Dear Ann Coulter:

No matter how tempting it might be, we're not going to be mean-spirited and all schadenfreude over your recent jaw wiring, like some people who are celebrating the fact that it apparently will shut you up for awhile.

For one thing, we've had friends who've had their jaws wired shut and it's a singularly unpleasant experience we wouldn't wish on anyone, not even miserable excuses for humanity for whom it might be a small piece of karmic justice. Getting your meals through a straw for months on end really, um, sucks.

And besides, we're not so foolish as to suppose that this will actually silence you. After all, you're at least as well known for the hateful, crazy crap you write as for the hateful, crazy things you say.

My guess, in fact, is that being denied a verbal outlet for your venom, you'll just pack that much more crazy into your writing. We can hardly wait.

In the meantime, we do hope that all that money you're making from in far-right investment scams is helping to pay for all this ...

Love, your friends at C&L

As the American economy plunges deeper into crisis, the conservative chattering classes are hoping for a replay of their 2001 blame game. Having successfully perpetuated the myth that President Bush "inherited a recession" from Bill Clinton, right-wing mouthpieces from Rush Limbaugh to Fred Barnes began blaming Barack Obama for the Bush recession literally within hours of his election. But as a quick glance at the data shows, across virtually economic indicator from GDP, unemployment and consumer confidence to home prices, foreclosures and manufacturing output, ownership for this mushrooming economic calamity squarely belongs to George W. Bush.

Gross Domestic Product. U.S. GDP shrank by 0.3% in the third quarter (July through September), a decline which followed the downward revision of the Q2 number from 3.3% to 2.8%. But while "recession" is traditionally defined as two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction (which is almost certain to occur), the quarterly Survey of Professional Forecasters by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia concluded that the United States entered a recession in April.

Recession at the State and Local Level. While there is debate as to whether or not the United States has technically slipped into a recession, at the state and local level there is no doubt at all. According to Moody's Economy, by the end of September 30 states were in recession, up from just five in March. 19 more states were deemed "at risk." (Only Sarah Palin's petro-state of Alaska was forecast to experience economic growth.) 276 of 380 metropolitan areas measured by Moody's had also sunk into recession. Combined with the downward spiral of home prices, these regional economic contractions are having a devastating impact on state and local tax revenue - and government services.

Unemployment. In October, the American economy shed 240,000 jobs, catapulting the losses for the year to 1.2 million. At 6.5%, the unemployment rate hit a 14-year high. The percentage of the adult population now working dropped to 61.8%, its lowest level in 15 years. The Philadelphia Fed survey forecast 222,000 more lost jobs per month through the end of the year. With some analysts now predicting unemployment will hit 8% by the middle of 2009, President Bush's reversal on extending jobless benefits could not come a moment too soon.

Jobless Claims. Of course, the corollary to skyrocketing unemployment is an explosion of new jobless claims. The Labor Department today released figures showing new unemployment claims jumped to 542,000 last week, a 16-year high. First-time jobless claims have now remained above the 400,000 for 17 straight weeks.

Continue reading »

I'm sure a lot of you were wondering what happened to Ann Coulter this election season. The right has trotted her out to wage culture wars reliably ever since 1998. But she hardly was visible at all this year.

Well, if you happen to be one of those lost souls who belongs to the Conservative Book Club, then you received one of these e-mails in your Inbox this week from Coulter.

[Click here to see the full letter.]

As you can see, it's a letter that starts out by teeing off the emerging right-wing meme attempting to blame Barack Obama for the current economic meltdown, mostly by noting that Wall Street firms donated more heavily to Obama's campaign than to John McCain's:

If you've been wondering why the financial industry is in meltdown -- and taking your 401(k) or investment portfolio down with it -- now you know.

Let's face it: The former frat boys who populate Wall Street today understand economics as well as the pinko professors whose courses they snored through.

Now, it's true that Democrats were heavily preferred by Wall Street campaign donors this year, but that has far more to do with their historic preference for lining up behind the perceived likely winners of a given election season. And even a blind pig -- or a right-wing pundit -- could sense before the season even started that the Republican brand was giving off the distinct odor of fetid slop.

