A hot iron

[libertango]

The Queen of Sheba (aka, David Brooks) just had an unfortunate piece of timing drop on him.

While making the equivalence here that the Democrats have taken six months to become as decadent in power as the Republicans did in 14 years, he also blurts out this:

"Machiavelli said a leader should be feared as well as loved. Obama is loved by the Democratic chairmen, but he is not feared."

Meanwhile, the actual news-reporting part of the New York Times tells us:

"The Senate voted 58-40 on Tuesday to strip $1.75 billion for seven more F-22 fighters from a military spending bill, handing President Obama a crucial victory in his efforts to reshape the military’s priorities.

The victory came after the president had placed his political capital on the line by repeatedly threatening to veto the $679.8 billion spending bill if it included any money for the planes."

Who ya gonna believe? Brooks, or the Senate's lyin' eyes?

Comments

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Brooks is pretty much a total idiot, although unfortunately he's no worse than a lot of pundits and political reporters. I find it hard to read the coverage of the health care scrum, even at good sites like Talking Points Memo, because so much of it seems to be about nothing but unsubstantiated rumor and drama-mongering. I noticed the same thing during the presidential campaign. There was very little attention paid to what was actually happening on the ground, and instead it was all about the latest buzz.

Over at Balloon Juice I also saw an interesting quote from a Washington Post article about Haley Barbour: He said he also has high regard for Obama’s political team. “They’re tough as nails,” he said. “This is the first White House since [Richard] Nixon that K Street is afraid of.”