Been watching a couple episodes of Season One of the Sopranos, and I had forgotten how good Nancy Marchand’s character was (Tony’s mom).

Ron Radosh at PJ Media reacts to the Nobel prize news to… insist Bill Ayers will write Obama’s acceptance speech, just as he did his books.

Is it too much to hope that one day, beltway wankers like Chip Reid will realize that Bush Derangement Syndrome was just projection, and that they will begin to understand that the Republican party is not filled with rational actors.

I’m worse off than I was yesterday. Thank god for fisherman’s friend and Vicks vaporizers.

The nutters have now had 24 hours to react to the Nobel Prize. Will they pull themselves together and stop acting like jerks? Will one of the elder statesmen in the party tell them they can’t turn it up to 11 all the time without looking insane? Has anyone figured out in the GOP that while Obama may not deserve the Nobel (and I happen to be one who thinks it was premature and he definitely did not deserve it), the only person you can’t blame for getting the award is Obama?

We shall see.

Thank you, Jezebel, for a much-needed LOL…

Happy weekend, y’all!

I’m busy huffing the sweet menthol fumes from a Vicks vaporizer as I hack and cough up whatever I have now.

In light of the fact that it looks increasingly likely that a census worker was murdered in Kentucky a few weeks ago, this kind of rhetoric from a Congressman is really fucked up:

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) took to the airwaves on Fox today to warn viewers of the rapists and child molesters he says will be coming to their doors courtesy of the U.S. government next year.

Speaking on “Studio B” this afternoon, Chaffetz responded to recent Senate testimony from a GAO official who said it was “possible” that improper fingerprinting procedures at the Census Bureau led to the hiring of somewhere around 200 temporary census workers “with extensive criminal records.” The official said the bureau had dismissed 750 of 1,800 temporary workers it hired last year with criminal records after reviewing details of the workers’ cases.

This is just disgusting.

You all do see the next freak-out, don’t you? It is just painfully obvious to me.

They won’t like the charity Obama is going to give the Nobel money, and will probably spend a week “investigating” (translation- furiously googling while high on cheeto dust and mountain dew) the charity for terrorist or unAmerican links. God help anyone on the charity’s Board who has a French sounding name.

The Corner has kind of let me down today (not as nutty about the Nobel as I had hoped), but the Washington Post PostPartisan is a goldmine. This may be less funny than Ed Nick Gillespie’s star turn on Reason tv:

In a stunning announcement, Millard Fillmore Senior High School chose Shawn Rabinowitz, an incoming junior, as next year’s valedictorian. The award was made, the valedictorian committee announced from Norway of all places, on the basis of “Mr. Rabinowitz’s intention to ace every course and graduate number one in class.” In a prepared statement, young Shawn called the unprecedented award, “f—-ing awesome.”

At the same time, and amazingly enough, the Pulitzer Prize for Literature went to Sarah Palin for her stated intention “to read a book someday.” The former Alaska governor was described as “floored” by the award, announced in Stockholm by nude Swedes beating themselves with birch branches, and insisted that while she was very busy right now, someday she would make good on her vow to read a book. “You’ll see,” she said from her winter home in San Diego.

[....]

The sudden spate of awards based on intentions or plans or aspirations was attributed to the decision by the Norwegian Nobel committee to award the peace prize to Barack Obama for his efforts in nuclear disarmament and his outreach to the Muslim world. (The committee said next year it will honor a Muslim who reaches out to the non-Muslim world.) Some cynics suggested that Obama’s award was a bit premature since, among other things, a Middle East peace was as far away as ever and the world had yet to fully disarm. Nonetheless, the president seemed humbled by the news and the Norwegian committee packed for its trip to the United States, where it will appear on Dancing with the Stars.

I think it’s time for a contest: who can find the least funny attempt to satirize Obama’s Nobel Prize award?

Update. I defy anyone to top this attempted joke by Ann Althouse:

Update. So much fail from Stuffy.

Move over, Mouthpiece Theater. For every single one of you who has told me I have been too hard on the glibertarians at Reason, I present you the Fonzi of Freedom, Nick Gillespie, putting that Koch Foundation money to good use:

I’m surprised he took off the leather jacket. And I challenge you to find something as absurd as that on any wingnut blog.

