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Dr. Charles Krauthammer joined Bret Baier and the Fox News coverage on election night as soon as Fox called Ohio for Obama, though the president had not been declared the winner yet. Like many of his recent TV appearances, Krauthammer appearance was filled with both vitriolic hatred and bitterness. He was so maliciously weird that he offered to prescribe free drugs to everybody.

Baier: We wanna bring in Dr. Krauthammer, who is a psychiatrist and he may be able to weigh in (laughs) with some of the back and forth we’ve seen.

Krauthammer: I know enough about psychiatry to know never get in between Karl Rove and the decision desk. So I’m going to leave the titans to fight it out and I’ll simply go which is pretty clear that even… [stammers] It’s almost…the chances are infinitesimal that Romney pulls this out. I think the real story here is that Obama won, but he’s got no mandate. He won by going very small and very negative and we are left with a country exactly where we started, but a little worse off. The Republicans are in control of the House, probably a little bit stronger [he’s wrong, Republicans lost seats]; they are not going to budge. There’s no way in which after holding out on Obama for two years they are going to cave in. And Obama doesn’t have really anywhere to go. He governed very large in the first two years . When he had control of Congress he nationalized health care. He passed the largest stimulus and energy policy and tried to enact them and when he lost control of the House he stopped.

In order to win reelection he went small, stayed small and put together his constituencies here and there and he put it together enough that he won. If he gets the majority of the popular vote it’ll be very small if there’s any and even in the electoral it’s going to be a rather small majority particularly if Virgina and Florida go to Romney. <They didn’t> So this is not a mandate either in the numbers or the way he campaigned.

Obama's popular vote lead has passed two million votes so it's a big win in this environment. Do you remember Republicans telling America that Bush had no mandate because he lost the popular vote by half a million? Neither did I. And let's all remember how negative, small, vile and vicious Republicans have been attacking President Obama since he walked into the oval office.

Krauthammer: He did not campaign on any ideas, anything large, anything important. He didn’t address entitlements, tax reforms or anything like that so what will he do? I think he’s got, I think he’ll go back to who he is. People have said he should be a Clinton and compromise, have a successful second term , but he is not instinctively a moderate [Oh, like Krauthammer is a moderate]. He is a man of the left and he will try to push his agenda through [gee, isn’t that what the victor does?] with what he thinks is a mandate and I think we are going to be exactly where we were let’s say a year ago with the debt ceiling argument next year. The problem is the country will slide right threw a second term because I don’t see give on either side particularly with a president and a very weak mandate for a second term.

Talk about a manic-depressive rant. I think he should take his own advice and write a script for himself. Something very potent.

Kelly: Charles, what...

Krauthammer: If that sounds kind of negative I think I've depressed half the country so as a psychiatrist I will offer to write prescriptions for anybody who needs them. Just write me at Fox News. I'll take care of it.

Kelly: As a lawyer I counsel you not to do that. I want to ask you: What does this mean for the Republican Party.

Krauthammer: Well, I'm not as despairing as many people are. <Did he just not know how he sounded?> I think this was an unusual election because Romney was a transitional figure. I thought he ran as good a campaign as he could. I think he did honorably well.he came pretty close, but he as a man, he's a north east liberal and that's not where we're going. <wow> That's not where the future of the party is and I'm optimistic because there's a very strong Republican bench that did not enter the fray.

We had a very weak field among the,in choosing the candidate this year. Romney was the only one remotely presidential and he was the logical candidate. But think of those who didn't run, of course Paul Ryan who I think will become a leader in the party, you'll have a whole rising young generation Kelly Ayotte, Bobby Jindal Nikki Haley, Ted Cruz the new Senator from Texas. Marco Rubio. This whole generation who were just a year or two short in their careers from running this time are all going to be in the fray next time and I think they are the future.

He immediately forgets about what actually happened to the Republicans in this election and moves on into never-never land. You remember how high-flying prospects in MLB and NFL draft picks often turn out. Most of them are busts when they have to step up to the plate in prime time.

Whew, what a day and night we had on election day. It was fascinating watching all three cable networks covering the unfolding of an unbelievable night. What did we learn?

Well, the lessons were clear. America repudiated conservatism completely after the smoke began to clear. I think the traditional media were scared the last few months by the fire-breathing right wingers who attacked every poll result that they didn't like and actually managed to make a star out of Nate Silver. So, after many polls showed Obama leading by three points at the end, we were treated with headlines that called the election a tossup because three was within the margin of error.

