You (GG) need to ask, when people say the Republicans are in the thrall of the extremists, who those extremists are.

What does this mean? How is this relevant? You can title these participants in any manner you choose--Ron Paul followers, Birchers, Lew Rockwell disciples--does any of that matter?

They're being duped, controlled, manipulated by guys like Armey, Gingrich, Beck, Hannity, Dobbs, and so on and so on.

Don't you think that these other labels are part of the distraction?

Interestingly, this morning, the front page talked about the march with no picture of the crowd and no reference to the size of the crowd on the front page. Looks like the whole issue was pushed way to the back by the MSM so as not to be accused of "liberal" bias.

I'm not clear as to your meaning. Do you say that the WaPo concealed photographic evidence that the crowd was huge, or that the crowd was smaller than RightWing blogs, Fox, etc., reported?

If the former (crowd huge), what would explain

But PolitiFact, the political equivalent of the urban legend-busting site Snopes.com, reported Monday that the picture was taken at least a decade ago.

Your article assigns a certain intellectualism to the teabaggers. This movement is vehemently anti-intellectual.

But this is just the point. The teabaggers themselves are--to put it politely--insufficiently and/or misinformed--thanks to the propaganda from the likes of Armey's FreedomWorks.

One of my many pleasures in life is reading posts from sites like ThinkProgress where one of their reporters questions guys like Armey about his outfit's role in these events--the guy's face turns purple and he starts to bellow, fume, all that stuff (and lie about his relationship with various employees). This revealing of corporate sponsorship of "grassroots" movements is critical to neutering them.

I had a lot more trouble writing this than I normally have writing anything - it's sort of complicated, intertwined and difficult to express. It's easy to muddle the point. I do definitely want to refine it and find clearer ways to express the crux of it.

I thought you did yoeman's work in describing the situation. You know, my deceased parents were among those who routinely voted GOP (and against their interests) in much the way you describe.

And, since I was raised that way, it wasn't until my 20's when I first uttered, "Wait, what?"

And in any case, you, Taibbi and whomever else need to beat this drum constantly in order to--mixing metaphors--beat the tattoo of reality into the foreheads of those who view that child of Satan (FoxNews).

Maybe it'll work in the long run, maybe not. But we'd definitely have a larger, insoluble problem with silence. I have great hopes for the Internet.

Re Caliph Mike

So, where were those demonstrators when Bush appointed more czars than Obama? Where were they when every president since FDR has had such czars? What is it that makes these czars different from all the rest, exactly? Just that you don't agree with them?

You probably know this already, but this person is a whiny, dishonest, mealy-mouthed, passive-aggressive jerk-of-a-poster who cannot find it within itself (I refuse to honor it with "him," since that denotes manhood) to be honest.

What a smarmy little character this is. A perfect candidate for the GOP and, with any luck, a harbinger of that troglodytic political party's future. Such is this offspring of Gollum.

As anthropologists and geneticists assure us that there's no such thing as a "race," other than the one and only human race, what can a "mixed-race President" be?

Yeah, that's right, and I hesitated using that phrase but I thought, well, it might be conventional terminology that Old Joe would be responsive to.

In retrospect, I think I was in error to use it.

Live and learn.