But if those same Wall Street pinko-educated frat boys are as ignorant of economics this year as Coulter claims, then wouldn't they have been equally so in 2000 and 2004, when they gave heavily instead to Coulter's then-preferred candidate, George W. Bush? Something doesn't exactly add up here.

That's all just throat-clearing, though, for Coulter's main pitch: She's selling you a financial newsletter written by a fellow named Mark Skousen, whose PhD in economics seems to impress Coulter mightily (if only she gave as much credence to people who actually won the Nobel Prize in economics).

Three years ago, Skousen was selling the same scam through the Heritage Foundation, promising super-hot stock tips if only you subscribed to his pricey investment newsletter. No word on how that hot tech stock actually did -- but I'd wager it performed about as well the return on assisting former Nigerian prime ministers.

Skousen, however, is not just your average "conservative economist." He actually is an adherent of the same far-right school of "libertarian" economics as Ron Paul: he advocates a return to the gold standard, the dismantling of the IRS and the Federal Reserve, and most of the other conspiratorial nonsense that accompanies these theories. Like Paul, he's a devotee of the Ludwig Van Mises Institute, which promotes much of this malarkey, and he's likewise actually a Bircherite in libertarian clothing. Indeed, Paul was one of the headliners at Skousen's "FreedomFest" earlier this year in Las Vegas.

Continue reading »

Bay Buchanan tried spouting the right-wing meme that "this is still a center-right country" when she was on D.L. Hughley's CNN show this weekend, and he had a simple question:

Hughley: Bay, do you think all the evidence -- even the election? That's the biggest evidence we would have. It's kind of shifted, don't you think?

Buchanan tried to filibuster the point (sure, it was a good campaign, blah blah blah) and then emits this howler:

Buchanan: This was a rejection of Bush, it was not a rejection of that which is conservative. George Bush did not govern as a conservative.

Sure. Because all that deregulation of the financial sector, all that gutting of government services like FEMA, all that warhawking in Iraq, all the tax cuts for the wealthy ... all of the things that Bush oversaw and which got us into this mess -- why, those things aren't conservative at all! And they had zero support from conservatives while Bush was carrying these policies out!

Right.

The rest is equally amusing. Hughley shoots down her arguments expertly, and all Buchanan can do is grasp at straws.

[H/t to Heather for the video.]

Download | Play    Download | Play

See? They really do hate America.

In one of their first joint appearances as the new Fox wingnut tag-team event, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck sputter in outrage about William Ayers' interview on Good Morning America:

O'Reilly: So here's my question. I know I made a big deal out of it, I know you talked about it on your radio program, got a lot of calls on it, people were angry. But when I go out on the street and I say, "William Ayers, does that bother you?" Just as many Americans say, "No, I don't care." What is that mentality when they don't care about a guy like this? What does that tell you?

Beck: Cakes and circuses and too many dumb people. I mean, we should thin out the herd, you know what I mean?

Um -- I can't -- I can't get my arms around the country that can listen to that and say, 'Oh, well he's saying it's not violent.' And he's on GMA promoting a book about non-violent acts, and comparing what we're going through now with the Vietnam War. He is pushing a book that is not only promoting this 'non-violent act' [air quotes] of blowing things up if you disagree with the government, and on top of that, the man is a university professor, he is a teacher! He is organizing people and telling them what we should teach our kids!

This is a total outrage, Bill. There is a disconnect in America. We are at the place where the Constitution hangs in the balance, and I think we're at a crossroads here. We're still about here [points to spot on hand], where the roads are just starting to split, but pretty soon, this side and this side are not gonna understand each other at all, because we're living in different universes.

Yes, we are indeed, Glenn. And yours is known as Planet Bizarro:

At any rate, if this is the quality of discourse we're going to get from these two, I think I'll just go rent the DVD:

Download | Play    Download | Play

Papa Bear was on The Daily Show last night, and it made for some rich viewing:

Stewart: I keep watching on your network, everyone is saying, Look, this is a center-right country, and he'd better govern that way.

And uh -- How is this a center-right country? Because it seems to me that it is not.