But besides that, President Obama withstood terrible odds of reelection after the rise of the Tea Party and their rout in the 2010 midterms. Conservatives were licking their chops in anticipation of 2012 and who they left with their tails between their legs. Most of the right and some in the media said that Obama didn't put out an agenda for reelection, but he did propose a program built on liberal ideology, even if he doesn't consider himself one.

Obama ran on regulations for Wall Street.

Obama ran on defending Social Security and Medicare.

Obama ran on immigration reform and the Dream Act.

Obama ran on raising taxes on the wealthy.

Obama ran on letting the Bush tax cuts expire.

Obama ran on income equality for the working class.

Obama ran on Women's rights.

Obama ran on Global Warming.

Equal rights for the LGBT community.

So did our Senate candidates. The Senate was thought to be a lost cause for the Democratic Party, with the possibility of losing up to twelve seats. In the end, remarkably, Democrats picked up seats instead.

President Obama won a mandate with this victory, and don't let anyone say otherwise. Republicans have been running on a Hate-Obama platform ever since he was first elected. The fact that he won a second term after getting through a financial and economic disaster is amazing.

Greg Sargent and Digby have some thoughts too:

The good news tonight is not that the president survived. It's that we had, as Greg Sargent points out, a liberal victory:

Obama has been reelected with a resounding victory in the electoral college (the popular vote is outstanding). Democrats have routed Republicans in the Senate races. A progressive champion has been sent to the Upper Chamber in the person of Elizabeth Warren. The first openly gay Senator — Tammy Baldwin, another solid liberal — joins her. The Dem majority will be more progressive and energetic. In Maryland, gay marriage has been ratified by popular vote for the first time.

The story of this election will be all about demographics. As Chuck Todd noted earlier today, the fact that it remained unexpectedly close in GOP-leaning southern states shows that the GOP is not keeping pace with the changing face of America. Meanwhile, Obama’s support proved unexpectedly strong among workers in the industrial midwest, thanks partly to his willingness to pursue aggressive government action to save a major American industry. Obama’s team made the right bet on the true nature of the American electorate. Rather than reverting to the older, whiter, more male version Republicans had hoped for, it continues to be defined by what Ron Brownstein has called the “coalition of the ascendant” — minorities, young voters, and college educated whites, particularly women.

If the Obama team learned anything from all this it should be that they cannot be all things to all people. We disagree in this country and that's ok. This election wasn't about post-partisanship, bipartisanship or "changing the tone." This was a strictly partisan victory made up of the Democratic Party coalition.
Liberals were validated this election, and it behooves the administration to strategize their next four years with that in mind.

He's run his last race and all he has left to worry about is properly governing the country and solidifying his legacy --- and that legacy will be made or broken on how well he fulfills the agenda of those who have voted for him in massive numbers. He has a right and an obligation to unapologetically work to enact the agenda those people elected him to enact.

Fox News was going ballistic last night trying to repudiate what their own eyes were witnessing. Bill O'Reilly was lamenting the end of the white man and Karl Rove was fighting with his own network after they called Ohio for Obama. Charles Krauthammer came out spewing flames of bile as soon as he was on air and after he finished he said that Obama did not have a mandate. What complete and utter bulls*&t.

It was the liberal agenda that broke out this election. We didn't win on bipartisanship -- hell no! Republicans said that only Romney had a chance to unite this insane Tea Party Congress, so President Obama needs to ride this week out then rally the entire Democratic Party around a strong hand. Demand that Republicans work with him and not the other way around.

Liberals should celebrate because our principles were embraced by America. My God, even Brit Hume admitted that America was more liberal than he thought. So rejoice. About the only person who failed miserably was the DCCC's Steve Israel. Howie Klein breaks it down.

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I've written many times that movement Conservatism as it has evolved since the 'New Right' began during Goldwater's days and morphed into the Abramoff/Norquist/Reed triad of Conservatism implemented with the College Republicans of the 80's has destroyed the American political system that we are now witnessing under President Obama. Digby linked up this great post via Balkinization that describes how the GOP has become an ideologically purified party that lives off of obstructionism and in doing so, America in the end is suffering at their hands and instead of being vilified for their behavior, is being rewarded. I tried to explain this to a board member of the LA Press Club last month, but wasn't as succinct as JB is here. My colleague wondered if the Left was behaving just like Conservatives and I explained how we were not. The media is to blame for large portions of even journalists not to understand what has happened under Obama so quickly.

