In a two week span in which the East Coast of the United States was beset by a monstrous hurricane, states in the same area had their strongest earthquake since World War II and Colorado experienced its most violent quake since 1967, we were reminded once again of the important role played by federal government in our society.

Now, I’m no constitutional scholar - like, say, Michele Bachmann - but I remember something in that document about government’s responsibility for “the general welfare”, which I can only assume means that if the state you live in comes to resemble Waterworld there is probably a useful role for the government in helping you keep your head above water.

This is not only a progressive view of governance. It is also one rooted in reality and based on US history and culture. In the early days of the republic, the Congressional Act of 1803 provided assistance to a New Hampshire town damaged severely by a fire.

This pattern would continue as Congress would help the victims of natural disasters in the two centuries to follow - not including Lady Gaga’s performance at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards or Tim Pawlenty’s presidential campaign, of course.

The stories like the fire in New Hampshire, however, have not formed the dominant narrative since that actor-who-climbed-into-bed-with-the-monkey transformed government into something that was on your back or just for those “welfare queens”.

Reagan and his ideological soulmates understood quite well that as Josef Stalin infamously said, while “the death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.”

In other words, if Americans realize that a single-payer healthcare system will help protect their parents and children from disease, then they’ll be for it. But if it can be something abstract that just helps those other people who are mere statistics at best, supplied by an amorphous “big government” with no human face, long tentacles and the ability to force you to drink fluorinated water or strictly require a pulse to purchase a firearm - well, then, it’s easy to hate.

And hate it they do. As long as it is government spending for you, and not them.

Because the truth is, with very few exceptions, conservative elected officials (of both parties) are hypocrites when it comes to spending money.

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Imagine, if you will, an amusement park set to open in the not-too-distant future. But instead of roller coasters and cotton candy, this one will have"juvenile giraffes" and odes to the good ole days. Which to the founders of this wonderland occurred about 6,000 years ago, when man and T-Rex blithely roamed the Earth together.

The year will be 2014. And the land of enchantment that commences operation that year will be a creationism theme park, which will exist aboard a "500-foot-long wooden replica of Noah’s Ark containing live animals," so kids can learn how the Earth really began and ignore all that tripe about the Big Bang.

It will accompany the already rocking Creation Museum in Boone County, Kentucky, which is devoted to a literal interpretation of the biblical story. This leads to certain challenges, of course, as Charles Pierce points out in his book Idiot America, such as providing a theoretical basis for how humans and dinosaurs co-existed, before the latter shuffled off this mortal coil.

Which explains why Creation-Museum dinosaurs are afforded the privilege of donning an "English saddle, hornless and battered," to remind them of their main purpose during their brief terrestrial experience: Serving as our Lippizanners.

Just imagine how much fun the Kentucky Derby must have been back then!

Perhaps, worst of all, not only is this scientific Frankenstein being built, but at the announcement of its pending, um, creation, was not some far-right loon, but the Kentucky Democratic Governor Steve Beshear. Perhaps its simple coincidence that in a year's time, he shall once again stand before the voters of Kentucky as a candidate for governor. And that he arrived at the unveiling with a potential offering of over $37 bn in taxpayer-funded, tourism development incentives.

Yes, I know, surely the Pirates of the Garden of Eden ride will provide jobs and lead to increased tourism for the area, but if the only requirement is to provide visitors with fantasy and pool a few shekels, why not just screen Russ Meyer movies or hand out signed copies of George W. Bush's Decision Points?

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There's nothing quite like those moments on Fox when Megyn Kelly and Monica Crowley share the set, because nobody kvetches louder than these two. Yesterday they had a special segment where they whined about President Obama reportedly referring offhandedly to the Tea Party movement as "teabaggers."

The whole segment, as usual, was rife with disinformation. Crowley tries to characterize the DHS bulletin describing right-wing extremists as a potential terrorist threat as an attempt by the administration to demonize ordinary conservatives -- a simply risible (not to mention deeply irresponsible) claim. Kelly tried to claim that this was the supposedly the "second time" Obama had been caught using the term -- even though, in fact, he didn't actually say it to Earl Blumenauer.

Crowley was especially comical:

Crowley: He ought to really apologize for this vulgar and vile comment referencing the American people, and also try to give some sort of speech -- I know a lot of us have heard enough from the president already -- but he should try to put out some words that are going to make up for this kind of thing.

... But you know, Megyn, even if he were to go out and say this, I would encourage him to do it, but he's got a credibility problem now because it seems that every time there is a movement or an individual or an institution or an organization that disagrees with his policies, he personalizes it. He singles them out, whether it's Fox News, or Sergeant Crowley of the Cambridge police department, or the entire state of Arizona for supporting this new immigration law, whether it's the Tea Party movement, he has this willingness that's very unbecoming of the American president, to go out and single out the American people.

