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Glenn Beck has all kinds of interesting political theories. Like the one he posed yesterday at the CPAC convention:

Beck: But I am tired of 40 percent of this country -- 40 percent! -- say they're conservative. Now how many more are out there that don't want to say they're conservative because, 'You just want to kill and eat children' -- [wolfing sound].

Forty percent! Thirty-six percent say they're moderates. What is it, twenty percent? Twenty percent say they're ... liberals. How are they making seventy-six percent feel like they're the minority.

The majority does not rule in America. But the minority shouldn't hijack it!

And it's because we're afraid -- they have isolated us and made us feel we're alone. We're not!

See, Glenn, here's the way it works in the real world: Every conservative sees anyone who is not a conservative -- including moderates -- as a liberal. They're usually vocal about letting us know that. In fact, that's how a lot of us former moderates wound up becoming proud liberals over the past 10 years or so.

Now, notice that Beck lumps moderates in with conservatives as part of the great majority that's being bullied around by mean conniving liberals. He does so without any explanation. But the reality is, the majority of moderates are considered "liberals" by most conservatives, and indeed many of them eschew the "liberal" label precisely out of fear of being called a communist child molester by the likes of Glenn Beck.

Which is why what you're actually looking at is about 56 percent of the country keeping that nutcase 40 percent in check.

You know, the 40 percent that wrecked the global economy by deregulating the most powerful financial sector on the planet into an Indian casino. The 40 percent who convinced enough moderates that Al Gore invented the Internet and that John Kerry didn't deserve his Purple Heart, resulting in a conservative administration that not only wrecked the economy, but drove us into an illegal and unnecessary war, made us more vulnerable to terrorism than ever, and gutted our ability to respond to national emergencies.

No wonder that 36 percent bloc of moderate largely voted en masse with liberals in the last election.

And last we looked, that comprised a real majority. Glenn Beck and his conservative minions may not like that reality, but it's one they created. No wonder they're working so hard to invent an alternative.

At least there's some good news as far as messaging goes. As you know, I hated the Citizens United ruling, and it appears that most of America feels the same way.

Obama raised eyebrows at his State of the Union address last month by criticizing the high court’s ruling throwing out limits on corporate spending in political campaigns. Turns out he’s got company: Our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 80 percent of Americans likewise oppose the ruling, including 65 percent who “strongly” oppose it, an unusually high intensity of sentiment.

Seventy-two percent, moreover, support the idea of a legislative workaround to try to reinstate the limits the court lifted.

The bipartisan nature of these views is striking in these largely partisan times. The court’s ruling is opposed, respectively, by 76, 81 and 85 percent of Republicans, independents and Democrats; and by 73, 85 and 86 percent of conservatives, moderates and liberals. Majorities in all these groups, ranging from 58 to 73 percent, not only oppose the ruling but feel strongly about it.

Even among people who agree at least somewhat with the Tea Party movement, which advocates less government regulation, 73 percent oppose the high court’s rejection of this particular law. Among the subset who agree strongly with the Tea Party’s positions on the issues – 14 percent of all adults – fewer but still most, 56 percent, oppose the high court in this case.

I like the idea that the country is understanding that our legislative branch can try to overcome this problem even though it's not an easy task to accomplish. I think outside of the partisan right, most Americans understand that when corporations have the ability to pump in or threaten to pump in gobs of money to influence the political process, it's a distortion of that process -- and it just plain smells.

They say he's in good spirits and doing well, but you always have to worry whenever heart surgery is involved:

Former President Bill Clinton is "in good spirits" after a procedure to place two stents in one of his coronary arteries, according to a spokesman.

"President Clinton is in good spirits, and will continue to focus on the work of his Foundation and Haiti's relief and long-term recovery efforts," said adviser Doug Band said in a statement.

He is expected to stay the night at Columbia Campus of New York Presbyterian Hospital, where he was admitted earlier Thursday.

It'll be interesting to watch the civility-conscious right-wingers who were all aghast at liberals' comments when Rush Limbaugh was hospitalized.

