(h/t Nonny Mouse). A BBC quiz show's moment of hilarity. Open Thread below...

So my eleven year old, who has discovered the importance of music in developing a cool aesthetic, asked me what my first favorite rock song was.

It was "Hey Jude" by the Beatles. I had just turned five.

I think one of the keys to the longevity of Beatles music is that their songs are so singable. Many are as easy to carry as a children's song.

Okay kid, I'd like to see you pull that act with Revolution Number 9. Music thread below.

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March 26, 2010 MSNBC The ED Show

Ed Schultz responds to Glenn Beck's attacks on him. From Media Matters: Beck and crew launch vicious personal attacks on Ed Schultz

Man oh man... as Media Matters noted, this what happens when you don't properly vet your guests.

Doocy set out to portray the Tea Party movement as being unfairly "marginalized" and discredited. He challenged this "mainstream media biased coverage" by hosting "former 'Saturday Night Live' star" and Tea Partier Victoria Jackson.

Unfortunately, Doocy appeared to be unaware of what Jackson has been up to since she left SNL in 1992 -- you know, how she's said that Obama "bears traits that resemble the anti-Christ" and shares "so many similar qualities" with Adolf Hitler (i.e.: "Obama's current attitude toward Israel is in question. Hitler did not support Jews.").

[...]

DOOCY: So, are you ready to join the tea party people?

JACKSON: I am the tea party people. We're beginners at this political activism and it's all new to us and it's kind of cute 'cause we're shy, we hold up our signs like this, you know, despite what they say about us, I have never done anything like this, but we have to because the president is a Communist.

[...]

DOOCY: Now, he is not a Communist. But you just pointed out that you hold up signs and stuff like that and people make fun of you. What do you think about how some on the other political side have tried to diminish or, you know, or marginalize the Tea Party people?

JACKSON: Well, I guess they're afraid of the power of our passion and our numbers and, you know, you might not say Communist, but I watch Glenn Beck and he's taught me well. Progressive is the new word for Communist, but it's the same goal as government control of everything and it's very obvious that Obama is trying to do that. And I don't want to brag, but I sort of called it before he was elected and when I was on O'Reilly and I said he was a Communist and I got a lot of hate mail, but I got some that said I was a prescient which means "a prophet."

Victoria Jackson... too crazy for Fox & Friends. You'd think they'd be proud of her. She's the perfect example of a brain dead Glenn Beck worshiper.

Mike Vanderboegh, the Alabama tea party-militia man who advocated the breaking of windows which the Washington Post has reported has already taken place is on a roll.

Some of the vandalism appears to have been instigated by an Alabama blogger, Mike Vanderboegh, who encouraged his readers to throw bricks at the windows of Democratic headquarters across the country. Vanderboegh, a former leader of the Alabama Constitutional Militia who is headlining an open-carry gun rally in Northern Virginia next month, issued a call to the modern "Sons of Liberty" on his libertarian political blog to break windows nationwide to display opposition to health-care reform.

A vandal threw a brick into the glass doors at the Monroe County Democratic Committee's headquarters in Rochester overnight Saturday, attaching a note that quoted Barry Goldwater: "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice."

Vanderboegh continues his violent tendencies by saying that gun owners have been bullied around long enough and the inevitable conclusion now because of the passing of HCR is that there will be more violence and more Waco-like events in the future during an interview with Alan Colmes.

See, he's just trying to spare a bloody end for Nancy Pelosi. This is scary stuff, folks.

Think Progress:

VANDERBOEGH: I am telling you we are motivated to break windows, we feel a deadly threat from the Federal government and the orders that the Democrat party has given us. [...]

COLMES: You’re telling people to break the windows of Democratic headquarters. You’re telling people to commit acts of vandalism. You’re supporting breaking the law.

VANDERBOEGH: May I tell you my personal motive for doing this? I’m trying to save the lives of Nancy Pelosi, and every one of these people who do not understand the unintended consequences of their actions. [...] Because they are not paying attention to the million of people across this deepening divide that politics no longer avails them. [...] We refuse to participate in the system, and we refuse to pay the fines, and we refuse arrest. Now where do you suppose that’s going but a thousand little Waco’s.

The Patriot movement that started during the Clinton years has had a revival with the tender loving care that FOX News gave them when they created the Tea Party movement. Now they don't have to hide in the shadows or behind closed doors. Mark my words.

As the temperature rises in the east,

The spread of violence will increase.

