Wait, I thought we were supposed to ignore signs at protests.

Guess not!

Showing no concern for the new civility push that followed the Arizona massacre, a group of leftist activists from groups including Code Pink, Common Cause and jewel of liberal think tanks, the Center for American Progress, turned into a loud mob complete with Nazi imagery outside a conservative gathering in Rancho Mirage, California.

This is the same game the Anchor Baby plays. "See, Ted Rall and some random guy on the Internets compared Bush to Hitler, too -- so both sides do it!"

Managing revolutions is tricky stuff, indeed.

The dumbest shit wingnuts are saying about the Egpytian uprising.

Well, they earned it

Stay classy, GS.

How might you compensate management for a year in which profits plunged, you spent $550 million of shareholder money to settle a fraud investigation and your stock ended up more or less exactly where it started?

You might be tempted to nix raises or withhold bonuses to send a responsible message about linking pay to performance. But if so, you wouldn't be Goldman Sachs (GS). It just had the year described above – and responded by tripling everyone's base salary while boosting bonuses by 40%.

America has the attention span of a fruit fly.

Yet another "Bush was right!" column from a former Bushie.

So, the protests in Egypt totally validate the bloody full-scale invasion and occupation of Iraq. Somehow.

Also,

President Jim DeMint?

Why not? He's exactly where the GOP is on almost everything, he just doesn't sugar coat it.

Ayn Rand, welfare queen.

Oh noes!

Critics of Social Security and Medicare frequently invoke the words and ideals of author and philosopher Ayn Rand, one of the fiercest critics of federal insurance programs. But a little-known fact is that Ayn Rand herself collected Social Security. She may also have received Medicare benefits.

An interview recently surfaced that was conducted in 1998 by the Ayn Rand Institute with a social worker who says she helped Rand and her husband, Frank O’Connor, sign up for Social Security and Medicare in 1974.

Federal records obtained through a Freedom of Information act request confirm the Social Security benefits.

Howard Roark weeps.

Radio silence.

Odd that The Quitter didn't weigh in on the SOTU. Not so much as a tweet.

"Our priorities will be the people's priorities."

So said Tanman when he became Speaker of the House.

I do not believe this is so.

Obama nominates RIAA shill for Solicitor General

When I think of great legal minds I think of the lawyer who represented the RIAA in its myriad lawsuits against file sharing networks.

Sweet!

The keeper of the Democratic brand.

Meh.

So tonight, I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. This would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and will bring discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president.

This freeze will require painful cuts. Already, we have frozen the salaries of hardworking federal employees for the next two years. I’ve proposed cuts to things I care deeply about, like community action programs. The Secretary of Defense has also agreed to cut tens of billions of dollars in spending that he and his generals believe our military can do without.

The Pentagon's budget this year was over $1T. But they'll have to cut tens of billions!

Plenty of good seats still available

NRO TV subscriptions must be flying off the digital shelves. Where else can you see a largemouth bass and a war criminal interviewed in just one episode?

Facts don't matter. What matters is my strongly-held yet uninformed convictions.

Dennis Prager uncovers a secular leftist plot!

Why have almost no Americans (excepting those who watch on C-SPAN) ever seen what is located above the president, the vice president and the speaker of the House? Why do network television cameras never pull back and give a wide-angle view of the president delivering his speech? That is certainly routine for TV: It is considered uninteresting to TV viewers to have a fixed view of a subject.

I discovered the answer when I attended President Obama’s speech on health care to a joint session of Congress.

I saw chiseled in the marble wall behind the speaker and vice president, in giant letters, the words, “In God We Trust."

My immediate reaction was to wonder: Why had I never seen that before? I have, after all, been watching State of the Union addresses for about 40 years.

Apparently, not very closely!

Seriously, though -- this is perfectly consistent with just about every wingnut bugaboo.

There must be welfare queens driving fancy cars because I believe it to be true. There must have been WMD in Iraq because I believe it to be true. Tax cuts must increase revenue because I believe it to be true. We would've won the war in Vietnam if Walter Cronkite hadn't demoralized the country because I believe it to be true. Global warming must be a big lie because I believe Al Gore is fat. And so on.

Facts matter very little with wingers. Beliefs are what really matter to them.

I has a bad president

Five year spending freeze? "Non-defense"?

Oh yeah. Fuck yeah. It's about to get all bipartisany up in this bitch.

More Bush administration criminals.

