol’s got two daughters. Despite the opening of the armed forces to female soldiers, I doubt that either is volunteering.

Why, when I came to town I didn’t have a dime in my pocket.

Now, I’ve got a dime in my pocket. /Groucho