The Real Story

"The idea that the birth certificate is the real story and Osama bin Laden is the distraction from it tells you everything you need to know about the people who are really invested in the birth certificate story." — Rachel Maddow, on The Daily Show.

"But it is also a deservedly bad moment for some of the destructive forces in American public life, for those who have substituted for ordinary politics a sustained campaign to brand Obama as an outsider, as un-American, as non-American." — David Frum, CNN.

U.S. officials are saying that documents seized from Osama bin Laden's compound indicate that al-Qaeda wanted to carry out a 9-11 anniversary attack.

I couldn't bring myself to participate in any of the boisterous celebrations over bin Laden's death. It all seemed kind of crass. But I do know the world is way better off without this guy.

You'd think this news about an anniversary attack would convince Republican's to give Obama some credit -- or at least admit he's not some kind of socialist alien. But oh I forget, catching one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists is just a distraction.

Chop-chop Video

You may remember a previous blog post a few years back where I interviewed my friend Trung who was, at the time, enrolled in the master's program at University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC). Trung is also a blogger who shares my contempt for the tea party. Well, apparently the ignorant teabaggers have contempt -- actually, violent hatred -- towards Trung's alma mater.

Trung explains the ongoing situation in his blog. It involves Andrew Breitbart (need I say more?) and secretly (actually, not so secretly) video taped lectures of UMKC econ professors. Of course, Breitbart and his minions are up to old tricks. They gave the splice job to these videos in the same way they distorted and minced Shirley Sherrod's words last July.

Breitbart and his BigGovernment web site are using the obviously edited videos to accuse two labor-studies professors of indoctrinating innocent, malleable minds to the violent ways of union thugs. The complete unadulterated videos, however, reveal the exact opposite. One professor tells students to resist violence because it "gives credence" to the argument that "these people need to be controlled."

But facts be damned. In a twist that's not really a twist because it's totally predictable, the teabaggers are actually the violent thugs. Incited by the erroneous videos, they started with phoning in threats to the university but quickly escalated the situation by trespassing on the UMSL (University of Missouri-St. Louis) campus and threatening students with violence:

In order to distract people from the fact that they were busted lying, St. Louis tea party provocateur Adam Sharp, who's blogged on Breitbart's sites before, apparently trespassed on the UMSL campus on Saturday to harass students and instructor Don Giljum. Sharp attempted to film students in their classroom, pestered them as they walked out of class with questions like "do you condone violence," and was arrested and charged with trespassing. Don Giljum was also taken to the police station because there was an altercation, and as students waited outside of the police station, another tea partier approached them and began taunting them and daring them to "take a swing" at him. This is after a week where the tea party violated students' privacy by putting videos on YouTube showing comments made for the purpose of classroom discussion.

Breitbart, in an April 18 interview with Sean Hannity, said he planned to "go after" educators. And there you have it. We've seen ethnic intolerance, religious intolerance, and every other shade of bigotry from these nuts, but now... academic intolerance.

Freedom of inquiry by students and faculty is the foundation of education and our university system. It's all too fitting that the teabaggers go after this.

Appeasing the Gods of Deficit

So I was going to post the Daily Show clip where Jon Stewart accuses Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker of "appeasing the gods of deficit" by closing the budget gap (created by millions in tax cuts for businesses) by ritualistically killing the unions. It's a pretty good take on the situation so watch the clip anyway, but the end kind of rubs me the wrong way. Ever since the March to Restore Sanity, Jon's been pushing this whole "both sides meme," and either he's not getting it or I'm not getting it.

Yeah, Fox supported the Tea Party protesters and condemns the Wisconsin union protesters, and the flip side is true for MSNBC. But the union protesters are a lot less crazy, didn't bring guns, and actually have their livelihoods at stake. The tea partiers? I've written enough about them, but they want "their country back" and don't want certain people to have health care. I think I'm smart enough to point out which side is loony, and Jon should point it out too.

