Here's this week's installment ~ is it not possible to disagree without lying and spewing disgust/hatred to [allegedly] make a point? ~ ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
The 10 Vilest Things Right-Wing Nutjobs Spewed This Week: Equality Sucks Edition
Surprise, surprise, a one percenter thinks we are not all created equal.

February 1, 2014 | 1. Investor Peter Schiff: 'We are not all created equal. I am worth way more than you.'

The Daily Show’s Samantha Bee decided to dig deeper into this whole minimum wage debate this week, and boy, did she land a doozy of an interview with spokesman for the investor Peter Schiff, new poster boy for the 1%. From start to finish, Schiff was totally and utterly vile. He admitted he never personally goes to fast-food joints, but somehow claimed to know that the people who work in them “don’t seem desperate. They’re young kids having fun.” (Cut to Bee interviewing two workers, one supporting five siblings; the other a 48-year-old man with a bachelor’s degree.)

An unabashed lover of the free-market economy in favor of abolishing the minimum wage altogether, Schiff also asserted that, “people don’t go hungry in a capitalist economy.” Tell that to the folks having their food stamps cut. He concluded by suggesting there are people you could pay $2 an hour, like the "mentally retarded." As the Founding Fathers said, he concluded, “we are not all equal,” and “you’re worth what you’re worth.”

Later in the week, he complained about how Bee distorted what he said. So he clarified it. What he meant was that “intellectually disabled” people could be paid $2 an hour. He stands by the rest.

2. Tea Partier Mike Lee defines inequality as giving gay people equal rights.

Okay, okay. That’s not quite fair. Senator Lee (R-UT), in his Tea Party response to the State of the Union address, said that many things are inequality. It’s just that none of the things he defined as inequality actually have a discernible thing to do with inequality. Here is a brief list of what Mike Lee defines as inequality:

• Trapping poor children in failing schools to benefit bureaucrats and union bosses.
• Penalizing low-income parents for getting married, or getting better jobs.
• Guaranteeing insurance companies taxpayer bailouts if Obamacare cuts into their profits.
• Blocking thousands of middle-class jobs in the energy industry as a favor to partisan donors and radical environmental activists.
• Denying viable, unborn children any protection under the law, while exempting unsanitary, late-term abortion clinics from basic safety standards.
• Denying citizens their right to define marriage in their states as traditionally or as broadly as their diverse values dictate. (Translation, not allowing people to deny gay people equal rights.)
• Obamacare.

In other words, inequality to Mike Lee is synonymous with all things Republicans do not like.

We can’t wait to see what he does with the rest of the words in the dictionary.

3. Well-known African-American expert Bill O’Reilly knows what’s wrong with black people.

Bill O’Reilly has taken the very original right-wing stance that black people are to blame for their own poverty. It’s because of their culture, he said recently (possibly for the umpteenth time). He talked about out-of-wedlock births, saying he was sick of talking about it, despite the fact that he talks about it all the time. He said that in black precincts, there is “chaos in the streets, in the schools and in the homes.” Black precincts? Are we in apartheid-era South Africa? Why, oh why, asks O’Reilly, won’t Obama give these black folks a talking to?

Despite Obama’s extremely high approval rating among African Americans (85 percent), O’Reilly did find two black guys who were critical of Obama. So, that tells you something. Two is a trend.

Why is it that black people are still struggling with a substantially lower median household income than white people? O’Reilly wonders. Because of their culture, he says. Also, Obama.

Watch O’Reilly explain black poverty, via Media Matters.

4. Senator Jeff Sessions: 'Pot is dangerous, Lady Gaga says so.'

President Obama upset a lot of people when he made the rather mild statement in the New Yorker recently about pot probably not being any more dangerous than booze. Some people have an awful lot invested in perpetuating reefer madness paranoia about cannabis. One of them is Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who chastised Attorney General Eric Holder during a judiciary committee for the administration’s softening stance on legalization.

"Lady Gaga says she's addicted to it and it's not harmless, she's been addicted to it," Sessions sputtered, "I just hope you will talk to the president—you're close to him—and pull back from this position which I think is going to be adverse to the health of America."

Sessions’ air-tight scientific expert, Ms. Gaga, told the Z100 Morning Show that she was smoking 15 to 20 marijuana cigarettes a day at one point and that she used it as a way of self-medicating her anxiety.

We suspect that might be the sum total of Jeff Sessions’ familiarity with the fashion-forward pop-star’s oeuvre. Fortunately, Lady Gaga was able to calm down and kick the extremely dangerous habit-forming drug, freeing her up to wear meat dresses.

5. Kirk Cameron: 'Those Grammy weddings were an assault on the traditional family.'

The fact that the mass weddings at the Grammys included same-sex weddings was a personal affront to the actor Kirk Cameron. Why? No one knows. Oh yeah, he’s a homophobe.

“How did you like the Grammy's [sic] all out assault on the traditional family?” he posted on Facebook. He went on to promote his new movie (which we’re not going to promote). “Last night, the lines were drawn thick and dark. Now more than ever, we must work together to create the world we want for our children,” he huffed and puffed. His new movie will strengthen families, he claimed.

He joined other forward-thinking individuals, and conservatives who took to Twitter, freaking out over the same-sex marriages taking place on live primetime television.

"Heads up: Grammy telecast to feature sodomy-based wedding ceremonies," Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association, wrote.

"I've never seen such a display of intolerance, bigotry and hatred. #Grammys #antichristian," Fox News' Todd Starnes tweeted.

Display of intolerance, indeed.

6. ​John Pisciotta: 'Boycott Girl Scout cookies because the organization has been taken over by left-wingers who want to empower women.'

It’s almost like they are begging to be ridiculed, these right-wingers. Here they are again, targeting cookies. The cookies that those sweet little communist-sympathizing girls in their Maoist uniforms try to sell you, invading your homes, spreading their message of female empowerment and lesbianism.

You’re probably asking yourself, who the hell is John Pisciotta? No one, really. He’s the head of Pro-Life Waco (yes, you heard that right), and as you might suspect, he does not like Texas lawmaker Wendy Davis. The Girl Scouts do kind of like and admire Wendy Davis, for her brave fight against the anti-woman forces of evil and Gov. Rick Perry, who are trying to take away a woman’s right to choose when to have a baby in that state. So the Girl Scouts’ website linked to an article nominating Wendy Davis as woman of the year. When Pisciotta saw that, he did what any reasonable pro-lifer would do: he called for a boycott of Thin Mints.

Megyn Kelly elevated this joker to national status by actually convening a panel to discuss this important issue of who you buy your cookies from. Mr. Pisciotta used his few moments of fame to great effect: “The Girl Scouts were once a truly amazing organization, but it has been taken over by ideologues of the left, and regular folks just will not stand for it,” Pisciotta said.

Not only do they try to empower girls, the radical left-wing cookie sellers have also advocated for the rights of transgender members. They’re very, very dangerous. Lock all the doors and don’t answer the doorbell.

7. Ryan Zinke: 'Hillary Clinton is the Antichrist.'

Well, at least Republican State Senator Ryan Zinke does not have a problem with exaggeration. The former Navy SEAL, who is now running for Congress in Montana, said during a campaign stop this week he is worried the country is losing sight of the real threat to the nation: Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps he got spooked when he saw the bizarre recent New York Times magazine cover of Clinton in which her face is portrayed as a planet. “We need to focus on the real enemy,” Zinke said on Monday, referring to Clinton, according to the local paper, the Bigfork Eagle. Then he called the former Secretary of State, the "Antichrist."

Zinke said he wants to restore truth, grace, honor and decency, which he called “our moral compass. It’s always been Judeo-Christian,” he said. With the present administration, “It’s whatever you can get away with.”

Oh the Antichrist, that devious shapeshifter.

8. Phyllis Schlafly: 'Many Americans are moving out of marriage equality states in protest.'

Americans are voting with their feet again, according to Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, who has been able to detect a massive exodus away from states that allow same-sex marriage. Why, you may wonder, has this trend not been reported elsewhere? Must be one of those vast left-wing media conspiracies. All they cover is the fact that same-sex couples are in some cases moving to states where they can have their marriages legally recognized. They are so biased.

A recent ruling in New Jersey set Schlafly off on her radio show:


There you have it. The latest trend. Straight flight.

(h/t: rightwingwatch)

9. Rand Paul to single mothers: 'Enough’s enough.'

Libertarian nutjob Rand Paul thinks single mothers need a good, stern talking to. At a luncheon in Lexington, KY recently, he suggested that, “Maybe we have to say ‘enough’s enough, you shouldn’t be having kids after a certain amount,’” to single mothers who receive government assistance.

Normally Paul likes kids—he comes from a big family—and he certainly wouldn’t want to give poor women access to birth control or abortions because fetuses are people who deserve full personhood and constitutional rights. But once they are actual children, well, that’s where the government’s responsibility ends. Because, enough’s enough. Paul also wants to abolish the Department of Education, which would eliminate funding for programs that support low-income families, Pell Grants, Head Start, you know, all those free rides. So depriving those kids of poor single mothers access to education is a great way to get the message across. Enough’s enough, he said.

Also Paul certainly does not support laws that address the gender pay gap because he’s a great believer that “the market determines” what wages should be. So, women, stop being so greedy. Uncle Rand says enough’s enough.

10. Illinois bishop: 'Discipline gay people like children.'

When holding a massive exorcism proved ineffective in ridding his state of marriage equality, Illinois Bishop Thomas Paprocki had to go to plan B. Gay couples need to be severely “disciplined” for participating in the “redefinition of marriage,” he suggested to his flock this week.

Disciplining gay people for getting married would actually be a very loving thing, according to the incredibly twisted bishop. It would be like what parents do to their children, when they teach them there is a right way to do things and a wrong way.

Similarly, gay people could be disciplined into learning there is a right way to love and a wrong way. Maybe they could be grounded or something. Or have their allowances docked.

That’ll learn ‘em.

http://www.alternet.org/10-vilest-things-right-wing-nutjobs-spewed-week-equality-sucks-edition?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

singapore is routinely held up as a model of free market capitalism. nearly 10% of the population lives below the poverty line:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featur ... 69442.html

Here's another week of "assorted absurdities" ~ what is most terrifying to me is that "some" [too many!] people believe this crap ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
10 Right-Wing Psychopaths' Vitriol this Week—That Somehow Made Pat Robertson Look Reasonable
700 Club host begs creationist Ken Ham to shut up already.

February 8, 2014 | 1. Pat Robertson: Voice of reason?

Truly, we must have entered the end times. The day after creationist Ken Ham denied reality for several hours in a “debate” with Bill Nye about evolution and the age of the earth, Pat Robertson implored Ham to shut-up, because he’s making fundamentalist Christians look stupid. It appears that Pat Robertson has allowed his brain to be corrupted by a little bit of science. Now his head might explode.

There is just no way the earth could be 6,000 years old as Ham and the Young Earth Creationists hold, Robertson said. “There ain’t no way that’s possible. . . To say that it all came about in 6,000 years is just nonsense and I think it’s time we come off of that stuff and say this isn’t possible.” He later referred to geological formations, a very science sounding term not found in the Bible, and begged Ham not to “make a joke of ourselves.”

Lest you think the world has gone mad, Robertson still said evolution is wrong.

Whew!

See more here.

2. Victoria Jackson, insane former SNL-er running for Congress.

Oh, joy. A sober and thoughtful candidate is running for Congress in Tennessee. That would be Victoria Jackson, who has run away with the prize of SNL alum who turned out to be the most flat-out bonkers of all SNL alums. And that is a distinction. Other competitors include Dennis Miller, who turned out to be a right-wing a*hole, and Jon Lovitz who loudly scoffed at Obama’s plan to tax the rich, and asked who declared him “king.”

But Jackson, who first gained fame for reciting poetry upside down on SNL, and has since become a noted Tea Party activist, has now, praise the lord, declared her candidacy for Congress in the state to which she fled from liberal New York City. Among her platforms: Islamaphobia—well she doesn’t call it that, she merely says all “Islamic Centers are ultimately terrorist training camps;” hating liberals—because they embrace Shariah law and wife beheadings; climate denialism, and a general antipathy towards cities, because . . . umm, they concentrate people, and that saves energy.

Toonces the Cat, her former co-star, is said to be on board as campaign manager.

3. Ben Shapiro: Liberalism killed Philip Seymour Hoffman.

The terrible disease of addiction and a potentially lethal batch of heroin emerged as the leading theories of what killed actor Philip Seymour Hoffman last weekend.

But there is something far more insidious going on, as it turns out. And thank goodness conservative thought leader Ben Shapiro shared his deep thoughts on the tragedy, by helpfully pointing the blame where it really belongs. It’s those damn liberals again. They’re killing everybody.

“…his self-inflicted death is yet another hallmark of the broken leftist culture that dominates Hollywood, enabling rather than preventing the loss of some of its greatest talents,” Shapiro wrote in the National Review.

The math, or the logic, goes something like this. Hoffman was a liberal. He died of a drug overdose. Therefore, liberalism causes drug abuse and death. Liberalism quickly devolves into “libertinism” and a “penchant for sin,” Shapiro argued. No one in Hollywood has any spirituality, principles or standards.

Except maybe the scientologists. We’re not sure where they fit in with Shapiro’s cosmology.

4. Michele Bachmann: Stop the tide of immigrants who are not conservative Republicans.

Newsflash: Michele Bachmann is saying some crazy shit again. This time she claimed that the Soviet Union (earth to Michele, the Soviet Union is no more) is stealing our innermost secrets via Obamacare, because “Belarus may have one of the subcontracting contracts to build the Obamacare website,” she said in an interview on KTTH. They may or they may not, but anyway, be worried.

Also, she has special insight into why immigrants don’t like Republicans. It’s because Republicans love patriotism and the Constitution—and immigrants don’t. So, it has nothing to do with Republicans wanting to, say, build fences along the border with Mexico, patrol with drones, arm border patrol officers to the hilt, say things like immigrants have “cantaloupe calves” because they’re all actually drug mules, or advocate mass detainment and deportations. Nope, Republican racism has nothing to do with it.

And speaking of racism, she cited some interesting statistics—and by cited we mean she just said them. “If you look at Hispanics today, 77 percent respond that they believe in big government and like big government. Fifty-five percent of Asians say they believe in big government, they like big government.”

They love it. Especially when it detains and deports them without cause and builds huge walls along the border.

5. Richard Cohen lectures Justin Bieber about pot, because it was cool when Richard Cohen smoked it, but not anymore.

We’re sure we can all agree that columnist Richard Cohen is the arbiter of cool. That’s right, the guy who wrote that the Mayor of New York’s mixed-race family made people throw up is just the heppest of all cats. So when he pronounced both Justin Bieber and the singer’s raging pot habit “uncool” this week, well, the shockwaves in the stoner community were palpable.

To support this claim, Cohen cited an article in the New York Review of Books by Harvard Medical School’s Jerome Groopman. This is because Richard Cohen is super smart and reads long articles like that. Of course, he also distorts them. Cohen warns against the dreaded “cannabis use disorder” which “can be particularly pernicious when it comes to young people. It has a big effect on their little brains.” This dreaded disorder is listed in the new fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), so it must be terrible. Other things listed in the DSM-5 include “caffeine intoxication” (“Restlessness, nervousness, excitement, red face, gastrointestinal upset, muscle twitching, rambling speech, sleeplessness, rapid and irregular heartbeat”) and “caffeine withdrawal” (“headache, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, depressed mood and other issues”).

In other words, the DSM contains a lot of conditions.

Now Richard Cohen admits that he smoked pot as a youth (and somehow avoided “cannabis youth disorder.” But when Cohen smoked weed, it was different.

“I was of the generation for which it was a rite of passage, apiece with sexual freedom and, much more importantly, civil rights and the anti-war movement. Old fogies warned about pot, J. Edgar Hoover hated it and Richard Nixon made war against it — three good reasons right there to have a toke,” he wrote. No irony detected.

No old fogies around here. Least of all Richard Cohen.

6. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong blames sick babies of two employees for cuts to 401K plan.

AOL head honcho Tim Armstrong loves conference calls. Last year, he famously fired someone on a conference call. In a more recent conference call, he announced to everyone that two sick babies had driven up healthcare costs and so the company would no longer be able to contribute matching funds to 401K plans. Don’t blame me, the inference was, blame those new moms.

“We had two AOL-ers that had distressed babies that were born that we paid a million dollars each to make sure those babies were OK in general,” Armstrong said on a conference call that was first reported by Capital New York. “And those are the things that add up into our benefits cost. So when we had the final decision about what benefits to cut because of the increased healthcare costs, we made the decision, and I made the decision, to basically change the 401(k) plan.”

Beyond being remarkably divisive and insensitive, it’s a dubious claim according to health care experts ThinkProgress contacted. A large self-insured company with more than 5,000 employees can easily absorb the additional health care costs associated with problematic pregnancies, because large employers typically buy reinsurance to cover large claims.

Obamacare, the catch-all scapegoat, is also to blame even though this happened before Obamacare. But never mind.

And don’t worry about Armstrong’s $12.1 million compensation. That’s safe. We’re sure he’ll let us know, probably in a conference call, if he decides his salary needs any trimming.

Full story.

And here.

7. Bryan Fischer wants homosexuality outlawed because of his deep love for black males.

Bryan Fischer honored National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, this week on his radio program. His conclusion, after reading from a CDC fact sheet that "blacks make up only 12% of the U.S. population but had nearly half (44%) of all new HIV infections in the United States in 2010," is that homosexuality must be outlawed.

If you think differently, you are the hater, not him. Or, as he ranted,

“You have no compassion in your black heart for black males because they're being decimated by HIV/AIDS ... So why am I opposed to the normalization of homosexual behavior? Because I love black males. I want black males to live long, prosperous, healthy, disease-free lives."

