Charles Pierce, author of Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, does a great takedown of pundits who appear on morning television. Writing in Esquire, he describes two people gossiping about politics as similar to "watching a seal and a goat recite Shakespeare."
Pierce righteously excoriates much of what passes for political commentary in Washington, as well as the people who take it seriously. He reserves his best vitriol for Ralph Reed:
Ralph Reed is a con-man who would sell his gray-haired granny to the Somali pirates for fifty cents worth of consulting fees. He has nothing worth contributing to the national dialogue. This should be plain by now to all but the deliberately dim.Dale Coberly at the Angry Bear blog has a beef with moderate pundits who lie about the 'need' to cut Social Security. Here's how he describes their arguments:
Try to imagine you have to buy a medicine that will save your life. You need 100 pills, and the doctor firmly said, “Finish the Medicine… if you stop too soon the infection will come back worse and you will die.”
So you go to the pharmacy and the pharmacist tells you the price of the medicine has gone up and your insurance will only pay for 98 pills. You say, “Okay, I’ll pay for the last two pills myself.”
But the pharmacist tells you, “I can’t let you do that. I can only give you the number of pills your insurance will pay for.”
This is what the “debate” about Social Security amounts to: You are going to need Social Security when you get old. The cost is going to go up by then about two percent. Washington has decided they can’t let you pay the extra cost. The only solution they are willing to consider is cutting the amount you will get… to less than it will take to keep you alive.The whole thing is worth reading.
