MATT DRUDGE'S ICK FACTOR

I don't expect Matt Drudge to betray the right-wing team and avoid criticizing the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but his choice of front-page image is strange:

The image is of the arrest of Corporal Evelyn Thomas, one of thirteen DADT protestors arrested at the White House on November 15.

Why this? Why her? Draw your own conclusions about how this relates to his own sexuality, I assume that what this says to Drudge, or what he thinks it will say to his audience, is "EEEUW! EEEUW! BIG BLACK LESBIAN!"

Does anyone below Social Security age besides Matt Drudge still have that reaction to a non-slender lesbian? Fer crissake, Drudge is seven years younger than I am. He's 44 freaking years old, and he's trying to tap into a sense of sexual revulsion that befits a fossilized old bigot nearly twice his age.

And, apart from the racial apect, I have to assume that this is coming from the same diseased place in Drudge's brain that generates his obsession with Janet Napolitano, aka "Big Sis."

CAN YOU HEAR HIM NOW?

I see that there appears to be a deal to get the Zadroga bill through Congress:

The deal to pass athe 9/11 health bill is done, the Daily News has learned.

Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand met with other senators' staff and staff from Rep. Carolyn maloney's offce until well after midnight, cutting a new deal and trimming the package to care for 9/11 responders to $4.3 billion, sources close to the deal said.

They reached final agreement at about 11:30 this morning after the New York Democrats met for an hour with the prime GOP opponents, Sens. Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Majority Leader Harry Reid is said to have joined the talks at the end, and agreed to try for quick passage.

... Besides cutting the price for the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act from $6.2 billion, the time span was also significantly limited to five years each for the health treatment program and the reopened 9/11 Victims' Compensation Fund....

The Zadroga bill originally had a cap almost twice as high -- $8.4 billion -- and a much more generous time limit; it was originally paid for by closing a tax loophole for foreign companies doig business in the U.S., though it's now paid for by an excise fee on foreign companies that receive U.S. government contracts. In other words, if you're a Republican, it was once an evil commie piece of legislation, and now it's marginally less commie. I'm sure the Baby Jesus will personally thank Senator Tom Coburn in one of their regular chats.

The New York Times says:

...Republicans backed down after facing a barrage of criticism -- not just from Democrats, but also from traditional Republican allies, including former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, and conservative news outlets like Fox News.

Yeah, Rudy came around on this -- eventually -- as (eventually) did some on Fox, mostly thanks to Jon Stewart's tireless efforts and the efforts of responders themselves.

Notice who didn't say a word, by the way? The first guy ever to exploit 9/11 first responders for personal gain. The guy who's so proud of having been the first to exploit 9/11 responders for personal gain that, in his recent best-selling memoir, he printed a huge double-page photograph of himself doing the exploiting -- a photograph he deemed so important to his act of promoting itself that it appeared before the title page, before the dedication, before the table of contents, before any of the text:

Those are pages ii and iii of George W. Bush's Decision Points, via Amazon Reader.

Can we hear you now, George? Well, 1.75 million copies of your book featuring that photo have been sold, but on the subject of the Zadroga bill, no, we couldn't hear you.

MOMMY, WHY IS VAN JONES DOING A LAXATIVE COMMERCIAL?

Dear Glenn Beck: You make $32 million a year. You can't find a video-site affiliate, or even just an intern, with enough knowledge of the English language to realize that "regulatory" and "regularity" are not the same word?

And this for the big freaking Van Jones scoop that I'm sure you hope will propel your loser site The Blaze into the wingnut online front ranks?

Here's the shocking video:



I don't even understand where the scandal is here. Jones, of course, is long gone from the Obama administration. He's speaking to a gathering of greens in Arizona, which I suspect is not exactly going to be ground zero in the coming eco/commie Civil War of Beck's imagination.

We're told that it's appalling that Jones says:

So the only thing left for you young folks, next year, is to go back to the EPA and say, "Listen, we tried to pretend that what was going on was a market failure, i.e., we had the price wrong for carbon, the price being zero, and we thought we had a solution -- that didn't work. So now, we're going to have to pretend like it's a regulatory failure."

All I think he's saying is that we tried to structure the fight to start moving away from a carbon-based energy system by saying, "Yes, you're right, the unmolested Randian free market is the most precious thing on earth, but please please please may we beg your leave to make one teeny tiny exception and treat deadly pollution as a priceable good even though capitalists don't actually sell it pretty please with sugar on it?" And that approach was rejected. And now we have to say the coming crisis is really just a crisis in lack of enforcement of existing law. When, really, we know that IT'S A COMING CRISIS, and we need to do something about it because, well, we bloody well need to do something about it for the survival of the planet in a recognizable form.

****

Beck's Blaze site is trying to be Free Republic or Fox Nation, but it's rather sad. Omigod -- there's a cross-dressing Santa in a shop window near Miami! Omigod -- Brooklyn has Muslims! It's as if the entire world beyond the cracker barrel and the feed shop was heretofore a complete mystery to these folks, until Glenn encouraged them to open their eyes.

I don't know if this is a site run by total rubes or cynically run to soak total rubes, but it comes off as pathetically naive, even by wingnut standards.

HALEY, I THINK YOU'RE GOING ABOUT THIS ALL WRONG

In comments, mb tells me he/she still thinks Haley Barbour's would-be presidential campaign is toast. According to Greg Sargent, his right-wing Washington Post colleague Jennifer Rubin and (now) National Review's Jim Geraghty agree. On the other hand, Sargent and Rubin's WaPo colleague Chris Cillizza is already pondering Haley Barbour comeback strategies -- an apology in the short term (Barbour's issued the apology already), followed by a move I have trouble imagining:

... he will need to develop a better -- and more serious/thoughtful -- answer(s) as the campaign wears on.

A broader speech by Barbour explaining how he viewed race during his formative years and how it impacted his life could be in order as well but almost certainly not any time in the foreseeable future.

As we're now learning from a right-wing Mississippi blog, Barbour actually gave a fairly serious race speech in 2004. But that was delivered in Philadelphia, Mississippi, on the 40th anniversary of the murder of three civil rights workers there; that was Barbour as governor, doing a governor-style thing. I'm really having a hard time seeing him deliver another such speech, one that's clearly intended as penance.

Penance doesn't fit the Barbour brand; he's selling himself as a bourbon-fueled Big Daddy who's in charge, effortlessly, without breaking a sweat (or spilling his drink).

