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This Wednesday on PBS, we got treated to another dose of David Brooks and his fetishism for “centrism,” with Charlie Rose leading the way, asking Brooks for “five big ideas, five big, bold ideas that you would like to see debated in the upcoming presidential election, which will have consequences for who we are.”

His answer is anything but surprising given the column he wrote earlier in the week, which has been panned from so many people out there, it's hard to keep count, but Politico gave it a shot and so did Gawker.

First out of the box: tax “reform”, which of course is nothing but Republican double-speak for lowering rates on the highest earners and making the tax code less progressive under the guise of “fairness” and pretending Republicans will ever close any of the loopholes for corporations, which they won't.

Brooks' second “big idea” is doing something to fix the costs of Medicare, which Brooks claims that no one knows how to do, and then immediately proceeds to tout Paul Ryan's “premium support” which is Republican double-speak for privatizing it. Naturally Rose didn't point out that we could do something to control the costs, like putting everyone on it instead of pushing the sickest and most expensive patients onto the tax payers while the insurance companies get to line their pockets off of the rest of us. That conversation isn't allowed in our corporate media though, so they moved on after Brooks lied about how privatizing Medicare was going to contain the costs instead of admitting that it would just push the costs onto seniors instead. Brooks also said we could “try some things that are in 'Obamacare' too,” but of course he didn't elaborate on what any of those things are.

Brilliant idea number three ... “family policy is essential.” To which even Charlie Rose had to ask, “What does that mean?” This is where Brooks blames income disparity and a lack of eduction on women having babies out of wedlock.

BROOKS: Right now, we have forty-odd percentage points of kids in this country born out of wedlock. The effects of that on average, not for every kid born out of wedlock, but for, on average, the effects of that are so powerful that it means thirty years from now inequality will be worse than it is right now. The achievement gap will be worse than it is right now. These effects are just huge and I don't care what we do with charter schools and all the other good stuff. You will not be able to counteract that effect of family breakdown. […]

It involves some conservative sounding ideas, getting people to get married before they have kids, just a social norm, some liberal policies. You've got to make men marriageable by giving them incomes, earned income tax credit, wage subsidies, or else no one's going to want to marry a guy if he has no income. And so that's a left/right thing, which I really think Obama should have done.

“Obama should have done.” I'm not quite sure how David Brooks thinks President Obama could have forced all of those people out there having premarital sex and having babies out of wedlock to get married first, but that statement just about made my jaw drop.

I guess Charlie Rose doesn't read Brooks' column, because he didn't bother to ask him about the fact that he was just citing the exact same statistics to praise the writings of Charles Murry, who as Charles Pierce pointed out this week, “has dismissed black people as fundamentally uneducable.”

I'll let Pierce take it from here with his commentary on Brooks and his column where the same topic of out of wedlock babies came up — Our Mr. Brooks Finds Another Very Important Thinker:

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He really just can't stop himself. Here's David Brooks with another "both sides" knee jerk reaction to President Obama daring to talk about the need for the rich to pay their fair share in taxes and the fact that trickle-down economics don't work during his speech in Osawatomie, Kansas this week.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, David, you're saying to focus on the fairness is off the point, that the point should be more about what's happening to the country?

DAVID BROOKS: I think it's about growth.

We have an inequality problem, there's no question. But I think people -- sometimes when you have -- we want a strong, growing economy and we want strong wage growth. And that's somewhat related to whether the top 1 percent get super bonuses, but it's not totally related to that. And so you better have a strong story about generating economic growth.

And I didn't see that story. And then, second, just politically, I agree with Mark the Republican Party has gone very far right, but if they singing the hymnal of FOX News, why do you sing to the hymnal of MSNBC?

Why don't you do something more centrist? Which is what I think he should have done. I think he should have acknowledged that not only do we have an inequality problem. We have got a growth problem and we have got a debt problem, which is the thing he entirely dropped.

Heaven forbid David Brooks can ever respond to a question on the extremism of the Republican Party without throwing in a.... "but Democrats are just as extreme" false equivalency out there and some ridiculous statement as he made here trying to pretend MSNBC is a liberal network because they've allowed some of their programming to represent liberal views or those of the Democratic Party establishment during their prime time programming or at the crack of dawn on the weekends. I can only assume that David Brooks either never watches MSNBC if he thinks what he said here is true, or he knows full well that it's not and he just doesn't mind lying to the PBS audience.

