Pundit Country

Call me old fashioned, but I like it when smart people call out craven fools for incendiary rhetoric. Having said, that, I really wish he’d stop referring to the health care reform legislation in the past tense.

Seriously, what the f*** is wrong with you? Is it that hard to discern what is actual news and what is tabloid garbage? I’ve never taken a single journalism class in my life and I don’t have these kinds of problems so what’s your excuse. I’d really like an answer. Go in the corner and think about. You’re getting a time out for this one.

From this morning’s E.J. Dionne’s opinion piece about why Obama is still having some trouble getting ahead of the poor economic numbers and the nation’s increasingly dour attitude of those in Washington.

The president’s supporters comfort themselves that Obama’s numbers will improve as the economy gets better. This is a form of intellectual complacency. Ronald Reagan’s numbers went down during a slump, too. But even when he was in the doldrums, Reagan was laying the groundwork for a critique of liberalism that held sway in American politics long after he left office.

Progressives will never reach their own Morning in America unless they use the Gipper’s method to offer their own critique of the conservatism he helped make dominant. It is still more powerful in our politics, as we are learning in Massachusetts, than it ought to be.

Somewhere in the afterlife, Theodore Geisel is looking down and laughing his ass off.

The first for 2010! As always, these items came predominantly from Hatewatch and Right Wing Watch. Enjoy.

• Mike Madden: Scott Brown’s ugly friends.

• Catholic Families for America announced that it will be holding “pro-family voter rallies” throughout the country heading into the November elections, beginning in Wichita, Kansas next week.

• As always, the Family Research Council has something useful and insightful to say when it comes to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

• Media Matters tracks the Interpol conspiracy theory through right-wing media.

• If Michael Steele wasn’t chairman of the RNC last summer, who was?

• Lou Engle declares the year 2010 to be “73-37 window“ because it has been 37 years since the Supreme Court issued Roe v. Wade in 1973. Get it?

• Tea Parties are plotting how to take over the GOP.

• Health care reform hasn’t even passed and already the Club for Growth is getting candidates to pledge to repeal it.

• Norm Coleman is still around (though not running for MN Governor) and will be speaking at the Minnesota Citizen’s Concerned for Life’s annual anti-choice rally on January 22.

• Newt Gingrich places himself among the contenders for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012.

• Operation Rescue announced that it is “offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of abortionists who are breaking the law.”

• Movement to Boot the formerly left-wing, now far right-wing Pacifica Forum Off Oregon Campus Gains Steam

• Statement: PFAW Condemns Robertson’s Comments on Haiti Earthquake.

• Joseph Farah continues his war against Wikipedia.

• The judge in Scott Roeder’s trial is allowing him use the defense that he believed the slaying of George Tiller was justified in order to save unborn children.

• Despite that fact that the ant-choice “personhood” effort has been rejected everywhere it has been put on the ballot, “personhood” is going to be the theme of the 2010 March for Life.

• Federal Jury Convicts Missouri Extremist

• You have to admire Lou Dobbs’ creative defense of his Birtherism.

• For some reason, the Family Research Council thinks it is really important that Sarah Palin base her Fox News operations out of Nashville.

• As the Proposition 8 trial gets underway in California, Ted Olson lays out the conservative case for gay marriage.

• A Nevada judge tossed out the “personhood” state ballot measure because the language is “too general in nature.”

• Alvin McEwen has an excellent piece in the Huffington Post on “The Right’s Unsuccessful Smear Campaign Against Kevin Jennings.“

• Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs says “the kinds of hate mail and the kinds of attacks I am getting from the right wing are way beyond anything I got when I was criticizing the left or even radical Islam” ever since he broke with the Right.

• The Family Research Council will be hosting a panel discussion next week explaining how healthcare reform is unconstitutional.

• Christian Newswire informs us that the next installment of American Idol will “lose middle America” because its viewers have an “anti0gay bias” and will object to the addition of Ellen DeGeneres

• Several right-wing leaders have banded together and signed on to a letter demanding the resignation of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

• Just what your iPhone needs: the Sam Brownback app.

• Towleroad: Rhode Island Lawmakers Override Governor’s Anti-Gay Veto

• Big donors are not happy with RNC Chair Michael Steele and are withholding donations, to which he defiantly replies “fire me or shut up.”

• Phyllis Schlafly will be speaking at Furman University in South Carolina on Jan. 20th on “The Left’s War Against Women: Abortion and Feminism Exposed.”

• Bristol Palin: Political Consultant?

• Pam’s House Blend reports that Oklahoma’s Sally Kern is trying to make it harder to get divorced in her state.

• Joe.My.God takes great pleasure in the fact that Glenn Beck is at war with the Birthers.

• PFAW Senior Fellow Discusses the Rise of the New McCarthyism

• Dropping Academic Veneer, Cal State Prof Starts His Own Hate Group

• Apparently, Oklahoma Republicans are going to attempt to “opt-out” of federal hate crimes laws. Good luck with that.

• The Washington Monthly explains how David Barton, Don McLeroy, and other Texas conservatives are rewriting your kids’ textbooks.

• A Liberty University professor expects to find Noah’s Ark sometime next summer.

• Rep. Bart Stupak’s office has been coordinating attacks on the Senate bill with Republicans and Religious Right groups.

• This should sound familiar for residents of Washington state: The Bangor Daily News says NOM should abide by the state’s campaign finance reporting requirements because “Maine voters should be able to know who is trying to influence their vote.”

• Is anyone surprised that Joseph Farah has joined those claiming that President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is unconstitutional?