Rush Limbaugh, at his best, can be the most effective advocate for conservatism in the public sphere. But at his worst, he does crap like this. During a discussion of Eric Massa’s resignation, and whether New York Gov. David Paterson will be able to appoint a replacement, Rush started saying “massah” with a bad, southern-black caricature-accent. Here’s a clip via Media Matters:

I’m not saying Rush is a racist. I’m very sure he’s not. But sometimes he is an ass. Why invite controversy just for the sake of controversy? Oh, that’s right—I  forgot. He does it for the ratings.

On last night’s Red Eye from the mouth of Jim Norton:

“I thought The Hurt Locker was great. It would have been better if a man had directed it, but I thought it was great.”

Yesterday, I expressed my skepticism about Eric Massa’s claims and motivations. Today, the controversy is taking a turn for the ugly. Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin had a rather nasty exchange about it this morning on Beck’s radio program. Here it is:

Later in the day, Beck made a classy and heartfelt apology to Malkin (that you can listen to here).

So, who’s right on this one? I lean towards Malkin because Massa sounds like a scumbag and nutcase to me. But Beck is right that the guy ought to be heard and should be allowed to give his side of the story on the national stage.

The true test will be at 5:00 pm today when Beck interviews Massa for [Larry King voice] “the full hour” on his Fox show. Massa will have to demonstrate that he’s not a nutjob, and Beck will have to be appropriately tough on him. I’ll reserve final judgment until then.

UPDATE: Malkin has a must-read post about Massa here, but I’m still reserving final judgment until 5 pm.

UPDATE II: Poor Glenn! It was a rough night. Massa talked for an hour, but said nothing. Why? I don’t know and don’t care to speculate. As I thought, he’s a wackado. Beck even finished the show by apologizing to his audience for wasting their time! Let’s hope Massa’s 15 minutes of infamy are over. Here’s the video. The apology starts at the 2:00 minute mark:

This is a classic:

Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere

To me, Paul Krugman lost his credibility a long time ago. But just in case he still has any in your eyes, check out James Taranto’s article from Friday’s Wall Street Journal. In a nutshell, he compares Krugman’s recent editorial on Senator Jon Kyl with Krugman’s own textbook on macroeconomics. The conclusion?

So it turns out that what Krugman calls Sen. Kyl’s “bizarre point of view” is, in fact, textbook economics. The authors of that textbook are Paul Krugman and Robin Wells. Miss Wells is also known as Mrs. Paul Krugman. It seems Krugman himself lives in two different universes–the universe of the academic economist and the universe of the bitter partisan columnist.

The conservative world is all aflutter because Congressman Eric Massa of New York, who is resigning under an ethical cloud because of complaints of same-sex sexual harassment, gave a radio interview yesterday trashing Rahm Emanuel. Drudge is all red about it. Glenn Beck is about to pee himself over it, and and Rush has played the audio over and over again all afternoon.  Hot Air has a more reasoned take on it, complete with the audio, here.

Personally, I’m not buying this. I can’t explain why, but something smells fishy to me. Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt that Rahmbo is the “son of the devil’s spawn” and would “sell his own mother” for votes, but Massa doesn’t sound credible to me. I’m reserving judgment for now. We’ll see how the story develops in the next day or so.

UPDATE: Massa has confirmed that he will resign at 5pm today. This is what bothers me: if the harassment charges were fabricated by Rahmbo in order to force him to vote for Obamacare, then why is he resigning? Conversely, if the harassment charges have merit, doesn’t that give him the motive to fabricate the stories about Rahmbo in order to save face? This sounds an awful lot like the “bitch set me up” defense to me.

UPDATE II: Looks like I’m in good company being skeptical on this one.

I actually like Robert Reich. He’s liberal, but he’s uber-smart, intellectually honest, and damn funny at times. But in this clip from yesterday’s This Week with [Fill in Name Here], George Will utterly humiliates him:

Consider the following hypothetical. Person A has major surgery. During recovery, he is administered morphine in a hospital under the supervision of a physician. After a few days, the drug is discontinued and he never uses it again. Person B is a junky. He buys morphine off the street, self-administers it, and becomes addicted.

Now imagine that a supposedly credible political analyst (who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard!) published an article on a supposedly credible website proclaiming that anyone who sees a difference between Person A and Person B is a “liar.”

Granted, it is an exaggerated hypothetical, but that is pretty much what Matt Yglesias has done over at the The Daily Beast with an article entitled GOP Liars. Here’s a sampling of Yglesias in his own words:

[Y]ou’ve probably heard that part of the Obama administration’s plan to pass health reform is to use the budget reconciliation process. The reason you’ve probably heard is that the press has been obsessed with the topic, repeatedly labeling it a “controversial” move that would “ram” legislation via an end-run around the normal legislative process.”

In fact, though most bills do not go through the reconciliation process—typically because their subject matter makes them ineligible—the process has been invoked frequently since 1980. And the reason it’s remained obscure until 2010 is that until the health-care debate, the press never saw fit to go into conniptions over congressional procedure. Indeed, as Jamison Foser has painstakingly documented the use of the budget reconciliation process to pass George W. Bush’s 2003 tax cuts on a 51-50 vote (Dick Cheney broke the tie, three Senate Republicans joined Democrats in voting no) passed the press with no comment . . .

ABC, CBS, and NBC combined to mention reconciliation zero times during the 2003 tax cut debate. CNN featured Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) mention it in passing, once, but certainly never did a segment in which its propriety was debated.

The article gets even stranger after this passage. Yglesias goes on to argue that this supposed conspiracy of silence exists because of “the right’s ability to set the media’s agenda.”

If Yglesias really believes that ABC, CBS, and NBC cow-towed to the Bush White House and are out to get Obama, then he’s living in a different universe than me, and we’re never going to find any common ground. But he ought to be willing and able to admit the obvious reason why the “propriety” of passing the Bush tax cuts via budget reconciliation was “never debated”: tax legislation is exactly what budget reconciliation was designed for!

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Over at NRO, Rich Lowry has a great article on the myth of green jobs. He explains that last year’s porkulus bill included $5 billion for weatherizing homes. President Obama claimed that it would create 87,000 jobs “right away.” But you know what they say about the best made plans of mice, men, and, in particular, liberals:

According to a Department of Energy inspector general report last month, “only 2 of the 10 highest funded recipients completed more than 2 percent of planned units.” New York had completed 280 out of 45,400 planned units as of December, Texas had completed 0 of 33,908, and California 12 out of 43,400. That’s 292 homes in three states with a total population of roughly 80 million.

Check out the full article here.