Last Call

Obama's finally playing hardball with Israel.  But Israel too can play hardball with the US, as David Sanger points out.

In 1981, Israel destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak, declaring it could not live with the chance the country would get a nuclear weapons capability. In 2007, it wiped out a North Korean-built reactor in Syria. And the next year, the Israelis secretly asked the Bush administration for the equipment and overflight rights they might need some day to strike Iran’s much better-hidden, better-defended nuclear sites.

They were turned down, but the request added urgency to the question: Would Israel take the risk of a strike? And if so, what would follow?

Now that parlor game question has turned into more formal war games simulations. The government’s own simulations are classified, but the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution created its own in December. The results were provocative enough that a summary of them has circulated among top American government and military officials and in many foreign capitals. 

There's no accident to this report being in the news this week. The eleven-stage wargame the Brookings guys come up with after Israel strikes Iran fundamentally changes the game for all players involved:  the US, Iran, and Israel.

The aftermath is grim:

1. By attacking without Washington's advance knowledge, Israel had the benefits of surprise and momentum - not only over the Iranians, but over its American allies - and for the first day or two, ran circles around White House crisis managers.

2. The battle quickly sucked in the whole region - and Washington. Arab leaders who might have quietly applauded an attack against Iran had to worry about the reaction in their streets. The war shifted to defending Saudi oil facilities, and Iran's use of proxies meant that other regional players quickly became involved.

3. You can bomb facilities, but you can't bomb knowledge. Iran had not only scattered its facilities, but had also scattered its scientific and engineering leadership, in hopes of rebuilding after an attack.

4. No one won, and the United States and Israel measured success differently. In Washington, officials believed setting the Iranian program back only a few years was not worth the huge cost. In Israel, even a few years delay seemed worth the cost, and the Israelis argued that it could further undercut a fragile regime and perhaps speed its demise. Most of the Americans thought that was a pipe dream.

Sanger's piece serves as a not-so-subtle reminder that Israel can cause us lots and lots of trouble, drawing us into a third war we can't afford to fight...and cannot afford not to fight, either.  The timing is clear:  Obama is being told very clearly that he should tread much more lightly around Bibi and his government.

As BooMan says, we are facing a paradigm shift in Israel relations right now.

In effect, the president is utterly repudiating the aggressive rhetoric that Netanyahu displayed at the AIPAC conference. Bibi said that (East) Jerusalem is not a settlement. Obama says that it is.

By demanding that Israel cease building in East Jerusalem and stop razing Palestinians' property, Obama is asking Netanyahu to order something he is incapable of ordering. Or, at least, he's incapable of ordering it within his current coalition, which relies upon the Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas parties. At a minimum, the Obama administration is insisting that Netanyahu cut a deal with Kadima in order to gain the power he needs to stop construction in East Jerusalem. More likely, Obama just wants to force Bibi out of power. After all, he's insolent and indistinguishable from the neo-conservative lunatics that hijacked our own government and ran it into a ditch.

Sanger's piece is Israel's response to that shift.  "You know, we could make things much, much, much harder on you, Mr. President, if you continue to make things harder on us.  Have you thought about the consequences?"

Obama's being delivered a warning here.  How will he respond?

Sunday Funnies: I'm Yer Huckleberry (Hound) Edition

Bobblespeak Translations are up, where the continuing complete failure of the Obama adninistration is helpfully docmented by people who have no clue (like, say, Sen Lidnsey Graham.)

Gregory: Chuck AT&T proved this week that I was right all along - people are going to lose their insurance!

Schumer: No that’s a lie - just like death panels
and killing grandma

Gregory: Lindsey how do answer the charge that Republicans were right?

Graham: that’s a good tough question Gregory - Democrats are eliminating Medicare, student loans, and AT&T will have stop delivering the great customer service they are known for - it’s Armeygeddon!

Gregory: so will you repeal the law?

Graham: yes we will force the Democrats to
double funding for Medicare

Schumer: ha - oh noes!

Graham: states will have empty referendums on this bill!

Gregory: Chuck this bill costs $93 billion a year!