MSNBC for the most part is not the equivalent of Fox, but they come pretty close during a good part of their daytime programming and I'd say there right there with the three hours in the morning with Scarborough. So liberal network equal to counter Fox my ass Mr. Brooks.

David Brooks also seemed to be having a very hard time wrapping his head around the fact that income disparity and lack of taxation on the rich might be related to each other and why most Americans are struggling these days. I guess it never occurred to him that the reason we don't have any growth is because the rich are hanging onto most of the money in the United States to the point that we're destroying what's left of our middle class and where consumers don't have any money to spend with the outsourcing for slave labor overseas, the destruction of unions, and a race to the bottom on wages and workers protections, and where those who are lucky enough to still have a job for the most part have not seen their wages go up, but remain stagnant or go down instead, but the ones benefiting from that economic model are sitting on mounds of cash.

It's too bad the hapless Mark Shields who is often as big of a hack as Brooks during this weekly segment on the PBS Newshour didn't try to make the same arguments that Nick Hanauer did on Cavuto's show last week where he tried to explain over Cavuto's interruptions exactly why his taxes should be raised and how that's tied to job creation and how it's the 99 percent having money in their pockets and not the 1 percent hording all the cash that creates jobs and some basic common sense on supply and demand on what makes economies grow as opposed to Republican fantasies about confidence fairies and trickle-down economics -- Millionaire Nick Hanauer Shoots Down Neil Cavuto's Straw Men as He Explains Why His Taxes Should be Raised.

Full transcript below the fold.

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While wrapping up his interview on Rachel Maddow's show this Tuesday night, Bill Maher was asked what he thinks President Obama should do about the fact that he can't get unanimity from Democrats in his own party to support his jobs bill that the Republicans just filibustered.

Maher responded pointing out how important he believes the Occupy Wall Street movement is because the Democratic Party does indeed need something to push it and the group of Conserva-Dems that continually side with Republicans in the Senate back over to the left.

MAHER: I don't know if they can get them in line, but I would agree with you that that is one of the big problems in this country, is we understand that the Republicans are mostly bad policy makers who are trying retreaded ideas that didn't work the first time. What's especially disappointing is that group of Democratic Senators, you know, the Ben Nelsons, the same types, these centrist, corporatist Democrats who ally with them.

You know, it's bad enough that you need sixty votes, which is kind of a quiet coup, you know, of government, because really the Constitution says it should be fifty one, to get something done. When you add the fact that there's fifty three Republican, I mean fifty three Democratic Senators, forty of them are pretty good, but there's that thirteen that call themselves centrist that really wind up with the Republicans, and then of course, nothing is ever going to get done.

And this is again, to come back to what we started to talk about, and why I think that Occupy Wall Street movement is so important. Because the left needs some... something to move them away from the center and toward the left. You know, we've tried conservatism in this country. We've tried centrism. We need something to make us try liberal policies.

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When caught just the latter part of this interview on Fox News before I had a chance to go back and watch all of it, I thought maybe it was just Neil Cavuto who had lost his mind, but apparently the brilliant idea of having former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson drafted to run for president originated with The Mustache of Misunderstanding, Thomas Friedman.

From Tim Murphy at MoJo -- The Alan Simpson For President Movement Comes of Age:

When we last heard from Alan Simpson, the former Wyoming Senator and GOP co-chair of the Simpson-Bowles Debt Commission was railing against today's disrespectful youths, "walking on their pants with their caps on backwards listening to the Enema Man and Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dog." All of which make the calls for him to run for president as inevitable as they are inexplicable.

It began over the summer, when New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said at the Aspen Ideas Festival that "If Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles want to run as president and vice president, I will vote for them." Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer reprised the idea in an interview with Simpson on CNN a few days later. For folks like Friedman, who pride themselves on the boldness of their ideas in the face of a crippling status quo (accurate or not), Simpson is a tantalizing choice. And now, with Republicans still freaking out about their choices for President and Friedman still pining for some sort of third-party savior capable of making tough choices and magically transcending checks and balances, the calls for a Simpson candidacy have picked up again (even though he's not running). [...]

