We’re simply doomed as a nation:

Alexios Marakis, a Greek Orthodox priest visiting the U.S., got lost in Tampa and tried to stop and ask directions from Marine reservist Jasen D. Bruce. But instead of offering help, “Bruce struck the priest on the head with a tire iron.” The reservist believed Marakis, who spoke limited English, was an Arab terrorist. Bruce chased the priest for three blocks, “and even called 911 to say that an Arabic man tried to rob him.”

Did you all see David Horowitz calling for General Casey’s head the other day for not attacking Muslim soldiers after the Ft. Hood shootings?

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.

A friend just emailed me a YouTube of “Lovely Day”; I was going go to with that and write “may the headwinds be always at your back”. But this is by far the finest Bill Withers video on the internets.

Once upon a time, the conventional wisdom was that “all politics is local.” Now, it’s conservative heterodoxy to, suggest, as Larison does, that

defeating Crist will be a hollow victory so long as the movement conservative alternative to the Crists of the party seems increasingly pre-packaged and crafted by national activists who are oblivious to and uninterested in local conditions around the country.

Granted, Tip was not a conservative, obviously. So I ask: have conservatives always though that some broad, vague, Randian, Burkean vision superseded any and all local, “parochial” issues? Or is this something new?

Update. Some point out that conservatives used to talk a lot about “federalism”. I always thought that people just talk about states’ rights when their party has no power at the federal level. So it seems strange to focus on a top-down, unified national message when you are completely out of power at the national level.

But maybe that is the central lesson here, that despite the fact that there are few Republican elected officials in Washington, the city is still wired for Republican control in a way that makes conservatives act as if they were in power. When the Politico says you’ve got a headwind at your back, the pundits say it’s a center-right nation, and you’re enjoying a Balzian resurgence , why not run cookie cutter conservatives in every district in the country? The conservative philosophy has never failed and whatever happens will be some form of good news anyway.

A reminder that the Republicans aren’t just jerks, they are also not very bright.

The closing of this WaPo piece on the NY-23 affair really sums it all up:

Scozzafava, who was stripped of her Republican leadership position in the New York State Assembly on Monday, says she has no regrets and even leaves open the possibility of running for the seat again as a Republican. She sees herself as a champion of local expertise over ideological purity.

“How can Sarah Palin come out and endorse someone who can’t answer some basic questions,” Scozzafava asked. “Do these people even know who they are endorsing?”

Those conservative forces now descend on Florida, where former House speaker Marco Rubio, who on Monday received the endorsement of the Club for Growth, might shove aside centrist Gov. Charlie Crist, who was once on John McCain’s short list for running mate. And Scozzafava has a warning.

“There is a lot of us who consider ourselves Republicans, of the Party of Lincoln,” she said, her face now flush. “If they don’t want us with them, we’re going to work against them.”

The funny thing about all of this is that no matter how bad all their ideas are, no matter how disastrous their governance has been, no matter how many horrible things they have done to the economy and this country, what really is killing the Republican party is that deep down, they are just complete assholes. You see it in the way they treat women, you see it in the way they treat minorities, you see it in the way they treat homosexuals, you see it in the way they treat anyone who is not a white Christian, and you see it in the way they treat anyone who disagrees with them slightly about anything. They just have no respect for anyone, and it shows. People don’t like to be treated like crap, and grown-ups don’t want to be associated with people who yell “You lie” or scream “socialism” or “Hitler” or accuse you of being a terrorist whenever they don’t get their way.

If you read the Corner or the Weekly Standard, or listen to any talk radio or any of the mouth breathers on Fox, or read any right-wing blogs, you will instantly know what I am talking about. You can’t help but notice that they are just loudmouthed jerks, stubborn bully boys, and insensitive and insecure cads. James Wolcott once wrote that Eric Cantor looked like the “pricky proprietor of the Jerk Store,” and that could be applied to the majority of the prominent Republicans out there. I guess that should be suspected from a movement in which the only thoughts are “Fuck you, I got mine.”

Seriously, how much time would it have taken for Hoffman to call Scozzafava after she withdrew from the race? But he didn’t, because he was a petty wingnut outsider thrust onto the scene by teabaggers and national loudmouths, and the people who were nice to her got the endorsement and the win. There is a lesson here.

Al Gore said he invented the internet, the Clinton people trashed the White House before the Dubya moved in, etc. (Krugman via Atrios):

There’s a persistent delusion, on the part of many pundits, to the effect that we’re actually having a rational political discussion in this country. But we aren’t. The proposition that the Community Reinvestment Act caused all the bad stuff, because government forced helpless bankers into lending to Those People, has been refuted up, down, and sideways. The vast bulk of subprime lending came from institutions not subject to the CRA. Commercial real estate lending, which was mainly lending to rich white developers, not you-know-who, is in much worse shape than subprime home lending. Etc., etc.