His problem right now is that his base is the mainstream media, and the mainstream media now demands this penance from him. (I bet his journalist pals hate pretending that they take this seriously, but I'm sure they feel they have to play along with the conventions.)

If he had a base of support in the tea party, or elsewhere among the Fox/talk radio hordes, he wouldn't need to bother with all this. And he'd know the right moves to make right now: yes, do the pro forma apology -- but get some new-media types to spread the meme that the call for an apology is just a fascist demand from totalitarian liberals, who are, after all, the real racists. Then, his minimal apology would carry a subtext: look at how the liberals have nailed me to a cross over nothing.

He'd probably then just refuse to talk to anyone in the media except true friends for a short time. That sends the message that everyone in the media apart from fellow travelers is a scummy liberal engaging in the politics of personal destruction. The scandal would blow over fairly quickly, and the message of victimization would strengthen him with his base. (It worked for Rand Paul, didn't it?)

Problem is, Barbour's press friends -- even apparently, the right-wing author of that Weekly Standard piece -- don't play the game the way the Fox/talk radio/tea party cabal does. And, beyond that, Barbour considers even mainstream reporters his friends.

So he can't do this effectively. A new-school right-winger, on the other hand, could negotiate this with a minimum of trouble.

MORE FROM THE FOX CONSPIRACY TO KEEP RIGHT-WINGERS STUPID

Teaser on the home page of Fox Nation:

Every card-carrying wingnut knows the long-term unemployed are just lazy people who are playing on our sympathies so they can leech off us a little longer -- Sharron Angle has said as much, as have Tom DeLay, Steve King, Jon Kyl, and other Republicans. This is just further proof that it's true! Right?

Well, when you click through to the AP story, you see that the answer is no:

... With national unemployment just below 10 percent, $20 yoga classes don't qualify as necessities for many out-of-work people who've pruned luxuries from their budgets. So in a gesture that's part send-good-vibes-to-the-universe and part community outreach, a handful of yoga studios have decided to cut the unemployed a break.

"We didn't want them to have to choose, 'Should I eat today or go take this class?' We wanted to give them the ability to do both," said Zack Lynn, a computer techie by day who teaches a free yoga class for people out of work in Columbus.

The Integral Yoga Institute in New York started offering free weekly classes last year when some students lost their jobs and couldn't afford to pay $17 per course. Now, a dozen or two jobseekers drop in for free sun salutations and other stretches every week....

Can't make it to the weekly class? The studio in New York -- and others in cities such as Chicago and Berkeley, Calif. -- have given unemployed people discounts on other sessions. At Integral, that means paying $10 per class instead of $17....

So no government agency is paying a dime for this, right? But that doesn't stop the commenters in the Fox Nation thread from getting their panties in a wad:

More of the genius obama's redistribution of wealth. Feel like puking yet.

****

Its not free yoga its actually taxpayer funded yoga for the lazy democrats (commies)

****

What about the rest of us? You know, the ones who are lucky enough to still have a job but are worrying ourselves sick over how we may have our (supposed) wealth redistributed and/or our personal estates pillaged through an increased estate tax in order to provide for those who would rather let somebody else foot the tab for their nanny-state lifestyle?

****

That's retarded! That must be one of those lefties loons retarded ideas. lol

****

Of course it is, just plain stupid waste of money.

****

Let's hope that the new Ohio Gov. shltcans this one real fast.

****

I bet they chant Obama mmm mmmm mmmmm

One commenter -- one -- actually seems to grasp what's going on:

I don't have a problem with this at all. It doesn't sound like that tax payer dollars are being used for this, and sounds like it is just individual (privately owned) studios are offering this. If tax dollars are being used for this though, then I have a serious issue with it.

Bingo, my friend -- you've poked your head out of the slime and actually grasped what's going on.

This is pure capitalism -- these studios are offering free classes as classic loss leaders, in the hope that when and if the attendees get work again, they'll be so grateful they'll keep attending (but now paying standard rates). Is that really so hard to grasp?

Well, it is for people who desperately want to feel aggrieved. And the folks who run Fox Nation know that's their audience. So they're pushing this story on the front page, knowing full well that it isn't really something that should outrage right-wingers, but it seems like a right-wing outrage if you misread the story.

And that's what part of the most influential news organization in America wants its audience to do: it wants people to misread this story. The story is on the Fox Nation front page in the hope that people will read it wrong.

This is the labor that fills some people's lives. I don't know how they live with themselves.

A LETTER TO THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Here in New York, the Daily News has really worked to get the Zadroga bill for 9/11 first responders through Congress. Here are couple of News front pages from earlier this month:

So, in response to this news...

New York Democrats hoping for quick action on a bill to give health care compensation to Ground Zero workers are about to run into Tom Coburn.

The Oklahoma Republican and physician -- known in the Senate as "Dr. No" for his penchant in blocking bills -- told POLITICO Monday night he wouldn't allow the bill to move quickly, saying he has problems with parts of the bill and the process Democrats are employing....

... I'm begging the News to put this on the front page tomorrow, in big, bold type:

202-224-5754

That's the D.C. office number for Senate Coburn.

I'm going to call the SOB's office, and I hope you do the same. But I think it's high time that "Senator No" heard "What the hell do you mean, 'No'?" from a real cross-section of angry residents of New York and the tri-state area.

That's where you come in, Daily News. Please, just do it.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
9/11 First Responders React to the Senate Filibuster
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

DOES THIS END BARBOUR'S PRESIDENTIAL BID? NAHHH. FAR FROM IT.

In comments to my first Haley Barbour post yesterday, mb wrote:

I think this will sink any (small) chance Barbour had of mounting a serious challenge for the GOP nomination.

I've been inclined to believe him -- the point of my post was that the Beltway, confronted with the sort of racial insensitivity Barbour displayed, feels compelled to take it seriously, though not all that seriously. Especially in the case of an admired insider, the political world tut-tuts for a while, then welcomes the pol back into the fold. But yeah, I did think the temporary suspension of the cozy relationship in Barbour's case might last long enough to derail his presidential bid, which he'll have to start soon.