Digby writes:

One thing is clear, unless the Democrats recognize that things have changed, we might as well just order up some tri-corner hats and join the Tea party because they will be the only game in town:

Parliamentary Parties in a Presidential System

Many commentators have noted and bemoaned the obstructionist tactics of the Republicans during Obama's first two years in office, and the likely gridlock that will emerge once the Republican Party takes control of the House of Representatives. To be sure, in today's Washington Post, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell state that they are ready and even eager to work with the Democrats. Despite these assertions of good fellowship, however, it seems clear by now that the Republicans are willing to work with the Democrats only if the Democrats put aside all of their preferred policy goals and more or less adopt the policy goals of the Republican Party. President Obama's recent decision to unilaterally freeze the salaries of federal workers is unlikely to soften the hearts of the Republican faithful and get them to accept a second stimulus package or anything else on the Democrats' wish list. Quite the contrary, this unbargained for concession is likely to make the Republican leadership increase the pressure on President Obama to negotiate with himself.

I want to put concerns about obstruction and gridlock in a larger perspective. What we are facing today is likely to be importantly different from previous periods of divided government before the George W. Bush Administration. The reason is that at the national level, contemporary American politics suffers from a pathological and debilitating condition: the emergence of parliamentary parties in a presidential system.

[...]

One should not assume that Congressional Republicans are acting this way because of bad faith or some set of personal failings. Rather, given the evolution of the Republican Party into an ideologically coherent parliamentary-style party in a presidential system, the Republicans are acting rationally. The Democrats, conversely, need to understand that they must work hard to break the Republicans' united front. They will not be able to do this simply by being nice to Republicans, or by attempting to meet the Republicans half-way, for if the Republicans are smart, they will not be assuaged by compromise. Their best strategy is to make Americans thoroughly disgusted with government in general, so that they will throw Barack Obama out of office in 2012. If the Democrats want to achieve anything legislatively in the next few years, they must create strategic problems for individual Republicans, causing them to break ranks despite the best efforts of the Republican leadership. The only way to ensure compromise when parties are polarized as they are is to make the failure to compromise politically costly to individual members of the minority party so.

The next time the Democrats become the minority party, they will have abundant incentives to do precisely what the Republicans are doing now, precisely because the Republicans have shown these strategies to be effective in a climate of ideological polarization. The Republicans fully developed many of their current tactics before the Democrats for three reasons. First, the failure of the Bush presidency and the tarnishing of the Republican brand made the development of these oppositional strategies more urgent for the Republicans following Obama's 2008 victory, when the Democrats controlled the presidency and both Houses of Congress. Second, the Republicans became a more ideologically coherent party more quickly than the Democrats did because they continue to be driven by a powerful conservative social movement. Third, the Republicans have learned how to use campaign finance to discipline their members more effectively than the Democrats have. (In fact, the Democrats, eager to regain power, had recruited a more ideologically diverse group of candidates in 2006 and 2008). But there is no reason to think that the Democrats will not eventually adopt many of the same tactics that the Republicans have perfected if, once again, they find themselves out of power.

I actually think there is every reason to believe the Democrats will not adopt many of the tactics Republicans have perfected because they are just not temperamentally equipped to do it. I think they will continue to pretend, as the media still does, that the beautiful world of Tip and Ronnie will return if only these awful people would just stop making their congressmen and Senators do things they don't want to do until they are pushed hard by the people to change their ways. At this point they do not have a whole lot to lose by losing --- the revolving door takes very good care of them if they promise not to make too many waves, which is exactly what they hate. Read the whole piece, it's not long and it explains how we got here and why it's a problem for a presidential system. (For instance, you can't call for elections when gridlock makes it impossible to govern.) And although he doesn't mention it, it's also why silly centrist notions like this are destined to do nothing but split the same party that's already outmatched by the hardcore Republicans, thus ensuring that the lunatic fringe of the GOP will continue to have the upper hand.

Unfortunately for the working class of this country, by the time they realize what has happened they may lose bedrock programs like Social Security and Medicare or see significant cuts to all the benefits they thought were guaranteed. JB didn't include the rise of right wing media machines like FOX News and Rush Limbaugh because without an incredible messaging system, the formation of the Tea Party movement which has insured party purification of the right would never have happened in such a short period of time.