Simpson is a pro-choice Republican who opposed Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and doesn't actually seem to understand how Social Security works—despite making it a signature issue. He is also, reportedly, old. But maybe this is his year.

To his credit, when Cavuto asked Simpson if there "was any situation under which he would consider running for president," Simpson laughed and told him "God, that's absurd. I mean, that really can't be... you're a bright guy." To which Cavuto responded, "Not really." Hey, Neil said something on the air I agree with for once!

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It looks like Tom Friedman has a new book to sell, so naturally that meant that Howard Kurtz just had to give him two full segments on this weekend's Reliable Sources to sell the CNN viewers on some more of his Third Way nonsense that he and a bunch of Republicans and corporate Democrats are trying to push now that they realize the right wing of the Republican Party has taken them over to the point that they rightfully should find themselves going the way of the Know Nothings once the better part of the electorate finally starts waking up to just how extreme their ideology is.

Never mind the fact that there's barely a bit of difference between what these so-called "tea party" members that are nothing but the extreme right wing of the Republican base trying to re-brand themselves and the people that both Kurtz and Friedman identify as being somehow "moderates" here.

I'll give Friedman a small amount of credit for finally admitting that it is just one party we've got a problem with right now that's obstructing everything that President Obama has tried to get pushed through the Congress to help create jobs in America, but the false equivalencies that went along with that are infuriating. That along with the people he's willing to label as "moderate."

I'd say, by what definition? Someone tell me where there's a hair's bit of difference between the voting records of Lindsey Graham and his BFF John McCain in recent years, or any of the rest of them that they named off, and the United States Senate's most extreme right winger, Jim DeMint?

Friedman likes to opine for the good old days when we had what you'd call "moderates" in the Republican Party, but accepting that notion depends completely on what anyone would describe as their definition of a "moderate."

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Time for your weekly Professional Left Podcast with our own Driftglass and Bluegal, once again taking on our Villagers and their beltway conventional wisdom as only they can. Have a great weekend and enjoy the podcast everyone.

Featured in this episode -- Lemkin: Cokie's Law vs. Social Security..

You follow them on Facebook at The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal. And if anyone wants to wish them well, they're finally going to make it official and are tying the knot next week. Congratulations Fran and Driftie!

Time for your weekly podcast with our own C&L contributors, Driftglass and Bluegal, otherwise known as the Professional Left.

Mentioned in the podcast, from the It Gets Worse project that "encourages Floridians to share their thoughts about how Rick Scott has affected their lives". And here's Fran's description of him:

The guy who wants to be in the center, but has no idea who is as extreme as Florida Governor Rick Scott is on the Right.

You can listen to their archives at The Professional Left Podcast and you can make a donation there if you'd like to help keep their podcasts going. You can also follow them on Facebook at The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal.

Have a great weekend everyone and enjoy the podcast.

Time for your weekly podcast with our own Driftglass and Bluegal, otherwise known as The Professional Left. I always look forward to these as my weekly dose of sanity on Friday afternoons when they first come out.

Mentioned in this episode: The World According to Chuck, Serenity.

You can listen to all of their archives at http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/ and you can make a donation there if you'd like to help them keep these going. You can also follow them on Facebook at The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal. Enjoy the podcast and have a great weekend everyone.

Open thread below...

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Thomas Frank lays out the reasons why the pick of William Daley for Chief of Staff in the Obama administration is completely politically tone deaf to the mood of the average voter out there.

From CNN's Parker Spitzer:

SPITZER: Joining us in "The Arena" tonight are CNN political contributor James Carville and Thomas Frank, "Harper's" magazine contributor and author of several books including "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

PARKER: Thanks for joining us. So we're all talking about the changes at the White House, particularly the new chief of staff. Why should the American people care about who the president hires as his chief of staff, James? Go to you first.

CARVILLE: Well, first of all, you know it's one of the most powerful positions in the United States government. It's not confirmable. So I think it does matter and I also think it's a reflection of the White House strategy of policy which appears to me to be a continuation of the December policy that cooperate with the Republicans and to not be very confrontational.

And I think that president picking Secretary Daley sent that signal. I think it's a manifestation of an ongoing strategy that the White House has adopted.

PARKER: Well, everybody loves him, it seems like. I have found no one on either side of the aisle who's critical of him. And I'm sure Tom Frank would join us here and congratulate the president for picking such a rationale chief of staff, right?