Of course, neither of them get around to explaining exactly why the president needs to show deference to a movement explicitly organized around opposing him and any and every policy he might try to enact, a movement embodied by people who call him a Marxist and a fascist and depict him as a witch doctor with a bone in his nose.

But most amusing of all is the notion that calling Tea Partiers "teabaggers" is a horrendous, unforgivable slur. As Dave Weigel says, it's clear that Tea Partiers find it offensive now, so that's probably reason enough not to use it if you're interested in conversing with them. That's a big if, though.

Moreover, as Jay Nordlinger at National Review admits, the term "teabagger" was introduced to the political lexicon by Tea Party movement leaders:

The first big day for this movement was Tax Day, April 15. And organizers had a gimmick. They asked people to send a tea bag to the Oval Office. One of the exhortations was “Tea Bag the Fools in D.C.” A protester was spotted with a sign saying, “Tea Bag the Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You.” So, conservatives started it: started with this terminology. But others ran with it and ran with it.

Tommy Christopher at Mediaite has it about right:

The origin of the term is relevant in determining the relative size of the Tea Party’s violin. What wasn’t pointed out to Tapper is the fact that the Tea Partiers not only invented the term, they did so in order to inflict a similar double entendre onto the President, the Democrats, and liberals in general. Hence, it’s a violin so small, you need an electron microscope with a zoom lens to see it.

Now, they’re trying to re-cast the term as a slur, on a par with the “n-word,” hurtful to all the Tea Party members who are just ordinary moms, dads, sons, and daughters. The latter point has some resonance, but the former is ridiculous in the extreme.

In emails, protest signs, t-shirts, and online, early Tea Party literature urged protesters to “Tea Bag the White House,” and to “Tea-bag the liberal Dems before they tea-bag you.” The suggestion is that the metaphoric “tea-bags” be shoved in the mouths of the President, Democratic members of Congress, and even ordinary citizens who identify as liberal Democrats. The idea that they just didn’t know the term’s only (at that time) meaning is belied by the fact that they obviously knew it was negative (and non-consensual), since they didn’t want it done to them, and also because it only had one meaning.

It was only after MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and David Shuster, and CNN’s Anderson Cooper, turned the tables on the term that Tea Partiers objected. They were perfectly satisfied to advocate the metaphoric mouth-rape of liberal men, women, and children, but had the nerve to become indignant when the insult boomeranged on them.

Here's a video of Griff Jenkins urging viewers to "Tea Bag the White House," plus Charles Krauthammer last November referring offhandedly to the "Tea Bag protests":

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And then there was Neil Cavuto in May:

I understand Tea Partiers want to get people to stop using a word they now find embarrassing. But can we please stop pretending that it's an unconscionable slur?

Ephphatha Poetry: Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black

cab drollery: The LA Times business columnist David Lazarus aske the right questions and provides some damn good answers

slatev: Cartoonist Mark Fiore explains how the big banks manage to win by losing

The Washington Monthly: Guy Fawkes, New Republican Hero

Connecting.the.Dots: Jules and Julia

HOLY CRAP: Franklin Graham cut from prayer event...Islamic death threat...God talks to Glenn Beck...Prayerful Fox gets served...We can’t hear you...Imagine this!...Helms was right...Fly Me to The Moon...Vatican rewards homophobia...Donohue makes a funny...Christian nation?...Book Lernin’...

Teabaggers must really believe they are the majority in America and John McCain won the election, but Obama is just keeping the Oval office warm because McCain has to win his Senate race against JD Hayworth first before he can be sworn in. It's just a formality. That's teabagger logic.

Amanda's post rocks!.

Digby is amused/disgusted at conservatives who simply will not accept that having a majority in both houses of Congress and having the Presidency means that Democrats get to pass legislation.

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Well, it’s simple, really. They assume, if they don’t state it outright, that large numbers of American voters shouldn’t have the right to vote. That’s the implicit argument when Sarah Palin praises white rural voters as “Real Americans”, when Birthers obsess over the idea that the first black President simply can’t be eligible for office, when tea baggers yell racist and homophobic slurs at politicians, and when they insist that you eliminate black voters from the count if you want to find out how popular a politician “really” is. When Bart Stupak laughed out loud at the very idea that nuns have opinions worth listening to---and listed a bunch of men whose opinions were the ones that counted---you had a similar sentiment being expressed. Universal suffrage seems like a fundamental part of democracy to liberals, but it appears that conservatives think it de-legitimizes the results of elections. And that if you do something without Republicans on board, you’re eliminating those who represent the only people who count.

