Barack Obama is facing a financial emergency on a grander scale. Yet his approach has been to engage in one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history.

I realize Mitt isn’t the smartest guy around and will say and do just about anything to curry GOP votes. But peacetime? What the hell? At my last count we’re engaged in a War on Terror™, with conflicts in at least 3 countries that we know about. Look, how can I (or anybody) take anything this man says seriously. I mean this wasn’t an off-the-cuff remark. It was an op-ed.

Even with significant trims in those areas, however, reaching Mr. Obama’s goal would probably require cuts in the size of the Army and Marines beyond the reduction of more than 40,000 troops already proposed by Mr. Gates. Defense analyst Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution thinks it could require the elimination of more command structures and another round of base closures. What will then happen if the United States is forced into more conflicts like those of the past decade—if it must intervene to prevent Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon or respond to aggression by North Korea, for example?

Mr. Gates, who is expected to leave office this year, said that big defense cuts “would be disastrous in the world environment we see today.” While some reductions in defense are inevitable, that is a warning that the administration and Congress cannot afford to disregard.

Now keep in mind the United States spends about as much on our military as the rest of the world combined. Six times that of China. But beltway “wisdom” says we have to balance our budget with, well budget cuts. Now what would be one way the Post editorial staff suggest we do that:

Defense savings beyond those already achieved by Mr. Gates are certainly possible and even needed — though by and large they lie in areas that Congress has been unwilling to touch. As we pointed out in a recent editorial, military health care now costs as much as the war in Iraq, in part because military families — including working-age retirees — pay one-tenth as much for their health plans as do civilian federal workers.

Think about how rancid that is.  The Post editorial board and their corporate overlords are the exact same people who used their massive influence not only to start multiple wars but to argue 24/7 against their end.  Now of course the Post Editors and nobody they know fought in these wars. They sacrificed nothing. Not a single thing.

Instead their pro-war advocacy placed the burden on the backs of a tiny portion of the population—military service members and their loved ones—yet when it comes time to cut the military budget, these individuals  are the ones that should “sacrifice” yet again by paying more for their health care. This would be funny if it wasn’t so darn sad.

The first complaint had to do with the crowd. But they soon realized there isn’t a lot of upside to condemning a grieving community. This talking point soon faded. The second had to do with accusing President Obama of lying about the way in which Gabrielle Giffords opened her eyes. These complaints were as demonstrably false as they were ugly.

It seems the latest complaint is that event organizers gave the memorial a name—”Together We Thrive”—and distributed shirts to attendees.

As absurd as this may sound, the right really is getting all worked up about this, blasting: Team Obama” for handing out “branded” shirts at a memorial service. As Michele Malkin complained, “Can’t the Democrat [sic] political stage managers give it a break just once?” As you might guess Drudge and Fox News jumped in to parrot this message.

The problem, of course, like the other two examples I have mentioned, is that they have no idea what they’re talking about.

[O]fficials at the University of Arizona said the White House had nothing to do with the name or the logo.

“The name of the event and the logo for the event were done entirely by the university,” said Johnny Cruz, a spokesman for the University of Arizona. “Branding of the event was not done in consultation with the White House, or any elected officials or political organization.”

The T-shirts were also the university’s doing, Cruz said.

“That was the university’s idea,” he said. “We wanted to give people something to remember, to symbolize the community spirit.”

The right, as you might guess, also complained that taxpayer money was used to purchase the shirts. Again, not true. Literally every claim conservatives have made, to get to their normal state of anger and outrage about this event has proven 110% false.

But here’s the kicker. When Malkin was told that her complaint was not factual on several levels, Malkin argued:

Given the Obama White House’s meticulous attention to stage prop details, however, I would say the odds of involvement by Axelrod/Plouffe & Co. are high.

Notice what she did there. This is a classic conservative move. First, present a baseless, classless allegation. Second,  be presented with facts that prove your allegation wrong. Third, pretend the allegation is correct anyway. Stay classy Republicans, stay classy.

Last October, Glenn Beck was musing on his radio show about the prospect of the government seizing his children if he didn’t give them flu vaccines. “You want to take my kids because of that?” he said. “Meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson.”

Last April, Erick Erickson, the managing editor of the right-wing RedState blog and a CNN commentator, was questioning the legality of the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey on a radio show. “We have become, or are becoming, enslaved by the government [....] I dare ‘em to try to come to throw me in jail. I dare ‘em to. [I'll] pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door.”