However, back to the whole budget deficit thing, this is important because way too many Republicans are trying to tell us that things like social safety nets and collective bargaining by unions, all the things Republicans never liked anyway, are just too darn expensive. But the Rachel Maddow show is challenging this whole myth that unions cause budget crises:

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Halfway to Sunset

I didn't expect to be blogging about the USA Patriot Act again this year. I assumed the extensions to the Bush-era anti-terrorist surveillance bill would pass without fuss, and the sun would fail to set yet again. But something happened.

The House didn't pass the USA Patriot Act extension. Apparently they considered it so uncontroversial that they moved it to the floor under a provision that requires a two-thirds majority to pass. One-hundred-twenty-two Democrats voted against it, and they were joined by 26 Republicans, including eight freshman "tea party" candidates. Of course, the headlines will read that it was some kind of "tea party rebellion" that thwarted the extension, ignoring the 122 nays from the Democrats, and ignoring that most of the tea party caucus voted to pass the extension.

Seeing this new Congress in action leads me to a few questions: are the TP candidates posing as libertarians or authoritarians? What happened to the "small government" rhetoric? They certainly have a strange understanding of freedom as Rachel Maddow pointed out last night. Just look at their policies:

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And yet Congress went through all that trouble to read the Constitution on the House floor just to cast votes against the Fourth Amendment a month later.

The bright side is that the issue of civil liberties can be common ground for the right and the left, but Glenn Greenwald has these sobering thoughts:

Last night's unexpected Patriot Act vote illustrates the tantalizing promise of such an alliance. Things would be vastly improved on the civil liberties front if the American Right was even minimally faithful to the political principles they claim to support. But the nature of that movement means that last night's vote is far more of an isolated aberration than anything likely to change the bipartisan dynamic in a positive way. Indeed, the very weak status of civil liberties in the U.S. is compellingly illustrated by the fact that an alliance with this deeply unprincipled and authoritarian movement is one of the few viable means for stemming the tide of the erosion.

Greenwald also believes that the Patriot Act extensions will indeed pass when they are voted on again in a few weeks under standard procedures that require a majority for approval.

But with more attention on the issue now and the votes of some unallied Freshman, maybe they will surprise us again? They do seem kind of fickle.

Making Their Own News

The alternate title for this blog post was "America's Dumbstupid moment."

After President Obama gave his State of the Union address the other night, CNN made the inexplicable decision to allow Michele Bachmann to deliver a rebuttal speech -- not for the Republican party which she is a member of, but for the "Tea Party" (better known as the teabaggers).

Next year I will insist on airtime for the "Dorkmonger Party." Who's with me?

Here is Rachel Maddow's thoughts on the equal billing of the teabaggers "official" response:

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I'm wondering if, as more and more Americans get a look at these "alternative" candidates in action, are they going to flee back to the mainstream candidates?

Advertising Violence

(Billboard in Tucson, Arizona. Image found on Deus Ex Malcontent.)

"...when you saturate the air with hate you cannot control who breathes it in," Dan from Pruning Shears explains in his post about the Arizona massacre. Take a few minutes to read his post, but I'll summarize his insightful points about advertising as best I can.

Advertising works. That's why Coke, Pepsi, Ford, Apple and everybody else advertises when they have a product to sell. In fact, they spend billions of dollars on advertising, often not even knowing which ad "sticks" and which is wasted. But it is a fact that increased spending on advertising will lead to increased sales of the product advertised.

And so when you look at the political climate in Arizona, the violent imagery used by Sarah Palin, the "Second Amendment remedies" suggested by Sharron Angle, the violent fantasies presented by Glenn Beck, and the Arizona Tea Party favorite who urged followers "Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly"... it becomes bloody obvious these people are advertising violence.

And it works -- even if you can't draw a straight line from any one advertisement to the reprehensible act -- it works.