The irony here is that Republicans are already way overrepresented in Congress. Because of the constitutional rules that give every state two Senators, no matter how underpopulated the state, you see rural, white-dominated areas having way more representation than they deserve. For instance, South Dakota has a little over 800,000 residents, but New York has almost 20 million. New York City has over 8 million people alone, which means that if the Senate had a representational system like the House, just the city of New York would be owed 20 Senators to compete with South Dakota’s two. Think about how irrelevant the Republican party would be---at least the current wingnutty Republican party, since it’s obvious New York can elect Republicans---if representation was actually fair...read on

I've been meaning to post this for a few days.

With all the hyperventilating hot air being spewed by the likes of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and Erick Erickson and Ted Nugent, et. al., it might appear the tea-bagging right wing is gaining momentum. The incendiary rhetoric being encouraged and even generated by Republican politicians egging on fanatical teabaggers to translate this into real violence can’t be simply written off as trivial; such behavior deserves as much exposure to the light of media as is possible to shine on such moral cockroaches -- mostly to show how very little support it actually does have with the vast majority of the American people.

Most children tend to grow out of the Terrible Two stage where ‘No!’ is their favourite reaction to everything. But however loudly Boehner screams ‘No, you can’t! at the top of his lungs, the softer tones of hope are becoming stronger every day, on both the right and the left, in spite of the Becks and the Boehners and the tea-baggers. It is comments left in on James Poniewozik’s post with a clip of a new viral video based on Will.i.am's "Yes We Can" from the 2008 primaries that give me hope the grown-ups are finally coming back.

‘I am yet another 50 year old small business owner for whom the tea party is a scary group,’ says Donnafre. ‘We can't sit back and assume it is okay to be a silent majority.’

‘Approaching my 70th year,’ says kbsamurai, a self-professed fiscal conservative and a social liberal, ‘Mr Boehner is [the] voice of fear trying to shout down the voices of hope. I did expect to see the left praise this video. I did not expect to see avowed Republicans speak the same language.’

And: ‘I'm 65, white, male, regular at church,’ says mcr57. ‘Yes We Can!’

There it is. That one little word. Yes. With such immense power in three little letters. Yes, we did. Yes, we will again. Yes. We Can.

So you can shout ‘No!’ as loud as you like, Mr. Boehner, not many are listening to you anymore. And just as the three – count them, three – teabaggers who showed up outside of Congressman Steve Driehaus’s home Sunday afternoon were scolded by a neighbour, ‘My family lives on the street, don’t do this to his kids,’ consider this video your well-earned trip to the naughty chair.

The best laid plans...

Our newest contributer, Karoli, has audio from the teabaggers celebrating the RNC sign donations, which Heather reported on for VideoCafe yesterday:

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But even after all that official RNC support, okay, not official but still party-sanctioned, okay not party-sanctioned but still paid for by the RNC (or whatever their excuse is today), the tea-baggers seem to be petering out...

Pointing to preliminary turnout numbers at today's rally on Congress, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) argued that the momentum behind the Tea Party movement had waned as lawmakers approach a final, decisive vote on health reform.

The DNC said its own head count of today's rally estimated about 300 attendees, well below the 1-1.5 million a Tea Party organizing group, FreedomWorks, had estimated in attendance for its Sept. 12, 2009 rally on the Capitol. (Other media outlets had estimated between 60,000 to 75,000 in attendance for those rallies.)

For its part, FreedomWorks pegged today's attendance as closer to 1,000, a number which they said could be even higher since the rally was organized at the last minute, and because many people in town skipped the rally to go directly to lobby lawmakers.

Hold on there, FreedomWorks, facts are pesky things. I contacted a friend who is a Senate staffer to ask about the tea party protests from Capitol Hill and this is what he wrote back:

I didn't see anyone in the office buildings on the Senate side but walked out of the Russell Office Building to see a raucous crowd protesting loudly, a tight knot of maybe about 250-300. Only problem for the Tea Partiers: the protesters were a group calling for better public transportation in America.

The only Tea Party representation I saw was a single guy in yellow "smiley face" shorts, purple shirt, and blue wizard's cap holding a sign saying, "Nancy Pelosi Spits In The Face Of America." I know the action was planned to be on the House side, but there was nothing at all over on the North side of our august Capitol ...

Ooopsies! No fair taking credit for non-tea party protesters, FreedomWorks. In the interest of accuracy, a House staffer, with whom I confirmed this account, had this to say:

Smiley shorts guy has been there everyday for the last month.

In fact, Huffington Post has a picture of him, and it appears his shirt is green (resembling a character from Disney/Pixar's Monsters Inc, and his hat is the same as Mickey's from Fantasia), so the Senate staffer may have some issues with color recognition or the tea-bagger may be conducting his own separate non-tea party protest against Disney.

