Watching the Rachel Maddow show tonight you had to shake your head. And then later bang it against the wall....

The news of the day, of course, is the U.S Chamber of Commerce — that elderly sweater girl with her pompoms for American business and clearly suffering from dementia. It's stunning when you think of it, how the same Chamber that so pleaded for the stimulus is now allied with the Tea Party and a handful of unidentified millionaires, and some 80 foreign corporations, now chomping to bring down Obama's job agenda. All in the name of the free market.

The clip to go with the Chamber story showed Tom Donohue, head of the chamber and the standardbearer of old white guys — all I could think of was Orwell's "Shooting the Elephant" or Kiplings's Gunga Din — with the straight hair, the straight suit, the straight lace and face of it all, talking about how there was nothing wrong with shipping jobs overseas. Nothing wrong at all. Thinking, one assumes, in the most practical terms, that the bottom line is after all the shareholder not the worker. Even in a great recession.

It was a callous remark and politically deaf, a Scarlet Letter of sorts, and a precious gift to Dems, just in the nick.

Then a few segments later you have Miss Rachel, from dykes on bikes, as it were, towering, elegantly and safely queer one could say, inexhaustibly animated and smart, but still a dyke, still at the edge of the tent, sounding like Teddy Roosevelt, talking about the importance of infrastructure, celebrating the new bridge just opening next to the Hoover Dam and lamenting New Jersey Gov. Christie's efforts to kill that new tunnel to Manhattan; and what a calamity it is, she went on, how we've so lost our way, our balls, our convictions, our dreams, even the capacity to dream.

She said it so well. So eloquently. You wanted to weep and cheer. And shake your head.

But how did we get to this turn? The Republican "man" has become an incoherent midget, an intellectual gopher, while the tall, big-boned gay lady shows the grand old strength, moxie and wisdom.

But here's the part where you want to bang your head to smithereens. A nation of stupidos has no ear for the message unless it comes out of an idiot's mouth. If Sharron Angle says it, it must be true. If Christine O'Donnell feels it, it must be real.

From birth of a nation to death of a nation. And one hopes to birth again. But the place will look and sound a lot different then....