Except that I was forgetting one thing: Barbour isn't George Allen -- a guy making a racist remark in the midst of a general-election campaign. He's not Trent Lott -- a prominent guy in the national government. Until nearly two years from now, the only people he has to appeal to are Republicans. And (all that "Look how many blacks we had at the tea party rally!!!" talk notwithstanding) they don't care. And, in fact, Barbour's offended us, which means this is probably a really good thing for him, at least for now -- he was just a non-teabagging, old-fashioned pol whose only constituency was the insider media and fellow wheeler-dealers, and now he's what every serious GOP candidate tries to be: a victim of evil liberalism.

And so we get this from National Review's Jim Geraghty, eagerly linked by Fox Nation:

The Weekly Standard profiles him this week, and liberal bloggers are spotlighting one section where Barbour discusses segregation and racism in Mississippi in his childhood days. You can sense where this is going, right?

...Over at Ace of Spades, Drew M. details how liberal bloggers are pointing out that the Citizens Councils weren't as benign as Barbour remembers; the story angle and accusation is gradually migrating from the most highly-strung of liberal blogs to the most likely MSM outlets. "It's as if JournoList is back in action," he tweets.

Any white Republican who grew up in the South is going to be accused of racism. In fact, there's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that any Republican running against Barack Obama will be accused of racism, period. Hell, any Republican, running for office, anywhere, at any time, will be accused of racism eventually.

... His sin is that, decades later, he remembers his hometown through rose-colored glasses? Don't most people do that?

Working against Barbour is that he is a distinctly Southern in his drawl and mannerisms, and Southern politicians have a higher bar to clear when it comes to accusations of racism. Because of the experience of slavery and segregation, the South is associated with racism in the minds of a significant chunk of the electorate. The perception may be outdated, false, unfair, and hypocritical, but it is out there. Still, we've hit a new low when an interview in which the subject recalls attending a Martin Luther King Jr. speech is the trigger for the accusation of racial animosity.

... Of course, all Barbour said was that the Citizens Councils kept the Klan out of the town, and that the business community didn't want to see violence in response to the integration of schools. Members of the Citizens Councils undoubtedly held reprehensible views, but is anything Barbour said untrue? ...

There you go -- Haley Barbour doesn't have a problem, you have a problem, you damn hippie!

So, in the Republican race, this is really good for Barbour.

Now, maybe this will worry the party mandarins in the (unlikely) event that Barbour starts doing very well in the race. (I still think the winner of the race will be someone who can rabble-rouse the best -- Barbour's too schmoozy.) But if Barbour does manage to do well, the GOP noise machine will just tell us all that we distorted and misinterpreted this incident, that we're the real racists, that Democrats were the segs, blah blah blah ... And enough time will have passed that the Barbour-loving mainstream press will (delightedly) go along; it will conclude that Barbour's served his time. (Besides, aren't heartland Republican voters normative? If they think Barbour's OK, the MSM will conclude, shouldn't we all?)

Unless he puts his foot in his mouth again in the same way, which I'm not ruling out.

****

Screenshot from the Fox Nation page for the Geraghty column:

No comment.

THAT NICE WHITE CITIZENS' COUNCIL IN YAZOO CITY

David Halberstam, "The White Citizens Councils," Commentary, October 1956 (via Atrios):

But the main and most effective weapon of the WCC has been economic pressure. For a militant organization which sees itself as law-abiding and which is fearful of using violence, this is an ideal solution, for it permits aggressive action without disturbing the peace.

"Look," said Nick Roberts of the Yazoo City Citizens Council, explaining why 51 of 53 Negroes who had signed an integration petition withdrew their names, "if a man works for you, and you believe in something, and that man is working against it and undermining it, why you don't want him working for you -- of course you don't."

In Yazoo City, in August 1955, the Council members fired signers of the integration petition, or prevailed upon other white employers to get them fired. But the WCC continues to deny that it uses economic force: all the Council did in Yazoo City was to provide information (a full-page ad in the local weekly listing the "offenders"); spontaneous public feeling did the rest.

Here's the ad, as reprinted in the September 13, 1955, issue of the Baltimore Afro-American:

As the Afro-American noted:

Yes, Haley Barbour was seven years old when this happened. But, y'know, you want to be president, maybe you have to learn about things that happened when you were too young to pay serious attention to them.

HEY, IT'S NOT AS IF BARBOUR SAID ANYTHING REALLY TROUBLING, RIGHT?

To judge from the Trent Lott and George Allen incidents, I assume that the press will not give Haley Barbour a pass for saying that the civil rights era in his Mississippi hometown was not that bad and for his praise of the undeniably racist White Citizens Councils.

But this will pass relatively quickly, and it will pass whether or not Barbour ever shows genuine contrition or evidence of soul-searching.

We know this because, four years after his "macaca" moment, George Allen is preparing to run for the Senate again, and will probably be the favorite in the Republican race to take on Jim Webb two years from now.

We know this because while the revelation of GOP operative Fred Malek's role as "Jew counter" in the Nixon White House cost him a prominent position in the 1988 campaign of George H.W. Bush, Malek was back working for Bush two years later as coordinator of plans for an economic summit. He subsequently became Bush's '92 campaign manager; more recently, he's been a top advisor to John McCain's 2008 campaign, the chair of a government reform commission for Virginia governor Bob O'Donnell, and a top advisor to Sarah Palin.

Oh, and after making racially charged remarks, Trent Lott didn't become a Beltway pariah -- he became a lobbyist, within weeks of resigning his Senate seat, and there isn't a shred of evidence that his remarks have hurt his new career.

So Haley'll be back in the Beltway's good graces before you know it, even if this causes him a bit of bother.

A BIT TOO SOON TO RELAX

Paul Waldman at Tapped declares victory prematurely:

Jonathan Bernstein makes an excellent point about the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell:

[T]his issue will now promptly go away, entirely. Oh, we'll have a bit of reporting on implementation, but seriously: does anyone think that Republicans are going to run in 2012 on re-instating DADT? Or, even less plausibly, on re-instating the ban that DADT replaced? Forget it. It's possible to believe that a DADT vote could be used in a GOP primary down the road, but it's utterly implausible to believe that the policy would ever be revived, no matter what happens in the 2012 (or any future cycle) elections.

With the possible exception of John McCain, pretty much every conservative knew they were going to lose this argument eventually. And many of them know they're going to lose the argument on marriage equality, too. As Jon Chait asks, "it was only six years ago that Republicans used the bogeyman of gay marriage to help win a presidential election. Does anybody expect that to happen again?"

