Fred Thompson had Dobbs on his radio show today, and asked him if he'd given thought to a presidential run. Dobbs said "yes," adding that he's engaging the services of all sorts of experts to give him the best advice.

Which means that the 2012 primaries—even if Dobbs runs as an independent, his campaign will be perceived as an adjunct of the festival of white rage that will determine the GOP's standard-bearer—will, god willing, be nothing short of a phantasmagorical Hunter Thompson-esque fever-dream populated by snake-handlers, idiots, Mormons, and fat, chain-smoking television hacks. Between Dobbs, Sarah Palin, and whatever Glenn Beck's 100-year-war "plan" has in store for us, the wingnut beat will be a life-changing event for those reporters lucky enough to chronicle it in 2012. The New York Times' David Kirkpatrick famously pioneered the paper's "conservative beat" in 2004, but it was largely a survey of the intellectual undercurrents of neoconservatism and seems to have been abandoned. Whoever picks up the mantle from him in two years will be richly rewarded. It's never too early to start strategizing.

The Atlantic's James Fallows quotes a "U.S. government official who was on the trip" characterizing Obama's reaction to the criticism he received for the bow. He was just being polite, as opposed to terrified that America's status as a superpower will disappear down the toilet if its president stops being a dick all the time:

Obama's attitude was, this is an elderly gentleman in a country where this kind of greeting is customary. It does not seem extraordinary to show this kind of gesture to him. The Fox news poll said that 67% of Americans thought it was a good thing for him to have done. When the president heard that some people had complained, I'd characterize his reaction as: The notion that the United States is somehow humbling or humiliating itself by showing respect for a local custom, when it is transparently the most powerful country in the world, leaves me speechless.

Rule No. 1 of being an unnamed White House adviser is Don't Put Words Directly in the President's Mouth Unless You Know What You're doing, so this was either a deliberate presidential pushback or a rogue element telling the truth. If it were the former, though, we'd imagine the White House would choose a more mainstream outlet to get the word out through than an Atlantic blog. Either way: If you have a problem with the president bowing to old Japanese men, Barack Obama personally thinks you're an idiot.

CafePress pulled the merchandise earlier this week when people pointed out what the prayer meant, but they quickly restored the items, telling Gawker in a statement yesterday that the slogan was in line with "current public discourse and our determination of what it is fair political commentary."

They've changed their mind. The CafePress blog announced today that Psalm 109 items are banned again:

Last night we posted a poll on our blog, read through the emails we've received and weighed the nature of the calls we've received on the topic. In the process we also learned that many of the original designers of the Psalm 109:8 designs had already decided to remove them on their own.

General consensus has proven that the design does point to a broader interpretation of the Psalm and thus has been deemed inappropriate for sale at CafePress.

Psalm 109 is a "Cry For Vengeance." Verse 8 reads: "Let his days be few; and let another take his office"; it goes on to ask God to kill the supplicant's enemy and make beggars of his children. So some sneaky Christians thought it would be funny to sell T-shirts bearing the slogan at CafePress, because Godless liberals wouldn't know that it was really a prayer for God to kill Barack Obama for being Muslim.

The online poll's respondents found the slogan "overly inflammatory and inappropriate," 76% to 22%.

[Via Politico.]

Go here for the full panoply of CafePress bumper stickers, mugs, and shirts containing prayers for the president to die and for his daughters—per Psalm 109—to "continually be vagabonds, and to beg." The Psalm 109 items were indeed briefly taken off the market yesterday, a CafePress spokesman tells Gawker, after some controversy developed about the appropriateness of veiled death threats as bumper sticker material. But they thought about it, and you know what? Why the hell not! Here's CafePress' statement:

Based on current public discourse and our determination of what it is fair political commentary, Psalm 109:8 products are still featured on our site.

Anti-presidential gear has been a mainstay at CafePress since we were founded in 1999 and has become a key component of political discourse. Our site has become a cultural barometer of public opinion and as such designs often come into question. In managing our content we are trying to protect self-expression, while making sure we are not advocating violence.

They have a point: If "current public discourse" as defined by folks at Fox News won't banish people openly calling for the death of the President, why should an online tchotchke outlet say different? And besides, maybe all those supplicants are praying for Barack Obama to die non-violently, through a heart attack or AIDS or something.