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Monica Crowley was eager to change the subject on The O'Reilly Factor last night when Alan Colmes brought up the naked racism of Tom Tancredo's Tea Party Convention speech, so she launched into a defense of the Tea Parties with facts and information seemingly taken straight from her posterior:

Crowley: Look, the Tea Party movement is a massive grass-roots movement. It is based on legitimate concerns about out-of-control spending, high taxes --

O'Reilly: But to address Colmes' point, that the way they presented themselves, in Colmes' opinion, helped President Obama.

Crowley: No, absolutely not. I'll tell you why. Um, President Obama doesn't seem to be listening to what the Tea Party -- and it's not just the Tea Party movement.

Remember, a big majority of the Tea Party movement are made up of conservatives. But you have a number of -- and a huge number of mainstream moderate Democrats in this movement, and a huge number of independents --

O'Reilly: Libertarians, OK. So you -- was it a neutral? Was the Tea Party neutral toward President Obama? Did it hurt him? Did it help him?

Crowley: Bill, I think -- no, no, actually, I think it hurts Obama. It hurts Obama because they've got the mainstream message. The majority of Americans now are siding with the Tea Party movement on the issues of spending deficits and debt.

A huge number of Democrats? I haven't seen any polls showing anything more than insignificant number of Democrats joining the Tea Parties -- in no small part because their rallies are endless and vicious rants against Democrats and liberals. It's possible Crowley has data to back up her claim, but count me among the doubters, given my experience at Tea Party events, which are uniformly right-wing affairs.

Crowley's claims about the Tea Parties' supposed popularity doesn't exactly match what voters actually think, according to a new Rasmussen poll:

Days after Sarah Palin headlined the nation's first Tea Party convention, a Rasmussen Reports poll released today shows that a generic "Tea Party candidate" would come in third in a theoretical three-way congressional contest.

The poll found that 36% of voters would support a Democratic candidate on a generic ballot, 25% would back the Republican and 17% would go for the Tea Party pick. Twenty-three percent of respondents are undecided.

In early December, the same poll showed the Tea Party in second place and the GOP in third. Unchanged between the polls, according to Rasmussen, is that 41% of voters have a favorable view of the conservative movement.

The poll of 1,000 likely voters was taken Feb. 7-8, just after the national Tea Party convention in Nashville. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

It's possible the public agrees with the Tea Partiers on a couple of issues. But overall the movement is turning them off, because it's not just full of nutcases, it's being led by them.

I saw this on CNN last night and cheered. I've been wanting the Dems to bring back Bush because he's responsible for the mess our country has been left with after he split the scene, man. The GOP knows it and that's why he's been off the national stage for so long. He didn't look too happy going out there in front of the cameras to help during the Haitian earthquake.

Americans are strange people when it comes to politics, and as we've seen with the polling of the mythical independent voters, the numbers go up and down all the time. The determining factor seems to me to be who is in power at the time when your life sucks. So this country is about to reelect the people who created our misery.

For many liberals President Obama hasn't handled these problems as the progressive we want him to be, but in his defense, he didn't initiate two wars in the Middle East after we were hit with a terrorist attack, and he didn't allow the global financial meltdown to happen right before his eyes. So if some people want to bring back BUSH for us, I'm all in.

Bob Collins says that nobody knows who actually bought the billboard that says" Miss Me Yet?"
Digby calls it Presidential Rehab, but I think this would be a blessing if he's trotted out there again. We can promote the theme of "Don't Get Fooled Again." We had eight long years that proved to all of America that Conservatism was and is a failure.

I'm sure you saw this piece in the Washington Post by Gerard Alexander titled, "Why are liberals so condescending?"

Jamison Foser busts the WaPo:

Well, this is interesting. Remember that "Why are liberals so condescending" piece by Gerard Alexander the Washington Post published last week? Turns out, the author didn't submit the piece the the Post -- the Post sought him out:

Bethesda, Md.: I thought that "Why are Liberals So Condescending" was the most intelligent article I've read in the Post in some time.

Do you think that this is the result of a decision by your editors to be more fair and balanced?

Also, I would appreciate your comments on the "All serious scientists agree that Global Warming is an enormous problem." school of thought. This matter has been positioned in exactly the same condescending manner.

