Gleefully satirical Portland cartoonist John Callahan dies [Portland Tribune]

Our guest columnist this morning is Richard Hofstadter.

If, after our historically discontinuous examples of the paranoid style, we now take the long jump to the contemporary right wing, we find some rather important differences from the nineteenth-century movements. The spokesmen of those earlier movements felt that they stood for causes and personal types that were still in possession of their country — that they were fending off threats to a still established way of life. But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.

Read more »

We’re not sure what, if anything, to make of the WikiLeaks dump of umpteen-thousand classified documents — complete with coordinated publication by the Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel — detailing Pakistan ISI ties to Afghan insurgents (don’t act surprised), but it started burning up Twitter Sunday afternoon, and it was burning up Memeorandum by Sunday night. We’ll let Spencer Ackerman be your guide. [Wired]

And things will improve, of course! “Tony Hayward, the embattled chief executive of BP, has agreed to step down and be replaced by Robert Dudley, the company’s most senior American executive who is now in charge of BP’s operations in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a person close to the company’s board.” [NYT]

Breaking news from the first state we’ll be giving back to Mexico:

The bloodbath continues along our southern border and now word is coming in that Los Zetas, the highly trained killers formerly with the Gulf Cartel, have crossed into the United States and taken over at least two ranches in the Laredo, Texas area. I am receiving word that the owners of the ranches have evacuated without being harmed.
 
Founder of the San Diego Minutemen Jeff Schwilk tipped me off to this story and passes along the following information on the location. The ranches are said to be “near Mines Rd. and Minerales Annex Rd about 10 miles NW of I-35”.

Yes, the Border War we’ve been warned about has finally begu—

Read more »

Ed Schultz, who every day manages the astonishing feat of making Tweety look good, complains to Netroots Nation that The President of These United States never drops by for a segment.

Dude. Not only could we care less about your self-aggrandizing “journey,” every time we see that promo we seriously consider switching to a Babylon 5 rerun. If your mission in life consists of insisting on “loyalty” from folks who are busy running an empire, perhaps you might have better luck getting a shout-out from the Old Spice dude.

Then again, nice rip on Beck.

MSNBC’s Ed Schultz Accuses Obama Of ‘Loyalty’ Issues For Not Going On His Show [Mediaite]

I might be able to down a Double, but that’s about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koxRy4asAAc