So today we start with the Red State Rabble checking in on America's Taliban in action on the airwaves.

"The latest lunacy from one of our more fanatical right-wing American Christian television outfits, the Coral Ridge Ministries," writes John Brummett, an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock, is that the "Holocaust wasn't Hitler's fault. Darwin made him do it."

Owwww. The stupid.... it burns. I could almost stop there and wonder if I need to make further comment on the state of America. But I will... I must...

Tapped meets the folks from Cato, the US gLibertarian think tank that is always visited by Hong Kong politicians for some unknown reason.

Putting aside the question of whether the decrease in poverty was due to welfare reform or the expansion of the EITC and the massive economic growth of the late-90's (poverty, by the way, increased every year between 2000 and 2004), to compare the number of folks in poverty and the number of folks uninsured and suggest the same policy strategies might apply to both is far beyond apples to oranges (which, as Chuck Klosterman has pointed out, are relatively similar things), it's more like apples to manatees.

And yes, there is more economic news from Think Progress complete with graphs.

President Bush says “the foundation of our economy is solid, and it’s strong.” That’s true, for some: corporate profits have now climbed to their highest share of GDP since the 1960’s.

But new Census Bureau data show the real state of the current economy. The Bush record on combating poverty and insuring more Americans is an undisputed failure.

Another post at Think Progress points out some other data.

– For full-time, year round workers, the median earnings of men declined 1.8 percent to $41,386, and the median earnings of women declined 1.3 percent to $31,858.

This while corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are their highest in nearly 40 years. Egggggs-cellent! And the Busheviks wonder why the American masses aren't happy with "the Bush Boom" of the last 6 years.

Dave at Seeing the Forest finds US Attorney General Alberto Abu Ghraib Gonzales' Justice Dept passing up on prosecution of Bushevik corruption by the guy formerly in charge of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Check out the details which includes:

... used his government office for personal business, including running a “horse racing operation” in which he supervised a stable of thoroughbreds he named after leaders from Afghanistan, including President Hamid Karzai and the late Ahmed Shah Massoud...

Hong Kong's head of the jockey club must be wondering whether he can know get an angle on the top job at RTHK.

TalkLeft finds that Rums-failed's military on the other hand is targetting for military justice a Navy lawyer accused of leaking information about detainees illegally held incommunicado at Guantanamo.

And AmericaBlog finds Abu Ghraib Gonzales has gone to Iraq to instruct them on the rule of law. *snort* I don't think anything good can come from this.

Thoughts from Kansas brings us humour. Leo Strauss' inspiration Plato discussing the truth with Leo Strauss' political operative Karl Rove.

And what is the lie the Busheviks have been peddling as their core belief since the end of the Vietnam War? Matt Yglesias explains the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics. I think this notion that anything can accomplished with just enough will power ends with most people about the same time they see through the ravings of Ayn Rand. The Angry Bear finds Rums-failed parroting the latest banal repetition of this as well as the next day spouting the other edge, which is the "enemy within that is stabbing us in the back and sapping us of our willpower". As noted in the Angry Bear post, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Reid responded to this nonsense effectively.

Secretary Rumsfeld’s reckless comments show why America is not as safe as it can or should be five years after 9/11. The Bush White House is more interested in lashing out at its political enemies and distracting from its failures than it is in winning the War on Terror and in bringing an end to the war in Iraq. If there's one person who has failed to learn the lessons of history it's Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld ignored military experts when he rushed to war without enough troops, without sufficient body armor, and without a plan to succeed. Under this Administration's watch, terror attacks have increased, Iraq has fallen into civil war, and our military has been stretched thin. We have a choice to make today. Do we trust Secretary Rumsfeld to make the right decisions to keep us safe after he has been so consistently wrong since the start of the Iraq War?

After all why would you trust the Busheviks to succeed after they've failed in reconstructing Afghanistan, Iraq or New Orleans in comparison to Iran/Hezb'allah quickly and decisively rebuilding southern Lebanon or via the AllSpinZone Mexico doing a better job of rebuilding Cancun/Cozumel after Hurricane Wilma last year.