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You know where the phrase "jumping the shark" originates, right? It's from the episode of Happy Days where Fonzie, wearing his leather jacket and some swim trunks, jumps over a confined shark with a pair of water skis. As Wikipedia explains, the phrase originally referred to TV shows whose desperation for ratings leads them to indulge stunts that underscore their having "lost it."

Well, Glenn Beck is hardly desperate for ratings -- yet -- but on his Fox News show yesterday, he jumped an entire school of Great Whites with Pinky Tuscadero on his shoulders.

He devoted an entire 14-minute-plus rant to depicting the Obama White House as being like Al Capone and his gang of thugs in The Untouchables, bashing people's heads in with baseball bats. And to illustrate the point, he waved about a big wooden Louisville Slugger and affected a tough-guy gangster voice, all to depict the administration as a bunch of petty thugs who threaten their opponents.

Because it was so long, I've divided it into two parts, just to preserve the whole thing for posterity. I want to be able to tell my grandchildren that yes, your grandpappy was alive when the most popular man on TV could rant for a quarter-hour that the president was a violent thug, while himself wielding a big baseball bat and urging his audience to take action.

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When a group of conservatives -- angered by a video showing kindergartners singing a song praising President Obama -- announced last week that they'd be protesting outside a Burlington Township, N.J., school today, school officials asked them to reconsider, since the school -- which houses kindergartners to second-graders -- would be in session:

The planned rally has school district officials planning to beef up security at the B. Bernice Young School in Burlington Township, which houses kindergartners through second-graders.

The song drew national attention last month after a video of the performance was posted on YouTube. Conservatives say it shows how schoolchildren are being indoctrinated to idolize Obama, allegations school officials have denied.

The Obama song initially was performed during a Black History Month assembly in February and was repeated in March when author Charisse Carney-Nunes, who wrote the children's book "I Am Barack Obama," visited the school.

Someone apparently with Carney-Nunes videotaped that performance and posted it at the author's Web site without the approval of school officials. A copy of that video appeared in September on YouTube, titled "School Kids Taught to Praise Obama."

Citing concerns for the safety of students and staff, Superintendent Christopher Manno has asked organizers to reconsider the protest because classes will be held that day. Manno said protesters will not be allowed on school property and additional district staffers will be on hand.

The protesters refused, of course, to reconsider:

Bill Haney, a rally organizer, said members of several groups would take part in the protest, although it was not clear Sunday how many people would be involved.

"Consider this a protest to squelch this trend to politicize our youth," organizers said in a prepared statement. "We are supporting the constitutional rights of our children and protest against the progressive social agenda promoted by the New Jersey Education Association and the National Education Association."

So there they were today, frightening children and their parents needlessly. Of course, rather than harass schoolkids, these protesters would have been more effective if they had gone, say, to a school-board meeting where decisions like these are dealt with.

At least one of the parents whose 7-year-old daughter was in the video spoke to Fox reporter Laura Ingle at the scene, and relayed her thoughts in a brief snippet:

My child's image has been hijacked, to produce -- I'm sorry, to promote a political agenda.

Now, Ingle makes this sound as if the parent is concerned about the school "indoctrinating" her child, which was what the protesters were there about. But what's clear from reading news accounts -- as well as Ingle's own reportage -- is that the parents were upset that the right-wingers had transformed a harmless school song into a cause celebre promoting the right-wing anti-Obama agenda.

This cropped up in local news accounts too:

The school district, in a statement, said that it "does not believe that protesting in front of an elementary school in session with four to seven year old children is appropriate."

The statement says that on Oct. 8, Manno contacted one of the protest's organizers personally and offered to meet with this person, who declined to meet. "It is unfortunate," the statement continued, "that an innocent, well-intentioned classroom activity by a well-respected teacher has become the object of so much debate."

Well, who were these protesters? Local parents upset with the district? -- You know, people who actually have something at stake with the conduct of their local schools?

Erm, largely no. The Courier-Post was only able to find one local couple who actually had a child at the school among the protesters (and they were more concerned with the video's release than with its content). According to the NY Daily News, they were a bunch of Glennbeckians who arrived at the school from elsewhere:

Haney's group, the 912 Project Burlington Group, is an offshoot [of] the national 912 Project founded by conservative radio and TV host Glenn Beck.