Outside of some local issues and races in the South, we've reached a point where The Gay Menace just doesn't have much political potency anymore....

Um, really? Don't tell that to this guy from a state we recently thought was getting much bluer:

Responding to the federal repeal of the military policy banning open gays from serving in the armed forces, a state lawmaker in Virginia plans to fight back with legislation that bars "active homosexuals" from serving in the Virginia National Guard.

Delegate Robert G. Marshall said the Constitution reserves states with the authority to do so and that he'll introduce a bill in the state General Assembly next year that ensures the "the effect of the 1994 federal law banning active homosexuals from America's military forces will apply to the Virginia National Guard."

"With the repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell,' President Obama seeks to pay back his homosexual political supporters," the Prince William County Republican said, echoing a sentiment shared by many of the repeal's most ardent opponents. "This policy will weaken military recruitment and retention, and will increase pressure for a military draft." ...

As I told you a few weeks ago, Marshall is the legislator who's been most instrumental in advancing the agenda of Virginia's judicial-activist attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli -- as one news report noted, the "Virginia Healthcare Freedom Act, which paved the way for Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's lawsuit against the Obama administration's health care legislation, was Marshall's brainchild," and they've also worked together on culture-war legislation about marriage and immigration. Oh, and Marshall appears to be making serious plans to run for James Webb's Senate seat.

No, I don't think this is going to be an issue in the 2012 presidential campaign -- or at least I don't think it will be in unadulterated form. I think the GOP nominee will find a way to work it into an attack on Obama as a guy who uses foreign policy and the defense of our freedom!!! as areas in which he can score political-correctness points. That's a way to bash DADT opposition without necessarily losing Log Cabin types. (And, yes, some self-hating gay voters will react as hoped by the Republican nominee and vote GOP.)

And then, if there is an all-Republican federal government in 2013, well, all bets are off. I don't see why the un-repeal of DADT would be off the table. Especially if more Marsahll-esque crazies have made it to Congress.

Come on, folks -- these are Republicans we're talking about. They never consider any defeat to be final. They think everything can and should be relitigated endlessly.

****

MORE:

Wingers are just going to move on? Yeah, right.

RIGHT-WING RADICALISM, PURELY FOR CENTRIST CONSUMPTION

I'm a little late getting to this Robert Kuttner article, which a despairing John Cole flagged last night. I agree that this would be a horrible decision -- and I want to add that I think it's meant to fend off something that isn't really going to happen:

Obama to blink first on Social Security

The tax deal negotiated by President Barack Obama and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is just the first part of a multistage drama that is likely to further divide and weaken Democrats.

The second part, now being teed up by the White House and key Senate Democrats, is a scheme for the president to embrace much of the Bowles-Simpson plan -- including cuts in Social Security. This is to be unveiled, according to well-placed sources, in the president’s State of the Union address.

The idea is to pre-empt an even more draconian set of budget cuts likely to be proposed by the incoming House Budget Committee chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), as a condition of extending the debt ceiling. This is expected to hit in April.

White House strategists believe this can also give Obama "credit" for getting serious about deficit reduction -- now more urgent with the nearly $900 billion increase in the deficit via the tax cut deal....

I don't think Obama would be blinking first on Social Security. I think he'd be blinking preemptively when Republicans aren't planning to do so at all.

I know that Paul Ryan is going be the chairman of the Budget Committee, and I know that, a while back, Ryan cooked up a budget that gutted Social Security and Medicare.

But please note that the "Pledge to America" unveiled by Republicans last fall conspicuously omitted Ryan's ideas on entitlements. (Ryan didn't even show up for the Pledge's unveiling.)

Yes, Republicans at that time were in campaign mode. But Republicans are always in campaign mode -- they're certainly looking ahead to 2012 already. If the president plays possum, I think they won't try to gut entitlements in their budgets -- not in this Congress. Frankly -- and I know this is minority opinion on the left -- I'm not sure if they'll ever seriously try to gut entitlements. They won't as long as older voters, very much including their own base, zealously defend their right to those entitlements.

Oh, sure, I think the GOP plans a nasty budget, and probably plans brinkmanship with the debt ceiling. But I think the nastiness of the budget will completely avoid the appearance of targeting sacred cows. It will be something along the lines of "roll all spending back to 2008 levels, then have an [X]% across-the-board cut." It might include Fox-worthy attacks on Planned Parenthood and public broadcasting, and a (probably porous) earmark ban. But I bet the great fiscal stewards of the GOP will avoid doing anything that will infuriate voters across the political spectrum -- unless Obama gives them cover by doing it first.

Paul Ryan? He'll be told to be a good boy and wait to implement his ideas -- and if Obama never pushes Ryan-esque ideas, the GOP will never push them at all. They'll be like the Human Life Amendment -- something the GOP claims to support and never actually fights to achieve.

Pardoxically, Ryan's right-wing radicalism is put on display by the GOP to impress Broderesque centrists in the Beltway; the right-wing radicals in the tea party don't actually want what he wants. But Obama may not understand the game, and we may be doomed as a result.

ON LESS MALIGN FAT CATS AND TALIBAN REPUBLICANS

I actually agree with the thrust of this E.J. Dionne column -- though I don't understand the point of the hippie-punching lede, which seems inconsistent with what follows:

The central question in our politics is whether we can break out of formulaic discussions that always end up in the same place. Here's one major test: Can progressives change their way of thinking about business?

I don't know why Dionne is saying that we're the problem, because he immediately after that he describes the situation correctly:

We are already seeing a dreary replay of the old argument. Self-styled centrists say that President Obama has really ticked off business leaders and urgently needs to make nice with them.

Because the president has spoken occasionally about the irresponsibility of Wall Street and the very wealthy, these poor suffering multimillionaires and billionaires have hurt feelings. Obama is being told he needs to feel their pain, to show he truly understands why they are so aggrieved.

Ah, here's his point:

Progressives bristle at this, and why not? Many among the best-off -- particularly on Wall Street -- were grossly irresponsible stewards of the power surrendered to them through deregulation. They wrecked the economy, Obama bailed them out, and most are now richer than ever. Yet they have the arrogance to complain about the president pointing to their misdeeds. Many liberals want Obama to tell the wealthy where they can go.

If this were only about gut reactions, you could count me as a fan of the latter approach....

