Vid of the week is up.

Hilarious.

And never the twain shall meet:

Conservative talk show hosts and columnists have ridiculed an 11-year-old Washington state boy’s account of his mother’s death as a “sob story” exploited by the White House and congressional Democrats like a “kiddie shield” to defend their health care legislation.

Marcelas Owens , whose mother got sick, lost her job, lost her health insurance and died, said Thursday he’s taking the attacks from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin in stride.

“My mother always taught me they can have their own opinion but that doesn’t mean they are right,” Owens, who lives in Seattle , said in an interview.

Owens’ grandmother, Gina, who watched her daughter die, isn’t quite so generous.

“These are adults, and he is an 11-year-old boy who lost his mother,” Gina Owens said. “They should be ashamed.”

I don’t think you understand. Health care reform is Teh Sozialism, and so if you gotta trash an 11-year-old kid, hey - that’s what we mean by “compassionate conservatism!”

Haven’t been following the U.S.-Israel tiff as closely as I might be if a whole bunch of other things weren’t on the plate, but others have been - and Glenn Greenwald knocks it out of the park today:

But over the last week, as the U.S./Israel dispute has blossomed, the American Right generally has engaged in much conduct that they have always denounced as disloyal and treasonous.  Almost unanimously, they have adopted what Jeanne Kirkpatrick famously condemned as a “Blame America First” attitude, with super-patriots such as National Review and Charles Krauthammer, among many others, heaping all blame on America and siding with the foreign government.  According to these Arbiters of Patriotism, this dispute is The Fault of America; indeed, when it comes to American conflicts with Israel generally, as Kirkpatrick put it in her famous refrain:  “somehow, they always Blame America First.”

Along those lines, the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman yesterday formally condemned Gen. David Petraeus for warning that Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians increases anti-American hatred and endangers American troops due to a “perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel.”  Foxman attacked Petraeus’ remarks as ”dangerous and counterproductive” – and, indeed, they are:  “dangerous and counterproductive,” that is, for those (like Foxman and the neocon Right) who want the U.S. to blindly support Israeli actions even when doing so directly harms American interests.  As Andrew Bacevich explained in Salon yesterday, the fact that Petraeus has now linked U.S. support for Israel to harm to U.S. interests will make it impossible for Israel-centric neocons to stigmatize that linkage ever again, and is thus “likely to discomfit those Americans committed to the proposition that the United States and Israel face the same threats and are bound together by identical interests.”  Isn’t it Barack Obama’s overriding duty as Commander-in-Chief to listen to his military commanders and take aggressive action against anything which undermines America’s war effort and Endangers the Troops — including Israel’s settlement expansions?

Beyond that, wasn’t it only recently that attacking Gen. David Petraeus the way the ADL has done was deemed so unpatriotic that it merited formal, bipartisan Congressional condemnation?  As Joan Walsh proposed yesterday, shouldn’t Congress now be preparing to condemn the ADL and Foxman for their attack on Petraeus, launched at him as he commands brave American men and women in harm’s way, fighting for our country?  After all, Petraeus is responsible for the safety of those troops and is trying to alert government leaders about policies which endanger those troops and undermine the American war effort.  What kind of person would attack Gen. Petreaus for doing that, all in the name of serving the interests of a foreign government?

Interesting - concluding that China could even devalue its currency:

Has the Chinese export sector become hostage to WalMartization, the ability of powerful retailers to squeeze vendor profit margins? Reader Michael Q called our attention to a key remark in a Wall Street Journal story:

Vice Commerce Minister Zhong Shan, in an exclusive interview Thursday ahead of a visit to the U.S., said that the profit margin on many Chinese export goods was less than 2%.

Most exporters absorbed the appreciation in the value of the yuan that followed its revaluation in 2005 by boosting innovation and cutting costs, but many were forced to close, he said. A further rise in the currency’s value would endanger more exporters’ survival, which China can’t afford, he said.