Haney said he hopes the rally will force the reassignment of school principal Denise King and will result in a reprimand of Schools Superintendent Christopher Manno by the state Board of Education.

Classy bunch, these folks.

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The fine folks at WorldNetDaily -- the wingnut outfit that was the original source of most of the Birther conspiracy theories, and remains their most ardent defender -- has a new theory it wants to trot out for mainstream consumption:

Barack Obama is actually the anti-Christ. Jesus said so!

An American Christian has produced a brief film for YouTube that connects one statement by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke to President Barack Obama.

His 4-minute video focuses on the direct quote: "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." (Luke 10:18)

"When I started doing a little research, I found the Greek word for 'lightning' is 'astrape', and the Hebrew equivalent is 'Baraq,'" said YouTube contributor "ppsimmons," a self-described Christian with a theological education and many years in the ministry, who spoke to WND under condition of anonymity out of concern for members of his local church. "I thought that was fascinating."

As he continued looking into the rest of the words in the phrase, he focused on "heaven," and found that it can refer not just to God's dwelling place, but also "the heights" or "high places."

He then recalled Isaiah 14:14, where Lucifer, another name for Satan, is quoted as saying, "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High."

"I wondered what the word 'heights' is," said ppsimmons, "and I looked it up in the dictionary, and it's 'Bamah.'"

Thus, on the video, the announcer notes, "If spoken by a Jewish rabbi today, influenced by the poetry of Isaiah, He (Jesus) would say these words in Hebrew ... 'I saw Satan as Baraq Ubamah.'"

Of course, both the "Christian" and WND then go to some pains to try to claim that they're not suggesting Obama is the anti-Christ. Which is sort of like saying you're not a racist after calling a black person the N-word.

I'm just waiting for Lou Dobbs to trot this one out and start mainstreaming it for public consumption. Or, more likely, Glenn Beck.

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Rep. Paul Broun, R-GA, was on Fox and Friends yesterday touting his proposal to have Congress officially designate 2010 "The Year of the Bible", and he had an interesting rationale for it:

Broun: Well, it's all about freedom, actually. The Bible was the basis of our laws, it was the basis of the Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence -- the Bible was the founding source.

Hmmmmm. Well, some of us have heard otherwise, but OK, whatever.

You may remember Rep. Broun. Last November he won lots of friends on both sides of the aisle and in the White House when he warned that Obama was preparing a Hitler-like dictatorship with his civilian-youth-corps proposal: "That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did ... When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

Broun is, of course, asking President Obama to issue this proclamation. And what will Obama achieve by issuing it?

Broun: The Bible was the basis of our nation. And as we look to the future, and as we deal with our economic problems, as we're stealing our grandchildren's future, we need to look at the principles that were taught Biblically. When our Founding Fathers established this country, they established it on freedom. That's what the Bible teaches. Every single one of our laws are based on the Biblical precepts. And we need to turn back to those precepts if our country's going to be strong and great again.

It's absolutely critical for us to understand what freedom's all about, what our own responsibility is all about, and what government's function within our society is supposed to be. And we have forgotten that in Washington. We are heading down a road that's going to destroy our nation. We are headed toward a total government control of everybody's lives -- a loss of freedom, a loss of our money, a loss of our private property -- and it's extremely critical now for us to go back to those foundational principles that this country was founded upon.

That's the reason a proclamation of "The Year of the Bible" will help people understand what the importance of those, um, principles are all about as we go forward to make our nation secure, free, and great again.

Oh. OK. So you want President Obama to issue this proclamation so right-wing nutcases like yourself can hijack the entire text of the Bible to promote your teabagging brand of politics. Whose entire purpose is to undermine the agenda of both the president and the Democratic Congress.

Right. Well, lots of luck with that, Rep. Broun.

You can't make this stuff up.

Calling Glenn Beck! Here's another "frustrated Americans" event for you to champion!

David Weigel at the Windy happened to catch the latest idea from the militiamen who are starting to see their paranoid ranks rising:

A peaceful demonstration of at least a million — hey, if we can 10 million, even better — but at least one million armed militia men marching on Washington. A peaceful demonstration. No shooting, no one gets hurt. Just a demonstration. The only difference from any typical demonstration is we will all be armed.

