[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Still can’t come back full time, but here is a fun concept for an open thread.  Apparently on the twitter, there is a new hashtag for #BeforeBlackPresidents.  This is where supposedly we talk about all the horrible ways we are holding up Obama to a double standard.  Like did you know that we were okay with endlessly raising the debt limit until we had a black president?

So I have taken a few minutes here and there to spam it with my own snotty and sarcastic comments.  For instance:

#BeforeBlackPresidents the democrats couldn’t shove an unpopular health care reform bill down our throats.

#BeforeBlackPresidents you could depict the President as a chimp without being called a racist. [with a reference to this: http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/K/1/bush_chimps2.jpg]

#BeforeBlackPresidents before we had a black president, Barack Obama opposed raising the debt ceiling.

#BeforeBlackPresidents before we had a black president, Barack Obama didn’t want us to go to war without congressional approval.

#BeforeBlackPresidents am i the only person 2 notice that there haven’t been 2 black presidents yet? or are we counting Bill Clinton again?

#BeforeBlackPresidents before we had a black president, Barack Obama opposed signing statements.

#BeforeBlackPresidents black panthers could be convicted of voter intimidation

So if you are on twitter, join in.  Drive them nuts.  If you aren’t, well, leave your best comments here.  if you can keep it to 140 characters or less (including the hashtag) I might rip you off.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

A Northeastern politician has resigned after sending nude photos of himself to an online female friend. According to the AP, at least two of the photos showed the politician’s crotch. One showed him bare from the waist up as he photographed himself in front of a mirror with his Blackberry. The politician has apologized and “acknowledged sending sexually explicit messages and photos to several women online.”

Louis Magazzu, we are deducting ten points for lack of originality. We are adding twenty points for ‘fessing up right away and not blaming the vast right-wing conspiracy.

Dan Wolfe could not be reached for comment. Nor could JohnReid9 (which could have something to do with the overwhelming likelihood that they are the same person — about which I will say much more in coming days and weeks).

Thanks to koam/wittier. [UPDATE: Elissa had it first.]

You guys might as well add your comments to the monster thread. Shooting for 3000 now.

UPDATE: Changed New England to northeastern. It’s all the same to us here in Cali, but accuracy must prevail.

UPDATE x2: While the link goes to the Daily Caller, it’s actually to an AP article. I have made the change for accuracy’s sake. (Thanks to “Crazy” Ron Brynaert. Someone must have hacked his comments. This one actually made sense.)

It would be unbelievable if it weren’t Biden:

What is truly insensitive is the comparison between the two. On one hand, you have someone who is so brain damaged that they have no meaningful chance of ever saying something coherent again. On the other hand, you have Gabby Giffords. (Rimshot.)

The full quote is even . . . more Bideny:

“When I went up, she said, ‘Joe,” Biden recalled of his meeting with Giffords. “I said, ‘Now we’re both members of the Cracked Head Club.’ You know, I had two craniotomies. For real. They literally took the top of my head off. Twice. Now, the wags in Delaware, when the second operation occurred, wrote and said, ‘Well, it’s because they couldn’t find a brain the first time!’”

One heartbeat from the Oval Office, ladies and gentlemen.

[Posted by Karl]

Yesterday, I wrote about progressive despair after the debt ceiling deal.  Here’s a bit more from FDL’s David Dayen:

It’s true that the public does not believe in a competent, activist government. That’s because government in America has revealed itself to be a total failure over two successive Administrations. Government gets us into wars we never get out of. Government allows Wall Street to destroy the economy and then bails them out for the privilege. Government stands mute in the face of rampant unemployment for going on half a decade.

***

We can elegantly construct a vision of government that is attractive and desirable. But when it’s undermined by real-world results, the vision is fatally compromised. Not only is the Washington Democratic rhetorical bias toward the deficit over jobs deeply problematic; so is their performance.

See also the reliably hacktastic Greg Sargent.  But the reason I noted these views were only partially correct was to head off the sort of giddy triumphalism from people like AmSpec’s Jeffrey Lord:

 [I]t must be said after that 269-161 vote in the House last night: America has reached a new Tipping Point.

An epidemic of conservatism is sweeping America. And thanks to the Tea Party, yesterday disgracefully accused of terrorism by Vice President Biden (he the vice president in an administration terrified of calling real terrorists terrorists — seriously!), the country will never be the same again.

With all due respect, it really must not be said that America has reached a tipping point, or that an epidemic of conservatism is sweeping the land.  As I noted (and linked) yesterday, neither Democrats nor Republicans are much interested in cutting government spending on anything except space exploration and foreign aid.  Entitlements, if not quite the untouchable third rail of American politics they once were, remain quite popular — and are likely to remain so until events force the public to rationalize their actual societal costs.  The Tea Party, for all of its many positive qualities, is not all that popular, and became less so during the debt ceiling debate in about the same measure as Pres. Obama.  The president remains within striking distance of re-election and will have the backing of the establishment media that is more likely to reach the casual, low-information voter.

To be sure, many of the milestones Lord lists in his article may have created preference cascades (the term popularized by Instapundit Glenn Reynolds).  The emergence of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News Channel, and the blogosphere did let many people know they were not alone in their beliefs, and gave them not only an outlet, but methods of banding together.  But in a democratic republic, the death of 19th-20th century progressivism is unlikely to happen overnight (absent a true debt crisis), precisely because there progressive institutions and programs were installed democratically (if not always with popular support).

America is not at a Tipping Point. Not yet. Rather than invoking the Instapundit’s preference cascades, remember his invocations of Han Solo: “Great, kid… don’t get cocky.”

–Karl