The ongoing absolutism in Congress in trying to prevent women--or at least poor women--from obtaining abortions is one of the more shameful spectacles in America. The sanctimonious Blue Dog Democrats and the Republicans, who almost unanimously opposed any right to abortion, present two basic arguments. One is that abortion is murder, and therefore must be illegal, or, in more nuanced form, they say that they or their constituents oppose abortion and therefore it is wrong to have their tax money paying for the procedure. Of course, for most of those who argue that abortion is murder, there is a towering hypocrisy in the fact that with rare exceptions, those who argue this view also support capital punishment, which is also murder.

“The Daily Show,” which has become one of the media’s prime monitors when it comes to calling out misuse or manipulation of video, caught the Fox News Channel and one of its hosts, Sean Hannity, Tuesday night, in what appeared to be a blatant example of doctoring a report with inappropriate video to enhance an argument. Jon Stewart, the host of “The Daily Show,” presented excerpts from a segment of Mr. Hannity’s show in which he discussed the so-called tea party protests in Congress last Thursday with Representative Michele Bachmann, a Republican from Minnesota who had urged supporters to turn up at the Capitol to protest the health care bill. [Note: ROFLMAO!!!!!!!]

In New Jersey, incumbent Democrat John Corzine was wildly unpopular for raising taxes, so that even with Democrats holding an almost 2:1 registration advantage in the state (half of all voters are unaffiliated), he too had no enthusiastic backing from his former base. No amount of money poured in by the former Goldman Sachs chief executive could overcome the negative views of his record as governor. But despite the lackluster candidates in both Virginia and New Jersey, I think it’s safe to say that there was also clear evidence that the losses, and the margins of the losses—huge in Virginia’s case, and significant in normally safely Democratic New Jersey—provide evidence that the Obama presidency, and the prevailing Democratic strategy of minimalist legislative initiatives on health care reform, global warming etc., expanded and unending war in Afghanistan, support for Wall Street and neglect of the one-in-five Americans who are unemployed or underemployed, are a political disaster in the making for Democrats in general and Obama in particular. The president came into office on a wave of populist enthusiasm and high expectations for the “change” candidate Obama promised. No change has been forthcoming now for over nine months, and with the president now past the first-year anniversary of his historic election victory, the latest election results suggest that his presidency could already be headed for the rocks.

L. KING: You seem to look back, and look at both of these parties with askance look. VENTURA: To me, Larry -- and I have said it before, and I know I'll get a laugh out of this. But I wish they would pass a law where all Democrats and Republicans had to wear Nascar racing suits, because if you look at the Nascar drivers, it tells who their sponsors are. And if they do that, we could then become informed voters, because we would know who owns them.

Republicans wrested political control of Virginia from the Democrats on Tuesday and New Jersey's unpopular Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine was fighting for his political life as independent voters swung behind the GOP in both states. It was a troubling sign for President Barack Obama and his party heading into an important midterm election year. Republican Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell's victory in Virginia over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds was a triumph for a GOP looking to rebuild after being booted from power in national elections in 2006 and 2008. It also was a setback for the White House in a swing state that was a crucial part of Obama's electoral landslide just a year ago. In New Jersey, exit polls showed Corzine locked in a close race, with independents heavily favoring his Republican challenger Chris Christie in a three-way contest with independent Chris Daggett.

I don't get it. I know that's the simplistic refrain of every 10-year-old, but I'm 33 and I mean it: I just don't get it. Specifically, I don't get why Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) - or any Republican senator, for that matter - is attracting so much attention. In the last few months, Democratic senators eliminated the public option and substantially weakened their health care proposals in order to buy insurance industry acquiescence and, thus, Snowe's vote. Now, based on the deafening media noise, all of American politics is focused on this unaccomplished backbencher and whether or not she will endorse the final bill. It is as if Republicans control Congress - as if Snowe, not Barack Obama, won the biggest presidential landslide since Ronald Reagan. This is bizarre for what should be obvious reasons.

Democrats are now at risk of post-Bush stress disorder (PBSD), a trauma that can cripple their efforts to adjust to everyday life in a new era. Their longtime enemy—potent Republicans—is gone, a mere memory of pain. But Republican ways of thinking have infected the minds of too many Democrats. More than a few have fallen into the GOP habit of selling out to corporate interests (the $1.5 million that health-related lobbies contributed to Max Baucus in 2007–08 goes a long way in Montana), pandering to banks, and reflexively assuming that just because the Pentagon recommends escalation in Afghanistan, it must be necessary. These habits will have to be broken if the Democrats are to stay in power. The key to a political victory on health care isn't just passing a bill, it's controlling insurance premiums. After much-ballyhooed reform, Massachusetts failed to restrain premiums, which are set to increase another 10 percent next year.