In the end it doesn't matter, because it turns out that the Biblical joke is on those people praying on Psalm 109: We're the last person to come to for Biblical exegesis, but a tipster pointed out that the psalm's "Cry For Vengeance" is attributed to King David, who was beset by faithless and lying critics seeking to undermine him: "Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the LORD, and of them that speak evil against my soul." In other words, the guy praying in Psalm 109:8 for his enemy's days to be numbered is an embattled leader facing down a gang of hectoring usurpers. And the guy whose days he wants God to number is Glenn Beck. Keep praying, kids!

Posters to various message boards tell stories of seeing bumper stickers with the message "Pray for Obama—Psalm 109:8" on the highway, only to look up the verse and find, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office." People — like the commenter "Panama" on INGunOwners.com, to pick one guy completely at random — think this is "too funny." The next verse in Psalms is, "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."

Anyway, now it's a real thing: CafePress is selling T-shirts and bumper stickers, the Christian Science Monitor is wondering whether it's "funny or sinister" to pray for Obama's death, and Rachel Maddow referenced it last night on her show.

UPDATE: CafePress appears to have halted sales of all the Psalm 109:8-related merchandise.

Psalm 109 is known as "A Cry for Vengeance," which is one of the foundational values of Christianity, along with small-business tax cuts. It's actually quite a little psalm, as psalms go, and the opening lines sound really familiar:

Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;
for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me:they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause.

Then it gets into the part where you pray for God to smite Barack Obama and condemn Malia and Sasha to poverty for the rest of their lives, a fate they deserve because they sprang from the loins of the sinful:

Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

The Psalm 109:8 gag is one in what's becoming a long line of cheekily coded Obama death threats: There was the classified ad someone placed in a Pennsylvania paper hoping that he follows in "the footsteps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy," all of whom were assassinated. And there was the gun-toting New Hampshire teabagger with a sign saying it is time to "water the tree of liberty"—a reference to Thomas Jefferson's reminder that the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the "blood of tyrants and patriots."

Why not a T-shirt that says, "Will Somebody Please Kill That Guy Already?" The word games are getting tedious. If you want Barack Obama to die and for curses to "come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones," and for his name to be blotted out in one generation, just say so!

Here's our favorite part of Psalm 109:

Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame; and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.

That sounds about right.

Lindsay Lohan and momager Dina have made it very, very clear that the order of protection they have against Michael means that he needs to stay as far away from them as he can. He's wiretapped conversations with Dina and tried to sell them. They're getting orders of protection and are telling the press they're scared. And Michael's hitting the press trail with everyone who'll listen.

But this is a little too intense. Sure, Michael Lohan looks like a bad James Woods character, and there's no question that he's desperate to be a power-barnacle on his family's dwindling resources of fame. But the taping of calls proves the criminal length to which he's willing not to help, but to go public with his "cause" in order to draw attention to himself. All of this begs the question: if Lohan actually needs help, how would Michael Lohan even know?

It doesn't matter. Because when you do shit like this, even if they're just for theatrics, you're insane, and possibly, dangerous, and even worse, shameless about how dangerously insane you are in the name of "protecting" your daughter while trying to invoke a higher power to electrocute you.

Hollywood gossip is a joke and the people who take it seriously are just as funny, and the fact that there's a massive industry built around it is hysterical if you can laugh through the sadness. I'm of the opinion that one shouldn't take it as anything but a big, sad joke. And it's hard to feel bad for one of that big joke's biggest characters, Lindsay Lohan, and her self-subscribed fates.

But here's someone who's already had a long, long life, no matter who made it hard. And of all the things Lindsay Lohan did to herself, I still can't imagine actually being able to will something like Michael Lohan into their existence repeatedly. Unless their name is Dina Lohan.

Now I feel bad for her.

Fanaticism makes strange bedfellows, and the push to link up Hasan to a wider terrorist plot has united Sen. Joe Leiberman and radical Yemeni cleric Sheikh Anwar Al-Awlaki in common cause. Wingnuts and neocons want Hasan to be a Muslim terrorist because it confirms their worldview that Muslim terrorists lurk in every shadow and helps them scare the shit out people. Muslim terrorists want Hasan to be a Muslim terrorist because it satisfies their desire to claim credit for the murders of Americans and helps them scare the shit out of people. Everybody wins.

