Just getting warmed up in Upstate New York, the Glenn Beckians set their sights on other heretics.

Obviously, it’s early in the presidential process yet, but I can’t help but notice that the stars seem to be aligning for a lunatic fringe Republican nominee in 2012…

I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed.

Cowardly chickenshit.  I understand that Republicans need all the votes they can get in the Senate, really I do.  After all, Democrats have to hold their noses while the likes of Joe Lieberman stab them in the back.  But I cannot for the life of me fathom how any Republican with a shred of conscience can support a hypocritical, venal, racist, perverted waste of oxygen like Vitter is beyond my ability to comprehend.

Not sure how throwing a moderate overboard for an extremist who doesn’t even live in the district is a sign of strength.  What message does this send to the last two Congressional Republicans in all of New England, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins?  Sounds like the same message Scozzafava got: you aren’t welcome here.

UPDATE: A great analogy that hadn’t occurred to me.

When even Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan agree, then the debate is over.

Richard Land, of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, compared health-care reform to Nazism and the Democrats to Dr. Mengele.  When the ADL and others protested, he apologized and promised to stop.  He lied.

Typically, my denomination does one crazy, offensive, stupid thing per year.  Less than two months to go, and this one will be hard to top.

Rape is a pre-existing condition.

Yeah, these are EXACTLY the kind of people I want in charge of my healthcare.

Melvin Martin (Oglala Sioux) gives the best discussion I’ve heard yet about the New Age “sweat lodge” deaths in Arizona and how they fit into a larger context of cultural theft and materialism.  Very profound.

The so-called “dominant culture” is greatly conflicted vis ‘a vis the American Indian so much so that they occupy a brutally nightmarish, cultural dead zone; they either hate us (with the worst of that hatred to be found in Rapid City, Bemidji and Farmington as previously noted) or they patronize us (‘a la legions of New Age devotees), with a pathetic absence of any sort of humane middle ground. A certain distance and even greater disconnect characterizes the contemporary status quo between white and tribal America that has manifested all sorts of social dysfunction, the Sedona incident being perhaps the latest and best example.

I have to say, I’m very skeptical of Sy Hersh’s claim of widespread racism against the president in the upper ranks of the military.  Are there racists in the uniformed services?  Of course there are, but no more so than in the general population; probably less, I would think.  And given how quickly your military career can come to a screeching halt if you are even suspected of racist attitudes, I have a hard time imagining some kind of bigoted cabal of generals and admirals at the Pentagon.  Having said that, it’s clear that there is a battle of wills going on, at least between Obama and Gen. McChrystal, over the future of America’s military commitment in Afghanistan, and it’s escalated to the point where McChrystal may have even leaked classified information.  My personal view is that we cannot abandon Afghanistan, if for no other reason than that of brutal self-interest; if Afghanistan collapses into warlord anarchy or a new Taliban dictatorship, it will once more be a breeding ground for the likes of Osama bin Laden, not to mention a destabilizing influence on Pakistan, with its brittle democracy, paranoid military, compromised intelligence service and nuclear weapons.

Well said, Mr. President.

If the Teabaggers were ever just manipulated tools of the Republican Establishment, that strategy has backfired spectacularly as the movement turns against the GOP all across the country.