It’s the Stupidity, Stupid
By David Sirota —
What could cause the intensifying politics of free-market fundamentalism at the very historical moment that proves the failure of such an ideology? Two new academic studies suggest all roads lead to ignorance

Frank Rich: The Grand Old Plot Against the Tea Party Whatever Tuesday’s results, this much is certain: The Tea Party’s hopes for actually affecting change in Washington will start being dashed the morning after.

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear
Jon Stewart - Moment of Sincerity
www.comedycentral.com
Rally to Restore Sainty and/or Fear The Daily Show The Colbert Report

The Sore Winners: Will America's Super Minority Sink Us All?
by Tom Junod
Republicans, who once decried the rise of identity politics, now practice it so relentlessly, so ruthlessly, and above all so successfully that they've created a beleaguered minority where only a cosseted majority stood before. It is a kind of super minority, its material well-being encroached upon by the swelling ranks of the shiftless poor and its spiritual well-being encroached upon by shadowy "elites" whose figurehead is in the White House.
*

Paul Krugman: Divided We Fail The last time Republicans controlled Congress while a Democrat lived in the White House was the period from the beginning of 1995 to the end of 2000. And people remember that era as a good time, a time of rapid job creation and responsible budgets. Can we hope for a similar experience now?
No, we can’t. This is going to be terrible.

Thugs on the Right By Joe Conason —
Sometimes tea party ideologues are described as libertarians, but the behavior of their leading candidates betrays an authoritarian streak just beneath all the sonorous rhetoric.

The Tea Party Test Case By David Sirota —
The only way to objectively define the tea party is to find a test case. And thanks to Wisconsin’s Senate race, we have exactly that.

The Scandal of 2010 By E.J. Dionne, Jr. —
If you travel any place where there is a contested race for the House or Senate, you are bombarded with attack ads, almost all against Democrats, paid for by groups that do not have to reveal where their money comes from.
*

Fear of [Muslims] Flying
by J. Barrett Wolf

There isn't any doctrine to this simple equation... In the last decade there was one major terrorist attack on American soil, and it being used to advance the profiling, the racism and the hatred we see in New York, in Murfreesboro, TN and all across America.

One attack. By radical terrorists... But there are 1.6 BILLION Muslims in the world and the estimate of the number of terrorists by everyone but the uninformed hacks runs between five and ten thousand... Do that math... At the high end it's one terrorist in every ONE MILLION SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND Muslims. So how many in America.... four?

There's a higher ratio of gang-bangers in Newark, fer Christ's sake... Point being that this is a goddamn excuse for the rhetoric, and worse, actual violence: The cabbie shot in NY, arson in Murfreesboro, vandalism all across America... and all because the number of ACTUAL, REAL SERIOUS Islamic terrorists IN the USA might be as high as FIVE... A number, by the way, that could be reasonably assumed to be the number of Christians who are willing to bomb abortion clinics and/or murder doctors... but nobody is profiling churchgoers or vandalizing the church in the town Dr. Tiller was from - How come every Christian in HIS town wasn't questioned?

My friend Harry says Americans are not all bigots and racists. I agree, But many American ARE scared. Unfortunately, as any good psychologist can affirm, fear leads people to their lowest common denominator of behavior. Frightened people act with a mob mentality, behaving in ways none of them would individually. Frightened people are absolutely bigots and racists - Hell, there are situations in which good people would let their neighbors die to save their family - How easy it it to hate the image of some unspecified danger called a 'terrorist'.

Do you remember the Twilight Zone Episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street"? Nowadays, they show it in schools to teach kids about the dangers of prejudice and hysteria. That's what's playing on the right...all day... all night.

It serves the interests of the Becks and the Palins to use charged rhetoric to keep their base afraid. It's all about 'The Other'...A president who is ...Other.... a religion that is...Other... They are not leading a national discussion to solve the problems, THEIR agenda is ultra-nationalist ultra-partisan rallying - Which does exactly nothing for the national discussion, nor does it in any way improve the chances for reasoned discussion between factions. They are reinforcing the image of monsters attacking us in our homes... a lie that short-circuits the discussion - which is EXACTLY what they intend.

