Noise of the Day

TPM Muckraker on the extremes of the extreme:

It's basically impossible for the "respectable" leadership of the Tea Party movement to ensure that their ranks don't include the kind of people who call Obama both Goebbels and Mengele in the space of a few days. And that's because, frankly, unhinged crazy people simply make up too great a proportion of the movement to be kept permanently at arm's length.

We lose Ted Kennedy and are left with ... Max Baucus?

After months of frustrating deliberations, and a threat from the White House that President Obama would write his own legislation, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has finally circulated a draft of a health care bill--one that does not create a public option, but allows for the creation of health care co-operatives.

John Aravosis is convinced that Obama is going to wuss out on ... well, everything.

We worry that every time Obama refuses to fight, in the spirt of bipartisanship, he lets a problem grow, and inspires more Republicans to push him even harder, further polarizing the country, further damaging the very bipartisanship he claims he's trying to promote.

The New York Times reports on the rise in homelessness among schoolchildren.

While current national data are not available, the number of schoolchildren in homeless families appears to have risen by 75 percent to 100 percent in many districts over the last two years, according to Barbara Duffield, policy director of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, an advocacy group.

David Neiwert puts Glenn Beck's success in ousting Van Jones in perspective.

Probably the most ironic -- no, make that flat-out bizarre -- aspect of Glenn Beck's ultimately successful campaign to force out Van Jones is that it was predicated on Jones' supposed indulgence in extremist rhetoric ideas. ... Beck's history of indulging in extremism -- not just turning a blind eye to its presence, but promoting it outright to an audience of millions -- is so deep and wide that whatever indiscretions Jones might be guilty of fade into total insignificance.