The usual suspects roundly mocked Brady yesterday, Atrios, TPM, Sargent, Cole.

Well played.

Except I think they all missed one critical point - the literal essence of the gripe, that Brady and his anti-socialist/communist/fascist compadres were complaining that the trains weren't running on time.

And good for him.

The racial animus underpinning the anti-Obama hate-mob is real, and it needs to be talked about.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to link to the multitude of concern trolls - Ben Smith of Politico, you know who you are - explaining that this is bad news for Obama, that the last thing he needs is racism dominating the news headlines. Sorry Ben, racism is already front and center of the anti-Obama movement, and tackling it head on is morally right, irrespective of what Villager conventional wisdom you agreed upon over last night's cocktails and canapes.

There are several indisputable facts around the state of the nation that explain why we have quite widespread discontent. In no particular order of relevance:

1. The economic crisis.

2. The as yet unreformed banking industry.

3. Long-term foreign military engagements that have delivered nothing.

4. Long-term middle class real wage stagnation.

It shoundn't need to be explained, but every goddamned one of these issues were things that Obama inherited. The basis for outrage about the status quo has long existed.

So why the sudden outbreak of popular revolt this year?

Leave that thought for a moment. Let's look at some of the particular complaints.

There's a good chunk of discontent over the fiscal stimulus. That this is an eminently defendable economic policy - indeed one that George Bush arguably followed with his 2001 tax cuts - does not matter. Because a Democratic president is doing it, this apparently makes it bad.

There's a good chunk of discontent over the nationalization of banks and auto-makers. That every bank nationalization occurred under George Bush, does not matter. That the atuo company nationalizations - which have preserved jobs prevented a total regional economic collapse in Michigan - have cost a miniscule fraction of the bank bail-outs, does not matter. Because this is now within the domain of a Democratic president, it is now suddenly apeshit bad.

There's a good chunk of discontent over healthcare reform. Nevermind that we are probably looking at fairly modest reform, definitely compared to the 1994 effort, does not matter. We have a Democratic president driving this - and anyone want to argue that Kerry would not have prioritized this had he had the chance? - and nevermind that the cost of it is broadly comparable to Bush's drug reform bill of 2003, none of this matters. No matter how tepid the reform, because it is Obama's, it is bad.

Let's also look at some of the particular complainants - Medicare beneficiaries decrying government healthcare schemes, birthers, and most famously a Southern law-maker who did everything but fellate Strom Thurmond daily (though it seems unwise these days to rule even that out).

Maybe it is on the Jimmy Carters of this world to demonstrate irrefutably the racial animus behind the protests. Maybe we should be trolling through Stormfront and various LaRouche affiliates to find this level of proof.

Or maybe the concern-trolls and other various stripes of skeptics and/or deniers might start presenting their own case for why the popular revolt against this Democratic president is so much more open and venomous. Clinton put up with a bottomless sewer of shit, largely orchestrated by the astroturfing pros and their friends in high-places. This present revolt is not the same, all kinds of lunatics have appeared on the scene to spew their frustrations against a Presidency operating in an economic environment as precarious and frightening as it was a year ago.

If race isn't stoking the frenzy, I'd interested to hear what is.

I don't want to waste too much more internets talking about the tea-party, just wanted pass on a couple of thoughts. First, from the incomparably civil Steve Benen, this:

We learned today that right-wing activists don't like government spending (except when Bush and Republican lawmakers spent freely), don't like the size of government (except when Bush and Republican lawmakers increased the size of government), don't like deficits and debt (except when Bush and Republican lawmakers added trillions to the nation's tab), and don't like czars (except when Bush used dozens of them to implement his agenda).

They don't like health-care reform, though it's not clear why. They don't like gun control, though it's not clear why they think anyone's coming for their firearms. They also don't like taxes, immigration, abortion, Muslims, the U.N., and the idea of "socialism," though their understanding of the word is tenuous at best.

In other words, the point of today's rally was to let the country know there are a lot of right-wing activists with right-wing beliefs. We knew that before today, but I guess they wanted to remind us.

No-one seems to be able to agree on how many people turned up, but Fox News, while excitedly talking up the occasion, went with "tens of thousands". So let's be generous and say 80,000 people were there.

Now cast your mind back 14 years, to when Louis Farrakhan held his party in the capital. I recall the endless nonsense about how many people had in fact turned up, but let's go with the independent estimates that put the figure around 400,000.

So, taking the high, non-independent estimate of the tea-party, and the low, indepedent estimate of the Farrakhan thingie, the tea-partiers were outnumbered 5:1. That's as generous an estimate as we can give to the tea partiers.

Would it be unfair therefore to argue that the tea partiers are less popular and thus by definition more extremist than the Nation of Islam?