But in Dick Armey’s world, in fact on the right as a whole, the affirmative-action-made-them-do-it doctrine isn’t even seen as a hypothesis. It’s just a fact, something everyone knows.

It’s often said that journalism is the first draft of history. I hope the final copy has better fact checking.

RedKitten, Cape Breton.

Royston Vasey, Lake Wairarapa At Dawn.

Email me a link to your one or two favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put up favorites in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one.

Gimme a break:

Republicans Monday had new hope that they could influence health care deliberations — influence that’s so far eluded them — as the debate moves to the Senate, where the rules and the politics can work to their advantage.

Some Republicans are trying to win Democratic support for more help for small business, different medical malpractice policies and changes in how the health care overhaul would be funded.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, one of three GOP senators to vote for the Democratic-authored economic stimulus plan earlier this year, said moderates from both parties are discussing potential areas of agreement.

The odds are still long, and probably insurmountable, against the Senate’s 40 Republicans having significant input into the biggest decisions, notably mandates on employers and individuals and the plan’s funding. They continue to complain that, as Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., put it, the bill “is being drafted behind closed doors.”

You want to have some say in the bill? Become constructive negotiating partners. Show that there is some reasonable expectation that you will vote for the bill if your changes are implemented. Offer amendments designed to make the bill better, not tank it. Slap down idiots like Palin and McCaughey and Bachmann who are running around lying and screaming about death panels. Stop holding rallies on the Capitol steps waving pictures of emaciated corpses from Dachau. You worried about cost containment- stop doing everything you can to protect profits for your big insurance buddies. Until then, stfu.

(via)

Tuesday is trash day around here, so I was gathering up all the trash to take it outside for the garbagemen. Afterwards, I went in and replaced the garbage bag in the kitchen, and as I grabbed the box of trash bags, I saw the Hefty logo and immediately said HEFTY HEFTY HEFTY as I remembered an ad campaign they had years ago:

HEFTY HEFTY HEFTY! For those of you too young to remember, there was a whole string of these commercials.

What other commercials stand out years later for you? I also remember the Bud Light “YES I AM” series, and obviously the Wendy’s “Where’s the beef” group, but what others are there?

I love stuff like this, from TalkingPointsMemo:

Today in fun word choice, from Politico: “Few political observers or elected officials doubt that an energized GOP has a headwind at its back.”

Silver Spring, Md.: I wonder if you could state the evidence for your premise of a “Republican resurgence”. I see a Virginia that did what it’s done since 1977 (vote against the party in the White House) in the presence of an epically bad Democratic candidate… a governor in New Jersey who was wildly unpopular since even before the “2008 debacle” (your baseline)... and – oh yes – a district in NY that went Democratic for the first time since the White House has featured a bath tub. With two unsurprising (from the vantage point of a year ago) gubernatorial results and one historical flip toward the Dems in NY, isn’t it as valid to call last Tuesday a further shift leftward?

Dan Balz: I don’t think I used the word “resurgence” in the piece that ran on Sunday.

The chat itself had been titled “The Republican Resurgence.”

Update. Because I’m a nice person, I emailed the Politico reporter who made the headwind/tailwind mistake to tell him to fix it. But I got this reply: “I will be out of the office on Tuesday, November 10.” So this should be up there most of the day.

28-10, Steelers over pretenders.

One of the better halves of football in recent memory.

By popular request:

All I had to do was put the towel down, and he knew what to do. I’ve had that towel since the late 80’s, I think.

*** Update ***

I will say it again- I used to hate Gruden as a coach, but hands down, he is the best football color guy out there. This MNF crew is as good as the old Vern Lundquist/TNT crew from the early 90’s.

The fact that this is a major media story says a lot:

The Washington Times has announced major changes at the paper this morning, with three top executives gone in the process.

[....]

There’s also been speculation that changes at the Times could be associated with last month’s handover of power in the Unification Church, the paper’s owner. The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who turns 90 in January, handed over power to his three sons.

Yes, the Moonie Times has lower circulation numbers than the Syracuse Post-Standard, but you wouldn’t know that to see how often its “reporters” turn up on the liberal cable news networks.

Remember the Whitey tape? And the bare arms? And then remember when Michelle Obama’s approval ratings were “higher than her husband’s”? Well, suck on this, Obamabots.

Michelle Obama’s poll numbers slide

This never happened with Laura Bush. And that’s why George W had the moral authority to lead the country while Obama never will.