David Frum has written two articles in as many days about what he calls “doomsday conservatism.” Both relate to a column by conservative nutjob and Pillsbury Doughboy standin Marc Thiessen. He is the part of the Republican Party who think of themselves as The Little Party That Could. If they are just true and strong then that big meanie President Obama will wave the white flag.

Really, this guy is delusional. This is the opening of his Washington Post column, “When the 1st Marine Regiment was encircled by communist forces at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, Marine Col. Lewis ‘Chesty’ Puller was said to have declared: ‘We’re surrounded. Good! Now we can fire in any direction.'” He should have quoted General Douglas MacArthur, “I shall return.” Because let’s face it, the best the Republicans can hope for is to survive to fight another day.

But no, Thiessen won’t have it! He claims that the Republicans have two options: stand and fight or surrender. As you can probably tell, this is not a guy who knows much about military tactics except for the anecdotes he learned during his trust fund education and well-paid lobbying jobs. But he wouldn’t even need to have served in the military to know better. Anyone with a little experience getting kicked in the teeth by life could have told him there are more than just two options. But this is the Republican Party all over. Remember John Boehner’s comment that he got 98% of what he wanted—and then turned it down? It seems that this is a world in which you can’t have it all and more and more it looks like that means Republicans are going to take nothing.

Thiessen has a three step plan:

1. Don’t raises taxes! And when they are raised automatically in January… Forget step one, go on to step two!
2. Come up with a new plan to—Wait for it!—lower taxes!
3. Pass your plan and if Obama doesn’t like it, destroy the economy!

This really is his plan. And Frum takes him to task for it. Mostly, he notes that there are no existing plans so somehow the Republicans would have to work all of this legislative magic with their backs to the wall and with the threat of creating the worst economic crisis in the United States since 1861.

But more important, as I noted above, there are not only two options. Unfortunately, all the blood seems to have left Thiessen’s brain and pooled in his dick. Frum explains:

In the end, I think that the Republicans will be more reasonable than this, because Thiessen is not proposing a plan to win these budget negotiations; he’s proposing a plan to destroy the Republican Party.

Recently, there have been a lot of articles about people who pleaded guilty to this or that crime. This came as a bit of a shock to me, because I’m a careful reader, and I just assumed that they pled guilty. You know me: the practical pedant. And this issue is very clear. Either of these constructions are okay.

How do I know? Well, as always, I checked Fowler. He thinks “pled” is an American thing. He appears to be wrong, but the fact that he doesn’t make a big deal out of the issue should tell you something; Fowler had no problem making a fuss when he thought it was right. So I checked my favorite grammar sources, The Grammar Bible and Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences. They don’t even mention the issue. And the Merriam-Webster dictionary? They not only mention “pled,” they offer “plead” as well!

Let me go further: why are we still using “pleaded”? The only words that are much like it are “lead” and “read.” And both conjugate the same way. There is no reason to hang on to this archaic usage. So “pleaded” is on notice around here. You won’t be seeing it. Except, of course, here:

Like all people who refuse to grow up, I love the Marx Brothers. But I fully admit that their movies are a mixed bag. There is total insanity followed by total boredom. I am not talking about Margaret Dumont here. She is brilliant and I don’t think Groucho is ever funnier than when he’s interacting with her. The problem is that the films are filled with standard stories with anemic characters who no one cares about.

Take Animal Crackers for example. I love this film. I often put it on to cheer myself up. But what is the plot? It is rather clever, to be honest, but I doubt that one out of a hundred viewers notice it. A painting is being unveiled at the party. The romatic couple decide to replace the painting with one that he did to illustrate what a great painter he is so that they can get married. The paintings switched, some social rivals of Margaret Dumont switch his excellent copy with a terrible copy. In the end, everything is righted, the young man is proclaimed a genius, and the couple can marry.

