Sanity signs.

Heh. More here.

I saw one earlier that I liked but can't find it now. "I'm persuaded by logical arguments."

"Rally to Restore Sanity" outdraws Glenn Beck's Great Teabagging.

Where are all the photos of the Mall and the breathless updates from the non-partisan Putz?

CBS News did an analysis of the crowd and estimated that 215,000 people were on hand. The network relied on the same company to estimate the crowd size at Glenn Beck's event in August, and found 87,000 people.

It's not just the "professional left."

Wow, just wow.

Democratic voters are closely divided over whether President Barack Obama should be challenged within the party for a second term in 2012, an Associated Press-Knowledge Networks Poll finds.

That glum assessment carries over into the nation at large, which is similarly divided over whether Obama should be a one-term president.

Such a Shame.

Oh. No.

Dozens of retired military chaplains say that serving both God and the U.S. armed forces will become impossible for chaplains whose faiths consider homosexuality a sin if the "don't ask, don't tell" policy is thrown out.

They say a chaplain who preaches against homosexuality could conceivably be disciplined as a bigot under the military's nondiscrimination policy, though the Pentagon says chaplains' religious beliefs and their need to express them will be respected.

Or they could be sent home for being tactless assholes. If you wanna preach that shit, padres, go home.

TEA PARTY!!1!!!!!!

D'oh!

Forty-eight percent of Americans approve of how President Barack Obama is handling his job as president, while 45 percent disapprove of his job performance, according to a CNN Poll of Polls compiled and released on Friday. This Poll of Polls suggests that for the first time this election season, more Americans approve of how Obama is managing his duties in the White House.

Why does most of America hate America?

Editorial Decisions.

Andrew Sullivan thinks Gawker's decision to print that anonymous Christine O'Donnell kiss-and-tell everyone's so angry about was "intrepid."¹

"If you believed the article was obviously wrong," he says, "then you should be in favor of publishing it and bringing the issue to light. Suppressing something only gives it legitimacy." he continues.²

Finally: "It's always better to put everything on the table and fight over it, than posture about which subjects are worthy of debate or scrutiny."³

In fact, these quotes are Sullivan's justification for publishing excerpts of the "The Bell Curve" in The New Republic. He says the Gawker item is "vile" and has "not a smidgen of journalistic justification."

¹The Atlantic, October 20, 2007
²USA Today, October 18, 1994
³The Atlantic, February 24, 2009

InstaPutz Assignment Desk.

Kathryn Jean Lopez thinks a strategy to overturn Don't Ask Don't Tell during the lame duck session is "lame." Please call her at 212-679-7330 (x2857, I think) and ask her to justify this.

Be civil, or not!

Let me know what she says, via email or comments.

It Burns.

From Erick Erickson's post, "White House Conspires With Media Matters":

ABC News notes the White House had a meeting of special needs representatives. What ABC News fails to point out is that two of them work at Media Matters For America, the George Soros funded character assassins who see evil racists in the white filling of every twinkie they consume.

The evildoers:

Oliver Willis, who is kryptonite to thinking, makes his living as an internet troll for Media Matters. I hear they even station him appropriately under a bridge where he routinely says odd things like, “Is that a billy goat I hear? I am going to gobble you up for my dinner.”

Duncan Black is a fellow at Media Matters, or whatever they call people who are fellows but want to use a gender neutral word so as not to offend the sensibilities of the unibrow crowd.

If someone would translate that last sentence for me I'd appreciate it.

Principle

Jillian Bandes unwraps her hands from Sean Hannity's cock long enough to type out this masterpiece about Joe Sestak's deplorable mudslinging in the PA Senate race against Teabagger extraordinaire Pat Toomey. If only liberal scumbags like Toomey would run positive ads rather than resorting to factually dubious hit pieces. Just ask Pat Toomey. He'll tell you all about it.

Shocked.

Stanley Kurtz to Hugh Hewitt:

HH: I must say this is a very impressive effort at scholarship. This is not a rip and run book. It’s not a dash off a polemic. You’ve been in the archives.

SK: Well, that’s right, Hugh, and I appreciate you’re saying that. You seem to get it, because that’s what I did, really, for two years. I traveled all around the country doing what scholars do when they want to write a biography of a president or any other important individual. They go into the archives of the organizations that these people worked with, are connected to, find out what the ideology, what the feel of things was among those intellectual environs. And that’s what I’ve done with Barack Obama. And to my shock, as I began this process of searching through the archives, I was forced to a conclusion that even I had not been inclined to make, and that is Barack Obama really is a socialist. And so there you go.

Stanley Kurtz, two years ago:

Whether formally socialist or not, Obama ties with ACORN and its New Party political arm show that spreading your wealth around has long been his ultimate goal.

Let the Two Minutes of Hate against Karl Rove commence.

Turd Blossom, actually telling the truth.

Expressing the strongest public reservations about the conservative star made by any senior Republican figure, Mr Rove said it was unlikely that voters would regard someone starring in a reality show as presidential material.

In two weeks, the former governor of Alaska launches a cable television series exploring her home state’s wilderness.

“With all due candour, appearing on your own reality show on the Discovery Channel, I am not certain how that fits in the American calculus of 'that helps me see you in the Oval Office’,” Mr Rove told The Daily Telegraph in an interview.

I mean, it's not that hard. Rove can read a poll.

I am starting to see a pattern here.

Apparently it's illegal to...be in a coffee shop?...if Eric Cantor is coming to visit and doesn't like the look of you. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with these people? For a bunch of "freedom" lovers they sure aren't shy about having sweaty, fat-assed cops cuffing people for no apparent reason.



So, to review, threatening violent revolution and/or showing up at public rallies with an automatic rifle makes you a patriot. Being a Democrat near Eric Cantor makes you a criminal.

