David Frum looks at the real risk takers in American business.

Pundits have the unenviable job of coming up with a new outrage every week, but even by pundit standards, last week’s imaginary outrage over Obama “spiking the football” about killing Osama bin Laden seemed a stretch.

Stretchiest of all was on Megan Kelly’s Fox show, where she assembled a panelist of Bush-era Republicans to make the point that one should not exploit national tragedies for political purposes. They were talking about 9-11, which was a national tragedy and should not have been exploited, although it was.

But the death of bin Laden was not a national tragedy. It was a national triumph, and people spike footballs every day when they triumph. Especially when the chief critic is on record saying he never would have called that play so deep in opposing territory. Did Romney agree with the top of the ticket back in 2008? Probably even Romney doesn’t know. Would Romney be criticizing Obama now if the Osama mission had failed? I think we all know the answer to that one.

But Obama was right before the election, and he was right to call for the raid, and it was a major reason why I voted for him. And I’m spiking my Nerf right now.

Earlier, I wrote a post about AP abandoning its opposition to “hopefully.” Then Ed Kemmick wrote a column about it for the Gazette (sorry, no link, I’m hoarding my Lee Enterprises hits). I started to write a blog post in response to Ed’s piece, but then the post transmogrified into an entire column.

I think I’m done now.

One thing I’ve noticed on those long Thursday delivery days is that Yellowstone Public Radio usually has at least one story that is more interesting all by itself than the sum total of everything on talk radio that day. Last week, it was a story about a study that found that hockey players wearing dark or colorful jerseys were more likely to get called for penalties than players in more subdued colors (sorry, when I’m bouncing in and out of the car 100 times a day to deliver papers, I miss crucial details, so I can’t tell you who made the study).

Various possible explanations were offered. One was that dark jerseys are more visible and offenses are more likely to be noted. Another was that because of our deep-seated human biases about colors (see Chapter 42 of “Moby-Dick,” which, as my brother likes to say, contains all secular knowledge) referees are more likely to call penalties on players in dark jerseys. Yet another is that because of our deep-seated human biases about colors (what, you haven’t read Chapter 42 yet?) players in dark jerseys are more aggressive and more likely to commit illegal acts.

This week the story was a feature on the growing popularity of hot sauce, which is now, apparently, a billion dollar a year industry. Again, various explanations were offered, but as a frequent consumer of spicy foods I was most drawn to the taste test, which included a sampling of Dave’s Insanity hot sauce.

As it happens, I once owned a bottle of Dave’s Insanity, a gift from my daughter. It claimed to be the hottest sauce on the planet, and I don’t doubt it, although I never tested the label’s claim that it also could be used to remove oil stains from driveways. I learned to eat it with great care, applied in tiny quantities with a toothpick, and became a bit addicted after a while.

But a little bit of Dave’s Insanity goes a long way, and eventually a white mold grew on the  surface of the sauce.  I didn’t eat any more after that, but I still kept the bottle in the refrigerator for several months, just out of sheer awe at the tenacity of a life form that, no matter how humble, could make a home in an environment that hostile.

One odd finding in the news report: A study (sorry, don’t know who) found that addiction to hot sauce is related to an interest in roller coasters and other safe but scary rides. Apparently, serious chili heads are thrill seekers. But I don’t fit that pattern. If I never ride another roller coaster in my life that will be fine with me, but I could go for a sip or two of Dave’s Insanity right now.

Hopes that Mike Huckabee will offer something fresh to the talk radio scene are diminishing rapidly. Last week he was pushing the same talking point that Limbaugh and Hannity also were flagging: comments by an unlucky EPA official that he was out to “crucify” oil companies. Taken in context, his remarks seemed unremarkable: He wasn’t talking about punishing innocent people; he was talking about coming down hard on violators to discourage others from breaking the law. You know, like the IRS does. But the hit job worked, and talk radio got its scalp.

This week, the talking point was that Obama had created a composite character in “Dreams from My Father,” his autobiographical book. Obama’s offense wasn’t creating the character, Huckabee pointed out, it was that he hadn’t disclosed what he had done. Except that he had.