With the media imbalance in place, if the Democratic Party acted in the same way if for instance the GOP takes over the White House in 2012, then you probably would see angry mobs with torches and pitch forks descending upon Democrats for not allowing the GOP to enact every anti-New Deal practice they demand.

Maybe Jack Tapper and Ruth Marcus will come to their rescue again because I imagine Tapper will just say that FOX News was getting their info from one uncorroborated source inside the prison walls and it's a very dangerous place to do reporting in. As for Ruth Marcus? I'll remain silent on her.

FOX News: Lesbian Prison Gangs Waiting to Get Hands on Lindsay Lohan, Inmate Says

Tamara Haley, 38, is doing time for heroin possession and prostitution. She said Monday: "Everyone will want a piece of her. It will make them famous if they hurt Lindsay Lohan. "Or if you get her to cry, the whole ward will laugh and people will love it -- even the guards."

Haley also warned bisexual Lindsay of the jail's lesbian gangs -- and offered advice on how to avoid their clutches. She said: "The gay inmates wear their shirts inside out to let others know they are available.

"So if Lindsay doesn't want someone to grab her ass she'd better keep her shirt on straight.

"Women grab each other like animals when the guards aren't looking. It's disgusting."

And if the lesbians don't get her, Tamara says she might get it from all the murderers even though she'll be segregated from them.

Haley added: "She'll be segregated from the general population, but where she's going it is even worse. It's the wing where the murderers are. "I don't think they will actually be able to get to her, but you never know. At the very least some of those hard cases will try to scare her. They'll scream stuff to her from their cells.

Yea, prison is tough like that. Now that's real reporting.
Don't miss the FOX411 host saying that Lohan will be subjected to a "full cavity search" too.

We have crazed, angry blacks stealing the election for Obama and wild hordes of lesbian prisoners having their way with you too. We're losing the culture wars. It's all going to hell with your liberal agenda!

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Will Howard Kurtz ask Chris Wallace why FOX News decided to make Newt Gingrich's new book their number one segment of the day? Then they followed it up by interviewing Laura Bush and proceeded into their wingnut panel discussion. Not one opposing view to Newt's movement conservative high jinks.

And about Gingrich's book: Newt's proclamation that President Obama is running a Nazi-style political machine that is as dangerous as Stalin and Hitler should be enough to drum him right out of his elitist DC Beltway bubble.

Wallace seemed upset that Gingrich went all wingnutty on President Obama:

Wallace: You also write this on the screen: "The secular socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did." Mr. Speaker, respectfully, isn't that wildly over the top?

Gingrich: No, not if by America you mean....Just listen to President Obama's language. He gets to decide who earns how much. He gets to decide when it's too much.

Wallace: We're not talking about any company. We're talking about companies that the government has put billions of dollars in...

Gingrich: No, no..he has said publicly and generically. Some Americans earn too much. So now he's going to decide that?

Wallace:No, he's not. He has said that some Americans earn too much.

What Gingrich is doing is slyly trying to defend the CEO fat cats and his chummy Wall Street elites who screwed up the economy and their companies while they raked in millions of dollars, but he doesn't come right out and say it.

Movement conservatives like Newt are very adept at talking around their far-out beliefs in a way that almost makes them seem reasonable. They know how to manage the language and play it like an instrument. His tone is muted, never going off pitch and always in control. That's their edge. Karl Rove does it as well.

Gingrich, who has changed his religion almost as much as his wives then uses God to justify his odious assertions about the President and what he calls his "secular-socialist machine."

Gingrich was a bit surprised, methinks, that Wallace called him out on his "wildly over the top" attacks on Obama and I think it's because Newt is parroting the exact same beliefs as Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the Teas Partiers which have caused quite a bit of unrest for the GOP elders. And yet, Gingrich is one of the elders---never forget that.

Gingrich is a talented manipulator of the American people and he's the one that suffers no pain when the economy crashes and burns under conservative rule. It's the average working class Americans that feel the hurt.

Newt's argument frames the usual fear-mongering, boogie man beliefs that have been passed on for generations through the Republican Party. The "Commie threat" has been used for decades and was made popular by Joe McCarthy until he was ousted as a nut. But the College Republicans of the 80s--people like Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed--took the Soviet Union "spies have infiltrated our government" paranoia to the kind of heights that can only be described as downright delusional, coupled with a Robert Ludlum-hero worship syndrome. These guys read Russian spy novels and dressed up in army fatigues, flying around the world trying to embed themselves into the action, fighting against communism while supporting the South American Apartheid regime. And it's this mindset untethered by facts that Gingrich philosophizes on.