How Glenn Reynolds describes the Rand Paul assault.

"It doesn’t seem to live up to the “curb-stomping” claims of early blog reports."

Curb, check.
Stomp, check.

Kathleen Parker Forgets Prior Contrition.

Kathleen Parker, July 2006:

My sleep has been troubled the past few weeks by a choice of words that prompted some polite protest from some African-American readers. It was "lynch mob," which I used to refer to the public indictment and conviction of three Duke lacrosse team members who have been charged with raping a black stripper (who, I hasten to add, is a student and mother).

I was using the term to suggest that the media and a willing public were trying the young men without benefit of due process. Even knowing how provocative the word can be, I justified using it because its original meaning was closer to my intent than to the more modern understanding of "lynching" associated with slavery and Jim Crow. ...

In retrospect, I agree with my readers that I was wrong to use the word as I did. It was convenient and it seemed to fit. But it trivialized a horror that deserves its own word and its own place in the American lexicon.

Kathleen Parker, today:

The proud [Clarence] Thomas said during those hearings that he was the victim of a high-tech lynching. Let's hope he has enough spiritual reserve to survive this second lynching[...]

Heh: "Right-wing voter fraud obsession leads to tens of criminal charges."

Funny headline, funny lede.

Worrying about "voter fraud" is a convenient way for Republicans and conservatives to practice voter intimidation and old-fashioned suppression of minority voters without drawing as much negative attention as, say, an outright poll tax would.

Read the whole thing, as Putzy likes to write.

Thar, she blows.

K-Lo pitches the last available cabin on the NRO cruise.


She neglects to mention that the cabin is actually hers, and signing up for it entails some "responsibilities" that become apparent far too late to save the unlucky inhabitant.

Head-stomping Teabagger demands apology from woman he assaulted.

You really can't make this shit up.

Nice political movement you've got there, Putz, who writes:

RAND PAUL STOMPER FACES CHARGES. Well, good, though it doesn’t seem to live up to the “curb-stomping” claims of early blog reports.

Yes, you see even though criminal charges were filed against a Rand Paul supporter for assaulting a woman, the whole thing was totally overblown by lefty bloggers!

Glenn Reynolds a skeptic of Rand Paul head-stomping incident.

We really need to look very closely at the facts of this supposed felonious "head-stomping" incident involving a Rand Paul staffer, you know.

It's very fishy, indeed.

UPDATE

Suspicious!

A Rand Paul supporter is apologizing after he was seen on video stepping on a liberal activist's head.

UPDATE 2

Clearly, this was photoshopped by some libtard at the AP.

That'll show 'em

Nothing says "We're anti-gay rights" quite like a long, purple bus.

What is it with Tea Party candidates and thuggery?

First Joe Miller's goons in Alaska, "arresting" a reporter -- now this.

How big do you think the wingnut Memeorandum circlejerk would be over this if the stomper was a black Obama supporter and the victim was a Teabagger?

Not Even Trying.

For quite a while, Putz has pushed the notion that (in the words of Roy) the Tea Parties are racially integrated. They're not, of course, which is why a Freedworks website is dedicated to propagating the lie and Putz is so eager to post pictures of black tea party attendees.

It's sort of refreshing that even Putz has given up the charade. If the tea party doesn't have the wherewithal to find a single minority in Cincinnati, a city 42% black, how will they ever dismantle the Department of Education?

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

Gay Patriot curiously qualifies his praise of conservative openness toward Teh Gay:

We have, by and large, found welcome on the right. And over time, the intolerance on the left makes us stronger. And helps us judge the character of our interlocutors. For while we often deal with liberal bigotry, we also frequently find open-minded “progressives” who in their interactions with us demonstrate an ability to rise above the prejudices of their peers.

"By and large." Mostly welcoming, in other words. He has found welcome except for the Teabaggers, the entire Religious Right, the old geezers, the military types, and the economic conservatives with 1950s attitudes toward homosexuality.

So, the right is very accepting and welcoming except for the 4/5ths of it that isn't. At all.

Well, the adbot is working

Google's magical ad placement techniques have really hit the average Dan Riehl reader on the head. Figuratively, and unfortunately not literally.

No, Of Course It's Not About Race.

Jack Neeley has written an honest, nuanced piece about the reasons Southerners don't like Obama. Of course, as Putz renders it, the problem with Obama is that he lacked administrative experience prior to getting elected. Also, he brought the hatred upon himself!

Southerners and the Gentry Class don’t get along well, since one of the key aspects of Gentry Class membership is looking down on Americans from Flyover Country in general, and the South in particular (especially if you come from the South yourself!).

Yeah, that's not really the guts of the essay, Putz. For instance:

I don’t doubt that white Southerners are prejudiced against Obama. Some are prejudiced against him because he’s black; a few older folks have told me they are. But most, I suspect, may be prejudiced for other reasons. Conservative white Southerners might have been okay with a black president if his name were Colin Powell.

White Southerners have something in common besides a heritage of racial presumptions—besides the fact that we were unwilling, 47 years ago, to sit in the same movie theater as anyone who looked like Barack Obama. White Southerners resist most sorts of change, racial and not. It may be hard to remember that Southerners were once very slow to accept other Northern imports like football and automobiles.

And:

Obama isn’t just the first black president. He’s different in lots of other ways, whether they seem overtly relevant to his job performance or not. He’s the first president in U.S. history with an obviously non-European name. He’s the first son of an immigrant to be elected president since 1832; Andrew Jackson was the last one. He’s the only president in U.S. history with a parent who didn’t settle in America. He’s the first president in U.S. history whose grandparents belonged to a non-Christian faith. He’s the first president in U.S. history who wasn’t born in the continental United States, those represented in the 48 stars on flags during World War II. Thousands of white Southerners are old enough to remember when Hawaii wasn’t even a state. Maybe we’re still getting used to the idea.