No one could've predicted, blah blah blah.

A long-running federal investigation has found that White House political aides to President George W. Bush engaged in widespread violations of a federal law which limits partisan political activity by government employees during the 2006 midterm elections.

A 118-page report issued Monday by the little-known Office of Special Counsel cites numerous violations of the Hatch Act by the Bush-era White House Office of Political Affairs. The report concludes that federal taxpayers footed the bill for improper activities that were intended to advance Republican political candidates.

It makes sense if you're a land narwhal

K-Lo writes an opus on the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, which was apparently about abortion.

It is a lesson for all of us. About abortion.

Ross Douthat's market-friendly approach to healthcare reform.

Hehindeedy!

My replacement for Obamacare: (1) Allow insurers to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions that kill people in two years or less; (2) force poor people to pay the first $50,000 of their medical bills; (3) make people who can’t afford insurance pay more for insurance. Nobel Prize for Economics, here I come!!

Run, Sarah! Run!

Texans don't like The Quitter.

2012 could be the year Democrats are finally competitive for President in Texas...but only if the Republicans nominate Sarah Palin.

There are vast differences in how the various different potential GOP contenders fare against Barack Obama in Texas. Mike Huckabee is very popular in the state and would defeat Obama by 16 points, a more lopsided victory than John McCain had there in 2008. Mitt Romney is also pretty well liked and has a 7 point advantage over the President in an early hypothetical contest, a closer margin than the state had last time around but still a pretty healthy lead. A plurality of voters have an unfavorable opinion of Newt Gingrich but he would lead Obama by a 5 point margin nonetheless. It's a whole different story with Palin though. A majority of Texas voters have an unfavorable opinion of her and she leads the President by just a single point in a hypothetical contest.

I blame the media.

It's quite a puzzle, Heather!

Heather Wilson bemoans the pool of Rhodes Scholar applicants in WaPo:

Unlike many graduate fellowships, the Rhodes seeks leaders who will “fight the world’s fight.” They must be more than mere bookworms. We are looking for students who wonder, students who are reading widely, students of passion who are driven to make a difference in the lives of those around them and in the broader world through enlightened and effective leadership. The undergraduate education they are receiving seems less and less suited to that purpose.

An outstanding biochemistry major wants to be a doctor and supports the president’s health-care bill but doesn’t really know why. A student who started a chapter of Global Zero at his university hasn’t really thought about whether a world in which great powers have divested themselves of nuclear weapons would be more stable or less so, or whether nuclear deterrence can ever be moral. A young service academy cadet who is likely to be serving in a war zone within the year believes there are things worth dying for but doesn’t seem to have thought much about what is worth killing for. A student who wants to study comparative government doesn’t seem to know much about the important features and limitations of America’s Constitution.

Shorter Heather Wilson: Why aren't any of the smart kids wingnuts? Can't we get more kids with outstanding grades who think Bill Kristol is right about everything?

Glenn Reynolds to Ted Koppel: Wah! Leave Ronnie Alone!

Geez, what a WATB:

TED KOPPEL: 30 years after the Iran hostage crisis, we’re still fighting Reagan’s war. Um, wasn’t Jimmy Carter President when the Hostage Crisis began? And if he’d taken decisive action instead of dithering, we probably wouldn’t still be fighting this war, and doing badly enough that supporters of the current Democratic President are trying to blame Reagan. Instead, Carter temporized, much as Obama has been doing on numerous fronts.

Let's consider these points, one at a time.

1) What would "taking decisive action" have precisely entailed? Specifics, please. Wingnuts like Putz love to flog Carter for not nuking Tehran, but Carter did not want the hostages to die, and approved a military mission to free the hostages, which failed. How is the military's failure Carter's fault?

2) Obama has expanded the War on Terror into Pakistan, and doubled the number of troops in Afghanistan. By what measure is this "temporizing"?

3) On Reagan's watch, we lost 241 Marines in Lebanon and his response was to retreat, which Putz and his ilk would call "appeasement" or "fecklessness" if Reagan were a Democrat. Not to mention the fact that Reagan sold weapons to the country we're supposedly "at war" with.

The fact is, both parties have been a disaster in the Middle East, including Carter, who tried to fight off the right with his ill-conceived Carter Doctrine. Reagan wasn't any better, and probably should've been impeached for Iran Contra. And we know now that his bombing of Libya led to the Pan-Am Lockerbie attack, which killed hundreds of Americans. HW Bush launched a war with Iraq after winking at Saddam, and left Saddam in power. Clinton bombed a defanged Iraq mercilessly and then supported the Bush/Cheney invasion.