As Kevin Drum noted, it took only about a minute’s worth of Googling to learn that Obama had openly revealed the techniques he used in the book. Huckabee, I suppose, didn’t have a minute. Sigh.

I wanted to say something about Mitt Romney’s ugly remark about Jimmy Carter, but James Fallows already said it.

While driving to the mailer Monday morning, I heard a few minutes of Aaron Flint saying that wind farms are causing global warming. Apparently, he was referring to this, weak though the comparison may be.

He did not seem to actually believe what he was saying, but that was OK because he also doesn’t believe in global warming caused by burning fossil fuels. Apparently, if you reject all science indiscriminately, then you are immune to criticism for rejecting science. It’s a strange new world.

For reasons no doubt related to the death of Levon Helm, this line has been running through my head for the last week: “Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see them.”

The Band did the definitive version of this song on “Cahoots,” but did not, of course, write the song. It was written by some guy they used to play with.

Sean Hannity launched into a long, strange rant against NBC News. His actual complaint was with MSNBC, but he kept calling it NBC, presumably because that name carries more weight. He also kept invoking the names of Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw, presumably because those names carry more weight than those of Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell.

Incredibly enough, Hannity’s basic complaint was that MSNBC wears its political ideology on its sleeve, that it slants the news to fit that ideology, and that it accepts without question biased reports from sources with which it agrees. In other words, he was attacking MSNBC for doing exactly what he does every day, four hours a day.

It makes a fellow wonder: What does Sean Hannity see when he looks in the mirror?

I should mention, by the way, that one commenter here used to frequently respond to my talk radio updates by saying that to be fair I should take on the TV cranks on MSNBC, too. My response always was that my talk radio commentary was a byproduct of delivering papers all day long on Thursday and that I didn’t watch enough MSNBC to have any particular opinion.

That was true enough at the time, but it really isn’t true anymore. For various reasons, I have watched quite a bit of MSNBC over the last couple of years, and I owe that commenter a full response, which I will get to by and by.

For now, just a couple of points:

1. Yes, I agree, Ed Schultz is just as obnoxious from the left as Hannity is from the right. It’s tough to take much of either.

2. I find Maddow and Chris Matthews likeable, Maddow because she is bright and spunky and Matthews because he is a jovial soul who really seems to care about, and know something about, political history. But I rarely have the energy, or interest, to watch either show all the way through. I find O’Donnell very strange.

3. During the daytime, MSNBC does a better job of reporting real news than Fox does, but the gap seems to be narrowing and may have closed altogether after 1 p.m. CNN is far and away the best choice for actual news.

4. None of the above applies to “Up,” MSNBC’s new weekend show with Chris Hayes. It comes on here at 6 a.m., so I miss a lot of it, but it really is worth setting the alarm for. Hayes is the one pundit who treats actual issues as if they mattered, delving deeply into things and discussing them at length with smart people from a variety of angles (this morning it was drone warfare and the Dream Act). You can try to compare what Hayes does to the talking point punditry you get everywhere else, but you really can’t. There is no comparison.

Here is the Outpost editor’s new Tea Party column, at slightly longer length and minutes before it appears in the actual paper:

A bad novelist likes nothing better than to bend the weather to suit artistic needs. A writer with a grudge against the Tea Party would happily have shivered through the April 13 rally on the Yellowstone County Courthouse lawn.

Advance materials for the rally said that the Tea Party and the conservative movement in general have been “blacklisted” by the media since the 2010 elections. That word drew my eye and also, apparently, the eyes of The Billings Gazette and Channel 2, who both had representatives at the rally.

But precious few others were there on a bone-chilling early spring afternoon. Perhaps two dozen people dotted the Courthouse lawn when the rally began. The number swelled to around 50 at the peak, then slowly diminished to a couple of dozen at the end, after most at the rally decided that weather trumped politics.