As Weigel says, lotsa luck getting a permit for that.

It's all very reminiscent of Linda Thompson:

[I]n 1994, Thompson declared herself "Acting Adjutant General" of the "Unorganized Militia of the United States" and announced plans for an armed march on Washington, D.C. which was to be held on September 19 of that year, in which an ultimatum demanding the repeal of such laws as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Brady Bill would be delivered to members of the United States Congress, and those members refusing to comply with the ultimatum would be arrested and tried for treason. The proposed march was almost universally denounced by groups on the right wing, from the John Birch Society to the militia organizations. Thompson canceled the march, claiming publicly that the announcement was never anything more than a publicity stunt and the march was never intended to actually happen, while claiming to her supporters that operatives in the Federal government had plans to detonate a small nuclear device in D.C. and blame her organization for the act. Publicity stunt or not it effectively spelled the end of her time in the limelight.

It may have ended her time in the limelight, but Thompson's legacy is still with us; a video she shot in the 1990s has been one of the primary sources of the "FEMA concentration camps" conspiracy myth.

Still, there's no doubt militias are bubbling back up to the surface these days.

In Stockton, California, the militia being organized in the event of a police shortage this summer is sounding increasingly scary:

I was most interested to hear from Alan Pettet himself. Pettet, 66, is the organizer of this group, which he said numbers 270. Pettet said he has a rainbow coalition (my words, not his) of rifle-wielding men and 11 women ready to be sworn in by an unidentified federal judge on the steps of Stockton City Hall on July 1.

That's scary enough, although you have to question why any judge would participate in this ceremony.

Now here is a turn that sounds even more ridiculous. But don't take my word for it, here it is in Pettet's own words:

"Five minutes after we're sworn in, we oust the mayor and City Council and then we can declare martial law."

Over in Michigan, militiamen are preparing for the depredations of the evil Obama administration too:

"Am I angry?" asked the unemployed commander, with a semi-automatic rifle strapped across his pectorals. "Yeah, it sets you off a little bit."

Come to a Michigan Militia picnic and you realize the commander is not alone. The farm where they rallied was chockfull of people like him, people boiling on the back burner, struggling to make ends meet, carrying around a knapsack of resentment for a government that they claim has taken almost everything from them and given nothing in return.

"Liberty," says the commander, 33, whose Christian name is Matthew Savino, of Adrian. "You cannot take my liberty. Eventually a man draws a line in the sand."

Why, he sounds just like Glenn Beck!

Indeed, doesn't all this seem right up Beck's alley? That's how you make those dire prophecies conveniently self-fulfilling.

From a March 27 tea party in Hartford, CT:

Photo Credit: Tia Ann Chapman / Hartford Courant

Note to winguts: When you decide to draw up a sign accusing others of being incompetent or, you know, "morans," (or demanding that immigrants use the "offical language") you might want to double-check your spelling. Contrary to what you might be hearing, dictionaries don't hate America.

(Cross-posted at BobCesca.com)

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What's the latest evidence of Obama Evilness, according to Glenn Beck? On last night's show, it came in the form of his plans for changing the tax deduction structure for upper-income folks when they give charitably:

I don't think I've ever seen a president or a government do anything that I thought was out-and-out evil. I mean, we've gotten close. I think rendition is pretty darned evil. But this is enslaving, what our president has proposed and what is in this new bill. Changes in the tax deductions for charitable giving!

What makes this enslavement? Beck never really gives a coherent explanation, but it apparently has to do with how much he hates giving through taxes and how he loves to give through his own charitable donation.

Evidently, in Beck's world, it's important to keep up tax exemptions for charitable donations so that people can keep using them as a tax dodge.

Because reducing the donations' appeal as a tax dodge is the main thing the change does, according to the LA Times:

Under the president's plan, itemized tax deductions for charitable giving and mortgages would be capped for those earning more than $250,000 a year. Changes would be phased in gradually over the next few years. So in 2010, instead of getting a 33% or 35% deduction for charitable donations, Americans in the top income brackets, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, would get somewhere in the neighborhood of 28%.