To be sure, the worst of all was Bush/Cheney, who were asleep at the wheel on 9/11 and managed to lose two wars in the region, one of which was totally unnecessary -- all resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. But Putz's post shows how you have to twist yourself in knots to blame one side.

Pretty flexible for a "non-partisan libertarian."

How easy it is to impress today's Republicans.

Barry Goldwater weeps.

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann received strong reviews from some top Iowa Republicans tonight but left them guessing about her intentions for the 2012 presidential race.

I live-tweeted her remarks. There’s also Register coverage at Iowa Politics Insider.

“I’m impressed,” declared Gov. Terry Branstad, after Bachmann’s speech to about 250 people at an Iowans for Tax Relief fundraiser. He said he doesn’t know whether she’ll run for president, “but she’ll certainly have an influence on the debate.”

Branstad hasn’t ruled out endorsing a candidate before the caucuses.

Steve Scheffler, a Republican National Committee member from Iowa and head of the conservative Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, also liked what he saw from Bachmann.

He said he has no idea whether she’ll run for president. “She’s definitely testing the waters and I think she could take a serious look at it,” Scheffler said. “She certainly would bring a lot of enthusiasm to the base.”

Apparently, that's all that matters to these people.

Let the Two Minutes of Hate Against Rudy Giuliani Begin.

It had been a few days before some Republican dissed The Quitter. Nice to see them back on track.

Running away from the Tea Party.

The fact that Willard is avoid the 'baggers like the plague isn't surprising, but "The First Senator from the Tea Party" Rubio?

Ouch.

The right's obsession with Google.

These posts are just really strange and smack of a jilted girlfriend obsessing about your Facebook status.

Also, apples to oranges, anyone?

Settling

It's not the headline I wanted to see ("Lieberman crushed by falling piano") but I suppose "Lieberman announces retirement" will do.

Enjoy the wingnut lecture circuit, asshole. Say hi to Zell for me.

You've got to admire their commitment.

They probably should be committed, true -- but the tenacity with which wingnuts pursue these right-wing unicorns is impressive.

Glenn Reynolds' beloved Sarah Palin.

Really, really unpopular.

Now, according to Putz, this is all the media's fault -- but, the Quitter's also coming out ahead in the end.

Somehow.

Most Americans familiar with Palin's video response to the Arizona shootings think it was inappropriate- that's where 40% of voters stand to 33% who were not familiar with her response and 27% who thought it was fine. Even among Republicans only 41% thought that what she did was proper- Democrats (60%) are much more unified in their feeling that it was not. Independents split toward thinking the video was inappropriate as well by a 42/28 margin.

Where does Palin stand now? In our monthly 2012 Presidential poll, which we'll release later this week, she trails Barack Obama by 17 points.

Media's fault.

Glenn Reynolds' beloved Tea Party.

Less popular than socialism!

Upgrading

ObamaCare no longer merely has death panels...it has baby death panels.*

*(The placement of the modifier "baby" makes this statement somewhat ambiguous, as it is not immediately clear if "baby death panels" refers to death panels consisting of babies or death panels whose work exclusively concerns babies. Upon further research it appears that the author is referring to the latter.)

The reason there's so many black libertarians.

Turns out, Medgar and Martin and Malcom and that awful judicial activism and big gubmint intrusion was totally unnecessary.

The free market would've taken care of it!

Carrying the Torch

Thank god we have Glenn Beck, who, according to Glenn Beck, is carrying on the legacy of MLK.

Fun with Urban Dictionary.

Doug Powers at the Anchor Baby's giddily finds a new entry, while failing to note the UD also contains this nugget:

a person who compensates for latent frustrations over prejudices against her own race or gender by contributing to the scapegoating of other minorities, of which she is not a part, so as to make herself feel more connected to and accepted by the majority.

When he was a child, he used to get the shit beaten out of him by the rich, white kids; then he grew up, made a lot of money and became a malkin. Now he spends all his time campaigning against gay rights.

Hehindeedy!

Speech doesn't incite violence, unless it's directed at Sarah Palin.

God, these people are dense.

"There has been an incredible increase in death threats against Gov. Palin since the tragedy in Arizona, since she's been accused of having the blood of those victims on her hands," Palin aide Rebecca Mansour told USA Today.

