You knew it was a matter of time: Psychology Today is here to tell us what makes the Tea Party tick. I think the piece is both insightful and bizarre at the same time.

Insightful:

Psychologically speaking, however, it offers relief from helplessness and a sense that things are falling apart. It offers a sense of cohesion and identity based on certainty, a commonality of interests, innocence, and even martyrdom. While the world of the tea-party'ers is filled with danger, it is a danger mitigated by moral certainty, clarity of purpose, and a definable external enemy.

The "problem," then, is not the paranoid story line but the anxiety, helplessness, and pain that generate it. And that pain is not irrational or crazy. It's real. We all feel it. Most of us do feel helpless in relation to the most important aspects of our lives, from the nature of our work to its security, from our politicians who are on the corporate dole to those perpetuating gridlock through their narrow ideology, from the quality of our health care to its availability, and from the isolation and loneliness of everyday social life.

The piece by Michael Bader makes the point that I completely agree with, which is that people who've lost their job or who are frightened by conditions in America right now deserve empathy -- these are folks who in making cases are looking for answers and are turning to the simplistic ones oftered by the likes of manipulative folks like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. The only sane approach is to offer these people a better alternative, as opposed to heaping scorn, which is very bad politics but more importantly bad humanity. The "Teabagger" joke was funny for a day or two when some of the protesters naively called themselves that, but people who still call them "Teabaggers" now are hurting their own cause, greatly.

And so the thing I find bizarre about the article is a purported plea for empathy with such a condescending tone, especially this part: "I hate these folks but I also understand them." Huh? How can you empathize with someone and hate them at the same time? I do have tremendous contempt for the extent that racism is involved in the Tea Party movement (based on what I've seen, that would be a lot for a few and a little for some more) -- but at day's end individuals should be judged...as individuals.

I've also wondered if it's over-the-top to call the right-wing movement "The American Taliban," as Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos will do in a coming book. I would say generally, yes, it is over-the-top, but not when referring to this alarming group called Repent Amarillo:

An evangelical Christian hate group called “Repent Amarillo” is reportedly terrorizing the town of Amarillo, Texas. Repent fashions itself as a sort of militia and targets a wide range of community members they deem offensive to their theology: gays, liberal Christians, Muslims, environmentalists, breast cancer events that do not highlight abortion, Halloween, “spring break events,” and pornography shops. On its website, Repent has posted a “Warfare Map” of its enemies in town. Calling Repent an “American Taliban,” blogger Charles Johnson notes that the group’s moniker “Army of God” is a rough translation of “Hezbollah.”

The only thing I would add to this is, wow! The original piece on Repent Amarillo is here.

You know all about the Tea Partiers running around, complaining about President Obama violating the Constitution and calling for his impeachment -- you may also heard there's a Coffee Party rising in a response, sort of, to the Tea Party. Here's something I think the Coffee Party can make agenda item No.1 -- President Obama violating the Constitution.

At least nobody died when Barack Obama lied -- except the American way of criminal justice.

A couple of times there've been news stories about a reunion of every living American president -- but this is a first: A reunion of every living "American president" -- plus two deceased ones! I reckon everyone on the planet has probably seen the Funnyordie.com video with Armisen/Obama, Ferrell/Bush 43, Hammond/Clinton, Carvey/Bush 41, Aykroyd/Carter, Chase/Ford, and introducing Jim Carrey as Ronald Reagan. (Here's the link in case you haven't.) I'd give it a 7 out of 10 for yuks, losing points for its earnest put plodding message for...banking reform?

But a couple of other things. First of all -- Dan Aykroyd? Is that really you in there? Second of all, the video is dragged down a tad by Carrey's annoyingly over-the-top Reagan -- necessitated by the fact that "Saturday Night Live"'s original Reagan, Phil Hartman, was murdered by his wife in 1998. He was always one of my favorite SNL performers, and he is still missed today. Here's Hartman as the Gipper in one of the funniest political satires ever:

Why do Republicans hate their own presidents? -- now it's Ulysses S. Grant:

Ronald Reagan is honored by, among other things, an airport, a freeway, an aircraft carrier and -- ironically for a critic of big government -- one of the biggest federal buildings in Washington.

Now, some of the late president's admirers are launching a new effort to add another honor: printing his likeness on a $50 bill in place of Ulysses S. Grant's.

In polls of presidential scholars, Reagan consistently outranks Grant, said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), who introduced legislation to make the change.

Modern Republicans pay almost no props to their own war heroes -- first it's the lack of respect for Dwight Eisenhower, the greatest GOP president of the 20th Century, and now the general who won the Civil War. Think it's a tad ironic that the guy who wants to take Grant off of money is from a Confederate state, North Carolina? What's the real agenda here?

"I'm very upset," said Keya Morgan, a New York-based Grant scholar who has a Web page on the 18th president. "I have all the respect in the world for Reagan, but what he accomplished is not anywhere as important as what Ulysses S. Grant accomplished."

