Mark Morford has a message for the teabaggers:
To all of you who either flip-flopped your wishy-washy ideals and switched your vote from bluish to reddish this past election because Obama and the lukewarm Dems failed to solve all world problems in 700 days, or because you got yourself so emotionally riled up/mentally watered down by the sexy caveman grunts of the Tea Party that you actually bought the BS line about being "mad as hell" about nothing even remotely coherent.
Here is your grand message: You are hereby wonderfully, thoroughly screwed.
Oh darling, it's so very true. The fun-filled news is, despite all the bluster and rhetoric, thinly veiled racism and rampant Islamophobia on display, the new army of jittery, anti-everything GOP bobbleheads that you just voted into office doesn't care a single iota about you, or your haphazard values, or what you sometimes occasionally stand for. And what's more, deep down, you secretly know it.
Are you slightly offended? Are you scowling and mistrustful of the notion? I'm delighted to hear it. Also: It doesn't really matter.
You don't have to believe me. Just wait until nothing at all is done to service the Tea Party non-agenda, because it's ridiculous and impossible to service. Just wait until you note how there is no actual shrinking of government, no restoring some bogus sepia-toned idealism that never existed, no saving of your job. There is, of course, but one GOP agenda: furthering their personal stranglehold on all things powermad and avaricious.
Dana Milbank is -- gag -- nostalgic for Dubya:
I miss George W. Bush.
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Rather, I miss him because in the end he was willing to toss aside his ideological orthodoxy when the national interest required it - a trait conspicuously absent among his fellow conservatives these last two years.
Gail Collins has a different take:
The moral of the George W. Bush TV interview this week with Matt Lauer involves the fact that it got terrible ratings. This could mean that the public wants to forget all about the first eight years of the 21st century and just blame Barack Obama for wrecking the economy. Or that while the country is divided in so many ways, we’re still one big family when it comes to our national exhaustion with the previous president.
Although if people had known he was going to tell that story about how his mother put the miscarried fetus in a jar and made him look at it, perhaps more viewers would have tuned in.
Or maybe not.
The whole interview was confusing. When the first George Bush was president, the White House seemed to go out of its way to drop hints that Barbara Bush was pro-choice. Did they know about the fetus jar story?
Also, didn’t it seem as if George W. was way more upset about Kanye West calling him a racist during Katrina than the fact that he invaded the wrong country?
E.J. Dionne Jr.:
Funny that when progressives win, they are told to moderate their hopes, but when conservatives win, progressives are told to retreat.
Worse, Democrats tend to internalize the views of their opponents. Already, some moderate Democrats are claiming that all would have been well if Obama had not tried to reform health care or "overreached" in other ways. Never mind that Obama's biggest single mistake (beyond the administration's projection that unemployment would peak around 8 percent) was giving in to Senate moderates and not demanding the much bigger stimulus plan a weak economy plainly needed.
Yup.
George Will is already writing the obituary for Obama's presidency:
As he promised it would be, Barack Obama's presidency has been transformative, but not as he intended. Whether it lasts two or six more years, it is an exhausted volcano because its biggest consequence may already have happened: It has resuscitated the right, making 2010 conservatism's best year in 30 years - since the election of Ronald Reagan.
The Los Angeles Times editors take on Oklahoma's idiotic anti-Sharia law:
Oklahoma is not OK. The passage of a state ballot measure last week that bans judges from considering international or Islamic law in their decisions is a symptom of a grave sickness in the heartland. It was an initiative inspired by paranoia, xenophobia and ignorance that should offend not only Muslims but anyone who believes in the principles enshrined by the U.S. Constitution.
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Oklahoma lawmakers, who put State Question 755 on the ballot, found a cheap way to appeal to voters' worst instincts by fanning deep-seated antipathy toward a tiny religious minority — one that poses no real threat to the state's laws or way of life. And this kind of demagoguery isn't confined to Oklahoma. It has helped fuel hysteria in response to mosque construction plans from New York to Temecula. For now, this is making life in this country tough for Muslims; who will the bigots go after next?
The editors at the New York Times are apparently shocked -- shocked! -- that John "Country First" McCain won't support the troops:
Senator John McCain has long defended the rights of military servicemen and women. It is a particular disappointment that he is vowing to filibuster the Pentagon’s spending bill unless a measure repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is stripped out — or he is satisfied about its effects on morale and readiness.
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Senator McCain has a chance to do right by the military and country he championed as a war hero. He should find a reasonable way to forgo a filibuster and end this grave injustice.
Yeah, don't hold your breath.
Bob Kinder explains how the United States is failing its veterans:
The leaders at the Pentagon have a moral obligation to ensure all veterans receive the necessary, comprehensive mental-health care they justly deserve. Loopholes or administrative actions that deny benefits and medical care to our veterans must be closed.
As our sons and daughters return home, we must humbly acknowledge their service and sacrifice, heal their wounds, restore their sense of hope, and enable them to reenter the civilian community as healthy, functioning members of society. Support our troops? Absolutely. It is our sacred honor.