But we live in a market economy. Businesses create jobs, and a healthy business climate is one key to a healthy society. It's a conclusion that progressives sometimes reach grudgingly....

You know what? We don't want Obama to talk tough. (Actually, as Dionne notes, he's done a bit of that, and it's really meant nothing.) We want lawbreakers and fraudsters of the past decade punished. We want the worst future financial threats to be prevented legislatively. And, while you're up, we'd like a fairer tax code and a little more help for the leaner cats in this country -- the ordinary citizens. Dionne seems to want the same things -- but he inexplicably feels the need to take a swipe at the "angry left" nonetheless. I don't get it.

****

Now, where is Dionne going with all this? He's saying that, in our past, businesses, or at least some businesses, have been enlightened enough to support reasonable legislation, and we should encourage some of that now:

There have been moments in our history when important elements of business were "progressive" in the sense of recognizing that social reform was in capitalism's long-term interest.

In a seminal 1995 article in the American Prospect about business opposition to President Bill Clinton's health-care reform, the political writer John Judis recalled that during the Progressive Era, "business leaders and organizations played an indispensable role in developing and promoting the social legislation that first blunted the sharp edges of laissez-faire capitalism." Judis's conclusion still rings true: that "without a business community moderately supportive of social reform, little is possible in the present era."

I'm fine with that. I'm an angry lefty, but it wouldn't take all that much to make me less angry. In this financial crisis, I want fat cats to get their boots off ordinary citizens' necks. I want mortgages adjusted. I want the wealthy to back down on support for GOP assaults on Keynesianism. And I want the fat cats to do this because it's in their own self-interest. Don't they want consumers to have money to spend on their products and services? It'll never happen if they don't back the hell down. And you'd think some of them would understand that.

(We should, of course, pause to note that some business leaders may have supported enlightened legislation in the Progressive and New Deal eras because they didn't want angry commie and anarchist workers burning down their factories. A bit of such fear was clearly a good thing, as it might be today.)

****

That 1995 John Judis article from The American Prospect has some interesting details about the fight over health care reform in the Clinton era, and who the real enemies were. Interestingly, the Chamber of Commerce -- one of the real bad guys right now -- was conciliatory on health care. At least it was for a while. But look who put the screws to the Chamber:

Since the first months of the Clinton administration, conservatives had been complaining bitterly about {Chamber president Richard] Lesher's and [Chamber VP William] Archey's conciliatory posture. They were pilloried by Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot, columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, and Human Events, and by the 75-member House Conservative Opportunity Society, chaired by Representative John Boehner of Ohio.

Yes, Boehner.

In one meeting, Boehner and the House Republicans in the Conservative Opportunity Society informed Archey and Lesher, according to one participant, that it was "the Chamber's duty to categorically oppose everything that Clinton was in favor of." Republicans refused to attend an awards banquet sponsored by the Chamber. Boehner, Representative Richard Armey of Texas, and Representative Chris Cox of Ohio contacted local and state Chambers to organize opposition to Archey and Patricelli, even urging that local Chambers leave the national organization. A Washington group, the Small Business Survival Committee, sent a letter to the Chamber board of directors signed by former board members protesting the organization's support of employer mandates. Like other Chamber critics, they equated support of mandates with support of the Clinton plan. Conservatives also mobilized talk shows. And House Republicans, determined to undermine the Clinton administration, threatened that if the Chamber persisted in supporting mandates, they would ignore Chamber lobbying on other issues.

It's true now and it was true a generation ago: the worst zealots, the wingnut Revolutionary Guard, the Taliban extremists of the right, were the Republican pols and commentariat. Part of the business community wasn't hardcore enough for these guys. So these businessmen had to be bullied by the GOP.

I'm not arguing that the business community is full of real softies. I'm saying that Dionne and Judis may be right -- there may be people in that community who are capable of understanding that thoroughly crushing ordinary Americans underfoot is not in their enlightened self-interest. And I can't help wondering if there are more such people in the executive suites than in Fox News green rooms.

FAILURE, AS USUAL, IS EXCELLENT NEWS FOR JOHN McCAIN

Let's see: John McCain failed to prevent the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and responded to an imminent vote on repeal with an incoherent harangue; he's also failed to derail the New START Treaty so far -- his potentially dealbreaking amendment was defeated.

So how does Politico respond when McCain whiffs twice? With -- naturally -- a love note acclaiming McCain's newfound power:

Sen. John McCain is getting under the skin of Democrats these days -- and he seems to be relishing it.

After Democrats scrapped a massive $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill Thursday, McCain gloated about its defeat -- and Democrats fumed. When he took a whack at efforts to bring up a bill aimed at helping Sept. 11 first responders, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) reacted fiercely. And as he went down fighting Saturday on the repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was baffled, saying, "I don’t understand it."

Fresh from a whopping electoral victory Nov. 2, McCain is inserting himself into the biggest issues of the day, acting as a power player in the Senate and angering Democrats. And while Mitch McConnell may be the Senate GOP leader, McCain has embraced a role as the leading Republican agitator against President Barack Obama, who defeated him in the 2008 presidential election....

Yeah, pay no attention to those defeats -- in victory, McCain wins, and in defeat, McCain wins. To the Beltway, nothing succeeds like Republican success, unless it's Republican failure -- or maybe just McCainian failure.

****

By the way, how is John McCain like Kim Jong-il? The Politico story hints at an answer:

... McCain may be more comfortable as an Obama antagonist -- even though he says he'll work with the president when they have common ground.

"I have said all along ... I would be glad to work with the president, glad to sit down and work with the president on a broad variety of issues," he said in the interview. "But the president has never sought my advice or counsel."

... McCain now says he hopes there's more outreach to improve the nonexistent relationship between the 2008 adversaries.

"It's not [that] there was anything wrong with the relationship; there was just no relationship," he said....

This guy doesn't really care about his own positions. I'm not sure he's even all that determined to attack Obama for the sake of attacking him. I think he'd be satisfied if he were just shown fawning respect. He doesn't really want anything on a policy level -- he just wants Obama to come crawling on his knees and begging for some sage, mavericky counsel.

That's why he reminds me of Kim Jong-il. Kim released two American hostages in 2009 as the result of a visit by Bill Clinton, and, as far as I can tell, he did so not because Clinton actually gave him anything, but because Clinton flew halfway around the world to plead for the hostages' release. The ass-kissing was enough. The same is true, I think, for McCain.