Meanwhile, if the Treasury really wanted to honor Reagan, it should bring back some of the large bills that were pulled out of circulation in 1969, like the $100,000 bill, which featured Glenn Beck's favorite president, Woodrow Wilson. Why? Because it was Reagan who took the United States from a creditor nation into a debtor nation, so if we ever do pay that gazillion or two back to China -- don't hold your breath -- we could turn over a suitcase filled with Ronald Reagan funny money.

As George W. Bush probably is saying about now, writing a book is...hard work. So here's a Bob Dylan song I can't get out of my head -- wonder why. And Dylan used to have a sense of humor...who knew?

On June 21, 1964, in New York, Jim Bunning was perfect. On March 1, 2010, in Washington, the ex-Phillie-turned-GOP-senator is as far from perfect as you can get. This picture above shows unemployed Americans in baseball uniforms trying to talk some sense into the aging Philadelphia sports legend:

Two thousand federal transportation workers will be furloughed without pay on Monday, and the Obama administration said they have a Kentucky senator to blame for it.

Federal reimbursements to states for highway programs will also be halted, the Transportation Department said in a statement late Sunday. The reimbursements amount to about $190 million a day, according to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

The furloughs and freeze on payments were the result of a decision last week by Republican Sen. Jim Bunning to block passage of legislation that would have extended federal highway and transit programs, the department said. Those programs expired at midnight Sunday.

Bunning also fanned unemployment benefits for about 400,000 Americans. He has brought great dishonor on the name of the Philadelphia Phillies, and when a franchise has more than 10,000 losses, that is hard to do! It's today's open thread. Discuss things!

Where's Joe Wilson when you need him. Today, John Yoo -- feeling exonerated by a report that was watered down by last-minute political interference and still make him look terrible, making legal decisions based on political interference and telling investigators that, "sure," it's fine for POTUS to order the massacre of a bunch of civilians -- wrote an embarassingly self-serving column in today's Inquirer. I always thought that op-ed columnists were supposed to shed light on issues of broad public interest and not crow about their own non-disbarment, but it's even worse than that. Yoo also told a whopper of a lie. He wrote:

The men and women on the front lines of the war against al-Qaeda have had good reason to wonder if their elected leaders have their best interests in mind. Attorney General Eric Holder allowed his OPR to conduct a persecution that would placate the far left of the Democratic Party and its representatives in Congress - at the expense of the nation's security. Holder's decision in our case continued this administration's disturbing trend of treating the war against al-Qaeda as a simple criminal-justice problem: announcing the closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the transfer of al-Qaeda prisoners to the continental United States; launching a criminal investigation into CIA agents who handled terrorists after the 9/11 attacks; trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court in New York City; and automatically treating Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a criminal suspect rather than an enemy combatant.

In fact, the Justice Department probe of Yoo and his colleagues began in 2004, long before either Eric Holder or Barack Obama arrived on the scene, as reported by the Washington Post. In fact, it was Holder and his allies who spared Yoo from a worse outcome -- he should have actually written a column thanking the Obama administration. The Post wrote last May:

Government sources indicated this week that a forthcoming Justice Department investigative report would refer both men to state bar associations for possible disciplinary action as early as this summer. The report, which summarizes the findings of a nearly five-year review, cites sloppy legal analysis, misjudgments and possible political interference in the process, the sources said.

The guy wasn't held accountable for torture, so I guess lying a newspaper op-ed column is no big deal in comparison. Pretty sad.

In a related matter, you may have noticed a new heading, "5 Minutes Over Attytood." That's because starting today into early April, it's all about the book. Any blog posts will be limited to what I can put together in 5 minutes (I'm actually going to be on vacation from the DN), so you guys (and gals) will have a regular new threads to keep arguing amongst yourselves. Have fun.

This is an amazing story out of New Orleans, nearly five years after the horrors of Katrina. The thin blue line almost never cracks, but it did today:

On the east side of the bridge, the officers encountered six civilians (five members of the B Family, and J. B., a friend of the B Family), who were walking across the bridge to get food and supplies from a supermarket. The officers fired at the group of civilians, killing J. B. and seriously wounding four members of the B Family.

Officers then traveled to the west side of the bridge, where they encountered Lance and Ronald Madison, who were crossing the bridge to visit the dentistry office of one of their other brothers. An officer shot and killed Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old severely disabled man.

When Lohman arrived on the scene shortly after the shootings, he noticed that there were no guns on or near the dead and wounded civilians. After determining that the involved officers could not come up with any evidence to justify the shooting, he concluded that they had been involved in a "bad shoot."

Apparently, the Danziger Bridge case had been kicking around for all these years with all hopes for justice lost -- until Lohmann, a retired police lieutenant, agreed to plead guilty on conspiracy charges today. Nothing changes the fact that what Lohman and his colleagues did in September 2005 was unconscionable. But what he did today was one tiny step toward what America needs so, so much more of.

The truth.

(h/t Atrios)

Blogger's note: Everybody's working for the weekend, but I'll be working on gathering material for my book in another undisclosed location somewhere in these United States, where it will be not snowy and a bit warmer but not warm enough. My so-called weekend starts now, so see y'all Sunday.

From the CEO of the John Birch Society! I'm flattered.

Discuss the dangerous flouridation of our waters, the Communist ties of Dwight Eisenhower, and other topics below.