Schumer: that’s not very much Fluffy

Gregory: how do you answer the charge that this bill cuts the deficit but doesn’t cut it enough

Schumer: if we did nothing it would be worse bubblehead

Gregory: the CBO, the Concord Coalition and Count von Count from Sesame Street all say this will cut the debt - but how can that possibly be true when you cover millions of people?

Schumer: I heard you were a moron

Graham: I heard that too!

Schumer: from me

Guess McCain was busy this week, so hey, it's the folksy non-wisdom of Lindsey Graham. How does Huckleberry Hound keep getting on these shows anyway?

Must Be Nice Living In John Hinderaker's World

Where the unreality field protecting him from logic allows him to simply dismiss violent GOP rhetoric.

The Democrats have tried to change the subject away from their health care debacle by claiming that conservatives are threatening violence against them. Their complaints are pathetic where they are not out-and-out lies (e.g., Clyburn and Lewis), and they have taken a lot of well-deserved criticism. It is liberals, not conservatives, who rely on ad hominem attacks, outrageous allegations and violent imagery. We talked about this on our radio show today, and several callers reminded us of a particularly sorry episode of liberal violence that, for some reason, has not gotten much attention: the 2008 Republican convention in St. Paul.

I attended the convention and remember the terrorist acts that were carried out by anti-Republican protesters very well. They threw bricks through the windows of buses, sending elderly convention delegates to the hospital. They dropped bags of sand off highway overpasses onto vehicles below. Fortunately, no one was killed.

These were anti-Bush and anti-Republican protesters. Is it a stretch to think that some of them, at least, may have been inspired by over-the-top, hateful attacks on the Bush administration by Democratic Congressmen, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, Michael Moore, who was a guest of honor at the Democrats' own convention, various show business personalities, and many other leading liberal figures? I don't think so. We haven't seen that sort of hate campaign since the Democrats went after Abraham Lincoln. It seems unlikely that none of the "protesters" who tried to commit murder were inspired by those liberal voices.

Yes, these acts at 2008 St. Paul were terrible and were condemned rightfully by both parties.  There were arrests made.  But here's the difference, John.  The voices stirring up the hatred on your side this time are called "Congressman" and "Senator."



It's one thing to have Michael Moore (on in the right's case, Ted Nugent) say violent things.  It's another entirely to have sitting members of Congress say them.  You don't get a pass on that.  You don't get to play the equivalence card and say "Democrats are just as guilty!"

They're not.   Start condemning these members of the Republican party.  Thanks.

Playing At Recess

President Obama's first act this weekend with the Senate gone for Easter is to make recess appointments of 15 of his nominees that the Republicans refuse to allow votes on.

Coming on the heels of Mr. Obama’s big victory on health care legislation, Saturday’s move suggests a newly emboldened president who is unafraid to provoke a confrontation with the minority party.

Just two days ago, all 41 Senate Republicans sent Mr. Obama a letter urging him not to appoint the union lawyer, Craig Becker, during the recess. Mr. Obama’s action, in defiance of the Republicans, was hailed by union leaders, but it also seemed certain to intensify the partisan rancor that has enveloped Washington.

“The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disprove of my nominees,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis.”

It was the first time the president has used his constitutional authority to fill vacant federal positions by making recess appointments, thus avoiding the requirement for the advice and consent of the Senate. Mr. Obama, who currently has 217 nominees pending and 77 awaiting action on the Senate floor, said Republicans had given him little choice.

“At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months,” Mr. Obama said. “I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government.”

With lawmakers back in their home states and Mr. Obama spending a quiet family weekend at Camp David, the White House issued the statement announcing the president’s intent to appoint Mr. Becker, and 14 others, mostly to fill positions on his economic and homeland security teams.

The White House said the 15 nominees had been waiting, on average, seven months to be confirmed. They are expected to begin work over the next week; the president’s action will enable them to serve without Senate confirmation until the chamber adjourns at the end of 2011. 

Bush did it, Clinton did it, Bush Sr. did it, Reagan did it...hell, up until Saturday, Obama had been the only president in modern history to NOT make recess appointments.  Glad he learned that the GOP was never going to allow a vote on any of his nominees from this point out.  Not like the GOP can call this unconstitutional, when the power to make recess appointments by the President really is spelled out right in the Constitution in Article II, Section 2:

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

Good to see Obama realizing he doesn't have a choice.  I foresee another 50+ recess appointments soon.  Not like any of the rest will get a vote now.

