From his fainting couch, Richard Cohen clutches his pearls and complains that Jon Stewart was mean to CNBC and Jim Cramer:

What Jon Stewart needs is Jon Stewart. He could use a droll comedian to temper his ferocity and correct him when he’s wrong, as he was about the financial media, particularly CNBC and its excitable analyst Jim Cramer. They didn’t cover up the story of financial shenanigans. They didn’t even know it existed. 

Setting aside the fact that lots of people knew – shouldn’t CNBC have known about the problem? They’re the experts.

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Ten miles from where we write, Robin Long sits in a brig at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. He pleaded guilty last August to desertion from the Army, and is serving a 15-month sentence.

Long is the first war resister deported from Canada since Vietnam. He enlisted in the Army in 2003, with what he thought was an assurance from his recruiter that he would not be sent to Iraq. When the Army ordered him to Iraq anyway in 2005, he fled the country. Long had been vocal about his objections to the war, and he was the only soldier deployed from his “nondeployable” unit.

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This story appeared last week, but given the paucity of good Republican sex scandals, I thought we should have a look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngTy4dEA3OE

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We used to be one of Them. “Deranged idiots”, UCLA’s Gene Bartow called us, which we immediately reified for personal use. Front row, McArthur Court, Eugene, Oregon. The Pit.

We were crazy, but we were polite. “Siddown, Gene!” we would chant when the opposing coach stood up. And when Gene sat down, one of us, who today produces wan fratboy humor for an upstart politics blog, shouted “Thank you!” That was immediately incorporated into the chant, and we were impressed with our awesome power to move masses. World revolution followed.

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First it was Rush and Michael Steele, now it’s these two:

Writing about the spat with [Laura] Ingraham on her Daily Beast blog this weekend, [Meghan] McCain wrote that “instead of intellectually debating our ideological differences about the future of the Republican Party, Ingraham resorted to making fun of my age and weight.” “At this point, I have more respect for Ann Coulter than I do for Laura Ingraham because at least Coulter didn’t come back at me with heartless, substance-less attacks about my weight,” wrote McCain.

Ingraham fired back while McCain was appearing on The View.

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A little inside baseball to get everyone ready for the new week:

1) Michael Steele, having been thoroughly humiliated by the GOP faithful, will stop giving interviews for a while.  A Republican spokesman who can’t speak. I like it.

2) The latest thing among the selfish classes is “going John Galt” – this means that Randians stop contributing anything useful to society (in the event they were doing so in the first place) and settle back to watch civilization collapse.

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Title: Chariots of the Gods

Author: Erich von Daniken

Rank: 61

Blurb: “Includes remarkable photos that document mankind’s first contact with aliens at the dawn of civilization.”

Review: “By turning the gods into mysterious and high-tech aliens, Däniken makes it possible for modern man to re-enchant the world, while still being firmly rooted in the space age.”

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