Even the liberal Mark Shields misses George W. Bush.

SHIELDS: We have a president of real intellectual horse power who is cool, detached and analytical and if anything you can watch the emotional side of him emerge in this whole process. … There’s an emotional aspect, the comforter in chief as well as the commander in chief. Both roles. And I think it makes me nostalgic for those days when we had a manly man in the White House who could say, “Let’s kick some tail and ask questions afterwards” you know? That’s what we really need instead of any reflection.

(via)

Update. I watched it again and I’m pretty sure he’s being sarcastic. If I’d known he was from Weymouth, I would have guessed this right off.

It’s easy to romanticize the past, of course. But I distinctly remember that 20 years ago, things like sudden increases in the number of people going hungry were considered important issues. Nowadays to even muse about whether this is something we can do something about as a society marks you as an unserious hippie. Even as we speak, Slate/Levitt/TNR are probably writing something along the lines of “you think that having a high percentage of the population without access to food is bad, but once you get past the conventional wisdom of our hippie overlords, you’ll see that blah blah blah.” David Brooks is probably on the Snooze Hour telling E. J. Dionne that the only solution is food vouchers and, anyway, in Red America, the hungry can always visit the Applebee’s Salad Bar for free. Robert Samuelson and Fred Hiatt are cooking up some bogus figures to tell us that there is no way that we, as a society, can do anything about this. And, anyway, Michael Moore is fat, so how can anyone really be hungry?

What the hell happened? How did all the conservative talking points become so thoroughly internalized in this country?

The Florida Republican primary is starting to look like a Soviet show trial:

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist hasn’t done himself any political favors by feigning ignorance that President Obama was in his home state last month.

Desperately trying to distance himself from President Obama and his own early support for the administration’s stimulus in the midst of a competitive Senate primary, Crist told reporters that he had no clue that the president was in Florida./

But through a public records request, the St. Petersburg Times found his top aides were well-informed of the president’s visit and responded to the White House that the governor couldn’t attend.

What the fuck is she talking about?

In addition to the suggestion that government officials would consider hastening the death of the infirm or handicapped, she began her remarks with a puzzling commentary on the design of newly minted dollar coins.

Noting that there had been a lot of “change” of late, Palin recalled a recent conversation with a friend about how the phrase “In God We Trust” had been moved to the edge of the new coins.

“Who calls a shot like that?” she demanded. “Who makes a decision like that?”

She added: “It’s a disturbing trend.”

Update. I see the next two paragraphs answered my question

Unsaid but implied was that the new Democratic White House was behind such a move to secularize the nation’s currency.

But the new coins – concerns over which apparently stemmed from an email chain letter widely circulated among conservatives – were commissioned by the Republican-led Congress in 2005 and approved by President Bush.

It’s fun to hate on Politico, but Jon Martin’s understated arch tone here is perfect.

Does this after ever happen to you? You step away from American politics and political media for a few days, you forget how nuts it is, then you get back into it and feel the stupidity and possibly doom all over again, as if for the first time?

Anyway, this song has been my happy place recently.

K-thug summarizes why no one should be rooting for FreedomWorks/Club For Growth/Beck/Palin in the Republican civil war:

And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it’s very bad for America.

To be clear, the Beck/Palin wing is ascendant right now and everyone should admit that. But, as amusing as it was, the Republican debacle in NY-23 should frighten everyone.

I just got an email from a guy named Dudley Sharp supporting Rick Perry’s decision to suspend the panel that was looking into the prosecution of Cameron Todd Willingham. The piece is pretty incoherent (link corrected)—there are no factual statements of any kind and it opens with an extended rant against the media that has almost nothing to do with this particular case.

Regardless of whether or not one supports the death penalty, the fact is that the prosecution’s case against Willingham was largely based on arguments that the fire in his house was caused by arson (rather than by, say, a space heater). These arguments were riddled with errors, and arson expert Craig Beyler concluded that the fire was probably caused by a space heater.

No criminal justice system is perfect, and, similarly, no expert’s judgement is perfect. But it is difficult for me to believe that a reasonable person could now be convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Willingham was guilty. It is, perhaps, not surprising that there are so many people out there who claim otherwise simply because they like the idea of putting the supposedly guilty to death. But it is shameful that these people appear on television so frequently.

Update. I accidentally screwed up the link to Dudley Sharp’s original article. So I am reposting it in its entirety below.

I hate to bring this up on a Friday night or, honestly, to go here at all, but we live in a country where carrying around pictures of the Dachau death camp to “protest” health care reform makes you an authentic representative of real America.

I wish there was a more pleasant way to say this. There isn’t.

Update. I recommend this clip, not for Tom Tancredo walking off, but because it’s a rare nationally televised example of a journalist doing what a journalist is supposed to do.

Bobo on independents:

Independents are herds of cats who find out what they think through a meandering process of discovery. Right now, independent voters are astonishingly volatile. Democrats did poorly in elections on Tuesday partly because of disappointed liberals who think that President Obama is moving too slowly, but mostly because of anxious suburban independents who think he is moving too fast. In Pennsylvania, there was an eight-point swing away from the Democrats among independents from a year ago. In New Jersey, there was a 12-point swing. In Virginia, there was a 13-point swing.