We live in a dangerous time and it has little or nothing to do with anybody but ourselves. If we cannot get back to a world where parties compromise, we are going to be in a world of trouble.
*

Maureen Dowd: Making Ignorance Chic

Gail Collins: The Fury Failure
*

Juan Williams' real crime: Hack punditry
Forget his remark about Muslims: His political commentary is somewhere between mediocre and awful
by Steve Kornacki

Juan Williams still doesn't get it, is rich anyway
by Alex Pareene
*

More Tea Party Hilarity
by Matt Taibbi
You see, when a nice white lawyer with a GI Joe beard uses state aid to help him through tough times and get over the hump – so that he can go from having three little future Medicare-collecting Republican children to eight little future Medicare-collecting Republican children – that’s a good solid use of government aid, because what we’re doing is helping someone "transition" from dependency to economic independence.
*

"No new taxes" for GOP -- except a national sales tax
by Joe Conason
Republicans swear they won't raise taxes -- but Rand Paul and Paul Ryan want to tax everything you buy.
*

Looney, and That’s No Debate
By Eugene Robinson —
Sorry, but I just can’t do it anymore. When has there been an election with so many looney tunes running under the banner of one of our major parties?
*

Fiore Cartoon: Meg Whitman's Personal Stimulus
She's already bringing jobs to California, one political consultant at a time.

Wall Street Hopes to Use Republicans to Re-Purchase Congress
by Robert Creamer
The same people whose recklessness caused so many everyday working class families to lose their jobs are now stoking the anger caused by their own actions and directing it toward Democrats who have brought them to account.
*

Paul Krugman: Hey, Small Spender
By PAUL KRUGMAN
If government spending hasn’t created jobs, it’s not because it doesn’t work; it’s because it wasn’t tried.
*

The Tea Party: It’s Worse Than You Think
By The Rev. Madison Shockley —
A debate has raged over the last 18 months as to whether the tea party movement is racist. I propose to put this debate to rest. The tea party is racist. Its followers have deployed a brilliant strategy to deflect charges of racism by using a form of the legislative provision known as severability.
*

Matt Taibbi on the Tea Party
This is an article from the October 15, 2010 issue of Rolling Stone. It's taken three trips to Kentucky, but I'm finally getting my Tea Party epiphany...

Lou Dobbs Hired Illegal Immigrants: The Nation Lou Dobbs has become notorious for his hard-line stance on undocumented immigrants--and the people who hire them. Yet, as an explosive investigation released Thursday in The Nation uncovered, Dobbs has been relying on undocumented workers for years to maintain the upkeep of his homes.

In Descending Order of Plausibility, Five Explanations for Rick Sanchez’s “Jon Stewart Is a Bigot” Comment
By Juli Weiner

Look Who’s Killing Jobs Now By Ruth Marcus —
Republicans like to denounce President Obama and congressional Democrats for what they describe as “job-killing” policies. But in those red-hot rhetorical terms, congressional Republicans are guilty of mass murder when it comes to job creation.

Lies of the Tea Party By Joe Conason —
The disaffection and demoralization of Democrats have created a dangerous political vacuum that is being filled with misleading data, urban legends and outright lies.

Obama and the Progressive Paradox By E.J. Dionne, Jr. —
A couple of hours before President Obama offered a boffo revival of his 2008 campaign persona during a boisterous rally at the University of Wisconsin, Sen. Bernie Sanders was analyzing why the president was in a political pickle in the first place.
*

Frank Rich: The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O’Donnell
ALL it took was some 30,000 Republican primary voters in a tiny state to turn Christine O’Donnell into the brightest all-American media meteor since Balloon Boy.
*

WHITE AMERICA HAS LOST ITS MIND
The white brain goes haywire in spectacular fashion. by STEVEN THRASHER