My gratitude to the stalwarts at Right Wing Watch for watching nearly two hours of Phyllis Schlafly's seminar earlier this month at The Citadel. She had some interesting things to say about feminism.

In the World According to Schlafly, the word "liberal is a pejorative now since Michael Dukakis...no politician wants to be called a liberal anymore" and because it's a pejorative, Schlafly thinks "that's the way we should treat feminism." She goes on to say women don't want to be called feminists because it's a bad word, and that "everything they stand for is bad and destructive."

I admit, I'm confused by this, especially since the right wing has been trying to hijack the term feminist for the past several years, courtesy of Sarah Palin. As far as our badness and destructiveness, I guess it's bad and destructive to work to take care of our kids so we're not at the mercy of the welfare state? Let's see. She truly believes "America is a giant island of freedom, achievement, wealth and prosperity", too. I guess for her that means freedom, achievement, wealth and prosperity for men and men only?

But wait, according to Phyl, "American women are the most fortunate people who lived on this earth" and feminists just want to be victims.

Are you facepalming yet? Wait till you get to the part where she hypothesizes about a man and a woman competing for the same high-paying job, and the woman being at a disadvantage because the man has a WIFE, something the woman is "insanely jealous of", so she wants to "abolish the wife of the man" because she can't have a wife of her own.

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Newt Gingrich, while thanking the Koch family for hosting a political fundraiser in 2007 adds "I think anytime you can visit a starter home like this..." Received by rounds of laughter from guests, Gingrich continues on to make a joke about the "core" differences between liberals and conservatives while using the no doubt palatial estate of the Koch family in an analogy about public housing.

Personally, I think Casey Anthony could beat him in a personality contest.

Here's the thing about an "entitlement society" the GOP candidates like to rail against: They don't like the fact that too many people would benefit from it. They're 1 percent suck ups.

Eric Cantor is such a patriot. He's so patriotic he's asking us all just to listen -- only LISTEN -- to how conservatives want to "give power back to the states" via a federal "repeal amendment", recently introduced in the Virginia assembly.

The [sponsors] say the plan is a response to the federal overreach created by "two 'progressive' constitutional amendments adopted in 1913" -- the 16th Amendment creating a federal income tax and the 17th Amendment allowing for the direct election of U.S. Senators, which were previously appointed by state legislatures.

Here's how their plan works: We elect a President and a Congress. Then we let them write their bills, debate their bills, pass their bills. After the President signs it into law, states can repeal it if 2/3rds of them agree. The states can blow it up and nullify it, subject to an override of 2/3rds of Congress.

Round and round and round she goes...just one big endless nonstop loop.

It's a conservative wet dream, because nothing could ever get done. No business of government could ever be transacted as a nation, which means even less standing in the global arena and more grandstanding at home. Load a few more tea partiers into state and national governments and we can look forward to gridlock after gridlock after gridlock.

Which is, of course, a home run for conservatives.

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Earlier this year I posted a story about a mind numbing political conversation I had with some of my conservative friends and relatives. No matter what I said, and no matter how much we agreed on certain issues, I was always dismissed as being "too far left." I had lunch with some of those same relatives earlier this week and as expected, politics took center stage in our conversation -- and I'm happy to report some progress!

We decided to meet at a local restaurant and right off the bat, I knew things were going to be interesting. My youngest, and most under-informed cousin pulled up in his ginormous SUV adorned with FIRE PELOSI stickers on both the front and back bumpers, and the sound of Rush Limbaugh's voice blasting from the open windows. You see, he has friends in the military and listens to Limbaugh so he knows everything there is to know about politics, the economy, war and social issues. Oh, and he's 21 and earns just under $22k a year. We'll call him cousin #1.

We were seated at a table and before the server could even introduce herself, cousin #1 looked across at me and said "So, what do you think 'bout your glory boy Obama now?" I knew it was coming and was prepared for battle, but before I could get a word out, cousin #2 jumped in and said "He's still a hell of a lot better than Bush and THANK GOD McCain and Palin didn't win!" And it was on like Donkey Kong. I just sat and smiled because the cousin who came to my defense was the first one to call me a "leftist" in our last conversation. He (and his wife) had finally seen the light and now realize how toxic the GOP and their media are to our nation. I was shocked at how their conversion to the truth was so strong that they even chided corporatist Democrats like Ben Nelson! Can I get an AMEN?