"When you start to accuse people of having the blood of innocent people on their hands, it incites violence," she added.

What happened to this?

President Reagan said, “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.” Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state, not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies, not with those who proudly voted in the last election.

Oh well.

Both sides do it!

Hew Hughitt's reaction to Bill Maher's rant about Teabaggers, which was pretty funny by the way, is classic.

Though Maher said mean things about the 'baggers, I don't see where he suggested they be shot, hanged, beaten to a pulp, etc. But both sides are uncivil!

This from a guy who wrote,

And did the Obama rally begin with the Soviet National Anthem?

McMegan: Why can't poor people be responsible like corporations?

Yeah, she did. Corporations are so responsible!

I would love to receive $3.3T in free money, wouldn't you?

Politifact checks the Anchor Baby.

And John Cole's take is hilarious, as usual.

They are going to need to hire about 1,000 new researchers if they are going to start fact-checking wingnut blogs and even make a dent. Half those researchers could work nonstop fact-checking just Malkin and Hot Air. Although, in fairness, it’s probably an easier task than doing the same to Fred Hiatt’s op-ed page at the Washington post.

Allah help Politifact if they ever stumble across Townhall.

Cole leaves out the fact that this act makes Politifact "partisan" and "liberal" and therefore, not to be trusted.

Then again, it does have "fact" in its name, which already made it suspect.

Glenn's new meme.

Putz has found something he likes lately.

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN [insert bad economic news]

We've come a long way from the heady days of 2008 and DUDE, WHERE'S MY RECESSION.

Now, it's unclear exactly who "they" is, but I seem to recall a law professor from Tennessee writing a long op-ed in the WSJ about Palin Monday, endless posts at The Corner and RedState and Hot Air and non-stop coverage at Faux News about her and...

Sarah Palin will appear on Sean Hannity's program on Fox News Monday...

And....

KIRSTEN POWERS: Obama Should Have Been Harder On the Anti-Palin Smears.

They're obsessed!

Glenn Reynolds: the media's to blame for Palin's massive unpopularity.

I guess if you're like Putz and you believe the media was at fault for the bloody quagmire in Iraq and lost the war in Vietnam, this makes perfect sense.

Palin, on the other hand, has been royally screwed-over by that same media, and has managed to come back and beat them out again and again, from “death panels” to “blood libel.” And that engenders considerable sympathy. A musician friend of mine who’s not especially political emailed me the other day: “I don’t particularly care for Palin, but every time they do this to her, I find myself hoping she becomes President, out of pure spite.”

I understand the sentiment, but being screwed over by the media, while it may breed sympathy, isn’t a qualification for being President. Richard Jewell was royally screwed over by the media, too, but he didn’t belong in the White House because of it. if Palin is to be elected President, it’s not going to be on a sympathy vote.

But here’s what’s going on in the dance between Palin and what she calls the “lamestream” media: Every time they attack her, they wind up doing something that hurts them worse than it hurts her.

A few obvious questions.

One, on which planet did The Quitter come out ahead with "death panels" and "blood libel"?
Two, if she is coming out ahead, why is she so unpopular?
Three, hasn't the media made Palin a multi-millionaire? That's some screwing!

And four, who the hell cares what some random musician who doesn't know shit about politics thinks?

Great Moments in Punditry.

Mickey Kaus, October 2, 2008 (after the VP debate):

Big loser, again, is Hillary. In two years Palin will be so much better she won't even be in the same league.

Let the Two Minutes of Hate Against Chris Christie Begin.

When even teabagger favorites like Christie are piling on, the chances of The Quitter running grow dimmer every day.

But...but...free speech!

The President can give a speech.

The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives – to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud. It should be because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country, and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American dream to future generations.

I believe we can be better.

What?! We're already #1! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Makes all those "Blood libel! Free speech!" shrieks seem very petty, indeed. Way to make Obama look great, Putz & Quitter.

Global warming is a liberal hoax update.

2010 was the warmest year on record.

But it snowed in New York in December!

Glenn Reynolds now feeding Sarah Palin her lines.

The Quitter cribs "blood libel" -- from Putz and other wingnuts -- which was really f'ing stupid, especially considering Gabby Giffords is Jewish.

Nicely done, Putzhole!

Meanwhile, she's now coming out against "collective guilt."