Gerard Alexander: I can only tell you that the Post editor I dealt with searched me out, and were as encouraging as any editor could conceivably be.

I wonder when we'll find out that a Washington Post staffer is actively seeking out a similarly disparaging column about conservatives? After all, Howard Kurtz keeps telling us how liberal the Post's opinion operation is.

Meanwhile, Alexander spent the bulk of today's Washington Post online Q&A acknowledging that some conservatives are plenty condescending to liberals, but claiming that it just isn't very common. Or something. Alexander, for example, contends that "conservative magazines, elected officials, etc" don't accuse coastal liberals of being out of touch with heartland values -- and that if they did so, they'd be "run out of town."

What planet has Alexander been living on for the past thirty years? Conservatives are always so courteous. Why does the Post think we're so mean and nasty? I certainly don't remember conservatives calling us traitors, terrorist sympathizers, we hate our freedom, the troops and American values, do you?

Please email the Washington Post and tell them I sent you. Maybe they can answer your inquiry even if you are a condescending a-hole.

ombudsman@washpost.com

Or just use the phone and call here:

Phone 202.334.6000 | 800.627.1150

Here's their full contact page for more:

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Bill Moyers reaired part of his interview with Howard Zinn from Dec. 11, 2009.

Howard Zinn died at the age of 87 on January 27, 2010

"They're willing to let people think about mild reforms and little changes, and incremental changes, but they don't want people to think that we could actually transform this country."

Transcript via Bill Moyers Journal.

BILL MOYERS: Like Richard Trumka, the historian Howard Zinn, who died this week, was a man who believed that working people couldn't wait for a better life - they had to fight for it.

He once wrote, "historically, government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed its responsibilities until forced to by direct action: sit-ins and freedom rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war. Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action."

Howard Zinn didn't just write history, he lived it, practicing what he preached, gaining enemies and critics by leaping into the fray himself. A working class kid from Brooklyn, he came home from fighting for America in World War II, to fight alongside other Americans for justice, peace, and jobs.

His fame and popularity came from helping us see America from the ground up - as ordinary people struggling to gain and hold their place in it. When no history book told that story as it should be told, he wrote the book himself -- A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. It became a perennial best seller.

He appeared on the JOURNAL just last month to tell us about a television special, THE PEOPLE SPEAK, based on his people's history. Here is a little of what we talked about:

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From The Cafferty File:

President Obama has the chance to use tomorrow's State of the Union address to reset his agenda and refocus the attention of the American people.

It's been a rough week for the president and his party - since the Democrats lost control of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts. Without their filibuster-proof majority, the president's signature issue of health care reform is on life support.

And the public doesn't appear too disappointed about that. A new poll shows 70 percent of Americans think the Democrats' loss of their super-majority is a good thing.

Meanwhile the president is expected to announce a three-year freeze on all non-security federal discretionary spending. He claims this could save $250 billion over 10 years - which is a start, but still just a drop in the bucket considering the country's $12.5 trillion debt.

And, expect some liberals - you know, the president's base - to push back hard. Already critics on the left are calling the proposed spending freeze a mistake of historic proportions. Some compare Mr. Obama to Republican Herbert Hoover, who failed to pull the U.S. out of the great depression.

Others liken this to Democrat FDR's move to cut back on government spending in 1937 - the economy tanked and so did the Democrats in the following midterm election.

There's lots more on the president's plate too, like the jobs situation - which doesn't show many signs of turning around. Unemployment is at 10 percent… up from seven percent when Mr. Obama took office.

Here’s my question to you: What should Pres. Obama emphasize in his State of the Union address tomorrow?

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Jonathan Martin reports in The Politico that the Bush-bashing policy has not worked for the Democrats so they are abandoning it.

After three consecutive losses in statewide races, some top Democrats are questioning a tactic aimed at boosting the party’s candidates in each of those contests: Bush-bashing.

Running as much against the Bush White House as he was running against Sen. John McCain, Barack Obama easily carried Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts in 2008.