To be perfectly honest, I didn't really participate in the conversation all that much. I didn't have to. The two cousins sparred for the better part of the meal and I sat and nodded my head - when I wasn't defending my new "leftist" cousin. Cousin #1 left the restaurant looking defeated and confused, albeit better informed than when he walked in. He conceded nothing, but was forced to admit that the Republican party had turned into a bunch of far right wing extremists and probably more extreme than he was comfortable with.

It was nice to finally be vindicated by two family members who were at one time, rabid Fox News watching Republicans. It took me years, but it was well worth the fight. If any of you need to vent about Republican friends, family or co-workers, please use this thread to get it off your chest!

A conservative economist with a progressive idea? I'm guessing he won't be doing consulting work for the RNC anytime soon. Kevin Hassett is director of economic policy studies at AEI, a very conservative think tank.

But when I got him on the phone to talk about the unemployment crisis, he struck a different tone. His problem with the stimulus wasn't that government spending inherently fails to grow jobs and the economy. The problem, he said, was that Obama's stimulus was not direct enough.

With the Recovery Act, the White House eschewed direct hiring and aimed instead to raise overall economic output in the hope that more activity would lead to more demand, which would lead to more hires. "Look at the stimulus and the number of jobs we've actually created, and it comes out to a couple million bucks per job created," Hassett told me.

"My idea is simpler. Find the unemployed and hire them."

[...]

"Employers don't want to take a chance on some guy without a job for two years," he said. "The cycle is so long and deep that the cyclical becomes the structural." The easiest way for the government to end somebody's jobless spell is, very simply, to end it by straight-up hiring the worker.

"Since the economy has created this class of long-term jobless, the arguments for government hiring become stronger," he said. "If you give the person a job for a while, it helps them get a job later. You remove the stigma."

What a concept. Hopefully, the White House is paying attention. And Congress. And yes, even conservatives.

Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks was filling in for Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC yesterday, and had on Sam Seder and conservative blogger Matt Lewis about Netroots 2010, Right Online, and media bias.

Lewis actually started arguing that the reason liberals don't have a Breitbart is because we don't need one -- we have the whole liberal media. No, really, he said that.

LEWIS: You don't need Andrew Breitbart. You have the Washington Post and the New York Times and three tv networks. The conservatives had to invent Andrew Breitbart because of the liberal bias in the media for decades. It's only been since the advent of the blogosphere the conservatives hope to keep up.

You don't need him. You've got networks. The Washington Post and the New York Times don't run any -- whatever the liberals want them to run.
It's obvious.

It seems like only yesterday when the Times ran that investigative series exposing false intelligence and urging President Bush not to invade Iraq, doesn't it?

The Risks in Reporting Real Stories in Baghdad

General Zinni became the latest man to say: " I think the American media is being made a scapegoat for what's going on out there."

David Ignatius

"By conservative counts, nearly 200 civilian men have been executed in the past two weeks and dumped on Baghdad's streets. Many have been hogtied. Some have had acid splashed on their faces. Others have been found without toes, fingers, eyes." Gettleman, who had been away from Iraq for more than a year, wrote that something fundamental had changed: The violence had "turned inward" into sectarian warfare...That is what the Iraqis see every night---But a reporter's job is to tell the truth, even when it hurts. Americans should be grateful that reporters such as Jill Carroll are risking their lives to chronicle this agonizing story -- and tell Americans not what they want to hear, but what they need to know...read on"

More from Joe on the Jill Carroll story:

AmericaBlog has the latest from MyDD. What's interesting is that Dailykos, TalkingPoints Memo, Raw Story, Eschaton, Crooks and Liars and Americablog nowhave more traffic than Instapundit, which remains the highesttrafficked conservative blog...read on

Pretty funny rundown from Mithras.

Atrios points out that you "gotta know the players."