As Michael Q, who is an equity analyst, noted:

2% margins on export-oriented businesses is not representative of any sort of real competitive advantage. A real competitive advantage when it comes to exporting would show double-digits profit margins. This whole sector is hanging by a thread…nearly none of the activity China has engaged in since the downturn is secular or self-sustaining.

Yves here. The implications for China are serious. First, this says that it perceives it has no room to revalue the RMB upwards. Not only are exporters politically powerful, but on a more mundane level, the regime has achieved social cohesion through a promise of rising prosperity. Too much unemployment would undermine the legitimacy of the governing classes.

But second, it also implies China cannot even tolerate much inflation. Remember, inflation will push up the price of good in local currency terms, which in a fixed peg currency regime, translates directly into price increases. Price increases from a country whose selling proposition is cheap prices would lead importers to look for substitutes in other emerging economies. A 2% margin not only says manufacturers have no room to cut prices, it also says they cannot afford much in the way of lost revenue.

This dynamic makes the idea floated on the blog earlier, that China might devalue the RMB, less radical than it might seem.

Sometimes I actually like what Peggy Noonan has to say. Other times she seems to have spent too long marinating in the Kool-Aid - like today:

Excuse me, but it is embarrassing—really, embarrassing to our country—that the president of the United States has again put off a state visit to Australia and Indonesia because he’s having trouble passing a piece of domestic legislation he’s been promising for a year will be passed next week. What an air of chaos this signals to the world. And to do this to Australia of all countries, a nation that has always had America’s back and been America’s friend.

How bush league, how undisciplined, how kid’s stuff.

Really. Passing what may be the most important piece of legislation since Medicare - something Democratic administrations have sought since the days of FDR - is “kid’s stuff?”

Visiting Indonesia is more important?

What has been interesting about this whole process is the degree to which Republicans have feigned OUTRAGE over the whole issue of process. That there might be “sweeteners” in the bill to get some legislators to vote for it - how outrageous. How totally unprecedented. Right?

And so it ends, with a health-care vote expected this weekend. I wonder at what point the administration will realize it wasn’t worth it—worth the discord, worth the diminution in popularity and prestige, worth the deepening of the great divide. What has been lost is so vivid, what has been gained so amorphous, blurry and likely illusory. Memo to future presidents: Never stake your entire survival on the painful passing of a bad bill.

The great myth here - one that Noonan practically breaks into a sweat trying to perpetrate - is that if the bill had been just a little bit better, more “bipartisan,” then it wouldn’t have been so divisive.

That’s a lie and she knows it.

There was no way the Republican caucus was going to vote for anything Obama proposed. Anything. Tort reform, every single GOP talking point could have been in it - and the GOP still would have locked arms and refused to go along with it.

Surely Noonan knows this. So why does she try to pretend otherwise? Because it’s too much for her to admit that the “great divide” will exist regardless of what Obama does. The first tea party rallies were taking place mere days after Obama had assumed the presidency.

The GOP opposes him not based on what he has or hasn’t done, but on the basis of who he is - a Democratic president. Period. Again, Noonan knows this.

Obama hasn’t “staked his survival” on this bill. Indeed - he will survive specifically because it’s passed, because he prevailed over the opposition. Especially these last few weeks, he fought for it - showed a little leadership rather than stepping back and remaining aloof, which Noonan apparently thinks would have been the better course.

Well, of course she thinks that. It would have failed had Obama done that.

Boehner standing up for the poor, oppressed bankers. Why am I not surprised.

Representative John Boehner, the Republican leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, spoke to bankers at a conference on Wednesday and urged them: “Don’t let those little punk staffers take advantage of you and stand up for yourselves.”

Boehner told bankers at the conference that even if the Senate produces a reform bill in the next few weeks, it could take a year to merge it with a bill approved by the House in December. That measure passed with no Republican votes.

