Ever since Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, the conservative movement has been having seismic convulsions over it. The bile, rage and disgusting behavior have exponentially increased and is still ongoing as the media captures it for the nation to see.

Dan Riehl's latest post about Harry's Reid's family tragedy is yet another example of that lunacy, but just another version of the same song. This one is particularly nauseating.

As you may know, Senator Harry Reid's 69 year old wife and 48 year old daughter were involved in a bad car accident Friday. Normal, decent Americans would ignore what political party they were in and hope that their suffering is as short lived as possible. To Dan Riehl, that expression takes on a sick new meaning:

Isn't It Time To Euthanize Reid's Wife?

I'm not sure I quite understand this, given that cost is so important as a burden to taxpayers when it comes to health care. If Democrats want so badly to abort babies because of it, why are we bothering with someone who has a broken neck and back at 69? It sounds to me like she's pretty well used up and has probably been living off the taxpayers for plenty of years to begin with. Aren't we at least going to get a vote on it?

Sen. Reid's daughter Lana Reid Barringer, 48, who was driving the mini-van, and his wife, Landra G. Reid, 69, a passenger, were both injured. Landra suffered a broken back and a broken neck in the crash; Barringer suffered minor injuries, Sen. Reid's office said Thursday.

I realize her crook of a husband and his pals in Congress have excluded themselves from the mess they're going to compel everyone else to join, but we're still paying the bills, are we not? I don't see that she's worth it at this point, frankly. I can't recall her ever doing anything for me. Come on, Harry - do your civic duty. The nation's broke and counting on you guy. Pull the plug and get back to work. And don't bill us for a full day today, either. This is no time to be sloughing off. Air freight her home, you can bury her during recess on your own time and dime. Or are you going to bill us for that, too?

Reid has stayed at his wife’s bedside throughout the day Friday and returned to the Capitol in the late afternoon.

I guess it doesn't matter to Riehl that Reid is a Mormon and is strictly pro-life. But let's forget about Harry's religious beliefs. Riehl demonstrates the insanity that epitomizes the conservative movement.

And these are the people that the media demands the White House should try and reach out to and work with in a more bipartisan fashion. I guess Dan Riehl supports some form of those Palin death panels after all.

How can you work with crazy people?

The Brad Blog: Discredited wingnuts lawyer up with GOP attorneys, blame 'liberal media'

Whiskey Fire: Muck

Brain Rage: How To Report The News

Balkinization: John Yoo's explanation of the purpose of the Torture Memos, and their actual purpose

Justice Watch: Republican obstructionism delays justice

They gave us a republic: Nightowl Newswrap

Many thanks to Blue Gal and Batocchio for their stellar roundup work during my absence

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Glenn Beck seems to be increasingly rattled by having been designated by the ADL as the nation's "Fearmonger in Chief" -- though he continues, on his Fox News show at least, to avoid tackling his critics by name. (He's pushed back at the ADL on his radio show, but only briefly.)

Yesterday he went on his show and denounced the unnamed "they" who say he is encouraging violence with his extremist rhetoric (which would decidedly include us). Keying off his softball interview with Barbara Walters -- who never did bring up his serial falsehoods about Walters and her colleagues at The View, oddly enough -- Beck gets all worked up about the toughest point raised in the whole conversation:

Beck: Barbara Walters even played into this nonsense during her interview with me last night on her annual 'Fascinating People' show. Here it is:

[CLIP] Walters: Glenn Beck is somebody who incites people to violence --

Beck: Oh, I've heard a lot --

Walters: -- He is inflammatory, he makes us scared.

Beck: Yeah. People say Glenn Beck is someone who incites people to violence. Yeah, a lot of people are saying that, but what's the evidence?

She also mentioned that I called Barack Obama a fascist. I don't know -- I, I don't think so. Maybe -- I don't think so, I do realize that Media Matters and MoveOn.org now just got an extra grant from Soros and they're moving into hyper-scramble to find, you know, an example. But I don't know if I ever even called him a fascist. I know I've said 'fascistic tendencies' -- sure, the administration is going in this direction.

Actually, what Walters said was this:

Walters: OK, you have said the Obama administration is fascist.

And in fact, that is exactly what he has done -- on multiple occasions, but most notably back on April 1:

Beck: Like it or not, fascism is on the rise. And that doesn't mean the Adolf Hitler kind of fascism. It's fascism with a happy face. I'll explain the exact definition of fascism in a second, and it will boggle your mind.