O'Reilly: Look, the problem is you never leave New York City. OK? That's No. 1.

Stewart: I'm a standup comic.

O'Reilly: Yeah, but if you're Jon Stewart, and you go to Alabama you're going to get killed. You can't go where these center-right people are. Because they'll stone you to death.

Hmmm. What passes for the "center right" part of the country for most of us -- say, suburban Milwaukee or rural Montana -- would be unlikely to react violently to a Jon Stewart. They might ignore him or think him rude, but most likely it would be civil and polite.

In fact, I happened to be in Wasilla, Alaska -- Sarah Palin's hometown -- when a crew from The Daily Show was there filming a segment on the town. No one was about to hurl stones at them. In fact, most of them seemed pretty eager to belly up to the table with Jason Jones inside the Mug Shot Saloon to be interviewed on national TV.

Now, I'm sure there are some quarters of the country where a city guy like Stewart might be wise to go well-armed and guarded -- probably some of them in places like Alabama. But to nearly everyone else in the country, these are the far right corners of the nation.

And it's pretty telling that O'Reilly thinks that's the center.

Later on, O'Reilly tells Stewart:

You should get out and meet some of the folks. They're not bad people.

That's true, except for that part about wanting to kill you.

(24 minute video--critical quote at 6:00)

Self-dubbed "The Three Tenors" of talk radio (a bad analogy, as the actual Three Tenors were talented and at the top of their field, and these jokers are...well, you know, hacks), Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved went to Minnesota to stump for the trio of Michelle Bachmann, Norm Coleman and Erik Paulsen. Prager apparently has a rather different reading of the Constitution than most people:

Prager, who calls Bachmann a “wonderful, wonderful extraordinary human being,” addressed the brouhaha by telling how he would’ve dealt with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews — by asking Matthews if he believes there are “American values” in the first place; if Matthews agrees, then “logic 1.1″ dictates that some people must hold anti-American values.

He added that both parties once upheld the “American value system” — the Democrats in the era of Kennedy and Truman — but the “Sixties Generation, the radicals, have taken over one of our two parties. They must be stopped!” People who “vote blue,” he added, “don’t know they’re voting radical.”

No fan of the Enlightenment, Prager added, “Equality, which is the primary value of the left, is a European value, not an American value.”

Wow. So I guess that Congress was being oh so continental when they wrote this:

Amendment XIV

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Remind me again who hates American values?

Download | Play    Download | Play

Bill O'Reilly lied on Letterman the other night as he was protecting Sarah Palin and defending her from the "gotcha" questions by Charlie Gibson. Here's what O'Reilly said.

"The Bush Doctrine? Remember that, when Charlie Gibson went, 'what's the Bush doctrine'? You got the nose with glasses on and all that. I'm sitting at home going 'what Bush Doctrine'? Is that the doctrine where I go to Crawford Texas five times a year? What Bush Doctrine is that? I don't know what that is. That was just ridiculous. It's all gotcha gotcha gotcha."

Now let's get the evidence, Many thanks to the tipsters from the C&L inbox. From his Talking Points segment on Tuesday, March 16, 2004: HAPPY DAYS FOR AL QAEDA

This Spanish election is very bad news for the U.S., which continues to be seen as a villain throughout much of the world. The new Spanish government will not be as supportive as the previous one.

Al Qaeda loves that. Its goal is to isolate America. Many people in Europe are Socialists, as you know. They believe that capitalist America is worse than Al Qaeda. And that crazy view has taken deep root...So the U.S. cannot count on much support from Europe. And that puts President Bush in a difficult position. The Bush Doctrine is to take the fight to the terrorists. Now with the capitulation of Spain, America has one less fighting partner.

And from this Factor Interview with Hans Blix via IMDB:

Continue reading »

Download | Play    Download | Play (h/t CSPANjunkie)

As McCain's campaign is falling apart, so are the right-wing talking heads. This is a sickness that runs deep. Case in point: Republican strategist Brad Blakeman actually attacks Obama for visiting his sick grandmother in a campaign plane. These people have no conscience.