Republicans, see, don’t think the banking industry needs to be reformed. Because the financial crisis is all the fault of government and the little people who borrowed more than they could afford. The bankers had nothing to do with it!

I love the smell of desperation in the morning.

Although I suppose it’s now the middle of the afternoon…

The Congressional Budget Office estimate on the Dems’ health care plan is out, and while Drudge, et al, is touting the overall cost - $940 billion - the CBO is saying the plan will reduce the deficit by $138 billion over 10 years - and by up to $1.2 trillion in the following decade.

That’s the cover a lot of Congressional Democrats needed. Dennis Kucinich is now not only voting for the bill - he’s working to get others in the fold.

It looks like this may indeed happen.

And check this out:

Conservative support remains way low. But check out the liberal and moderate support - trending upward.

Teabag nation explodes if this thing passes. I might have to watch Beck’s show Monday if it does - just to see him cry.

When you read something like this, your first response is: Settle down, tinfoil hat.

And then you realize that the author is actually this guy. Not exactly a freak. And then you think: Er… uh-oh.

We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy. …

<snip>

We are living through one of civilization’s great seismic reversals. The ideology of globalization, like all “inevitable” utopian visions, is being exposed as a fraud. The power elite, perplexed and confused, clings to the disastrous principles of globalization and its outdated language to mask the looming political and economic vacuum. The absurd idea that the marketplace alone should determine economic and political constructs led industrial nations to sacrifice other areas of human importance – from working conditions, to taxation, to child labor, to hunger, to health and pollution – on the altar of free trade. It left the world’s poor worse off and the United States with the largest deficits – which can never be repaid – in human history. The massive bailouts, stimulus packages, giveaways and short-term debt, along with imperial wars we can no longer afford, will leave the United States struggling to finance nearly $5 trillion in debt this year. This will require Washington to auction off about $96 billion in debt a week. Once China and the oil-rich states walk away from our debt, which one day has to happen, the Federal Reserve will become the buyer of last resort. The Fed has printed perhaps as much as two trillion new dollars in the last two years, and buying this much new debt will see it, in effect, print trillions more. This is when inflation, and most likely hyperinflation, will turn the dollar into junk. And at that point the entire system breaks down.

All traditional standards and beliefs are shattered in a severe economic crisis. The moral order is turned upside down. The honest and industrious are wiped out while the gangsters, profiteers and speculators walk away with millions. The elite will retreat, as Naomi Klein has written in The Shock Doctrine, into gated communities where they will have access to services, food, amenities and security denied to the rest of us. We will begin a period in human history when there will be only masters and serfs. The corporate forces, which will seek to make an alliance with the radical Christian right and other extremists, will use fear, chaos, the rage at the ruling elites and the specter of left-wing dissent and terrorism to impose draconian controls to ruthlessly extinguish opposition movements. And while they do it, they will be waving the American flag, chanting patriotic slogans, promising law and order and clutching the Christian cross. Totalitarianism, George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith but an age of schizophrenia. “A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,” Orwell wrote. “That is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” Our elites have used fraud. Force is all they have left.

Via Bryan R: The children by the millions weep for Alex Chilton, dead at 59:

The Memphis-born Chilton rose to prominence at age 16 when his gruff vocals powered the massive Box Tops hit “The Letter,” as well as “Cry Like a Baby” and “Neon Rainbow.”

After the Box Tops broke up in 1970, Chilton had a brief solo run in New York before returning to Memphis. He soon joined forces with a group of Anglo-pop-obsessed musicians — fellow songwriter/guitarist Chris Bell, bassist Andy Hummel and drummer Jody Stephens — to form Big Star.

The group became the flagship act for Ardent’s Stax-distributed label. Big Star’s 1972 debut album, #1 Record, met with critical acclaim but poor sales.

The group briefly disbanded, but reunited without Bell to record the album Radio City. Released in 1974, the second album suffered a similar fate, plagued by Stax’s distribution woes.