--

Beck: I looked up the definition of fascism yesterday, and I want to break it down. The first part is: "Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners." Wouldn't you say this is what's happening with GM right now?

As we noted then, this even included a segment with a time-traveling dime:

How far out to lunch was Beck here? Well, one of the goofier moments in this whole charade came when Beck trotted out the back of an old American dime -- first minted, as Beck says, in 1916 -- which has a fasces, the fascist symbol, on its reverse side:

This is the famed "Mercury dime", which was designed by sculptor Adolph A. Weinman, who won a 1915 competition: "The reverse design, a fasces juxtaposed with an olive branch, was intended to symbolize America's readiness for war, combined with its desire for peace."

Now, the fasces has a long history of inclusion in various parts of American symbology besides just this dime. You can find it in the Oval Office, on National Guard Bureau insignia, on the American flag that flies in the U.S. House, in the Mace of the House of Representatives; on the seal of the U.S. Senate, on the Statue of Freedom atop the United States Capitol building, and on a frieze on the facade of the United States Supreme Court building. Fasces are incorporated into the Lincoln Memorial.

But then, fascism as a political movement was not born until 1919. So for sculptor Weinman to have intended the fasces on the Mercury dime to imply a "fascist" intent, he'd have had to have jumped in a time machine, traveled to the future, met Mussolini, and come back to 1915 with that nefarious design in his head. Somehow I doubt this.

Beck had made the charge even before then, in a February conversation with Laura Ingraham:

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...why do Americans care if taxes are raised at all? And why should Americans care about tax cuts also?

As you guys know, I watch the mind numbingly sophomoric Fox Saturday block of Stock Shows that goes by the name of "The Cost of Freedom." They consist of four 30-minute shows, and every single week there's an idiot on who says the only people that pay taxes are the richest members of our society.

OK, let's say I agree. Then why should 290,000,000 Americans more or less give a rip about the ramifications of raising taxes? They make the argument for us that taxes should be raised since only the very rich pay them.

Dave Neiwert wrote about this in one of his earlier posts: Populism: It's all the right-wing rage these days

The Tea Parties, in every incarnation -- from the Tax Day protests to the health-care town halls to the "Tea Party Express" and the "912 March on Washington" to Michele Bachmann's lame "Super Bowl of Freedom" -- has been all about populism, and it is distinctly right-wing populism.

A giveaway moment came during Sean Hannity's April 15 evening "Tea Party" broadcast from Atlanta, when he brought in a live feed from the Rick and Bubba Tea Tantrum in Alabama:

Hannity: And I'm going to tell you one other thing: When did we ever get to a point in America where, we're nearly at the point where fifty percent of Americans don't pay anything in taxes! Nothing!

[Crowd boos]

Rick: The numbers out are just astounding that, that, how much that the very top taxpayers actually pay. I feel like these taxpayers are disenfranchised. I want them to have a share of the burden just like they have a share of the vote.

That's right -- it's the wealthy top percentage of the country that needs a tax break. After all, they are the one Obama's targeting, right? So at least they're being upfront about just who "the taxpayers" are whose interests they're out marching to defend...read on

Don't you feel sorry for these poor rich bastards? If this is their argument, then I say President Obama should impose immediate tax increases like a war tax, a health-insurance tax and a jobs creation tax on the top tier of Americans. Make it a payroll tax and take it right out of their checks every pay period. That would immediately satisfy the deficit scolds.

After all, who will care if it's only the Fox Noise demographic? In the end all conservative policies do is destroy the least of us. They treat the American worker like trained seals, whose only function in life is to fuel their wealth.

Digby has more:

I think they tend to make their judgments about the upper and lower classes based as much on tribalism as anything else. (Recall that the populist hero Ross Perot was a billionaire who made his fortune from government contracts -- but he sounded like a good old boy.) These things never play themselves out exactly the same ways but the fundamental appeals remain the same. The upper levels of society usually find a way to pull the strings and control these people, but the more vulnerable often suffer quite a bit at their hands. Neiwert's piece is a very important primer for those of us who are trying to understand where this Palin-Beck teabag phenomenon comes from and how it relates to other right0wing philosophies like Randism and militias. At the end of the day it all translates into ugly know-nothingism that lashes out at everyone but the adherents themselves, who see themselves as the defenders of the Real America.

