Put this poll in your pipe and smoke it

Conservative bloggers have been peeing in their pants lately with delight over polls that show great public dissatisfaction with the Democratic-controlled Congress.

They ignore, of course, the fact that the low numbers for Congress reflect, in part, great dismay that lawmakers aren't taking a harder stance against the Bush administration. The right-wingers want us to think that the polls reflect an anti-liberal bent among the public, which is nonsense.

And the conservatives have got nothing to say about a Pew poll showing that Americans favor the Democratic Party over the Republicans by a margin of 15 percentage points. Karl Rove's dreams of a permanent Republican majority are gone with the wind, as this piece notes.

The Republican obsession with masculinity

Once again, the ever-reliable Digby has provided us cause to ponder the peculiar penchant among Republicans to worry about their political masculinity.

Digby's vehicles this time are Stephen J. Doucat's book "The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity," and the cover story in the latest edition of The New Republic, "The Masculine Mystique of Fred Thompson."

As we've noted here previously on several occasions -- this one, for example -- one can find among males of the americanus republicanus species an innate fear of the loss of masculinity. Consequently, these strange critters are given to pounding their chests and acting belligerent or presuming to protect the females among them -- even when no such protection is required -- just to make themselves feel superior.

Ah, yes, they're an interesting, almost amusing, breed. But their ranks are thinning because of the excesses of the males.

A chickenhawk convention

In this video, Max Blumenthal visits a gathering of College Republicans, all of whom are enthusiastic supporters of the war in Iraq, but none of whom can bring themselves to participate in it.

My favorite in this piece is the guy who wants to "become like a really good like speaker and stuff."