If this man gives you advice, do the opposite.

This is a rare picture of David Brooks without his head in his ass. He's been called, here and elsewhere, the wrongest man in America, and given how many people have been wrong over the past 8 years, that's a heaping hunk of raw wrongitude. David Brooks is the King of Wrongistan. If you look up wrong in the dictionary, it will refer you to Brooks, David.

David Brooks writes for the New York Times. Yesterday, he wrote a column that reminded me of those Waffen SS officers who, once they lost the war, quickly shed their uniforms and tried to pass themselves off as helpless, war-weary German civilians.

"Hitler? Never heard of the guy."

In his column, with the oxymoronic title A Moderate Manifesto, Brooks tries to rebrand himself as a moderate and reveals just how far this pampered rich asshole is removed from the troubles that a generation of his brand of conservatism has inflicted on his fellow citizens.

Just listen to this:

But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.

No, it's just that you and the other Bush apologists gutted the treasury and left vitally important work to thieves like Halliburton. Now, the country has a whole bagful of problems that can no longer be put off.

So programs are piled on top of each other and we wind up with a gargantuan $3.6 trillion budget. We end up with deficits that, when considered realistically, are $1 trillion a year and stretch as far as the eye can see.

Yes, thanks for driving us into this ditch, you and the other Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman worshippers who foisted on us a monetarist policy based on servicing the debt. Now quit bitching, get the fuck out and help us push.

The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment. Yet the Obama budget is predicated on a class divide. The president issued a read-my-lips pledge that no new burdens will fall on 95 percent of the American people. All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward.

Apparently, Mr. Brooks thinks the only suffering during this crisis will be borne by people making over $250K whose tax rate will go up 4%! OMG, David, the misery you and your fellow patricians must endure, it's appalling.

Never mind the unemployed. Never mind those who will lose their homes. Never mind those who will lose their health insurance and get sick. Those people don't suffer. Hell, they don't know the meaning of the word suffering. David Brooks knows suffering.

I have a simple rule. Whenever I hear someone whine about being treated unfairly, I ask myself if I would switch places with them. If the answer is yes, I tell them to STFU and I reserve my sympathy for more deserving people.

The U.S. has always had vibrant neighborhood associations. But in its very first budget, the Obama administration raises the cost of charitable giving. It punishes civic activism and expands state intervention.

Yes, and according to poeple who actually think about this stuff rather than just spew bullshit, the taxes will cost charities 4 billion dollars out of the 300 billion given annually. Will it hurt? Yes. Does it"punish civic activism?" Fuck no.

The U.S. has traditionally had a relatively limited central government. But federal spending as a share of G.D.P. is zooming from its modern norm of 20 percent to an unacknowledged level somewhere far beyond.

Again, according to people who actually think about this shit, the level is estimated at around 60%, still lower than many wealthy European countries. And on a related note, every time I hear one of these conservatives bleat about spending too much I want to throw up. It was you neocon cocksuckers who got us into a 3 trillion dollar war, telling us that it wouldn't cost us a dime. Fuck you. Fuck you all.

As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

Here's another thing. Conservatives like Brooks, and don't let him fool you with that moderate uniform he's suddenly sporting, were the ones who chuckled when their tax guru Grover Norquist said "Bipartisanship is date rape." Now that their economic policies have mortgaged our asses to China, they're surprised no one wants to consult them on finances any more. Let me tell you, Mr. Brooks, taking economic advice from guys like you is like taking weight loss advice from Rush Limbaugh. Fuck you. And fuck Rush, too.


Those of us in the moderate tradition — the Hamiltonian tradition that believes in limited but energetic government — thus find ourselves facing a void. We moderates are going to have to assert ourselves. We’re going to have to take a centrist tendency that has been politically feckless and intellectually vapid and turn it into an influential force.

And David Brooks knows intellectually vapid.

But beyond that, moderates will have to sketch out an alternative vision. This is a vision of a nation in which we’re all in it together — in which burdens are shared broadly, rather than simply inflicted upon a small minority. This is a vision of a nation that does not try to build prosperity on a foundation of debt. This is a vision that puts competitiveness and growth first, not redistribution first.

Again, burdens inflicted upon a small minority. Take your patrician head out of your patrician ass, David, get out of the fucking limo and take a look around. The burdens are not being shared broadly and they haven't for quite some time. They're being shared by military families, the unemployed, the poor and all the workers who fear the next round of layoffs. Spare me the hand-wringing victimhood because your taxes will go up.

Moderates are going to have to try to tamp down the polarizing warfare that is sure to flow from Obama’s über-partisan budget.

Polarizing warfare? Fuck you. I remember during Reagan's term when the head of the RNC said I wasn't a "real American" because I wasn't a conservative. I remember when New Gingrich, your speaker, said that Susan Smith's murder of her two sons was a direct outgrowth of liberalism - until he found out she'd been molested by her right-wing Christian father. I remember the $77 million conservatives wasted trying to bring down Clinton. Fuck you and your polarizing warfare.

David Brooks, the Wrongest Man in America now appears to be one of the most dishonest.

Fuck him. And fuck the New York Times for giving him credibility.