First, Miss Lucy and I want to thank everyone for your good wishes for her well-being. She is still fading, although she doesn’t seem to be in acute distress.

Second, here’s another Maddow clip that everyone in America needs to see. So send it to your friends:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Righties are getting bolder about declaring their intentions to end the Social Security program. One might think this is a really stupid thing to do, given that we’re getting very close to a critical midterm election. But I think they feel so certain of a smashing victory in November they cannot contain themselves.

At the Los Angeles Times, Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson discuss why allowing the Bush tax cuts for the extremely well-off to end is good for democracy. The weakness of the article is that they don’t clearly explain why growing income inequality really is a threat to democratic government, and the troglodytes who added comments to the column certainly aren’t figuring it out on their own.

Ben Stein isn’t figuring it out on his own either; he whines that raising the taxes on the income he toils and sweats to wring out of his stock portfolio must be some kind of punishment.

The GOP trotted out its “Pledge to America” today, and of course it’s full of policy ideas that, if enacted, would pretty much put what’s left of the American Dream out of its misery. Yet it is not extreme enough for much of the Right Blosophere; not enough hate.

If you don’t want to be utterly depressed, don’t read “Walmart’s midnight baby formula bread line.”