You're goin' down. Chainsaw.

Give 'em have a taste of your boomstick, Barack.

First I fly the seat off my pants, and then they repossess the pants.

Via Open Left and Digby we have another example of realy asshattery by Barack Obama.

Digby does a great job of taking Obama's comments apart so I'd like to take the opportunity of my own to ask the obvious question: what the hell is Barack Obama thinking?

Ronald Reagan was a horrible President. The kind of people who think Ronald Reagan was a great President are not the kind of people who are going to vote for a Democrat. Ever.

Trying to suck up to those people is a waste of time and energy and fairly stupid strategically. Once again I have to say I don't think Obama is ready for the Big Leagues.

So vote once, vote tuh-wice, for Bill McKay... you middle-class honkies.

Dean's thoughts on what's taken as conventional wisdom on the candidates for President-

"Oh noes, not the brier patch!" This one is my favorite. The CW happens to be that Hillary Clinton can't win in the general because conservatives hate her and will turn out in droves to vote against her.

This is just stupid on so many levels. Conservatives will hate whomever the Democratic nominee is, whether it's Hillary or not. Are we supposed to believe that people who spent the 90's watching Jerry Fallwell's "Clinton Chronicles" and the last Presidential election shouting down John Kerry as a cowardly traitor are going to approach the next Democratic candidate for President with an open mind? Who cares what those loonies think?

"My life's an open book." The inverse of the above. The CW is that the thousands of faux scandals during the Clinton presidency some how inoculates Hillary from the revelation of any more skeletons in her closet. Really? Look up "swiftboating." Republicans have learned they can just make shit up about the Democratic candidate and the lazy media won't call them on it.

"Bygones by bygones." Apparently Barack Obama candidacy is about some sort of kinder, gentler liberalism. Or something. How this translates into governance is increasingly to appear to be more attempts to reach out to the 28%ers and try and compromise. Not gonna happen. If the last twenty years have shown us anything they've shown us those people could care less about what the rest of the country thinks.

"The Gipper redux." The only thing Fred Thompson and Ronald Reagan seem to share in common is their chosen profession. The thing that helped Reagan paint-the-pig of some truly horrible, regressive policies was his sense of humor and sunny disposition. Thompson, on the other hand, is dour and grouchy. I knew the Gipper and you, sir, are no Gipper.

"Nyah, nyah - pubs keep the White House." As usual the CW is that the uber-man the Republicans nominate will take the White House as they've done in the last four out of five elections. Whatever. Put aside the dubious nature to a couple of those "wins," the biggest problem that the Republican candidate will face is that they have to run so hard right to win the nomination there's absolutely no way they can get all the way back to the center by the general election. I have a hard time seeing how they can overcome the disadvantage inherent to the fact the base of their party are insane.

"The Road to the White House runs Center/ Right." Nope. The road to the White House runs through America.

What have you got for an opening act this time? A Chinese gorilla dancing ballet?

When the great photographer Ansel Adams interviewed Ronald Reagan during the halycon of the future President's days as a spokesman for G.E. the photographer referred to Reagan as "opaque." No light penetrates. A condition prevalent to most of those of Reagan's political persuasion I might add.

This open letter to Jon Stewart demonstrates once again how those on the political Right live a life of irony-deficiency. They're simply incapable of noticing the absurdity in advocating two (or more) counter positions at the same time.

In this case Justin Hartfield of the Prometheus Institute (Objectivists?) is simultaneously saying that he admired Jon Stewart's appearance on Crossfire in which he berated host Tucker Carlson while taking up Tucker's biggest charge during that program that Stewart wasn't serious enough in his interviews and demeanor.

I understand your show is in the business of entertainment and its focus is on humor, but isn’t it at least a small bit reckless to criticize so fervently yet offer no viable solutions yourself?

Stewart's response when Tucker tried the same line was that the show leading into his was "puppets making prank calls."

I was going to post the entire Crossfire segment which is available at You Tube but came across this speech by Stewart which he made on the first episode of the Daily Show following the 9/11 attacks. I think Stewart does a far better job of defending his program and talking about why his job as the heckler is so important in a free society than anything he said on Crossfire.

As for Hartfields complaint that Stewart needs to attack targets from all sides of the political spectrum and not just Republicans I think it's pretty clear to anyone that watches the show that they don't pull any punches when it comes to Democrats. It's just that when you're the kid in the back of the class shooting spitballs, as Stewart talked about in the post-9/11 show opener, you shoot those spitballs at the teacher.