This from journalist Tim Eagan:

For average Americans, the last 10 years were a lost decade. At the end of President George W. Bush’s eight years in office, American households had less money and less economic security, and fewer of them were covered by health care than 10 years earlier, the Census Bureau reported in its annual survey.

The poverty rate in 2008 rose to 13.2 percent, the highest in 11 years, while median household income fell to $50,303. Ten years earlier, adjusted for inflation, it was $51,295. . .

Now consider the people who showed up in a state of generalized rage in Washington over the weekend. They have no leaders, save a self-described rodeo clown — Glenn Beck of Fox News — and some well-funded Astroturf outfits from the permanent lobbying class inside the Beltway. They are loosely organized under a Tea Party movement, but these people are closer to British Tories than 18th century patriots with a love of equality.

Where was the Tea Party movement when the tax burden was shifted from the high end to the middle? Where were the patriots when Wall Street, backed in Congress by Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, rewrote securities laws so that the wonder boys of Lehman and A.I.G. could reduce home mortgages to poker chips at a trillion-dollar table?

One more detail caught my eye in these new economic reports on the lost decade. People in their prime earning years — age 45 to 54 — took the biggest hit in the last years of the Bush Administration, their median income falling by $5,000. And the region that suffered most — the South.

And we're supposed to be afraid of whatever Obama has in store? We're supposed to turn the country back over to the Republican idiots who've spent the last 8 years trashing it? Anyone who believes that truly is delusional and needs to be kept from reproducing.

And next year, two more experts will be back with a book telling us to do the complete opposite. The only consistent thing about parenting advice is the money to be made telling anxious parents that we're doing it wrong.

Yawn.

Nobody was mocking you for your faith, you self-made martyr twit. You were being ridiculed (and rightfully so) for your homophobic bigotry. But of course, that's what Christianity has become in this country, so perhaps you're right.

Either way, you're eminently mockable. As is the Right.

Nice to see the Right dealing with pressing matters like a small community organizing group instead of little things like, say, immigration, healthcare reform, sustainability and such. But then why do we need sustainability when the Rapture is around the corner?

The thing is, these people are dangerous, motivated and they appeal to the dangerously reptilian tendency many Americans have to let irrational terror and toxic victimhood, not rationality and maturity, drive their decisions (see Bush, George W.). They could gain Congress back in 2010 if the Left is complacent, which we tend to be. That would be a disaster worse than Bush. Can you imagine Bachmann as Speaker? We might look on 2001-2008 as halcyon days.

Thanks. That incredible statement didn't register with me at first.

You nailed it. Wow.

Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean girl-on-girl: every GOP male's mental whacking movie.

Who's to say we can't be the Menckens of today? I'm a writer and I think it's vital that we spend the next few years exposing the insanity of these people to independents.

My idea is simple: a book that simply reprints the most ignorant, racist, outrageous, treasonous and crazy statements of people on the Right since Obama took office. Printed in their entirety so no one can try the "took me out of context" defense. It would be called "Right In Its Own Words: Crazy %$#@ That the Teabaggers, Birthers, Deathers and Talk-Show Hosts Actually Said." It would come with its own website where people could continue to suggest more material.

Proceeds would go to ACORN. Hee hee.

I'm serious. Who wants to collaborate, Salonistas?

Well, Orly has proved herself to be both delusional and ignorant. She is now fully qualified to run for office as a Republican.

Stephen, I imagine it IS really tough being a delusional fuckwit whose presence in the otherwise totally awesome "The Usual Suspects" almost ruins that movie for me. At least you get killed with a knife in the neck, which is far more pussy than being shot.

Now go away.

"This is another liberal idea, and since we all know that liberals hate progress, money, and capitalism, it must be bad. Never mind that our fat salaries depend on kickbacks and bribes from multi-national corporations who might not be able to continue ass-raping the world into double digit annual growth if 20% of Americans stopped buying their crap. Don't you see, this represent a descent into a world where PEOPLE ARE HAPPIER WITH LESS! The HORROR! The HORROR!"

Fuck you.

The working class is a bunch of morons.

Not our fault.

I love money.

Oh, and fuck you again.

I'm a big alternative healthcare fan, but this whole "detox" the body thing is pseudoscientific crap. I can't believe how many products tout it and how few times people call bullshit on it. Basically, your body already detoxes itself. You sweat out substances like alcohol and your kidneys and liver do the rest. You don't need to dress like a Klondike Bar.

Gov. Mike Huckabee, "Joe the Plumber," U.S. Reps. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., Trent Franks, R-Ariz., Steve King, R-Iowa, Tom McClintock, R-Calif., Dr. Tom Price, R-Ga.

Man, that's a fantastic lineup, but couldn't you add Orly and Caribou Barbie just to complete the In-Fucking-Sane GOP Hat Trick? Some suggestions for other speakers who would fit right in:

- Strom Thurmond's corpse (good name for a band, actually)

- TrAnn Coulter

- David Duke

- Fred Phelps of the Westboro (God Hates Fags) Baptist Church

- The cast of Real Housewives of Atlanta

Most important, who's going to be there to capture what this crowd says for posterity? There's a book in just reproducing the crazy that will flow.