RON BROWNSTEIN’S politicized non sequitur. “It’s nonsense. But its printed nonsense. So it has the suggestion of seriousness.” Meh. Not so much anymore, to those who have been paying attention.

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): U.S. Satisfaction Remains Near 12-Month Low. “Gallup finds 19% of Americans satisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time — essentially on par with the lowest level of the past 12 months, 17%, registered in December. . . . The current low level of satisfaction is likely tied primarily to the economy.”

I LOVE IT THAT WHEN PEOPLE TRY TO PLAY THE “TOXIC RHETORIC ON BOTH SIDES” CARD they’re reduced to quoting things like my paraphrase of Bill Clinton’s “erase North Korea from the map” bit — and always without noting that I was talking about how to respond to a full-fledged North Korean invasion of the South. When you have to stretch that far, it’s an admission that you’ve got nothing.

Also, this bit — “even the most inaccurate and excessive rhetoric on the left these days doesn’t invoke violence” — is simply a lie, or a confession of ignorance so utterly profound as to be, if anything, worse.

Special Bonus: Breaking: TUCSON TEA PARTY LEADER THREATENED At ABC Taping… Unhinged Leftist Arrested. “Trent Humphries has been receiving death threats all week since the national media and their leftist cohorts began blaming the tea party for the shooting.”

UPDATE: ‘Civil’ Discourse: A One-Way Street?

Related: Palin is ‘unrepentant’ about her involvement with the murders that you’d have to be insane, lying, or both to claim she had anything to do with.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A compendium of lefty hate.

THE GUARDIAN goes Full Orwell.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE, to end a political career? A sense of shame, which they don’t really have any more.

MICHAEL TOTTEN on Tunisia. Or just visit his main blog page and keep scrolling, as he’s got numerous posts. Plus, thoughts from Barry Rubin.

AT AMAZON, 50% off on camping and hiking supplies.

I’LL BE ON PETER “DATECHGUY” INGEMI’S RADIO SHOW on WCRN in Massachussets in just a few minutes. You can listen live here. And here’s a post with all the info.

MYSTERY WRITER’S INSTINCTS BORNE OUT: New York Times Stuxnet report confirms Roger Simon’s Siemens connection speculation.

HOW BAD WAS THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF TUCSON? So bad that Charles Blow is writing about “The Tucson Witch Hunt.”

Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right.

“I saw Goody Proctor with the devil! Oh, I mean Jared Lee Loughner! Yes him. With the devil!”

The only problem is that there was no evidence then, and even now, that overheated rhetoric from the right had anything to do with the shooting. (In fact, a couple of people who said they knew him have described him as either apolitical or “quite liberal.”) The picture emerging is of a sad and lonely soul slowly, and publicly, slipping into insanity. . . . Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof.

Ya think?

WHAT, HE’S GOT SOME KIND OF “HAIR WARDROBE” NOW? Ann Althouse: “And what’s the first thing you notice — the difference between today and the speech he gave at the memorial? Right. Different color hair. Gray for the memorial, signifying the wise elder, the father figure. Back to dark hair to signify the vigorous young man, ready to forge ahead, solving problems, and restoring his party’s electoral fortunes.”

VIRGINIA POSTREL: Kidney Donation Goes Prime Time:

Last Sunday night something remarkable happened. Two prime-time shows included plots in which one character’s kidneys failed and, instead of the usual squirming, another character actively tried to donate. Admittedly, on “Family Guy” the would-be donor was a talking dog. But at the last minute a doctor, who treated donating as the logical choice, replaced him.

More significantly, on “Desperate Housewives,” where Susan (Teri Hatcher) is shown visibly ailing and facing years of dialysis, her mother’s refusal to donate seemed petulant and irrational. In contrast, against Susan’s protests her own daughter insisted on being tested. She told her mother: “They have these new surgical techniques—it’s no worse than a belly piercing—which I did not do.” An exaggeration, sure, but a welcome change from declaring kidney donation a Bad Idea.

