Via the Standard, I think Karl’s got this one right. After a week of every shameless liberal “civility” scold in the media universe comparing Republicans to terrorists and other assorted miscreants, Bashir knew he had to do something special to break from the pack. Any time-serving left-wing hack on the New York Times op-ed page can compare tea partiers to terrorists. A clever, hard-working left-wing hack goes the extra mile and brings in a doctor to declare them certifiable. That’s more useful to the left than the “terrorist” label, in fact: Both lines of attack are meant to delegitimize the right, but clinical language adds a veneer of authority and expertise. If you’re disappointed that they didn’t drop the T-bomb, though, don’t fret. By the end of the clip, Peele is reassuring Bashir that austerity addiction might lead to terrorism. Bases covered.

I recommend watching it twice, the first time to take it in and the second time to focus on Peele’s criticism as an almost preternaturally perfect case of projection. We’re $14 trillion in debt, we’re at serious risk of a credit downgrade, we just had an epic congressional battle over a bill that ensures we’ll “only” add another $6 trillion in debt over the next 10 years, and the driver of all of this — entitlements, and specifically Medicare — is the one thing the left will never, ever, evah compromise on. Yet somehow this guy musters the stones to say this:

Well, the way I think about it is they are pursuing goals that can’t be achieved. It’s sort of like a child who has some kind of fantasy, and they keep asking you to give them things to acquire that, but it’s impossible to arrive at the goal that they want. The idyllic paths that they are pursuing probably never existed and certainly not something we can reach right now.

That reads like a paragraph from an interview in Reason magazine. Ah well. Two clips for you, one of Bashir and Peele and the other of media-friendly tea-party freshman Joe Walsh serving up a huge side of red meat in responding to Biden on “terrorism.” To repeat a point I made yesterday: They’re the ones holding the bomb.

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