Feel the love black males? (Not you gay ones, the other ones.)

8. Fox Guest MeMe Roth fat-shames the idea of a plus-size Disney princess.

First we should probably introduce the relatively unknown MeMe Roth, who is trying to make a career out of fat-shaming anyone over about size 5 with her website National Action Against Obesity website and personal blog which carries the tag-line “MeMe Roth: Reporting From FATOPOLIS.” In the past, she has compared obese people to sex criminals and advocated for nutrition plans that resemble anorexia. And she has done so despite not appearing to have any degrees or training that would lend her an iota credibility on nutritional topics.

Just the sort of dubiously-qualified, opinionated loudmouth Fox News loves to give a platform. This week, Roth was invited to discuss a petition asking Disney to have a plus-size princess, one that might make little girls who don’t conform to Disney princess, or Barbie body standards, feel better about themselves and more included.

This would be a disaster of epic proportions, Roth told Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Such a Disney princess would “glorify obesity.” She is pretty sure the petition comes from fat people, who are diabolically plotting to make us all fat. “If you’re going to do a storyline with obesity, then you need to do Princess Diabetes, Princess Cancer, Princess Fertility Problems,” she spewed.

OK, now we are going to go throw up.

9. Republican official says Satan’s gays should be purged from GOP.

Another day, another enlightened person seeking to pick up the mantle of the GOP. This time, it’s a new candidate for a Michigan seat on the Republican National Committee. Her name is Mary Helen Sears and she has a modest proposal: that gays "purge" from the GOP because homosexuality is a "perversion" created by Satan himself.

In a post on a Schoolcraft County Republican website last April, Sears laid out her view that homosexuals prey on children, and "Satan uses homosexuality to attack the living space of the Holy Spirit." Republicans "as a party should be purging this perversion and send them to a party with a much bigger tent."

Some of her other views include the fear that Communist college professors are indoctrinating young people, and Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory "gave rise to Hitler’s Third Reich, Mussolini’s Italy and Stalin’s Russia."

So, calm, cool and intellectually collected. Just the sort of leadership needed for the new more inclusive GOP.

Satan will just have to switch parties.

10. Restaurateur brags about refusing to serve “freaks,” and “f****ts,” also Muslims, blacks and people with metal in their face.

Ms. Sears (above) would probably feel right at home at an Oklahoma restaurant where the owner says he doesn't want to serve gay people.

According to the Huffington Post:


Other things James really does not like: people who wear hats inside, “girlie men,” “men with all kinds of metal in their face.” Wait, so are braces out? We should also throw in the fact that James hates blacks, Muslims, and Democrats.

Sadly, while those latter groups are legally protected from discrimination, refusing to serve a gay customer appears to be legal in Oklahoma.

To the patrons of Gary’s Chicaros Club: Side of hate sauce with that taco?

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/10-right-wing-psychopaths-vitriol-week-somehow-made-pat-robertson-look?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Many times these make me laugh. There are other times when they fill me with despair. When that happens, I must remember that for most of this crap, it's just ONE raving lunatic spewing their ignorance and hate. Sigh.

Another week of "... assorted absurdities" ~ I wonder if GOP/TPers' imaginations just always work at warp speed or if this is a "special talent" they hone ~ ~ FTR, the author got her numbering confused; I counted 8 [not 7] "deranged comments", so I corrected the title ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
7 8 Deranged Comments from America's Far-Right This Week—Ted Cruz's Achy Breaky Heart Edition
Plus, Tom Perkins thinks more wealth should mean more votes.

February 15, 2014 | 1. Ted Cruz’s ‘heart weeps’ because of marriage equality gains.

Our favorite nut-job senator from Texas was holding forth again this week, and our ears were hurting. Texas Senator Ted Cruz explained to Family Research Council president Tony Perkins how his proposed State Marriage Defense Act would, “make it more difficult for married same-sex couples to receive legal recognition.”

Thanks, Ted. We were worried about that.

But the crusading lawmaker didn’t stop there. He explained how the Obama administration’s support for gay equality was “an abuse of power and lawlessness.”

“Our heart weeps for the damage to traditional marriage that has been done,” Cruz sobbed. Or at least his heart did. “Marriage is under attack,” he warned. “There will be pushback from the country when people see the consequences of this redefinition of marriage.” Curiously, he did not elaborate on these dire consequences. An oversight, we’re sure.

Anyway, we’re confident Senator Ted will save us. As soon as his heart stops weeping, that is. Messy business. We know a good cardiologist if he needs one.

See more here.

2. WSJ’s James Taranto says intoxicated young women are equally to blame for their own rapes.

James Taranto graced readers with another glimpse into his “war on men” theory in a column Monday, which promised “a balanced look at college sex offenses.” Taranto is very concerned that young men are mostly being blamed when they have sex without a young woman’s consent, in other words, rape, them. He thinks that when both parties are drinking, the young women who are assaulted are equally to blame. “If both parties are intoxicated during sex, they are both technically guilty of sexually assaulting each other," he argues.

Girls drinking too much, and dressing too provocatively are the problem, all right.

“What is called the problem of "sexual assault" on campus is in large part a problem of reckless alcohol consumption, by men and women alike. (Based on our reporting, the same is true in the military, at least in the enlisted and company-grade officer ranks.)

So, wait, does that include gang bangs and the use of roofies too? Maybe so in Taranto’s deranged world, where, wait, a woman could be charged with sexual assault for having sex without her own consent.

Maybe we should consult Bill Cosby on this question.

3. Tom Perkins: Wealthy Americans should get more votes.

Visionary one percenter, Tom Perkins, who sees Nazis when he sees Progressives, and increasing taxes on the rich as a totalitarian takeover of democracy, piped up again this week. This deep thinking venture capitalist suggested that only taxpayers should have the right to vote at all, and wealthy Americans who pay more taxes should get more votes, especially guys like himself.

"The Tom Perkins system is: You don't get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes," Perkins said, at a Fortune magazine forum. "But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How's that?"

When the audience guffawed—he had to be kidding, right?—he stuck to his guns. It makes total sense to him. Democracy should be just like a corporation.

Yeah. One man, one vote. That’s so yesterday.

4. Clarence Thomas: Funny, race never even came up in the 60s.

It’s always comforting when a lifetime member of the highest court in the land says something that leaves your jaw hanging agape.

Justice Clarence Thomas does not make a lot of public statements, but when he does, well, it makes you realize why he does not make a lot of public statements.

Thomas recently told a bunch of college students that race relations in America were better when he was a kid in the 1960s. Yes, he did. He said that.

“My sadness is that we are probably today more race- and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school. To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Georgia, to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up.”

Hmmm. Perhaps the subject of race did not come up because you could be lynched for bringing it up. Let’s see, it was the height of the Civil Rights Movement when Thomas was a kid. Segregation was pretty much the norm, throughout the south, and parts of the north—certainly in Georgia. and African-Americans who protested racial injustice put themselves in grave danger. But little Clarence Thomas was a happy little camper.

The real problem, Thomas continued, is that everyone is just too dang sensitive these days.

“If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah,” he said. “Every person in this room has endured a slight. Every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them — left them out.”

Yeupp, that’s all institutional racism is, Clarence. Just a bunch of black people getting their feelings hurt.

5. Anne Coulter: Obama acts like he’s from Kenya, weed is like ‘retard’ pill.

Vitriol-spewing conservative author Ann Coulter offered up a twofer this week. First, she argued: Obama may not be a brain-washed, foreign born agent of destruction like some latter-day “Manchurian candidate,” but he may as well be. “Let’s just think for a thought experiment for a moment,” she said Monday on the Howie Carr radio show. “If Obama were born in another country, had no love for this country, and had set out to destroy America, what would he be doing differently?”

Think about it. America’s enemies, even now, plotting to impose healthcare on all of us. Terrifying! Thanks, Ann.

Next topic: that old devil weed, systematically reducing the IQ of millions of Americans by up to 8 points, Carr claimed a study said.

“And a hundred points off your initiative and ambition,” Coulter chimed in. “It is as if they have legalized retard pills.”

She has such a lovely way with words.

h/t: Rawstory

6. Laura Ingraham: Obama treats the Constitution like an abusive spouse.

Not to be outdone by the previous blonde blowhard—yep, we’re talking to you Ann—Laura Ingraham dished out her own colorful metaphors this week: Obama is to America as an abusive spouse is to his victim. Kids, listen up, this analogy may turn up on your SAT test.

You have to follow some pretty twisted logic to understand this, but we’ll try. Ingraham, as most will remember, does not like immigrants, especially Latino ones. She recently questioned the patriotism of Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, and has said Mexicans are “jingoists” out to destroy the English language.

So, she really does not like how this Obama fellow is pushing for immigration reform, and she does not even believe the fact that he has deported two million undocumented aliens for minor crimes, because that would make her like him, causing a severe case of cognitive dissonance.

So imagine her horror that someone like Rep. Paul Ryan is voicing his support for possibly, eventually, granting legal status to undocumented immigrants. And she does not give a hoot about all the “enforcement mechanisms” Ryan is promising will be in any immigration reform bill he votes for.

Ready, here comes the domestic abuse analogy.

“It’s like spousal abuse!” Ingraham fumed, referring to Ryan and other Republicans’ willingness to trust that Obama will enforce the laws. “It’s not going to be different. They are abusers! The administration, led by Barack Obama, are abusers of our Constitution. And just when you think that maybe they’re going to see that [Obamacare] isn’t working, this is hurting our health care system, they abuse the Constitution once again.”

If this all seems really confusing, perhaps this will help.

7. Rush Limbaugh’s absurd rant about Michael Sam: Heterosexuals are under attack!

Sputtering right-wing fool Rush Limbaugh was very confused this week. He knew he had to say something about this whole horrifying business of Michael Sam coming out as the first openly gay player projected to play in the NFL. Rush knew he had to protect heterosexuality from this terrible threat. “Heterosexuality has no political agenda and there is no agenda attached to it,” he helpfully pointed out. “Heterosexuality does not have activists.. . . [Heterosexuals] may be 95, 98 percent of the population — they’re under assault by the 2-5 percent that are homosexual.”

Under assault, do you hear him?

Rush has so many questions about this, his head is spinning, and green venom is spewing forth. “Why is it OK now for a gay man to play football? I thought it was dangerous and leads to concussions, that it was barbaric . . . Why is it heroic for a gay man to play football?”

Yeah. Wait. Huh?

Well, it turned out that Rush was just playing with us. He knows the answers. It’s because the media wants a gay football player to succeed.

File it under the vast left-wing-gay-mafia-liberal-throw-in-Jewish-and-other-minority-groups-conspiracy.

8. Colorado Sen. Bernie Herpin: It was a “good thing” the Aurora movie theater shooter had a 100-round magazine.

It might be useful to remember that this gun-nut was elected to replace a legislator who voted for gun control in Colorado after the Aurora shooting. So, we knew where he stood. We just did not know that he was standing on another planet, altogether.

“Perhaps, James Holmes would not have been able to purchase a 100-round magazine,” he said this week. “As it turned out, that was maybe a good thing that he had a 100-round magazine, because it jammed. If he had four, five, six 15-round magazines, there’s no telling how much damage he could have done until a good guy with a gun showed up.”

Yes, it was a good thing he had so much firepower, because the more the firepower, the more chance of the gun jamming? Right? And so, we should supply all of our mass murderers with these, then there is just that much better of a chance that the good guys with the guns will show up before hundreds of people are slaughtered.

Unsurprisingly, victims’ families were not cheered by Herpin’s totally unhinged theory.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/7-deranged-comments-americas-far-right-week-ted-cruzs-achy-breaky-heart-edition?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Heterosexuality does not have activists.. . . [Heterosexuals] may be 95, 98 percent of the population — they’re under assault by the 2-5 percent that are homosexual

Huh? In one breath he's condemning gays playing football and in the next says heterosexuals have no activists with a political agenda. What the hell does he think opposing gays playing football is? I suppose he's never heard of DOMA, don't ask/don't tell or even Ted Cruz's State Marriage Defense Act? The supporters of those misguided efforts are definitely activists with a political agenda.

I'm not sure if Steven Rosenfeld is the new author of this recurring weekly column or if Janet Allon is on vacation [or whatever] ~ Rosenfeld is not quite as snarky as Allon, but he does get his point made ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Steven Rosenfeld
6 Signs of Psychosis From GOP Fringe This Week
The party of bullies, bigots and blowhards prays for a new Jim Crow.

February 22, 2014 | Last week was filled with more idiotic outbursts from right-wingers, except some of them went beyond infantile rants and raves to posing real-life harm. As is often the case on the fringe these days, the tone was set by the biggest bigot from the biggest state, Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz.

1. Ted Cruz: Pray for discrimination.

What is Texas’s Tea Party senator seeking now? This week Cruz called on supporters to “simply pray” that LGBT Americans did not get equal legal rights because same-sex marriage was “heartbreaking.” Yes, pray for a new Jim Crow.

In an interview with conservative radio host Janet Mefferd, Cruz started by saying that he introduced the “State Marriage Defense Act” to undo the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down parts of the federal government’s ban on marriage equality. He accused liberal groups of using “brute power” to wage an assault and “subvert our democratic system.” Then the Harvard Law School graduate, who forgets that an elite Republican lawyer argued for expanding gay rights before the court, issued his hateful hope.

Cruz said that gay marriage threatened liberty and he urged people to pray to God that gays and lesbians don’t get equal marriage rights. “I think the most important thing your listeners can do is simply pray, because we need a great deal of prayer,” he said. “Because marriage is really, really being undermined by a concerted effort. And it’s causing significant harm.”

When right-wingers like Cruz pray for discrimination, a curious thing happens. God doesn’t RSVP ASAP. But other right-wingers do.

2. Answering Ted’s hateful prayers, exhibit A.

A day after Cruz prayed for discriminatory divine intervention, the heavens—or rather the AM broadcasting spectrum—replied. Wrath-filled right-wing radio host Mark Levin didn’t like a libertarian caller’s opinion that LBGT Americans deserved equal legal rights and he disagreed that evangelizing moralists should stay out of people’s sex lives.

What about women in polygamist marriages, Levin replied, saying they don’t have equal legal rights. (Umm, polygamy is illegal in most states.) Then Levin, ever the AM loudmouth, unleashed a torrent about needed moral lines. “I’ll give you an example to be as clear as I can,” he said. “What if an individual decides to have sex with a close relative? And what if it’s both agreed to, they both agree to it?”

Ted Cruz prays for discrimination and Mark Levin answers by saying gay marriage is like father-daugher incest. Levin doesn’t need a microphone, he needs a psychiatrist.

3. Answering Cruz: Exhibit B, the other Ted.

Not to be upstaged, another foul-mouthed Ted—dinosaur rocker Ted Nugent—sprang up on the Texas campaign trail on Tuesday and spewed more predictable right-wing filth to boost Republican Attorney General Gregg Abbott’s bid for governor. The Detroit-born Ted answered Texas Ted’s prayer for discrimination by calling President Obama a "subhuman mongrel,” among other things. It wasn’t the first time he’s said it. However, this time the national media took note.

Abbott replied with the political equivalent of a shrug and a sly smile. Democrats quickly pointed out that the messenger was a mess, a known sexual predator for underage girls. Anyone who has followed Abbott’s antics as AG could hardly be surprised. This is the lawman who sent Texas Rangers to arrest Latino grandmothers—one while taking a shower—for registering voters, marching past local drug dealers and crack houses.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer had the right take, noting on-air that Nugent’s hate speech was almost identical to one of the slurs used by Nazis against Jews. That point—and sense of history, of how hate speech can incite real racial violence—was lost on Nugent, who abruptly canceled his appearance on CNN afterward. Nugent, another right-wing crybaby who is afraid to stand by his words in unfriendly forums, turned to Twitter and lashed out, comparing CNN and Blitzer to the Nazi’s propaganda wing.

Then Sarah Palin chimed in, endorsing Abbott on Facebook. “If he is good enough for Ted Nugent, he is good enough for me!”

On Friday, Nugent half apologized. Gregg Abbott hasn’t said a thing. And Sarah? Well, that uppity Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann bounced her out of the spotlight, saying Hillary Clinton would never be president because there isn’t a “pent-up desire for a woman president.” She added, “There was a cachet about having an African-American president because of guilt. People don’t hold guilt for a woman.”

Yup, the country wasn’t ready for Bachmann when she ran for president in 2012, and that’s why Obama was reelected twice—tidal waves of electoral guilt.

4. More rock-ribbed Republicans with thin skins.

Too bad we can’t give Texas back to Mexico. There’s more poisonous political behavior from the Lone Star state. (That’s one star on a scale of one to five.) What is in the water that creates deluded self-appointed patriots who can dish it out but can’t take it?

Orange County, Texas, population 81,837, lies in the state’s swampy southeastern corner. This week, Jerry Wilson, age 70, a candidate for county GOP chairman, showed us that the GOP is the party of angry white men. On Tuesday, he became enraged when he saw a volunteer from another campaign removing his signs and replacing them with one calling him a RINO, which means Republicans In Name Only. RawStory.com reports what happened next:


Wilson was arrested on a misdemeanor assault charge for his senior moment and released on a $1,000 bail.

5. Bitten by one’s own words.

Speaking of guilt, another leading Republican who looks in the mirror and sees a saint is watching his presidential prospects crumble. Like his fellow Republican bully colleague, New Jersey’s Gov. Chris Christie, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has been trapped by his own lies. An email trove released this week in the midst of an independent prosecutor’s political corruption inquiry confirmed that Walker was running parts of his campaign for governor out of the Milwaukee County executive’s office, his prior job. That’s a big no-no under state election law that bars electioneering from public offices.