I'm gonna go out in a limb and say this is not what Putz wants his readers to take away from Neeley's essay.

Hilarious.

A wsj interview with Newt Gingrich:

Q: Aren’t these challenges natural for anyone who goes from movement leader to elected leader?

A: No. … Obama, I think, is a sincere Alinsky fairly left ideologue. And I don’t mean that in a negative way.

BREAKING: IRAQ HAD WMDS!!!!!!

Well, only for wingnuts like Putz.

In Glenn Reynold's squalid little world, however, what the documents show is that the war was even more glorious than one he'd always masturbated to, and will be good news for Republicans!

Tea Partiers are very patriotic and libertarian.

For 8 years, if you didn't goosestep behind Bush, you were a traitor. Now, treason is the highest form of patriotism.

Another wingnut who doesn't know what the First Amendment is.

Jacobson, via Putzy:

"There is a real threat to freedom in this country, and it does not come from conservatives."

Why is Dr. Helen linking to Vox Day?

I haven't checked in on Dr. Mrs. Putz in a while, but two of her last three links go to a guy who once wrote that Americans need to "reclaim their traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture" and penned this little gem:

If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

Gotta hand it to Dr. Mrs. Putz. She has the balls to link to 110-proof wingnut stuff Putz swigs behind the barn, but won't touch with a 10-foot pole in public.

Bush to himself: Heckuva job, George!

Geebus, the astonishing lack of self-awareness of this dipshit is really something to behold.

Glenn Reynolds, comedian.

I may never stop laughing.

Well, Fox viewers are the open-minded, tolerant type.

Sure, they are.

Fox News viewers supported George Bush over John Kerry by 88 percent to 7 percent. No demographic segment, other than Republicans, was as united in supporting Bush.

In today's GOP, the Birchers are mainstream.

Hehindeedy!

“Some people say I’m extreme, but they said the John Birch Society was extreme, too.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates' Awesome Blind Item.

Yes, Ta-Nehisi Coates' new piece is brilliant. It's gotten a lot of play from liberals, all deserved. None, however, have addressed the elephant in the room: Who was the "5'11 (maybe?) white dude" Coates nearly clocked during the 2008 Democratic National Convention?

...I was supposed to meet Carr after the speeches and grab dinner. But while I was in the National Journal area a person who I'd written about (not an employee of Atlantic Media) came into the tent and aggressively challenged me on something I'd written about him. 

We spent ten frankly embarrassing minutes jawing back and forth. That's fine. People should aggressively challenge you. Toward the end, Carr, wondering where I was, came in and saw me in mid-argument, which by this point had gotten heated. He gave me that "you damn fool" look and said "I'm going to be there, [whatever the restaurant was] either you're coming or not. But this is stupid." He left, and shortly thereafter I started walking away with Alyssa and few of the other bloggers who were hanging out. The gentleman kept after me, even following me out the tent, and by this point, taunting. 

At the door of the tent, and I looked at him and said, "You really need to back off." 

He looked back and said, "Or what." 

I closed in on him, and quietly but seriously, responded, "You really want to find out?"

Here are my top picks, all whom were tweaked by Coates either during, or just prior to, the convention:

• Richard Cohen. During the convention, Coates observed that he "make[s] some shit up." TNC correctly identified the Postman as "vapid" and "too weak to just out and say you hate somebody's guts." He also -- again, correctly -- noted that Cohen's item in question will filled with "barely functional English."

• James Carville. Carville's a little on the tall side -- 6'2", apparently. Still, perhaps he was ticked that Coates wrote that he and Begala's analysis wasn't to be trusted because they "really just look like they're pushing their next book"? (True!)
   
• Howard Wolfson. Coates called him a "world-class primary-denier." I'm not sure what that means, but I'm pretty sure it isn't nice.

• Lanny Davis. "Any Hillary supporter who thinks that Lanny Davis,  Bob Johnson and Bill Clinton were effective surrogates is smoking," he wrote. (Also true!)

Shit, what was this column supposed to be about?

So picture Mona Charen pounding out her 800 words of dreck twenty minutes before her deadline. Having already concocted a snappy title ("Democrats are the French Party" Ha ha ha! Fuck France! Everyone hates them!) and spent 750 words bitching about France, you suddenly realize that your title promised an article that was at least loosely about how the French are like Democrats and vice-versa. So you quickly append this as the final paragraph of your column to rectify the fact that you got so carried away in the giddy joy of mocking France:

What Democrats have most to fear is that American voters will perceive that, indignant denials notwithstanding, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Patty Murray, Joe Sestak, Barbara Boxer, Jerry Brown and the Democratic Party, in general, are indistinguishable from the socialist parties of Europe.

Phew! Crisis averted!

I'm not kidding, folks. That is the column. That is her point.

This Has...

Blog mogulette Roger L. Simon, subsequent to accusing the NAACP of "creating" racism, says:

The organization was of great importance in its day, but there is a strong argument to be made it should no longer exist

Do I have a right to say such a thing? Well, I was a civil rights worker in the South in the sixties, lost the full use of my finger there, went on to be a significant financial supporter of the Black Panther breakfast program in the seventies…. Is that enough?

No, asshole, it is not. I suspect Simon's pal Goodman (and Chaney and Schwerner, too) would be appalled at the way this aging wanker proudly cites his 30-second involvement in the Civil Rights Movement every fucking chance he gets, time and again -- and to advocate abolishing the NAACP, no less!

Is "Veronique de Rugy" a real person?

Or perhaps just a pseudonym concocted by a group of bored NRO writers to serve as a repository for their worst work?

Today "Veronique" asks: What’s So Different about the U.S. That We Can’t Cut Spending?