Health Care Is The Excuse

Obama Derangement Syndrome is the diagnosis.  Frank Rich sees the situation for what it is.

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.

In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

If Congressional Republicans want to maintain a politburo-like homogeneity in opposition to the Democrats, that’s their right. If they want to replay the petulant Gingrich government shutdown of 1995 by boycotting hearings and, as John McCain has vowed, refusing to cooperate on any legislation, that’s their right too (and a political gift to the Democrats). But they can’t emulate the 1995 G.O.P. by remaining silent as mass hysteria, some of it encompassing armed militias, runs amok in their own precincts. We know the end of that story. And they can’t pretend that we’re talking about “isolated incidents” or a “fringe” utterly divorced from the G.O.P. A Quinnipiac poll last week found that 74 percent of Tea Party members identify themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while only 16 percent are aligned with Democrats.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.
 
Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too. 

If there's a principled opposition to Obama's policies, they are being drowned out in the sea of false and hateful rhetoric from the Teabaggers.  It is in fact somewhat unfair that those on the Right who have arguments against what is going on are being tarred with the same brush as the extremists.  It's then the duty of the moderate, cooler heads in the Republican party to stand against these lunatics.

They refuse, instead they pander daily to the Pretty Hate Machine.  The leadership of the Republican party knows they will no longer be the leaders if they don't pay homage to the "Obama is a Socialist" crowd, and dozens of Republicans in Congress have given themselves over to this idiocy anyway.  They're not going to risk what little political power they have left by standing up to the rhetoric and the violence.

So it gets worse every week.  It will continue to do so until America finally says "enough".  Sadly, that's not going to happen until we all pay the price high enough to unite us in revulsion at the acts.

Gone In An Arizona Minute

The Minutemen Militia is calling it quits.

The Arizona-based border watch group that burst onto the national scene in 2005 sent an email to its members this week announcing the corporation has dissolved.

The group’s president, Carmen Mercer, of Tombstone, said she and the board’s two other directors voted to end the group’s five-year run because they were worried her recent “call to action” would attract the wrong people to the border.

On March 16, Mercer sent out an e-mail urging members to come to the border “locked, loaded and ready” and urged people to bring “long arms.” She proposed changing the group’s rules to allow members to track illegal immigrants and drug smugglers instead of just reporting the activity to the Border Patrol.

“We will forcefully engage, detain, and defend our lives and country from the criminals who trample over our culture and laws,” she wrote in the March 16 e-mail.

Mercer said she received a more feverish response than she expected — 350 personal e-mails she said — and decided the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps couldn’t shoulder the responsibility and liability of what could occur, she said.

“People are ready to come lock and loaded and that’s not what we are all about,” Mercer said. “It only takes one bad apple to destroy everything we’ve done for the last eight years.”

When Mercer realized she had at least a short battalion's worth of yahoos ready to put holes in anyone making a run for the border, she wisely realized she went too far.  She knew exactly what she was saying with the rhetoric, but for some crazy reason she didn't expect anyone to actually take her seriously.  350 emails made quite a nasty electronic trail that would have made it clear beyond a doubt she was absolutely responsible for any violence that would have surely come if she had followed through.

It's a good thing she didn't go ahead.  I understand the need for border security in the United States in 2010, but armed militia groups providing it just was never the way to go.

Bachmann Fails At Economics Again

Michelle Bachmann continues to be one of the most amazingly uninformed, ignorant, and embarrassing members of Congress on either side of the aisle.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is continuing to denounce what she says is a pattern of government takeovers of the economy -- going so far as to say that the economy used to be totally private.

"And what we saw this Tuesday, once the president signed the health care bill at the 11th hour in the morning on Tuesday, that effected 51% government takeover of the private economy," Bachmann said on Wednesday, during an interview with North Dakota talk radio host Scott Hennen. "It is really quite sobering what has happened. From 100% of our economy was private prior to September of 2008, but as of Tuesday, the federal government has now taken ownership or control of 51% of the private economy."