But the trove revealed something far more interesting than these election law denials. Emails revealed how Walker and his staff were bullies and creeps with capital Bs and Cs. Like New Jersey’s Christie, Walker’s top aides took glee in bullying and mocking. The man-who-would-be-Wisconsin-governor burnished his uptight white guy credentials by firing a county-employed female doctor who modeled thongs on the side. His ex-deputy chief of staff replied to an email comparing non-white welfare recipients to dogs, saying, “That is so hilarious and so true.” Another email among top staffers described a nightmare in which someone wakes up as a “black disabled Jewish homosexual with a Mexican boyfriend.” The person ends up being a Democrat.

6. Even more right-wing fantasies.

With Republican friends like these, who wouldn’t want to be a Democrat? But snarkiness aside, the right-wing political asylum is a dangerous nuthouse. Witness the latest bit from inmate Tom Delay, who says people forget that God wrote the U.S. Constitution. That’s the treatise that protects religious freedom and keeps it out of government, needless to say. Yet dangerous things can happen when these members of the American Taliban become blinded by their faith and burning desire to believe anything they say.

When you start with praying for discrimination, preach intolerance on national airwaves, spew hate-filled rants on the campaign trail, and don’t have thick enough skin to dish it out but not take it, and enjoy bullying and jokes based on racial stereotypes, what does that yield? A spectrum of bad to psychotic behavior.

Witness the week’s other news, such as a noose found around the neck of a statue of the first black man to attend the University of Mississippi, or an all-white high school wrestling team from New Jersey posing in a mock lynching photograph with a black dummy. In Ted Nugent’s world, this is America—get over it.

But repugnant beliefs—not mere distortions—have a way of infiltrating politics, and that is where Ted Cruz’s prayer to God for anti-LGBT discrimination gets serious. Take what happened in Arizona this week. Its legislature passed a bill that would allow businesses to refuse to serve anyone—the target was same-sex couples—if it violated their personal religious beliefs. Republican Gov. Jan Brewer has not yet signed it.

God may not be answering Cruz’s prayer for discrimination, but other Republicans are.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/6-signs-psychosis-fringe-week?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Janet Allon is back this week and has given us 2 summaries of GOP/TPer idiocy ~ here's the first ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
6 Truly Unhinged Right-Wing Reactions to Jan Brewer's Veto of AZ's Anti-Gay Bill
"Tyranny is on the march," and "Now, we'll all have to bake penis cakes."

February 27, 2014 | Right-wingers in media, politics and so-called "think-tanks" wasted no time in becoming apoplectic about Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's reluctant decision to veto her state's blatantly discriminatory law which would allow businesses to refuse service to gay customers.

Here are some of the most ridiculous immediate reactions. Expect plenty more idiocy and hate in the coming days:

1. Tucker Carlson on Fox News. Just before the veto, Carlson opined that Arizona's anti-gay bill promotes "tolerance." Then he argued that it's "fascism" to require individuals and business owners to provide equal service to gay people. "If you try to force me to bake a cake for your gay wedding, that's fascism," Carlson said. Might we suggest another visit to your dictionary, Tucker?

2. Todd Starnes, Fox News "Business" host tweeted, just after the veto: "AZ Gov. Jan Brewer makes Christians in her state second-class citizens." So, to be clear, not being allowed to discriminate legally is the definition of discrimination. Surely, all the Christians will flee Arizona. But where will they go? To the promised, homophobic land?

3. Rick Lowry of the National Review tweeted: "The Brewer veto shows that poorly informed hysteria works." He means, of course, that Brewer caved to the hysteria from the business community who argued, fairly rationally, that the proposed law would hurt business and tourism in the state. But wait, we thought conservatives were pro-business. Are we to understand that they are only pro-business when it does not clash with their desire to discriminate against gays? It's a lot to keep straight.

4. Judson Phillips, president of Tea Party Nation had a predictably measured reaction: "Tyranny is on the march!" he ranted. Business owners who are not allowed to discriminate against gays and lesbians are "slaves" to the "great liberal state," which now has a handservant in "French Republicans" like Jan Brewer. Also, now business owners are going to be forced to bake cakes with "a giant phallic symbol on it," yes, the dreaded penis cake; or possibly a cake with another "shape of genitalia," might invade. Still other businesses will be forced to "photograph a homosexual wedding where the participants decide they want to be nude or engage in sexual behavior." And what's really weird is that, obviously, all businesses are going to be forced to do these things, whether they are bakers or photographers, or not. Bet you didn't read that in the fine print.

5. Rush Limbaugh: Jan Brewer got bullied by corporate America, says Rush. But wait, some kinds of bullying are okay, just not when I disagree. Naturally, the right-wing shock jock unleashed his usual mish-mash of incoherent thoughts on the matter. Examples: “Religious beliefs can’t be used to stop anything the left wants to impose, unless they’re Muslim religious beliefs and then we have to honor those."

Exactly. Leftists, Muslims, one and the same, led by Muslim-in-chief, Obama, all of them love the gays. Then there is poor Jan Brewer being bullied so:

“She’s being bullied by the homosexual lobby in Arizona and elsewhere,” Limbaugh said. “She’s being bullied by the nationwide drive-by media,she’s being bullied by certain elements of corporate America in order to advance the gay agenda. I guess in that circumstance bullying is admirable. In fact, this kind of bullying is honorable.”

Spoken like a true bully...

6. Michele Bachmann: Brewer "eviscerated free speech." What was funny was that Michele Bachmann was doing her level best to sound balanced and reasonable in her interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on the topic. “Just like we need to observe tolerance for the gay and lesbian community, we need to have tolerance for the community of people who hold sincerely held religious belief,” she said. But, just to be clear, Bachmann did not think Brewer should veto the bigoted bill, and did not think that discriminating against gays means "intolerance."

“Oh in fact, it’s just the opposite,” Bachmann patiently explained to Wolf. “This is a decided level of intolerance — it’s effectively eviscerating the rights of freedom of speech, expression and religious expression for the people of Arizona, and it sets a terrible precedent.”

We can only imagine the other "terrible precedents" Bachmann sees: The Voting Rights Act? Emancipation Proclamation? Scary indeed.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/6-truly-unhinged-right-wing-reactions-jan-brewers-veto-azs-anti-gay-bill?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Here is this week's installment ~ it's hard for me to imagine that this many children were ... dropped on their heads ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
10 Biggest Right-Wing Idiots This Week (Not Even Including Arizona Homophobes)

Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson or Dick Cheney: who does the statue go to?

February 28, 2014 | Putting aside all of the nutjob reactions to the veto of Arizona’s crazy anti-gay law, some of which were chronicled here [Sooz says see above post], right wingers were still plenty busy mouthing off this week.

1. Pat Buchanan: 'Repeal all civil rights laws, segregate gays.'

Poor Patty was feeling a bit ignored of late, so he kicked off the week with a doozy of a column melodramatically titled “How Freedom Dies.” Springboarding from the kerfuffle around all the exciting anti-gay legislation, the conservative bigot, er, pundit, proposed that the U.S. repeal all its civil rights laws.

“A radical idea: Suppose we repealed the civil rights laws and fired all the bureaucrats enforcing these laws,” Buchanan wrote. “Does anyone think hotels, motels and restaurants across Dixie, from D.C. to Texas, would stop serving black customers? Does anyone think there would again be signs sprouting up reading 'whites' and 'colored' on drinking foundations and restrooms?”

Maybe.

The work of civil rights is done, he goes on to claim, and the only reason for keeping these laws on the books is the evil left-wing plot to “validate the slander that America is a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic country which would revert to massive discrimination were it not for heroic progressives standing guard.”

Where would anyone get the idea that there was a problem with homophobia in this country? From Arizona, say, or Georgia or Ohio or Indiana, which all tried to pass legislation making it okay to discriminate against gays? That’s crazy talk.

Uncle Patty has a much better solution: segregation.

“As for the Christians of Arizona and same-sex unions in Arizona," he said, "if they don't like each other, can they not just avoid each other? After all, it's a big state.”

2. Bill O’Reilly: 'Women have gender-deficiencies and therefore should not be president, right?'

Desperate for further confirmation that Hillary should never become president, O’Reilly invited two actual women on his show for a serious discussion of women’s unfitness to lead the free world, due to their “gender deficiencies.” It was not enough that Michele Bachmann already said the country was not ready for a woman president. O’Reilly invited Republican strategist Kate Obenshain and Fox contributor Kirsten Powers on to discuss the issue, but it didn’t go as planned. First, O’Reilly asked Powers if there was “some downside to having a woman president, something that may not fit with that office, correct?”

“Hmmm, I’m gonna say, no, Bill,” Powers said.

O’Reilly admitted that men “may not be as open to sensitive discussion as women,” then practically begged Obenshain to back him up on the woman thing. “There’s gotta be a downside for a woman, do you know one?” he asked her. There’s just gotta be; throw the poor suffering fool a bone.

“Uh, you know, I’m having a tough time with this one too, Bill,” Obenshain said, adding, “It depends on the certain individual.”

But wouldn’t Russian president Putin, North Korea, the Chinese and “the mullahs” all test a hypothetical Hillary Clinton presidency, O’Reilly wondered.

“But, Bill, they do that to everybody,” Powers replied.

Quick, get Michele Bachmann back on the show. She's a woman who knows her gender is deficient.

h/t: Rawstory

3. Ted Nugent: 'I know I took back the whole ‘subhuman mongrel’ thing, and promised not to call people names, but Obama is a Nazi trying to start a race war... just saying.'

No, Ted Nugent cannot shut up, thank you very much. Even though his brother Jeff told him to tone it down, and his kids have asked him to stop calling people names. To Erin Burnett, he simply denied any racial component to his calling the President "subhuman" because there is "not a racist bone in my body." Nope, not one. Not when he argued that African Americans could fix "the black problem" if they just put their "heart and soul into being honest [and] law-abiding." Not when he said, "I'm beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War" or that "black communities across America" have a "mindless tendency to violence."

Nope, no racism there.

Later, with conservative dickhead Dennis Miller, Nugent defended his claim that Obama is like Hitler, trying to start a race war with Obamacare and the IRS, and said people who work for the administration are like “jack-booted thugs” and “brownshirts.”

The whole pledge to stop calling people names is totally working out for Ted.

4. Paula Deen sees her struggle as very like Michael Sam’s coming out.

Actually, that’s not quite right. Paula Deen did not compare herself to NFL prospect Michael Sam—she compared herself to “that black football player.”

She said, “I’m fighting to get my name back,” adding, “I feel like ‘embattled’ or ‘disgraced’ will always follow my name. It’s like that black football player who recently came out. He said, ‘I just want to be known as a football player. I don’t want to be known as a gay football player.’ I know exactly what he’s saying.”

Got it. So Paula does not want to be known as a gay black football player. You got a problem with that?

5. Pat Robertson gets to use the word sodomy a whole bunch. Praise the Lord.

The other Patty, who so enjoys using that word sodomy, perhaps because it sounds biblical to him—all nice and Old Testamenty—weighed in this week.

You can imagine the state the TV preacher was in about the events in Arizona—not that this whole equal rights for same-sex couples thing hasn’t had his knickers in a twist for quite a while. “What we’re seeing now, more and more, the rights of homosexuals—the practice of Homo.Sex.U.Al.Ity, sodomy, consensual sodomy—is being raised and elevated above the rights of religious believers,” he ranted, complete with finger wag. “And that is terrible!”

You can imagine his distress, because, in his view Arizona’s proposed SB 1062, which would have allowed businesses to discriminate against LGBT people, had “nothing to do with limiting homosexuals.” Nothing.

Instead, “It has to do with giving religious people the right to practice their religion freely,” he concluded.

Which means the freedom to discriminate.

6. Louie Gohmert: 'God answered my prayers by creating the Tea Party.'

Little known verse in Genesis: And on the eighth day, God created the Tea Party. And he saw that it was ... well, f*cking nuts!

Well, that is one version of events. The other is cuckoobird Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, who says the Tea Party is God’s answer to his personal prayers. Gohmert was marking the fifth anniversary of the founding of the marvelous Tea Party movement, which has brought so much intelligent, nuanced debate to our country, in a speech to the Tea Party Patriots, a.k.a., like-minded nutjobs.

He reminded the assembled what a horrific year 2008 was. McCain lost to Obama; Pelosi became Speaker of the House; Harry Reid maintained leadership in the Senate. “And Anthony Weiner got some new friends to text with,” Gohmert said. Ooh, good one.

But out of the ashes, came people who just did not want to pay any more taxes. The very people Louie Gohmert had conjured in his personal conversations with God. It was a goll-darned miracle, “an answer to my prayers,’” Gohmert said.

The Lord works in very mysterious ways, that is for sure.

7. Gavin McInnes: 'Dominicans abuse food stamps, and use them as a fat pill.'

Why should the homophobes get all the attention this week? What about the racists? They deserve their turn. Enter Vice magazine founder Gavin McInnes, who is famous for telling various publications how much he enjoys being white, and how much he does not enjoy non-whites. This week, he told Fox News' host Sean Hannity that he should not demonize some white surfer who is on food stamps because it’s those Dominicans in New York who are the real food stamp abusers—they are using them as a “fat pill,” he said.

We had not heard of this “fat pill” before. Please do enlighten us, Gavin.

Democratic activist Jehmu Greene, the liberal foil on the show, pointed out that it was wrong to demonize the food assistance program and hungry children because of one surfer Bill O’Reilly’s producer found in California.

“Why not? Let’s demonize them!” McInnes exclaimed. “Have you seen the poor? They’re gigantic! They’re overfed!”

“Talk to a hungry child,” Greene suggested.

“I’d love to,” McInnes replied. “I can’t talk to them, they’re too big, they can’t get off their chair."

If you're a little lost here, you're not alone.

8. Douchebag named Jack Bridwell just does not understand why people are offended by a Confederate flag license plate.

Jack Bridwell, the state commander of the Georgia division of Sons of Confederate Veterans, has designed a specialty license plate that prominently features a large Confederate battle flag. He cannot, for the life of him, understand why this might be controversial or offensive. “What’s the big deal?” he asked plaintively this week. “If I offend anyone, I don’t understand why because we had the emblem on there for years.”

Well, that certainly makes it much better.

Guess he missed the part in history class explaining that the Confederate flag represents racism, injustice, slavery and oppression of blacks, as well as the South just refusing to accept the results of a democratic election. But this is his heritage, and he wants to celebrate it.

Next month: Third Reich heritage month?

9. CNBC’s Joe Kernen: 'Climate change is like witchcraft.'

It’s great to know you can find lunatics all over TV and that idiocy is not limited to Fox News. This winter has really thrown off a lot of people who are immune to scientific study. Because it’s been so cold out their front doors on the East Coast. So therefore, climate change is a hoax, no matter what’s going on in Australia or California. What matters is whether they have to wear a really warm coat or not.

CNBC’s Joe Kernen says climate change, and January’s record-setting heat, probably had nothing to do with increasing CO2 emissions. No, he prefers to go with the explanation that it is just inexplicable.

“It’s almost like witchcraft,” Kernen said on Thursday. “In the Middle Ages it was witchcraft. You would have attributed adverse weather events to witchcraft. Now we just have CO2 at this point.”

Yes, Joe, those two things are very similar, science and witchcraft, witchcraft and science. Whatever.

Then again, this was the week, as Phil Plait pointed out in Slate, when a lot of climate science deniers lost their “expletive deleted.” It was hard to outdo Charles Krauthammer’s Washington Post op-ed in which he called climate scientists “whores.”

In the biblical sense, of course.

10. Cheney rears his Darth Vader-like head: 'Obama would rather buy food stamps than have a strong military.'

It is not enough for Dick Cheney that Barack Obama has upped America’s use of drones and used them to kill more innocent folks in the Middle East than his predecessor. The president has gone soft, Cheney says. He would rather spend money on “food stamps” than on the military. Cheney expressed this view on Monday to Sean Hannity in an interview about the proposal put forth by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel calling for shrinking the Army to its smallest size in 74 years, closing bases and reshaping forces. The former vice president called the cuts “just devastating.”

Even worse? A compassionate president. Truly awful.

http://www.alternet.org/10-biggest-right-wing-idiots-week-not-even-including-arizona-homophobes?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Here's this week's installment, proving there is NO SHORTAGE OF MORONS ~ ~ there are more "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
8 Colossal Jackasses From the Right-Wing Fringe: Just-Stop-Being-Poor Edition
And we’re not even mentioning the speakers at CPAC.

March 8, 2014 | Sure, there was plenty of tomfoolery and dickishness on display over at CPAC this week—what with Trump’s immigrants-are-coming-to-steal-jobs remark and Paul Ryan claiming poor parents don’t love their kids. But asinine comments were made elsewhere in the right-wing lunasphere. Some doozies:

1. Fox Business commentator’s advice on the poor: “Stop being poor.”

The Daily Show’s Aasif Maandvi may have found the greatest jackass of them all recently when he interviewed Fox Business commentator Todd Wilemon. The subject was healthcare and the oft-repeated, totally erroneous claim that the U.S. has “the greatest healthcare system in the world.” This assertion should only be made with the addendum: "if you can afford it." In fact, the U.S. ranks 37th in the world for healthcare, so,yes we're in the top 40, and hooray, we're ahead of Slovenia. Take that, Slovenia! It’s gotten to the point where international relief doctors who usually helicopter supplies into war-torn, impoverished countries and refugee camps are now starting to fly those supplies into places like Knoxville, Tennessee.

But have no fear. Wilemon had a great solution for these people who just “want a free lunch,” and who “refuse to pay.” When Maandvi pointed out that they are not "refusing to pay," but just aren't able to afford healthcare because they are poor, Wilemon said, “If you’re poor, just stop being poor.”

