Someone finally commissioned a poll to quantify what everyone with eyes already intuitively understood: the Tea Party is overwhelmingly far right, white, male, and aging (occasional outliers like the One Young Teabagger with Piercings aside).

The Times saved the best bit for last:

Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits.

Others could not explain the contradiction.

“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”

If real life were more like the internet.

Brooks is right that most of the people in that 5% bracket log heavy hours, but where he’s wrong is in failing to recognize that most of us have enough shame to know that what we do for a living isn’t really working. I pull absolutely insane hours in my current profession, to the point of having almost no social life at all, but I know better than to call what I do for a living work. I was on a demolition crew when I was much younger, the kind of job where you have to wear a dust mask all day long, carry buckets full of concrete, and then spend all night picking fiberglass shards out of your forearms from ripping insulation out of the wall.

If I had to do even five hours of that work today I’d bawl my fucking eyes out for a month straight. I’m not complaining about my current good luck at all, but I would wet myself with shame if I ever heard it said that I work even half as hard as the average diner waitress.

The rest.

Congratulations to Mark Fiore, first alt-cartoonist to win the Pulitzer since Feiffer!

And with my old friend Matt Wuerker a finalist, this was a very good year for editorial cartoonists working outside the standard template. (As I noted in my now-obsolete letter to the Pulitzer Board four years ago, the only other remotely non-traditional editorial cartoonists to have ever won the award were Trudeau and Breathed.)

I’ve re-activated the signed prints and posters for sale sections. Longtime readers may have noticed that these tend to come and go — when I get too busy with my real job to deal with packaging and shipping items, I tend to close up shop for long stretches of time. So if anything there catches your eye, or if you’ve been wanting a specific print, now’s your window of opportunity.

… and probably already do. But just in case you’re not up to speed, you really, really need to read Greenwald on the Wikileaks civilian massacre video: here, here, and here for starters. (The first link also leads to the video itself.)

And you really owe it to yourself to watch Rachel Maddow’s definitive takedown of the ACORN hoax, here.

This week’s cartoon: All The Rage.

Read it on Salon, here.

… or on Credo, here.

Health care reformageddon.

The war on rationality.

Just, oy.