Yeah I'm kinda glad Michael Steele didn't take GOP babes to the clubs after all, because of, well, the gross-me-out factor. [Hot Chicks with Douchebags, eat your heart out.]

Open thread below...

Small Black was one of the hits of SXSW 2010; their remastered EP will be released next month.

What are you listening to tonight?

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Our own Dave Neiwert joined Rachel Maddow to discuss the recent militia bust and the upcoming Second Amendment March planned for next month in Washington D.C.

It's not often I'm with Maureen Dowd, but I have to agree with her on this one: The scandal is too big, the pope is in too deep. (He's still in denial, calling the scandal "petty gossip.")It's time the Catholic Church had a female pope. (Heck, if Alanis Morrisette can portray God, why not pry open those closed minds even further?)

Pope Benedict has continued the church’s ban on female priests and is adamant against priests’ having wives. He has started two investigations of American nuns to check on their “quality of life” — code for seeing if they’ve grown too independent. As a cardinal he wrote a Vatican document urging women to be submissive partners and not take on adversarial roles toward men.

But the completely paternalistic and autocratic culture of Il Papa led to an insular, exclusionary system that failed to police itself, and that became a corrosive shelter for secrets and shame.

If the church could throw open its stained glass windows and let in some air, invite women to be priests, nuns to be more emancipated and priests to marry, if it could banish criminal priests and end the sordid culture of men protecting men who attack children, it might survive. It could be an encouraging sign of humility and repentance, a surrender of arrogance, both moving and meaningful.

Cardinal Ratzinger devoted his Vatican career to rooting out any hint of what he considered deviance. The problem is, he was obsessed with enforcing doctrinal orthodoxy and somehow missed the graver danger to the most vulnerable members of the flock.

The sin-crazed “Rottweiler” was so consumed with sexual mores — issuing constant instructions on chastity, contraception, abortion — that he didn’t make time for curbing sexual abuse by priests who were supposed to pray with, not prey on, their young charges.

My late aunt Agnes (my godmother) was explaining to me some years back that she didn't approve of women who wanted to be priests.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because Jesus was a man, and so were the Apostles. That's why priests have to be men," she told me.

"Well, Aunt Aggie, if you really want to be literal, you should have to be Jewish to be a priest. Because Jesus and the apostles were," I said. (I can't help it. I love to mess with people.)

A devout woman, she looked at me, shocked at my blasphemy. But she still couldn't come up with an answer.

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This was about as bad as Chris Matthews letting this wingnut Tea Partier Loesch come on his show as well and talk over Melissa Harris-Lacewell in one of the more horrid interview segments I've watched in a long time. Loesch was obviously extremely uninformed and rude and I'm really surprised Matthews didn't shut her down since she was talking over him as well.

Larry King apparently thinks Loesch and fellow Tea Partier and Libertarian Wayne Allyn Root deserved two segments on his show. The only good thing I can say about this interview is that talking about getting rid of Social Security didn't exactly endear these two with the 87 year old caller who managed to get in. He wasn't too happy with the Tea Party movement for looking like they'd be happy to see our government overthrown either.

Even Larry King looked a bit shocked at some of their rhetoric and tried to get them to admit that Social Security was put there because you're supposed to be your "brother's keeper" and asked if the Tea Partiers might "turn it back" (fat chance Larry). Loesch apparently has no care for how Social Security has evolved since it was first enacted and why with her arguments; and Root uses the excuse that the funds have been raided to say it should be privatized.

Of course it would never occur to either of these two nitwits that if you changed our tax laws and made this a less regressive tax you could fix some of the long term problems with it, that getting rid of it would immediately throw millions of senior citizens into abject poverty which might not go over so well with the general electorate even if you don't care about what that says about us as a society and your care for your fellow American, which these two obviously have no care for, and that if we had listened to genius George Bush who wanted to privatize it, the fund would have taken the same hit our stock market did due to Wall Street's deregulation and the games they were playing with the derivatives market. So maybe Mr. Root would not have done so well with his own $15,000. (Update: I should have also noted, the most anyone is paying right now in Social Security taxes is $6600 a year due to the $106,800 income cap. So Root pulled the $15,000 a year number out of his butt.) I know my 401K didn't look too good after the market crashed.