The question of whether Hasan qualifies as a bona fide Muslim terrorist seems to be academic, and can serve as handy ideological litmus test. He clearly was motivated in part by extremist religious views, and clearly killed a lot of people. For the New Republic's Jason Zengerle, that alone is enough to call him a terrorist. But "Islamic terrorism" has a political and cultural meaning that extends beyond merely acts of violence by people who believe a certain subset of crazy religious teachings—it means jihad, Al Qaeda, spectacular violence, and a global network of people who are acting in concert to kill us all and establish an emirate. Dick Cheney is not worried about American civilization being destroyed 13 soldiers at a time by single men armed with pistols, and "the largest single terror act in America since 9/11"—which is how Fox News contributor Walid Phares describes the Ft. Hood shootings—is a label that's tailored to call up something in our lizard brains that goes far beyond lone wolves. It's about the "existential threat" we are under. No matter how extremist his views or how despicable the man, no one can argue that Maj. Hasan is an existential threat to the republic.

So the question is: How do we turn him into one, so that this horror will not pass without being taken advantage of politically? That requires making him part of, and representative of, a larger and well-known enemy for which there exists more than sufficient reserves of justified hatred and fear—Al Qaeda. Enter ABC News' Brian Ross, the notoriously unreliable investigative reporter who came out with a blockbuster this morning: Unnamed intelligence officials tell Ross that unnamed American intelligence agencies learned months ago that Hasan had attempted to make contact with "people associated with Al Qaeda" who were under U.S. surveillance. The report is a grab-bag of red flags. Ross mentions that officials are trying to find out if Hasan ever communicated with Anwar Al-Awlaki, the former imam of a mosque that Hasan attended on Falls Church, Va., who later fled to Yemen and supports violent jihad. But it's unclear from Ross' report whether Al-Awlaki is one of the "people associated with Al Qaeda" that Hasan is said to have attempted to contact, or if there are others. Within the story itself, what begins as an attempt to contact "people associated with Al Qaida"—with no explanation as to why he was allegedly trying to contact these people—rapidly becomes "Hasan's attempt to reach out to al Qaeda." These are vastly different things, and Ross' casual conflation of them, with no evidence, is an indicator that something is cooked in the story.

It wouldn't be the first time: Ross famously, and breathlessly, reported in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks that U.S. intelligence sources had specific and detailed evidence linking Iraq to the type of anthrax used. It was complete and utter bullshit, and it served to heighten the atmosphere of panic and fear in the days immediately following the attacks and to link them to a convenient enemy. So we take his latest entry in the post-massacre-blockbuster-terrorism-story sweepstakes with a grain of salt.

Even before Ross' report, the attempts to render Hasan's killings more politically effective for the purposes of changing U.S. policy toward Islamic radicalism had begun. Sen. Joe Lieberman called on Sunday for a congressional investigation into Hasan's background—which we think is a great idea—and mimed Phares' bumper sticker, calling it it "the most-destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11." The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg charitably wrote today, under the headline, "When Muslims Commit Violence," that not all Muslims are "violently unhappy with America." Whew! Good to know. Unfortunately, Goldberg continues, "elite makers of opinion in this country try very hard to ignore the larger meaning of violent acts when they happen to be perpetrated by Muslims." The "larger meaning" here being what? That "when Muslims commit violence" we should have a different reaction, and different policy reforms designed to prevent a recurrence, than when Christians or Jews or anarchist nutjobs or right-wing nutjobs commit violence? The problem, Goldberg writes, is that since "elite opinion makers do not, as a rule, try to protect Christians and Christian belief from investigation and criticism," they should apply the same standard to Muslim beliefs. Because clearly, Islamic theology has gotten a pass from journalistic and cultural establishment over the last eight years, and it's about time somebody blew the lid off the whole thing. Did you know that some of them agree with suicide bombing?

Goldberg and Zengerle both make the point that the left referred to Scott Roeder as a terrorist after he murdered Dr. George Tiller. Parity, one imagines, dictates that the same term apply to Hasan. One noteworthy distinction, though, is that Roeder fits precisely into what most people generally think of when they talk about right-wing terrorists. He worked closely with other people who sought the deaths of abortion providers. He talked about it all the time. He was an active member of an organized movement. Hasan's case is noteworthy because of the extent to which it is not like the Al Qaeda threat we've come to know. That doesn't mean there's nothing to be learned from it, or even that we shouldn't try to change the way we do things to try to prevent it from happening again. What it does mean is that it's not like the Al Qaeda threat that we've come to know, and is substantively different from the Muslim terrorism, and fear thereof, that has hijacked our national psyche for nearly a decade. As Zengerle quite reasonably acknowledges, magnetometers at airports won't prevent it from happening again, nor will invading Iran, nor will another PATRIOT Act.