Hmm.



I'm glad we had this talk.

It would be insane for the United States to not change its course now and to continue spending. Let’s give spending cuts a chance.

I agree, and I have some shocking ideas on where we might be able to start.

How Glenn Reynolds handles criticism.

So, Conor Friedersdorf writes a 10,000 word rebuttal of Putz's post, filled with substantive questions -- and what does Putz do?

Let Dan Riehl to do his dirty work for him.

Guess Dr. Mrs. Putz was busy mowing the lawn.

Martin Peretz, Liar.

Martin Peretz, September 4:

But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

Martin Peretz, today:

I wrote about “Ovadia,” the beloved head of the Council of Torah Sages and the leading Sephardi “adjudicator” (which is what the Jerusalem Post called him yesterday), about a month ago and in four different posts: here, here, here, and here. This was right around the time when I offended so many people with my comments on the heartlessness of jihadist Islam.

This is false. Contra Peretz, his September remarks contain no mention of jihadis. They were, in fact, explicitly about American Muslims.

In the months since Peretz's latest disgrace, TNR staffers have not displayed much anguish about working for a bigot. Surely, one presumes, they won't be bothered that he is also a liar.

Poor Conor.

Surely, this is all a put-on, and he knows what Putz is, right? Because unless some Republican is being insufficiently conservative, Putz doesn't do criticism of anyone but Democrats.

Professor Reynolds can’t think of anything besides presidential ineptness that would explain an uptick in terrorism fears or anti-Muslim sentiment among Americans. Let me suggest some alternative explanations. On certain right-of-center blogs, there’s been a concerted campaign to convince Americans that Islamic radicals are trying to build a victory mosque at Ground Zero to signal their triumph on 9/11. Simultaneously, politicians like Newt Gingrich are advancing the narrative that the implementation of sharia law in the United States is a serious danger. Other conservatives like bestselling author Andy McCarthy are arguing that President Obama himself is allied with Islamist radicals in a Grand Jihad against the United States. More recently, Dinesh D’Souza argued at book length that every one of President Obama’s actions is motivated not by a desire to protect and defend the constitution of the United States, but by a quixotic quest to implement the Kenyan anti-colonial ideology that his father embraced. Perhaps these arguments and others like it are causing Americans to be more afraid of radical Islam, and less trusting of the president’s policies to combat it. Surely we should at least concede the possibility that this is a factor.

But...but...Gingrich's and D'Souza's unhinged racist rants against Obama and Muslims are clearly the product of Obama not keeping us safe.

See how easy this is, Conor?

I am starting to understand why Mitch McConnell is forever trying to keep these rookie Republican Senate candidates away from the media.



So, yeah, Rand Paul is fucking bonkers. As C&L points out, he sounds exactly like a 14 year old who has been caught in a lie. The combination of fake indignation and rage combined with the absence of a denial is...adolescent.

Up is down, black is white.

If you live long enough...

A statewide newspaper trade association is recognizing two Pennsylvania newspaper publishers for their contributions to the industry and their communities.

Tribune-Review publisher and philanthropist Dick Scaife and Philadelphia Tribune CEO Robert Bogle will receive the Benjamin Franklin Award for Excellence from the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, or PNA. ...

Scaife is being recognized for his continued commitment to the principles and purpose of newspapers -- serving their readers and their communities -- as well as his significant contributions to his community, the PNA said.

I can't speak to the latter -- one presumes Richard Mellon Scaife has over the years dumped millions into the local economy -- but "commitment to the principles and purpose of newspapers"? Really? This is true only if "principles" means leveraging one's position as publisher to partially fund Watergate and (via his Tribune) accuse the President of murder.

To hold Scaife up as some kind of paradigm of a newspaper owner is a joke. Scaife's a billionaire who can afford to sink more than $300 million into a "gurgling sinkhole" -- run, says the Washington Post, "with so little concern for profit and loss that it's more a hobby than a business." Maybe on some perverse level this is admirable. Still, I can't help but think that rewarding this guy is a flagrant fuck you to the poor hacks who still work in the very profession Scaife has done so much to devalue.

Republicans believe in free speech.

Just ask Joe Miller! He'll tell you all about it.

*UPDATE*

Joe still has one big fan...and in this instance "big" applies in both the literal and figurative senses. Take it away, K-Lo! (Note the clever headline "Miller Time in Alaska")

It is life and death for some entrenched powers in Alaska and the incident involving Joe Miller’s security and a website editor is probably making their day. Reading some of the accounts of it, I truly don’t envy Miller.

Joe Miller is in many ways the epitome of the tea-party this year. He’s taken on the establishment in Lisa Murkowski. The establishment has said “how dare you!” not just to Miller, but Republican primary voters. Joe Miller desperately wants to talk about policy issues and what he would do in the Senate because he believes America’s future depends on decisions being made in Washington. He sees a lot of injustice around him, in politics, in coverage, in resources, and he’s trying to get a handle on it all, having to do so under many hostile watchful eyes.

I think the former Army officer would make an excellent senator and talk a bit about his recent drop-by NR-DC in my syndicated columnist this week. I hope enough Alaskans get to hear from him and his appreciation of the stakes in this election before they vote.

"Self-Help."

Putz:

It occurs to me that right after 9/11 we saw the beginning of anti-mosque demonstrations but those quickly dissipated. Why? Probably because right after this march, we had Bush’s WTC bullhorn speech and people started to feel confident that Bush would protect the country. With less confidence in Obama, are they resorting to self-help?

You've got to appreciate the chutzpah: the beating of a Muslim boy, stabbing of a cabbie, attempted arson at the construction site of an Islamic center -- these incidents, says Putz, are Obama's fault, presumably because he hasn't found some smoldering rubble/bodies to serve as a platform from which to lie to the American public. According to Glenn Reynolds, the beatings, stabbings, arson -- it's all good! Hey, cryptolibertarian teabaggers real Americans need to blow off steam and get in touch with their inner Doctor Phil, right? [via Cole and Greenwald]

Caption contest.