Something strange has happened to rank-and-file Republicans since President Obama took office. These past few months, standard-issue gray lawmakers have sounded like fire-and-brimstone demagogues. Conspiracy theories and over-the-top legislation to fix imaginary wrongs are flying wildly around formerly mainstream GOP circles. It turns out that like so much of what ails the world today, this can be traced back to Glenn Beck. Some fifth-term Iowa senator might be railing against death panels, but it's really Beck's voice you're hearing. With his show on Fox News, Beck has successfully positioned himself as the weirdo right's ambassador-at-large to the rest of the world. When the patron saint of the Tea Parties lets his freak flag fly, seemingly normal right-wing functionaries have been known to line up and salute. Republicans parrot Beck's crackpot notions and pet issues routinely -- sometimes running with his manias the morning after he first airs them. [Note: Retards are really sad, but they are not by themselves.]

You won't see them standing up and making grandiose speeches in defense of Wall Street's inalienable right to pillage our pocketbooks, but behind the scenes, dozens of Democrats are doing hatchet work for the nations' biggest banks. Take Rep. Walter Minnick, D-Idaho. In 2008, he was elected as the first congressional Democrat to represent the state in 15 years, and he quickly threw in his lot with the Blue Dog Coalition, one of eight such members on the Financial Services Committee. He cut his teeth in politics as an aide to President Richard Nixon in the '70s, but his economics are significantly to the right of his former boss. He voted against President Barack Obama's stimulus package early this year, and he earned a perfect score from the radical right-wing anti-tax group Club for Growth. On economic issues, he's as predictable as Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

D.C. is a town teeming with corporate brothels. You've got your non-profit bordellos like Third Way, your for-profit massage parlors like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and, of course, K Street is the single biggest red-light district in the world. But bar none, the best little whorehouse in definitely the New Democratic Caucus, and this Bloomberg News story could serve as its advertisement: The New Democrats got Rep. Barney Frank to drop provisions that would have required banks to offer so-called plain vanilla products like 30-year mortgages or low-fee credit cards. The lawmakers were also influential in excluding non-financial companies such as accounting firms, auto dealers and retailers from the agency's oversight... The story goes on to note that in just the first six months of 2009, the 15 New Democrats on the relevant Financial Services committee "received about $1.9 million in contributions from the finance, insurance and real estate industries." They may be high-class hookers - but that's a pittance when considering their work will result in billions of dollars in higher consumer fees - and thus an orgasmic happy ending for bank executives.

While 50 ACORN members were in the Illinois Republican Party headquarters, the phone rang, and an ACORN member answered it "ACORN, Can I help you?" On the other end, they said, "What, ACORN? Wait a minute, this is the Republican Party in D.C. calling the Republican Party in Illinois." The ACORN member said, "ACORN has taken over the Republican Party in Illinois. Can I help you?" The response: "Oh my God."

In recent days, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other major news outlets have recounted the "troubled" history of the poor people's advocacy group ACORN, but left out the five-year anti-ACORN campaign led by White House adviser Karl Rove and other Republican operatives. Dropped down the memory hole is the fact that ACORN was at the center of the so-called "prosecutor-gate" scandal, when the Bush administration pressured US attorneys to bring indictments over the grassroots group's voter-registration drives, then fired some prosecutors who resisted what they viewed as a partisan strategy not supported by solid evidence. The latest furor over ACORN was touched off by conservative filmmaker James E. O'Keefe III and a right-wing columnist who posed as a couple planning to buy a house for use as a brothel and getting advice from a few ACORN employees, rather than being turned away. The pair filmed their meetings at ACORN offices with a hidden camera, producing a video that brought to a fever pitch the long-simmering Republican war against ACORN. The video was trumpeted by Fox News and other right-wing news outlets, starting a stampede in the mainstream press and in Congress, where a majority of panicked Democrats joined the herd in approving legislation to strip ACORN of federal funds.

For people who love golf, the chance to play at the five-star Greenbrier resort in West Virginia is a dream come true. Especially if someone else pays for it. That was the case this summer for two powerful members of Congress, House Republican Minority leader John Boehner of Ohio and Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia. Accompanied by top corporate lobbyists , the two golf-loving Republicans spent a luxurious weekend at the Greenbrier, the kinds of cozy gatherings new ethics reform laws were supposed to curb.

Republicans from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence say that they will no longer participate in an investigation into the Bush administration's interrogation policies, arguing that they were all for investigations until Attorney General Eric Holder outrageously called for investigations. Investigations are one thing, but investigations are another matter entirely, a discombobulated Sen. Christopher Bond (R-MO) told the Washington Post. "Had Mr. Holder honored the pledge made by the President to look forward, not backwards, we would still be active participants in the Committee's review." We'd be investigating right now if it wasn't for all this business about investigating! Someone, fetch me the Tylenol, or at least explain to the sophomoric Mr. Bond, a man who refers to CIA agents accused of torture as "terror fighters," that investigations inherently mean looking back at evidence, and cannot solely entail looking forward. "Looking forward" is a euphemism for covering up past crimes. Really, what are the limits of this hapless quest for bipartisanship? There has to be a point where the Democrats accept that they are the adults in the room, and move forward with their promises of reform and accountability. [Note: Licensed lunacy?]