King said he'd definitely have both of them on again. Why don't you do us all a favor Larry and pass on that... please. Don't put them on again unless you're going to have someone credible on with them as well to rebut their nonsense. Given that CNN thinks Erick Erickson should be considered part of their "best political team on television" now I don't have much hope of that happening. They're content to be Fox-lite. Bringing these two on is just more proof they're doing their best to dumb down their viewers right along with ClusterFox and sadly the better part of our corporate media as well.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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President Obama was interviewed by Matt Lauer and he brought up the topic of the tea party crazies.

Echoing some of the commentariat, Obama said, “There's a part of the Tea Party movement that actually did exist before I was elected. We saw some of it leading up to my election. There were some folks who just weren’t sure whether I was born in the United States, whether I was a socialist." Then he gave voice to the real concerns of the sane elements of the Tea Party.

"I think that there’s a broader circle around that core group of people who are legitimately concerned about the deficit, who are legitimately concerned that the federal government may be taking on too much," Obama said. "And last year, a bunch of the emergency measures we had to take, in terms of dealing with the bank crisis, bailing out the auto industry, fed that sense that things were out of control. And I think those are folks who have legitimate concerns.

Obama wasn't going to attack the psycho element that lives inside the tea party movement; that's our job. He did point out one elelment of their party and they are the Birthers. What he is saying is that many of these people were part of the conservatives that fought against his election and so joined in the FOX News created movement to scream and yell because they lost the election. But the militia/Patriot folks also joined in and are now a very outspoken and dangerous component of that movement. They aren't hiding behind closed doors anymore. There never is an end to the right. The college republicans led by Grover Norquist and the convicted felon Jack Abramoff would be considered teabaggers back in their day for the street theater that they inspired, but now FOX News needed to latch onto the next farthest right demographic in America to energize their base and now we're witnessing what that make up is. And it's a very dangerous one.

UPDATE: C&L's David Neiwert will be on Rachel Maddow tonight)

This is the second wave of the mortgage crisis, one that was predicted by the liberal economists who inhabit the blogosphere. It's unlikely that we'll see a sustained economic recovery until after this shakes out:

By the end of 2010, about half of all commercial real estate mortgages will be underwater, said Elizabeth Warren, chairperson of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel, in a wide-ranging interview on Monday.

“They are [mostly] concentrated in the mid-sized banks,” Warren told CNBC. “We now have 2,988 banks—mostly midsized, that have these dangerous concentrations in commercial real estate lending."

As a result, the economy will face another “very serious problem” that will have to be resolved over the next three years, she said, adding that things are unlikely to return to normalcy in 2010.

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Apparently the leader of The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps in Arizona, Carmen Mercer has figured out that if you ask people to "come locked and loaded", they just might take you literally. From TPM:

Minuteman Leader: When I Said To Come To The Border Locked And Loaded, I Didn't Mean Locked And Loaded:

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC), the Arizona-based anti-illegal-immigration group whose members keep watch on the border, is disbanding as a national organization, after its leader asked for volunteers to come "locked, loaded, and ready," then got more than she bargained for. [...]

It appears that Minuteman members responded enthusiastically to Mercer's call to arms -- maybe too enthusiastically:

Mercer said she received a more feverish response than she expected and decided the group couldn't shoulder the responsibility and liability of what could occur, she said.

"People are ready to come locked and loaded, and that's not what we are all about," Mercer said. "It only takes one bad apple to destroy everything we've done for the last eight years."

In other words: When I told people to come locked, loaded and ready, I didn't mean locked, loaded and ready.

So she and the board's two other directors voted to dissolve the Minuteman corporation. Read on...

As Keith noted, Sarah Palin could take a lesson from Carmen Mercer, but I don't expect that to happen any time soon. From Alan Colmes blog -- Sarah Palin “Unloads” On Her Facebook Page:

In a sad and slightly amusing attempt to strike back at liberals who condemn the use of her recent violent language, Sarah Palin has taken to what I believe to be satire in a recent Facebook blog entry: “Warning: Subject to New Politically Correct Language Police Censorship“. [...]

As (not so) funny as this might be to some, I think she is either underestimating her followers, or worse, anticipating they’ll rachet up the game in response to her “loaded” commentary. Either way, her actions become more irresponsible by the day.

