From Muppets Studio — The Swedish Chef makes Popcorn Shrimp.  Be sure to pay very close attention to the captions.

What’s on your mind?

h/t Christy

This is the kind of nostalgia I can live without.  Via Politico today:

If President Barack Obama needed any more incentive to go all out for Democrats this fall, here it is: Republicans are planning a wave of committee investigations targeting the White House and Democratic allies if they win back the majority.

Everything from the microscopic — the New Black Panther party — to the massive –- think bailouts — is on the GOP to-do list, according to a half-dozen Republican aides interviewed by POLITICO. . . .

. . . And a handful of aggressive would-be committee chairmen — led by Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas) — are quietly gearing up for a possible season of subpoenas not seen since the Clinton wars of the late 1990s.

Issa would like Obama’s cooperation, says Kurt Bardella, spokesman for the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. But it’s not essential.

“How acrimonious things get really depend on how willing the administration is in accepting our findings [and] responding to our questions,” adds Bardella, who refers to his boss as “questioner-in-chief.’

Yes, my friends, that’s right — if their obstruct-and-blame game plan borrowed from 1993-94 repeats its success in giving Republicans control of the House of Representatives, the GOP will do its damnedest to relive the whole eight years of Bill Clinton’s presidency.  (No word yet if Obama will cooperate in the re-enactment by having a tawdry Oval Office affair, although he’s been remarkably obliging toward the Republican strategy so far.)

Not that anyone should be surprised, of course.  The Republicans only have a few tricks in their bag, and endless, puffed-up accusations of Democratic scandals have always been one of them.  And with a nominally Democratic president still in place in the White House no matter what happens in the midterm elections, it’s not like the GOP could entertain thoughts of passing a serious policy agenda, even assuming they had one.

Still, think about the media’s belly-exposing submissiveness toward the right wing in dealing with manufactured controversies like ACORN and Park 51.  Now imagine how much more airtime will be devoted to these nonsensical claims once they’re backed by House subcommittees with subpoena power, and the TV bobbleheads can gravely intone that Serious Republican Congressmen wouldn’t make such accusations unless they had some merit.  Sobering, isn’t it?

And even if relentless scandal-mongering won’t boost the public’s opinion of Republicans very much, it will accomplish the party’s underlying strategic goal — distracting Americans from issues that really matter, and convincing them further that government can’t accomplish anything useful.  (The Democrats, truth be told, are only good at the second part of that.)

Okay, see if you can spot the irony here.  Late last year, Blue Dogs and some freshman Democrats oppose a second stimulus bill, even as it becomes apparent that the first one was woefully inadequate:

“I think we have just got to get serious about the deficit,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the president of the class of freshman Democrats. “I would have to really be persuaded of a dire situation and one that’s getting worse, frankly, to have any enthusiasm for a second stimulus.”

Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.), a co-chairman of the 52-member Blue Dog Coalition, said he would have to hear a “very compelling” justification for further adding to the deficit, even for the sake of fostering more job growth.

“My constituents, I think, have had it with spending,” Hill said. “And I concur with their sentiments.”

And now this year’s midterm election is looking terrible for House Democrats because why?

Top Democrats are growing markedly more pessimistic about holding the House, privately conceding that the summertime economic and political recovery they were banking on will not likely materialize by Election Day.

In conversations with more than two dozen party insiders, most of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly about the state of play, Democrats in and out of Washington say they are increasingly alarmed about the economic and polling data they have seen in recent weeks.

They no longer believe the jobs and housing markets will recover — or that anything resembling the White House’s promise of a “recovery summer” is under way.

And which Democrats are going to pay the biggest price for voter dissatisfaction with the 9.5% unemployment and crappy economy?

The pattern is clear: Some of the most conservative members of the House Democratic caucus, those with vote scores that rank them in the high 100s or low 200s of the 256-member caucus, are in trouble.

(…)

Blue Dogs or other House Democrats who often vote with them are going to account for the vast majority of House Democratic losses this November, which is not a real shocker to anyone following the situation closely;

In other words, the Blue Dogs and their conservadem fellow travelers engineered their own downfall by putting their simplistic (and highly selective) “fiscal conservatism” ahead of the wellbeing of their constituents and the country as a whole.

It’s a pity they’re not self-aware enough to realize that opposing the public good can have adverse electoral consequences, because it’s something they really should keep in mind when it comes time to vote on the Catfood Commission’s recommendations to gut Social Security.  And Obama might want to think about it too, before he signs anything into law.

Simply put, the best way to survive a backlash election is to not invite one.