Hey, wasn't that George W. Bush presidency really fantastic? You do still remember it, don't you? Wasn't it great? Don't you have lots of warm and fuzzy memories of it? Isn't it a shame that he couldn't have a third term? Okay, so maybe you don't see it that way. Maybe the last eight years weren't such a party for you. But remember the regressive right? Remember how much they loved the guy? Remember how they adored Ol' Georgie, especially back in 2001, 2002, 2003? Remember how they gloated and stuck it all in our faces? Remember how much they loved not only Bush's politics, but his in-your-face, my-way-or-the-highway, love-it-or-leave-it, macho cowboy routine delivery? I don't know about you, but I recall all of that really, really well, thank you very much. Painfully well, one might say. Which makes it all the more puzzling that the troglodytes of the right seem to have disappeared their former grand hero almost completely these days. Isn't that odd? They never talk about him anymore, as if he had never even existed. They seem quite desperately to want to vanish him entirely, like the body of some beaten-to-death prisoner at Abu Ghraib. Hmmm. Wonder why? Wonder what gives?

On Monday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski gave a speech in which he outlined the FCC's plan to enforce Net neutrality, a position President Barack Obama held during his campaign for president. In recent years, concern has grown that some Internet service providers are slowing down "access to high speed Internet for things like Internet-based voice calls, video streaming, and legal file sharing (that carriers might wish to block or at least charge extra for)," writes Ian Paul at PCWorld magazine. While Net neutrality is supported by Internet-reliant companies such as Google and Microsoft, it is opposed by major Internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. Those three have come out against Genachowski's plan, ChannelWeb reports.

From time to time, one meets a madman in a shopping mall or at a bus stop who approaches one with discreet confidences about his mother, the Queen of England, or about the messages beamed through the fillings in his teeth that warn him of CIA surveillance from the plane flying 30,000 feet above his head. It's an effort of will to remind oneself that this is a person in disheveled mental condition and it would be unwise to be drawn into protracted discussion of royal lineage tracked through the Almanach de Gotha or to peer into jaws suddenly opened for one's inspection. Similarly, with Obama, he advances ridiculous propositions with nutty aplomb, as when he claimed in his speech to Congress last week that his plan was deficit neutral. Why does he expose himself thus to well-merited derision? Is it that Obama simply cannot bear to displease anyone -- unless they are far away in places like Afghanistan? Indeed the president reached the apex of lunatic effrontery when he caused the assembled legislators to leap to their feet in stormy applause by pledging that "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits." This is the same president, these are the same legislators, who are committing billions in red ink for the war in Afghanistan and the continued U.S. presence in Iraq.

The current conservative-generated hysteria over ACORN is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with both of our major political parties and the general state of our political discourse. Let's put aside for a moment the Glenn Beck-hyped "sting" videos of ACORN employees supposedly engaged in nefarious behavior (I'll get back to that in minute). First, let's take a step back and consider just what ACORN is. It is a non-profit organization whose mission is to empower and improve the lives of poor people. As with many other organizations, ACORN has a number of legally distinct parts, each of which has different sources of funding and engages in different kinds of activities (ACORN's conservative enemies routinely conflate these various parts to imply that ACORN is using federal money for improper political purposes). Since its founding the 70s, ACORN and its employees and volunteers have fought successfully to, among other things, increase minimum wages across the country, increase the quality of public education in poor areas, and protect people from predatory lending practices. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, ACORN helped rebuild thousands of homes and assisted victims in relocating and finding housing outside of New Orleans. The ACORN activity that has drawn the most conservative ire is its voter registration efforts which, consistent with ACORN's mission, are primarily aimed at low-income voters (who tend to vote Democratic).

Two weeks before his movie "Capitalism: A Love Story" opens nationwide, filmmaker Michael Moore swept through San Francisco on Thursday with a rally, a Commonwealth Club appearance and an unlikely new antagonist: Democrats. When Moore criticized Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., this week on NBC's "The Jay Leno Show" for getting "sweetheart loans" from a mortgage company he was charged with overseeing, Moore said he got a call from a top Democratic Party official telling him to "back off." (Dodd was cleared by a Senate ethics panel.) But Moore, a longtime supporter of a single-payer health plan, didn't back off. In an interview with The Chronicle, he chided House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not being aggressive enough in pushing health care reform and ripped President Obama's financial team as "the foxes guarding the henhouse." There is plenty of conservative-bashing in the film, which focuses on capitalism as the "evil" at the root of the financial crisis, but the film also refers to Democratic leaders as the "deliverymen" of the government bailouts for financially troubled Wall Street firms.

I appeared on CNN this weekend with Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer to discuss the racial undertones of the tea party protests. You can watch the clip here. As the images of the tea party march prove, there are, obviously, such racial undertones. However, there are many who refuse to acknowledge that simple truism, instead opting to pursue what I call "dog whistle politics." I know this not from just reading the swill on right wing websites, but from the loads of angry hate mail I received after appearing on CNN - including one that was an explicit death threat. Yes, last night I received a full-on death threat from a person promising to kill me if I dare discuss the racial undertones of the froth that Glenn Beck and other political terrorists are clearly encouraging. I went through the process of contacting the authorities, and the police responded very quickly, which was reassuring. The whole episode speaks to a post I did last week about the Nation of Assholes - and it is demoralizing.