I get the impulse and I feel the same frustrations. But their solutions are always worse than the problems they seek to solve.

The Amazing Atheist: "Tell The Truth!" (h/t DU)

I've been in a funk this weekend. It's hard to look at the coverage of the 9/12 protests and not come to the conclusion that this country is seriously--and possibly irretrievably--messed up. I'm not even sure that half the country even knows what the truth is any more, or could recognize it if it was standing in front of them. I don't know if it's an unfortunate byproduct of the rough and tumble internet age, but the uninhibited rage scares me. And where is our media now? Trying to temper misinformation and out-and-out lies? Surely, you jest.

As per usual, the Sunday shows will give those out-of-touch-with-reality, anger-management-needing conservatives plenty of air time to confuse Americans. Rep. Joe "The Heckler" Wilson will get to lie some more on Fox News Sunday, Newt Gingrich (yes, again) will be on Meet the Press to spin away, Gang of Six Queen Olympia Snowe will be on Face the Nation and Tenther Gov. Tim Pawlenty will be on This Week. A single intellectually honest discussion of issues to be had? Surely, you jest.

ABC's "This Week" - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Mary Landrieu, D-La.; Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - David Axelrod, White House senior adviser; Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and John Cornyn, R-Texas; Howard Dean, former national Democratic Party chairman; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Helene Cooper, Howard Fineman, Joe Klein, Ceci Connolly. Topics: Has President Obama regained control in the health care debate? What is behind the venom President Obama has faced? Meter Questions: Was the anti-Obama venom unavoidable? YES: 6 NO: 6; Has Obama Got Command Back? YES: 12 No: 0.

CNN's "State of the Union" - White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.; Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - This week - an in-depth look at Afghanistan. The election, the war, the country as a whole. All riddled with problems. What can the U.S. and the world do? We'll speak with two of the Afghan presidential candidates, with Michael Ware who spent a week in the heartland of the insurgency, and with a panel of experts debating the options.

"Fox News Sunday" - Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C.; Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union.

Viewer note: Barack Obama will make his third appearance on 60 Minutes tonight, talking health care. But until then, what's catching your eye this morning?

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Yes, Bill O'Reilly, it really is a crappy thing when major public figures -- or pissant ankle-biters -- can outrageously smear other public figures as "racist" and do so with impunity and repeatedly. That's what BillO was on about last night, anyway.

But no, he wasn't talking about Sonia Sotomayor. She's just a minor figure, after all. O'Reilly was talking about his own august self. Of course.

It was really quite the stomach-churning whinefest. He started off ranting that "my civil rights" and "my rights as an American" had been violated because he's been branded a "racist" on numerous occasions, which he claims is "libel." Then he indulged one of his periodic bully-the-women routines ("My rights were violated here!"), where he had on two female lawyers who proceeded to explain to him that he was full of crap. This, of course, did not sit well with O'Reilly, who ended up shaking his finger at them and accusing them of enabling the destruction of America.

Along the way, he managed to emit some momentous howlers:

If I were a minority, they couldn't do this to me. You know it. You know it, Tonia. If I were African-American like you are, and they started to do all this kind of stuff, I could kill 'em. And that's my point now. White Americans, Miss California, their rights are being violated, at least the spirit of their rights, by these unbelievable attacks, personal attacks.

...

They're attacking people who disagree with them in very personal ways. That's what they're doing. Don't dodge it.

Then, when they pointed out that the same could be said of his own behavior, he flew into a barely contained rage:

Wait a minute! Hold it! Tonia, keep quiet. I don't dish it out, madam. I don't do that stuff. Don't sit here and say I do. ... We don't do that here. Ever.

And then, at the end of the show? His usual segment of "Pinheads and Patriots." The "Pinheads" segment featured Barbra Streisand:

On the Pinhead front, Barbra Streisand's gonna write a book -- about design. It's gonna tell us all about her mansion in Malibu. I just can't wait for that, can you? No truth to the rumor she'll be concentrating on designs in ... Red Square!

That, of course, is only a sampling of the nonstop flow of "attacking people who disagree with them in very personal ways" on The O'Reilly Factor. Indeed, his whole show is built around it.

Every single night on his show, O'Reilly demonizes liberals. It's what he does. His critics are all "far-left loons" and "haters" who he himself has compared on a regular basis to Nazis and the Klan. Guess he doesn't much care for it when the shoe's on the other foot.

