President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Suddenly the party of smugly and righteously hurting the evildoers' feelings has rediscovered the importance of results and achievements. Stay classy, neocons.

Yes. However, Republicans are neither.They are lying about death squads, openly admitting they won't support any health reform, and quietly hoping the defeat they want to deal President Obama will be his "Waterloo." They are drawing Hitler mustaches on President Obama's picture and strapping on assault rifles outside the President's speaking engagements.

So regretfully, all meaningful debate must be confined to the Democratic Party. If Republicans want a bipartisan bill, they should be cordially invited to vote for the compromise that 60 Senate Democrats reach with one another.

Just because it's legal to sport an assault rifle outside the hall where President Obama is speaking, doesn't make the guy who did it any less of a self centered, reckless fool.

Responsible gun owners hunt in sparsely populated wilderness areas. They hone their shooting skills at ranges specifically designed to prevent injury to others. They most definitely do not willingly endanger hundreds of people in crowded urban settings, for the sake of calling attention to themselves and their big guns.

Whatever the reason for Palin's abrupt resignation, it's kind of a shame because her biggest failing was arriving late to the party. 
She isn't materially dumber or less articulate than George W. Bush. Her opinions are solidly representative of conservative thought, such as it is, on a wide variety of topics. She articulates the Republican talking points as well as anyone. Like every other conservative, Palin supports tax cuts for all rich people and opposes spending for most poor people. Like every other elected Republican, Palin also supports deficit spending for her own particular circle of rich people. Her personal drama (so far) is broadly comparable to other prominent conservatives. Her daughter's shotgun engagement is no more shocking than the serial divorces of Giuliani, Gingrich and Limbaugh. So far as we know, she's never engaged in the bathroom prowling of a Craig or the sex tourism of a Sanford. Her highly self-trumpeted Christian persona is no less Christ-like than Rick Santorum's or Tom DeLay's. In other words, she is perfectly representative of Republicans and conservatives. But she has bad timing.

Robert Reich is enthused about the possibilities of a "post manufacturing economy."

But college is not for everyone. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy Survey, 14% of the respondents had "below basic" prose literacy. This represents 30 million Americans who possess "no more than the most simple and concrete literacy skills." 

They need jobs too. Pell grants and subsidized student loans are going to provide diminishing returns, at best. 

The challenge I'd really like addressed is how to create an economy where you don't have to go to college to afford your own apartment. 

GM and Chrysler still haven't addressed the issue of quality. American vehicles are still not the best values and none of the restructuring plans are going to change that.

April 2009 was Consumer Reports magazine's annual car issue. To measure a vehicle's overall value, they divided its estimated 5-year ownership cost by its overall road test score. They amusingly call this price the vehicle's "bucks per bang."

Their conclusion:

Of the 41 vehicles in our best values list, all but the Mini, VW, and Volvo C30 are from Asian manufacturers, with 17 built by Toyota, 10 built by Honda, four by Nissan, and three by Hyundai. This reflects the fact that those automakers build many good, well-rounded vehicles that do well in our road tests and reliability Ratings. They also have relatively low owner costs, thanks largely to good resale value and relatively good fuel economy.

The Prius ($325) had the fewest bucks per bang and the Hummer H2 ($3620) had the most. The Jeep Wrangler Unlimited($2320,) Chrysler Sebring 4 cylinder ($740) and Chevy Aveo5 ($870) are a few more reasons that American car companies are going bankrupt.

Waterboarding somebody 183 times is not a ticking time bomb scenario and has nothing whatsoever do do with national security. It was punishment, a medical experiment on prisoners, a training exercise and a legal defense, all wrapped up into one, giant war crime.

Waterboarding a man 183 times is punishment in it's purest, most vindictive form. He did this to President Bush's country and Bush made him suffer.

Waterboarding a man 183 times is a medical experiment on a prisoner. Doctors dutifully signed off that the prisoner didn't get any broken bones or internal organ damage. Interrogators refined their techniques and learned how much they could torture a man without meeting Bush's legal definition of "torture."

Waterboarding a man 183 times is a training exercise. George W. Bush wanted prisoners to be tortured. He must have found it lamentable that after so many years of obeying the law, nobody really knew how. Whole departments had to be brought up to speed. The torturers needed practice.

Finally, and worst of all, waterboarding a man 183 times is a legal defense. If anyone were to be prosecuted, and President Obama says they won't be, the prisoner's medical records from the experiments would no doubt be used as evidence. The defendants would claim that yes, we were really mean. But the prisoner suffered no permanent harm and therefore he wasn't really tortured.

Sarah Palin is back on tour. She's still bragging about her choice to deliver her baby with Down's Syndrome and still trying to deny that choice to everyone else. Her daughter couldn't even manage a shotgun wedding. It was a shotgun engagement that lasted all of Grandma's Vice Presidential campaign. But we're not supposed to talk about that.

Palin reminds me of the heavy metal band Bang Tango. They were as talented as any other eighties band. Their spandex was just as tight and their hair just as big. Their "tattered" blue jeans were meticulously sculpted into just as many perfect, parallel little rows. They deserved at least as much success as dozens of other bands, but they were late to the party. By the time they debuted in 1989, hair metal had all but played itself out. Then along came Pearl Jam and Nirvana to seal the coffin.