The group made one more album, Third/Sister Lovers, with just Chilton and Stephens — and it, too, was a minor masterpiece. Darker and more complex than the band’s previous pop-oriented material, it remained unreleased for several years.

In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine named all three Big Star albums to its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

“It’s a fork in the road that a lot of different bands stemmed from,” said Jeff Powell, a respected local producer who worked on some of Chilton’s records. “If you’re drawing a family tree of American music, they’re definitely a branch.”

A big one, too.

Late ’80s/early ’90s and I was beginning to get the idea that I’d never hear the music I really wanted to hear by listening to pop radio. I’d done the classic rock radio thing, was into the Dead, but found myself gravitating towards the more tuneful, guitar pop stuff - Badfinger, for example. Home in Lancaster for a long weekend, I got to talking about it with an old buddy, E., who said - have you ever listened to any Big Star?

Big who? No. Knew the Replacements’ “Alex Chilton” by then, didn’t realize the line “I never travel far/without a little Big Star” referred to the band. So I went and picked up the two-fer, the first two Big Star albums on one disc.

Jeebus.

Here were classic rock arrangements married to pop sensibility; Beatlesque, absolutely, but particularly on the second album, Radio City, looser; more chaotic. Heartbreakingly beautiful in some spots; powerful and raucous elsewhere.

Was never much of a fan of the third album Third/Sister Lovers, too drug-fueled and self-indulgent for my tastes, though there are some shining moments. But those first two albums - 20 years after I was first exposed to them, nearly 40 years since they were recorded - remain some of the most honest, eubullient, sublime rock and roll I’ve ever heard. And a lot of people, a lot of musicians, feel the same way. If you like the Beatles, if you like Badfinger, if you like that sound and have never listened to Big Star - do. You won’t be disappointed, I guarantee it.

Drudge bannering this one today: It’s starting: Regional Walgreens says no new Medicaid:

Effective April 16, Walgreens drugstores across the state won’t take any new Medicaid patients, saying that filling their prescriptions is a money-losing proposition — the latest development in an ongoing dispute over Medicaid reimbursement.

The company, which operates 121 stores in the state, will continue filling Medicaid prescriptions for current patients.

In a news release, Walgreens said its decision to not take new Medicaid patients stemmed from a “continued reduction in reimbursement” under the state’s Medicaid program, which reimburses it at less than the break-even point for 95 percent of brand-name medications dispensed to Medicaid patents.

Walgreens follows Bartell Drugs, which stopped taking new Medicaid patients last month at all 57 of its stores in Washington, though it still fills Medicaid prescriptions for existing customers at all but 15 of those stores.

Easy answer for this one. Let’s allow the reimportation of drugs from Canada. That’s next on the radar screen, and should be: Canada has placed controls on the price of drugs which we here in the grand old capitalist U.S. of A. will never do! Fine - so give consumers the option of buying their drugs from Teh Socialism for less if they like. Canadian pharmacies make a profit, American consumers get the medications they need for less.

Great call from Steve Benen:

MAJOR LEGISLATIVE BREAKTHROUGHS ARE ALWAYS CONTROVERSIAL…. Americans now consider programs like Medicare bedrocks of our society, but it was not always thus.

Dem leadership staff is highlighting a series of numbers from 1962 on President John F. Kennedy’s proposal. In July of that year, a Gallup poll found 28% in favor, 24% viewing it unfavorably, and a sizable 33% with no opinion on it — showing an evenly divided public.

A month later, after JFK’s proposal went down, an Opinion Research Corporation poll found 44 percent said it should have been passed, while 37% supported its defeat — also showing an evenly divided public.

Also in that poll, a majority, 54%, said it was a serious problem that “government medical insurance for the aged would be a big step toward socialized medicine.”

The point, as Greg Sargent emphasized, is that “passing dramatic, history-making reform in the face of intense organized opposition has never been politically easy.”