Great idea! Why didn't we think of that?!

Watch the whole hilarious clip here.

2. Megyn Kelly scoffs at atheist’s claim that the cross is a religious symbol.

Somebody was not paying proper attention in Sunday school, and has been very, very naughty. We’re talking to you, Megyn.

There is a steel beam cross in the center of the World Trade Center memorial. It was found in the wreckage and seen as a miracle by some Christians. The activist group American Atheists are suing to have the cross removed, claiming that as an inherently religious symbol, it has no place in a publicly funded monument. They point out that people of multiple faiths, and even those without faith at all, died in the disaster.

“The cross is Christian," said David Silverman of the American Atheists during his appearance on the Kelly Files. "It was installed in a religious service on consecrated ground, which makes it a working shrine on public land in the World Trade Center, and we think the atheists who also died on 9/11, and the Muslims and the Jews, should all have their equal presence,”

Nope, Megyn Kelly said. The cross is not religious. It's just a historical artifact. Nothing Christian about it. Tough luck, atheists, Jews and Muslims.

Got it, the cross is not Christian. Next week: the Bible, not a book.

Watch the entire interview posted online by Cruciefiction.

3. Josh Miller, Obamacare hypocrite: 'I got mine, so bite me!'

Another prime cut of jackass raised its braying head this week in the person of State Representative Josh Miller of Arkansas. Such a man might, at first glance, inspire some sympathy. He was paralyzed in a car accident, and he was uninsured at the time. Fortunately for him, his medical treatment was paid for by personal assistance coverage from Medicaid. Naturally, an experience like that would really convince someone of the value of Medicaid and healthcare for all. Wait, what? No?

Astonishingly, Miller voted against the expansion of Medicaid, which would have given poor people in his state the same coverage he received in his hour of need. In an interview with the Arkansas Times, he explained why. "My problem is two things," Miller said. "One, we are giving it to able-bodied folks who can work ... and two, how do we pay for it?"

Of course, he knows that really isn’t a question since the federal government has offered to pay for Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. Translation: It would be free money for Arkansans who might get hurt or sick while uninsured.

Like you, Josh Miller, dickhead!

h/t: Esquire.com

4. Michele Bachmann lectures Jews: You’re doing it wrong! You elected the anti-Christ!

In a conversation Monday with Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, that zany Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann chastised American Jews for voting for Obama, She warned them that Obama is “threatening Israel,” and also that he is kind of the anti-Christ, fulfilling biblical prophecies and bringing about the End Times.

Blame it on the Jews, what a novel idea!

The Minnesota congresswoman told Perkins that President Obama is pressuring Israel to “give up its land to terrorists,” who are, of course, allied with Al Qaeda. This is what is going to trigger the end of the world, or as Bachmann described it, the “final war, destroying and reducing to rubble Israel.”

Here are more of her insane and fairly incoherent ramblings:


Fortunately, she was able to retrieve her breath and scrape her jaw off the floor, so that she could scold the American Jewish community for its wide support for Obama.

What is reassuring, in a way, is that all of this was predicted in the Bible. As Bachmann reads it: “The nations of the world will come against Israel and the scripture very specifically says all nations, now for the United States we don’t have that experience until recently under President Obama with the United States not standing with Israel.”

h/t: Rightwingwatch

5. Conservative leader thinking he was off-mic: “Jews are the problem.”

Michele Bachmann, meet Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin (retired), the executive vice president of the conservative Family Research Council, or perhaps you two already know each other.

Turns out you both feel that Jews are a problem.

Boykin has other nutty ideas, like a theory that President Barack Obama is using “subliminal messages” to signal support for Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. There is audio to this effect posted by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on Friday.

“If you understand anything about Islam, there are subliminal messages,” Boykin says. “[Obama's] message, really, I believe was, ‘I understand you, and I support you.’”

Sounds like a thoroughly reasonable man. So reasonable in fact that CPAC won’t even allow him to participate. CPAC! — which featured such bright lights as Donald Trump rambling incoherently and Sarah Palin doing what she does best, making no sense.

Anyway, Boykin and his fellow all-out loonies hold a competing event called the National Security Action Summit. The event’s organizer, Frank Gaffney, has accused CPAC’s organizers, the American Conservative Union, of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Later, Boykin was just joshing around with a reporter, an Israeli no less, saying, “The Jews are the problem. The Jews are the cause of all the problems in the world.”

Oh. Hahahahahahaha. They must have had a good belly laugh. The Jews love that kind of humor...

6. James Bowman: 'There must be some happy stories about slavery.'

What the hell is wrong with these people? You really have to wonder about the small (hopefully) subset of white people/commentators/bloviators who keep insisting that some slaves really enjoyed their captivity. Bad enough that people made this argument during the time of slavery, in order to perpetuate it, but we’re talking about TODAY!

James Bowman, cultural critic at the American Spectator, joined the ranks of the idiots of “Duck Dynasty” when he complained that there weren’t any positive stories about slave masters in 12 Years a Slave.

His words: “If ever in slavery’s 250-year history in North America there were a kind master or a contented slave, as in the nature of things there must have been, here and there, we may be sure that Mr. McQueen does not want us to hear about it.”

Yeah, c'mon guys. Why all the negativity about slavery? You're such Debbie Downers. Why can’t we have happy movies about slavery like Gone With the Wind? Don’t slavery apologists deserve some entertainment, too?

We’re sure Steve McQueen will take it under advisement.

7. Wyoming governor takes brave anti-science stand.

It takes a brave and visionary leader to just say no to science. But in Wyoming, one man, the governor in fact, is taking that brave stand. But he did not do it all alone.

A little background: The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are a new set of education initiatives that have been adopted in 10 states and, like the Common Core State Standards, are designed to make sure students across the country are being held to the same benchmarks. They were developed with input from 26 states; although, not Wyoming.

So when the budgeting process came around for that state, another visionary, Rep. Matt Teeters (R-Lingle) first proposed a budget amendment that stops the state from considering the NGSS. Gov. Matt Mead (R) approved this amendment in his budget Wednesday.

The NGSS treats climate change and evolution as fact. Hmmmm. Could it possibly be that the real target is climate change science? According to ThinkProgress, Gov. Mead has previously said he is "unconvinced climate change is man-made.”

He and Rep.Teeters just don’t want climate change to be taught as established science. ‘Cause that would be bad, you know, for kids to learn the truth.

Read more here.

8. Arkansas judge: Gay sex “just a small step to having sex with a dog.”

Yep, direct quote. In fact, Arkansas state judge Mike Maggio is famous for his pithy quotes, which also include: “Sluts are just whores in training.” Women shouldn’t make an “emotional decision to divorce because the husband stepped out” if he was a “good provider.” And, whatever you do, don’t go to Disney World during “gay/lesbian week.”

According to ThinkProgress, these lovely homespun homilies from the bench were “uncovered after the Arkansas blog, Blue Hog Report, discovered that a pseudonymous commenter on a message board for Louisiana State University fans was a sitting Arkansas state Judge Mike Maggio." Judge Maggio, who posted under the username “geauxjudge,” offered questionable views on race, sexuality, women and many other issues.

The comment about sex with dogs arose in a discussion thread about a “Vegas woman arrested for sex with pit bull.” Maggio suggested that “TGGLBS sex”—an apparent reference to “transgender, gay, lesbian or bisexual sex”—is a gateway to copulating with canines.”

He has since acknowledged authorship, and withdrawn from a race for higher office.

Phew!

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/8-colossal-jackasses-right-wing-fringe-just-stop-being-poor-edition?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

He has since acknowledged authorship, and withdrawn from a race for higher office.

... and sought solace from his pet canine?

Here's this week's installment, proving yet again that there is NO SHORTAGE OF MORONS ~ ~ there are more "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
8 Shocking Instances of Moronic Right-Wing Malevolence This Week
'Poor people just love sitting around being poor' ... and more.

March 15, 2014 | The far-right assemblage called CPAC may have ended, but the wingnuts carried on undaunted this week.

1. Paul Ryan: When I said inner city men are too lazy to work; that's their culture, I didn't mean it racially.

It seems that now that poverty is spreading to white people, the topic has piqued the interest of a handful of Republican leaders. Notably, Republican bullshit artist par excellence, Paul Ryan, who has lately been trying to convince the public that he really cares and is earnestly searching his ample intellect for a solution — as long as it doesn't require any government spending. Whoever is buying what he’s selling is dumber than a post.

So here is this deep thinker’s take on the cause of poverty: laziness. And not just any kind of laziness, the dreaded “culture” of “inner city” laziness. Or, in the House Budget Committee Chairman, ex-GOP veep candidate’s words:

"We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with."

You don’t have to be a genius at cracking codes to understand that he’s simply saying: Blacks are lazy. They prefer being poor to working. (As if working was a surefire way not to be poor.)

When called out on the thinly-veiled racism of his comments, Ryan said he had been “inarticulate” and had not intended to be racist at all. In fact, it never even occurred to him that they might be racist.

And if that isn’t the mark of a racist we don’t know what is. Surely, Ryan, with that big intellect of his, knows that the libertarian so-called-thinker he has lately been quoting, Charles Murray, who argues that Blacks and Latinos are genetically inferior, is also a self-described white Nationalist.

Note to Ryan: White Nationalist = racist!

To read more about what a complete fraud Ryan is, click here.

2. Kevin Swanson: The movie Frozen is a satanic plot to turn our children gay.

Hide your young’uns. Don’t let them out. Cut off the TV and the electronic devices. Tie them up if necessary. Satan rides again. This time in the form of the oh-so-innocent-seeming Disney animated movie, Frozen. Religious Right talk show host Kevin Swanson is certainly not taking his 5-year-old daughter to a movie that is going to “indoctrinate” her “to be a lesbian." And nor should you.

“Man, how many children are taken into these things," Swanson wondered on his radio show. "And how many Christians are taking their kids off to see the movie Frozen, produced by an organization that is probably the most pro-homosexual organizations in the country?”

Wait, does Mickey Mouse know about this?

“You wonder sometimes,” Swanson continued. “I’m not a tinfoil hat conspiratorialist….”

No, Kevin? So what kind of conspiratorialist are you? And is "conspiratorialist" even a word?

“… maybe there’s something very evil happening here. If I was the Devil, what I would do to really foul up an entire social system and do something really, really evil to 5- and 6- and 7-year-olds in Christian families . . . I would buy Disney. I would buy Disney in 1984.”

Oh, that devil is a wily one. He can time travel, and he’s a great businessman. How can we compete with that? Now he’s got the kids.

Run!

3. Pat Robertson: 'Horror movies cause demonic possession. Let us pray.'

For the second time in recent weeks, Pat Robertson is seeming less crazy than even kookier kooks. Truly we must be entering the End Times. First, just a few weeks ago, Robertson begged Young Earth Creationist Ken Ham to stop making other Christian fundamentalists look bad by saying things that fly in the face of indisputable science. Now, Robertson is looking just a tad less loony than Kevin Swanson, who thinks the devil is working through Disney. Robertson does think the devil is involved in the entertainments business, but he is working through horror films. Makes much more sense, no?

When a viewer called in this week to ask the 700 Club host if watching a horror movie was the cause her recent car accident, Robertson oh-so-empathically agreed that being cursed or demonically possessed can be the result of viewing these films.

He was not specifically familiar with her case, and whether she in fact was so cursed, but he had heard of other instances. Also, he suspected that the devil may be sitting in the producer’s chair of such films, because entertainment execs are very susceptible to Satanic influences.

On that, he and his buddy Swanson agree.

"This thing may be living around you and what you need to do is speak it — command this thing to leave — and ask God to forgive you," he counseled the caller.

Probably sage advice for everyone. You know, just in case.

Hear it for yourself here.

4. Fox’s Stuart Varney: 'Obama’s overtime move is just a way of buying votes.'

As might be expected, the “fair and balanced” folks over at Fox News have been apoplectic about Obama’s move this week to modestly expand overtime pay. The Fox Newsians have pretty much no idea what Obama is suggesting or what effect that it will have, but it’s socialist and un-American, and they don’t like it.

Business host Stuart Varney led the charge of the Fox brigade:

“This is redistribution by executive order," he sputtered. "The president is buying votes. He is commanding higher salaries for millions of people. Right before an election. Don’t you think that those millions of people will be grateful and say, ‘Thanks for the pay raise, Mr. President. I’m voting Democrat.’ Don’t you think that’s in there?”

Wait, is there an election this Spring?

Of course, not only is it about buying votes early and often for the midterm elections next Fall, paying people overtime will ruin the economy, and destroy the next Google.

“In the earlier days of Google," expert Varney continued, "they had all kinds of youngsters, up and coming strivers, who would work day and night. That’s how they built the company. Tech startups with really a drive to succeed and climb that food chain.”

Unbeknownst to Mr. Varney—because, why let actual information get in the way of scaring people?—Obama’s overtime expansion would only affect people making less than $50,000, so not applicable to the young programmers at Google at all, who all made a good deal more than that.

Paying people for their work is such a terrible idea. What are you trying to do, instill some sort of work ethic?

5. AZ Republican: 'Slaveowners took pretty good care of their slaves.'

Another week, another right-winger desperate to find something positive about slavery.

This week, the humanoid hunk of toe-jam slavery apologist was Jim Brown, who’s running for Congress in Arizona. Guess what: he does not care for federal spending, or “entitlements.” When you don’t like something, you compare it either to slavery or Nazi Germany. Young Jim went with slavery in a post on his Facebook page.

But, hey, he digressed, slavery was not that bad.

"Back in the day of slavery," he wrote, "slaves were kept in slavery by denying them education and opportunity while providing them with their basic needs. Not by beating them and starving them. (Although there were isolated cases of course) Basically slave owners took pretty good care of their slaves and livestock and this kept business rolling along."

Putting aside the utterly offensive nature of this absurd claim, doesn’t it kind of undercut Mr. Brown’s argument that entitlements are horrible, if they are similar to something that wasn’t all that horrible?

An outcry ensued, and so he posted an “apology.”

He really, really does think slavery was terrible. Just awful. He swears.

But entitlements, they are like putting people in concentration camps.

6. Ben Carson doesn’t care about political correctness or really about being correct at all, because 'America today is like Nazi Germany.'

Right on cue, Dr. Carson. The Tea Party darling and former neurosurgeon is just the sort of fearless commenter who is willing to trot out that tired-old Nazi metaphor. This week, he explained to a Breitbart interviewer what he means when he says Americans are living in a “Gestapo” age.

“I mean, very much like Nazi Germany,” the doctor began, “and I know you’re not supposed to say Nazi Germany but I don’t care about political correctness — you know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population.”

Huh? Intimidate them how?

“We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe,” Carson continued, “and it’s because of the p.c. police, it’s because of politicians, it’s because of news — all of these things are combining to stifle people’s conversation.”

That’s weird, because it seems to us that people are saying all kinds of crap. Especially, on Fox News, where the doctor is now “in.”

h/t: Salon.

7. Austin Ruse: 'Liberal professors should be taken out and shot.'

The best way to handle people with whom you disagree, as every child is taught in school, is to shoot them. Or, to have someone else shoot them. Just so long as they are shot. Wingnut Austin Ruse added to his growing list of people he’d like to see taken out and shot this week (a list which includes Hillary Clinton) while filling in for American Family Radio host Sandy Rios.

The subject was Belle Knox, the enterprising Duke University freshman who acts in porn movies to help pay her own tuition. This way of making ends meet is not the fault of sky-high tuition rates, but rather women’s studies and other college departments reeking of liberalism said Ruse, who leads the ultraconservative Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-Fam).

His suggestion: “the hard left, human-hating people that run modern universities” should “all be taken out and shot.”

Problem solved.

The American Family Association, that bastion of rationality headed by rabid homophobe Bryan Fischer, has since sought to distance itself from Ruse, and said it won’t be giving Ruse any more airtime.

Ruse has refused to apologize for his comments, and called those who disagree with him “pajama boys.”

In other words, he's sticking to his guns.

8. New Hampshire lawmaker posts beyond-offensive sexual ‘joke’ about battered women — and stands by it.

For pure creepiness, it would be hard to out-slime New Hampshire Tea Partier Kyle Tasker this week. Arguably, though, there were other creeps in contention. In an exchange on the Facebook page of the Greater Nashua Tea Party, there was a discussion thread about the New Hampshire GOP's refusal to stand by state Rep. Mark Warden (R), who had been criticized for saying, "Some people could make the argument that a lot of people like being in abusive relationships." (Yes, he is the other creep in contention.) But he was outdone by Tasker who posted a graphic in support of Warden with a joke about "battered women". It was a crude picture of a man on top of a struggling woman, positioned to possibly give her oral sex whether she wants it or not, with the caption, “50,000 Battered Women—And I Still Eat Mine Plain.”

What exactly he is saying, you tell us. Certainly that he is untroubled by whether women are battered or not. The State GOP demanded he apologize, but Tasker takes that whole “live free or die” state motto seriously, and he refused, saying, somewhat bafflingly, "I didn't mean that as a joke, it was a t-shirt print I thought was pretty ridiculous that someone would wear that around."

Wait, so it wasn’t a joke? What the hell was it?

He also said his "intent was pure."

To which we say, pure what?

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/8-shocking-instances-moronic-right-wing-malevolence-week?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

I just LOVE the juxtaposition of 6 and 7!

Here's this week's installment ... with some just-out-of-the-swamp NEW MORONS ~ ~ there are more "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
10 Lunacies From the Right-Wing Fringe This Week: Women Want Malls, Not Equal Pay Edition
First women whined to get the vote, now they want equal pay. Where does it end?

March 22, 2014 | While Neil deGrasse Tyson has the creationists all in a tizzy, the right has quietly amped up its war on women, and this week, it seemed Republicans have trotted out some of their women as cover. Michelle, Sarah, watch out. You’ve got some competition.