So the "alleged" shooter, Jared Loughner is mentally ill? I have no doubt that he is. But that doesn't make the crime an "isolated incident." David Neweirt proposed there is a level of moral and ethical culpability when violent speech has the following features:

• It is factually false, or so grossly distorted and misleading as to constitute functional falsity.

• It holds certain targeted individuals or groups of people up for vilification and demonization.

• It smears them with false or misleading information that depicts them in a degraded light.

• It depicts them as either emblematic, or the actual source, of a significant problem or a major threat.

• It leads its audience to conclude that the solution to the problem manifested by these people is their elimination.

Crazy talk incites crazy people.

I get the feeling that some people honestly believe that if we never find a direct connection between Loughner and any pundit's violent rhetoric, then somehow violent speech is vindicated, acceptable and righteous. It is not.

Why?

"The crossfire is intense, so penetrate through enemy territory by bombing through the press, and use your strong weapons — your Big Guns — to drive to the hole. Shoot with accuracy; aim high and remember it takes blood, sweat and tears to win." — Sarah Palin, March 2010.

"My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today's tragic shooting in Arizona." — Sarah Palin, January 8, 2011.

Bullshit, Sarah. You put U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in your cross-hairs last year (don't try to hide it), and now she's been shot, point blank in the head, and although Giffords made it through surgery, a nine year old child, an Arizona Chief Judge, and four others are dead.

The 22 year-old shooter, Jared Loughner, has a recent history of paranoid rants regarding mind control, currency, the government, the Constitution, and grammar. I'll take a wild guess that he's a paranoid schizophrenic -- the exact type Palin and Sharron Angle were trying to incite with talk of "Second Amendment remedies." To me, it doesn't really matter whether Loughner was a follower of either of those vile women -- he delivered the result they wanted -- the result the "tea party" wanted.

And by the way, isn't Arizona one of those states where people can carry guns almost anywhere? Why did bystanders have to tackle Loughner to the ground? Gee, weren't they all supposed to be armed and ready to shoot him down? I guess it never works out that way in reality...

But in reality, sustained violent rhetoric always has a body count.

Welcome Back Funny Guys

Somehow I forgot that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were back this week. That two weeks hiatus slipped by so quickly...

Just before their winter break, The Daily Show was kicking butts over the 9/11 first responders bill. Last night Kirsten Gillibrand was on thanking Jon for amplifying the stories of the first responders and helping the stalled legislation pass:

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The first responders bill, by the way, was staunchly opposed by teabaggers.

Vote

Do not let your mild disappointments with President Obama keep you from voting next week.

(YouTube video.)

Libertarian Utopia

Apparently Tennessee is the Libertarian promised land. South Fulton firefighters stood by and watched an Orion County home burn down because the owners had not paid their $75 fire protection subscription fee. The homeowners offered to pay on the spot, but were refused. The family’s three dogs and a cat died.

Mayor David Crocker said, "if homeowners don't pay, they're out of luck."

Or we're all out of luck. Because if one house is on fire, the whole neighborhood is at risk. Fires are tricky devils and don't check policies or town hall records before igniting home after home. People who don't pay or can't pay -- for whatever reason -- endanger themselves, their neighbors, and even the firefighters -- it's easier to put out one small house fire than a neighborhood ablaze.

Likewise for highly contagious diseases. We can't protect ourselves piecemeal. We have to protect the entire herd equally.

Call it socialism if you want, but socialized fire care is an idea whose time has come... or came, actually, in the 19th century. The U.S. had private fire companies back then, and that system didn't work for shit. Time was wasted summoning the correct company, or none at all, and fires would spread. The public demanded some kind of central command of fire companies. Of course, I don't think anybody screamed "socialism" back then. It was just good common sense that taxes in a civilized society should go towards services for the public.

But thanks to the teabaggers and Glenn Beck, these matters are now some kind of modern debate in which compassion and the common good are open to ridicule and mockery.

Yahoo Paranoia

"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."

"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"

"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much."