What Goldberg, Ross (or his sources), Lieberman, et. al. are trying to do is establish an equivalence between "Muslim person who kills people" and "global conspiracy of Muslims who kill people," so that they can advance a political agenda that involves deploying U.S. resources in a particular way to defeat a particular threat.

The funny thing is, the terrorists agree with them. Hasan's radical former imam, Anwar al Awlaki, wrote on his web site that "Nidal Hasan is a hero" who performed "an Islamic duty." It's precisely the same ideological jump: Hasan didn't act alone, he is part of a broader struggle by religious fanatics. And it's made for the same reason: to advance a political agenda. The neocons want to keep pressure on the idea that there is a vast army of scary Muslims always on the verge of killing us. And so do the terrorists.

It's been getting kind of confusing keeping track of what's truly American anymore, so we came up with a handy list of things that are socialist and foreign because Barack Obama has soiled them, by doing them.

Winning the Nobel Peace Prize
Used to be a win for America back when Henry Kissinger won it. Now it's a sign of a "weakened, neutered U.S.," unless John McCain had won it, which he should have, in which case it would have been awesome.

Puppies
Bo is a ringer, a fake rescue dog who was personally raised by Ted Kennedy for the Obamas and the press won't look into it because they're too busy writing about how cute he is. And he's Portuguese!

Classrooms
That's where kids get indoctrinated. Keep them away.

Community Organizing
What sort of person helps other people?

Doctors
They're all socialists now, since some of them met with Obama at the White House, and people took photos.

Farming
Michelle Obama started a vegetable garden on the White House lawn, but it's fake and how dare she?

Chicago, Ill.
Obama lived there, so it can't be in America, and therefore it's not un-American to celebrate the fact that it lost its Olympic bid, since it's Chicago that lost, not America. Fuck you, Chicago.

Hawaii
He lived there, too, which is why 6% of Americans now consider it part of un-America.

Beer
He had one with that awesome cop and some black Harvard guy, ruining it for the rest of us.

Smoking
He never quit, and so is a liar, and probably smokes Gauloises.

Checking Out Asses
Would a real American ever glance at a lady's ass, like Obama did? In Italy!? No, he would never do that.

Loving Your Wife
Obama took Michelle on a date to New York City in May to see a play, prompting the RNC to ask, "If President Obama wants to go to the theater, isn't the Presidential box at the Kennedy Center good enough?" We're still waiting for an answer, Mr. President.

Basketball
He replaced the White House bowling alley—which can be used to play a white-people game—with a basketball court. Didn't O.J. Simpson or someone play basketball? And he goes to games, instead of fixing America, constantly.

Baseball
He throws like a girl. A European girl.

Craig Whitney, the man who kept all the thug motherfuckers in check as the Standards Editor of the New York Times, is retiring after more than four decades at the paper. You can read a very gracious speech about him by Bill Keller by clicking here, or just read this excerpt, which is Whitney's career highlight:

And along with Phil Corbett, his successor, he has worried about all the words that appear not only in the paper but, now, on the web (a recent exchange with a department head involved the appearance of the word "pooping" in one of our sites).

Poop well in whatever you move on to, Mr. Whitney.


Just like in America, Russia has cranky old ex-military wingnuts. But over there they seem to have slightly more influence! Example: Someone wrote a story ("media" peg alert!) about a kabob house called the "Anti-Soviet Kabob House." Uproar ensued amongst Soviet wingnuts! Somebody else wrote about how ridiculous this was and now he's subjected to even more intense wingnuttery, to the point where his life may be in danger. The moral of the story is, God Bless America, where our wingnuts kill journalists less often than their wingnut counterparts elsewhere do.


Is Time Inc. for sale? No, says Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes. He said at a conference that they'd still have it five years from now. Although if he could go back in time two years and sell it he totally would, in a flash.


Boy, the magazine industry sure isn't going to let Apple come between it and its readers, like Apple did to the music industry with iTunes. No way. The magazine industry wants to make its own iTunes-type thing, to cut out the middleman, and grab the dough. Well, you know how it is. Five years from now you walk back into the same bar and there's the magazine industry, sitting on the same stool, sipping the same beer, still talking about how it's gonna make that awesome new iTunes thing for magazines. Good luck, guys.