Virginia donated a kidney to Sally Satel a few years ago. We talked with her about it in this podcast.

THE “WHITE ALBUM” OF THE TUCSON MASSACRE? Not really up to Beatles quality . . .

AS SOON AS I FINISH SHOVELING MY DRIVEWAY, I’LL TRY TO ANSWER THAT: “Why will no one listen to us anymore?”

OIL PRICES: There will be no OPEC bailout.

LETHAL AIRBORNE prions?

NEW — AT LEAST TO ME — the Amazon Photo and Video Services Store. Printing, mugs, cards, and more.

ACTUALLY, JARED LEE LOUGHNER IS LESS CULPABLE THAN the Weather Underground. He’s just crazy. They were evil, and treasonous. It’s a disgrace — and, ironically, a testimony to the class privilege they embodied but claimed to oppose — that some of them occupy positions of importance today.

WHAT A . . . BARGAIN: Tom Maguire: Three Krugmans In One. “Not all moral views are created equal.”

IN BOSTON, special ambulances for the grossly obese. “The ambulance is equipped with a special stretcher that can hold 850 pounds and a hydraulic lift with a 1,000 pound capacity, said Captain Jose Archila of Boston’s Emergency Medical Services fleet.”

FROM MARKOS KRUGMAN, it’s the Climate Of Hate Blog.

TUNISIA’S Jasmine Revolution. Don’t blow it, guys.

MORE ON HARD DRIVES: In response to this morning’s post, reader Chuck Allen emails:

You linked to the cheap 2TB Seagate drive. But for just $15 more you can get this 2TB drive that gets *much* better reviews, and will work with a Mac.

I don’t own it, but was researching backup drives this AM.

And reader Stephen Johnson writes: “I’ve had one of these wonderously cheap (and yes, Chinese made) 1 TB drives fail on me. I didn’t have it backed up, and yes, that’s my fault — but restoring the data set me back about two grand: about twenty times the cost of the drive. Electronics — computers and their component parts in particular — *are* getting fantastically cheap but they’re still far from as infallible as, say, blenders or lawn mowers. Until then, I’d say don’t overlook some hidden costs directly related to lack of quality. Not to mention that we basically *have* to upgrade our PCs every 2-3 years.” Yeah. You always need to backup, though. The only hard-drive failure I’ve had in recent years was a supposedly super-reliable and more-expensive hard drive I used in the audio studo computer. Luckily, it was backed up.

THE NEW REPUBLIC: How the Media Botched the Arizona Shooting. Er, totally?

When disaster strikes, journalists have to write something about it—and write it fast. That means they have to take mental shortcuts, calling up established narratives and laying them out like old wrapping paper for new and more ambiguous facts. (Wife poisons husband. Revenge killing? Money killing? Self-defense killing? We stand at the ready with a lot of templates.) While the resulting gift isn’t always pretty, it’s generally good enough for deadline work.

But sometimes the shortcuts produce a journalistic stampede at the worst possible time. That’s what happened last weekend, when 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner shot six people to death at an Arizona Safeway and gravely wounded many more, including Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The dominant storyline in the press—one that persisted in the face of all the facts—was that right-wing hysteria and lunacy had given rise to Loughner’s atrocity. Only on Wednesday night, when President Obama delivered a speech that effectively told everyone to cut it out, was the stampede halted (one hopes). But it’s still worth reviewing how the nation’s leading periodicals descended into such mindlessness.

Sadly, I don’t think most of them had to “descend” very far. Note, however, that local media did better.

E.B. White was onto this a long time ago.

CREDENTIALED, NOT EDUCATED: Elected Officials Flunk Constitution Quiz.

Elected officials at many levels of government, not just the federal government, swear an oath to “uphold and protect” the U.S. Constitution.

But those elected officials who took the test scored an average 5 percentage points lower than the national average (49 percent vs. 54 percent), with ordinary citizens outscoring these elected officials on each constitutional question.

The country’s in the very best of hands.