On the upside, he wasn’t in a cheerleader outfit.

The Ruth Marcus take on the Obama Nobel is an instant Village classic:

This turns the award into something like pee-wee soccer: everybody wins for trying.

[....]

If the Nobel Committee ran out of worthy candidates, it might have engaged in a bit of recycling. Nothing wrong with a second prize to Aung San Suu Kyi (1991). And I suspect it did not actually do the president any favors. Obama’s cheerleaders don’t need the encouragement—and his critics will only seize on the prize to further lampoon the Obama-as-Messiah storyline.

It’s got it all, a lame joke based on her experiences as an upper class suburban parent, the good news for Republicans stuff, and an extremely half-assed effort at suggesting an alternative candidate (Aung San Suu Kyi is great, but no one has ever gotten the Peace Nobel twice). If you’re going to go with the someone-else-should-have-gotten-it shtick (which I don’t even disagree with), at least google a little to come up with a list instead of just going with a previous winner you’re familiar with.

Anyway, it would have just been good news for the Myanmar military junta if Aung San Suu Kyi had gotten it again.

If you didn’t know that Obama winning the Nobel prize was good news for Republicans, you haven’t been paying attention. Here’s Marc Ambinder:

At Slate, John Dickerson writes that the Nobel committee shouldn’t have awarded the prize to Obama, and Mickey Kaus urges Obama to turn it down. Kaus’s reasoning is politics: Obama’s narcissism problem—Kaus’s bolds—will be exacerbated.

This tracks with one argument I’m hearing and reading from Democrats and others who are skeptical of the prize: it will turn the volume and enthusiasm level all the way to the extreme end of the dial for conservatives—overmodulating at 110%; the resulting hyperpolarization will hurt Obama’s agenda. (Representative of this opinion: “I think it will feed not just conservative dislike but the growing concern of independents and elites, that he is a man of rhetoric, a work of imagination, but as of now an unaccomplished statesman. The smartest thing he could do is turn it down. It will backfire on him.’”)

His narcissism problem? Jesus fucking Christ, when did that become an official Villager meme?

Update. Yes, I know Kaus and Will have hitting the narcissism thing hard, but I didn’t know that it was an official Villager meme yet. Ambinder using the expression, without air quotes or anything like them, means that it’s now official.

Update. Great reader emails, like this one, are why I’m still a Sully addict, you haters be damned:

If I’m using Politico’s tortured logic, what the Nobel gang really did, basically, is give the prize to Polanski, right?

This stinks:

No, the network hasn’t started airing the show’s second season yet. Why—why do you ask?

Oh, that’s right. Because axing a returning scripted drama right before its season debut is highly unusual.

It’s sort of like shooting your racehorse in the starting gate.

The network has six produced episodes, which were originally scheduled to begin airing on Fridays starting Oct. 23. Instead NBC has shut down production on “Southland” and plans to keep “Dateline” in the slot.

Southland was, as far as I was concerned, the best show NBC had run since Boomtown. Which, of course, they killed prematurely, as well. You want good drama? Forget NBC. Nothing but the criminally unfunny Jay Leno at 10 o’clock.

Normally, I don’t think comparing your political opponents to terrorists is such a good idea. But I’m afraid that this, from the DNC, is accurate:

“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize,” DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse told POLITICO. “Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize – an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride – unless of course you are the Republican Party.

“The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It’s no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore – it’s an embarrassing label to claim,” Woodhouse said.

I honestly believe, at this point, that if, God forbid, the United States were hit with a major terrorist attack, there would be cheering in the office of the Weekly Standard.

Not sure why he was given it, other than as a repudiation of the Bush way of doing things, but man I am enjoying the freak-out from the usual suspects.

Allahpundit sounds like he is about to stroke out, Breitbart probably won’t speak for two weeks, and this is yet another opportunity for Republicans to show the entire country what assholes they can be.

I’m really looking forward to it. There should be some pretty quality stuff coming from the wingnuts who just 24 hours ago were getting themselves worked into a froth over the art in the White House.