Not to be deterred by the dismal turnout and weakening talking points, a spokesperson for FreedomWorks offers a rosy prediction for their continued relevance:

"For those who are dismissing, I would say the only date that matters is Nov. 2nd," said Rob Jordan, the vice president for federal and state campaigns at FreedomWorks. "You can count on people showing up for that day."

Whatever you say, buddy.

More unintentional hilarity from Grampy McSame:

"When Senator John McCain was asked here this afternoon how he plans to balance the budget, he said that he hoped to do so by stimulating economic growth - and approvingly cited the example of President Ronald Reagan," the New York Times reports.

And the buzzer goes 'BZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' See, as much as facts don't matter to Republicans, I pretty sure that holding up Ronald Reagan for his deficit cutting is not a good plan:

Reagan Tripled the National Debt...

For Tea Baggers supposedly concerned that "deficit spending is out of hand," history apparently began only on January 20, 2009. Because while President Obama rightly resorted to massive deficit spending to rescue the American economy from calamity, it was Ronald Reagan who ushered in the now-standard Republican practice of "spending our children's inheritance."

As Steve Benen rightly noted, it was not Reagan but President Obama whose stimulus plan delivered the largest two-year tax cut in history. And as it turns out, what Saint Ronnie giveth, he also taketh away.

As predicted, Reagan's massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-settings deficits. Ultimately, Reagan was forced to raise taxes twice to avert financial catastrophe (a fact John McCain learned the hard way from Tom Brokaw last October). By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan nonetheless more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history.

Swing and a miss for McCain. Again.

If Joe Lieberman was the biggest ingrate in American politics, Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher is surely now the first. While Lieberman betrayed Barack Obama only months after Obama campaigned for him in Connecticut, the Plumber turned Tea Bagger has now turned his back on John McCain and Sarah Palin. Which can only mean that God must be talking to Joe the Plumber again.

On Saturday, Joe revealed his disdain for his benefactors during a "Mobilize for Liberty" event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

He said he doesn't support Sarah Palin anymore. Why? Because she's backing John McCain's re-election effort. "John McCain is no public servant," he told the room, calling the 2008 Republican nominee a career politician.

I pointed out he'd just be plain old Sam Wurzelbacher of Ohio -- Joe the Plumber wouldn't exist - without McCain. His response was blunt. "I don't owe him s--. He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it."

Wurzelbacher said, "McCain was trying to use me. I happened to be the face of middle Americans. It was a ploy."

But if was a ploy, Wurzelbacher used to be content to go along with it. Because, as he told Christianity Today in May 2009, God told him so:

CT: How did you react to such public attention after John McCain talked about you in the presidential debate?.

JOE THE PLUMBER: The second day, when everything out came out about my taxes, you know, I got really scared, really down. All these people were saying just god-awful things about me. I mean, I'm not one to blow smoke up my skirt, but I think I'm a pretty nice guy and I'm not used to people saying that kind of thing about me. It really hurt. But then I went to bed that night and talked to God for a good, long time. The next morning, I woke up feeling like Superman and I didn't care about what things people said anymore from that day on. They're going to say what they're going to say. They want to tear people down to make themselves feel better. They have their own agendas, and God said, "Well, you know, listen--I set you on a path, and go to it. See what you can do."

And back then, Sarah Palin could count on support from Joe the Plumber - and Jesus the Christ:

"I like Sarah Palin a lot, actually. I just don't know if that's where God's leading her. I just know the Republican Party's done its best to blackball her. I don't know what her agenda is. If she ran, would I vote for her? Absolutely. John McCain was the lesser of two evils."

If the Almighty is now counseling Joe to take back his endorsements of John McCain and Sarah Palin, He has also told Wurzelbacher the time is not yet right to seek political office himself. Asked about it in May, Joe the Plumber responded, "Not right now. God hasn't said, 'Joe, I want you to run.'" Then in July, he told WorldNetDaily:

Asked if he has plans to run for public office, he replied, "I hope not. You know, I talked to God about that and he was like, 'No.'"

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Princess Sparkle Pony's Photo Blog: Hairdressers and fetuses will destroy tea baggers. Internecine warfare has already erupted. But check out the invite I got yesterday!

Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog The wingnut defense of Monsanto

Enduring America: Afghanistan: Did the way forward come out of London Conference? (h/t swimgirl)

Margaret and Helen: The elephant in the room is a kangaroo

Angry Bear: The meaning of "Monty Python and the Meaning of Life"

2L4O: Too Liberal for Obama: My friend vastleft sent me this cool Tshirt...