It's about time. These are the same aggressive tactics liberal economists recommended all along, and it could have saved a lot of pain and suffering if we'd done it sooner:

The Obama administration plans to overhaul how it is tackling the foreclosure crisis, in part by requiring lenders to temporarily slash or eliminate monthly mortgage payments for many borrowers who are unemployed, senior officials said Thursday.

Banks and other lenders would have to reduce the payments to no more than 31 percent of a borrower's income, which would typically be the amount of unemployment insurance, for three to six months. In some cases, administration officials said, a lender could allow a borrower to skip payments altogether.

The new push, which the White House is scheduled to announce Friday, takes direct aim at the major cause of the current wave of foreclosures: the spike in unemployment. While the initial mortgage crisis that erupted three years ago resulted from millions of risky home loans that went bad, more-recent defaults reflect the country's economic downturn and the inability of jobless borrowers to keep paying.

The administration's new push also seeks to more aggressively help borrowers who owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth, offering financial incentives for the first time to lenders to cut the loan balances of such distressed homeowners. Those who are still current on their mortgages could get the chance to refinance on better terms into loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration.

The problem of "underwater" borrowers has bedeviled earlier administration efforts to address the mortgage crisis as home prices plunged.

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Ed Schultz asks Alan Grayson to respond to being put on Sarah Palin's list of "targets" on her crosshairs post on Facebook.

Grayson: She told her followers to "take me out" like I was a moose that you shoot from a helicopter.

Schultz: Yeah, what is your response to that Congressman. How do you feel about that?

Grayson: It's all they've got left... fear and hatred. They've got nothing left.

Grayson also called out the Republicans for stoking fear and hatred and then blaming the Democrats for it. Ed asked Grayson what he would say to her if he met her face to face.

Grayson: You know, every time she smiles she proves that ignorance is bliss. I don't even know if she understands half the things she's talking about.

[...]

I'd love to see a Palin/Grayson ticket in 2016. We'd get elected and then the next day she'd quit. That's what she does. She's the patron saint of quitting.

After a year of rancorous debate, Congress has given its blessing to the final health care reform bill. As expected, the reconciliation fixes to the $940 billion package received exactly zero Republican votes, passing the House 220 to 207 and 56 to 43 in the Senate.

In theory, the born-again deficit virgins of the GOP should also have been happy. After all, the CBO forecasts the final health care bill for less than half the cost of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts will slash the deficit by $130 billion over the first decade and $1.3 trillion over 20 years. As Steny Hoyer (D-MD) put it, "We think it will post the largest deficit reduction of any bill that we've adopted in the Congress since 1993."

Of course, every single Republican in the House and Senate voted against that Clinton deficit reduction legislation, too. For more history on the GOP's one-way street, see "Bipartisanship's Willing Executioners."

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More of the false equivalency game from John Avlon and David Gergen on Anderson Cooper 360. While both of them warn that this could get out of hand and escalate to more violence, neither are willing to lay the blame squarely in the lap of the Republican Party where it belongs. When one party is using eliminationist rhetoric with no regard for the consequences and the other party is merely pointing out their bad behavior, the side pointing out the bad behavior is not the problem. I'd like to ask Avlon and Gergen if they blame the Civil Rights leaders of the sixties for the actions of the Klan since they seem to be buying into the argument that it's okay to blame victims for the actions of their attackers.

Transcript via CNN.

COOPER: Just to recap the breaking news, the House tonight approving the final piece of health care reform legislation, the final fixes, all that brinkmanship, all that maneuvering, passed by the Senate earlier today. When President Obama signs the fixes, that is it.

But, for some, especially angry opponents of the reform bill, the administration, the IRS, you name it, it is not over -- windows broken, death threats made, some scary stuff, and allegations that some are fanning the flames for political gain.

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Oh boy. The man who brought us Sarah Paling-Around-with-Terrorists Palin and who has promised to take his ball and go home rather than work with the Democrats now thinks we should have some "civility in the health care debate":

Sen. John McCain called for a more civilized political discourse on Thursday after members of Congress who voted for health care reform reported incidents of harassment and threats of violence.

"There is a lot of anger and passion out there," McCain said on CNN's "John King USA." "Let's change that into a spirited and healthy respectful campaign season between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. Let's really go at it, but let's do it with respect, that's the key to it."

McCain noted that he has held thousands of town hall meetings during his long political career. "The only thing I ask people to do is be respectful," he said.

CNN didn't bother to mention in their Political Ticker that McCain defended Sarah Palin for her "reload" and political crosshairs Facebook posting. McCain wrote it off as just typical political rhetoric.

Full transcript via CNN below the fold.

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