Gingrich: Democrats Want to Impose 'Secular-Socialist Machine'

Gingrich said that he stands by his argument that the "secular-socialist machine" represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, not in the sense of the immorality of those deadly regimes, but as a "threat to our way of life."

"The degree to which the secular-socialist left represents a fundamental replacement of America, a very different world view, a very different outcome, I think is a very serious threat to our way of life.

I have a lot of problems with the way the President has handled certain issues, as we've documented on the pages of C&L, but to say he's a threat to our way of life is cowardly and immoral and should exclude Gingrich from our political landscape.

Of course, in the Village, conservatives can say anything without consequences.

I've helped spearhead a group of Latino, progressive, unions and sports activists to come together and ask Bud Selig and MLB to join with the MLBPA and denounce Arizona's hateful immigration law SB 1070.

Latino, Sports, and Progressive Advocates to MLB: Move the 2011 All-Star Game from Arizona! Letter Calls on MLB Commissioner Selig to Move 2011 Game Due to New AZ Immigration Law

Washington, DC – Prominent organizations fighting against the discriminatory and damaging Arizona anti-immigration law will send a letter tomorrow to Major League Baseball (MLB) Commissioner Bud Selig urging him to remove the 2011 All-Star Game from its scheduled location in Phoenix, AZ and to pressure teams to re-locate spring training games from locations within the state.

The letter states, “Major League Baseball has a strong history of supporting minorities and civil rights in America, which began when Jackie Robinson became the first African-American baseball player in 1947. As you are well aware, over a quarter of all Major League Baseball players are Latino, and almost 40% of your players are people of color. In this moment of crisis, these players – and baseball’s millions of Latino and immigrant fans – deserve a loud and clear message that the League finds this law unacceptable. We strongly urge you to relocate the 2011 All-Star Game from Phoenix and to pressure teams to pull all winter and spring training games from Arizona while this un-American law is in effect.”

This Tuesday at 11 AM Eastern on a telephonic conference call, join with several of the prominent signers of the letter to discuss their request to Commissioner Selig, to learn about follow-up activities, and to put the controversy over the Arizona law into a larger context.

Among the organizations and advocates signing onto the letter include civil rights and advocacy organizations such as Presente.org, National Council of La Raza (NCLR), People For the American Way, Center for New Community, Border Action Network, and America’s Voice; labor organizations such as the AFL-CIO and SEIU; and an array of bloggers and representatives from online outlets, including Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga of Daily Kos, John Amato of CrooksandLiars.com, and Julio Pabon of LatinoSports.com.

WHO: John Amato, Founder & President, CrooksandLiars.com

Roberto Lovato, Co-Founder, Presente.org

Clarissa Martinez, Director, Immigration & National Campaigns, National Council of La Raza (NCLR)

Doug Gordon, Founder, MoveTheGame.org, Vice President, Fenton

Frank Sharry, Executive Director, America’s Voice

WHAT: Organizations & Advocates to MLB: Move the 2011 All-Star Game from Arizona!

WHEN: Tuesday, May 11th at 11 AM Eastern

CALL IN: Dial: 1-800-895-1085, Passcode: “BOYCOTT” America's Voice -- Harnessing the power of American voices and American values to win common sense immigration reform.

The 2011 All Star game must be moved if the law is not repealed. We're holding a press conference in the morning so stay tuned. We are also telling the players who speak out against this racially motivated law: "We got your back."

One by one, voices are calling out baseball to do the right thing and denounce Arizona's hateful law.

Sen. Robert Menendez is urging the Major League Baseball Players Association to boycott next year's All Star Game in Phoenix over the recently passed Arizona law to crack down on illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Democrat says in a letter that 27 percent of Major League players are Latinos and they shouldn't be subjected to a law Menendez says codifies racial profiling.

Rep. Jose Serrano, a New York Democrat, has similarly asked the players to boycott the 2011 event, noting that in 1993 the National Football League rescinded its offer to host the Super Bowl in Arizona because it didn't then recognize Martin Luther King day.

I've helped put together a huge coalition against MLB and Bud Selig over their silence on SB1070. Tuesday will be an interesting day. Stay tuned.