In the Obama budget, the cuts on tax deductions for upper-income Americans -- coupled with cuts in government spending -- are projected to help raise $634 billion for a kind of big federal piggy bank that would be used to extend health coverage to the more than 47 million people in America who are uninsured and subsidize premiums for others who can't afford what they have.

Critics are already voicing concern that charities, hard hit by a decline in donations because of sinking stock prices on Wall Street, could suffer further. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the No. 2 Democrat in the House, said the potential loss of philanthropic giving is "clearly one of our concerns." And CNBC's Maria Bartiromo said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" today that the Obama blueprint comes with "such unintended consequences" and said of charitable donations, "Get ready for those to go off a cliff."

Republican Rep.Roy Blunt had a similar cow about the proposal:

The provision Blunt is referring to would apply only to families making more than $250,000 a year, and it would extend the 28 percent rate to all tax deductions, not just charitable giving. It was listed in Obama's budget as one of the ways the administration plans to pay for health care reform.

The rationale, according to the administration, is that those who make more than $250,000 get a higher tax benefit than those with a much lower annual income for the same nonprofit donation. This change would make the deduction for charitable giving more equitable.

"We need to start making the tough choices to get our economy moving again," White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said.

Blunt says the move would stifle giving at a time when charities are more dependent than ever on the goodwill of others. "We should be encouraging, not penalizing, the country's good Samaritans during a time when millions of Americans are relying on their work more than ever," he said.

Brundage disagreed, saying the change would scale the deduction back to the same rate it was at the end of President Ronald Reagan's administration. "Charitable giving was strong then, and it will be strong now especially as we get the economy growing again," she said.

Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic observes: "If wealthy people want to give money, then they should give, regardless of tax benefits. Also: if you're inclined to oppose higher taxes on rich people, wouldn't this be the first way you'd try to sell your opposition to the American people -- by essentially fretting about the huge drop in charitable contributions? My thought experiment is: if tax reform down the line were to gut all deductions, would charitable contributions totally dry up?"

In any event, it all certainly sounds like epitome of evil itself, doesn't it?

I've been around right-wing extremists long enough to know when they're making calls to action. And when it comes to these folks, this inevitably translates as violent action.

So Alan Keyes, in an interview with a reporter from KHAS-TV, filmed outside a fundraiser for the AAA Crisis Pregnancy Center in Hastings, Neb., said this:

"Obama is a radical communist, and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois and now everybody realizes it's true," said Keyes, who ran unsuccessfully against Obama for the state's open Senate seat in 2004. "He is going to destroy this country, and we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist."

These kinds of remarks are, as Andrew Sullivan suggests, deeply disturbing, and not merely for the gut-level emotional impact.

Already, if you look at the comments from the YouTube where it's posted -- as well as at a number of right-wing sites -- the remarks are being hailed as "the truth" and "telling it like it is."

This is classic right-wing eliminationism: Depicting the opposition as the embodiment of evil, intent on destroying the nation. For militia/Patriot types, this kind of rhetoric also becomes a call to action.

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Sometimes I think Glenn Beck is saying the crazy things he does just to get attention from liberals for being so crazy. It's the Ann Coulter model of right-wing punditry: the more outrageous the better for your ratings.

But Beck isn't as smart as Coulter. He's also more of a Bircherite populist, and he's convinced himself that the more mawkish the better he'll appeal to that sensibility. Unfortunately for Beck, he is also handicapped by not having a very firm grip on reality in the first place (not that this ever stopped other right-wing millionaire pundits). It shows up in his great fondness for right-wing populist conspiracy theories.

So after resorting to the good old Bircher standby -- "Commie! Obama's a Commie!" -- the night before, on his show last night he veered completely to the other side of the road and accused liberals of incipient Nazism:

Last night, I told you that we were on the road to socialism. Some comedy, you know, coming your way. Well, tonight -- oh dear, this may not go well -- when I finish this story, some may believe we're on the way to the Hitler Youth.

What inspired this analysis? It was a snippet of a quote from Al Gore, given to a crowd of schoolkids:

Al Gore: There are some things about our world that you know that older people don't know.