— From Tea & Crackers: How corporate interests and Republican insiders built the Tea Party monster by Matt Taibbi.

This Rolling Stone article -- I wish I could quote the entire thing -- is a must read. It's not only a lengthy study of the narcissism and delusional thinking of the teabaggers, but also an illumination of the Rand Paul phase of this whole tea party aka GOP thing.

Rand Paul is, of course, the political neophyte son of Republican Congressman Ron Paul. Last May, Rand won the Republican Senatorial primary race in Kentucky. One thing I cannot ignore about this man is his position on the 20-year-old American's with Disabilities Act. He wants to gut it, and as I stated four months ago, "I feel threatened every time some politician feels more empathetic toward the 'free speech' of a business owner versus the basic rights of the disabled. I know it's hard for libertarians to understand, but in 1990, a federal law increased my rights."

And yet at a recent Sarah Palin rally, Matt Taibbi observed, "every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters."

(Grandma's new wheelchair under a Tea Party government.)

Do these elderly white people never think about consequences? Not only are they fighting to get functional government programs cut, but they're supporting the people who will take away their basic rights. So even if Janice gets a free scooter from the government, she won't be able to take it anywhere! No ADA means no curb cuts, no ramps, and any theater, restaurant or business can slam the door in her face.

On the other hand, at least they'll find out what it really means to be an oppressed minority.

Has Our Honor Been Restored Yet?

I simply didn't have the stamina to watch that bizarre Glenn Beck civil rights pantomime over the weekend. I've been out of it for a week, and I'm still under the influence of narcotics (see post below) and my prescription label says, "do not drive, operate heavy machinery, or watch Beck rallies." I'm sure some of you must have seen parts of it though?

So I ask you, did he cry? Did he tell us how much he loves his country? Did the Mormon shock-jock call for some kind of vague Christian revival? Was it self-indulgent? Was it pitiful?

I heard about the geese flying in a v-formation over the reflecting pool. I'm concluding from the many awe-struck replies on this YouTube video that most of Beck's fans flunked science, so let me share the secret: that's the way migrating geese fly! Shh!

And here's another little factoid: interpreting the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds is a pagan practice called augury. I think Beck's crowd reached a new level of confused religiosity.

Anyway, if there was a god who busies himself organizing geese, then those birds would have shat on Beck's head.

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This whole self-anointed messiah act is exhausting. I try not to react to every idiot comment coming from Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, etc., but liberals cannot ignore these people into irrelevance. They preach to the choir and their choir is devout.

A recent article by Matt Taibbi articulated the dangers of ignoring the media hate-fest:

In fact if you follow Fox News and the Limbaugh/Hannity afternoon radio crew, this summer’s blowout has almost seemed like an intentional echo of the notorious Radio Rwanda broadcasts “warning” Hutus that they were about to be attacked and killed by conspiring Tutsis, broadcasts that led to massacres of Tutsis by Hutus acting in “self-defense.” A sample of some of the stuff we’ve seen and heard on the air this year:

• On July 12, Glenn Beck implied that the Obama government was going to aid the New Black Panther Party in starting a race war, with the ultimate aim of killing white babies. "They want a race war. We must be peaceful people. They are going to poke, and poke, and poke, and our government is going to stand by and let them do it." He also said that "we must take the role of Martin Luther King, because I do not believe that Martin Luther King believed in, 'Kill all white babies.'"
• CNN contributor and Redstate.com writer Erick Erickson, on the Panther mess: "Republican candidates nationwide should seize on this issue. The Democrats are giving a pass to radicals who advocate killing white kids in the name of racial justice and who try to block voters from the polls."
• On July 6, the Washington Times columnist J. Christian Adams wrote an editorial insisting that "top [Obama] appointees have allowed and even encouraged race-based enforcement as either tacit or open policy," marking one of what would become many assertions by commentators that the Obama administration was no longer interested in protecting the rights of white people. "The Bush Civil Rights Division was willing to protect all Americans from racial discrimination,” Adams wrote. “During the Obama years, the Holder years, only some Americans will be protected."
• July 12: Rush Limbaugh says Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder “protect and represent” the New Black Panther party.
• July 28: Rush says Supreme Court decision on 1070 strips Arizonans of their rights to defend themselves against an “invasion”: "I guess the judge is saying it's not in the public interest for Arizona to try to defend itself from an invasion. I don't know how you look at this with any sort of common sense and come to the ruling this woman came to.” That same day, Rush says this: "Muslim terrorists are going to have a field day in Arizona. You cannot ask them where they're from. You cannot even act like we know where they're from. You cannot ask them for their papers. We can ask you for yours. Not them."
• July 29: The Washington Times asks “Should Arizona Secede?” and says the Supreme Court "is unilaterally disarming the people of Arizona in the face of a dangerous enemy” with the aim of creating a “socialist superstate.” The paper writes: "The choice is becoming starkly apparent: devolution or dissolution."
• July 29, Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy continues the Radio Rwanda theme, saying, "If the feds won't protect the people and Governor Brewer can't protect her citizens, what are the people of Arizona supposed to do?"

Taibbi concludes that conservatives really don't want a race war, but driving frustrated/broke white suburbanites into a race-hatred frenzy happens to be good business.

So -- though I'm still unsure what "restoring honor" means -- I'm guessing the restoration is not complete... because then Beck's gig would be up.

Getting Our Priorities Straight

I should have seen this coming. A small political movement with strong anti-tax, anti-establishment sentiments, and many angry, heartless, selfish supporters is running out of money. Yeah, I'm talking about the teabaggers again:

Some leading tea party activists are concerned that their efforts to reshape American politics, starting with the 2010 elections, are being undermined by a shortage of cash that’s partly the result of a deep ambivalence within the movement’s grass roots over the very idea of fundraising and partly attributable to an inability to win over the wealthy donors who fund the conservative establishment.

Apparently their fiscal myopia combined with the blatant opportunism of their leaders is draining their coffers. Do we need any more proof that they're really neocons?

And do we need any more proof that their ideas about taxation are the bane of this country? Paul Krugman recently wrote about how all this anti-government rhetoric is harming us:

The anti-government campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud — to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.

He calls is an "unlit, unpaved road to nowhere," but while Republicans stand strong against the tiniest of aid to state governments, Americans in Afghanistan get paved roads and more for their Humvees.

Government Oversight

I don't have anything much to add to that.

Send Out The Clowns

We may be a little bit crazy in California -- we once had an entire ballot full of crackpots -- but tonight we proved we're saner than Kentucky. California Republicans did not choose Orly Taitz as their nominee for Secretary of State. And I'm thankful.

You may remember dentist/lawyer/real-estate agent Orly for her crazy legal filings to repeal Obama's birth certificate or something like that. U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land dutifully slapped her with a $20,000 fine, and I hoped that was the last we'd ever hear from the "birther queen."

Now, if Orly had won the Republican nomination, I could have written a long blog post about teabaggers, and California becoming a circus, and the irony of conservatives electing a former Soviet to overthrow our democratically elected government...

Seems some people wanted her to win for the sheer joy and hilarity of seeing this conspiracy theorist campaign with other notable California Republicans. No doubt there will be some memorable races in November when teabagger favorites run against Democrats who do not believe in bartering chickens for checkups, or repealing the Civil Rights Act, or drill baby drill.

But Orly won't be in those races. I really believe democracy is better when all candidates are serious, rational, and educated. I don't want California to become a circus.

On the Anniversary of OKC

(The Survivor Tree at the Oklahoma City National Memorial, photographed by Dustin M. Ramsey.)

Fifteen years have passed since the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City which claimed the lives of 168 men, women and children. Nine years have passed since Timothy McVeigh was executed for the crime.