Bashing Bush in local races will not help if it doesn't emanate from the White House. Axelrod never made it a priority to attack conservatism and George Bush or Ronald Reagan and the country was primed for it. They did mention that Obama inherited this mess from Bush, but they missed a monumental chance to shake conservative principles for years to come, had Barack Obama actually attacked not just Bush but conservatism and called it (rightly so) a complete failure, beginning from the day he decided to run for president.

And then he could have pilloried them the entire time, both in the campaign and even after he took office. Reagan blamed liberals and big government constantly for his early failures, and it worked for him. Bush followed suit and bashed Clinton, but for some reason they didn't find it appealing.

The country witnessed a complete meltdown under George Bush except for the very wealthy, but if you never make the case on a national level, Americans will soon forget about him and blame the person that is in charge because their lives are no better. In reality, it takes years to dig out of the kind of economic collapse we just witnessed, if at all.

Democrats said that invoking Bush’s name doesn’t have the same impact now, in part for a fairly obvious reason: He’s not in charge anymore.

And the anger toward the political establishment that helped lift Obama and so many Democratic candidates in 2008 has now been transferred to the party in power.

If President Obama and his staff had made Bush bashing -- and calling out conservatism -- a priority, it would have been a potent weapon, because they had the truth on their side. Instead, it was another lost opportunity and now it falls to bloggers to make the case that conservatism is an ideology that doesn't succeed. It's never worked, and it never will work. Conservatives like to forget that Ronald Reagan raised taxes because he had to. If he didn't he would have been a single-term president.

Greg Sargent reports that House liberals are refusing to support the Senate healthcare reform bill, which sets a whole new dynamic in play. Good for them! I, for one, am tired of the House members being treated as minor players in such important legislation:

In a private meeting in the Capitol just now, a dozen or more House liberals bluntly told Nancy Pelosi that there was no chance that they would vote to pass the Senate bill in its current form — making it all but certain that House Dems won’t opt for this approach, a top House liberal tells me.

“We cannot support the Senate bill — period,” is the message that liberals delivered to the Speaker, Dem Rep Raul Grijalva told me in an interview just now.

Some had hoped Pelosi would push liberals to get in line behind this approach, in hopes of expediting reform, but that didn’t appear to happen in this meeting. Pelosi mostly listened, Grijalva said, adding: “We didn’t get any declarative statement from her.”

The meeting, which was polite but blunt in tone, underscores the degree to which Dems are scrambling to figure out a way forward on health care in the wake of last night’s loss. The unwillingness of liberals, and some in labor, to support passing the Senate bill means House Dem leaders need to find another way forward — fast — and leadership aides are scouring procedural rules as we speak.

Tellingly, House liberals also urged Pelosi to consider passing individual pieces of reform through the House as individual bills, and sending them to the Senate to challenge the upper chamber to reject them, Grijalva tells me. Liberals said this approach would be preferable to passing the Senate bill.

For instance, Grijalva said, why not send the Senate individual bills that would, among other things, nix the “Cadillac” tax or close the donut hole, pressuring the Senate to deal with each provision separately?

“If the Senate chooses not to close the donut hole, that’s their damn problem,” Grijalva said. “They’ve had it too easy. One vote controls everything. Collectively, we’re tired of that.”

The Blame Game has begun over the Kennedy special election in Massachusetts yesterday. The Atlantic has a list of what's being said.

Many Democrats are operating under the assumption that Democrat Martha Coakley will lose today's election in Massachusetts to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. In the debate over how Democrats could possibly lose the race--which has major repercussions for President Obama's agenda--Coakley herself is taking more and more of the blame. Some Democrats and liberals aren't waiting for the polls to close to turn against Coakley and her campaign. Here's a taste of what they're saying...read on

Digby:

According to Chuck Todd, the trouble in Massachusetts comes down to two words: Health Care.

