vey.

While I often find Joan Walsh to be as much of a tool as Mark Halperin, she surprised with this entirely reasonable reaction to the Nobel Prize tempest du jour. And this line is particularly important:

The right-wing's idiocy about Obama's Nobel win is no longer even interesting.

We need to get that message to Chris Matthews, Anderson Cooper, Campbell Brown, Wolf Blitzer, David Gregory, etc. etc. to whom it really is the only interesting aspect of current events. Go and tell it, Joan.

Clearly the attacks against the Clintons stung Joan Walsh. She can't pass up an opportunity to revise standard-issue power playing (keep your friends close, your enemies closer) into a validation of her own political instincts. And the need to frame every move of president's as "he agrees with me" is just plain creepy (although it does provide useful insights into the Walsh psyche).

The comment by Nate Silver - who's usually great - is very silly. Millions of people didn't vote for Obama and many thousands of those millions attended Palin rallies throughout the campaign. This is more of the same.

If anything, the underwhelming turn-out is astonishing, given the six-month Glenn Beck promotional campaign and the wall-to-wall coverage of the summer's townhalls.

Salon makes official its new brand identity: PUMAs Live On!

Slouching towards irrelevancy...

So Salon hires someone who is actually connected to Taitz's husband to report on her? And then presents her clear manifestation of a psychosis as "genuine"? Journalism, we hardly knew ye!

This is a nasty, racist screed masquerading as tolerant magnanimity. Every fiber in me recoils at what this pernicious "writer" is trying to do. Any article that attempts to explain away the entire history of black oppression and slavery by listing statistics about complicated black opinions about homosexuality has only one objective: to make white people look better. This article is toxic and racist brew. Salon - a bunch of white folks, let's face it - should know better than to publish it.

How do you feel about Sarah APLIN? And, while you're pondering that, how do you feel about ROTFLMAO?

The middle-aged overweight hate-filled white people who show up at these town halls are just another very public endorsement for increases in education spending.

It's like Sirota walks through life with a Stupid IV attached to his arm. You can set your watch to his very, very silly weekly anti-Obama post, as he earnestly tries to carve out a special niche as the Guy Who Attacks Obama from the Left. So, so predictable and tiresome. Wasn't he recently getting ready to throw in the towel?

The towel is waiting.

There's nothing more tiresome than "liberal" scolds brow-beating artists and entertainers. I don't care if they're painters, filmmakers, sculptors, performance artists, actors, or comedians. They're not beholden to your preachy PC requirements. In fact, I think a central truth of the creative experience ought to be crossing the line as often as possible. That's precisely how we find the line.

Letterman's defense of bad taste was commendable. I applaud him for it. As for Palin, she clearly and inexplicably gets some weird satisfaction from all these tabloid-level histrionics. She keeps pulling herself into this crap. Who knows why? Who cares?

Having spent the last eight years propping up the worst president in modern history, they are now reduced to defending third-rate know-nothings like Ed Henry and Chuck Todd. Obama has them flummoxed, and it's very entertaining to watch. Presumably all these folks discovered Salon through the Camille Paglia wormhole and have come to share their paranoia and unhinged rage with the natives. Note to trolls: you're wasting your time.

...the weekly David Sirota sky-is-falling column. Obama sucks, the government sucks, Wall Street sucks, everything sucks - except for my hair, which looks great on TV!

Why is every single feeble utterance of that brainiac John McCain treated by the press as though Moses has spoken from Mt. Sinai? Who cares what he thinks? He offers no new ideas and never will.

"It's a little odd, though, to see McCain adopt some of the language used by the kind of conservative Republicans who disdain him." Really? McCain wouldn't even come to his own daughter's defense when Laura Ingraham called her fat. And wasn't selecting Sarah Palin a gift to "the Republicans who disdain him?"

The totally phony characterizations of this guy persist for reasons that defy logic.

I remember reading The Artificial Nigger many years ago and being so shocked by the act of betrayal at the center of that story that I had to physically put the book down and walk away. It was an act of emotional and moral violence so forceful that it left me disturbed and stunned. I've never had a response to anything in literature quite like it. I found her work to be revolutionary in that way. The shock and awe of A Good Man is Hard to Find. The redemptive, mystical vision of Revelation. The spiritual possession in Parker's Back. And the patient and even-handed treatment of each and every fatuous wingnut throughout her stories. What compels about O'Connor is that she was brave enough to acknowledge that in spite of our pretenses we stand always on the edge of total anarchy and violence.

...Michael Steele apologizes to Rush for his insensitive comments about him. They do realize that they've made Rahm Emanuel seem prophetic, don't they? And themselves look even more ineffective and effete than they usually do?

The problem for that trivial leg of the Republican party that includes actual elected officials is that they are completely emasculated by this Rush hero worship. Can you govern effectively when you represent a constituency of one: Rush Limbaugh?

What once seemed like inconsequential Inside Beltway political point-scoring has actually calcified into a political reality. I've got my popcorn.