UPDATE

Pantload:

I should have said this a few days ago, when my friend Glenn Reynolds introduced the term to this debate. But I think that the use of this particular term in this context isn’t ideal.

I'm sure if Obama had used the term, Doughboy would be just as deferential.

Glenn Reynolds: Tim Pawlenty's refusal to endorse cross-hairs in political ads makes him unfit for the presidency.

Now that's some litmus test!

TIM PAWLENTY DEMONSTRATES THAT HE’S NOT MAN ENOUGH TO BE PRESIDENT.

I'm not sure someone who poses for pictures like this should be questioning anyone's manhood.

Teabagger pwned by Matthews.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

USA! USA! USA!

Let the two minutes of hate against Peter King (and Cliff May) begin

Cliff May understands NRO readers very poorly (check out the comments):

Sane and reasonable people agree that political battles should be fought with ideas, principles, and words — not guns, bullets, and bombs. But in a nation of more than 300 million, it must be expected that at least a small minority will be neither sane nor reasonable.

With that in mind, Peter King, the new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg this morning proposed federal legislation that would prevent people from knowingly bringing guns within 1,000 feet of an event at which members of Congress and federal judges are appearing...

This seems pretty commonsensical. It does not, in my view, compromise the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. Even in the old West, cowboys hung up their guns when they entered a saloon.

Such a law will not be a panacea. ... But if this can provide even a small measure of additional protection for public servants who are too often too vulnerable, it’s worth considering.

Peter King is against gun control, until he thinks someone might try to use a gun against him.

FLASHBACK: Vice President Quayle blames "Murphy Brown" for L.A. Riots.

But...but...the First Amendment!

And the media can cause us to lose the war! And Bush can prevent Mosque attacks with bullhorn speeches!

This is getting to the same point I did yesterday.

For as long as I can remember, I have heard conservatives blaming everything that is wrong in the universe, from violent crime to declining test scores to teen pregnancy to rude children to declining patriotism to probably athlete's foot . . . upon Dr. Spock, Hollywood liberals, the abolition of prayer in school, Bill Clinton, the "liberal 1960s," the teaching of evolution — in other words, upon symbols, rhetoric, cultural norms, and the values expressed by political and media leaders. Yet from the moment when someone gets a gun in their hands, apparently, society ceases to have any influence whatsoever on the outcome and individual responsibility takes hold 100%. Something is driving the tripling of death threats against congressmen (and the concomitant rise in threats against Federal judges and other villains of the right, from Forest Service rangers to climate scientists) and it isn't the sunspot cycle.

Can't have it both ways, but they will try.

It's 36 degrees this morning in Austin.

Algore is fat!

Serious People Agree: No one is at fault

David Gergen, furiously pounding away at his pud on CNN, produces a piece entitled "No time for finger pointing"

Ed's Universal Truth of the Day: people only say "Now is not the time for finger-pointing and assigning blame" when they are at fault.

DeLay MIserables.

Bye, Tom.

Glenn Reynolds: The Real Victims of the Arizona Mass Shooting are Conservatives

I can't believe the WSJ actually pays Putz to write this shit.

Rand Paul has absolutely no imagination.

Quoth the Buddha:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said on Fox News Sunday today that the mass shootings in Arizona yesterday are "unrelated" to Arizona's gun laws: "The weapons don't kill people, it's the individual that kills people."

Both sides do it!

No they don't.

The Palin forces, who have fomented this dynamic more viciously and recklessly than any other group, are reacting today with incandescent rage that they could even be mentioned in the same breath as this act of political terrorism. That's called denial. When you put a politician in literal cross-hairs, when you call her a target, when you celebrate how many targets you have hit, when you go on national television and shoot guns, when you use the language of "lock and load" to describe disagreements over healthcare provision ... you are part of the problem.

A photographic reminder that the right is different.

"People are trying to score political points."

That's Putz, complaining about comments on Althouse's post about the shooting. Then, in the same post, Putz links to Gateway Retard who calls the shooter "left wing" in the headline.

Fair & balanced!

Gee, wonder who he's talking about?

I'm guessing it's not Al Franken.

Mr. Dupnik said it is time for the country to "do a little soul searching."

He added: "The vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business ... This has not become the nice United States that most of us grew up in."

Given that the president is compared to Hitler and Stalin on a regular basis, it's surprising there hasn't been more of this.

Matt Lewis comes out in favor of using sniper imagery in a political ad.

