The top ten think tank directors make a between $450,000 and nearly $1 million per year. Conservative think tanks seem to pay better, probably because they're funded with a lot of money from the Billionaire Boys' Club.

I wonder how I can get one of those jobs. I can think. I spend all day thinking. Maybe that's the problem.

(h/t ThinkTanked Blog)

Just in case you didn't see it coming, here's the opening salvo in the Great Bush Tax Hike Cut Battle, courtesy of the Heritage Foundation, that non-partisan think tank that just happens to wrap itself around every conservative value out there.

It's a fantasy, just like every other fiscal policy the Republicans think is gospel. They cue the tax cut fairies and ignore David Stockman, Alan Greenspan, Paul Krugman, and just about every economist on the planet while catering to the few and starving the many.

Reassure the children. The Tax Cut Monster is a big red greedy thing, but it's easy to kill. Do nothing, and the tax cuts vanish! Just like that. The tax cut fairies will cry and stomp, but it'll be all right. We'll all be better off for it, even if the richest 400 people in the country have to pay something more like their fair share.

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I'm sure most of you will find it heartbreaking that "nobody in the media even cares" that Glenn Beck has been jumping up and down with a conspiracy theory about radicals plotting to destroy America in a "coming insurrection" being aided and abetted by Obama and the eeeeevil "progressives." Glenn seemed mighty distraught about it last night.

Let's all join hands and say: "Awwwwwwww. Poor Glenn."

Anyway, the main thing I've noticed is that Beck's show is just getting BORING. The chalkboard schtick is getting old and it's now just dry and confusing (not to mention confused). He needs to come up with something new, like blowing stuff up or something. That would be more interesting.

Because, you know, his ratings are completely in the tank these days. According to Business Insider, "Glenn Beck's total number of viewers are down by almost 30%, from 2.9 million in January to 2.1 million in April."

Beck, meanwhile, blames the weather. What, it's not caused by the progressive cancer destroying America?

If that isn't a perfect microcosm of the muddied thinking of a neo-conservative, I don't know what is. It's the conservatives that suffer from bad p.r., that's all. It has nothing to do with the fact that their policies have been proven to either not work or just be monumentally bad for most of the country...they're so secure that their belief system is right that the only problem is they just don't have a good branding. Call it "chocolate" and immediately 65-70% of the people would want to be them.

PBS host of Think Tank Ben Wattenberg makes the very serious misjudgment of appearing on The Daily Show to push his book, Fighting Words, with his vague talking points that just don't hold up to Jon Stewart's logic, and the only thing he can say to Stewart is "be serious now." Dude, you're on Comedy Central and it's clear who the only clown on that stage was.

In honor of ABC News and their absolutely worthy-of-flushing questions in tonight's debate, may I present the fish tank toilet bowl from FishN'Flush, a.k.a. "the whimsical potty." Hey, is it too whimsical to name my fish Stephanopoulos and Gibson? (h/t LU)

Open Thread below....

Leftopia: Reality Bites (Back)

The Newshoggers: Nuke policy blog tank - Getting the word out

SeaBird Chronicles: Interesting, amusing, and frightening quotes on current events and the presidential race

Listening Post: With a dissatisfied electorate clamoring for less of the same, the candidates are stumbling over each other in a frantic race to determine who will become known as the changiest of them all.

Talking Points Memo: What, exactly, is Bill Clinton supposed to have said that is so 'venomous?'

'Just World News' with Helena Cobban: Gaza scenarios

(Photo of hands warming up on a cuppa hot coffee via di+mars.)

The Sunday Talking Head thread is up and ready for perusal this morning.  It's a whole lotta Iraq and bloviating, and not much else, frankly.  But there could be some interesting sparks on CNN's Late Edition if Rep. Tom Lantos gets asked about why Rush Limbaugh is an ill-informed, bloviating moron.  (Here's hoping Blitzer gives him the chance...but I'm not exactly holding my breath.)   I wanted to highlight a story from Nova Scotia that one of my readers (Audrey -- thanks!) linked up in my comments.  It makes for much better Sunday morning contemplation.  Via the Chronicle Herald:

Two students at Central Kings Rural High School fought back against bullying recently, unleashing a sea of pink after a new student was harassed and threatened when he showed up wearing a pink shirt.

The Grade 9 student arrived for the first day of school last Wednesday and was set upon by a group of six to 10 older students who mocked him, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up.

The next day, Grade 12 students David Shepherd and Travis Price decided something had to be done about bullying.

"It’s my last year. I’ve stood around too long and I wanted to do something," said David.

They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday — even the bullied student had one.

"I made sure there was a shirt for him," David said....

So, what's catching your eye in the news and on the blogs this morning?

The Non Sequitur: A "belief" based on testable science is not the same as having faith.

Threading Water: Emergency contraception is still MIA.

Balkinization: Accountability for military contractors. "When we talk about the “Geneva Conventions” and the “law of war,” we frequently lose sight of the fact that this entire body of international law is a distinctively American contribution."

PR Watch:Check in on "The Spin of the Day."

Think Tank Watch: There is no such thing as a conservative think tank. But then, "scholarship" is much easier when it doesn't need to be accurate. False comparisons are a favorite technique, as is outright bunkum. If all else fails, one can just buy an opinion.

Guest round up by Batocchio (batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com).

CNN:

Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin has died at the age of 76, a Kremlin spokesman confirmed Monday.

Kremlin spokesman Alexander Smirnov confirmed Yeltsin's death, but gave no further details.[..]

He became the first democratically elected president of Russia in 1991 and two months later put down a coup attempt against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

One of the images most associated with Yeltsin is that of him sitting on a tank during the raucous street rallies that marked the coup attempt.

"I think that is the image that he would like people to have forever," former Yeltsin adviser Alexander Nekrassov told CNN Monday.

But just two years later, he ordered tanks to storm the Russian White House to oust barricaded deputies who dug in after Yeltsin dissolved parliament, accusing it of blocking reforms.

"He has trampled on democracy," said Gorbachev in a later interview. "The first freely elected elected parliament in Russia in 1,000 years and he fires on it with tanks!"

Yeltsin was both loved and hated by fellow Russians, said Matthew Chance, CNN's senior international correspondent in Moscow.

Salon: (watch short ad for day pass)

Not only did the World Bank president find his companion Shaha Ali Riza a cushy job in the State Department, but she received a security clearance -- unprecedented for a foreign national. [..]

(I)n 2006 Wolfowitz made a series of calls to his friends that landed her a job at a new think tank called Foundation for the Future that is funded by the State Department. She was the sole employee, at least in the beginning. The World Bank continued to pay her salary, which was raised from $60,000 to $193,590 annually, more than the $183,500 paid to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and all of it tax-free. Moreover, Wolfowitz got the State Department to agree that the ratings of her performance would automatically be "outstanding." Wolfowitz insisted on these terms himself and then misled the World Bank board about what he had done.

Exactly how this deal was made and with whom remains something of a mystery. The person who did work with Riza in her new position was Elizabeth Cheney, then the deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. And Riza's assignment fell under the purview of Karen Hughes, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. But these facts raise more questions than they answer.

Ah, but Bush has nothing but "full confidence" in the job Wolfowitz is doing. In any other reality, this guy would be out on the sidewalk filing for unemployment. But in BushWorld, this level of corruption is a good thing.