As Charles Johnson—whose ongoing reformation from Muslim-hating wacko to right-wing apostate continues to puzzle and delight us—points out, Palin's ghostwriter's previous work includes Donkey Cons, a thoughtful investigative look at the Democratic Party's criminality that blows the lid off that "killer and traitor Aaron Burr." Vincent's co-writer on Donkey Cons was Robert Stacy McCain, a former Washington Times editor who writes things like this:

[T]he media now force interracial images into the public mind and a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion. The white person who does not mind transacting business with a black bank clerk may yet be averse to accepting the clerk as his sister-in-law, and THIS IS NOT RACISM, no matter what Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Washington tell us.

That was from a private e-mail McCain once wrote that a recipient posted online, so in his defense, McCain (no relation to Palin's running mate) wouldn't write something like that in public. In public, he says things like slaves and whites in the Old South had "cordial and affectionate relations," is a member of the League of the South, which wants to secede from the Union (again!), and writes for a web site called VDare, which proudly publishes the work of "rational and civil...white nationalists" who "unashamedly work for their people."

Anyway, when Palin was doing her due diligence before hiring Vincent, she probably didn't look into her association with McCain, because she probably just assumed it was John McCain, because she's an idiot. We're sure she will promptly reject and denounce Vincent's racist affiliations.

Vincent also ghost wrote the memoir of Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the former head of the Army's Special Forces Command, who literally believes that his job in the U.S. military was to defeat Satan for the Christian nation of America. Of one of our enemies in Somalia, Boykin said, "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." And why does the world hate us? "We are hated because we are a nation of believers." And how do we defeat terrorism? "[W]e come against them in the name of Jesus."

In summary, Sarah Palin's book will be awesome because her ghostwriter has abundant experience in shaping the confused, fevered thoughts of religious fanatics into sentences.

UPDATE: McCain responds: "I know lots of interracial couples." Oy. Are any of them your best friends?

To be fair, Clinton didn't have much of a choice, because Meet the Press host David Gregory asked the former President whether the so-called conspiracy, first assessed by Hillary Clinton, still exists, to which Clinton replied in the affirmative.

Sure it is. It's not as strong as it was, because America has changed demographically. But it's as virulent as it was. I mean, they're saying things about him. You know, it's like when they accused me of murder, and all that stuff they did. ... But ... it's not really good for the Republicans and the country, what's going on now. I mean, they may be hurting President Obama. They can take his numbers down. They can run his opposition up. But, fundamentally, he and his team have a positive agenda for America. Their agenda seems to be wanting him to fail.

Well duh they want him to fail. But, that's beside the point, because the "conspiracy," if it should even be called that, may actually be more powerful than the one that worked against Clinton. With all the new media outlets, not to mention Fox News, it's easier to mobilize the masses and work them into a fury. No, there's no impeachment planned, but there are even more complicated and insidious roadblocks at the right's disposal.

And, sadly for the big O, Clinton's comments are only going to fan the flames. If there's one man the ultra-right hate more than Obama, it's Bubba, and having him jump in the fray will simply embolden and further ostracize the President's critics. Plus, a sizable amount of Clinton's drama came from his, shall we say, encounters with Monica Lewinsky. Injecting that particular memory into the right's already petulant collective consciousness could create a sticky, stinky brew of fresh Obama hate.

Oh, look: Ann Coulter's already ranting about "semen stained Kleenex." Great.

You may recall that Iowa-based Representative King, along with Ron Paul, voted against a plaque honoring the slaves who were forced to build the Capitol building. Well, he's back on our radar after trying to connect gay marriage to socialism. In a feat irrational thinking, King, who once called Joseph McCarthy a "hero for America," argues that a socialist takeover requires the "undermining" of democracy-sustaining marriage and that gay use of public funds is "a purely socialist concept.

...One of the goals they have to go to, same sex marriage, because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal. They want public affirmation. They want access to public funds and resources. Eventually all those resources will be pooled because that's the direction we're going. And not only is it a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept in the final analysis.

Ah, this must be like a political orgasm for King — it brings together two things he hates: those leech socialists and the dirty homos. But there are so many other eye-rolling things up his sleeve. It's really hard not to appreciate the amount of bullshit one man can produce.

• The lawmaker fought against naming a Berkeley library after a local politician because the politician had ties with the city's Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library.
  
  
• Meanwhile, in the anti-gay realm, King once vowed that gay marriage, like unicorns and leprechauns, would never come to Iowa. Sadly for him, Iowa legalized gay marriage earlier this year. When the state's Supreme Court upheld the contested decision, King insisted it was playing a game of "social engineering."
  