1. Minnesota Rep. Andrea Kieffer: Equal pay equals women whining.

The word "equality" is a lightning rod for Republicans. They don’t like it. They don’t believe in it. People are not equal, and equal pay for equal work just does not compute. The party has thrived on inequality of all kinds and it is bound and determined to keep it that way. And anyone who objects is just a lily-livered sob sister.

Meet little-known Republican Minnesota Rep. Andrea Kieffer, who had this startling insight into the discussion of a package of legislation that would address the gender pay gap: "We heard several bills last week about women’s issues and I kept thinking to myself, these bills are putting us backwards in time," Kieffer said, according to an audio recording posted by the Alliance for a Better Minnesota. “We are losing the respect that we so dearly want in the workplace by bringing up all these special bills for women and almost making us look like whiners.”

Kieffer was speaking during a hearing on the Women's Economic Security Act, which would raise the minimum wage to $9.50, expand access to paid sick leave and childcare, and protect women from discrimination and unfair pay. The legislative package would also improve protections for domestic violence victims.

But seriously, women, stop whining. First you whined to get the vote, now equal pay. Where does it end?

Fairness, schmairness. Whinypants. (Or should we say, whiny pantsuits?)

Full story: Talking Points Memo

2. Cari Christman of Red State Women: Women are too busy to need equal pay laws.

Turns out there is such a thing as being an idiot and an asshole simultaneously. The leader of a recently launched political-action committee aimed at female voters in Texas made the nonsense argument during an interview this week that women don’t want equal pay laws because they are “extremely busy.”

Huh?

Where shall we begin to poke holes in this? Perhaps women are so busy because they have to work extra to bring home the same paycheck a man does.

A little background: Texas Republicans are in a bit of panic after their gubernatorial candidate, Greg Abbott, campaigned with known racist-gun-nutjob-headcase Ted Nugent, and said Texas has no need for laws protecting women against pay discrimination. So they launched a PAC called Red State Women, and appointed this genius, Cari Christman, as their executive editor.

She has a real way with words, if by way you mean a method of putting words together so they don’t actually make sense.

“We believe that Texas women want and deserve equal pay,” she admitted. “We don’t believe the Lilly Ledbetter Act is what’s going to solve that problem for women. We believe that women want real-world solutions to this problem, not more rhetoric.”

All righty then, what would be a better solution?

“If you look at it, women are… extremely busy, we lead busy lives,” she stumbled. “And times are extremely busy. It’s just — it’s a busy cycle for women, and we’ve got a lot to juggle.”

“And so when we look at this issue, we think, what’s practical?” Christman continued. “And we want more access to jobs. And we want to be able to go to get a higher education degree at the same time we’re working or raising a family. That’s common sense. And we believe that real-world solution is a more practical way to approach the problem.”

Note to Ms. Christman: When you arrive in the “real world,” do give us a shout.

3. Beth Cubriel, executive director of Texas Republican Party: Women will get better pay when they learn to negotiate like men.

Casting about for yet another lame excuse for not supporting equal pay laws, another Texas Republican good ole gal offered up this: "Men are better negotiators. I would encourage women, instead of pursuing the courts for action, to become better negotiators."

The author of this pearl of wisdom was one Beth Cubriel, executive director of the Texas Republican Party. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which Texas Republicans oppose, would allow women to sue their employers for paying their male colleagues more for the same work whenever the pay discrimination is discovered, rather than barring them from doing so after 180 days following the first discriminatory paycheck. The law was inspired by Lilly Ledbetter, a woman who had worked for Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. for almost 20 years when she received a note alerting her that she was being paid 40 percent less than her male colleagues of equal or lesser superiority.

Cubriel concedes that women are paid less. It’s just that she thinks it’s their own fault.

So to summarize, women are too busy whining rather than negotiating and therefore should be paid less for equal work.

4. Ralph Reed: Making divorce harder is a better solution to hunger than food stamps.

Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed does not like divorce. He has gone as far as to compare it to other scourges like “drug use, human trafficking and legalized gambling.” On “Morning Joe” this week, he explained why he feels this way to Mika Brzezinski.

“I personally think the no-fault divorce revolution in the '60s and '70s has not been good for society,” he said. “Certainly, I recognize that couples are not going to be able to stay together. That’s been true throughout society, but do we really want to make it easier for a man to discard the wife of his youth than it is for him to fire his secretary, for him to basically go in and say goodbye when 40 percent of all child support is never paid?”

Which is why some women end up in poverty, he said. Well then, shouldn’t Reed support more federal programs like food stamps? MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle asked. Or support more enforcement of child support? Or both?

Nope, just make divorce way harder.

Forcibly, if you have to. Because abusive and unhappy homes always turn out better for the kids.

Can you say "throwback"?

h/t RawStory

5. Alaska Rep: Put state-funded pregnancy tests in bars so women will be more responsible.

Generally, Republicans oppose expanding government funding for pretty much anything, but one Alaska State Senator, Pete Kelly, wants to add a line to the budget. State-funded pregnancy tests in bars so women act responsibly.

Women, you see, are children, and yet they also have children. Sometimes, sadly, they have children with fetal alcohol syndrome, which is a big problem in Alaska.

Here’s how Senator Kelly explained his novel idea in an interview with the Anchorage Daily News: "Literally, you can go into the bathroom at the bar and test. So if you’re drinking, you’re out at the big birthday celebration and you’re kind of like, ‘Gee, I wonder if I—?’ You should be able to go in the bathroom and there’s that plastic, Plexiglas bowl in there."

Might there also be a Plexiglas bowl of, say, condoms? Possibly in both the men’s and women’s bathrooms. Wouldn’t that help too?

Nope, that is not part of Kelly’s oh-so-creative plan, because, “Birth control is for people who don’t necessarily want to act responsibly."

Funny, we thought it was just the opposite. At least, that’s what we learned in sex ed.

h/t huffpo

6. Rush Limbaugh: 'We already have museums for women—they’re called malls.

Rush Limbaugh cracks himself up, he really does. This week, the conservative icon made fun of House Republicans for their blatant attempt to counterract their reputation for waging war on women by building a National Women’s History Museum.

"What?" Rush whined. “There isn’t going to be a National Men’s [Museum]. [All] those war museums and memorials, those are museums to men. We’ve left the women out, that’s right.”

But wait, Rush thought with a little bit of mischievous glee. “We already have —ladies and gentlemen—I don’t know how many museums for women all over the country. They are called malls.”

Oh. Hahahahahahahaha.

Then he just went and upped the ante. He did. He made it even funnier. “Hey, I could have said brothel.”

Rush, stop. Our sides are hurting.

h/t Salon

7. South Dakota Rep: Businesses should be able to refuse service to gays and blacks.

An honest bigot. So hard to find. Sometimes you have to travel all the way to South Dakota where one lone voice in the tundra, Republican State Senator Phil Jensen, laid it all out, plain and simple. Businesses should be able to refuse service to anyone, regardless of their race, color, creed or sexuality. But especially, they should be able to refuse service to blacks and gays. Because it’s that kind of bigotry that made this country great.

It’s called freedom, people. Freedom with a capital F.

Senator Jensen introduced a brave freedom-loving bill this week and explained it thusly to the Rapid City Journal:


Putting aside the mind-boggling idea of the KKK running a bakery, kudos to Jensen for one-upping the widely ridiculed Arizona bill that merely would have allowed businesses to discriminate against LGBT customers. But Jensen’s bill wasn’t couched in terms of “religious freedom;” he’s a self-described “free market absolutist,” which is another creepy religion of the extreme right-wing.

Saner heads prevailed in the crimson red Mt. Rushmore state, and the bill was killed in committee. We can’t wait to see what Senator Jensen comes up with next!

Full story: Talking Points Memo

8. Bryan Fischer explains why God has not killed Bill Maher yet.

A lot of people have been wondering why God has not killed Bill Maher yet. Last week, the noted anti-religious HBO comic talked about the story of Noah, and how it reveals that God is “kind of a dick” and a “mass murderer” who gets off on “drowning babies.”

There must be some explanation for why Maher, who appears very healthy, has not yet been struck down for his blasphemy. And don’t give us that "the lord works in mysterious ways" b.s. Maybe he's too busy starting the “rapture” with Flight 370, as Billy Graham’s daughter suggested.

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association was nice enough to explain the ongoing existence of Maher on his Monday radio program. This is helpful, because Fischer and God talk all the time. It turns out that Maher will indeed be “judged for those careless words,” but God is just going to give him a little more time.

“God hopes it doesn’t come to that,” Fischer said about his buddy, God. “God could, by all rights, take him right now and Bill Maher would have to face judgment by the end of the day. Why doesn’t he do that? Because he is patient with Bill Maher. He doesn’t want to have to do that. He wants to give Bill Maher the time to come to his senses and to come to a place of repentance.”

It’s been a good decade now since Maher’s been openly mocking God. Think he’ll come to his senses? Think God will get around to smiting him?

You can watch Fischer divine God’s plans for Bill Maher via Right Wing Watch.

9. Yawn, yet another conservative billionaire calls progressives "Hitleresque."

These conservative billionaires, so unoriginal with their name-calling. Home Depot co-founder and Pope Francis critic Ken Langone apparently was not paying attention when venture capitalist Tom Perkins was roundly mocked for comparing San Francisco progressive protests against inequality similar to Kristallnacht. Langone dove right into the idiot pool by calling populists (like New York Mayor Bill deBlasio) who are concerned about income inequality, Nazis.

In an interview with Politico, Langone expressed dismay about the shift in the zeitgeist away from letting the one percent run roughshod against the rest of us.

“I hope it’s not working,” the major GOP donor said of current populist appeals. “Because if you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany. You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy.”

We were hoping that the Hitler scholar might be good enough to cite where Hitler said that, but alas, he turned tail and later issued an apology, or rather, one of those pseudo-apologies.

"My remarks were intended to discourage pitting one group against another group in a society. If my choice of words was inappropriate — and they well may have been that — I extend my profound apologies to anyone and everyone who I may have offended," Langone said in the statement.

Yeah, so he's really sorry if he offended you. And, it is not as if the one percent or their representatives have ever employed the strategy of dividing and conquering. (Paul Ryan, “inner city males,” for starters.)

10. All the brave, anonymous, racist tweeters about the prospect of a black Annie.

The incredibly talented Quvenzhané Wallis, nominated for her performance in Beasts of the Southern Wild has had the audacity to be cast as Little Orphan Annie, in the remake of Annie. The trailer was recently released.

Vile racist spewage ensued on the Internet, directed at the 10-year-old actress. “Annie was a white girl,” said one tweeter of the fictional character. “This is racist....it’s a slap in the face.”

It is dastardly indeed.

Most of the comments were way less printable. Way more unhinged.

WTF is wrong with these people?

Read more here.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/10-lunacies-right-wing-fringe-week-women-want-malls-not-equal-pay-edition?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Here is this week installment ~ I'm seriously in awe that anyone believes this crap ... not to mention those who spew it ~ ~ there are more "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
8 Appalling Moments by the Right Wing This Week: Jesus Only Bakes Wedding Cakes for Straight Couples Edition
Known unknown: Donald Rumsfeld should be replaced by a trained ape.

March 29, 2014 | The parade of right-wing morons and lunatics marched on this week. Some highlights:

1. Donald Rumsfeld: A "trained ape" would be better at foreign policy than Obama.

Donald Rumsfeld continues to both shock and awe us with his arrogance and his psychopathic inability to admit he was completely wrong about every aspect of the Iraq war. Being a psychopath, he still has the audacity to hold forth on questions of foreign policy. That he recently included a dollop of racism to his unwanted commentary on President Obama’s conduct as Commander-in-Chief, is just par for the course for good ol' Rummy.

In an interview with Fox’s Greta Van Susteren this week, Rummy railed against Obama’s dealings with Afghanistan, and with characteristic colorfulness said that relations with Afghan president Hamid Karzai had gone “downhill like a toboggan,” under Obama whereas all had been rosy under Bush.

“Take for example that we have status of forces agreements probably with 100, 125 countries in the world,” Rumsfeld said, amping up the technical jargon to confuse the audience and make himself look smart, no doubt. “This administration, the White House and the State Department, have failed to get a status of forces agreement.”

He added: “A trained ape could get a status of forces agreement. It does not take a genius.”

Hmm, no racism there.

It is either a known unknown (or an unknown known—we’re never quite sure) that Rumsfeld likes to use these kinds of metaphors, but no, we don’t believe it was an accident. As bad as that is, perhaps worse is his perpetuating the lie that the Bush administration was not a catastrophe for foreign relations, and that he was not hugely responsible for the biggest fuckup, lie and war crimes of all Bush’s merry band of jackals.

2. Pat Robertson: Rape causes atheism.

What planet is Pat Robertson on? Planet crazy, that’s what. On Monday, the “700 Club” host talked about a letter he had received from a confused Christian viewer named Sandra. Sandra was flummoxed as to why a coworker was “hostile at the mere mention of God” whenever Sandra tried to proselytize or “bring her to Jesus.” Reading between the lines, the co-worker did not care for being hounded to go to Sandra’s church, or repent, ‘cause the end is near.

“Should I abandon the idea of being a positive influence on her and just let her perish?” Sandra wondered to the televangelist.

Uncle Patty reads between a different set of lines, and he had a variety of theories on why relentless evangelizing might rub someone the wrong way. Could be something “demonic... something beyond normal human experience,” he conjectured.

Working overtime, his little brain alit on the perfect explanation: “Maybe she had an abusing father, somebody who raped her and acted like he was preaching to her from the Bible,” the TV pastor continued. “You just never know what’s going on in somebody’s childhood.”

Eureka! Case closed.

“Just pray for that anointing,” Pat concluded.

3. Pat Robertson (yeupp, again) points out that Jesus would not have baked a gay couple a wedding cake.

Jesus was a carpenter, from what we’ve read, not a baker, so as far as we know, he was not given to baking wedding cakes for even heterosexual couples. Also, did they have wedding cakes in biblical times? Note to self: research wedding rituals in Jesus’ day.

But historical anachronisms are besides the point when you’re Pat Robertson and you want to make a point about homosexuality.

“I think you got to remember from the Bible," the televangelist said this week, "if you look carefully at the Bible what would have happened in Jesus’ time if two men decided they wanted to cohabit together, they would have been stoned to death.”

True enough, Uncle Pat. It’s this next part that gives us pause.

“So Jesus would not have baked them a wedding cake nor would he have made them a bed to sleep in because they wouldn’t have been there. But we don’t have that in this country here so that’s the way it is.”

So, the problem is that gay people are around and not being stoned to death. This whole thing gets Uncle Pat worked up into a lather, because he is very pro-life.

“What is it about gays? What is it about abortion?” he ranted. “Have you ever thought why they’re on the forefront right now? Both of them deny the reproduction of human species.... The Devil is trying to say, ‘I’m going to destroy your progeny any way I can. If you will kill your babies, that’s fine, I’m with you; if you will deny the chance of having babies, that’s fine too; but I want to destroy your opportunities to reproduce.' It’s a very serious thing and we’re not talking about it, and we need to as a society, we have to realize where the attack is coming because it is definitely an attack.”

Do you follow that? Devil. Gays. Women. Birth control. Big cabal. Out to get us.

h/t: rightwingwatch

4. Chris Christie declares himself innocent, blames “emotional” woman for Bridgegate.

Chris Christie ran his own investigation into Bridgegate, used a million dollars of taxpayer money to do it, and declared himself innocent this week. This was treated as news. Case closed, right?

The internal investigation did reveal that Christie was told about the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge (petty payback to the Fort Lee Mayor who dared not support Christie). But Christie says he does not recall that conversation. Memory is a funny thing, and Chris Christie’s memory is really funny, because at one point he asserted that although he did not recall this conversation (with David Wildstein of the Port Authority, who orchestrated the whole lane closure payback thing), he did recall that the conversation had nothing to do with getting back at some rinky dink mayor.

While Team Chris Christie shockingly exonerated Chris Christie, they gratuitously stuck it to Bridget Kelly, the staffer Christie already scapegoated and fired for the whole mess. The report called her “emotional” and mentioned she had been jilted by another staffer, despite this not having a thing to do with anything. It’s just fun to bring up the fact that women are emotional and don’t like being jilted. Whereas men are the opposite.

5. Bill O’Reilly: Critics of Paul Ryan are "race hustlers."

Paul Ryan has spoken. He does “not have a racist bone in his body.” Also, some of his best friends are black. Wait, that’s not true. He does not have any black friends.

But Bill O’Reilly stood up for his boy Ryan this week, defending Ryan’s right to talk about the “culture” of shiftlessness of “inner-city males,” cite known racist author Charles Murray, and not be called racist. Anyone who accuses Ryan of using racist code language is a “race hustler,” O’Reilly says, and he’s sick and tired of that sort of behavior. "These race hustlers make a big living and they get voted into office by portraying their constituents as victims," O’Reilly said. "And it’s all your fault, and it’s my fault, it’s the rich people’s fault, it’s the Republicans’ fault. It’s everybody’s fault except what’s going on."

One of these race hustlers was California Rep. Barbara Lee, who had accurately called Ryan’s statement “a thinly veiled racial attack.”

She had some choice words about the race hustler characterization as well. “Unfortunately we’ve come to expect language like ‘welfare queens,’ ‘food stamp president,’ and now ‘race hustlers’ from the right wing and Mr. O’Reilly," she said in a statement. "It is disgusting and divisive and should never be accepted in our national discourse.”

O’Reilly maturely responded that if Lee did not like being called a race hustler, he’d be happy to call her other names.

“How about ‘pinhead,’ congresswoman?” he said on the air. “You like that better?”

