GOP's quandry: people like the Tea Party's words but not what they mean

The Tea Party Wags the Dog - The New York Times

LATE ADDITION: Americans Want To Cut Spending, But Polls Show They Don't Agree How - TPM

Bachmann almost makes Palin look good

Don't Know Much About History - The New York Times

Walk the walk, you gasbags

Repeal Health Care? Give Up Your Own First! - Credo Action

Conditioned to shop

"The trillionaire-making strategies you encounter are so insidious because of how normal they’ve become. You’ll find them creeping into your life not only explicitly, in magazines and commercials, but implicitly, in the way other people around you -- even people you love -- expect you to live."

How to Make Trillions of Dollars - Raptitude

The myth of a failing Europe

"The lesson of the Irish debacle, then, is very nearly the opposite of what Mr. Ryan would have us believe. It doesn’t say 'cut spending now, or bad things will happen'; it says that balanced budgets won’t protect you from crisis if you don’t effectively regulate your banks — a point made in the newly released report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which concludes that '30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation' helped create our own catastrophe. Have I mentioned that Republicans are doing everything they can to undermine financial reform?"

Their Own Private Europe - The New York Times

Bloated defense budget is so 20th century

Ike Was Right: Cut Defense - Washington Post

LATE ADDITION: The Big Tank That Couldn't - The New York Times

The Republican plan is simple and wrong

The Republicans' Bogus Budget Plan - Slate

Code Blue: what could happen if health care reform is repealed

The Worst Case - The New Republic

LATE ADDITION: The Hot Spotters - The New Yorker

In our reason-impaired discourse, threats have replaced democracy

A Call to Protest Ignites a Call to Arms - LA Times

The new anti-elitists: despising the idea that things - or they themselves - could be better

"Who, then, is guilty of elitism...? The main culprits turn out to be people [who adopt] aesthetic, intellectual, or political values that demur from the money-making mandate that otherwise dominates society."

Revolt of the Elites - n+1

Another nice observation: "It’s my fiduciary responsibility to increase shareholder value is our I was just following orders...."

A teachable moment that came and went

The Competition Myth - The New York Times

Who nudges the nudgers?

Critical Theory in the Nudging Era - Potlatch

The lost generation

The Face of An American Lost Generation - TomDispatch

The rich think they're different from you and me

The Rise of the New Global Elite - The Atlantic

It's unpopular to say it, but it's true

Poverty and Recovery - The New York Times

Which sounds more moral to you: assisting those in need, or screaming "Mine! Mine! Mine!"?

A Tale of Two Moralities - The New York Times

Fact check reveals Republicans are full of it

Do Republican Critiques of the Healthcare Law Add Up? - LA Times

Debunking Common Myths About Health-Care Reform - Washington Post

The War on Logic - The New York Times

We lack not just civil discourse, but honest discourse

"This isn’t about angry blog posts or verbal fisticuffs. Since Obama’s ascension, we’ve seen repeated incidents of political violence. Just a short list would include the 2009 killing of three Pittsburgh police officers by a neo-Nazi Obama-hater; last year’s murder-suicide kamikaze attack on an I.R.S. office in Austin, Tex.; and the California police shootout with an assailant plotting to attack an obscure liberal foundation obsessively vilified by Beck.

Obama said, correctly, on Wednesday that 'a simple lack of civility' didn’t cause the Tucson tragedy. It didn’t cause these other incidents either. What did inform the earlier violence — including the vandalism at Giffords’s office — was an antigovernment radicalism as rabid on the right now as it was on the left in the late 1960s....

Have politicians stoked the pre-Loughner violence by advocating that citizens pursue 'Second Amendment remedies' or be 'armed and dangerous'? We don’t know. What’s more disturbing is what Republican and conservative leaders have not said. Their continuing silence during two years of simmering violence has been chilling."

No One Listened to Gabrielle Giffords - The New York Times

Stockholm syndrome: why do Americans still cling to their economic captors?

Left Out - The American Interest

Why inequality matters

Interesting analysis from Slate's Timothy Noah: The United States of Inequality - Slate

Why the Rich Are Getting Richer - Foreign Affairs

The only thing that count$

Misery With Plenty of Company - The New York Times

...and Boehner says, "Na-na-na-I-am-not-listening-to-you"

CBO Says Health Care Repeal Would Deepen Deficit - Washington Post

Meet John Boehner, corporate tool: The Crying Shame of John Boehner - Rolling Stone

Conservonomics: truly a turd the size of Texas

The Texas Omen - The New York Times

They're crazy and they have guns. And microphones.

"Can we see the hands of all the kids taken from their parents because they didn't get flu shots? How about all those people rotting in jail because they didn't cooperate in compiling the census?"

Land of the Paranoid - Washington Post

Exactly

From Colbert: "The signature drink at the Reagan bar is the 'trickle-down,' where the bartender keeps giving your drinks to the rich guy next to you until he vomits in your glass."

It's past time to mute the language of violence

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

LATE ADDITION: Climate of Hate - The New York Times

The future may not include Obama

Where Do We Go from Here? - The New York Review of Books

Meet the new boss, cheaper than the old boss

Corporate America, Paving A Downward Economic Slide - Washington Post

Conservatives mysteriously balk at making their abstractions concrete

House of Professors - Washington Post

GOP is vowing to do what it does best: making someone miserable

"Republicans benefit from the fact that memories are short and statutes of limitations shorter.... [Now they] are back in control of the House, ready to run interference for the rich as recklessly and belligerently as ever."

Get Ready for a G.O.P. Rerun - The New York Times

LATE ADDITION: The Corporate House - The New York Times

Where 'sickening' isn't just a metaphor

Equality, a True Soul Food - The New York Times