  
• Speaking of social engineering: he suggested we electrify border fences because he does it with his livestock and it works like a charm. Also, immigrants come here just to have babies and spread new diseases. FYI.
  
  
• King's craziest moment, however, may have nothing to do with gays or reds, but with Obama. King insisted that Obama's election would make terrorists dance in the street. As if terrorists know how to dance.
  
  
• The best part of King's repulsive nature? He told a local rotary club that he purposefully exaggerates his backward ways!! Now that's an American hero.

Considering his conservative leanings, it should come as no surprise to hear that Brooks disagrees with Carter. Tea baggers can't be racist, because Brooks himself saw them talking to black people during last weekend's protest. That's proof.

No, Barack Obama's health care opponents aren't fueled by racism. They're simply continuing — um —the age old Jefferson v. Hamilton debate.

...My impression is that race is largely beside the point. There are other, equally important strains in American history that are far more germane to the current conflicts.

For example, for generations schoolchildren studied the long debate between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians. Hamiltonians stood for urbanism, industrialism and federal power. Jeffersonians were suspicious of urban elites and financial concentration and believed in small-town virtues and limited government.

So, the Jeffersonians begot the Jacksonians, who hated "the fusion of federal and financial power" and "cosmopolitan elites." Those elites are now sitting pretty within Obama's administration. Or that's how Brooks paints the President's administration "movement:"

Barack Obama leads a government of the highly educated. His movement includes urban politicians, academics, Hollywood donors and information-age professionals. In his first few months, he has fused federal power with Wall Street, the auto industry, the health care industries and the energy sector.

The "left" probably wouldn't be too thrilled by the fact that Brooks readily dismisses the racism argument. Nor would they appreciate the confusing fact that Brooks equates Huey Long, who advocated wealth distribution, and Hitler-sympathizer and anti-Communist priest Charles Coughlin. (Not to mention a subtle attempt to characterize Obama's team as inhabitants of an Ivory Tower looking to "fuse" control.)

Yes, liberals would have a field day in the comments section. But, so too would the right.

According to Brooks, the ongoing debate's a perfectly natural "populist backlash" against Obama's government takeover. These protests are the American way, regardless of one's political leanings.

This populist tendency continued through the centuries. Sometimes it took right-wing forms, sometimes left-wing ones. Sometimes it was agrarian. Sometimes it was more union-oriented. Often it was extreme, conspiratorial and rude.

The populist tendency has always used the same sort of rhetoric: for the ordinary people and against the fat cats and the educated class; for the small towns and against the financial centers.

Even though Brooks does kind of make sense, the angry wing-nuts will go ape shit over being linked, however tenuously, to their left-leaning rivals. The lefties, you see, are against the rich, while the right's against big government. There's absolutely no relation.

By both dismissing racism and claiming the right's like the left — even in terms of hyperbolic media — his comments section would have become the ultimate ideological battle field. And it's there that both sides could realize their common confusion and call the whole thing off. See? Comment prohibition hurts America.

Poor Joe Wilson was not ready for the spotlight. In the 18 hours since he attempted to turn a ceremonial speech to Congress into a WWF rally, he has:

• Been revealed as a deadbeat whose debts could very well exceed his assets and a liar (that word!) who failed to report assets on his last congressional disclosure.
• Been revealed as a secessionist dead-ender who fought to the last to keep the Confederate Flag flying over the South Carolina statehouse.
• And turned in, as Talking Points Memo notes, one of the shakiest post-apology news conferences in the history of politics, throwing off flopsweat of Nixonian proportions.

Wilson made clear in that impromptu news conference that he only apologized because he was told to by the Republican leadership, who have apparently emerged from the cocoon of their own white rage long enough to realize that a nearly bankrupt Stars'n'Bars-waving congressman shouting "liar" at a black president from the floor of Congress is not good optics. His confederate in the Senate, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), says ol' Joe's gonna be just fine, and manages in the video at the top of this post to somehow pivot from why his fellow South Carolinian couldn't avoid attempting to shout down the president to a discussion of what an unreasonable partisan hack Obama is and how it's his fault that people call him a liar while he's trying to address Congress anyway and don't you know Joe Wilson has four kids in the military!?

Obama, of course, accepted the apology because he's just that cool.

Oh, and as for the substance of Wilson's charge, that Obama was lying when he said his proposal wouldn't extend healthcare to illegal immigrants? We could link to stories that give the answer, but you know it already, and what's the point? Obama tried to play grownup last night and raise the debate above bullshit hyperbolic charges and while he was doing that someone hurled a bullshit hyperbolic charge at him. And what are we all talking about today?