What an ass.

Look, there's something between "Sarah Palin actually pulled the trigger" and "Sarah Palin acted perfectly reasonably when she used gun sights in a political ad" -- isn't there?

If the sniper sight ad was above board -- why'd Palin take it down today?

Shooter ID'd

The shooter is apparently one Jared Lee Loughner. His YouTube channel is here. He appears quite troubled.

We need to know more about this guy and what his background is, but I don't know many lefties who are goldbugs and have a fixation on guns and the US Constitution.


No matter, wingnuts are already saying SEE HE'S A LEFTIST!

UPDATE

The comments are hilarious at Gateway Retard's.

Apparently, the facts that this guy was obsessed with guns, the Constitution, liked Mein Kampf, and was a goldbug fixated on federalism who targeted a DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSWOMAN -- all irrelevant.

But...but...he read The Communist Manifesto and burned a flag.

Clearly leftist!

Idiots.

Well, that excludes half the people who voted for you, John

McCain states that the assailant(s) "deserve and will receive the contempt of all decent people, strongest punishment from the law."

So Putz and Beck and Riehl and the gang will be OK with it based on that criteria.

Democratic Congresswoman shot in Arizona.

Awful.

Giffords' office was vandalized after her HRC vote.

UPDATE

Giffords was targeted by The Quitter -- with a gun sight.

Also kind of a problem.

Anyone else think $172K/year is "relatively modest"? I don't, and neither does Walter Shapiro.

Obama's sympathetic comments about Gibbs' financial sacrifice illustrate that populism remains an abstraction for the president, despite the persistence of the worst economic downturn since the Depression. In the world of Obama (or Clinton or either Bush), it is par for the course that William Daley, the new White House chief of staff, served as Midwest chairman for JP Morgan Chase between his stints in government. Or that Rahm Emanuel made $16 million as an investment banker during the three years between his departure from the Clinton White House and his 2002 election to the House.

Digby nails it.

You know, for me it's even beyond the lack of empathy and common touch. It's the political malpractice that I can't get over. Are these people really so insulated in green rooms and limousines and fat cat fundraisers that they have no idea they sound like total assholes? Huge numbers of people in this country are living in economic terror right now, wondering if they are going to have a roof over their heads next month. They'd love to eat lunch at their desk --- in fact, they'd love to have a desk. And these idiots are trying to tell us that 172k a year is minimum wage?

Explains an awful lot.

Yeah, this is kind of a problem.

Reich:

“If you widen the lens, the public is being sold a big lie — that our problems owe to unions and the size of government and not to fraud and deregulation and vast concentration of wealth. Obama’s failure is that he won’t challenge this Republican narrative, and give people a story that helps them connect the dots and understand where we’re going.”

Of course, Reich's boss made the same mistake.

There's no fiscal problem at all in Texas!

Sure, Kevin. Mmm-hmmm.

That's why they're freaking shutting schools down in Williamson County.

Asshole.

Reason glibertarians shocked, shocked, that Bush/Cheney Republican isn't serious about cutting spending.

So funny.

Low-Tax Texas Beats Big-Government California

All the while right-wing hacks like Michael Barone were writing pieces like this, Rick Perry was covering our massive deficits with stimulus money and running around threatening to secede.

There's no stimulus this year, so the jig is up.

Oh well.

Because the bailouts, the feather-light finreg, and the tax cuts weren't enough.

Apparently, this headline is not a joke.

Mr. President, we MUST NOT ALLOW A MINE SHAFT GAP

The public relations representatives of our defense industry (better known as the media) engage in some motivated pant-shitting over the fact that OMG THE CHINAMEN ARE SORTA CLOSE TO DEVELOPING A FIGHTER JET THAT LOOKS KINDA LIKE ONE THAT HAS ADVANCED STEALTH TECHNOLOGY WE PERFECTED 15 YEARS AGO DURING F-22 DEVELOPMENT!!!!!

Wouldn't it be particularly unwise to cut defense spending in light of such an obvious threat? I mean, conspicuously placing the alleged stealth fighter out on a runway where it could be photographed clearly means that the Chinese are presenting a direct threat to our military superiority.

Does Boeing pay ad rates for stories like this?

BREAKING: Johns Hopkins Medical School found to know more about science than Jenny McCarthy.

Weird but true!

Hopefully, people will start vaccinating their kids.