What, exactly, is wrong with this innocuous and fairly common-sense observation about the nature of generational change? It's an attack, apparently, on the sovereignty of parenthood:

Now you've got the former vice-president of the United States and a Nobel Prize winner looking your kid in the eye and telling them, 'You know what? You know things that your mom and dad don't.'

... The government and its friends are indoctrinating our children for the control of their minds, your freedom, and our choice and our future. It must STOP! Because history -- when properly taught -- has already shown us where it leads. This is what Nazi leader Josef Goebbels said about the Hitler Youth:

If such an art of active mass influence through propaganda is joined with the long-term systematic education of a nation, and if both are conducted in a unified and precise way, the relationship between the leadership and the nation will always remain close.

Well, what's next? If Mom and Dad decide to keep the temperature above 72, should our 'Gore Youth' report Mom and Dad? Should they also report groundings and spankings every time Daddy comes home to watch that evil Fox News?

Yyyyyeah, Glenn. Lotsa people out there talking about doing just that, big guy. Now excuse me while I take the next elevator.

So, in case you missed that, today's broadcast from Planet Beckazarro: Al Gore raising environmental awareness is the exact same thing as the state-sponsored Hitler Youth.

Or is it Communism? Agh! We're so confused! Where's Jonah Goldberg?

A little later, while interviewing the teenager who recorded it and her poor dissed Dad, Beck gives us a fuller context of the quote previously snippeted:

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Glenn Beck's Sunday program was fetid little cauldron of wingnuttery featuring Michelle Malkin and that Ayn Rand fan, Stephen Moore. Fortunately, the blonde Fox political analyst, Kirsten Powers, managed to work in the only voice of sanity.

Beck has already gone off whatever rails Fox might have had in mind for him this week, but on Sunday he made a special effort to weave it all together for us: America is doomed because liberals are going to destroy the economy now and Mexico is going to invade us or something.

Beck: Let's say Mexico collapses. All right, now you've got out-of-control Zetas on our border, you've got Texans who are already -- we're missing 70 of them that have been kidnapped on the border, most people -- you don't know, do ya?

Powers: I think you sound like coocoo for Cocoa Puffs.

I mean, what are you talking about? We're going to be invaded by Mexico?

Beck then puffs himself up and condescends to Powers for the rest of the segment, while Malkin swoops in with a sneer or two, and Moore actually sides with Powers.

Well, as we already mentioned, Mexico is indeed having serious problems with the power of drug lords, but it is not on the verge of collapse -- particularly not, as Beck argued earlier in the week, because of the decline in remittances from America (which only constitute about 2% of the Mexican GDP).

Beck may raise some eyebrows over his first few weeks on Fox, but the impending-apocalypse schtick -- which is clearly where he's taking the show -- gets real old real fast. Especially because the people who rely on them constantly have to dream up new looming apocalypses and try to make you forget the last one that didn't pan out. Problem with that is, audiences always remember.

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Sarah Palin reminds me, for some reason, of the late Helen Chenoweth -- the congresswoman from Idaho's 1st District from 1992 to 2000. Well, I actually can think of a lot of reasons: Maybe it's the slightly stilted, doll-like delivery in a red business suit. Or the beauty-queen smile. Or the absurd right-wingnuttery she sells with a distinctly populist style. Watch and judge for yourself.

Chenoweth was perhaps best known for being an avid promoter of the militia movement in Congress (though towards the end of her tenure shee made headlines for her extramarital affairs. Indeed, the above video is one I made from a video sold by the Militia of Montana as part of its New World Order conspiracy promotion, titled "America In Peril." It features Chenoweth speaking before an obviously preselected audience, prior to her election to Congress in 1992, as a "Natural Resources Consultant."

This snippet (the video is nearly an hour long) is from the first five minutes or so, and features Chenoweth holding forth on the causes of global warming:

What is some of the programs that the environmentalists are engaging in? Well, some of the programs are programs of fear -- fear that is so broad and so expansive that you and I can do nothing about it.

What about the idea that the earth is warming? You know, we hear that every day -- that the earth is warming. But when we look back, where are temperatures taken? Well, they’re taken from airports. Weather balloons go up from airports, where heat rises from miles and miles of concrete.