Two main things to know: first, the President was not fooling around, particularly about the "death panel" rumors, which he described as "a lie, plain and simple." You go, Barack!

Of course, despite his tough talk, the GOP doesn't seem ready to concede. Rep. Joe Wilson, responding to Obama's claims that illegal immigrants aren't included in reforms, declared "You lie!" That's pretty rude, no? But we're not surprised by any of this.

Nothing particularly new was brought to the table tonight. The main aspect was, quite simply, an opportunity to explain away misconceptions, reiterate his plans, and bring the debate back to level ground. August brought us insane town hall outbursts and Republican hand-wringing over health care, and tough-talking Obama attempted to put that all to rest with this evening's appearance. But, alas, it may mean nothing.

Rather than focusing simply on the much maligned subject, Obama attempted — and succeeded — to fit health care into a bigger picture, like his administration's tireless recovery efforts. Of course, the American people aren't always good at visualizing, so the President had to tackle the largest misconceptions about reform, like that it's a socialist takeover.

In order to really drive home his point to two conflicting camps, progressives and Republicans, the President had to both make sure people knew that we, a nation, all have a stake in the matter — as he did by referring to the mess as a "collective failure" — and ensure business interests that the market place will remain top dog.

There may still be companies that refuse to do right by their workers. The problem is, such irresponsible behavior costs all the rest of us money.... If some businesses don't provide workers health care, it forces the rest of us to pick up the tab when their workers get sick, and gives those businesses an unfair advantage over their competitors. And unless everybody does their part, many of the insurance reforms we seek – especially requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions – just can't be achieved.

Those themes — the collective responsibility and the importance of the market place — were well-placed and oft-referenced in his speech, but it's likely the former will make the most right-wing heads spin. References to the market place and competition will be pushed aside as opponents focus on Obama's emphasis on the "everybody," especially considering his campaign-ready closing remarks:

But that's not what the moment calls for. That's not what we came here to do. We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it. I still believe we can act even when it's hard. I still believe we can replace acrimony with civility, and gridlock with progress. I still believe we can do great things, and that here and now we will meet history's test.

Those who were against his reforms likely weren't won over, and the Republicans, who sat sour-faced and stern, don't look like they're ready to sit down and work things out, despite the best efforts to make it all crystal clear. In addition to Wilson's "lie" remark, there were plenty of other times when the Republicans, who refused to clap and wore oppositional signs, let out audible "boos."

So, if we're going to play political psychic, tonight's speech will only further embolden the right's name-called, finger-wagging and general obstruction. But maybe they'll surprise us!

Basically, the speech amounts to nothing more than our nation's Commander-in-Chief urging kids to stay in school, for, if they do, perhaps one day they'll be president. Floridian Republican Jim Greer was one of the first to seize up over the news, and called Obama's September 8th an attempt to "spread" his "socialist ideology." Greer then got into nitty-gritty politics, and warned that the President would simply be indoctrinating guppies with his liberal politics.

Conservatives are easily swayed, almost collective organism, so their calls for prohibition only grew more voracious. They took particular offense over the announcement that students would be encouraged to "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president."

Rush Limbaugh was soon on board. So was Glenn Beck. And then Greer reared his head on Hardball this evening. Though he and his knows Presidents often address students, this is different, because Obama's a proselytizer of anti-American madness.

The debate has become so heated, in fact, that school districts in six states are refusing to show the video, for, it would seem, they believe Greer's worries that anti-Obama kids will be "ostracized." This couldn't be further from the truth.

First of all, kids are kids and, if our increasingly dim childhood memory serves, don't care much for nitty-gritty policy. They care about recess and juice boxes. By folding to conservative pressure, schools and parents both are tacitly vilifying the President when, in fact, even if he were to discuss policy, most kids wouldn't care or would forget about it after cartoons.

Perhaps the most worrisome aspect of this outrage is that the kids are being denied an opportunity to hear directly from the President, a man to whom some civics classes — if such things still exist — encourage. Democracy goes both ways, we're taught, so wouldn't hearing a generic message about the importance of education be an important lesson in and of itself?

If you ask us, America's children would definitely benefit from hearing the President, particularly the nation's first black president, discuss the necessity of reading, writing and arithmetic. Especially since a Florida school distract just now, in 2009, removed the term "negro" from its racial background form.