Tonight I watched The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions of an American Terrorist on MSNBC. I wasn't sure what to expect. The "state-of-the-art computer re-creations" were annoying and creepy, but the documentary as a whole was a rather dry textbook time line of the events plus stories of the survivors.

As the special was advertised in the previous week, I was a little worried that MSNBC might inadvertently glorify the anti-government fanatic McVeigh -- that's the last thing this country needs right now -- but I should have realized that Rachel Maddow, as the narrator, would never allow such "hatriot" propaganda. Instead, the tapes revealed McVeigh as a killer without much insight, compassion, or charisma. Years ago I used to wonder if McVeigh's dreams were haunted by the children he killed, but all he had to say to their surviving families was "get over it."

Besides that shocking callousness, I didn't learn anything new about McVeigh or his motivation. He said some stuff about Waco and Ruby Ridge. These catalysts have been discussed many times over the years, and they're probably the closest thing to an explanation that we're ever going to get. Yet I could never understand how McVeigh could be so damn vengeful over those tragic deaths and yet not give a shit about the children he murdered.

And here we are again all these years later. This time we're faced with new fringe hate groups and their incoherent threats of violence over all the things they're misinformed about. Of course, one of those things is health care. They're angry because people less fortunate than themselves might get health care. Yep, the callousness is still there along with the violent rhetoric.

Today former President Bill Clinton wrote about the lessons learned from Oklahoma City:

Americans have more freedom and broader rights than citizens of almost any other nation in the world, including the capacity to criticize their government and their elected officials. But we do not have the right to resort to violence — or the threat of violence — when we don’t get our way. Our founders constructed a system of government so that reason could prevail over fear. Oklahoma City proved once again that without the law there is no freedom.

Well, only some of us learned those lessons, and we're the same ones who remember just how dangerous an angry few can be.

The inscription that accompanies the Survivor Tree reads, "The spirit of this city and this nation will not be defeated; our deeply rooted faith sustains us."

Tea Party Ghost

And now it's time for a story. It's kind of like "The Night Before Christmas," but for tax day. From the creative mind of P.J. O'Rourke:

He stood on the stage bathing in the adulation of the assembled dignitaries. The Nobel Prize! At last, his body of work had been given the honor it deserved. As the standing ovation went on he thought of his critics. He knew they were watching. Did this great hall look like the rubber room where they said he’d spend the rest of his days bouncing? Ha! His struggle had been so worth the effort…

Glenn Beck was awakened from his dream of adequacy by the sound of a man clearing his throat. He sat up and, as his eyes adjusted, saw a glowing white Colonial ghost standing beside his bed.

“Who are you?”

“My friends call me Ben. We have been watching you for some time, and see how loyal you are to our cause. I have been sent to grant you the privilege of attending the real Boston Tea Party, that you may then be able to advance our cause with more familiarity and fervor. We haven’t much time. Touch my sleeve and join the cause.”

Read more...

I hope this story becomes a tradition.

Teabagg'n Again

A year ago I wrote my first post about teabaggers. It was also the first post where I used "LOL," which I hope was forgivable given the absurdity of the carnival-like protests. But I guess I was assuming the teabaggers and their "parties" would have faded into history by now. I assumed these people would have moved on after getting their tax cuts, but I overestimated their logic skills.

However, many of us cynics realized the "tea party express" was a marketing gimmick and money making tool of the Republican establishment, and well -- yeah, we were right:

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But what was not outwardly clear was that teabaggers are, according to a new New York Times/CBS News poll, "wealthier and more well-educated than the general public." In other words, they are elitists looking for wealth-care and not health-care.

Do I believe it? Maybe. It actually fits with the few teabagger types I know: white, married, own a McMansion with an SUV parked out front. They went to college and earned some kind of degree but never cared to be educated outside their narrow vocational focus. They go to tanning salons often, and wouldn't have gotten through college if I didn't help them with their math classes. (Ok, I admit I'm thinking of one friend in particular.)