There's a new NY Times/CBS poll on the teabaggers, and guess what? It only confirms what we've been saying all along. They are mostly white male conservative sore losers who hate the poor and hate President Obama. Which means of course that they dislike black people, and are staunch Birthers and climate-change deniers. And they fall in line with the GOP because they do not want a third party.

The NY Times gave 17 Tea Party people 34 minutes of free ad time by posting videos of each one of their complaints. Did the Times do that for the blogosphere when we first started to rise? Did they do it when there were major Iraq war and immigration reform protests? Nope.

Anyway, Digby has a full rundown on the poll, so read the whole post because it's awesome. I'll only quote her wrapup.

They say the don't like the GOP 54% to 43%. But 92% of them despise the Democrats.

--

There's nothing particularly surprising about the rest of them either. These people are nothing new. They have different iterations, but when you get right down to it they are, quite simply, the far right. They hate poor people (especially blacks) and they hate government that helps poor people (especially blacks.) They are deluded about taxes and spending and are paranoid about the government being infiltrated by "the other." They believe they are the only "true" Americans and alternate between insisting that their "traditional values" are best represented by the Bible or the Constitution, both of which they believe they are ordained by God to properly interpret. And they do not really believe in democracy which is really why they hate the government.

When they lose they stage a national hissy fit of epic proportions and persuade the Village (where they are perceived as the personification of the heartland of America) that they are something very important. Now that they have their very own TV and radio networks featuring crazed right wing demagogues 24/7, they are more successful on those terms than ever. But they are nothing new, nothing new at all. They are mostly a bunch of cranky, white men with money who are trying desperately to hang on to their privileges. Same as it ever was.

They are what we have called "Republicans" for at least the last 30 years.

Most of them get their information from FOX News because they don't read websites and only 6% believe George Bush had anything to do with the deficit. Oh, and only 20% of them have heard of Ron Paul and they just love Glenn Beck. Why the media is spending so much time trying to figure these people out is a mystery to me now. They are arch-conservative racist wingnuts who hate the government, but still want their Social Security and Medicare.

Poll after poll will say the same thing. When they lose they get angry. When they get angry they make f*&ked up signs and scream in town hall meetings about the Constitution.

UPDATE: Rick Perlstein writes an incredible historical comparison in the NY Times about the teabaggers of today and yesteryear.

Watching the rise of the Tea Party movement has been a frustration to me, and not just because it is ugly and seeks to traduce so many of the values I hold dear.

“I just don’t have time for anything,” a housewife told a news magazine in 1961. “I’m fighting Communism three nights a week.”

Even worse has been the overwhelming historical myopia. As the Times’s new poll numbers amply confirm — especially the ones establishing that the Tea Partiers are overwhelming Republican or right-of-Republican — they are the same angry, ill-informed, overwhelmingly white, crypto-corporate paranoiacs that accompany every ascendancy of liberalism within U.S. government.

Continue reading »

Limbaugh says this garbage every day: People like Giusti are "mad" and "worked up" because they are "being raped" by their government. And we get stories like this...

You see, it's spreading like wildfire.

A man accused of dropping more than 30 explosive devices into mailboxes and other locations across east Texas did so out of anger toward the government and was acting alone, federal authorities said Thursday.

Larry Eugene North was indicted Wednesday on charges of possessing an illegal firearm or destructive device. He could face 10 years in prison if convicted.

Authorities believe North is responsible for planting 36 devices between Feb. 5 and Wednesday, said Robert R. Champion, an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Authorities previously said they had found at least 16 explosive devices, including five pipe bombs.

"These devices, over 30 in number, have caused fear in this community nothing short of domestic terrorism," prosecutor Brit Featherston said. "Today that fear stops."

North had been under surveillance for about a week before he was arrested Wednesday while placing an explosive in a Tyler mailbox, authorities said. A pipe bomb was found in the van he was driving and bomb-making materials were discovered in his home, they said.

FOX News has unleashed a monster on our society no matter how dumb Murdoch plays it. We live in a hugely populated country and the kooks are drawn to Fox. David and I have made the case over and over again that right wing talkers need to take more responsibility in how they go about their business. No matter how much they deny it, we're seeing the evidence every day of the violence that is spreading throughout the country.

Digby writes:

Imagine if he were Muslim...