Meanwhile, the White House has caved and agreed to release the speech's text ahead of the event. They also changed the announcement letter's language about "helping the president" to "write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals." Both moves only give validity to these inane, unnecessary protests.

At least the kids learned one valuable lesson: bitch loudly and often enough and you can bring the White House to its knees.

Yes, Pastor Broden also believes that Obama's administration will lead to socialism, ideologically-motivated hit squads and general cultural disintegration. Beck wonders aloud whether Broden, who supported McCain during last year's election, too has become a pariah. Certainly he can't be called a racist, because he's black, so what pejoratives does Broden face? The good pastor hasn't the foggiest. He just hopes people call him a "patriot," a moniker Beck readily affixes.

Ebony, ivory, red, white and blue!

The Alaska Family Council held an event this evening to bolster support for their latest ballot initiative, which supports a law demanding parents be told if their dirty, sexually active child goes to get an abortion. And, as far as they were concerned, Palin had agreed to headline their event. They were twice told she would attend and were absolutely vibrating with anticipation:

We look forward to Governor Palin honoring her commitment to attend, and we appreciate her public support of our effort to pass this important voter initiative to protect the rights of parents and the health of teenage girls.

Unfortunately for them, Sarah didn't show. According to her spokeswoman, Meghan Stapleton, Palin isn't even in Alaska and never actually planned on gracing the AFC with her presence. She has other things to do. What, we can't imagine. Certainly not tending to her totally sound, healthy marriage.

This has become quite a pattern for Palin. Not only did she totally wimp out and give up her gubernatorial powers, but she also stood up the Simi Valley Republican Women, who thought she was speaking at their event at the Ronald Reagan Presidential library earlier this month. She also pulled out of CPAC convention and a Republican fundraiser earlier this year.

Like so many of her supporters, Palin's treating the AFC like yesterday's trick. How long, we wonder, until they and others summon the strength and liberate themselves from this abusive relationship.

According to "art community consultant" Patrick Courrielche, who supports those Obama Joker posters, the NEA organized a recent conference call to assemble an army of artists who will maybe possibly (hopefully?) use their work to inspire service in key social arenas, such as health care and energy.

The call, he says, included the NEA's Director of Communications, Yosi Sergant, White House Office of Public Engagement Deputy Director Buffy Wicks and Nell Abernathy, who directs outreach for United We Serve, the President's community service initiative. All parties apparently highlighted the importance of these pressing national issues.

The call's participants were "encouraged" to use their myriad mediums to concoct "creative ways to talk about the issues facing the country." Now, it's not unusual for the government to use art in times of economic need. Long ago, the New Deal's Works Progress Administration set up the Federal Art Project, which had artists beautify the Depression-pocked landscape and remind them of essential needs, like good dental care. But the WPA and NEA are different beasts, and Courrielche worries that the NEA, which offers grants to artists and often drums up even more money for grantees, will use this initiative to pick and choose ideologically motivated artists.

Discussed throughout the conference call was a hope that this group would be one that would carry on past the United We Serve campaign to support the President's initiatives and those issues for which the group was passionate.... A machine that the NEA helped to create could potentially be wielded by the state to push policy.

After voicing even more concerns about government overreach, Courrielche asserts the call's maestro described the initiative as a "brand new conversation," yet intimated that the group itself doesn't know the legality of the project:

We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government. What that looks like legally?…bare with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely…

Yes, this could all be very scary, but Courrielche — who only includes that one direct quote — offers little more in the way of proof for his art-induced anxiety. While we don't doubt this conversation happened, it seems to us that the government should be encouraging artists to use their craft to raise awareness.

It's not like all Americans read the news. Some of them simply like looking at pretty pictures. If the government used its funds to back artists who agreed with the administration's proposals — well, that would be a problem, but Courrielche hypothesis basically assumes that Americans are stupid and will believe anything they see. In more ways than one.

Hedrick gained a bit of notoriety after yelling at Congressman Brian Baird for describing the protesters as the aforementioned "brown shirts." He then reminded everyone about how the Nazis took control of Germany's industries — just like the Democrats!

Well, it didn't take too long for Fox News to bring him on, and tonight, while talking with Hannity, Hedrick used the opportunity to go all out and suggest that politicians "better be careful about that conversation because they might find that the swastika is on their own arm."

Because that's how it happens: one day you just wake up with a swastika. Didn't you read The Wave? Where's Barney Frank when you need him?