What's sobering is how this woman got elected to office to represent hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans and continues to remain there while having no clue about how basic economics work.  One hundred percent of our economy was private prior to September of 2008?  51 percent of it is government controlled now?  That's either proof positive that she's blindingly ignorant, or that she thinks everyone is stupid enough to believe her just because she said it.  It's a complete fabrication.  Yet she's treated as a serious lawmaker.

Either way, Minnesota needs to elect someone else from that district come November.

Obama's Squeeze Play On Bibi

With the recent diplomatic spat between Israel and the US now having gotten somewhat serious, Obama's next stage of the plan may be to strike now with his major Middle East peace initiative.  But what's Obama's real game here?  McClatchy's Warren Strobel (emphasis mine):

Obama, fresh from his legislative victory on health care, is planning an attempt to turn the current disaster into a diplomatic opportunity, according to U.S. officials, former officials and diplomats.

The administration is said to be preparing a major peace initiative that would be Obama's most direct involvement in the conflict to date, and would go far beyond the tentative, indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks that were torpedoed earlier in the month.

"It is crystallizing that we have to do something now. That this can't go on this way," said one of the officials who, like the others, wouldn't speak for the record because of the issue's sensitivity.

Because of the U.S. political calendar, Obama has limited time to press Israel before it becomes a major domestic political issue during midterm elections. Netanyahu, who this weekend confers with his closest allies, has limited political space in which to operate, if he wants to stay in power.

His coalition at home is populated with Israeli politicians who support Jewish settlements in the West Bank, oppose any concessions on Jerusalem and are skeptical of an independent Palestinian state next door.

One irony of the current confrontation is that the administration, which had laboriously organized indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians, had planned to use Biden's visit to provide "strategic reassurance" to Israel, in hopes of improving relations with the closest U.S. ally in the Middle East after a year of strains.

Now, trust between the two sides seems to be at a very low ebb.

"There's not a great deal of trust that he believes deeply in the two-state solution," a former senior U.S. official in touch with the White House said of Netanyahu. "There's a belief that he's a reluctant peacemaker here."

The Obama administration is said to believe that Netanyahu has more control over Jewish settlements than he admits, and political flexibility to dump his right-wing partners and form a government with the moderate Kadima party if he chose.

"Fundamentally, he's going to have to decide between his coalition and his relationship with the United States," the former official said.

My distaste for unnamed sources aside,  there's a clear play here.  Obama's trying to squeeze Bibi out.

That's right.  Regime change in Israel.  Let that soak in for a moment.  Let's explore what that means:  it means the Obama administration sees Israel's refusal to come to the table and stop with settlement expansion as a direct threat to US national security.  So much so, that Obama's looking to put Bibi in an untenable situation where he has to decide between the US or his job.

The idea here is that the current government collapses and Netanyahu is forced to form a more moderate one.  The chaos would also prevent Israel from going after the Palestinians or Iran for a while.

BooMan has the right of things.

Given that, there is no way forward until not only Netanyahu goes, but the far-right lunatics he needs to form a majority go, too. Consider:

The Arab League is scheduled to meet this weekend in Libya and is likely to repeat demands for a freeze on Israeli building in occupied areas before giving a final endorsement to the return of the Palestinian Authority to peace talks with Israel. Mr. Abbas, the Palestinian president, has sought pan-Arab cover for his decision to return to the talks.

With Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak recovering from surgery and unable to attend the Arab League talks, and with our Gulf allies (and Britain) still furious about the Mossad assassination team unleashed on Dubai, the administration must show naked resolve and displeasure with Israel in order to have any credibility whatsoever. Not to mention, humiliating Joe Biden when he traveled to Israel was bound to be returned in kind two-fold by a president who knows how to watch his number two's back. 

Obama's running the old squeeze play here and he's doing a pretty brilliant job of it.  We'll see how it turns out.  Either way, make no mistake:  Obama is out of patience with the Netanyahu government, and they are about to get a stark reminder about who really does run this relationship.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Eleven people were killed in a wreck on Interstate 65 in Kentucky when a tractor trailer crossed the median and smashed into a church van.
• Earth Hour encourages everyone to switch off electricity for an hour at 8:30 PM local time tonight.
• The bloc of former Iraqi PM Ayad Allawi has claimed the most seats in Iraq's parliament, second-place Nouri al-Maliki's bloc is disputing the two-seat difference.
• Tensions are high as South Korea searches for 46 lost patrol boat crew members after an explosion sank the vessel near the North Korean border.
• Need to control your Mars rover robot from your iPhone?  Yeah, there's an app for that.

