The Facts About Facts

There are things that are ambiguous, things that are uncertain, and things that are open to various kinds of interpretations.

Then, there are cold hard facts:

The law of gravity.

In the long run, we are all dead.

Newton's laws of motion.

David Brooks is an utter buffoon.


Here is his latest Op-Ed piece.

Here is well-placed, pointed ridicule of that piece by Jonathan  Chait.

Here is Ezra Klein calling him out on his errors and/or lies.

To recap, Brooks argued that reconciliation is being used more frequently, and that past reconciliation bills, like Bush's tax cuts and prescription drug benefit, were significantly bipartisan. Reconciliation is, in fact, being used less frequently, past reconciliation bills like the tax cuts were not significantly bipartisan by any stretch of the imagination, and the prescription drug benefit did not go through reconciliation. Brooks isn't wrong in the sense that "I disagree with him." He's wrong in the sense that the column requires a correction.

Can it be that liars, fools and tools - exclusively right wingers and their fellow-travelers - have gotten away with misleading non-information, misrepresentation, chicanery and outright lies for so long that they think they can simply make stuff up that is easily refuted by a little fact-checking, and still get away with it?


The alternatives are that Brooks is either too lazy to make the effort required to get it right, or too stupid and/or ignorant to present an opinion worthy of consideration.


No matter which of these is correct, he should be collecting unemployment.  That's a fact!


H/T to Delong, who is nowhere near harsh enough.
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