Sarah Palin is no more or less talented, articulate, intelligent and attractive than George W. Bush was. Her daddy was a nobody, but other than that, she's just as good. But Palin was late to the party. It was only after 8 years experience with W that voters found her embarrassingly unqualified to be President, and frankly just a little bit frightening.

Meanwhile, it looks like Bang Tango is opening for Skid Row, May 9 here in Phoenix.

Michelle Malkin trumpets the "Go Galt" movement, a comically self-delusional conservative fad, based loosely on the Ayn Rand protagonist John Galt, whereby conservatives are threatening to cut back, go on strike, abstain from new adventures or otherwise deprive the world of their "productivity." The master plan is to titrate their income below $250,000 to avoid the dreaded Obama tax increases.

Don't let the door hit you in the rear. This guy, who Malkin links approvingly from Stephen Spruiell's commenters, is my personal favorite in terms of comic self unawareness:

I am a tax accountant, don't consider myself to be an idiot, and I am right in Obama's income target range.  I will be joining those looking to limit hours worked so as not to enter that 60% territory.  Part of the motivation will be the self satisfaction of not contributing to the socialist cause.

A tax accountant! His job is to minimize people's tax liabilities, and he's threatening to screw the socialists out of revenue by doing less work! Go Galt. Now. Please.

To join him, I'd also like to nominate:

1. Any five Republican Senators.
2. Rush Limbaugh.
3. Fox News.
4. Karl Rove.
5. Newt Gingrich.


Going Galt is by far the biggest improvement conservatives could make. So what are you waiting for, conservatives? Go Galt. Now. Please.

Top five reasons Republicans don't want to monitor volcanoes:

5. Hurricanes only give about 4 days advance notice. Tornado chasers get 4 minutes, so they're still OK, but volcano warnings are totally unfair.

4. The plucky sheriff of Pompeii took charge and saved lives while those damn Roman bureaucrats diddled over paperwork.

3. Gay marriage was outlawed in California. God won't send any volcanoes.

2. Republicans' daughters all signed abstinence pledges. That's like a national registry of sacrificial virgins.

1. We're Rapture Ready, so let it blow!

I guess I'm sort of a Palin contrarian. I disagree with Kevin Drum that her nomination was a shocking anomaly.

Sarah Palin is perfectly representative of the Republican party. She's no more or less intelligent, articulate, informed, curious, experienced or qualified for office than George W. Bush was.

I remember 2000. Voters were reassured that what Bush lacked in native intelligence he would compensate with good advisers. Because his name was Bush, he supposed to have access to this vast reservoir of grownups, remember? After 8 years of peace, prosperity and the disgraceful interaction between gravity and Bill Clinton's pants, almost half the 2000 voters found Bush plausible enough to elect.

Palin 2008 is no different than Bush 2000, right down to her supporters' assurances that she'd have plenty of on-the-job training from John McCain. The difference is simply current events and 8 years of history.

After two wars, Katrina, an 8 year recession and a total financial meltdown, about 5% of the voters decided maybe the President and Vice President should be smarter than the average Joe Plumber after all.

An ASU poll has McCain leading Obama by only 2 points in Arizona! Now, all available evidence suggests that Obama knows what he's doing better than I. And winning the election is obviously more important than satisfying my partisan cravings. Still, if Senator Obama could find the time without neglecting other priorities, I really wish he'd visit Phoenix.

I've been vaguely disappointed that Senator Obama hasn't delivered the crushing, humiliating smackdown that Republicans so richly deserve. And I can't think of a more deserving group of Republicans than the ones right here in Arizona. For Obama to ninja the state of Arizona would be truly epic.

Barry Goldwater carried Arizona and nowhere else. But he is widely regarded as a founder of the conservative movement that has brought the nation to the brink of ruin. I can't think of a more fitting end to this failed philosophy than for John McCain to suffer his predecessor's fate.

Oh wait, yes I can. I want McCain to lose Arizona too.

Sarah Palin strikes me as the unintentionally perfect spokesperson for the Republican Party. Look. McOnomics amounts to re-creating the Great Depression. Foreign McPolicy amounts to re-fighting the Vietnam War. Their ideas are really that bad.

Republican talking points are about as repetitive and vacuous as Palin made them sound. Their intellectual philosophy is about as incoherent as Palin's fractured sentences. It's not like she's defending a rich intellectual tradition grounded in history, logic or fact. A well formed sentence from her would practically be a misrepresentation.

However unintentionally, Sarah Palin represents the Republican Party better than anybody.

I was hoping to keep the Great Depression in the back of historical memory. I wanted to puzzle over how it shaped my Grandpa's life, not live through the re-creation myself.

So thank you George Bush. Thank you John McCain. Thank you Republicans for trying so hard to answer the question, "How many disasters will it take to yank people's heads out of their collective asses?"

Thank you Conservatives for crapping in the pool again. President Clinton had just barely finished cleaning the filter, but thanks for this historic opportunity to scoop out your turds and finally administer some chlorine.

I don't know into which derivative my mortgage got bundled, but when the government buys it I'd like to refinance at 3 percent, please. That's a bailout I would believe in. 
Otherwise, the government is really just buying my debt service for 1 or 2 percent, and charging me the same 6 percent as before. That's more like a tax. Might even be the biggest increase in history.