And I sometimes think Wall Street fat cats and other CEOs have the same feelings with regard to Obama. They want more presidential face time. Their precious egos tell them that, dammit, they deserve more presidential face time. I sometimes think a master card-player of a president could force more regulations and constraints on the fat cats partly by seeming to fawn on them in face-to-face meetings, even while plans to tighten the screws went forward elsewhere in the West Wing and in Congress. Maybe not, but it would be worth a try -- with them and with McCain.

MONTANA UNDER SIEGE!

One win, one loss today: the Senate passed Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal today -- and, much as it kills me to say it, thank you, Joe Lieberman, for whatever you did to expedite this, even I know you're going to betray your party's presidential nominee again in 2012 (you'll probably ditch the GOP this time in favor of whoever Mike Bloomberg's sock puppet is, because Bloomie campaigned for you in 2006), then come crawling back to the Dems when -- given your inexplicable survival skills -- you win reelection again that year. I'll still loathe you, but thanks for your help with this.

Meanwhile, the DREAM Act failed to survive a cloture vote -- and an anonymous congressional staffer nicely summed up why that happened, despite heightened enforcement of the immigration laws under Obama:

"Short of marching these people naked over the border at the point of a bayonet, there is no such thing as being tough enough" for those who want to target illegal immigrants, the staffer said.

Bingo. You can't placate them, so stop trying.

Of course, the cloture vote failed not just because of Republican opposition, but because five Democrats voted no:

Five Democrats -- Pryor (Ark.), Tester (Montana), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Baucus (Montana), and Hagan (N.C.) -- sided with the minority.

Arkansas, Montana, Nebraska, Montana, and North Carolina? Really? This is where the Brown Menace is being felt? Give me a freaking break. Montana? I can probably see more illegal immigrants on one New York subway platform at rush hour than there are in your whole damn state. Sucks about the threat to your local ethnic purity, I guess, but my feeling is: get a grip.

NICHE ANGER IS NOT ENOUGH

Steve Benen flags this story from the New York Daily News:

Arizona Sen. John McCain did it again, insulting 9/11's heroes and belittling the push to pass a health bill as "fooling around."

The Arizona Republican, dubbed McWeasel for blowing off an ailing Ground Zero construction worker two weeks ago, whipped up new fury last night by suggesting Senate Democrats have wasted time trying to pass the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, among other bills.

At the time, McCain was refusing to accept a time limit for debating the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

"To have a time agreement after all of the fooling around that we've been doing on [the] Dream Act, on New York City ... we will not have a time agreement from this side," he insisted angrily....

Of course, part of the reason there's limited time in the lame-duck session for debate on the START treaty is that Republicans have played games by blocking the Zadroga 9/11 bill on more than one occasion.

It's maddening that this isn't a national outrage. Jon Stewart, of course, has been quite forceful in his disgust at the blockage of this bill -- but, alas, the only people who watch Jon Stewart are Jon Stewart fans. That's not a mass audience. That's a niche.

Lefty blogs have a niche audience. MSNBC prime time has a niche audience. Add these sources up and there's not enough outrage to be mainstream.

Fox, alas, is big enough to make a partisan outrage go mainstream. But there's nothing comparable on the left. Right-wingers talk about the "liberal media" and the mainstream ("lamestream") media as if they're interchangeable, but, of course, as Stewart notes, there's literally been no coverage of the Zadroga bill on the three major networks. Fox takes small stories and turns them into big controversies, for partisan reasons. The three major networks don't. (I don't even think that's because they're corporate-run, or just because of that. That just isn't what they think their job is.)

We have a belief right now in the ability of scruffy niche areas of the media to make things "go viral" -- but it seems to me that you still need a big dog to catapult a story into the mainstream.

OK, forget the media. You know who could make this a big deal? The president. Anyone know how often he's mentioned the Zadroga bill?

I go to WhiteHouse.gov and I see exactly one mention of the bill in a White House statement. One.

Well, it isn't the kind of thing Obama likes to emphasize. He wants to be a big-item president. This isn't a big item. Right now he's excited about trying to pass START.

Well, if you don't shame Republicans on the seemingly small things -- the way Republicans and Republican media outlets shame Democrats every chance they get -- it's a hell of a lot harder to get their cooperation on anything, including big things. They aren't eyed suspiciously. They sustain the good graces of the public. So they feel they can get away with stuff. Of course, they're right.

Lacking a Fox, we need a political leader who'll sometimes pick big fights on seemingly small issues. If it's not the president, it should be a Democratic McCain or Gingrich, who'll get angry on Sunday talk shows as often as humanly possible. We need something.

****

And if you doubt that there's a huge difference between the status if Fox and the status of MSNBC in this political culture, check out this result from the recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll (PDF):

Seven percent of the country gets most of its televised news from MSNBC; for Fox, it's 27%.

Think of it this way: If we're more or less a 50/50 country, then half of GOP voters get their TV news primarily from Fox -- but for Democrats and MSNBC, it's something like one out of seven.

That's a huge difference in clout. (And I'm not even going to get into the question of how many stay-at-home types and retirees are getting their spin from Scarborough.)

NEWT GINGRICH, INCORRIGIBLE GRIFTER

Rachel Maddow revisited an old (and rather silly) story last night:

Tonight, we have brand-new developments in the dramatic, often fraught relationship between Newt Gingrich and the topless club in Dallas known as The Lodge.

Mr. Gingrich, you may remember, offered The Lodge a 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year Award, which was to include a certificate, a novelty gavel and a special dinner in Washington with Newt himself, all for the low, low price of a $5,000 donation to Newt Gingrich's political group, American Solutions.

Of course, the folks at The Lodge understood that this award was a very, very, very thinly disguised fundraising scam, but they were excited to meet Gingrich and happy to fork over the $5,000....

Gingrich found out the Lodge was a strip joint, rescinded the award, and returned the check. But now:

Turns out this week, Dawn Rizos, the owner of The Lodge, got another fundraising scam letter from Newt Gingrich with another super-tempting offer and, of course, another solicitation for money.

... Quote, "Will you enclose a special year-end contribution of $1,000 or even as much as $2,000 to American Solutions, Ms. Rizos?" ...

It's a minor story (full clip below) -- but to me it says something bout Gingrich ... as contrasted with Sarah Palin.