So there, you meanie lady!

6. Michele Bachmann: Birth control equals "killer drugs."

Speaking of pinheads.... In her latest dispatch from Planet Nutjob, Michele Bachmann spewed yet more illogical nonsense this week.

Continuing her relentless attack on Obamacare, Democrats and just anything resembling progress, she vented about the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case, and how the religious freedoms of companies are under assault. Religious freedom means Christians are allowed to ram their religion down other people's throat. That's how the Founding Fathers envisioned it.

Bachmann could not quite bring herself to use the word "contraception" (it's long and multi-syllabic, so pretty hard). She has a different nickname for it. The birth control that evil socialist Obama is so eager to have companies cover are “killer drugs,” according to Bachmann, and by that we don’t think she means drugs that make you really really high. In Bachmann's world, there are "killer drugs," a.k.a. contraception, and then there are the good drugs, “life-saving drugs and surgical procedures” that Bachmann says “only politically connected best friends” of President Obama’s administration will get.

You probably did not read that in the fine print of your Obamacare insurance policy.

For more of Bachmann's lunacy, click here.

7. Rep. Bill Cassidy: The uninsured are "less sophisticated" and illiterate.

Of course, there is a reason you did not read that in your new insurance policy that you got thanks to Obamacare, and that reason is that you are ignorant and stupid. Louisiana Rep. and Senate hopeful Bill Cassidy says he thinks he knows a whole lot more about poor people than Barack Obama, that alleged former community organizer, does. The uninsured are, says Cassidy “illiterate.” He also says: “I’m not saying that to be mean. I say it in compassion.”

He knows, because he’s a doctor and they are his patients (poor things). And it is for their sake that he opposes expanding Medicaid in Louisiana. See how compassionate he is. He’s a doctor, for pete’s sake. He has to be compassionate.

He then further reflected on his version of “the reality of who the uninsured are: relatively less sophisticated, less comfortable with forms, less educated," he said.

Ergo, no healthcare coverage for them!

h/t: tpm

8. Ted Nugent: I’m just like Rosa Parks.

Bereft of his “singing” career, Nugent is now a columnist and an all-out, full-throttle race-baiting, gun-slinging slimebucket. Just like Rosa Parks.

And just like Rosa's civil rights were, Ted’s right to sling those guns are under assault.

“In 1955, my hero, Rosa Parks,” he wrote this week, “refused to give up her seat on a city bus. Good for her. In 2014, gun owners must learn from Rosa Parks and definitely refuse to give up our guns. As Rosa Parks once said, 'You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.'"

It’s not the first time Nugent has declared himself a sistah with Rosa. “I’m Rosa Parks with a Gibson,” Nugent has previously claimed. Further confusing his metaphors he has called for gun owners to “sit down on the front seat of the bus.” And do what? Shoot out the windows?

Although he says he deplores racism, Nugent has also said that apartheid was not all bad, and that some people aren’t created equal, like indigenous people in South Africa who “still put bones in their noses.” So he and Rosa are absolutely together on that.

h/t: mediamatters

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/8-vile-inanities-right-wing-week-jesus-only-bakes-wedding-cakes-straight-couples?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Here is this week's installment ~ I'm curious if spewing this crap is a "talent" these swamp-things have naturally or if they have to work at it ~ ~ there are more "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
7 Craziest Right-Wing Rants This Week: Satan's Role in Graham Crackers?
'Honey Maid's ads featuring same-sex couples is the work of the devil,' and more...

April 5, 2014 | 1. Charles Koch writes hateful opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, then moronic GOP senator recites it on the floor, instantly proving that pols are puppets of billionaires.

Isn't it fitting that greedy-ass billionaire Charles Koch published his op-ed claiming he is against “cronyism and political favors” — knowing full well that he and his equally evil brother David spend hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase those favors — the same week the Supreme Court ruled that the Kochs don’t even need the cover of an organization to outright buy politicians anymore?

Money is speech, the right-wing gang bangers of the Supreme Court said, and people like the Kochs are free to lay it on just as thick as they want to.

But, Koch whined in his op-ed, just because he uses his enormous wealth to ruin the lives of all but the few of his fellow robber barons doesn’t mean that you “collectivists” get to criticize him. It hurts his feelings, waah, waah, waah!

Employing the age-old strategy of “I’m rubber, you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you,” Koch called his critics despots who are un-American.

Shortly thereafter, one of his flunkies in the Senate, Kansas GOP-er Jerry Moran read this great American’s op-ed out loud and in its entirety to his fellow senators, claiming it represented “mainstream” America.

Excuse us while we go throw up, collectively.

2. Glenn Beck: Obama is a military dictator who designs his own uniforms.

Radio whack-job Glenn Beck spewed so much craziness this week, it’s hard to isolate just one tidbit. The man is a veritable gusher of insane vitriol. Still, Beck became particularly unhinged by the news about Obamacare enrollment and went on an epic rant to rival his other epic rants. Some of the more absurd moments: “This guy (President Obama), put him on a balcony in a military uniform, this guy’s a full-fledged dictator . . . What are we doing? We’re watching a circus. Right now, we’re still allowed to say, ‘this is bogus. This is a fairytale. The emperor has no clothes. . .’ And everyone in the press, you rat bastards, you know . . . This is borderline insane, (Obama’s) a sociopath.”

Then returning to the uniform, Beck sputtered, “Put him in a uniform that he himself designed, because he’ll be the greatest uniform designer ever."

Oh my God, yes! You nailed it, Glenn. Obama, the sociopathic greatest uniform designer ever. It does not get more evil than that.

See for yourself.

3. Pat Buchanan: God is on Putin’s side. The West is like Gomorrah.

Pat Buchanan was having a little chat with God this weekend and God said, “You know, I like this guy Putin. He hates gays as much as I do.”

“I hear you God,” Pat replied. “I love Vlad.”

“The West is like Gomorrah,” God added.

“Well said, Yahweh. I might steal that line,” Patty chuckled. “Don’t you also hate the fact that the homosexual lobby has taken over that perfectly nice word, ‘gay,’ which used to just mean ‘happy,’ and now we can’t say it anymore.”

But God had hung up and moved on to other things, like catching a screening of that Noah flick, and smiting Bill Maher. (It was on God’s to-do list, like, forever.)

Pat wrote his column praising Putin for "planting Russia's flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity" when it comes to anti-gay and anti-women’s rights policies. He also kvelled that Putin is “tapping into the worldwide revulsion of and resistance to the sewage of a hedonistic secular and social revolution coming out of the West.”

Oh, Vlad, you are really Pat’s kind of guy. Turns out God does like communists, after all. He switched sides. He can do that. He’s God.

h/t: mediamatters

4. Rick Perry: Nah, we’re not going to do anything to curtail prison rape in Texas.

Prison rape is epidemic, and at least one in eight juveniles in detention are sexually assaulted, according to a (conservative) Bureau of Justice survey. Way back in 2003, a law to gradually curb rape in prison was enacted. It gave states plenty of time to implement some changes, like more than 10 years. (So, sorry you inmates who have been raped in the interim.)

The DOJ's rules include: separating teens from adults, eliminating cross-gender pat-downs in teen and juvenile units and allotting more staff to juvenile facilities, according to the Huffington Post.

But, you know what? Rick Perry doesn’t care about prison rape. He’s busy doing other things. Like closing down women’s health centers. And executing people. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder last week, Perry explained why he was ignoring the "commendable," but “cumbersome" and "counterproductive" new rules.

Perry said the law would not work in Texas, because Texas, unlike the feds, considers 17-year-old inmates to be adults rather than teens, and it would be too expensive to separate younger inmates from adults.

So, in essence, let the rape of 17-year-olds continue.

Read more here.

5. Boomer Esiason says Opening Day is more important than new fatherhood; apologizes. Mike Francesa says similar thing; doesn’t apologize.

Sports personalities always have their priorities in order. Boomer Esiason demonstrated this when he opined on his radio show this week that New York Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy should have made his wife get a C-section — you know, that minor procedure where they slice into your stomach, pull your intestines out and pile them on top of your belly, yank a baby out, stuff your intestines back in, and stitch you up — rather than fly to be with her when she went into labor and miss baseball season’s first two games. (Because, jeez, there are only 162 games in the season!)

"Quite frankly, I would have said C-section before the season starts," Esiason blathered. "I need to be at Opening Day. I’m sorry. This is what makes our money. This is how we’re going to live our life. This is going to give my child every opportunity to be a success in life. I’ll be able to afford any college I want to send my kid to because I’m a baseball player."

Shockingly, listeners complained. Some accused Esiason of insensitivity and being a male chauvinist pig. Others pointed out that it really was none of his business. Under duress, he apologized, because he would “never” tell women “what to do with their bodies.”

No, never.

Bigger jerk sportscaster Mike Francesa expressed a similar view on his show and stuck by it. Dads don’t need to be present for parenthood, he said, especially dads with really cool jobs, like baseball players and radio hosts.

Someone, please wake Mike up and tell him it’s not 1955 anymore.

6. Pat Robertson: Obamacare is killing people! Here’s the number.

Being ignorant has never stopped Pat Robertson from offering his opinion about anything. And he has been unable to wrap his addled, bible-thumping brain around that newfangled healthcare law. But he doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like it one bit. So, when an uninsured viewer asked the 700 Club host for advice, he warned her about the evils of the gubmint’s healthcare exchange marketplace for two very sound reasons: 1. Her personal information would get spread all over the Internet, and people might learn that, for example, she’s had sex. And 2. Healthcare reform is a disaster and it is “killing people.”

Be that as it may, the frothy televangelist then gave out the Obamacare 800 number.

h/t: rightwingwatch

7. Crazy right-wing group sees Satan’s handiwork in graham crackers.

You’ve been warned about Girl Scout cookies causing lesbianism, but did you know that Satan has personally infiltrated graham crackers? Seems that innocent staple of kindergarten snacks and naptime is in cahoots with the forces of darkness, as evidenced by the fact that the Honey Maid brand recently featured a same-sex family (and an interracial couple) in its advertising, claiming, “This is wholesome.”

Dastardly.

The American Decency Association (yeupp, that’s its name) recently joined other anti-gay activists in saying the ad is proof of Satanic deception: “Satan wants us to see sin as normal and not so bad…. Honey Maid and others are putting two moms in a same-sex relationship. They are making two dads to seem normal.”

Make no mistake, the group cautioned. This is not about acceptance. It’s a matter of an “evil agenda,” and part of Satan’s attack on God.

No, not the graham crackers, Satan!

Meanwhile, Honey Maid responded. With genuine decency. Watch the video here.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/7-craziest-right-wing-rants-week-satans-role-graham-crackers?paging=off&current_page=1

I'm thinking this week's installment is the best example to-date of us desperately needing a nation-wide "time out" ~ ~ there are more "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
7 Right-Wing Absurdities This Week: Colbert Causes Conservative Meltdown Edition
Apoplexy after Stephen Colbert takes CBS late-night reins from Letterman.

April 12, 2014 | 1. Various conservative clowns: Stephen Colbert will single-handedly destroy America.

The hysteria on the right about Stephen Colbert’s elevation to CBS’s Late Night post has been nothing short of hilarious. Even before news hit that Colbert would replace David Letterman when he retires, Bill O’Reilly frantically declared that Colbert is responsible for the “destruction of America.” That’s quite a distinction, when there are so many other things vying for the title of “America’s Top Destroyer.” (Wait, reality contest show idea: "Who will be America’s next Top Destroyer?")

More than failing infrastructure; abject refusal to deal with the coming climate catastrophe; rampant, spiraling inequality to rival the Gilded Age; near daily mass shootings; the criminalization of poverty; or deportation of millions of legions of innocent undocumented immigrants [insert your favorite scourge here], it is Stephen Colbert who is ushering in the decline of this great nation. In addition, O’Reilly also said, Colbert is an “ideological fanatic,” a “deceiver” and responsible for the mayhem following UConn’s March Madness win.

No, we don't really get that last one either.

Rush Limbaugh sputtered that Colbert’s promotion was “an assault on the heartland of America,” prompting millions of heartlanders to scurry to their bomb shelters with multiple firearms, canned goods and bottled water. He also said it represented a "redefinition of comedy," a "redefinition of what's funny." This is true, Rush. Comedy has been redefined to mean something that makes actual people laugh.

And, after numerous attempts to identify the full extent of the outrage, Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro finally landed on his metaphor: In making a career out of pitch-perfect conservative pundit mockery, Stephen Colbert was guilty of no less than the moral equivalent of “vile political blackface.” Clever wordsmith Shapiro called this “Conservativeface,” a neologism that seems destined to catch on.

No word on whether Colbert is the Anti-Christ. Although a few years back a little outfit called Christfire implied as much, calling Colbert Stalinesque, Hitleresque and a bigger threat to America than Islamic terrorism.

All right ye liberals! You’ve been warned! Laugh your way straight into Satan’s clutches.

2. Advisor to Texas GOP gov. hopeful: (OK, it’s Charles Murray): There’s no evidence women are significant thinkers.

It’s pretty well known that American Enterprise Institute “scholar” Charles Murray is a colossally dishonest thinker who shrouds claims of white intellectual superiority in pseudo-science. But he has proven himself offensive and wrongheaded on other topics as well. This week at a talk at University of Texas, he stood by his claim that women have not contributed much significant thought to the field of philosophy. But don’t feel too bad, gals, because Murray did allow that some of you are very good in literature.

Murray’s enlightened views on women naturally include his oppositions to equal pay laws. He argues that such laws would hurt women by discouraging companies from hiring them, and anyway he doesn’t even believe in pay discrimination—it’s a myth invented by liberals. “Women prefer to stay home with their children,” he says. And they also choose lower-paying jobs.

Who cares what Charles Murray says? You ask. Well, Texas GOP hopeful Gregg Abbott does. He takes some of his cues on education from Murray and specifically cited Murray’s work in his argument against universal pre-K. Of course, Abbott keeps some pretty questionable company in general. He’s also appeared with Ted Nugent, whose enlightened views on women and blacks are fairly well known.

h/t: RawStory

3. Virginia GOP candidate Bob Marshall: No incest exception for abortion because sometimes people want to have incest.

The good people of Virginia have themselves a real prize in Republican Bob Marshall, who is running to represent them in Congress. In fact, his views are so extreme on things like abortion and same-sex marriage that even his fellow Virginia Republicans can’t stand him. And that is saying something. He’s the one who introduced the bill requiring women who want abortions to have an ultrasound first, which helped make Virginia the butt of late-night jokes.

Still, he does have a following among other crazy social conservatives who could carry him to a congressional seat, where he could continue to embarrass his state. Marshall is anti-abortion, anti-same-sex marriage and anti-Planned Parenthood. He has some pretty bizarre religious ideas, too. Remarks of his that came to light this week include his opposition to abortions even in the case of incest, because, “How do you know it’s not voluntary? Sometimes it is.”

He has also said that disabled children are punishment for women having abortions. Here is his very science-based assertion: “The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion who have handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the firstborn of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children,” he said.

No clue as to what his source for this bizarre claim is. Voices in his head, perhaps.

h/t: RawStory
and: RightWingWatch

4. Reince Priebus: There should be no caps on campaign donations at all!

The chairman of the Republican National Party, Reince Priebus, echoed the words of his master Charles Koch this week when he came out for removing all caps on campaign donations. He also suggested that donors should not even have to be disclosed. Well, theoretically, he thinks disclosure might be okay, but....

"I mean, you want to be for disclosure," Preibus said. "But when you start to see some of the cases out there where people are targeted, and businesses are targeted and picketed and threatened for political contributions, then now you’re suppressing free speech through disclosure. So I mean, even things that I want to agree with are getting to be very difficult."

So to summarize, money is speech and should therefore not be limited in any way (particularly when it is flowing into Republican coffers). But unlike actual speech, money should be spoken in secret and not be open to scrutiny or criticism.

Because that hurts money’s feelings.

5. Detroit columnist Nolan Finley: Woman candidate is “milking the vagina business.”

Detroit News’ editorial page editor and columnist Nolan Finley displayed his ability to keep it real classy this week. Notoriously anti-Democratic and pro-corporate, he has long been using his perch to rabidly oppose the candidacy of Democrats, most recently Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schnauer and his running mate, Lisa Brown. This week Finley wrote:


Wait, there’s a vagina business that can be milked? How come we did not know that?

What that curious term means to Finley is that Lisa Brown favors reproductive rights for women, which in his world (roughly the 1950s) makes her an extreme left-wing liberal.

Milking the vagina business.

What will the Republican woman haters club come up with next?

6. Minnesota GOPer: I'm running for Congress because no child should be exposed to science.

Aaron Miller loves to tell the story of how his daughter came home in tears from school on the day when she learned about evolution. That’s not what her daddy taught her. Determined that his daughter and other innocent children should never again be exposed to science that might be upsetting to them, Miller was galvanized to run for Congress. The government has obviously declared “war on our values,” he thought. Well, he was just going to declare war right back at them.

Miller has already gotten endorsements from other creationists in government, like Minnesota State Rep. Allen Quist, who has argued that it is only reasonable people and dinosaurs coexisted and that the Book of Job offers science lessons.

He also joins a GOP field full of anti-science deep thinkers, like Paul Broun of Georgia who knows that evolution is a lie “straight from the pit of hell.” In Texas, all four GOP candidates competing for the lieutenant governorship in Texas are pushing to teach creationism in public schools. Even more plentiful are the climate science deniers. They even get to head up congressional science committees.