What's amusing is that the conservatives who are pointing and laughing at the Jenny McCarthys of the world while shouting SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE!!! turn right around insist global warming is a liberal hoax.

Mitch McConnell proves Megan McArdle is an idiot.

Jane Galt loves to say that the health care bill sucks BECAUSE NOT A SINGLE REPUBLICAN VOTED FOR IT!!!111!!!, but Mitch helpfully explains why.

"We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off [legislation advanced by Democrats]," McConnell says. "Because we thought -- correctly, I think -- that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the 'bipartisan' tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there's a broad agreement that that's the way forward."

Translation: the GOP opposed the health care bill for tactical political reasons.

To most non-morons, this was obvious all along -- but it's nice to see them admit it, if for no other reason than to make JG look stupid.

Bruce Bartlett is shrill.

Pretty much.

One of the biggest problems you have faced over the past two years, Mr. President, has been the extremely poor quality of your opponents in the Republican Party. With precious few exceptions, conservatives have made no effort to engage your administration on an intellectual level. Their criticism has been limited almost entirely to lies, caricatures, and ridiculous charges. Even “respectable” publications such as Forbes magazine have indulged in the same sort of conspiratorial anti-Obama nonsense being peddled by unhinged talk radio hosts and right-wing bloggers.

Well that didn't take long.

Underneath Chuck Norris' beard is a fist, and in his column "Will the 112th Congress Finally Get it Right?" is a list of questions that someone as awesome as Chuck Norris should be able to answer without difficulty:

As the 112th Congress officially convenes this week, the questions most of us have on our minds are: Will it finally...

--Reduce government spending?

--Reduce the national deficit?

--Reduce the national debt?

--Reduce earmarks and pork?

--Reduce briberies by lobbyists and special interests?

--Reduce Americans' taxes?

--Reduce illegal immigration?

--Reduce our foreign entanglements?

--Reduce government overreach into our lives?

--Reduce government lying, cheating and corruption?

--Reduce constitutional disobedience?

...And so stabilize the nation and economy?

No, no, no, no, no, OH HELL YES, no, no, no, no, no, and no.

Thanks for playing.

Indeed.

Torture fapper Marc Thiessen is, for the first time in his life, correct:

This week, as conservative insurgents take their seats in Congress, I can't help but think that my old boss, the late Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), would be thrilled.

Let the Two Minutes of Hate Against Erick Erickson Begin.

These are trying times for The Quitter.

I am not excited by or inspired by any of them save Sarah Palin and, as much as I love Sarah Palin, I am adamantly convinced that she cannot win given the ridiculous smears and hate thrown her way by Democrats and, frankly, by a lot of Republicans. She has been made radioactive.

Yes, she did nothing wrong -- it was the Democrats' fault.

Another white conservative victim, made a millionaire by the media and Democratic hatred, but rendered unelectable.

Tragic, isn't it?

Ha ha ha! Putz funny!

Oh, Glenn!

JED BABBIN: ROTC Should Ban The Ivy League. “The right question is this: Is it in the military’s best interest to invest time and money to recruit and train young officers from among the denizens of the Ivy League? In short, it isn’t. . . . Banning ROTC at the Ivies is as damaging to the military as banning recruitment at Vassar would be to the NFL.”

Nothing like quoting someone named "Jed" for some incisive commentary on policies in the Ivy League, especially to make the really excellent point that the Army ain't need no smarty pants kids no how.

The Joe the Plumberization of economic policy.

I've lost all the respect that I had left (which wasn't much after I heard George W. Bush got his MBA there) for Harvard.

"Stop trying to spread the wealth" is apparently the answer to all our problems.

William Jacobson: We don't need no stinkin' judges -- screw Obama.

If you want to see partisan hackery at its finest, it's always worth paying the Putz of Cornell a visit. Here, he's disagreeing with the notoriously left-wing Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who just told the GOP to stop blocking Obama's judicial nominees.

I don't know what the answer to the problem of politicized appointments is, but I do know that with Obama in office, now is not the time to try to unring the bell.

Notice: no dispute of what Roberts said. No expressed concern at all for the health of our legal system.

Just to hell with Obama and the Democrats.

Spoken like a true patriot.

UPDATE

A reader, Mark, posts this -- the percentage of judicial nominees confirmed.

Carter: 91.9%
Reagan: 93.1%
Bush I: 79.3%
Clinton: 84%
Bush II: 86.8%
Obama: 42.8%

The Democrats do it too!