Comparing health care reform to the holocaust is indeed an extreme view.

Really. It doesn’t.

This past weekend, Americans were treated to two completely different profiles in class. First there was former president George W. Bush. On Friday night, George and Laura Bush traveled by car to Fort Hood to meet with the devastated families of last week’s tragedy. They specifically asked the base commander not to alert the press, and spent hours simply doing what they could to comfort the grief-stricken families.

The story was eventually uncovered, as these moments tend to be, but clearly President Bush did not see this as a personal opportunity, nor did he want to upstage the current president. The former president saw his interactions with wounded soldiers and their families as private moments.

Twenty-four hours later, President Obama was not at Fort Hood, but rather on Capitol Hill lobbying a private meeting of Democrats, who must not have known his position on health care. Obama told the lawmakers, according to Democratic congressman Earl Blumenauer in the New York Times: “Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit [Democratic voters] and it will encourage the extremists.”

Let’s dissect that statement. First, President Obama incorrectly states that conservatives are “anti-government,” which simply is untrue. Conservatives are in favor of the government’s performing its duties efficiently and effectively. Conservatives are not in favor of the government’s running a new national health-care entitlement that will surely fail. (The House passed a bill that costs $2.4 trillion, raises taxes by $700 billion, and massively expands a bankrupt Medicaid program — all while the nation’s unemployment rate stands above 10 percent.)

More disturbing is President Obama’s labeling his opposition as “extremists” and falling just short of using the profane “teabag” epithet that is popular among dismissive liberals. This is simply beneath the office he holds. When tens of thousands of multigenerational families descended onto Capitol Hill last week, they were protesting runaway federal spending and government control. They understood that while reform of our health-care system is necessary, the answer is not to compound the problem while ignoring uninsured Americans. These are not extreme views.

Wow! This is fun, Dennis! Know any other parlor tricks?

You see how I prefaced that, though…..

“My guess is….”. That means it is my guess that they know what the reference is intended to mean.

Do you really want to get into Charles Krauthammer’s sexual proclivities, Dennis?

Cuz I’m going guess that in certain circles this guy’s nickname is “Earl Grey.”

Gee Dennis, I didn’t know you could read minds, as well.

And you give us a hard time about dog whistles?

Fundemental attribution error. Self-serving bias. If I ever teach introductory psychology again, I will use your commentary to illustrate these rational fallacies. It’s really perfect.

Shorter Dennis: “Run away!”

Nope, Indeed, still here.

You, however, have yet to explain why you kept using forged quotes well after knowing they were forged.

I don’t know what was going through Obama’s mind, but my guess is he and Gibbs and Axelrod and Emmannuel and Chairwoman Mao all hate the tea party protesters and are all keenly aware of how much a thorn in his side they are, and they ALL know exactly what the teabag term as used by the liberals set means, especially when he coupled the teabag term with ‘extremists’. My guess he was being a lot more Janeane Garafalo than he was being Charles Krauthammer, especially since he threw in the “extremists” descriptive. I doubt you’ll see Krauthammer describe tea partiers as “extremists.”

It’s like the classic, “I’m sorry if people were offended by what I said.” It’s not an apology for saying something stupid or offensive, it’s apologizing for the fact that people were too sensitive; it’s not an apology at all.

But that’s okay. I know what to expect from you now.

As for your link: If you want to operationally define “niceness” as the amount of money that an individual gives to charity, then perhaps you are correct. I would argue that charitable donations are a very narrow view of the differences in temperament and attitudes of liberals and conservatives; there is a lot more to consider, including the amount of volunteer work individuals do, as well as the root causes for the differential giving behavior.

For example, I could speculate that conservatives give more money on average because they are trying to assuage deep-seated guilt from their explicit support of individuals and a Republican party that supports racist policies and helps the wealthy at the expense of the poor. Therefore, their giving behavior is indicative of conservatives acting in a manner that is actually more repugnant than liberals’ behavior (the opposite of your thesis). The link you provide is just as much evidence for my hypothesis as yours (that conservatives are “nicer”).

The point is, looking at simple correlations in a study such as this does not demonstrate anything conclusive in the way that you believe it does.

I think the charge of racism is a bit more serious and deserves a higher degree of scrutiny than saying conservatives are nicer than liberals, yes.

I apologized to you for haranguing you about the Limbaugh forged quotes after your explanation but you persisted in calling me all sorts of names, so it was game on. Indeed kept posting those quotes long after I had shown him rather convincingly they were forged, so he couldn’t make the case of a simple mistake. You can harangue me all you’d like to about the Hitchens quote- I probably deserve it and I learned a lesson from it.

As to studies, here’s something to get started:

Conservatives Have Answered Obama’s Call
On the other hand, the data show that liberals need a nudge to give.

No doubt because you threw a fit in the comments section demanding a retraction once you realized you got played for a fool. Again.

Blindly cutting and pasting from hack conservative blogs regardless of the facts IS WHAT YOU DO.

So you seem to be saying that when YOU do something like this, it’s just an innocent mistake, but when OTHERS (especially those on the other side of the aisle) do something similar, it’s evil and malicious and dishonest and wrong. Fundamental attribution error and self-serving bias all wrapped up in a neat little package.

I’m inclined to believe you, incidentally, about this being a mistake borne out of laziness or carelessness. But tell me why I should afford you this courtesy when you are so unwilling to do so for others? Why should I not harangue you consistently about this in the weeks and months to come? Especially at any time in which you criticize another for messing up a quote?

Finally, I would LOVE to see published, scientific studies that indicate that conservatives are “nicer” than liberals. I am going to go on a limb and bet that anything you find is going to be shoddy, shoddy work. But I could be wrong. Surprise me.