Do right-wing talk show commentators incite violence against the government? Feel free to draw your own conclusions—but to dwell on the rise of violent rhetoric on the right is to miss an even bigger, though connected, problem. Let’s focus, rather, on the first part of Beck’s and Erickson’s observations: The government wants to take away Glenn Beck’s (and by extension, your) kids. The government wants to take a census and will throw Erick Erickson (and by extension, you) in jail if he, and you, don’t comply.

Can we see the hands of all the kids taken from their parents because they didn’t get flu shots? How about all those people rotting in jail because they didn’t cooperate in compiling the census?

The primary problem with the political discourse of the right in today’s America isn’t that it incites violence per se. It’s that it implants and reinforces paranoid fears about the government and conservatism’s domestic adversaries

Clearly in the recent weeks and months there has been an ever rising tide of  anti-government violence. Even more examples here.

But what is key is that so many on the far right tell their viewers and listeners the governnent wants to do all these “evil” things to them and their loved ones. None of which are true.

But I am sure somebody once said something mean about Sarah Palin on Twitter, Facebook, or Daily Kos so it all balances out.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Please read the above (called the Equal Protection Clause) again and keep it in mind when you read this exchange between Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and California Lawyer on the issue of discrimination.

Q: In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don’t think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we’ve gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?

Scalia: Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. … But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that’s fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t. Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don’t need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don’t like the death penalty anymore, that’s fine. You want a right to abortion? There’s nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn’t mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it’s a good idea and pass a law. That’s what democracy is all about. It’s not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.

If you think Scalia is saying what you think he is saying you are correct. In his view the 14th Amendment offers no legal recourse if the government sanctions discrimination against women. Under Scalia’s doctrine women could be legally barred from working after having a child, driving a car, attending state-run schools, or not allowed to vote. Pretty much anything and they would be shit-out-of-luck.

If logic applied to Palin’s career trajectory, this month might have been judged dreadful for her. In an otherwise great year for Republicans she endorsed a “Star Wars” bar gaggle of anomalous and wacky losers—the former witch, Christine O’Donnell; the raging nativist, Tom Tancredo; and at least two candidates who called for armed insurrection against the government, Sharron Angle and a would-be Texas congressman, Stephen Broden, who lost by over 50 percentage points. Last week voters in Palin’s home state humiliatingly “refudiated” her protégé, Joe Miller, overturning his victory in the G.O.P. Senate primary with a write-in campaign.

But logic doesn’t apply to Palin. What might bring down other politicians only seems to make her stronger: the malapropisms and gaffes, the cut-and-run half-term governorship, family scandals, shameless lying and rapacious self-merchandising. In an angry time when America’s experts and elites all seem to have failed, her amateurism and liabilities are badges of honor. She has turned fallibility into a formula for success.

But American politics these days is anything but rational. Republicans bitterly opposed even the modest infrastructure spending contained in the Obama stimulus plan. And, on Thursday, Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, canceled America’s most important current public works project, the long-planned and much-needed second rail tunnel under the Hudson River.

It was a destructive and incredibly foolish decision on multiple levels. But it shouldn’t have been all that surprising. We are no longer the nation that used to amaze the world with its visionary projects. We have become, instead, a nation whose politicians seem to compete over who can show the least vision, the least concern about the future and the greatest willingness to pander to short-term, narrow-minded selfishness.

Bob Herbert carries on the same thought process:

We can go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and threaten to blow Iran off the face of the planet. We can conduct a nonstop campaign of drone and helicopter attacks in Pakistan and run a network of secret prisons around the world. We are the mightiest nation mankind has ever seen.

But we can’t seem to build a railroad tunnel to carry commuters between New Jersey and New York.

The United States is not just losing its capacity to do great things. It’s losing its soul. It’s speeding down an increasingly rubble-strewn path to a region where being second rate is good enough.

Next week, President Obama is scheduled to propose new measures to boost the economy. I hope they’re bold and substantive, since the Republicans will oppose him regardless —if he came out for motherhood, the G.O.P. would declare motherhood un-American. So he should put them on the spot for standing in the way of real action.

Now that John McCain has taken care of his political business in Arizona, it is time for him to return to Washington and the responsibilities he bears as a leader of the Republican Party and the nation.

Exactly why is he still writing for the Washington Post.