Last Call

Good news and bad news on the whole rolling back DADT thing.  The good news, the Defense Department is going to make it a lot tougher to expel anyone under the current rules.  Bad news, the Marines still aren't playing ball.

The Marine Corps' top officer says he would want to avoid housing gay and heterosexual Marines in the same rooms on base if the ban on gays openly serving in the military is lifted.


"I would not ask our Marines to live with someone that's homosexual if we can possibly avoid it," Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway told a Web site in an interview posted Friday. "And to me that means we've got to build [barracks] that have single rooms."

Asked about the possibility of gay and straight Marines living together, Conway told the site Military.com that he would "want to preserve the right of a Marine that thinks he or she wouldn't want to do that -- and that's the overwhelming number of people that say they wouldn't like to do so."

Conway said the Marine Corps is the only branch of the armed services that houses two to a room.

Marines.  You can ask them to die for their country.  Exquisitely trained, lavishly equipped, the soldier's soldier.  Ask them to deal with TEH GHEY however, and they can't take it like the rest of America.

Go figure.

Tick-Tick-Ticked Off

The situation is turning into a time bomb out there.  Ask Nashville resident Mark Duren.

Duren had just picked up his 10-year-old daughter from school and had her in the car with him.


"He pointed at the back of my car," Duren said, "the bumper, flipped me off, one finger salute."
But it didn't end there.

Duren told News 2 that Weisiger honked his horn at him for awhile, as Duren stopped at a stop sign.

Once he started driving again, down Blair Boulevard, towards his home, he said, "I looked in the rear view mirror again, and this same SUV was speeding, flying up behind me, bumped me."

Duren said he applied his brake and the SUV smashed into the back of his car.

He then put his car in park to take care of the accident, but Weisiger started pushing the car using his SUV.

Duren said, "He pushed my car up towards the sidewalk, almost onto the sidewalk."

Police say Harry Weisiger is charged with felony reckless endangerment in the incident.

 What caused this?  What was Mark Duren's offense?  What set off Harry Weisiger?
 
Duren had an Obama-Biden '08 bumper sticker.  Gotta love it.  Driving While Democrat, the newest rage.  Road rage, that is. 

A Fresh START

For an encore to health care reform, the President announced a new nuclear missile reduction treaty with Russia.

The agreement cuts by about one-third "the nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia will deploy," the president said.

The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) will last 10 years, and builds on the previous agreement that expired in December.

"It significantly reduces missiles and launchers," Obama told reporters at the White House. "It puts in place a strong and effective verification regime. And it maintains the flexibility that we need to protect and advance our national security, and to guarantee our unwavering commitment to the security of our allies."

Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will sign the agreement April 8 in Prague, Czech Republic, Obama said, calling arms control "one of his administration's top national security priorities."

Information released by the White House says the new treaty limits both nations to "significantly fewer strategic arms within seven years" of its signing. One of the limits: 1,550 warheads. "Warheads on deployed ICBMs (Intercontinental ballistic missiles) and deployed SLBMs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles) count toward this limit and each deployed heavy bomber equipped for nuclear armaments counts as one warhead toward this limit," the White House said. There are also limits on launchers.

The treaty lays out a "verification regime" that includes on-site inspections, data exchanges and notifications, the White House said.

"The Treaty does not contain any constraints on testing, development or deployment of current or planned U.S. missile defense programs or current or planned United States long-range conventional strike capabilities," the White House said.

Obama said the agreement is part of the U.S. effort to "reset" the U.S. relationship with Russia.
"With this agreement, the United States and Russia -- the two largest nuclear powers in the world -- also send a clear signal that we intend to lead," the president said. "By upholding our own commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we strengthen our global efforts to stop the spread of these weapons, and to ensure that other nations meet their own responsibilities."