A lot of people have said over the past couple of years that Palin won't run for president in 2012 because what really interests her is taking advantage of her newfound fame to hoover up money. But to me it seems as if Newt Gingrich is the guy who won't run because he can't give up running scams. And he can't seem to give them up even though his scams are so small-time.

Let's see: He's got an organization called American Solutions. He's got another one called Renewing American Leadership. There's the Gingrich Foundation. There's Newt.org, a site that sells Newt-oriented books, DVDs, and audio, and which offers a premium subscription for $59.99 a year. There's Newt's newsletter, available via Human Events.

He's a lot like Glenn Beck in this way, except presumably at a much lower income level. (Gingrich is on Fox, too, of course, and he also cranks out a lot of books.) But I just get the feeling Palin isn't like this -- she doesn't seem to have made herself an expert in the process of creating grift opportunities; she just seems to take full advantage of the ones offered to her. My sense is that she'd give it all up to be even more famous and important -- which, by the way, is how I believe she thinks about the presidency (which is why I think she wants it). I'm not sure Gingrich can give the small-time scams up; they're his life, and they've been his life for too long.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER'S STAR-SPANGLED WAR STORIES

Yes, I too am puzzling over Charles Krauthammer's latest:

If Barack Obama wins reelection in 2012, as is now more likely than not, historians will mark his comeback as beginning on Dec. 6, the day of the Great Tax Cut Deal of 2010.

... with his stunning tax deal, Obama is back. Holding no high cards, he nonetheless managed to resurface suddenly not just as a player but as orchestrator, dealmaker and central actor in a high $1 trillion drama.

...Obama pulled this off at his lowest political ebb. After the shambles of the election and with no bargaining power ... the Republicans could have gotten everything they wanted on the Bush tax cuts retroactively in January without fear of an Obama veto....

I can only guess that (a) Krauthammer, like most modern right-wingers, sees politics not as a means to serve the country but as a war whose sole purpose as victory, and (b) like his fellow right-wing noncombatants, he has a view of war that's simple-minded and cartoonish -- war, in this view, is a contest in which one party is thoroughly demolished and the other comes out without a scratch (see the right's favorite slogan about war, "We win, they lose"). To Krauthammer, the fact that Democrats came away with anything must mean that they won everything -- in war, losers are all summarily put to death, their towns pillaged, their firstborn slaughtered, their land salted. Every armchair general knows that, right?

(And no, I'm not mocking Krauthammer's infirmity -- this Crayola view of combat, and political combat, is shared by his movement-conservative colleagues, nearly all of whom are inexperienced in the ways of actual war despite being able-bodied.)

PETER KING: AL-QAEDA RECRUITER OF THE YEAR

Well, if he didn't just lap the competition to snag the award this year, blowhard New York congressman Peter King is certainly going to win it next year:

The Republican who will head the House committee that oversees domestic security is planning to open a Congressional inquiry into what he calls "the radicalization" of the Muslim community when his party takes over the House next year.

Representative Peter T. King of New York, who will become the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he was responding to what he has described as frequent concerns raised by law enforcement officials that Muslim leaders have been uncooperative in terror investigations....

"When I meet with law enforcement, they are constantly telling me how little cooperation they get from Muslim leaders," Mr. King said.

The move by Mr. King, who said he was planning to open a hearing on the matter beginning early next year, is the latest example of the new direction that the House will take under the incoming Republican majority....

Notice King's evidence: guys tell me this stuff. That's pretty much it. According to the article, he cites one specific case: a Muslim police informant's tipoff to Najibullah Zazi that Zazi was being investigated. (Zazi was arrested anyway.)

In contrast to this guys at the precinct house tell me stndard of evidence, we have this:

[A] report from the Congressional Research Service, sent to Congress with little fanfare on September 20, contends that soon after 9-11, American Muslims "recognized the need to define themselves as distinctly American communities who, like all Americans, desire to help prevent another terrorist attack" and explores how federal, state and local law enforcement organizations responded by tapping into American Muslims' language skills, contacts, information and cultural insights.

And this:

A November report by the Muslim Public Affairs Council said Muslim communities had helped law enforcement agencies foil almost 4 of every 10 Qaeda-related terrorism plots since the Sept. 11 attacks. The report is based on information the group draws from news media accounts, affidavits, academic studies and other sources.

"There is an enormous countertrend that has emerged within the last few years," said Alejandro Beutel, the author of the report. "People are saying: 'This is a serious issue, and we are dealing with this. We are not tolerating this.'"

Even as federal law enforcement officials have been criticized, they say their investigations have been strengthened by their outreach efforts and good relations with Muslims, including here in Oregon.

Leaders of mosques, including those attended by [Mohamed Osman] Mohamud [the suspect in an planned bombing of a Christmas tree lighting ceremony], regularly attend meetings with law enforcement officials. And Mr. Mohamud's father, Osman Barre, provided information before his son’s arrest about his increasing radicalization, officials have said.

And in a case in California, mosque attendees were intolerant of violent talk even by an FBI informant:

In the Irvine case, [Craig] Monteilh's mission as an informant backfired. Muslims were so alarmed by his talk of violent jihad that they obtained a restraining order against him.

And in the big city in Peter King's home state that is, y'know, by far the #1 target of violent jihadists, police commissioner Ray Kelly regularly recruits and promotes cops who speak languages useful to counterterrorism:

"We're always being tested," Maged, the detective from Egypt, said. "You know you passed the test when suddenly somebody gives you a password to a chat room you didn't know existed." He went on, "We're familiar with the tradition, the background, we speak the slang."

"Also, we're cops," Reza said. "We hear different things than the civilians the F.B.I. hires do. We got investigative backgrounds, looking for bad guys on the street. Sometimes it's not what they're saying, it's what they’re not saying. You see patterns, like news items from two months before that suddenly start recirculating."

Sometimes, Reza said, "You'll see an offer of a video-clip download. It might be a beheading, or training materials, or proof that someone actually did something."

Aly, the Egyptian-born sergeant, shook his head. "This is not Islam," he said.

****

Ah, but this is our future with the GOP: a future focused on active demonization, which is just going to send that many more on-the-fence Muslims over to the side of non-cooperation with the non-Muslim world -- and, in many cases, into the arms of terrorist groups.