Fire away.

Heh.

Condi Rice: We'll have to wait another 100 years to know if we really fucked everything up.

This is really getting old.

Rice said it is still too early to fully judge the success or failure of that war or other foreign policy issues in the administration of George W. Bush.

Seriously, it will be 3003 and some Bushbot will give a speech at the Bush Library at SMU and say, "Verdict's still out. History will be the judge."

They Shall Know We Are Christians...

Professor Mike Adams (adamsm@uncw.edu) thinks gays can learn a thing or two from a handful of Christians who've been martyred criticized for being bigoted dicks and yet, somehow, lived to tell the tale:

These eight cases are all true except for one thing: The Christians who were bullied by gays and gay activists are all still alive. Not a single one has committed suicide. That is because they have centered their lives around Jesus Christ, rather than their sexual identity.

Christ, what a douchebag.

Glenn Reynolds: damn those oppressive gays!

This rather odd post from Putzy (see the update at the bottom) comes just a short while after his equally weird New York Post piece.

To summarize: gays are authoritarian thought police, and colleges that don't approve of the military's homophobia are the real bigots.

Overcompensating?

Hehindeedy!

Putz, yesterday:

CHANGE: Michelle Obama electioneering in polling place? “You kind of have to drop the standard for the first lady, right?”

Election laws, like taxes, are for the little people.

Back on planet Earth, even Fox says Obama did nothing wrong.

Buck up, assholes! The whitey tape should drop any day now.

What's the libertarian answer to wealth inequality?

Haha, just kidding. Of course, there is none.

Blood on their Hands.

NPR:

After years of steady progress, the percentage of 2-year-olds in private health plans getting immunized dropped last year. ...

Insurers attribute the decline to parents' fears that vaccinations could be linked to autism. Though public health experts and government studies have found no evidence that vaccinations cause autism, the subject has been subject of fierce debate on the Internet and outspoken celebrities have fueled the controversy.

According to a report by the National Committee on Quality Assurance, vaccination rates dropped for measles, mumps and rubella (90.6% in 2009 from 93.5% in 2008), diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough (85.4% in 2009 from 87.2% in 2008) and chickenpox (90.6% in 2009 from 92% in 2008).

The repercussions of non-vaccination are nasty; a few years ago, 839 people, including three babies, got the measles -- all thanks to one intentionally unvaccinated kid.

Naturally, there's a lot of blame to go around. For brevity's sake, let's limited ourselves to the most respectable, high-profile fear-mongering assholes:

"As everybody on the planet knows, thimerosal is a neurotoxin. Injecting it at the levels they do and used to do, and still do, by the way, into the bloodstreams of infants must do something." --Don Imus

"I can’t prove it, but intuitively, you look at the spike [in autism], you look at thimerosal, there is no doubt in my mind… we’re gonna find out that thimerosal causes, in my opinion, autism." --Joe Scarborough

"It’s time for the CDC to come clean with the American public. Its tactics of deception and obfuscation are jeopardizing the credibility of the entire vaccine program and posing an enormous danger to public health." --Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

"Parents still have to be very careful in the application of vaccines to their kids. That’s what I’ve asked my kids to do with my grandkids." --Joe Lieberman

"Many parents have written us over the last couple of days saying that they have put their child in the process of chelation, which removes the mercury poisoning from the system, and they say they've seen vast improvement. Wouldn't that suggest that there may be some relationship between the mercury from thimerosal and the removal from the child?" --Tim Russert

You stay classy, conservatives.

Can you imagine the non-stop Faux News/GOP/wingnut blogger freakout if someone had put up a billboard of Bush as a terrorist?

Mankiw the Magnificent

It's good to know that a Harvard professorship and overwhelming intellectual dishonesty are not mutually exclusive. And I have Greg Mankiw to prove it. Watch how he uses all of the wizardry and sleight-of-hand tricks available to wealthy tax whiners to twist, manipulate, and distort the impact of the expiring top bracket tax cuts.

Looks like Glenn Reynolds might have an Ivy League future after all if this is where the bar is set.

Another Bet.

Jonah Goldberg today:

Jonathan Chait insists that the GOP will impeach Obama if they take back the House. I think he’s nuts. I’ll bet him $500 to the charity of the winner’s choice it doesn’t happen.

Credit where it's due: this wager is slightly more tasteful than the last one, in February 2005:

Since [Juan Cole] doesn't want to debate anything except his own brilliance, let's make a bet. I predict that Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I'll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now).

Needless to say, Goldberg was wrong about everything and the parenthetical was probably a lie.

Duly noted, K-Lo. Duly noted.

Huh.

There’s an odd piece over on Politico today. It’s the collaborative effort of three of its leading writers, about Newt Gingrich. It mentions from the get-go his recent comment about Barack Obama’s “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview. The comment was made to our Bob Costa. And Newt was explicitly flagging — and endorsing — Dinesh D’Souza’s thesis about what makes Obama tick, the point of D’Souza’s recent Forbes article and new book. But the Politico piece never mentions the D’Souza book, making Newt sound randomly kooky at best.

This just in from Politico: "CORRECTION: Yesterday we incorrectly implied that Newt Gingrich is fucking bonkers. He was actually quoting and endorsing the views of Dinesh D'Souza, who is fucking bonkers. POLITICO regrets the error."

It's obvious day!

Rich Iott points out that historical re-enactments are a way to teach history. Yep, and people who dress up in SS uniforms are fucking creepy.

I'm glad we had this talk.

The Sound You Hear is Kay Graham Weeping.