Because the GOP is determined that every child should grow up in blissful ignorance.

h/t: ThinkProgress

7. Florida Rep: Floridians can't vote on solar ballot measure.

Solar energy is increasingly popular among Floridians, which is why a Republican representative is hellbent on keeping the issue out of the polls. As we all learned in high school civics class, democracy means not letting people vote on things you don’t want them to vote on. A Senate committee in the Sunshine State approved an amendment for the November ballot that would give tax breaks to businesses that install solar panels. But Ritch Workman is using his power as the chairman of the House Finance and Tax Committee to prevent that from happening. His lame excuse?

“I just don’t see the need to continue to expand the incentives and underwriting of solar,’’ Workman said. “Solar is coming a long way and eventually it’s going to be able to stand on its own two feet. But right now it doesn’t.”

More likely, say proponents of the bill, Workman is under the sway of Florida’s electric utilities, which adamantly oppose rooftop solar energy because it will end their monopoly.

Ah well, it’s not as if there’s some big hurry to convert to clean energy or anything. It’s not as if climate change and global warming are some big urgent problem that the whole country needs to immediately address in no uncertain terms in order to avert what is certain to be catastrophic climate events, the likes of which we are only just beginning to see. No, no, no.

Anyway, we all know the sun is for frying your skin, not heating your home or running your appliances. Silly.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/7-right-wing-absurdities-week-colbert-causes-conservative-meltdown-edition?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Another week's installment that does not disappoint ~ and introduces some "newbies" who also live in and enjoy that parallel universe that is absent pesky reality ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
6 Dastardly Right-Wing Declarations This Week: The Phyllis 'Expand the Gender Pay Gap' Schlafly Edition
And: The poor should kiss the ground beneath the rich.

April 19, 2014 | 1. Phyllis Schlafly: Women need to be paid less so they can find husbands.

It’s one of the more perplexing mysteries of our time: Why is Phyllis Schlafly still flapping her lips? Has she not gotten the message that history has entirely passed her by? Several fold. Apparently not. Not content merely with her party’s rejection of pay equality for women, Schlafly took to her pen this week to argue that women would be better off if the gender pay gap were widened.

Whaaaat? You understandably ask.

Lower pay makes it more likely that women will find “suitable” husbands, the Eagle Forum founder wrote in the Christian Post. “Suitable” turns out to be the key word here, because Phyllis and her fellow retrograde conservatives have a peculiar definition of that. Women, says Phyllis, prefer mates who earn more than they do. Whereas men prefer to be the high earners.

We have a feeling that Phyllis doesn’t have the kinds of friends we have. Another feeling we have is that Phyllis is not living in the same century we are. But just because she advocates paying women less does not mean that Phyllis does not care about women. Why would you think that?

“The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap,” she wrote.

Yeupp, the best way to save “traditional” marriage is to increase poverty and desperation for women (you can throw children in the pot as well). Wonderful idea, Phyllis. Wonder why anyone apart from everyone throughout history hasn’t thought of that before?

2. Pastor Kevin Swanson compares being gay to being a cannibal or an axe murderer.

You may have heard about the outbreak of conservative apoplexy brought on by Nabisco's Honey Maid commercial depicting a same-sex couple.

The competition for craziest reaction to an ad about graham crackers got tougher this week when Pastor Kevin Swanson of Colorado compared homosexuality to axe murder and cannibalism on his radio program. Nabisco, he said, was making a big mistake here.

"When you come down to things like axe murder or homosexuality and you say, ‘We’re really going to promote it and we’re going to encourage everybody in America to engage in this or at least support this thing,’ there will be people on the other side who will take an adamantly opposed position to your support of axe murdering or homosexuality," he said. "They will be intolerant—they will be very intolerant of that which is evil, like axe murdering."

Having upped the ante that far, he couldn’t top himself, so resorted to an old standby, comparing homosexuality to bestiality. "Maybe they had another family where a dog is the wife with a human husband," he said, before adding, "Homosexuals love their friends and cannibals love their victims—they taste good.”

Love. He said love. Isn’t that just what Swanson’s brand of Christianity is all about?

Listen to Swanson's remarks, courtesy of Right Wing Watch, here.

3. Bryan Fischer: The poor should kiss the ground on which rich people walk, just as Jesus said.

The head of the American Family Association proved that he can be deeply offensive on a wide array of topics this week. Usually, Bryan Fischer spouts off about his hatred of gays, but he changed it up recently, and instead spouted off about his hatred of the poor.

In honor of tax day, Fischer discussed how the richest 1 percent pay 30 percent of federal taxes. We’re not sure where he got his figures, but never mind that the 1% often pay lower tax rates than the poor and middle class, or that the richest 1 percent control 40 percent of the wealth in the country (conservatively estimated).

So, highly questionable numbers aside, here is the posture Bryan Fischer recommends poor and middle-class people take toward rich people”: Prostration. Yeupp. Fischer told listeners that the poor ought to kiss the ground the rich walk on.

The poor and middle-class families in this country “ought to be kissing the ground on which [the rich] walk” because it is the top 1 percent who are paying for EBT cards and food stamps and federal housing," Fischer fumed.

Yes, that is absolutely Jesus’ message. Sermon on the Mount, right?

The rich, Fischer went on to say, “ought to be given ticker tape parades once a week in all of our major cities to thank them for funding welfare for everybody.”

Yes, a ticker tape parade for the oligarchs like those wonderful Koch brothers, who so generously fund social programs, and make sure to help elect progressive, enlightened politicians who ensure livable wages for workers, a secure social safety net, fair regulation of industry, just deserts for crooked bankers, investment in infrastructure and education, universal health insurance....

Yeupp, that’s the planet we live on, all right.

4. Rep. Glenn Gruenhagen: The best way to stop bullying is to beat children.

Hard to imagine a so-called lawmaker not wanting to take measures to prevent children from being bullied, but they exist. And they say some crazy things. Meet Minnesota state Rep. Glenn Gruenhagen, who argued against an anti-bullying bill and instead advocated beating of children who bully others, calling it a “cheap, inexpensive, and effective” solution that “cures” bullying.

Then he told his colleagues a little story from his past about a bus driver who beat him when he was a child for bullying a girl on the bus. That was the last time he bullied that girl, although it is not known if he continued to bully other people. Gruenhagen also regaled colleagues with a tale about a football coach who had a paddle, “and if you didn’t behave yourself, you got up in front of the class, and guess what, you got one on the hind end.”

Good times...

Gruenhagen really got into this “fight bullying with bullying” philosophy, claiming that schools wouldn’t have to hire armed police officers if schools were just allowed to punish children by beating them. So, not only was he against the anti-bullying measure, he wanted to repeal laws preventing corporal punishment.

The good news is that the beat a kid, prevent a bully argument did not carry the day in Minnesota, and the anti-bullying bill passed.

5. Brit Hume says Obama and Holder use race as “a shield and a sword," then is hurt that people are mean to him on Twitter.

Poor Brit Hume. Fox News' ostensibly “serious” guy was talking with fellow whiter-than-white conservatives George Will and Chris Wallace about race last Sunday, and they all agreed that black people are wrong about it. For President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder "race has been a shield and a sword," the panel decided. Hume was very happy that he and his white friends got that whole race thing sorted out.

But no, apparently black people and other people were mean to Hume on Twitter after that, so Hume got sad. Why can’t they just agree with him, and why would they complain about the lack of diversity on a panel discussing race? Can't a few white guys just tell black people how to feel about race without being called racist? Wah. Wah. Wah.

So Hume did what any reasonable oppressed white guy would do: He commiserated with his friend Bill O’Reilly, who is an expert on how white guys on Fox get oppressed by black guys and liberals (like that mean old Stephen Colbert).

6. Michigan mayor: Freedom of religion does not include freedom from religion.

Warren, Michigan Mayor Jim Fouts is all for freedom of religion and all; that’s why he let a Christian group set up a “Prayer Station” inside of City Hall. But when an atheist group suggested setting up a “Reason Station” nearby to promote another little American idea called separation of church and state, as well as secular thought, reason and logic, Fouts decided that was taking this whole freedom thing too far.

Turns out that the guy who suggested the “Reason Station,” Douglas Marshall, was affiliated with a group called Freedom From Religion Foundation, and just the name of that group offends Fouts’ sensibilities. In a letter to Marshall, Fouts explained that the Freedom From Religion Foundation was not protected under the First Amendment’s Establishment clause because atheism is not a religion.

“To my way of thinking, your group is strictly an anti-religion group intending to deprive all organized religions of their constitutional freedoms or at least discourage the practice of religion,” Fouts wrote. “The city of Warren cannot allow this.

“I emphasize one thing,” he added. “The government cannot restrict an individual’s freedom of speech, but an individual cannot restrict the government’s freedom of speech.”

Yeah, take that!

Wait, huh? Who's restricting the government's speech?

http://www.alternet.org/phyllis-schlafly-and-other-christian-crazies-kick-it-notch?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

And still another week's installment that does not disappoint ~ I'm being forced into giving the far right-wingers credit ... they really do an excellent job of twisting/manipulating everything ~ ~ there are more "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
7 Absurd Right-Wing Follies This Week: Bundy/Hannity Breakup Edition
Racism is MLK's fault and other head-exploding stuff.

April 26, 2014 | 1. Cliven Bundy: Black people were better off as slaves. Now, they put themselves in jail.

That Cliven Bundy turned out to be a colossal racist is not a hugely surprising twist ending to the ridiculous Hannity/Bundy love affair, media circus and saga that was such a marvel to behold this week. If there is a more perfect example of Fox and the right being exposed as the utterly backward haters they are, we cannot imagine it. The greatest fiction writer in the world would be hard-pressed to come up with a more airtight scenario. Truth cannot only be stranger than fiction; it can be more satirical than satire itself.

Still, Sean Hannity was shocked—shocked, I tell you—that a man who had previously said perfectly reasonable things, like he did not believe in the existence of the federal government, the face of which just happens to be a black man, turned out also to harbor morally repugnant views about race.

Good ol' Cliven was not about to let his moment in the Fox-induced sun go by without weighing in on a whole variety of topics. With the microphones on, he waxed lyrical about the “Negro,” though his actual pronunciation included a short “i” rather than the long “e” in that retrograde word. Equally ironic, perhaps, is that he opened this bit of philosophical rumination by criticizing “negroes” who are on government subsidies, when his cattle are on the bovine equivalent of food stamps, grazing away on federally owned land for zippo.

For those who missed it, here’s Bundy’s refrain, one more time: “Negroes abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

Apart from the obvious outrageousness of saying anyone is better off as a slave—much of the rest of this just doesn’t even make sense. Black people put their men in jail—no, that would be the police who put them in jail, often due to racist drug laws. And then that weird causality that Bundy implies, they put them in jail because they didn’t learn to pick cotton. How is that causal? Explain.

Black people are less free now that they are no longer slaves. OK, totally veered off into the realm of absurdity. Demonstrably false, crazy, head-exploding stuff.

2. Cliven Bundy: If I’m racist, it's MLK's fault.

Further demonstrating his tenuous grasp on both logic and reality, Bundy elaborated on his deep thoughts on race on CNN later in the week. He was very taken aback that people found his musings on whether black people might be better off as slaves offensive, and so he sought to clarify them, or find someone else to blame. Oddly, he figured it was Martin Luther King Jr.’s fault, for not finishing “his job.”

Perhaps someone should break it to Bundy that MLK was assassinated.

Just as oddly, Bundy thought that the thing that people found most offensive about what he said was that he used words like “black boys” and “Negroes,” as opposed to the whole “better off as slaves” bit.

Finally, he concluded, "We need to get over this prejudice stuff." This puts him in fine conservative company. Conservatives are very upset that people keep calling them racist for doing things like siding with Cliven Bundy, or blaming blacks for their own problems, or in the case of the Roberts Court, for saying that we live in a post-racial society where we no longer need affirmative action to make sure colleges are diverse and educational opportunities are afforded to all.

In other words, the conservative argument is this: Let’s not do the hard work it takes to make things truly equal between races. Let’s just "get over" the racism stuff. Say it’s over, and be done with it. If we just stop calling racists "racist," we're good.

3. Sean Hannity: Shocked and appalled at Bundy’s racism, because it reinforces the “ignorant view” that conservatives are racist.

Well, you know the old expression, if the shoe fits . . . or in Bundy’s case, the boot.

But how embarrassing for Sean Hannity that this freedom-fighting, federal-government-denying rancher who just wants to keep his grazing fees down so we can all afford to eat a hamburger for heaven's sake, is now reinforcing the “ignorant view” that conservatives are racist.

A brief recap of other conservatives or conservative darlings who have reinforced that view:

* Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson: blacks were better under Jim Crow although he seemed unclear about the difference between that and slavery.

* GOP’s Virginia Lt. Governor candidate E.W. Jackson: “Welfare hurt black families more than slavery ever did.”

* Bill O’Reilly more or less any night, so let’s just cite his recent interview with Kentucky coach John Calipari during which O’Reilly just kept asking how on earth it is possible to coach all those crazy black kids.

* Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum pact in Iowa in 2011 while running for president which began:


So, Michele and Rick are just wondering if blacks weren't better off....

4. Alex Jones: The NY Times totally misquoted Cliven Bundy’s words that he actually said on TV.

Not everyone abandoned Cliven Bundy in his darkest hour when so many media outlets called him racist, including his Fox Fairweather Friends. Crazy conspiracy theorist Alex Jones invited the rancher to clarify his comments about black people and slavery and set the record straight, because, as Bundy has said, he loves all people, and he never said he was prejudiced. He never said it, so how could he be? Because racists always say: Yeah, I’m racist.

Bundy dutifully clarified that he was just wondering if real slavery was worse than what he calls “welfare slavery.” And he also clarified that real slavery might have been preferable because black people had chickens and gardens and the men worked.

Well, when you put it that way, Cliven, chickens and gardens.

But again, Bundy is “just wondering.” He's "not prejudiced." He never said that.

Alex Jones chimed in: “How can people say you don’t want freedom for black people.”

Bundy: “I do want that. That’s what our heavenly father wants and that’s what our founding fathers want and that’s what I want.”

And, let’s remember, Bundy has said he is kind of like the founding fathers.

Also, Bundy told Jones he’s invited "ethnic people" to his parties. In fact, he added, “There’s a black man on my front yard right now.”

Apparently, he did not mean the offensive statue of a black man holding a lantern, either. This black man in the front yard, Bundy said, was in the militia that is protecting Bundy from the bad old federal government. And that black man seems to be "very comfortable" and he is "mingling" with Bundy’s family. And he is armed, all of which is very reassuring.

5. Sean Hannity: If you don’t like Ryan’s budget, sister, you’re a communist.

Hannity is an equal opportunity asshole, able to be a complete douchebag on a variety of topics, not just scofflaw ranchers, of course. And after Bundy embarrased him so much, Hannity really needed to change the topic. So, he did. He invited Sister Simone Campbell, who has written a book about helping the poor, onto his show, and then he called her a commie. Nice. The reason? She said she did not care for Paul Ryan’s horrifying, safety-net eviscerating, one-percent loving budget.

Hannity is a Christian, a Catholic to be exact, and he demonstrates over and over again just how fully he has absorbed the message of Jesus Christ when it comes to caring for the poor and serving others.

So, of course he favors Paul Ryan’s reverse-Robin Hood proposal to cut $5.3 trillion from programs for the poor combined with $4.3 trillion in tax cuts for the rich. Both Ryan and Hannity care about the poor so much, they want to improve their moral fiber, which is always accomplished by taking food away from their children.

That’s what Jesus would do if he were alive. Help the poor improve their moral fiber.

But wait, he is alive, eternally. We should ask him.

And if he doesn’t agree with Ryan and Hannity, then Jesus is a commie, too.

More here.

6. LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling to girlfriend: Don’t post pictures with black people on Instagram.

It just may be that Donald Sterling, the charming rich guy who owns the LA Clippers, did not get the memo about this post-racial society we now live in. (Probably MLK’s fault.)

After his girlfriend V. Stiviano posted a picture of herself with Magic Johnson on Instagram, Sterling wagged his finger and said, no. His ensuing argument with her was caught on tape.

"It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people," he is heard saying. "Do you have to?"

Stiviano, who is black and Mexican, wondered if there couldn’t be an exception made in the case of someone like Magic Johnson, whom she thought Sterling admired. So, Sterling very nicely clarified his position on that, at an extremely high volume, to make sure she would hear.

“I'm just saying that it's too bad you can't admire him privately. And during your ENTIRE F****** LIFE, your whole life, admire him -- bring him here, feed him, f*** him, I don't care. You can do anything. But don't put him on an Instagram for the world to see so they have to call me. And don't bring him to my games. OK?" Sterling replied.

Magic Johnson, having heard about Sterling's views, has said he won’t be going to any more Clippers games, shockingly.

h/t: Huffpo

7. Cardinal Dolan: My lord, all you have to do is walk into a 7-11 or any shop in America and have access to contraceptives.

Speaking of great Catholics besides Hannity, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, arguably the most prominent Catholic in America, got his facts completely wrong this week, when he decided to speak about the contraception mandate in Obamacare.


Dolan is not terribly informed on the topic of contraception, which hasn’t prevented him from aligning himself with conservative evangelicals in their fight for employers who don’t want to give insurance coverage to women who don’t want to pop out babies or remain abstinent.

He also hasn’t been to a 7-11 lately. Yes, they have condoms, but no IUDs, or diaphragms or birth control pills, etc… all of which require doctors' visits and cost quite a bit more.

Full story: Political Animal

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/7-absurd-right-wing-follies-week-bundyhannity-breakup-edition?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Another "good" week for ... lunatics ~ ~ there are more "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
Sarah Palin Leads 7 Vilest Right Wingers This Week: "Waterboarding is How We Baptist Terrorists"
Sarah Palin offends her Christian allies for "her sacrilegious jibe" ... and more.

May 3, 2014 | 1. Donald Trump has a little advice for Donald Sterling: Don’t go girlfriend hunting in hell.

