Fear and Loathing Low Expectations in Las Vegas

Apparently, last night we had yet another Republican declared the "winner" of a debate because he or she -- she, in this case -- managed not to respond to any questions by drooling, dropping trou, and doing the Funky Chicken.

What?

Oops. Sorry. Wrong picture. Try this one instead:

"Fourteen million dollars in one quarter. Raised
by a candidate who carries on like a mental patient."

Continues Mark Warren:

We need to at last call this for what it is: This is America in retrograde, thoroughly engaged in a spasm of exaltation of the stupid and the mediocre. Now, there is a significant cohort of the population that recoils at this notion, and, led by its priestess Sarah Palin, calls this the viewpoint of an American "elite." Well, yes. We have always been called to greatness — we have always been exhorted to excellence. America is an elite nation, and it didn't get that way by being led by people who didn't know that Africa was a continent and not a country. We did not become the greatest power the world has ever known, the shining city on a hill, by being determinedly dumber than the generation that came before, by surrendering (for long) to our most vile nativist passions, or allowing ourselves to be led (for long) by the morons and the fearful. People who wander into each new day, misunderstanding it as thoroughly as they had the day before, did not make this country great. In fact, it is this kind of ignoramus that has always — always — been nothing but a drag on American progress.

Whole thing is worth reading, even as it will only make you sadder about the next couple of years.

(pic. sources: Joe Dator/New Yorker | Las Vegas Gleaner | Heather Roddy)

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Oh, HST, where are you when we need you?

The Rise of the American Taliban

Yeah, you knew Sharron Angle was nuts, but did you know she was this nuts?

(h/t: @daveweigel)

Nervous Laughter

Jon Chait on the Fourteenthers:

There does seem to be a general trend for Republican presidents to look better with the passage of time as successive Republicans get crazier. Richard Nixon proposed universal health care and created the Environmental Protection Agency. Ronald Reagan passed a huge tax hike and a progressive tax reform. George H.W. Bush passed a deficit reduction bill that included a tax hike on the rich. George W. Bush didn't have a lot of accomplishments, but these days we can look back and appreciate the fact that he left the post-Civil War amendments intact. Likewise, one day we will be saying to ourselves, "You know, I never really appreciated President Palin at the time, but her policy of having intellectuals publicly flogged seems pretty humane compared with President Angle."

Leading Republicans Hating On Teachers Again

I just got an email from the Tarryl Clark campaign, saying that Crazy Eyes Bachmann recently claimed that teachers and other public employees will be "laundering" "taxpayer money" which will then be used to reelect Democrats and punish Republicans.

This strikes me as plausible. That she would say this, I mean. As with Sarah Palin rolling her eyes upon learning that a disgruntled erstwhile constituent was a teacher, Republicans like these love to hate on teachers. And why not? Uneducated voters are their best friends.

I decided to check on it anyway, and surprise, surprise, it's true. And of course she said it while on FoxNews. While painting it as a Pelosi plot. (Shocker, huh?) And also unsurprisingly, the even crazier Sharron Angle, who was also on the show, echoed the sentiment. As Greg Sargent observes:

Keep in mind that Angle dismissed the BP escrow money secured by the White House as a "slush fund," an assertion she later retracted. Call it the Bachmann-ization of GOP candidates: The constant elevation of the rhetorical stakes to the point where good faith disagreement is no longer possible or even desirable.

The Tea Party hallucinations have grown so overheated that politics can no longer merely be clash of visions or ideologies. It's about rescuing the republic from evildoers. Everything Democrats do must of necessity be nefarious, even vaguely criminal.

Video of this crazy talk (whence the screen grab above) has been posted by harryreid2010. Glad to see someone is paying attention. We do not actually want people like Michele Bachmann and Sharron Angle running our country. That would be very bad.

(x-posted)