And you see, the satellites that are recording data around the globe will tell us that today, the earth is not warming. But you see, what the pseudoscientists -- who have turned into political scientists and lobbying scientists -- are saying is that these issues are so huge that you and I can do nothing about it.

You can almost envision Sarah Palin sitting at the back of the room taking notes. Indeed, as you can see, the camera irregularly pans to the nodding audience members, and one of these happens to bear a striking resemblance to Palin (she's at about the 5:40 mark of the video; you can see a still here). Not that this actually is Palin, but let's just say the imagery is complete.

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Ed Morrissey at Hot Air is plumping the efforts of an outfit called HowObamaGotElected, which in turn is now being bandied eagerly throughout the wingnutosphere.

Their main theme, apparently, is that Obama voters were "ignorant" because they hadn't absorbed the wingnuts' favorite smears about Obama during the campaign. The site claims that it commissioned a "Zogby Poll" which came up with the following results:

512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points

97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet.....

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we "gave" one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

Now, the data about the voters' ability to correctly identify facts about Sarah Palin -- as well as their understandable confusion about what Palin actually said about Russia, considering that in fact she did say that one could see Russia from Alaska -- is essentially meaningless; a survey of McCain voters would almost certainly come up with similar statistics.

But as Nate Silver says, this is flat-out push-polling. Look at the questions in the first half of the data summary -- nearly every one of the supposed "facts" is either simply false or a grotesque distortion:

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[Photo by Ryan Wood, Midland Daily News]

Hard to believe, I know, but not all were joyous on Election Night. In Texas, Baylor students were bringing out the nooses. And in Midland, Michigan,: there was this guy:

A Midland man told police that his walking on the sidewalk in full Knights of Ku Klux Klan regalia while toting a handgun had nothing to do with Barack Obama winning the presidency.

Later, however, he admitted that Obama's victory was the catalyst for his display.

Midland police questioned Randy G. Gray II, 30, who was walking on the sidewalk along Eastman near North Saginaw Wednesday afternoon while waving an American flag, but released him because he wasn't breaking any laws.

Gray was walking up and down the sidewalk in front of a vehicle dealership while several motorists shouted obscenities at him and others shouted ''accolades,'' police said.

Randy Gray's name may ring some bells ...

Yep, that Randy Gray. He was tossed from the Ron Paul campaign when they discovered he was a Klansman. My guess is he didn't vote for McCain either.

Here he is in action at a Ron Paul rally "white power" event.

There are some things about the next four years I am definitely not looking forward to.

[Cross-posted at Orcinus.]

Jim Quinn yesterday on The War Room with Quinn & Rose:

You know, I was thinking about this. You know, if you were a slave in the old South, what did you get as a slave? You got free room and board, you got free money, and you got rewarded for having children because that was just, you know, tomorrow's slave. So, you got a free house, you got free money, and you got rewarded for having children. Can I ask a question? How's that different from welfare? You get a free house, you get free food, and you get rewarded for having children. Oh, wait a minute, hold on a second. There is a difference: The slave had to work for it.

Yeah, that was the difference. Right.

This raises the question: Are the wingnuts coming so unhinged they are losing any contact with reality?

[H/t to Hume's Ghost.]

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Laura Ingraham was repeating what's about to become wingnuts' favorite theme: Republicans lost because they weren't wingnutty enough!

Bill Hemmer: Let me flip that argument around here. If the Republicans are swept out of power -- I mean, the Senate, the House, the White House -- how does the Republican Party change, do you believe?

Ingraham: Well, I think -- I heard Mary Matalin say this last night, and really, she hit it out of the park. If McCain loses, if Republicans lose seats across the board, this is a rejection of Republicans who don't follow traditional conservative principles. It's not a rejection of conservatism, or Reagan, or small government.

... I think Republicans are going to have to do some soul-searching, but not on conservative principles -- on how they governed.

Er, mebbe. But how they governed was precisely according to conservative principles!

The Big Shitpile is a direct product of conservative principles enacted in governance -- namely, the Panglossian belief that deregulation of business, and the financial sector, was an unrelievedly good thing.

Well, the people who are paying the price for that foolishness have managed to figure that out.

[H/t to Dave for the video.]