Good news here.  Russia, after all, is an ally.  Republicans were angry with the President on Israel, saying that we treat our enemies better than our friends.  It'll be extremely difficult for the GOP to oppose this treaty without insulting Russia.  Where's the win here?  It's not like Americans want MORE nuclear weapons out there, especially on the Russian side.  (Aren't Republicans always screaming that "loose Russian nukes" could fall into the hands of terrorists on the black market?)

Nope, I'm betting this treaty is signed and ratified without too much trouble at all.

Preemptive Absolution

Digby has an excellent point:  the Wingers are so absolutely confident that violence is imminent that they are already publicly laying the groundwork for the narrative that the mean ol' Dems had it coming when it does:

I can hardly believe it, but apparently America's wife beaters have actually decided to use the defense that these Democrats are "asking for" death threats from the right wingers because they are "making them mad." I documented Sere and Cantor's warnings this morning, but there are more:

Breitbart: Congressional Black Caucus members went "searching for ... racism" by walking through Tea Party crowd

Graham tells Beck -- Beck! -- Tea Partiers "get mad" because they "don't like being called racist

Michael Graham: Pelosi was "asking for" response by carrying Medicare gavel

Rove warns Dems that discussing threats against them may "inflame emotions"

And on and on.  Blaming the victim isn't new in humanity's annals of, well, inhumanity, but the sheer rapidity at which this narrative is developing should scare the crap out of everyone.  The Wingers believe it's coming.  They are now completely counting on it and scrambling to save themselves.

They know that serious violence is very likely. They are simply inoculating themselves against the charge that it was their inflammatory rhetoric that caused it. It will be the Democrats complaining about their inflammatory rhetoric that made the teabaggers snap. If they'd just stayed quiet and not made daddy mad, he wouldn't have had to hit them.

The only thing these people should be doing is calming down their crazies. Instead they're ginning them up. Heckuva job.

They've lost control of this crazy train, and when it derails and people are hurt or worse, it's going to be nasty.  "You made us do this!" will be the battle cry of 2010.

What Bob Cesca Said

Eric Cantor indeed needs to retract his story.

He needs to retract his accusation that somehow liberals and Democrats are stoking the right-wing terrorism, and he needs to retract his ridiculous bullet story.

RICHMOND, Va. — Richmond police say the bullet that hit a window of Republican Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor's office had been randomly fired skyward.

Randomly fired skyward.

Retract, Mr. Cantor.

He won't.  Republicans will use this to continue to attack the Dems, and the Village will follow suit.  Six months from now, we'll still hear "Well, remember someone shot out Eric Cantor's window just after the health care vote, so it wasn't just Republicans who were violent, it was the Left too." 

Obama's a Muslim.

Al Gore invented the internet.

Liberals shot out Eric Cantor's office window.

Hell, FOX News will be telling the Cantor lie tomorrow still. Watch.

Growth Spurt

The final revision on Q4 2009 GDP numbers is out, and it's actually fairly good news on the surface.

Gross domestic product expanded at a 5.6 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said in its final report for the fourth quarter, instead of the 5.9 percent pace it estimated in February. It was still the fastest pace since the third quarter of 2003.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast GDP, which measures total goods and services output within U.S. borders, growing at a 5.9 percent rate in the October-December period. GDP increased at a 2.2 percent pace in the third quarter.

The department also said after-tax corporate profits grew 6.5 percent in the fourth quarter, slowing from a 12.7 percent rise in the prior period. It was below market expectations for a 10 percent gain. For all of 2009, after-tax profits fell 6.9 percent, the biggest decline since 2000.

Growth in GDP was lowered because contributions from business investment, consumer spending and inventories were revised down.

And then the bad news:

Much of the economy's recovery from the most brutal downturn since the 1930s has been driven by government stimulus and businesses being less aggressive in reducing inventories.

This has raised concerns that growth could sputter later this year when the boost from the two sources fades, given tepid consumer spending and high unemployment.

The good news is the stimulus worked.  The bad news is it was far too small.  Obama and the Dems may have won the battle on health care reform, but another stimulus package will be impossible because the GOP has no interest in seeing the economy improve, not when it's far easier to do nothing and blame Obama. The growth we've seen in the last several months is only because of the stimulus.  When it runs out, so does the economy.

Right around, oh, campaign 2010 season.