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I always wanted to be fluent in another language. I studied Spanish in school, passed my HS Regents exam back in the day, but never got it down. I never learned Italian because of the racism that my grandparents faced when they came to the US in 1915. Studying a new language in school actually helps a person "think" better as far as I'm concerned. Maybe that's why right wingers hate Obama's idea so much.

Predictably, right-wingers flew into a rage at Obama's un-American call for better language skills. For example, John McCormack at the Weakly Standard labeled language education as snobbery and elitism. John Derbyshire called Obama's suggestion "idiotic" because "not many human beings can learn another language", as his own failures prove. He combines that with characteristic condescension:

In fact, below some cutoff point, which I'd guess at around minus one standard deviation in IQ (that would encompass sixteen percent of the population), education beyond the three R's is a waste of time, and foreign-language instruction a total waste of time.

What, my good pal John Derbyshire had a tough time learning another language? Well, that's not surprising. And since most Europeans speak many languages, are they just smarter? I don't think so. It's because all the countries do so much business together and are so close in proximity that it makes sense all around.

Hey folks. I'm still Manila Ryce from The Largest Minority signing in for Mike.

T. Boone Pickens of BP Capital Management is feeling mighty stupid and it's not just because he was named after a steak house. No, it's because Pickens is soon to owe John Kerry 1 million dollars if he can disprove even one Swift Boat allegation. Doesn't it feel good seeing billionaires lose money to lowly millionaires like you and me?

As a follow up to Nova's "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial", Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes covers the conservative rage over the episode's misrepresentation of Intelligent Design as a religious belief and not a scientific one. No matter how many fundamentalist Christians insist that Intelligent Design is indeed science, the scientists just won't listen.

Tommy Boy Friedman has come up with the best combination since nuts & gum. Obama & Cheney in '08! After Bush leaves office, Cheney's trigger finger is gonna get cold. Freidman apparently thinks Obama's butt is ripe for the puppetmaster to strongarm.

Some advice to the conservatives out there: Insulting someone by calling them a "communist" just doesn't carry the same level of stigma that it did in the 1950's. This is especially true when said person is simply suggesting that we follow our constitution and impeach Cheney (I hope that won't affect the unity ticket mentioned above).

Zeno presents us with probably the most uneven match I've ever seen - Dinesh D'Souza vs Mark Twain! D'Souza bases his solid belief in God on the fact that he can make a mess whenever he feels like it. There's no doubt that he does, and his article is just one example, but I think D'Souza's actions prove the existence of Satan rather than God.

Got submissions? Email me at John (dot) William (dot) Harrison (at) Gmail (dot) com

An instant classic...She attacks Jessica Valenti about taking a picture with a group of bloggers at a Bill Clinton luncheon some time ago and then flies into a rage (threatening to hang up) because it was brought up in the conversation by Garance Franke-Ruta of TAPped...She goes on and on after that about the meanies that attack HER...

Download | play Download | play (rough transcript)

Althouse: I know you know some of the people who are especially nasty to me----I don't accept your..WAIT a minute...WAIT a minute. I DON"T accept your saying that Jessica Valenti breast controversy. I consider that an insult...you know..I, I'm on the verge of hanging up with you, for, for bringing it up that way...it was nasty and character assassinating to talk about it that way...

Narcissistic much? Michael Berube has more...Lefarkins transcribes another interesting tidbit ...Orcinus transcribes the whole painful exchange

Update: TRex goes into the original story and it ain't pretty for Ann...

But maybe this is why the Right Wingers like you. You have perfected one of their favorite maneuvers, the Reverse Malkin, which is where you launch a vicious, factually challenged, hate-filled personal attack against someone and then when they push back, you stand to the side and screech, "Wait! I'm the victim, here!...read on

(H/t BloggingheadsTV)

"A Boston Herald reporter asked the 70-year-old conservative Roman Catholic if he faces much questioning over impartiality when it comes to issues separating church and state. "You know what I say to those people?" Scalia replied, making the obscene gesture and explaining "That's Sicilian." ...read on"

I'm Sicilian too, but I've never seen that in our handbook. I have witnessed many people "flipping the bird" when they are experiencing road rage though. Attending mass usually has a calming influence on many people just after they leave.

Scalia also has a problem with Gitmo detainees.

Update: There's some question about what gesture he made. The article's title is: "Justice Scalia flips the finger in church"