The latest offering from On Faith, the unholy lovechild of The Washington Post's perennial embarrassment Sally Quinn and Newsweek's Jon Meacham, suggests that the plucky vanity site seeks to occupy a space in the discourse just to the right of The American Spectator.

Yesterday (which, not for nothing, was National Coming Out Day) Quinn and Meachan saw fit to publish the work of Tony Perkins. The views of Perkins, who has some pretty ugly ties to David Duke, are well known: he's warned that same-sex parenting is a danger; criticized Judge Vaughn Walker for being "openly homosexual"; and claimed that gay men disproportionately abuse children.

It's not unreasonable to assume that Quinn and Meacham -- or whoever actually oversees the page -- contracted Perkins specifically to deliver this unusually rank bigotry.

Amid a spate of suicides and bullying  -- and a mere week and a half after one of the uglier anti-gay hate crimes in New York history -- Perkins points the finger:

...homosexual activist groups like GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) are exploiting these tragedies to push their agenda of demanding not only tolerance of homosexual individuals, but active affirmation of homosexual conduct and their efforts to redefine the family.

Also, says Perkins, gay activists and the media are the guilty parties:

Some homosexuals may recognize intuitively that their same-sex attractions are abnormal--yet they have been told by the homosexual movement, and their allies in the media and the educational establishment, that they are "born gay" and can never change. This--and not society's disapproval--may create a sense of despair that can lead to suicide.

Thank you, Washington Post Company, for bankrolling Tony Perkins' plea against tolerance.Oh, and here's how GLSEN "exploited" the beatings:

Many in the LGBT and ally community are asking what we can do in the wake of multiple tragedies across the country. What can you do to make a positive difference?
Ask for help:

If you or someone you know is in crisis and has mentioned or is considering suicide take it seriously and get help. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or the Trevor Lifeline at 1-866-488-7386. View the resource list below for how to recognize if someone is in crisis.

Shameless, I know.

The Right Swiftly Denounces Homophobic Remarks.

Totally kidding.

But why would they? Paladino,  who said that gays are dysfunctional, simply echoed the party line.

Well, that settles that.

Salena Zito enlightens us all with a made up election narrative that is conveniently similar to her preferred outcome and worldview her excellent understanding of partisanship and the American voter in a lovely piece called "Americans Will Vote Their Interests, Not Their Party."

Despite the contradictory evidence offered by the last 50 years of political science research, I think I'll go with Selena's explanation here. She seems more credible given the amount of research she did (i.e., talking to two people in Independence, MO).

Media Matters Just Doubled Its Staff.

Rich Lowry:

Just a short notice: Comments are finally coming to the Corner, tomorrow if all goes as planned.

I look forward to learning some very creative, asterisk-filled words for black people and homosexuals. NRO will kill this new, certain-to-be-hilarious feature no later than Friday.

Liberal media update.

The New York Times has new, fawning feature stories on Pam Gellar and Ann Coulter.

Discuss.

A little dodgy? How about creepy or bizarre?

Not even NRO is trying to defend the Ohio Republican who likes to dress up like a Waffen-SS trooper.

Now, I’m all for two evil totalitarian superpowers killing each other, but Americans romanticizing it by reenacting it? That’s a little dodgy.

Minority Outreach, Take 2.

Elaine Donnelly writes:

The Military Culture Coalition (MCC) recently sent to the Defense Department working group a lengthy list of issues of concern that the panel should address objectively in its Dec. 1 report . The MCC list demolishes the notion that implementation of a new LGBT law or policy for the military would be "easy" or desirable in terms of military necessity.

Elaine no doubt wonders why the DoD has ignored her well-meaning organization. My guess? The DoD doesn't want advice from a bunch of people who'd sooner ratfuck their grandmothers than allow gays the right to, well, anything.

Good to see NRO is still making shit up.

Oh, this is rich.

The reason conservative governors such as Rick Perry have turned down federal aid during this cycle is that such aid forces state and local governments to commit to a higher baseline, which usually means higher taxes — I predict that nobody who is calling for the government to be anti-cyclical during this recession is going to suddenly start cheering for layoffs when the boom times return.

Other than balancing the state's $12B shortfall last year with stimulus money, yeah, he's totally turned down aid.

Please. Perry has turned the Lone Star State into a big welfare queen.

How Modest.

Omg.

HH: So Pete [Wehner], if the theologians you cite in this book, Karl Barth and Bonhoeffer, and many others, had access to everything that you had access to, and [Michael] Gerson had access to, do you believe that they would credit the conduct of the [Iraq] war, as it was done by the President and his team, as just?

PW: That’s a great question. I’m not sure if all of the theologians that we cite, where they would come out, because I think this is a very hard question. And different theologians are going to come down on different sides of it. I do know that I felt like, Mike and I felt, and the President feels that the war met the criterion in terms of being a just war. And I think actually when history is written, it will be seen as a war that liberated people and advanced the moral good. But I’m not arrogant enough to think that there would be unanimity about great Christian minds on this[.]

Don't cry for me, Virginia

Virginia Thomas from America's Shittiest Website proving once again that upper-income people whining about their taxes make an extremely sympathetic group:

Consider the fact that a family of four making $6,400 per month — right in line with the $76,649 median income for married couples with minor children, as reported by 2009 census data — will see $179 less per month after taxes increase on January 1. In this tight economy, $179 per month is a lot of money. It’s the difference between taking a family vacation and staying at home. It could determine whether a child continues to take music lessons or gymnastics, or even has the chance to attend summer camp. Most importantly, it’s a huge percentage of a family’s monthly grocery budget. Some of us are looking at considerably more dinner menus that feature franks and beans.

Despite the brave effort to cherry-pick the statistics by choosing "married couples with minor children" as the basis for her median income statistic, who makes $76,649 per year and has no choice but to eat Weenie-Beanie?

