Krugman on 'The Monster Years'

...the monster years... like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution...like Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer “therapy and understanding” to terrorists...like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to start torturing people.

Let's hope so.

Palin

What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents—and her supporters celebrate—the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance.

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Bailout

We need extraordinary powers to deal with this threat to the world and to our way of life!!

Sound familiar?

We have a mandate

In three reports delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the [Interior] department’s inspector general...portray[s] a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch.

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I remember, years and years ago, Jack Anderson writing that, whenever he called a Republican or conservative lawmaker/functionary/department head to ask him about some questionable behavior, he knew that he wouldn't get an outright denial; instead, they would claim that the rules didn't really apply to that particular person or situation; the rules were for those people, the ones who don't really have the best interests of the country at heart; we're only doing what needs to be done, have only the best and purest of motives, and all them pesky rules and regulations are standing in the way of doing what's best for the country.

Self-righteousness is odious, no matter who is guilty of it. And in the present administration, for the last eight years, we have reached the apotheosis of the "Don't bother me with facts, my mind's made up" mindset that started with the "Reagan Revolution."

I have never hated anyone as much as I hated Reagan. It scares me to this day how much. That smug, lying, delusional corporate shill symbolized for me the worst aspects of conservatism and the Republican Party (more so, even, than Richard Nixon). "Don't worry your pretty little heads, we know what's best for you. Just do as we do, think as we think, and the world will be a perfect place."

Elections 2008

This is just embarassing.

When even Karl Rove is admonishing Republicans for their campaign strategy, you know that they have finally lost all pretense of making rational arguments.

Hopefully it will be enough to overcome the "ain't no nigger gonna be my president" factor.

And hopefully the people will finally be able to wrest control of the Republican Party back from the neocon ideologues.