No More Animal Videos, I Promise

Just stuff to read —

See “John Boehner: the latest Tea Party stooge ” by Gary Younge:

The Republican party’s internal division and public humiliation this week felt like a moment that was such a long time coming it seemed as though it would never arrive. But the ramifications are not limited to Congress. The very mayhem that has been evident in Washington DC this week has been playing out in Iowa and New Hampshire these past few months, and will continue through the coming presidential year. Adrenalin could keep the Tea Party going only so long outside the fetid ecosystem of Fox News, talk radio and the internet, before reality intervened and forced some kind of reckoning. They can’t have everything they want, and won’t take the considerable amount they can get. So they cast around from crisis to crisis and candidate to candidate exploding with rage and imploding with contradictions until there’s very little left but the venom.

See also Ezra Klein, “‘No Labels’ Stops Whining.”

Update: I’m not posting this, notice. I’m just linking to it. It doesn’t count.

Paul Krugman, “Springtime for Toxics