Risk-averse lawmakers never want to hear this, but it takes some courage.

If it’s any consolation to wavering Dems, progressive policymakers are always vindicated by history.

In 1935, Republican opponents of Social Security insisted that Roosevelt’s “socialistic” plan would, among other things, force all Americans to wear dog tags. Not quite a half-century ago, conservative critics of Medicare seriously argued, in public, that the law would empower bureaucrats to dictate where physicians could practice medicine, and open the door to government control over where all Americans were allowed to live. Around the same time, many opponents of the Civil Rights Act believed the fabric of America was being torn apart by the legislation.

Right-wing arguments of today are absurd, but they are branches on a large and ridiculous tree.

Emphasis added. You know, Social Security was passed - when do I get my dog tag?

Oh, right. This time.

Via David Kurtz over at TPM, check out this video. Especially check out around the :50 second mark, where the guy with the sign saying he has Parkinson’s sits down in front of the Tea Partyers.

Pictures really are worth thousands of words. We are going to have a field day with this in our own vid later on this week.

Wow. Tough stuff:

To close a deficit that he asserted was approaching $11 billion, Governor Christie called for the layoffs of 1,300 state workers, closings of state psychiatric institutions, an $820 million cut in aid to public schools, and nearly a half-billion dollars less in aid to towns and cities. He also suspended until May 2011 a popular property-tax rebate program, breaking one of his own campaign promises.

Democrats were quick to characterize Mr. Christie’s proposal as falling disproportionately on the backs of the middle class, the poor, the elderly, schoolchildren, college students and inner-city residents, while leaving largely unscathed the wealthy and most businesses.

But Mr. Christie was ready for that line of attack.

“Today, we are fulfilling the promise of a smaller government that lives within its means,” he said at a joint legislative session here. “The defenders of the status quo have already begun to yell and scream. They will try to demonize me. They will seek to divide us rather than unite us. But even they know in their hearts, if not yet in their minds — it is time for a change.”

But consider the “change.”

Look - as state after state, municipality after municipality and the federal government itself continue to confront these budgetary issues, the choice is always going to be between raising taxes and funding programs/pensions/whatever, or slashing slashing slashing - and there’s simply no way you don’t hurt people in the process.

Well sure, taxes “hurt” people too. But we seem to have this idea in this country that taxes must not be raised, ever! Good God, tax rates were significantly higher back in what Glenn Beck likes to think of as the “good old days” - and had we not slashed taxes to the extent we have, we might have more public prosperity now, rather than the isolated private prosperity that you, probably, have not personally shared in, or rather only if you put most of it on your credit cards.

So consider what Christie is doing. 1,300 state workers laid off! Perhaps they’re all the conservative stereotype of the lazy bureaucrat; but perhaps, as a result, state government actually becomes less capable, less efficient.

If state psychiatric institutions are closed, where do those patients go?

The cuts to schools include reductions in subsidized school breakfasts. This means, simply, that a lot of kids are going to go hungry - as such meals are often the only good one some kids get each day.

And his school budget cuts comprise 7 percent of the total school funding. You know, local school boards are always complaining that Harrisburg doesn’t adequately fund them - consider what happens if they had to instead swallow a 7 percent cut.

Ah, but true to his Republicanism, Christie also provides this:

The battle to ensue is likely to shape up around the so-called millionaire’s tax, a one-year income-tax surcharge on people making more than $400,000 that Mr. Christie vowed not to renew. (Democrats allowed it to lapse in December.) If that surcharge were renewed, it would bring in close to $1 billion.

In his speech, Mr. Christie affirmed his stance on the issue, saying New Jersey’s tax burden was already the nation’s costliest. “Mark my words today: If a tax increase is sent to my desk, I will veto it,” he said.

Because the rich are suffering too! Sure, their kids don’t rely on those lunches, they can probably afford private psychiatric institutions for their loved ones; but why should any special obligation fall upon them?

