Friday Quick Hits: Conservatives Wave the White Flag Edition

• Atrios notes how the economy works now [1]: "inflation in the things we need, deflation in the things we want." It's a theme Ezra Klein [2] has written about, somewhere, I think, if I recall correctly, and also Daniel Brook in one of my favorite books from last year [3], Daniel Brook's The Trap. [4] The new iPhone's nifty. But what will that avail us at the point its price converges with that of a couple of tanks of gas?

• Chris Matthews: chicks can't be "palpably patriotic." [5]

• What Ailes us [6]: "According to Fox News, John McCain misled the voters about the nature of tonight's town hall meeting. While the event was billed by the McCain campaign as a town hall with independent and Democratic voters, Fox News noted at the end that the audience was made up of invited guests and supporters. " There's something fascinating, and heartening, about the fact that Roger Ailes can no longer get away with the technique Roger Ailes invented: fake "town hall meetings." [7]

• More encouraging NIXONLAND [8]-related progress for progressives: the American Spectator birthplace of Richard Mellon Scaife's "Arkansas Project" [9] to sabotage the the last Democratic president by framing him as close kin to hippie-demon Charlie Manson, throws in the white flag [10]: "The Weathermen have been reduced to college professors. The new drug epidemics are happening in the Great Plains, not college campuses. The Republicans, not the Democrats, own the latest war. With nothing for the Silent Majority to backlash against, the Left might finally win."

• Conservatives want us to believe government can't help, when the fact of the matter is that conservative government won't help. [11] Funny how that works...