Mac Attack

The Brawler has a toddler who loves to play with blocks. Up, up, up they rise in a stack, delighting the toddler and all around. Yet the toddler does not notice that the blocks are all placed slightly at an angle. So at some point -- usually around the tenth block -- the whole edifice collapses.

Toddler Brawler's tower building reminds the Brawler of Patrick McIlheran's column writing.

And just as the Toddler Brawler's efforts are applauded, so should some of P-Mac's greatest hits of the past week.

Coming in at No. 3:

Last Sunday, the economically illiterate P-Mac takes on the estate tax, bashes actual economist Paul Krugman, says the $28 billion it raises is chicken feed and says its immoral and based on envy. He concludes:

A tax that's justified by envy still clashes with Americans' sense of who we are, fortunately. The real reason people too middle-class to pay the death tax oppose it is because when laws are shaped by resentment, there's no telling where the resentment will stop.

Here's the deal: A surefire way to increase taxes on the middle class -- or cut programs or services it's come to expect -- is to whack away at taxes such as the estate tax. To the extent members of the middle class oppose the death tax, the Brawler would suspect it's because of right wing spinners who've managed to persuade people that it'll cut into stamp collection Uncle Henry was going to leave them.

At No. 2, this hump day post from P-Mac titles "Strategic failure, strategic change."

Just as the critics warned, we now see American soldiers, M16s at the ready, having to patrol what we thought was conquered territory. Having trusted local authorities who turned out to be weak or incompetent, we find that disorder sweeps this southern territory, with the same old bloodshed returning. And so, the previous strategy having failed to ensure safety and peace for what local inhabitants remain, we find our leaders scrambling to switch tactics. The Louisiana National Guard returns to bloody New Orleans in hope of restoring order. In an unrelated story, American and allied troops fight to reassert control in southern Afghanistan after the Taliban buy off or cow Afghani leaders to whom the allies had turned over southern regions. Allied and Afghani troops killed 20 insurgents Tuesday, AP reports

Lemme see. How many car bombs are going off in New Orleans? How many members of the National Guard have been killed in New Orleans? How many government officials have been assassinated by guerillas?  And, oh yeah, is Osama bin Laden still at large because we failed to catch him in New Orleans?

The Brawler does not want to minimize the violence in New Orleans. But attempting to minimize the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan by saying "Gee, how many people get killed in American cities in a given week?" has been played by the right for years. It was bullshit the first time, it's the same now.

Afghanistan has been rife with failure. The first, of course, was not sending in enough troops in the first place because we were already jumped up on attacking Iraq.

The only similarity between Afghanistan and New Orleans is that Bush presided over both.

And the winner is:

It's a ringer!  Charlie Sykes!  For saying this about the above column:

This is why Patrick McIlheran has become one of the best conservative bloggers around.