And AMERICAblog -- Sarah Palin discovers drunk-Facebooking:

Paragraphs three and four are the best. This is real. Apparently, Sarah Palin is the only person in America who doesn't find troublesome the recent violent tenor of political talk by the right, and their Teabagger surrogates, directed at members of Congress. So she decided to invoke more imagery of guns and executing people to prove her point that only PC people get upset when you call a congressman a "n***er" or a "f***t," or attempt to cut the gas line to their home.

I know, she revels in attention, and poking people in the eye. But it's serious when the FBI has to give security to ten-plus members of Congress, and there are concerns about the safety of the home of the Senate Parliamentarian. Palin thinks this is a joke. That is why this woman is and always will be a blithering idiot, and a dangerous one at that.

This is a lesson that LTG Benjamin Mixon, commander of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), should not have had to be told. It's one thing to be a conservative-minded knuckle-dragger like USMC General James Conway and say, my personal opinion is that I don't like gays. It's entirely another thing to use one's command influence to encourage others to support your position and to print that statement in the Stars and Stripes.

The recent commentaries on the adverse effects of repeal of the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy were insightful.

It is often stated that most servicemembers are in favor of repealing the policy. I do not believe that is accurate. I suspect many servicemembers, their families, veterans and citizens are wondering what to do to stop this ill-advised repeal of a policy that has achieved a balance between a citizen’s desire to serve and acceptable conduct.

Now is the time to write your elected officials and chain of command and express your views. If those of us who are in favor of retaining the current policy do not speak up, there is no chance to retain the current policy.

Amazingly, SecDef Bob Gates really didn't find this advice as helpful.

Gates and [ADM Mike] Mullen denounced Mixon’s letter during a Pentagon press conference.

“I think that for an active duty officer to comment on an issue like this is inappropriate,” said Gates.

"I feel the same way and actually it is being addressed inside the chain of command in the Army,” Mullen added. “I’ve spoken specifically to [U.S. Army chief of staff] Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., about this. And Gen. Mixon specifically is – the issue is being addressed with him."

Mixon, reached via email Thursday, would not comment on the matter. "You will have to address all your questions to Army (public affairs)," he said.

This was a bone-headed statement from a general officer who should have found a better way to leave active duty service. The conservative bloggers have already started blaming Gates and Mullen as the villains in this drama, and no doubt more claims of the DOD favoring "political correctness" over the morale of our troops will surface. But the short of it is this - no one in the Pentagon cares if you support or don't support gays being allowed to serve in the military (for the record, I do). You don't, however, contradict the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a public forum on a politically radioactive topic such as this. Although Mixon had a strong professional career and was (one can guess) a smart officer, for some reason he made a really bad decision here. You can expect LTG Mixon's notice of resignation any time soon, I would expect.

Andrea March, the ex-fiance of the leader of the Hutaree militia group, spoke with Shepard Smith and said that David Brian Stone was a Ron Paul fanatic who was afraid that Obama would take away his guns. Where have we heard that one before? Oh, it reminds me of the Richard Poplawski saga. (rough transcript)

Marsh: When Obama took the presidency is when he lost it because he was a Ron Paul fanatic.

Smith: Ron Paul fanatic, what does that have to do with ?

Marsh: To tell you the truth I don't know. I never really understood why Ron Paul was so much different, but he thought he could get away with anything and he wanted more freedoms than what he had and he was trying to do it through the violence.

Smith: Do you know what was his particular concern was with the current government? Was he worried they would take his guns away?

Marsh: Well yes, he clearly believed in guns and having them and he didn't think . He didn't want to have a driver's licence, he didn't want to fill out any census papers

Smith: Oh.

Marsh: He wanted to own guns unregistered....

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And he is said to have believed that anti-Christ was on the way and he wanted to do something about that?

Yes, he explained to us that through the bible the world was going to end in war and Christ wanted us to do this. Now he couldn't prove that to anyone, but the kids always listened to him.

Ron Paul's brand of anti-government rhetoric influenced Stone greatly which also fed into his 'End Timer' philosophy. And in this case, Obama was the anti-Christ.

These outbreaks of violent right-wing "cells" within our country will only increase, unfortunately. We can only hope that the feds and local law enforcement keep up the great work, or people will really get hurt.