Rick Perlstein, author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus and the soon-to-published followup Nixonland, now has a blog.
Every good person in America will read it.
Hey, what’s going on inside Richard Cohen’s fantasy world this week?
INSIDE RICHARD COHEN’S HEAD
Washington is relentlessly middle class…
OUTSIDE RICHARD COHEN’S HEAD
According to a 2003 report on the Census Bureau website, four of the eight wealthiest counties in America are Washington suburbs:
Median Household Income (In 2003 Inflation-adjusted Dollars)
1. Somerset County, NJ $89,289
2. Howard County, MD $88,555
3. Prince William County, VA $82,926
4. Morris County, NJ $82,025
5. Fairfax County, VA $80,753
6. Nassau County, NY $80,647
7. Santa Clara County, CA $76,544
8. Montgomery County, MD $76,439
More recently, the Washington Post reported:
The three most prosperous large counties in the United States are in the Washington suburbs, according to census figures released yesterday, which show that the region has the second-highest income and the least poverty of any major metropolitan area in the country.
Of course, you can understand how Richard Cohen could get this wrong, since he has neither internet access nor a subscription to the Washington Post.
PREVIOUSLY, IN SIMILIAR FANTASY WORLDS: Joseph Lieberman explains, “Being a Senator, I haven’t gone much beyond the middle class.”
Missing Kurt Vonnegut
If you’re feeling bereft at the Kurt Vonnegut-less eternity that stretches before us, Dennis Perrin has some great video of him. I also recommend this post by Poputonian at Digby’s, which links to prevous Vonnegut-themed posts here and here.
Kurt Vonnegut, dead at 84
New York Times story here.
From Cat’s Cradle:
Hazel’s obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass, of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a granfalloon. Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows—and any nation, anytime, anywhere.
As Bokonon invites us to sing along with him:
If you wish to study a granfalloon,
Just remove the skin of a toy balloon
Tom DeLay has lots more to say about why liberals are like Nazis
You may remember that in Tom DeLay’s new book, he compares liberals to Hitler. Why? Because he was prosecuted for violating campaign finance laws. (If I understand the history correctly, this is precisely what Hitler did to his enemies.)
It turns out DeLay is eager to stand by and amplify on these remarks. Here he is being interviewed by David Goodman of the show “You Are Here” on Emerson’s radio station WERS today:
DELAY: I am so outraged by this whole criminalization of politics. It’s not good enough to defeat somebody politically. It’s not even good enough to vilify somebody publicly. They have to carpet bomb you with lies and made up scandals and false charges and indicting you on laws that don’t exist. … It’s the same thing as I say in my book, that the Nazis used. When you use the big lie in order to gain and maintain power, it is immoral and it is outrageous…
It’s the same process. It’s the same criminalization of politics. it’s the same oppression of people. It’s the same destroy people in order to gain power. It may be six million Jews. it may be indicting somebody on laws that don’t exist. But, it’s the same philosophy and it’s the same world view.
You can find a little more from the interview (about Nancy “Hanoi Jane” Pelosi and how Democrats are helping to “kill more Americans”) on my site.
(Many thanks to David Goodman for sending this around.)