Nerd Love

Both my thought for the week and my Place I Went have to do with the concept of being a nerd.  I had a happy hour this week with a friend of mine at Brasserie Beck, an overpriced K-Street place where I once saw Carl Levin.  They have really good mussels and frites, which makes sense, since they are Belgian.  But you will easily put down $40-50 for a meal, which is no problem when you're on the company card, but choke-worthy for a grad student like me.  During happy hour, though, they have half-priced Belgian drafts, which are delicious.  As pretty much anyone will tell you, I am not a beer person.  Truth be told, I'm not even really an alcohol person.  Red wine makes me nauseated, I usually have to give back rail drinks for being too strong...if a diet coke could make me better at talking to people I don't know, I think I would be a tea-totaler. (Is that how you spell that?)
But Belgian beers are delicious.  They taste like light, refreshing juice.  And the bartenders at Brasserie Beck are delightfully geeky about it all.  They tell you the composition, the aging process, they let you try samples and pair them with things.  I ended up going with a Palm Speciale, in spite of its menu description of tasting like "warm biscuits".  (Dear BB, no one wants their drink tasting like warm biscuits.  Especially when it's 106 degrees outside.  Just FYI.)  All of this to say, Brasserie Beck happy hour is highly recommended.  Ignore the menu and let the bartenders put their geekery on display.
And now my own nerd-dom: I think I may be in love with Gene Lyons.  First, who can resist this come-hither look paired with a tweed blazer?  A woman can only be so strong.  Second, he writes fantastic columns on why current Republicans would hate Reagan, on why schools are not like companies and also has some of the best headlines around.  He has a way of taking a lot of my mutterings (and the mutterings of millions of others) and turning them into useful, articulate thoughts that can actually be shared with people on both sides of the aisle.  Take, for example, the debt ceiling debate.
 During the two speeches on Monday night, I sat with my roommate in our living room and moved through a roller coaster of emotions.  First, I was amused at Wolf Blitzer's anxiety in getting ready for the address - I think he's permanently scarred by the Bin Laden debacle, when he was forced to reveal nothing, nothing, nothing until a slightly drunk John King stepped in and totally stole his thunder.  Then I was worried for Obama and the reception of this speech - first of all, why exactly was he giving a speech a couple days after the GOP had specifically said "we're tired of speeches"?  And good gracious, did he have to keep saying all the things typical Americans don't know?  They already think he's pedantic and elitist, so recapping the nation's ignorance seems like a terrible idea.  But by the end of the speech, I felt he had, overall, done a good job.  He had used solid reasoning to back up his ideas - we have to do historic cuts, but to suggest you can tackle this problem without any revenue increases is insane, and the CBO, Moody's, S&P and the American people all agree.  We have already paid for all this stuff, this is about authorizing ourselves to be good on our word and about making a solid, sustainable plan for the future.

And then came Boehner's speech.  Facts went out the window.  Right off the bat, he compared the US Government to his own small business.  That is nothing but misleading rhetoric.  His small business did not determine the international economy.  His small business was not responsible for determining the behaviour of millions of other businesses in the US and around the world.  And then he moved on to some good ol'-fashioned revisionism.  
"Here was the president, asking for the largest debt increase in American history, on the heels of the largest spending binge in American history."  

I'm sorry, who had the biggest spending binge in American history?  I mean, not according to Sarah Palin?  Could it be...oh wait...maybe...not a democrat?!  Take a look at this fantastic graph the NY Times put together on the comparative spending of Obama vs. Bush.

And this.  This is why I'm in love with Gene Lyons.  This quote right here:

"Mr. President, this ain't Harvard Law Review, where everybody's done their homework and honorable colleagues seek reasoned compromise. If you want the great mass of Americans to grasp what's going on, you've got to tell them plainly and repeatedly until they can repeat your message like an ad slogan: "Less filling, tastes great." "Where's the beef?" Like that.

How does "deadbeat Republicans" sound? Because the simple fact is that the GOP under George W. Bush put two wars, a Medicare drug benefit, and tax cuts heavily slanted toward the rich on the national credit card. Now that the bill's due, they're planning to skip town and stick Democrats with the charges...

So when Speaker Boehner speaks of "the largest spending binge in American history," he's hiding who's responsible. The Obama administration has added a comparative fraction to the National Debt, almost all by necessity. Also due to recession, tax revenues are way down.

These are indisputable facts. GOP cultists, however, occupy a metaphysical netherworld where anything in the New York Times is false by definition, scorning arithmetic as an elitist tool. Much of the public simply doesn't know what to think; the Obama White House has been perversely reluctant to tell them."

 (Read the rest of the article here)

Roommates, in case you were wondering, this is what I was trying to get out when I was sputtering incoherently on the couch.  Gene Lyons, please marry me.