FRANK: You know what, Kathleen, this -- this whole thing, it just -- you remember when I was on your -- I was up there in New York and I was on your show a couple of weeks ago and we were talking about -- the term that I use is the poverty of centrism, right?

The sort of exhaustion of this whole way of understanding politics. And this gives you another, you know, really big clue as to what's the matter with the Democrats. There's just no imagination out there. They seem to just be completely clueless with regards to, you know, how to play the political game. This is their response to the shellacking that they took.

SPITZER: You know, Tom, I got to jump in here and agree with you 100 percent. It seems to me there's another factor we've got to bring to the table here.

On the same day that Bill Daley comes in, Paul Volcker goes out. Paul Volcker, of course, the esteemed, highly respected former chairman of the Fed, was the only one in the administration who was really pushing for fundamental Wall Street reform. And so he is gone and we bring in a banker, somebody from Morgan Chase, who is now going to be at the center, as James said. Being chief of staff for the president is being arguably the second most powerful person in the United States government.

FRANK: Right. But, you're not -- you're not being fair there. It's a balanced choice because at the same time they brought in Gene Sperling who I believe used to work for Goldman Sachs.

SPITZER: That's right.

FRANK: So you've got -- you know you've got both sides represented there. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs.

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You've just got to love the framing they used for this segment from CNN's Parker/Spitzer earlier this week -- Can a centrist movement in the U.S. succeed or is it too 'mushy' to hold up?

This just smells of more Republican re-branding with some of the so-called Republican "moderates" wanting to distance themselves from the teabirchers that have taken over their party. They may have done well during the mid-term elections just catering to their base, but that's not going to work so well in 2012.

Former Rudy Giuliani staffer John Avlon's been pushing this nonsense for some time now, but as Karoli pointed out last week, there's a new group jumping on his bandwagon as well. Kathleen Parker never mentioned the "No Labels" group during the segment, but it may as well have been an infomercial for them by Parker and Avlon.

It's really a shame that Thomas Frank wasn't allowed to speak more to counter Avlon's talking points. Kathleen Parker and John Avlon can put all of the "mushy middle", "we're a center-right country", bipartisan spin on this they want. It's not going to change the fact that they're both a couple of right wingers. There's not a lick of difference between their economic policy positions and those of Dick Armey and the Koch brothers.

CNN's off air interview with Frank looked a lot more interesting than listening to Avlon's claptrap about how voters just really want all the bickering to stop and for our politicians to all just get along, which is doublespeak demanding Democratic capitulation.

Q: If we could arrange a private conversation between you and Rep. John Boehner, what would you say to him?

FRANK: I was struck by his line about Democrats “snuffing out the America that I grew up in.” It’s a charge that I frequently apply to conservatives, who have so resolutely smashed the middle-class society where I grew up in favor of a nation that is heaven on earth for the very rich—and an endless, losing struggle for working people. It’s also something I often say about market forces generally, which are the most radical and disruptive cultural influences I know of. Conservatives always claim to love the market and to deplore what’s happening in “the culture,” but they never explain how they can hold these two views at the same time. Wouldn’t it be great to have John Boehner himself sort out these things out for us?

I’m also always been impressed by his luminous neckties, and I would of course tell him so.

Q: What credit do you give the Tea Party for changing American politics at this moment?

FRANK: They demonstrated two important things:

- That the supposed power of centrism is in fact just a comforting beltway fairytale. That the “median voter” doesn’t really determine things. That politics really is a battle of small, committed groups—and also of money.

- That there’s a place in politics for class-based discontent. That conservatives can speak to that emotion just as readily as liberals can. And that if liberals don’t understand this—if they just blow it off on the grounds that working-class people will always vote for Democrats because duh—that they will keep losing, and they will deserve to lose. [...]

Q:As you get older, do you find yourself becoming more or less liberal?

FRANK: Not speaking strictly for myself here, but what I find people outgrow isn’t liberalism per se, it’s the tendency to treat politics like a branch of aesthetics, where what matters are gestures and what you’re after—the object of politics—is a demonstration of your originality and your surpassing cleverness. When you get older you realize how impotent that approach is, and you also understand the disastrous consequences things like, say, banking deregulation have for people.

Full transcript of the clip above below the fold.

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