The problem is that almost nothing is done to make this main plot interesting. Add to this the extreme heights of brilliance whenever the Marx Brothers are on screen and you end up with a film that is half great and half boring. I think this is why most people hold Duck Soup in such high regard: it is pretty much all Marx Brothers all the time. And I agree. But I think it suffered at the time of its release because it was ahead of the times. It is just gag after gag without much in terms of a plot. Just to give it some cohesion, it brings back the Sylvanian ambassador multiple times to remind everyone that this is all about the country going to war.

I think the Marx Brothers really manage to bring it all together in their first MGM film, A Night at the Opera. I just watched this film again and I was very impressed with how it manages to integrate the brothers into the story. In a fundamental way, the story is no different than Animal Crackers: the romantic couple want to marry but they can’t until he gets a chance to show everyone what a great singer he is. But in this case, Chico is his manager who makes a contract with Groucho who kind of represents the opera. Actually, this is my favorite scene (unfortunately a very bad copy):

I think there is a reason that there hasn’t been a lot of just dumping Marx Brothers bits together. It can be kind of hard to take. They are at their best when they are integrated into a story. I also appreciate that they are a little more likable in A Night at the Opera. Even though Duck Soup is funnier, I think that A Night at the Opera works better as a film.

Yesterday, I responded to the Fed’s decision to tie interest rates to unemployment. Although I think this is good, it is the least they could do, and they are doing it much too late. My biggest problem was that the Fed’s new unemployment target is 6.5%, which is nowhere near full employment. I noted that they were continuing to do the heavy lifting of the rich. And note: high unemployment (and 6.5% unemployment is very high) is great for business owners because it gives them the pick of the best employees for the lowest prices.

Robert Reich responded to the policy change this morning, Why the Fed’s Jobs Program Will Fail. His analysis is different than mine. In fact, it is even more depressing. He says that this is good policy, and I agree for the most part: it is at least better policy. But the real problem is that the low interest loans will not be used in a productive way for our economy:

What he’s getting at here—although he doesn’t say it—is that the American economy is not capital constrained. The truth is that companies are sitting on huge sums of cash. If they want to invest in infrastructure, they can. But they don’t, because there isn’t a demand for their products. This is kind of a game of anti-chicken with the economy. Everyone is waiting until someone else starts to spend.

It is interesting to look back at how Milton Hershey dealt with the Depression. Instead of sitting on his huge piles of money, he assumed that the depression would eventually be over. So he invested in his infrastructure and when things got better, he was in a great position to capitalize on it. Of course, there were other reasons why he did so well. For one thing, it is a hell of a lot easier to get people to splurge on a nickle candy bar than on a thousand dollar Buick. But still, Hershey was farsighted in a way that most businessmen can’t even imagine.

Reich says, rightly, that what we really need is to invest in the middle class. But instead, we are tearing down the middle class. The Michigan right-to-work fiasco is a good example. But it is bigger than that. We have Republicans who think that if only the rich get richer, all will be fine. Well, let’s look at how that’s going:

This graph illustrates what Ed was saying over at Gin and Tacos yesterday. Basically, we are told that prosperity is just around the corner. All we have to do is take another pay cut or another benefit cut, and then all will be well. But as you can see in the graphs above, this isn’t the case.

Of course, I tend to think that the issue isn’t particularly the Republicans. We know that they are out to get us. But so is much of the Democratic Party. President Obama seems eager to “reform” Medicare. He, like many Democrats, seems more interested in seeming reasonable than in doing what’s right. Unfortunately, the Democrats are all we’ve got. And to their credit, they are at least trying to make the economy better for all of us. (But better still for the rich!)

And now we are in a situation where we cannot depend upon the Fed to save us. Instead, we must depend upon the crazy and evil Republicans and the morally uncertain Democrats. Reich sums up:

But there is good news. If the government doesn’t do anything really bad, the economy will eventually heal itself. And I feel very confident that the Democrats will not do that much harm. This is why they are infinitely superior to the Republicans. This is why I voted for Obama.