To those who wonder why Paglia publishes here (in spite of helping to get this website off the ground 14 years ago), wake up and smell the capitalism. Paglia gets clickthroughs and page views and that's what drives ad revenue. You can thank Paglia's online BFF, Matt Drudge, for the volume. His site is the wormhole through which the crazies travel to get here, and share their mock surprise in Letters about a "liberal" who gets it. The formula sets up a nice little cottage industry for Salon: Paglia + Drudge = Multitudinous Page Views. If you really want to see Paglia gone, stop clicking.

I agree with Paglia on Jefferson Airplane and Grace Slick. They were uniquely preoccupied with nuclear devastation (their '68 Crown of Creation album cover features a mushroom cloud) and had a completely unique sound. Too back rock history has all but written them off.

Dave Sirota, ambitiously staking out the attack-him-from-the-left position for fun and profit. Who's the craven opportunist?

Another group of friends and colleagues were told yesterday they were laid off. This recession is really just gaining steam. Why spoil the fun with federal assistance? Let's let the banks collapse instead. That'll teach 'em!

Sirota's back and faux concern has got him! This piece is just another in what is sure to be four years of "progressive" lamentations from his opportunistic keyboard. Coulda, shoulda, woulda is the subtext of all Sirota's stuff. Damning Obama with faint praise is a smart marketing strategy for him. He gets to have it both ways. Look for this trend to continue. It keeps the TV bookings up.

Seriously, is there a political analyst out there with as much of a tin ear as this guy? Every column he writes serves a single purpose: to reinforce his own specious and wholly wrong theses - facts be damned. Oh well. It's Saturday.

The guy's been president for what, two weeks, and already the sky is falling? Please. The stimulus debate is not being won by the Republicans. It's being lost by Democrats - in the media. That is, where the fuck are they?

The good news is that the next jobs report will be released on Friday. Americans will be scared straight all over again, and Obama will have another opportunity to remind folks that the Republican economic collapse continues, uninterrupted by regime change.

ps - Citing Rasmussen is chicken little cherry-picking. Rasmussen remains an outlier on stimulus polling - albeit the one the media will rush to because it fulfills this week's conventional wisdom (and Joan's) of Obama's presidency being over. See Nate Silver on the subject for much more honest reporting on the subject: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/02/stimulus-still-popular-after-all-these.html.

The whole Sirota schtick is as dull as rocks. And as phony as a Bernie Madoff investment. If you didn't have Washington insiders to rant about, you wouldn't be employed. Own it.

Before I clicked on Paglia's column, I checked Drudge for a link to it. Bingo! The formula repeats itself. I officially declare the Drudge link to Paglia's Salon column The Troll Portal. Welcome all ye Sean Hannity fans! Greetings Dittoheads! Hello Tax-Cuts-Only ostriches!

Obama has always talked right over the heads of the pundit class and directly to the people. That's what makes it possible for so many people to connect with him. That his poll numbers are holding should surprise only those talking heads who're invested in driving those numbers down (you included, Joan). I told you so is a pundit's primary political position, after all. Millions of Americans are sitting on the edge of their seats right now, jobless, exhausted by politics, just waiting for that blobby mass known as "the government" to do something, anything. The Obama administration understands this. Good on them for totally ignoring Beltway chatter and Republican obstructionism. Right now, as I see, the only people actually trying to do something helpful are Democrats. This becomes more evident by the day.

The trolls, locked in an August 2008 time capsule, are out in force today. If you feed them, they will stay.

For a second I thought maybe I'd imagined Matthews' on-mic slip. Thanks for the confirmation!

Obama's speech was solid. Man, is he one cool customer. Joking with the opposition, putting the tense nation at ease. His recasting of the financial system as belonging to all of us and necessary for all of us to support was extraordinary.

And the squirming and general discomfort visible in the likes of John McNasty and Lindsey Graham were priceless. I thought John Boehner's spray-on tan might melt right off his face.

...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.

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.