Andrea Mitchell say's the two words are: Big Government

I say: Bad Economy (and Political Malpractice)

Consortiumblog: Few Americans understand how important Haiti's contribution to U.S. history was, and this moron and this braying jackass prove it

The Washington Independent: First GOP Moneybomb and a union warning

The Big Picture: How Bankers Think

The Swash Zone: Timid liberals

Princess Sparkle Pony's Photo Blog: Book Shelf: GQ Scene Magazine, Fall 1967

Jack & Jill Politics: Teddy Pendergrass, RIP

Countdown's Worst Persons for Jan. 4, 2009 with winner Brent Bozell.

Ignoring his past remarks, Bozell says "if" Limbaugh said liberals "want to kill people," "[i]t would be the end of his career"

In a December 31 Newsmax article, Media Research Center president Brent Bozell is quoted as saying that if Rush Limbaugh said liberals "want to kill people," then "[i]t would be the end of his career." But Limbaugh has made numerous remarks of the sort, including declaring that "It's the American Left that wants you to die" and that the Democratic Party is "obsessed with your death."

Runners up Scott Rasmussen and The Politico.

Politico fails to fact-check Rasmussen’s claim that he ‘has never been a campaign pollster or consultant.’

Reporting on criticisms of right-leaning pollster Scott Rasmussen, Politico presented as fact his official bio as “an independent pollster” who “has never been a campaign pollster or consultant.” The article quotes Rasmussen’s critics, but fails to question his supposed independence.

And Gretchen Carlson.

Gretchen Carlson Promotes Bogus Bertha Lewis White House Visit Story On Fox & Friends

Gretchen Carlson is a graduate of Stanford where, one assumes, she learned that information must be properly sourced and vetted before it is used in a report. Thus, one has to question why former Miss America pushed a discredited Andrew Breitbart report which claimed that ACORN’s CEO, Bertha Lewis, recently visited the White House. Fox Nation ran with the smear for three days before taking it down*. But today, pretty in pink Gretchen reported that “ACORN's chief Bertha Lewis got an inside look at the White House just days before those explosive undercover tapes about ACORN were released. Could her relationship with the First Family affect the way the administration ended up viewing those tapes?” Ah, the “explosive” tapes that resulted in a Congressional Committee concluding that ACORN hasn’t violated any federal regulations in the last five years. Gretchen didn’t mention that little detail.

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Allen Quist is one of a bevy of wingnuts lining up to take on Democratic Rep. Tim Walz in Minnesota's 1st District. He's already making appeals to the Tea Party crowd, and now he's taken to channeling Glenn Beck, as you can see from the video above:

Quist: I, like you, have seen that our country is being destroyed. I mean, this is -- every generation has had to fight for freedom. This is our fight! And this is our time. This is it! Terrorism, yes, but that's not the big battle. The big battle is in D.C. with the radicals! They aren't liberals, they're radicals! Obama, Pelosi, Waltz, they're not liberals, they're radicals! They are destroying our country! And people all over are figuring that out.

This was from a mid-December Christmas party for the Wabash County Republicans.

Richard Alan Smith at VoteVets notes that Quist's smear includes Tim Walz, a decorated veteran:

Sergeant Major (Ret.) Walz's service to his country apparently means nothing to Allen Quist, one of the Republicans lining up to challenge Walz in this year's mid-term election. Here is a video of Quist, who has never worn the uniform of his country, telling you that this brave American is a "radical", is more dangerous than a terrorist and is out to destroy the country he served for 24 years...

...

Allen Quist, a politician who has been chasing office since 1982, should be ashamed of himself. A year before Quist began his desperate attempt to become a career politician, the man who's patriotism he attacks put on an Army uniform at the age of 17 and wore it for 24 years, rising to the highest enlisted rank and becoming the highest ranking enlisted soldier in southern Minnesota. A man who has so little respect for the service of America's Veterans has no business serving in Congress.

Yeah, well, the only problem with teabagging Republicans is ... they have no shame whatsoever.

Congratulations to Carnival of the Liberals on their 100th Edition!

Fried Green Al-Qaedas: the gaping maw opens

2 Political Junkies: They Have No Shame

Jesus General: You can't spell "neo-con" without an H, O, L, Y, W, A, and an R.

Guys from Area 51: 2009, the internets in review

Happy New Year! Mike returns tomorrow; send blog tips to finnsagain AT aol DOT com.