The poll results also show that their beliefs are very different than non-teabaggers: Only 26% of all responders think Sarah Palin would be an effective President, but 40% of teabaggers do. 27% of all responders have a favorable view of George W. Bush, but 57% of teabaggers like him. Only 18% of all responders have a favorable view of Glenn Beck. Unsurprisingly, 59% of teabaggers like him.

The numbers also show teabaggers have very conservative views on social and economic issues. But here's the funniest statistic: 78% of self-identified tea party supporters have never attended a tea party rally or meeting nor donated to the cause. So really, that 78% is just the same GOP we've always known.

And what about the angry ones attending the rallies with their hilariously misspelled signs? They must be the unemployed and undereducated portion of this sham of a "movement." Which makes sense -- conservative lawyers, bankers, and executives always leave the dirty work to the peasants.

The Learnin' Channel

TLC has officially jumped the shark. Well, they were headed for the jump for a while. Kind of like KFC, their three letter acronym has no meaning now. They haven't had truly educational programming for years, and their current tagline is "life unscripted." In other words, reality TV.

And in case you haven't heard, the latest addition to their lineup is "Sarah Palin's Alaska." Good god. They should have called it Northern Overexposure or The Beverly Snowbillies.

But whatever they call it, you know this puts Sarah Palin appropriately in the same category as Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, and that couple with too many kids: pompous, careerist, self promoting, attention whores...

Somebody must have advised Sarah that this would be a lucrative career move. Because I'm confident Mrs. Mooseburger doesn't care about "the story of Alaska," or conservationism. Remember "drill, baby, drill" and her many other anti-environmental stances?

"Sarah Palin's Alaska" will no doubt be another political platform for her violent, stupid, self-righteous babble. Another platform where she can freely use cross-hairs and hunting rhetoric to incite her sicko teabagger followers to do god-knows-what. Hey Sarah, just in case you didn't know, hicks aren't good with subtle imagery:

"The crossfire is intense, so penetrate through enemy territory by bombing through the press, and use your strong weapons — your Big Guns — to drive to the hole. Shoot with accuracy; aim high and remember it takes blood, sweat and tears to win." — Sarah Palin.

If you can even call that subtle.

I won't be watching "Sarah Palin's Alaska" unless there is an episode where her entire clan is eaten by a pack of wolves.

Almost a Law

Over the past year I've had my doubts, but it finally happened. The House has narrowly approved the healthcare bill.

And although I've watched Schoolhouse Rocks a hundred times, I'm kind of fuzzy on the next step in this process. The Senate still must vote on a reconciliation package. Then comes the part where President Obama signs the bill. Then I guess we celebrate... in 2014, when most of the legislation kicks in. Some of the bill's benefits, though, will be immediate.

Of course, not everybody will be celebrating. The racist, bigoted, xenophobic teabaggers have gone (even more) batshit insane at the top of their lungs this week. I think it's now obvious to everybody (except Fox News) that teabagger anger has nothing to do with healthcare or even taxes. Teabaggers would rather die than live in a country that provides any kind of welfare to blacks, Hispanics, the poor, the disabled or anybody they deem inferior to their ignorant white asses. Makes me embarrassed to be white.

And yet the strangest twist in the last year has to be the confederate flag toting teabaggers equating President Obama to Hitler. Well, maybe it's not strange. Comparing your political rivals to Nazis is completely predictable, but the wingnuts don't know history so well. The Nazis aren't really remembered for healthcare, you know.

I could almost laugh except these paranoid teabaggers did influence the debate... in the worst way possible. Republicans brought no viable alternatives to this piece of legislation because, well, they couldn't be seen making deals with people who wanted to kill grandmothers. What would Rush Limbaugh have said?

But in the end, all that angry shouting proved ineffectual. The bill passed. Teabaggers feel defeated and impotent. Now they are making blatant threats of violence as they become even more unhinged.

Kind of ruins that hopefulness we should all be feeling right now.