That’s kind of the key question facing the nation now: You either think great wealth implies a greater responsibility to society as a whole if you don’t. And if you don’t, then the broader society is impoverished. That’s just the way it is - as more and more of us will soon be finding out.

But don’t worry - no one will skimp on the cops when those have-nots start expressing their displeasure, right?

Ruh-roh:

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History is opening a new permanent exhibit exploring human evolution over 6 million years.

The nearly $21 million Hall of Human Origins opens Wednesday. It will include more than 285 fossils and artifacts, including the only Neanderthal skeleton in the United States.

Curator Rick Potts says the exhibit tracks major milestones of human development, including when we started walking upright and speaking. He says the science can be compatible with religious perspectives.

Hm, I think those with really strong religious perspectives will disagree with that.

Personally, I think they should include “both sides” of the debate. You know, like maybe a diorama of Noah loading a Tyrannosaurus Rex onto the ark.

Over the river in New Jersey, and soon to be coming to a Keystone State near you:

Thomas Tevlin had worked some solid jobs — salesman for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, driver for a uniform company — when he and his wife had twins.

As the main breadwinner for a family of seven, Tevlin knew something had to change. So in 1965 he took a 15 percent pay cut to become a Maplewood firefighter.

“I took the job for the benefits, because if you have that many people to look out for, you need your benefits,” he said. Tevlin augmented his salary by taking a second job as an encyclopedia salesman. It was enough for him and wife Carolyn to forge a lifestyle she jokingly calls that of “lower-middle-class, working-class slobs.”

Tevlin, 74, is long retired, but he now finds the very benefits package that wooed him into firefighting 45 years ago is facing a crescendo of criticism.

On Tuesday Gov. Chris Christie will unveil his plan to close an $11 billion gap in the state budget — a plan likely to include skipping a $3 billion payment to the pension fund.

Angry finger-pointing swirls as Trenton debates a long-term fix for making good on its obligation to not just teachers, firefighters and police officers, but dispatchers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and custodians.

While very little of that budget debate has to do with today’s pensioners — for the most part, their benefits are locked in by contracts — it has placed their personal finances in the glare of a withering spotlight. Now in their golden years, they find themselves the target of a backlash.

They, in return, are angry and aggrieved.

In internet postings and on talk-radio shows, government workers are being called “greedy” and “bloodsuckers.” Commenting on the teachers union, one writer called its members “the worst human beings on the face of the planet.” Criticizing the police, another wrote, “The typical criminal could never steal what these cops are walking out the front door with.”

As New Jersey’s unemployment hovers at 10 percent and 401(k)s are dented by stock-market losses, retired public workers find themselves on the receiving end of “pension envy.”

We’re already seeing the bit about overpaid teachers - elsewhere on this board! - though we haven’t heard too much about the cops yet, and I suspect we won’t - we’ll bash teachers and faceless “bureaucrats” to high heaven before your average local deficit hawk ever dreams of criticizing the boys in blue.

But I had a prof at Millersville tell me last fall that their pension is underfunded and the legislature/public “will make good on this obligation.” Uh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

Then again, a pissed-off and ripped off civil service is a helluva political constituency for someone. And it ain’t the party/movement telling them they’re too greedy asking for what they’d been promised.

Interesting. Obama is booked for an interview on Fox News, to be broadcast tomorrow:

President Obama will sit down with Fox News’ Bret Baier Wednesday afternoon, for an interview that will air at 6 p.m. ET.

Baier, who hosts Special Report, will interview the president for the full hour of his show.

According to Baier:

This is a real opportunity to try to get some firm answers from President Obama on lingering questions about specifics in the health care legislation, the process Democrats are using to try to pass it, and the politics of its passage. And it’s an opportunity to try to pin the president down on a few other hot topics. We welcome the opportunity and think it will be a benefit to our viewers.