And our social betters have been encouraging the rest of us to take Staycations in the rare instances that we have paid vacation time. Ginny missed the memo.

If Glenn Reynolds needs some new windows or siding, I've got just the guy to sell it to him.

So awesome.


(h/t Jon Walker)

Alex Jones annoyed Glenn Beck is stealing all his stuff.

(h/t LGF)

I Really Hate these People.

It really does surprise me sometimes how easily conservatives -- typified, in this case, by Kathryn Jean Lopez -- talk of defunding an organization that offers screening for breast, cervical and testicular cancers; pregnancy testing and pregnancy options counseling; and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases:

I actually believe we’re at this beautiful moment where people are in such a mood for common sense in governing that things like a universal Hyde Amendment and de-funding Planned Parenthood are absolutely coalition wins.

I am sometimes asked to justify my belief that conservatives are, with few exceptions, bad people. Well, here you go.

Purdum Was Not Blindsided.

Todd Purdum plays babe in the woods:

The prevailing question about John McCain this year is: What happened? What happened to that other John McCain, the refreshingly unpredictable figure who stood apart from his colleagues and seemed to promise something better than politics as usual?

His conclusion:

It’s quite possible that nothing at all has changed about John McCain, a ruthless and self-centered survivor who endured five and a half years in captivity in North Vietnam, and who once told Torie Clarke that his favorite animal was the rat, because it is cunning and eats well. It’s possible to see McCain’s entire career as the story of a man who has lived in the moment, who has never stood for any overriding philosophy in any consistent way, and who has been willing to do all that it takes to get whatever it is he wants. He himself said, in the thick of his battle with Hayworth, “I’ve always done whatever’s necessary to win.” Maybe the rest of us just misunderstood.

Yeah, I don't think so. The press loves to pretend that McCain 2.0, the guy who's sprinted to the right to outflank JD Hayworth, is a big disappointment. That's ridiculous. He is, and always has been, an extremist conservative. If Purdum doesn't realize this, he's a fool.

However, Purdum surely cannot claim he "misunderstood" McCain's ambitions. Here he is, writing in Vanity Fair in 2007, predicting that McCain would jettison his "highest ideals" in pursuit of the presidency:

McCain’s own compromises in pursuit of the presidency may be necessary, even justified. And they may, in fact, pave his way to victory in the Republican primaries, and perhaps to the White House itself.

It strains credulity that three and half years later Purdum is surprised that McCain is doing whatever's "necessary" to keep his job.

How about a little accountability at CAP?

I never bought the "Obama's totally powerless to get the health care reform he wants because of Ben Nelson" argument, but now we know for a fact that it just wasn't the case at all.

Teabaggers caucus with Skeletor, devise plan to win hearts & minds

Hey, it turns out Joe the Unlicensed Plumber is still alive! We have a confirmed sighting! He's getting on board with other Teabaggers to take a principled stand against anti-puppy mill legislation in Missouri. No, read it carefully...it's not a stand against puppy mills. It's a stand against legislation intended to shut down puppy mills.

Well, according to the Alliance For Truth, the main force behind the anti-Prop B movement, there is something much more nefarious afoot (er, apaw) in the HSUS measure. The Alliance For Truth claims that the HSUS has a "radical agenda" and is "misleading the public with its intentions on Prop B. The society seeks only to raise the cost of breeding dogs, making it ever-more difficult for middle-class American families to be dog-owners."

Anita Andrews from Alliance For Truth told TPM that it's a "deceptive, lying bill" that is "trying to purposefully get rid of the breeders." The state of Missouri, she said, has been given a bad rap as "the puppy mill capitol" of the U.S. but "in truth we have the best ribbon breeders in the country." And, Andrews said, the state already has anti-cruelty laws on the books.

"They don't like animals," she said of the Humane Society of the United States.

I see the potential for a real movement-builder here. It can cut across ideological lines, because everybody loves corporate pet stores and puppy mills.

Tea Party 2010: Fuck Puppies. Yeah, That's Right. Fuck 'em.

Rod Dreher Iced?

So, it's been more than six weeks since major league asshole Rod Dreher quit blogging, claiming that his employer, The John Templeton Foundation, was working through "some technical and editorial issues" in order to ensure that the blog was "more in tune" -- i.e. lockstep -- with rest of the org.

Three weeks ago, a Templeton spox told me to "stay tuned." I have, and so far...white noise!

What I wanna know is: did Dreher get raked over the coals and how bad it hurt? Was he (ohpleaseohpleaseohplease) fired? E-mail me at instaputzen@gmail.com.

Sarah Palin to run for Quitter-in-Chief.

I can't wait until Romney and Huckabee and Pence are forced to start acknowledging that she's a total dingbat attacking her. What will her legions of Facebook followers do?

Yes, that happens in every primary, but I don't think we've seen a base like the Palintards, who regard The Quitter as a quasi-religious figure.

Popcorn!

Sucks for You, Lindsey.

The Advocate:

Hustler publisher Larry Flynt said that he knows the identity of a gay U.S. Senator, and that he plans to expose him in the next few months if the legislator does not come out on his own.

According to Talking Points Memo, Flynt spoke with CNN’s Don Lemon in the context of the publisher’s standing offer to give $1 million to anyone who can prove they were sexually involved with a high-ranking official. Lemon asked Flynt whether he could describe details about his latest tips.

“We know we’ve got a gay senator, you know, we’d just like to see him come out of the closet,” said Flynt. “I think we’ll be exposing him in the next few months if he doesn’t.”

Assuming the soon-to-be-outed Senator stays closeted, Flynt's disclosure will totally take some of the sting off the midterm losses.

Glenn Reynolds sees anti-military bigotry in daughter's college brochures.

