What Mr. Sessions, and others, seem to be saying in thinly disguised code is that America is being taken over by hostile forces and this Obama character is some kind of Manchurian Candidate, so patriots keep your guns cleaned because it may come to that.

These bombastic morons are playing with fire, in a way that only morons are want to do.

These bombastic morons are playing with fire

Well, he is from Waco.

Does anyone really believe that the "leadership" of the GOP is interested in getting "back on track" with anyone except the more extreme parts of their base?

Even if they said something that might resonate with the large majority of the country, nobody wants to hear what they have to say, except the base. So it's the base they're talking to.

"If you sow the wind" etc...

Don't forget the question from the Fox poll released early in April (PDF):

Which one of the following do you think Barack Obama wants to happen?
(RANDOMIZE)
SCALE: 1. He wants the financial crisis to continue so government can take over more businesses and grow the federal government. 2. He wants the financial crisis to end so private businesses can succeed and get stronger without government assistance. 3. (Neither of those) 4. (Don't know)

There really is no point where the "responsible" right-wingers end and the nutjobs begin.

(68% of Americans said he actually wanted the crisis to end, as opposed to 23% who thought he wanted it to continue -- but a plurality of Republicans -- 44%-43% -- said they believed he wanted to prolong the pain.)

[Sessions argues] that Mr. Obama is not trying to create jobs. In an interview, Mr. Sessions cited rising unemployment in asserting that the administration intended to "diminish employment and diminish stock prices" as part of a "divide and conquer" strategy to consolidate power.

If Obama is trying to "diminish employment and diminish stock prices", Sessions and Limbaugh should be elated because he is failing. Last time I checked the market is up and unemployement has slowed considerably.

Why doesn't someone,anyone, from the main stream media take these idiots to task for these ridiculous statements.

Maybe Pete Sessions should have another fundraiser at a strip joint, that might get more people to like his brand of politics.

Seriously, the Republicans do seem to be stuck in Crazytown, and their only remaining supporters seem intent on burning the place to the ground. I hope the Democrats realize that compromising with crazy people is a really bad idea, and will get them nothing but more crazy demands from the right and less support from the center/left.

When Newt Gingrich was in charge of the House he instituted polices that insulated Republican house members and staff from Democratic house members and staff. He did away with things like the house softball league. He discouraged communication with members of the other party. He also weakened committees where much of the real work was accomplished by the collegial interplay of Democrats and Republicans. Tom DeLay's entire K-Street Project was designed from the very beginning to isolate Democrats. As it turns out the more important effect of the Gingrich/DeLay changes to the house has been to isolated House Republicans. House Republicans don't even begin to understand the concept of institutional importance. For them it is party over all.

Sessions has served 7 terms but has done so in a Republican bubble. As a result he has never really come to realize that members of the other party are people who genuinely love their country. Some of the most isolated people in Washington are Republican house members. Isolated people are prone believing their own propaganda. That leads them to believe do and say dingy things.

Typical: the righties are in a manic lather over Wanda Sykes jokes about hoping for kidney failure of Rush the Oxycontin-addled 20th highjacker. She's just a commedienne (more talent from my area, this time Portsmouth VA.) But when their own politicians, not just comics or bloggers etc. come up with execrable trash-talk about things like emulating the Taliban, IOKIYAR etc. That Sessions guys should be considered a "high-cracker" albeit not a highjacker.

BTW, remember when Ann Coulter said things like, she wished the terrorists had bombed the NYT building instead? Their people didn't erupt in outrage over a snark about bombing an entire building, whereas kidney failure isn't immediately lethal (it depends on whether you get dialysis in several hours, which is readily available esp. to a rich person ....)

Telling Sessions to "stop being crazy" isn't going to work-- obviously, Sessions doesn't think he's crazy. The awful truth is that he believes what he's saying-- and he thinks that all of us bad libruls know that what he's saying is true, but we'll never admit it.

the right wing is consistently drumming the undermining this country, anti-patriot criticism of the obama administration.

it consolidates both 1) avoiding prosecutions of the bush administration for crimes and treason, and 2) for when-and-if an overwhelming crisis hits, they will be positioned to blare the crazy talk blaming obama and the dems. and those possibilities grow everyday...

this seems to be their one and only plan for regaining power.

and when they do... well, there's an old quote by john mitchell you can look up.

Let's not forget CBS Sports golf analyst David Feherty (apologized Sunday) who wrote for "D Magazine":
"From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this though," Feherty wrote toward the end of his column.

"Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there's a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death."

That's not only against elected officials and not v. some commentator of the type who's in the give and take of outrageous remarks, but Feherty trying to pit (and by unintetntial extension, defame) our military against those leaders. That's far more serious. Many some righties complained, most probably liked it.

The poor, poor Republicans.
"If it weren't for bad issues, we'd have no issues at all."

Which is true. They 'respectable conservative opposition' has deserted to the Blue Dogs -- who don't have to apologize for the Bachmanns, Kings, and Palins. Obama's policies are the popular ones on most issues, the country likes Obama, and the areas where he's most vulnerable are on his 'left.' (Prosecuting Bush's torturers, legalizing marijuana, ending the death penalty, Single-Payer health care rather than 'fixing up' the current system, a stronger line on church-state separation, etc.)

