Who said that Republicans have no plan? They just released a bold 21-page manifesto called "Pledge to America" that promises extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich and repeal the Democrats' health care plan among other revolutionary initiatives that will transform the country back to exactly the way it was two years ago.

Soon after we launched dagblog, I decided that I wanted to publish my writing on facebook to share it with my friends and family. That's not as easy as you might think. You can import your posts into Facebook notes using an RSS feed, but Facebook changes the formatting, and readers can't see the comments from the blog. Other methods I tried couldn't handle multi-author blogs and would publish every dagblog post without even indicating who wrote it.

Longtime readers may have noticed that dagblog is running a bit sluggish lately. The plodding performance is an unfortunate consequence of my having imported a massive stack of blog posts from Talking Points Memo Cafe. Actually, the problem is not the posts themselves but the comments hanging off of them. The 54,544 comments that have made their new home in our database are gumming up the works.

I've just been informed that notorious funnyman Jon Stewart and his subversive sidekick Stephen Colbert are organizing a protest march in Washington DC on October 30th. The pretense of the protest is a parody of Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor demonstration last month, but we all know what this is really about. Stewart and Colbert planned this "protest" in order to proselytize a perverse and poisonous doctrine that they call comedy.

Dear TPM Cafe refugees,

TPM has generously created a feature to let you export your old Cafe posts along with all the comments. If you would like to migrate your posts to dagblog, please follow these steps:

Almost one year ago, I wrote a post titled What's the Matter with New York? about the fierce battle between moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava and fringe conservative Doug Hoffman to represent New York's 23rd congressional district. Scozzafava dropped out of the race and endorsed the Democratic candidate, who prevailed in the election.

At last, Democrats launched their counterattack. For two years, Republicans have joyfully demonized President Obama, his wife, his daughters, his pastor, his staff, his casual acquaintances, and various socialist subversives running amok in Washington. The only Obama associate to escape withering defamation has been his dog Bo.

Dear TPM refugees, web surfers, and other assorted riffraff,

I returned from vacation last night and was happy to find a surge of activity from new members and friends from TPM Cafe. Welcome all to dagblog.com.

I just want to write in to express gratitude to the new immigrants from TPM Cafe for all the great material you've contributed over the past few days. Dagblog really came alive this week. I hope that you've enjoyed the experience and that you continue to write and comment here. For those who have just stopped by to check out the scene, I encourage you to crosspost here and see how you like it.

The furor over the Islamic center near Ground Zero has led many to conclude that the right wing has rediscovered its passion for Muslim-bashing, and some predict more to come. But what strikes me most about the recent outburst of Islamophobia is its exceptionality. Nine years after 9/11, the once preeminent obsession of American foreign policy and Republican politics had been all but forgotten. Even the attempted bombing of Times Square failed to generate much rage from the right.

Some Democrats have cheered the success of right-wing extremists in the Colorado primaries yesterdays. They have a point.

Late Saturday night, the California Highway Patrol stopped 45-year-old Byron Williams as he sped towards San Francisco. Wearing a bullet proof vest and armed with three guns, Williams opened fire on the officers. After a 12-minute firefight, CHP troopers subdued and arrested Williams.

In response to the relentless demands of millions of adoring readers, I've decided that it's time to break my media silence about the status of the book.

After an eight-month effort that has been simultaneously grueling and exhilarating, the book is nearly finished. I completed the manuscript at the end of June and have been racing through the revisions since then. In a few weeks, it will be all over but the rhapsodic reviews. The book is still on schedule to come out in mid-October.

Call me Israel. I am not a large man; I survive by wit and grit. I am a good man, and I fear no one.

Do not judge me. My childhood was a nightmare grimmer than you, who grew up in comfort and security, could ever imagine.

A New York Times article today expressed concern that governments around the world are enacting austerity measures too soon, recalling that FDR's premature tax increases and spending cuts in 1936 snuffed a shaky recovery and pushed the country back into depression. Paul Krugman has repeatedly made the same point in his columns.

June 16, 2030

Two weeks ago, my co-bloggers urged the American government to press Israel to end its blockade of the Gaza strip. I was skeptical that American pressure would be effective. One universal truth of sovereign nation states is that no one appreciates self-righteous foreigners telling them what to what to do, especially self-righteous foreigners with their own tainted records.

"Get the hell out of Palestine...Remember these people are occupied, and it's their land."
-- Helen Thomas, former journalist of the White House Press Corps

Their land. What does that phrase mean? I understand what it means to purchase a piece of land. You sign a deed, and you own the property, just as you might own a car, shares of stock shares, or a poodle. If someone steals your land, your car, your stock, or your poodle, it is an injustice.

On June 4th, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) released an audio recording of a radio exchange between a flotilla ship and the Israeli Navy in which an unidentified crew member of the Mavi Marmara shouted, "Shut up, go back to Auschwitz!" Another unidentified voice with a distinctive Southern drawl explained to the Israeli Navy, "We're helping Arabs go against the US. Don't forget 9/11, guys."

I've written a couple of posts recently about the phenomenon of right-wing projection. Projection is a Freudian concept according to which people project their own feelings of hostility onto the targets of their hostility. It is a psychological defense strategy that enables people to disown their feelings of hatred and intolerance by attributing them to the people they hate.