Many carried signs with messages such as “Stop waste,” “Bankrupting Our Kids Is Taxation Without Representation,” “It’s My Money, Not Yours” and “Keep Your Kool-Aid I Drink Tea.” A small child bore a sign saying “Keep Your Hands Out of My Piggy Bank.”

A handful of booths provided information. One was for Montana Shrugged, the Billings branch of the Tea Party, which claims some “5,000 patriots” and was named after a novel by Ayn Rand, the noted atheist who loved reason and hated government.

The Bozeman chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers-backed political group based in Virginia, also had a booth. The chapter is worried enough about the health of the movement that a recent headline on its web page read: “Is the Tea Party Movement Dead?” The article’s answer – “Heck, No” – wasn’t entirely reassuring.

But AFP’s Henry Kriegel said at the rally that he wasn’t worried.

“Our numbers are reduced,” he said. “That’s OK.” The Revolutionary War, he noted, was won with far less than total public support.

But the dearth of politicians cannot have been good news. I saw a sign for Ken Miller, a Republican running for governor, and a man in a Ken Miller T-shirt, but I identified only two actual politicians: Clayton Fiscus, a Billings businessman who is running for House District 46 in the Montana Legislature; and Kathy Haman of Columbus, who is running in HD60.

The John Birch Society had a booth, and the group’s field coordinator for Montana, Michael Boyle, was there in suit and windblown tie. After a burst of notoriety in the 1950s, the Birchers fell out of favor in the 1960s when the group’s founder, Robert W. Welch Jr., accused Dwight Eisenhower, one of the 20th century’s greatest Americans, of being a communist.

Mr. Boyle declined to give membership numbers for Montana, but the group seems to have made a comeback as the political winds have shifted its way in recent years.

Conspiracy theories, apparently, still thrive. Deg Hanson, who was manning the booth, said communists can be found at all levels of government, from local to the national, but he was unable to name any communists involved in local politics.

Mr. Hanson also blamed government for rising healthcare costs. I pointed out that all other major industrial nations offer some form of universal healthcare, yet we in the United States have by far the highest healthcare costs in the world.

“Do we?” he asked in a tone that sounded a little, well, conspiratorial.

The invocation that preceded the speakers included the first attack on the Federal Reserve I have ever heard in a prayer. In honor of my own Tea Party roots, I declined to join in the Pledge of Allegiance. My fundamentalist upbringing turned me against the Pledge when the words “under God” were added in 1954, which we viewed as a blasphemous attempt to enlist religion in a rote exercise aimed at promoting a secular cause.

In opening remarks, Montana Shrugged’s Eric Olsen acknowledged some decline in Tea Party ranks, blaming it in part on the distraction of social issues in recent months. The deficit, he said, remains the most important issue, but taxes seemed to weigh more heavily on his mind.

“I tell everybody to protest property taxes every year,” he said.

Obamacare was on the mind of Janice Linn, who attacked the Independent Payment Advisory Board, an agency created by the act to control Medicare costs, as a “death panel.” She warned that the future of healthcare in America could be similar to England and Canada, where, she said, the governments save money by “letting people die.”

“Don’t expect the Supreme Court to stop Obamacare,” she said, “because the people who are forcing it on us are lawless.”

As speaker after speaker droned on, none answered the questions I had: If not Obamacare, then what? Fifty million uninsured and the highest healthcare costs in the world, with the rest of us picking up the tab whenever a poor person goes to the emergency room?

And how do you balance cutting taxes with cutting the deficit? Just assume, as one speaker did, that tax cuts always increase revenues? And if we return to the Constitution as the founders envisioned, what do we do about slavery? And letting women vote? And the tricky 14th Amendment?

The day was getting no warmer, and neither were the answers to my questions. As Williston, N.D., radio host Bella Dangelo rambled on about something or other, I wandered over to the sidewalk, where a man in a tri-cornered hat was holding a sign saying “Honk for Freedom.”

Quite a few people did, as they sped by on North 27th Street. Whatever the popularity of the Tea Party, I suppose, there still is a constituency for freedom, as long as it doesn’t involve getting out of the car.