Update: He is disabled and in a wheel chair. No word on whether or not he received disability from the despised federal government, but it's fairly likely. He also has some emotional problems, according to his lawyer, and is going to be given a mental evaluation to determine whether or not he can help with his own defense.

I'm not surprised that mentally unstable people are trying to blow things ups. They've always been around. It's just that right now, all they have to do is turn on Fox or the radio to hear a whole lot of angry voices egging them on, so it's becoming more common.

The Washington Post reports: Anger over health-care reform spurs rise in threats against Congress members

It's also good to see the MSM start reporting on the violence that is being spurred on by the anti-government crowd. We're seeing more heated anger boil over after the HCR debate and Fox has done their part, but it was simmering a long time before that, since the Limbaughs used it to really get the right inflamed. Now they are starting to act out on their hatred.

Poll after poll keeps revealing the same results when it comes to the tea party movement. Newt Gingrich's Winston Group unveiled a new poll and what we learn is that they are conservatives that are more extreme than usual and who are much angrier than the rest of them at the moment and as C&L has said over and over again, were created by FOX News.

The individuals who make up the Tea Party movement are largely conservative and get their news from Fox; they're generally old and of moderate to low income; and they're fairly convinced that their taxes are going to rise in the next few years, even though they likely won't.

Those conclusions are part of a new study put together by The Winston Group, a conservative-leaning polling and strategy firm run by the former director of planning for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. And they provide a telling new window on the political force that has revamped the Republican Party and altered the landscape of the 2010 elections.

In the course of conducting three national surveys of 1,000 registered voters, Winston was able to peg the percentage of the public that identifies itself with the Tea Party at roughly 17 percent. The group pledges that it is independent of any particular party (indeed 28 percent of Tea Party respondents in the Winston survey labeled their affiliation as such). But on pretty much every defining political or demographic issue, the movement lines up with the GOP or conservative alternatives.

Sixty-five percent of Tea Party respondents called themselves "conservative" compared to the 33 percent of all respondents who did the same. Just eight percent of Tea Party respondents said they were "liberal."

Forty-seven percent of Tea Party respondents said that Fox News was either the top or second source of news they turn to, compared with 19 percent of the overall public who said the same thing.

FOX News got the ball rolling and when times are tough, people will side with something that has been marketed as different so their ranks slowly pick up unhappy Americans. I keep hearing teabaggers on TV say that they want to take over the Republican party and get back to their true conservative roots. Does anybody know what that even means? Ronald Reagan raised taxes on Americans more than once:

The first Reagan tax increase came in 1982. By then it was clear that the budget projections used to justify the 1981 tax cut were wildly optimistic. In response, Mr. Reagan agreed to a sharp rollback of corporate tax cuts, and a smaller rollback of individual income tax cuts. Over all, the 1982 tax increase undid about a third of the 1981 cut; as a share of G.D.P., the increase was substantially larger than Mr. Clinton's 1993 tax increase.

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Mr. Reagan's second tax increase was also motivated by a sense of responsibility -- or at least that's the way it seemed at the time. I'm referring to the Social Security Reform Act of 1983, which followed the recommendations of a commission led by Alan Greenspan. Its key provision was an increase in the payroll tax that pays for Social Security and Medicare hospital insurance. For many middle- and low-income families, this tax increase more than undid any gains from Mr. Reagan's income tax cuts...

Since Reagan is their Lord and Master, how would he fair in this climate if he raised taxes? Ronald would be vilified by the teabaggers and the entire conservative movement. So what conservative principles are tea partiers talking about when they long for the good old days?

These people sound like the Daleks and Cyberman from Dr. Who. One group thinks they are purer than the other and so they must be destroyed. Isn't that what Auntie Pam said on Letterman?

They were angry that they lost the 2008 election and got even angrier because an African American was the one to beat them.

The teabaggers aren't really populists or libertarians although their "ideology" contains a smattering of incomprehensible slogans from both populist and libertarian thinking. They are conservative movement robots, which isn't really ideological at all but rather an emotional outlet for resentment and anger at all the "others" who these adherents believe are either getting ahead at their expense or looking down their elitist noses at them. It's really not about politics at all.

The policies they robotically proclaim all Republicans should follow would only cause their lives more pain, but then as the hardship grew worse---they still would be brainwashed by FOX. Poor Big Business is not given enough respect in the country and the government sucks. In each scenario, Grover Norquist's vision wins out.