Schuster: Brad, if it's so important not to be spending money like a drunken sailor and I haven't asked you this but I'm curious to hear your view of the the amount of money that was spent, 150,000 was spent on Sarah Palin's clothes at high end stores like Saks and Neiman. I don't even think you shop at Saks and Neiman.

Blakeman: No I don't, but let me tell you this. You know what the outrage is today? Is Barack Obama taking a 767 campaign plane to go visit his grandma.

Forget about the energy that is wasted, what about the hundreds of thousands of dollars to take a private trip when this guy should be humping his bags on a commercial plane or taking a smaller plane. Taking a 767 of campaign money from people who could least afford it is more of an outrage in my opinion.

Shuster: That is one of the most valiant tries I have ever seen in this entire debate about Sarah Palin's clothing allowance.

Blakeman: It's a fact!

Shuster: Nice try, Brad.

How was he supposed to get there, walk? He is under tight security, remember, Brad? Really, they will say and do anything at this point. They have no arguments to make so they dream up garbage like this. America is really taking a good look at these people I think for the first time and it's ain't pretty. Keep it up, Brad. You only help our case against conservatives.

Huff Post:

Responding to a question about how John McCain could square his opposition to wasteful spending with the RNC shelling out over $150,000 on clothes and accessories for Sarah Palin, said that the real outrage is Barack Obama "taking a 767 campaign plane to go visit Grandma."

Download | Play    Download | Play (h/t Heather)

Columnist Kathleen Parker is continuing her martyr tour to complain about the meanies who have gone after her for daring to say that Sarah Palin should step down.

Frankly, I'm a little disgusted by Parker's self-congratulatory stance of being "on the front lines" and taking fire for saying things that the GOP don't want to have said out loud. That's not bravery...that's acknowledging reality.

And though he doesn't get her to say it out right, I suspect there's another Barack voter sitting right there.

  FireDogLake:

Parker, who last week called for Palin to step down, now finds herself the target of a Wingnut Two Minutes of Hate.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself. [..]

After 20 years of column writing, I'm familiar with angry mail. But the past few days have produced responses of a different order. Not just angry, but vicious and threatening.

And she knows vicious. Here's Parker in 2003, on the Democratic presidential candidates:

Here's a note I got recently from a friend and former Delta Force member, who has been observing American politics from the trenches: "These bastards like Clark and Kerry and that incipient ass, Dean, and Gephardt and Kucinich and that absolute mental midget Sharpton, race baiter, should all be lined up and shot."

Suck it up, Kathleen. You've been tossing red meat to a caged rabid animal for two decades. No sympathy when it finally bites you.

Now, she whines:

...when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different from one's own, we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk.

You reap what you sow, Kathleen.  How do you think the liberal community has felt since George Bush took office?

This is too funny. You know my fondness for Kudlow, who blames poor people for the mess we're in.  Well, Larry "Market Popeil" Kudlow said he was in favor of the bail out and Bernie Sanders, (I) VT, called him out on it. Larry, who hates all forms of regulations on Wall Street and is a big free marketeer and Conservative is looking for a hand out. Way to go Larry.

Sanders: Larry,  I'm sure after all of the ranting and raving you have done against government intervention and the virtues of free market I know without saying that you are opposed to the bail out.

Kudlow: No, I'm in favor of it.

Sanders: Oh, you've become a Socialist overnight Larry, what happened?....I think your version of socialism is to bail out the rich. My concern is about the middle class and working families who are now asked to bail out the disaster caused by the incredibly greedy people on Wall Street who have fought for this deregulation which is now taking us over the cliff.

Larry Kudlow proves once again that he's nothing more than a right wing, free market, Milton Friedman hack that just lies at will. Doesn't he have a conscience? Nope...It's never the big money freepers that horde the wealth of this country and  have no restrictions on what they can do thanks in part to Mr Deregulation himself, John McCain. Jon Perr has more...

Download | play   Download | play (h/t Heather) (rough transcript)

Kudlow: It's time for the Congress, Republicans and Democrats to stop encouraging---exhorting and forcing banks to make low income loans with no documentation. Stop that---literally pushed these lenders to make low income loans

Scarborough: Hold on a second. You cannot blame this on low income people that are getting a house. 

