Nate Silver on the Tea Baggers Rally

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Size Matters; So Do Lies

Nate dispassionately examines the attendance at and meaning of the "9/12" rally in DC, and how the truth of genuine grievances can be overshadowed by lies and poor judgment. Money quote:

The way this false estimate came into being is relatively simple: Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, lied, claiming that ABC News had reported numbers of between 1.0 and 1.5 million when they never did anything of the sort. A few tweets later, the numbers had been exaggerated still further to 2 million. Kibbe wasn't "in error", as Malkin gently puts it. He lied. He did the equivalent of telling people that his penis is 53 inches long.

Birthers Aren't Just a Southern Fringe Lunacy

Washington Monthly provides a graph of the geographical distribution of the lunatic birthers. The concentration of these neoracist pinheads to the South is not a surprise.

But this particular strain of stupid isn't limited to the heart of Southern Baptist Land. Our own State Senator Dave Schultheis (R - Focus on the Family) thinks there's something to it, too.

Dave Schultheis (Sen_Schultheis) on Twitter.png by deanbarnett on Aviary.

Senator Schultheis is also the renowned Colorado pol who worries excessively about the citizen status of Hispanics in fatal car accidents and believes treating pregnant women with AIDS encourages promiscuity.