What's a poor Republican to do *sniff*?

Steve:
We all know the Republican leadership is stark raving mad. But we've won! -- at least for now. I'm getting tired of reading about these lunatics. How about limiting your comments about the Republicanistas to a daily summary of bullet points listing their madness -- and devote more of your energies to discussing the ins-and-outs of the progressive agenda and intra-party politics within the Dems? Yes, I know a daily list would be long! Maybe limit it to the top five howlers...

Expecting Repubs to not be crazy is like expecting dung beetles to stop rolling up balls of dung.

The point that Matt Yglesias makes is important. Yes there were outrageous things said and printed about Bush and his administration by the left, but all of that came from a fringe element, and mostly never went beyond that. The right wing echo chamber, ever the champion of projection, would accuse the mainstream progressive movement of supporting all that, but there was never any evidence for that.

The difference we see on the right, as they attack Obama and his administration, is that the attacks really are taken up by the leaders of the conservative movement and made their own. And the attacks are also taken up by the right's own MSM outlet, Drudge and FOX News, and through that echo chamber make it out into the real MSM.

When the right started their attacks on the liberal bias of the media, decades ago, there was some cause for concern. Now, the deck is stacked in the other direction to an extent that the liberal press could have only envied, never emulated.

Give the guy a break, not only was he dumb enough to pass the IQ test low enough to think it's a good thing to be a Texas Republican, he passed it low enough to join the Hair Farce and become a fighterjoke (er, I mean, "jock").

Recall that General Jack D. Ripper, who was determined to protect our precious bodily fluids from the commies was an Air Force general.

Wait, you want them to stop being Republicans?

Given the gop's enormous talent for accusing others of doing what they themselves do, I would say Session's comment about divide and conquer reveals a great deal about the republican agenda for the last 15 years. As for ruining the economy, I doubt the repubs set out to ruin us, they just aren't smart enough to realize what they were doing.

If some random right-wing blog or shock-jock argued that the president is intentionally ruining the economy and killing capitalism, as part of an incomprehensible campaign to consolidate power, it'd be easier to dismiss as just another conservative tantrum.

Trust me, all right-wing bloggers argue this (well, argue implies a rational process, which overstates the case). The difference is that they're not spinning crazy tales on their own, they're parroting those prominent figures.

Just another wingnut putting out a hit on the n-word in the WH. These comments are coming fast and furious now. I only hope that the Secret Service is up to handling the inevitable fallout.

We never seek to censor our friends or Republicans. If they want to say things we think are crazy that's fine.

It the really vicious mean things bankers and insurance people have to say stand out clearly.

We've *got* to listen carefully to the "smartest guys in the room".

sessions "By next fall voters may regain appreciation for the era of Republican governance when "many dreams were achieved," the size of the economy doubled and employment and financial markets hit record levels."

refresh my memory here...when exactly was that...reagan, bush 1, bush 2, hoover??? [ike, maybe?]

sounded like he was describing the clinton years....

Steve, you're not really surprised that GOP nuttiness is getting worse, are you?

This was totally predictable. Think of the GOP as a psychologically deranged adult, whose wife has left him, his friends stay further and further away...he desperately needs high-quality professional psychotherapy, but he absolutely refuses to get any.

As a general rule, human beings under stress snap back to responses that are most comfortable, most familiar..and most primitive. And usually most ineffective. The GOP is well on the way to ending in some metaphoric form of self-immolation. It's as predictable as their current behavior was predictable some years ago.

The only interesting part about this situation is: how long with the GOP go on shrinking? How long will it take before the party either disappears, or re-makes itself? Because right now it's well on its way to being the party of an Unreconstructed South..and there's not much future in that.

Worth remembering that these Southern Senators have to get through GOP primaries. The implications of that are pretty brutal: to get through a Southern GOP primary you have to sound like someone well to the right of the John Birch Society. Increasingly, in places like Virginia and North Carolina, that's not going to win a general election. And the Intermountain West will present the same problem, as it gets bluer and bluer.

So. Be interesting to see how long this goes on.

I hope President Obama does undermine the so-called free-market capitalist system we have now because it doesn't work. Or rather, it works for about the top two percent of the country. Of course, if it were truly free-market, all the "too big to fail" banks would be gone by now. But no. We need them, so they get unlimited welfare.

As for the Republicans--I think crazy is all they have. Good luck with that.

For all the recent talk about what the Republican Party needs to do to get back on track, I might recommend a simple step for the top of the to-do list: stop being crazy.

I hope someone from Comedy Central is reading, because that is a perfect John Stewart line.

There is a basis for the man's remarks:
If Obama were faced with a stark choice, his Country or Capitalism, I am sure he would ditch Capitalism, like anybody in that position, except possibly a Republican. I know that there is already a choice for the deciders to make, one that is between the Free (or Lawless) Market and National Prosperity.

I read over that yesterday, and I have just realized that Sessions has entirely discounted that mass unemployment is generally not a recipe for the party in power to consolidate power. Mass unemployment means serious trouble for the party in power.

Steve is doing such a terrific job that I never have to read Daily Kos anymore, especially with brownsox taking his new job.

Or else these comments are revealing that Sessions thinks that Obama will actually do something to employ people so he will not be blamed for the situation and can pursue his other priorities.