Kudlow: I'm not blaming them. Kudlow: Sub prime, sub standard loans were a creature of the US Congress in the 90's and the 2000's.

Scarborough: Are you saying that poor people have caused this crisis?

Kudlow: Not poor people. Members of Congress who were rich people. But their Liberal guilt consciences forced banks and lenders to make lousy sub-standard loans and that has to be repealed...not everybody can afford a home, Joe. Some people have to rent."

What a crock.  Kudlow blames it all on the liberals. What a joke this man is. This is another case that proves conservatism is dead. Of course not everybody can afford a home. Sorry, the irresponsible lending practices went on because it kept Bush's economy chugging along for years before it crashed and burned. The ownership society Bush and conservatives called it. Morning Joe actually takes him apart for even suggesting that low income families are the root cause of our economic problems in the housing market. It's up to the lenders to qualify people for loans. PERIOD. 

I watched this crisis unfold and saw people walking into fairly expensive homes in Venice, CA with no down payments and either low or no interest loans. Yes, I'm a renter now. I couldn't believe my eyes when the property values skyrocketed (went up to 1 million) because of these lending practices. People can apply for a loan all they want, but that does not automatically mean they should be approved. That's up to the lenders. Liberal guilt is never an issue and a lie, Mr Kudlow. They aren't supposed to hand over thousands of dollars without knowing that they will be paid back. The predatory lenders made boat loads of cash at will with a conservative philosophy in hand. Just ask your best friend for a hundred bucks and see what happens...Naomi Klein writes: Disowned by the Ownership Society

Washington think-tanker Grover Norquist predicted that the ownership society would be Bush's greatest legacy, remembered "long after people can no longer pronounce or spell Fallujah." Bush has turned out to be the ownership society's undertaker.

I hope these work....Contact Larry Kudlow here: Larry.Kudlow@cnbc.com  Larry.Kudlow@nbcuni.com Call 877-251-5685 up until 7 pm EST and let him know how you feel in a respectful way.

Logan Murphy says:

Continue reading »

I didn't believe Driftglass when he posted that Monica Crowley called Sarah Palin "Ann Margaret in 'Kitten with a Whip!'"  But the official transcript proves that...well...she did:

MS. CROWLEY: She is Ann-Margret in "Kitten with a Whip." (Laughter.) She is fabulous, okay? And it raises the question, where has she been? The Republican Party has been craving somebody new and fresh and dynamic.

We've got video of the rest of Crowley's cravings right here:

MS. CROWLEY: ...[McCain] pulled off the nearly impossible here with the selection of Sarah Palin and in his speech, which is that he has rebranded the Republican Party as populist, as reformist, anti-establishment, anti- corruption, and -- dare I say it -- hip and cool...

Download | play    Download | play

Very few television personalities make me forget my pervasive sadness that I don't have Katherine Harris and Rick Santorum to kick around anymore.  Thank you Monica Crowley, for being you.  

  Teh stoopid, it hurts.

By all measures, Martin Luther King Jr. was a true leader. Barack Obama, on the other hand, is just another politician - one who has demonstrated far more regard for the interests of teacher unions than for the children they are paid to serve, far more regard for the pro-abortion lobby than for the future of the black community, and far less good sense than the average person has when it comes to picking a spiritual mentor.

The positions and values of Senator Obama stand mightily against those espoused, and what's more, practiced, by Martin Luther King Jr. Based on all these considerations, I think it is quite probable that King, were he alive today, would not vote for Barack Obama.

Oy.  As Matt Yglesias says, perhaps the National Review should leave the divining of political leanings of slain civil rights leaders to conservative rags that weren't around in the 50s and 60s.  You know, the kind that didn't write such racist tripe as Will Herberg's commentary on King's Nobel Peace Prize "'Civil Rights' and Violence: Who Are the Guilty Ones?" .  I'm just sayin'...

On a related note, PFAW offers a look back at the way the GOP has tried to continually paint themselves as the non-racists by looking at their origins during the Civil War and ignoring their actions from the 60s forward.