Shorter Putz: elitist snobby schools that refuse to actively participate in the US military's discrimination against gays are the real bigots.

The difference between you and me is that I'm not fucking insane.

Ann Althouse doesn't know Glenn Beck called Obama a racist.

Try to keep up, Ann.

Cohen's rugged bike path is studded with incomprehensible prepositions.

... and calls Barack Obama a racist. It is the language of rage...

What language? You didn't even quote anything from Beck. Maybe you created a Pandora channel for Beck and you listen and ideate furiously while cycling, but I don't know what you're talking about.

For reals?

"This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture," Beck said. "I don't know what it is."
[...]

"I'm not saying he doesn't like white people," Beck said. "I'm saying he has a problem. He has a -- this guy is, I believe, a racist."

Send a waaaaaaaaaahmbulance

Shorter Rachel Marsden: $250,000 would buy a married couple very much in midtown Manhattan. As evidence, consider my own inability to earn enough or spend wisely enough to afford Manhattan. But more importantly, based on the most expensive single location in the U.S. we should conclude that $250,000 isn't rich.

PS: Fuck retards, always taking our tax dollars (seriously)

Define "Struggle."

Sullivan, like every other blogger on the planet, has a thought about Ken Silverstein leaving Harper's. The guy's decision has for some reason been treated in some precincts like Jordan leaving Chicago, which I do not understand. (He's a fine reporter, sure, but this ain't a tragedy; he's still got a job.) In any case, Sullivan's 'reax', had it been written by anyone else, would surely warrant one of his oh-so-clever awards:

If I didn't escape to the Cape for four months a year, it would be a struggle. 

Maybe asshole poseur sentence of the week?

Nullification redux

Teabaggers could not pass a freshman class on the Constitution. That's why they do things like propose amendments to let states nullify acts of Congress and give quotes like this to alleged journalists over at Tucker's Folly:

“The founding fathers who put together our Constitution … were very, very concerned about the power a large federal government, which … was the driving reason behind the first 10 amendments; a lot of what they feared has come to pass,” Virginia House Speaker Bill Howell told The Daily Caller. “I think it is vitally important that we restore some of that balance, which has been taken away.”

1. As long as we accept that "large" has a single universally understood meaning, this statement is correct. Since it doesn't, Bill Howell is retarded. A balanced system of dual federalism (with a Supremacy Clause that made clear which powers would prevail in a conflict) and checks among the three branches of the Federal government were the response to fears about a "large" government. The Bill of Rights was thought unnecessary by the majority of the Founders (see the Federalist Papers for ample evidence) and it was promised mostly to appease skeptics and ensure ratification. The driving reason behind the first 10 amendments was public relations. In any event, nothing in the Bill of Rights speaks to the "largeness" of the Federal government excepting the 9th and 10th Amendments reserving powers to states and individuals. These amendments were appended to a Constitution that clearly reserves powers that are limited in number but vast in scope to Congress.

2. In Teabaggerland, "restoring balance" means giving states a power they never had. A power, incidentally, that the Hallowed, Genius Founders explicitly contradicted with Art. VI Sec.1 Clause 2:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

Funny how the Founders' intent, not to mention their brilliance, is only relevant when it supports the version of reality in wingnut brains.

So, to summarize, "ObamaCare" is bad so we should change the Constitution to allow states to nullify it. Insert bullshit pseudo-rationalization based on inaccurate knowledge of the Constitution here. Good work, guys.

Government is not a solution to our problem, government is... oh, wait.

TP:

The conservative vision was on full display last week in Obion County, Tennessee. In this rural section of Tennessee, Gene Cranick’s home caught on fire. As the Cranicks fled their home, their neighbors alerted the county’s firefighters, who soon arrived at the scene. Yet when the firefighters arrived, they refused to put out the fire, saying that the family failed to pay the annual subscription fee to the fire department. Because the county’s fire services for rural residences is based on household subscription fees, the firefighters, fully equipped to help the Cranicks, stood by and watched as the home burned to the ground[.] ...

The fire reportedly continued for hours “because garden hoses just wouldn’t put it out. It wasn’t until that fire spread to a neighbor’s property, that anyone would respond” — only because the neighbor had paid the fee.

Awful. I look forward to hearing from Putz about how the poor bastards would've been spared this misery if they'd simply been producers and not parasites.

The party of personal responsibility.

Shorter eMeg: the fact that I employed an undocumented immigrant then lied about it is all Jerry Brown's fault.

David Cameron, not a fan of the Teabaggers.

Ouch.

Later, I would ask him what he thinks of American conservatism’s lurch to the libertarian extreme.

“How shall I put this? We seem to have drifted apart… there is an element of American conservatism that is headed in a very culture war direction, which is just different. There are differences with the American right.”

Glenn Beck weeps.

Suck on this, Glenn.

Enthusiasm gap, schmenthusiasm gap. Without the benefit of months and months of advertising and promotion on Fox News Channel (in fact, I'm only aware of Ed Schultz on MSNBC doing any kind of TV promotion), the One Nation Working Together rally in Washington DC has gathered more supporters than Glenn Beck's much ballyhooed rally, which I will lovingly refer to as "Whitestock".

Preliminary satellite estimates put the crowd size at 175,000 to 200,000 at about noon EST. By the calculations of Bachman/Beck, et al., that would mean at least 1,000,000, non?

Andrew Breitbart last person on planet to realize James O'Keefe is a total douche.

Haha!

Actually O'Keefe doesn't owe anyone an explanation, Andrew. The people who created this loser do.

Rand Paul apparently ignorant about Godwin's law -- and Hitler.

I realize that "ZOMG our national debt! This is what the last days of the Weimar Republic looked like" is a common glibertarian meme, but Rand Paul should probably crack open a high school history book.