This is actually good timing for Obama to do this. He likely believes, and I think he’s right, that a reasonable-sounding President will be able to appeal to a certain segment of the Fox audience that is now opposed to his health care reform plan. Not many, obviously; but frankly I’m surprised Fox would give him the air time at this critical juncture, in that Fox News itself seems heavily invested in defeating the proposal.

So Obama appeals to their journalistic instincts at a time when it will be most detrimental to Fox’s partisan instincts. Pretty shrewd.

Oh brother:

Today on ABC’s Topline, former top aide to President Bush Karl Rove provided one of the more bizarre attacks on the Obama administration regarding the recent U.S.-Israeli diplomatic spat, claiming that the cause of the dispute arose because White House aides didn’t do “their homework in advance.” If they had, Rove said, they wouldn’t “get caught by surprises like this.” Rove did not explain however, how doing more homework would have prevented a decision that was made by the Israeli government. But as another example of the alleged sluggish work ethic of White House staffers, Rove cited the administration’s handling of the Honduran military coup, which, ironically, he described in terms that one might ascribe to his former boss:

ROVE: We saw it in Honduras. Where rather than monitoring the situation, they [the Obama administration] let a cowboy president try to act in an extra-constitutional way to violate a fundamental principle in the Constitution, all without having done their homework in advance.

Emphasis added. Hmmm… cowboy president…. extra-constitutional… without doing homework in advance.

It’ll come to me… wait it has.

And the hell of it is - all across America the wingers with a memory that only goes back to November 2008 hear this, and give themselves whiplash nodding in agreement.

And there you go:

Since Glenn Beck called President Obama a “racist” with “a deep-seated hatred for white people, or white culture” in July 2009, a campaign initiated by Color of Change has compelled “more than 200 companies” to join a boycott of Beck’s Fox News show. In August, when just 33 companies had left the program, Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti told the AP that the network wasn’t losing any revenue from the boycott because the companies had “simply requested the ads be moved elsewhere.” But the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reports today that Apple, along with a “handful” of other advertisers, have “abandoned” the entire network:

More than 200 companies have joined a boycott of Beck’s program, making it difficult for Fox to sell ads. The time has instead been sold to smaller firms offering such products as Kaopectate, Carbonite, 1-800-PetMeds and Goldline International. A handful of advertisers, such as Apple, have abandoned Fox altogether. Network executives say they believe they could charge higher rates if the host were more widely acceptable to advertisers.

Like the idea that one of the premier tech firms, Apple, has bailed entirely on Fox. But it makes sense - Fox skews older (Kaopectate!); Apple skews younger. Glenn Beck fans are most likely still trying to figure out their Walkman. And O’Reilly’s viewers are searching for their 78 rpm records.

Good stuff. Via John Cole, we see Ross Douthat opining in the NYT that the movie “Green Zone” just isn’t handled in a fair and balanced manner, with sufficient appreciation of the Iraq wars’ complexities (!) -  prompting Larison to explode:

Yes, the problem might be that we do not have artists capable of rendering contemporary architects of a war of aggression that was based on shoddy intelligence, ideological fervor and deceit in a sufficiently subtle, even-handed manner. If only Hollywood were better at portraying the depth and complexity of people who unleashed hell on a nation of 24 million people out of an absurd fear of a non-existent threat! Life is so unfair to warmongers, is it not? Then again, the reason our debates are so poisonous and our nation so divided might have something to do with the existence of utterly unaccountable members of the political class that can launch such a war, suffer no real consequences, and then reliably expect to be defended as “decent” and “well-intentioned” people who made understandable mistakes. The unfortunate truth of our existence is that villains do not have to come out of central casting for comic book movies. They are ordinary, “decent” people who commit grave errors and terrible crimes for any number of reasons. Many great evils have found their origins in a group’s belief that they were doing the right thing and were therefore entitled and permitted to use extraordinary means.

Because we’re exceptional, see. And that did indeed mean we were entitled. Still does - right?