[....]

Independents support the party that seems most likely to establish a frame of stability and order, within which they can lead their lives. They can’t always articulate what they want, but they withdraw from any party that threatens turmoil and risk. As always, they’re looking for a safe pair of hands.

Nate Silver

Too often in “mainstream” political analysis, once it is pointed out that independents have swung in one or another direction, the analysis stops. The pundit inserts his own opinion about what caused the independent vote to shift (“Obama’s far-reaching proposals and mounting spending”, says the Washington Post), without citing any evidence. It’s a neat trick, and someone who isn’t paying attention is liable to conclude that the pundit has actually said something interesting.

But in New Jersey, there’s literally almost no evidence that the Democrats’ agenda had anything to do with Jon Corzine’s defeat. Voters who cited a national issue were more likely to vote for Corzine, and voters who cited a local one, the Republican Chris Christie.

The whole Bobo piece is a classic, from the jigsaw puzzle he played with as a kid to the “America moved to the right” meme. The Sulzbergers must be very proud of him.

The first rule of cabs is when you’re in one, ask your driver about foreign policy. When you’re in five, take an admittedly unscientific poll:

In an admittedly unscientific poll of the last five taxi rides I took with South Asian drivers, Abdullah and Mohamed claimed that the U.S. is ruining Afghanistan and making matters worse in Pakistan with drone strikes that are killing more civilians than terrorists. Najeeb and Ibrahim said it’s a travesty that the U.S. is considering reducing its commitment to Afghanistan after all the pledges to rebuild. They are convinced the Taliban will regain power in double time if the U.S doesn’t change things up soon. Ahmed wholeheartedly endorsed the McChrystal report and claimed he heard about it even before it was leaked.

If Pete Sessions escapes with anything less than being publicly stoned with fake dog poop, he should consider himself lucky:

Make no mistake about it, Pete Sessions and the NRCC must shoulder most of the blame and responsibility, with Michael Steele and the RNC coming right behind them. They did not listen. They would not listen. They posited themselves as the smartest people in the room.

And we’ve cleaned their clocks.

Now? We should be magnanimous in victory — and whether Hoffman wins or loses, as long as Dede Scozzafava loses it is a victory — but we should demand accountability, we should demand a reckoning, and we should demand a purge from the party establishment of those people most responsible for the Republican disaster in NY-23.

It goes without saying that whatever happens in NY-23 on Tuesday, it will be good news for conservatives. If teabagger Hoffman wins, it will signal a profound political realignment, the likes of which have not been seen since the days of Ronaldus Magnus. If the Democrat Owens wins, it will still be amazing that Hoffman came out of nowhere to make the race so close; this will probably be true no matter what the vote totals are, though there is also the possibility that Hoffman will lose by so much that it will turn out that he wasn’t a true conservative.

I have some serious question here. First off, what benefit does all the good news, here and elsewhere, actually bring conservatives? Is it really a smart tactic to claim that everything that happens is good news for your political movement? The only parallel I can think of is communism where good economic times for capitalist countries meant that capitalists were getting fat and lazy while bad economic times meant the workers were getting ready to rise up. Is this a fair comparison? And was it smart for communists to spin things that way?

Tapper? Todd? I’d like to know.

QUESTION: One more question — have you — do you any comment on Anita Dunn’s belief that Mao is one of her favorite political philosophers?

MR. BURTON: I caught some of that from the Glenn Beck show yesterday, but I don’t think anybody takes it — takes his attacks very seriously. We’re just — you know, we go day to day in this White House trying to ensure that people know the truth about the policies and programs and positions that the President holds, and we’re going to continue to do that.

At this point, I think it would be easier to cut on the middle man and just have Glenn Beck attend the press gaggles.

Someone helped Sara Magna crunch some numbers for her latest star turn at National Review:

We rely on petroleum for much more than just powering our vehicles: It is essential in everything from jet fuel to petrochemicals, plastics to fertilizers, pesticides to pharmaceuticals. Ac­cord­ing to the Energy Information Ad­min­is­tra­tion, our total domestic petroleum consumption last year was 19.5 million barrels per day (bpd). Motor gasoline and diesel fuel accounted for less than 13 million bpd of that. Meanwhile, we produced only 4.95 million bpd of domestic crude. In other words, even if we ran all our vehicles on something else (which won’t happen anytime soon), we would still have to depend on imported oil. And we’ll continue that dependence until we develop our own oil resources to their fullest extent.

[.....]

Alternative sources of energy are part of the answer, but only part. There’s no getting around the fact that we still need to “drill, baby, drill!” And if those in D.C. say otherwise, we need to tell them: “Yes, we can!”

BPD, bitches. Betcha didn’t know what that meant before.

The fact that is one of the top stories on “Politico click” right now makes me wonder if we’ll make it to 2012:

TMZ has a video of former Olympian and “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” reality star Bruce Jenner weighing in on President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize win.

And I say all of this as someone that was quite fond of the Bruce Jenner collection.