Do I think the new Republicans do this because they don't really care about reducing the amount of terrorism we face? I'm not sure. I do know that, at the very least, that they wallow in the dehumanization of The Other; they can't quite believe that it could be bad when it feels so good. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say it's their usual belief that the angriest, nastiest course must be the most effective course. I won't assume that they actually want to increase terrorist recruitment because they're treating this like drunks actively looking for a bar fight. But the outcome is the same. And it's extremely likely that the next Republican president will be very, very Peter King-like.

DEAR MEDIA: AFGHANISTAN IS NOT VIETNAM -- FOR YOU

From a Sheryl Gay Stolberg article in today's New York Times:

Afghanistan ... barely registered on voters' minds during the recent midterm elections. With the war now in its 10th year, Americans have clearly soured on the conflict. Six in 10 say it is "not worth fighting," the Post-ABC News survey found.

That could spell trouble for Mr. Obama next spring and summer, when he will have to flesh out the details of his troop withdrawal plan -- just as his re-election campaign is heating up. Mr. Obama left the specifics unclear on Thursday, saying his plans would be dictated by conditions on the ground. But at some point he will have to lay out a plan and make a clear case for it if he expects Americans -- and lawmakers in his party -- to get behind him.

No, he won't. He won't won't have to make a clear case to the public, no matter what he does. The same goes for his party, for different reasons.

How blind do you have to be not to notice that America just shrugs and resigns itself to whatever goes on if Afghanistan -- at least as long as we're still there? There's no anti-war protest movement. There was no talk of the war on the campaign trail, and no one in the public demanded talk. Most people have just given up. A Republican couldn't win the war and wouldn't withdraw, and now the same thing seems to be true of a Democrat. What's the point of thinking about it? The politicians do whatever they decide to do.

The public really, really does not want to be in Afghanistan anymore. You might not realize that from the recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll:

By a 53-to-45 percent margin, Americans approve keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan until 2014 (however, a majority of Democrats and independents disapprove)

That's because the question (PDF) offered an extremely limited range of choices:

President Obama has pledged to start reducing American troop levels in Afghanistan next year, but a recent plan by the U.S. and its NATO allies see some combat troops remaining there until 2014. Do you strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove or strongly disapprove of leaving some American troops in Afghanistan until 2014?

A majority approves, but most of those are in the "somewhat" category. ("Strongly disapprove" gets nearly as much support as "somewhat approve.")

But in more open-ended questions, the ABC/Washington Post poll shows utter disgust with the war: 60% of the public thinks it wasn't worth fighting (43% feel this "strongly"), and a whopping 81% want Obama to start pulling out troops in summer 2011 or sooner (54% say that timetable is "about right," 27% want it to start sooner). They understand the need to do this carefully -- approval of the 30,000-troop increase is 50/50 (literally, 48%/48%) -- but they want to start getting the hell out soon.

Yet they seem to have given up. No one fights this war, and no one votes to end it. They won't need convincing if the withdrawal starts on schedule -- but they'll just sigh and shrug if it doesn't.

But if it does, the hawks and wingnuts may raise hell -- for the usual political reasons. They'll want to start painting Obama as "weak." They'll want to make his "weakness" a 2012 campaign issue.

Which is why Democrats in Congress don't need Obama to "make a clear case" for a withdrawal. They're not going to respond to a clear case -- they're going to respond, as usual, to right-wing demagoguery. If the right holds back on this issue, Dems will go along with a withdrawal. If the right fights, Dems will be their usual spineless selves.

And if Obama capitulates and postpones the start of the drawdown, some Dems will fight -- but not enough to make a difference, as usual. (Republicans and Blue Dogs will dominate the debate.)

I know the press wants a rerun of the Vietnam era, with furious debate on an endless quagmire of a war. But the public doesn't have the stomach for that, and the more dovish party doesn't have the guts. So no Pulitzers for you guys on "the war at home" this go-round.

GUESS IT KINDA SLIPPED HITCH'S MIND

Via Ron Chusid, I see that Christopher Hitchens has written an admirably angry takedown of the tea party movement and Glenn Beck; it's up on the Vanity Fair Web site. The piece is spoiled for me, however, by a brief dip into the recent past:

So, Beck's "9/12 Project" is canalizing old racist and clerical toxic-waste material that a healthy society had mostly flushed out of its system more than a generation ago, and injecting it right back in again. Things that had hidden under stones are being dug up and re-released.... a whole new audience has been created, including many impressionable young people, for ideas that are viciously anti-democratic and ahistorical. The full effect of this will be felt farther down the road, where we will need it even less.

I remember encountering this same mentality a few years ago, when it was more laughable than dangerous. I didn’t like Bill Clinton: thought he had sold access to the Lincoln Bedroom and lied under oath about sexual harassment and possibly even bombed Sudan on a "wag the dog" basis. But when I sometimes agreed to go on the radio stations of the paranoid right, it was only to be told that this was all irrelevant. Didn't I understand that Clinton and his wife had murdered Vince Foster and were, even as I spoke, preparing to take advantage of the Y2K millennium crisis -- remember that? -- in order to seize power for life and become the Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu of our day? These people were not interested in the president's actual transgressions. They were looking to populate their fantasy world with new and more lurid characters.

Hmmm -- at the time, do you remember the Hitch ever bringing up the less-than-savory nature of his newfound friends? I believe he started making the right-wing rounds when he published his anti-Clinton book No One Left to Lie To, in 1999; not long after that, 9/11 happened, Bush and Cheney sought to overthrow Saddam, and Hitch became, for years afterward, the right's cosseted-pet lefty, at least until he started getting squeamish about that torture thing. No, wait -- even after he denounced Abu Ghraib, he was still thumping the tub for the war for the likes of The Weekly Standard. Even now, Hugh Hewitt prays for him.

Yet somehow, in all that time on the right, presumably encountering even more conspiratorial nuttiness, Hitchens -- who postures as The Last Honest Man, and who seems to have written and published more words in that period than mere mortals had time to read -- never once made note of the fact that many of his compatriots were barking lunatics.

You know what, Hitch? Those people you saw in the Clinton years, and presumably beyond, weren't "more laughable than dangerous." They were taking over America, set back only briefly by Bush and Cheney's failures. They were aided and abetted by the same right-wing media that showered you with affection. And you, the oh-so-trenchant observer, either never saw it coming or never thought it was worth bringing up.