When it comes to hippy punching, the Washington Post’s in-house “liberal,” Dana Milbank, is one of the Beltway press corps’ most accomplished pugilists. His career can be easily defined by his use of his platform as a nominal liberal to say how silly and out of touch liberals are. Milbank’s latest involves mocking the Congressional Progressive Caucus for having the temerity to produce a budget which arrives at a surplus within 10 years. Milbank frames the awful policy choices by the CPC thusly:

Still, it gives a sense of how things would be if liberals ran the world: no cuts in Social Security benefits, government-negotiated Medicare drug prices, and increased income taxes and Social Security taxes for the wealthy. Corporations and investors would be hit with a variety of new fees and taxes. And the military would face a shock-and-awe accounting: a 22 percent cut in Army forces, 30 percent for Marines, 20 percent for the Navy and 15 percent for the airforce. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would end, and weapons programs would go begging.

I hope no one fainted by this brutal vision of reality! Milbank mockingly closes his column:

The Progressive Caucus will win that argument, just as soon as they gain control of the weather. The drizzle, alas, did not let up.

What a dick.

Fed up with Milbank’s ridiculous hippy punching, Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution decided to punch back:

First they came for the welfare mothers, but I did not speak out, because I was a member of Skull & Bones.

Then they came for middle-class manufacturing unions, but I did not speak out, because I had to get to a party at Marty Peretz’s.

Then they came for the upper middle class people who didn’t have columns in the Washington Post, but I did not speak out, because Dennis Kucinich is short.

And then they came for me…and I was STILL so fucking stupid that I spent my time making fun of the House Progressive Caucus.

And boom goes the dynamite.