There’s competition for the title “The Donald,” with all the idiocy, egotism, racism and bad comb-overs the name implies.

But rich, white jerks named Donald have to stick together. For one thing, they can protect each other from predatory girlfriends who blab their dirty little secrets to the world. That was pretty much Donald Trump’s take on Donald Sterling’s troubles this week. Sterling’s problem is not his documented history of racism, housing discrimination, deep-seated misogyny, and views of the world that are almost as incoherent as they are repugnant. Donald Sterling’s problem is that he has the "girlfriend from hell.”

You won’t catch Trump's trophies blabbing like that. Wife Melania thinks he’s right about everything. Marla Maples was gagged in the divorce, though when they were courting he did allow her to brag about his prowess in the sack.

Of course, now V. Stiviano says she wasn't Sterling’s girlfriend. She has alternately described herself as his archivist, his personal assistant and his “silly rabbit,” all jobs which came with a multi-million-dollar apartment and several luxury cars. The route which her infamous taped discussion with Sterling took to TMZ is mysterious. Why, she’s even saying the now banned-for-life Clippers owner is not really a racist, despite telling her not to bring black people to his games or be photographed with them. "I think Mr. Sterling is from a different generation than I am. I think he was brought up to believe these things… segregation, whites and blacks," she told Barbara Walters Friday night.

How sweet. See Donald, she’s not so hellish after all.

2. Sarah Palin: Baptize terrorists by waterboarding!

Sarah Palin is such a fun gal, with her bubbly personality, invented words like refudiate, and her tenuous grasp of American history. (Remember children, Paul Revere warned the British.) She’s also an enthusiastic gunnie—she likes hunting moose and liberals—and a good Christian soldier, who thinks life begins at conception and ends whenever the hell she says it does. But Palin managed to offend some of her Christian allies last weekend speaking at the NRA convention, when she reminded everyone why we are so very lucky that she never got within a heartbeat of the presidency.

Comparing how liberals view terrorists and how she views them, Palin told the appreciative crowd, “Oh, you can't offend them, can't make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen. Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.”

Oh ha ha ha, went the crowd. Who would have thought it, gun enthusiasts also being torture enthusiasts?

A number of Christian leaders were slightly less enamored. Their problem was not so much the waterboarding thing, that’s fine. But invoking the sacrament of baptism? On terrorists!! Presumably Islamic ones! That is just wrong. Rod Dreher, writing for the American Conservative lamented: “Palin and all those who cheered her sacrilegious jibe ought to be ashamed of themselves. For us Christians, baptism is the entry into new life.” Waterboarding rarely is viewed that way.

No shame appears to be forthcoming from the Palin camp.

3. Odious Sean Hannity having abandoned Bundy, defends vigilante killer instead.

You might have thought Sean Hannity would be interested in rehabilitating his image somewhat after he elevated rancher Cliven Bundy to hero-outlaw status only to be embarrassed and appalled when Bundy suggested blacks were better off as slaves.

But no, Hannity found another cause to celebrate this week, and if he was trying to outdo his previous odiousness, we just might have to hand the victory to him.

Hannity had only one problem with what Minnesota murderer Byron Smith did when he shot two kids who had broken into his house execution-style, after setting a trap for them and lying in wait with his guns. It wasn’t the third shot Smith fired into 17-year-old Nick Brady’s face after saying to the wounded teen, “You’re dead.” And it wasn’t hunting down 18-year-old Haile Kifer, putting a gun to her chin and making her eat a bullet. It was the fact that he called the teenagers “vermin.” Now that’s hurtful.

The jury convicted Smith of premeditated first-degree murder this week, but the court of Hannity was considerably more lenient. Hannity’s not just a stand-your-ground advocate. He’s a “set-traps-in-your-ground, lie-in-wait-in-your-ground, and hunt-down-and-execute-anyone-on-your-ground” kind of guy. On his show, he questioned the verdict because the teens “broke into the guy’s house.”

Hannity, you are a seriously angry, possibly psychotic man. At some point this stuff you spout eats into your psyche. We’re hard-pressed to find a joke about this. Just stop.

4. Glenn Beck: Hillary Clinton will have lesbian sex in White House.

Radio host Glenn Beck makes no secret of his distaste for Hillary Clinton. Another thing he dislikes: gay marriage.

Beck is not sure that Hillary is a lesbian, but he is sure she would be willing to say she is a lesbian if it helps her get elected. Of course, she would. This is a woman who had her daughter knocked up in order to be a grandmother while she is running for president. Hillary stops at nothing. Having shoes thrown at her. Doing whatever it is she is supposed to have done in Benghazi. Faking an aneurysm.

But the target here was gay marriage and all the politicians who opportunistically jumped on board to support it, all because of what Beck and his sidekicks scoffingly called “the arc of history.”

One of Beck’s sidekicks gave him an opening he just had to drive through when he mentioned that Hillary Clinton came out in favor of gay marriage last year.

“Did you just say, came out?” Beck asked with a little glint in his eye.

"I'm telling you," Beck said, "Hillary Clinton will be having sex with a woman on the White House desk if it becomes popular."

They all laughed and laughed, imagining that very scene.

See more.

5. Denver radio host: "All racists are, at the end of the day, atheists."

Dan Caplis, a talk radio host in Denver weighed in on the Donald Sterling controversy earlier in the week asserting his perverse opinion that all racists are atheists.

His words:


It made perfect sense to him, and he stuck to it even as listeners barraged him with angry emails. But he did say that the opposite was not true, insisting that he does not believe all atheists are racist.

Pretty big concession there for a man whose starting point is that all racists are atheists. Funny, we have a distinct memory of Cliven Bundy talking a lot about God as he wondered whether black people were better off as slaves. But he's not a racist. He said he wasn't. Of course, we could also name just about every other racist in history including those who put burning crosses on black people's lawns.

Caplis grew up in Chicago, and he knew some racists there, and always assumed they could not believe in God.

So, yeah, there’s some real social science behind his claim. He always just assumed it.

h/t: rawstory

6. Alabama’s chief justice: Buddha and Mohammed did not create us so First Amendment only applies to Christians.

It’s a free country, so not against the law to be some kind of religious kook. But when you are the law, you’re supposed to, well, understand the law. No one told that to Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court who declared at the Pastor for Life Luncheon this week that the First Amendment only applies to Christians because, “Buddha didn’t create us, Mohammed didn’t create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures.”

Hmmm, that doesn’t sound like what they teach in most law schools. “They didn’t bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship," the judge continued. "Let’s get real, let’s go back and learn our history. Let’s stop playing games.”

Wait, which game are we playing? Not that silly old religious freedom game, or that ridiculous separation of church and state game. No, we’re playing the game of Life, which, incidentally, begins at conception, not when you’re born, not at 30. Conception. That is definitely what Thomas Jefferson meant by "life."

Judge Moore just knows that. Don’t ask him how.

h/t: rawstory

7. South Dakota GOP-er compares food stamp recipients to wild animals.

An absolute charmer is running for Senate in South Dakota. She is a doctor, or has Dr. in front of her name, which is Annette Bosworth. She styles herself after Tea Partiers Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Steve King, and some of her employees are suing her for back pay. She also has a Facebook page, and posts her deep thoughts there. Like this one this week:


No word on where she got the numbers, but moving on to the rest of her post.


“This concludes today’s lesson. Any questions?”

Ummm, yeah. Are you aware that you are in the running for the most heinous person of the week?

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/sarah-palin-leads-7-vilest-right-wingers-week-waterboarding-how-we-baptist?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

And yet another "good" week for ... lunatics ~ ~ there are more "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
8 of the Worst Right-Wing Wackos This Week: War on Science Edition
'Actions to curb human-influenced climate change are part of a socialist agenda' ... and more.

May 10, 2014 | 1. CNN’s S.E. Cupp to Bill Nye: You science guys are bullying us.

Remember when we all used to agree that science and knowledge were good things? When scholarship was respected? When we looked to educated people to do research and inform us what was actually going on with the world?

It wasn’t that long ago.

This week, after the White House released a report on just how devastating climate change already has shown itself to be right here at home, with superstorms, flooding, droughts and tornadoes already pounding America (and the rest of the world) with increasing frequency—the very phenomena that reputable scientists have been warning about for a long time, what did the deniers do?

They upped the ante.

Not only are they impervious to knowledge, reason or fact, they apparently feel attacked by knowledge, reason and fact. So, they counterattacked. On CNN, S.E. Cupp accused scientists of being bullies. Scientists who are just trying to inform people about facts and something that affects us all. WTF is wrong with these people?

It happened on CNN’s Crossfire. Heritage Foundation economist Nicholas Loris argued with “science guy” Bill Nye and activist Van Jones that the extreme weather trends are "uncertain."

"I’m not a denier, I’m not a skeptic,” Loris said. “What I’m saying is, climate is changing — yes, man-made emission are in some part to that — but we haven’t seen these extreme weather event trends. The observed data doesn’t prove that."

Poor Bill Nye was flabbergasted.

“So let’s just start with, we don’t agree on the facts,” Nye said. “This third report came out, saying it’s very serious, you say no. There’s the essence of the problem, S.E."

That would be the S.E. Cupp from the Heritage Foundation, who then said this to Bill Nye: “Isn’t it a problem when science guys attempt to bully other people? Nick here had to say, ‘I’m not a denier.’ He had to get it out: ‘I’m not a denier.’ Because really, the science group has tried to shame anyone who dares question this, and the point I’m trying to make is, it’s not working with the public.”

Attack the scientists! The purveyors of knowledge! Kill the messengers!

Anyone else getting a Taliban-like feeling from this crew?

2. A sign that Fox News’ Benghazi obsession just might be getting out of hand.

OK, we’re not sure, but we think that it just might be possible that Fox News is developing an unhealthy obsession with Benghazi. We’re just worried that maybe they should see someone for that particular problem. There are treatments for these kind of things. There’s cognitive behavioral therapy to loosen the grip that such obsessions have. You can acquire tools to drive away these negative, repetitive thoughts swirling around in your brain. The thoughts that are preventing you from thinking about or doing anything about actual problems like, oh, we don’t know . . . maybe climate catastrophe!!!

Maybe we’re wrong though. Blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Here’s what got us worried though. You tell us. Does this seem like a worrisome sign?

It was on Monday, just after the White House released that landmark report on climate change and announced that President Obama might be doing interviews with local weather announcers and meteorologists around the country to try to get the word out, and deliver the information from a source that people generally know and trust, like Al Roker or (insert your local weatherperson here).

Here’s Fox News host Dana Perino on that:

"Tomorrow, President Obama is going to do interviews with meteorologists all across the country about a new climate change report ... I hope they ask him about Benghazi!"

Hear that Al Roker?

3. Charles Krauthammer continues the assault on science, calling it superstition.

Hey, Fox News managed to find another crazy, irresponsible idiot disguised as a sentient being to debunk facts and science: good old Charles Krauthammer. He said on Tuesday that the belief in global climate change is mere “superstition” akin to the “rain dance of Native Americans.”

Why would he say such a thing? Such a provably wrong thing? We have no idea. It could be wishful thinking. Sure, we wish this whole climate change catastrophe would go away, and that we could wake up from it like a bad dream. We wish all these meanie scientists conducting real research based on actual facts would just stop discovering that the news is so very, very bad, and bullying us about it.

Krauthammer took his point a little farther, about science actually being superstition. Yah, and the other way around, too. Up is down Charles. Black is white. No is yes. “It’s always a result of what is ultimately what we’re talking about here, human sin with pollution of carbon. It’s the oldest superstition around. It was in the Old Testament, it’s in the rain dance of Native Americans — if you sin, the skies will not cooperate.”

Still more crazy talk from Chuckie Kraut:

“Ninety-nine percent of physicists were convinced that space and time are fixed, until Einstein working in a patent office wrote a paper in which he showed that they are not,” Krauthammer said. “I’m not impressed by numbers, I’m not impressed by consensus.”

What does impress you Charles? On second thought, maybe don’t answer that.

4. Pat Robertson: Fighting climate change will destroy America.

Pat Robertson added his sober assessment to the news of the new study on climate change’s damaging impact on the U.S. by warning that efforts to combat climate change will “destroy America.”

During his “700 Club” program Monday night, Robertson said actions to curb human-influenced climate change are part of an anti-American “socialist agenda,” saying it all goes back to “the playbook of Obama’s mentor.”

He did not appear to notice that he resembled an insane man as he said it.

Fighting climate change “is high on the agenda of the radicals who want to destroy America, it isn’t high on the agenda of those who really care about what goes on in life,” he said.

Patty, just one question. What the hell are you talking about?

h/t: rightwingwatch

5. Fox News is just wondering if female breadwinners are a recipe for disaster. Just wondering.

It takes a ton of work, a huge budget and an army of numbskulls to try to set the social clock back roughly to the Victorian era. Or maybe just the 1950s. Either way. Lots of work. But the Fox Newsians are on it.

Some women are making good money. More than their husbands, apparently. Is that good? Fox News is just wondering. It’s emasculating. They’re just saying. Just reporting the news, that’s all.

This was the topic of a discussion Brian Kilmeade and Elisabeth Hasselbeck had with author/ financial writer/professional advice giver Farnoosh Torabi, who managed to be pretty calm in the face of questions like Kilmeade’s, “Is it worth it to have the man be the second highest paid person in the house?”

Because sometimes husbands cheat under those circumstances. And sometimes marriages break up when the man makes less. And we all know that none of those things happen when the man makes more.

And what if he’s the third highest earning person in the house? Like, what if one of the kids’ careers takes off. What then? Would he divorce his kids?

Well, we don’t know, but something is going to have to be done, because the statistic they are citing is that in 24 percent of households, women are out-earning men. And while normally, Fox likes it when people earn money, especially rich people, they like it a little less when women do it, and emasculate their men.

h/t: mediamatters

6. AZ Christian pastor: Women in yoga pants partially responsible for rape.

Last month, Dean Saxton, a University of Arizona student who preaches under the name Brother Dean Samuel, protested outside a documentary about 1998 Miss World Pageant winner and rape survivor Linor Abargil.

It was her fault, he explained this week in an interview with Vice. She had put out some provocative pictures of herself. Therefore, she was asking for it. “I believe that if she was at home, and if she had kept to her Orthodox Jewishness, that rape would really probably would not have happened.”

Nice. This douchebag also likes to wear t-shirts that say “You whore.”

During his protest, he held a sign that said “You Deserve Rape.” He yelled at women to “give up your immodest clothing” and that “yoga pants are a sin.”

Do not even get him started on downward facing dog.

h/t: rawstory

7. Tony Perkins warns that condom use leads to tyranny, because, of course it does.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins responded to the news this week that the Department of Education will investigate 55 colleges and universities for “mishandling sexual assault claims” by coming to the very reasonable conclusion that contraception distribution “leads to tyranny.”

Huh? Sorry, Tony. Care to connect those dots for us?

Well, the problem, Perkins said on his “Washington Watch” program, is “the sexualization that is taking place in our culture in general but on college campuses.”

Right, because 18-22 year olds used to never think about sex. Furthest thing from their minds.

“Contraception is made available as if it were candy which sends a message, well it’s there, it must be there for a reason, and then we’re surprised when — this is not justification, it’s wrong, we are all responsible for our actions — but we’re surprised when people act on these outside factors that they are surrounded by,” Perkins sputtered.

Then, the non sequitor that he apparently thought followed his already wobbly sequence of kind-of thoughts.

“It leads to tyranny,” he said.

Dot connection fail.

h/t: rightwingwatch

8. Gordon Klingenschmitt speculates that forbidden fruit in Genesis might have been marijuana.

Hoo boy! Crazy Gordon Klingenschmitt was at it again the other day on his “Pray in Jesus Name” program. Seems Klingenschmitt, a.k.a. “Dr. Chaps” felt called to respond to those “pot hippies” who cite Genesis 1:29, the line about God having given you "every herb bearing seed," as biblical justification for legalizing weed.

Oh, those dastardly hippies. Reading the bible? That is just low!

Klingenschmitt has cooked up a theory in his busy little brain that maybe the “forbidden fruit” was no apple; it was marijuana (maybe disguised as an apple? or smoked in an apple?)

No, actually, he’s done a little research. The bible does not use the word “apple,” he pointed out. It uses the word “forbidden weed.”

C’mon, people, weed?!! Remind you of anything?

“How do you know that the serpent didn't give pot to Eve and say 'go ahead, and the day that you eat this, you're not going to die,'” Klingenschmitt said. “But you are going to die.”

Oh man, what a buzz kill.

h/t: rightwingwatch

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/8-worst-right-wing-wackos-week-war-science-edition?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Here is this week's installment ... leaving NO DOUBT or QUESTION in my own mind that yes, we are surrounded by knuckle-dragging idiots! ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
9 Vilest Right-Wing Moments This Week: Limbaugh Pits Himself Against Abducted Nigerian Girls
"They're not our girls"... and more horrific commentary.

May 17, 2014 | 1. Rush Limbaugh: The Nigerian girls aren’t “our” girls... and other atrocities.

Despicable, human-shaped being Rush Limbaugh went full-on evil this week when he decided to mock the #BringBackOurGirls Twitter campaign to bring attention to the school girls kidnapped in Nigeria.

Why? What could possibly be partisan or controversial about wanting to help more than 200 girls kidnapped by radical Islamists and sold as sex slaves and wives?

Well, Michelle Obama held up a #BringBackOurGirls sign—that could be part of it.

“Look at her,” Rush snarled at a picture of Mrs. Obama, “looking all sad.” Also looking sad about the missing girls was Malala, the heroic Pakistani girl who nearly died because she insisted on getting an education. Jesus Christ himself would be ridiculed by Limbaugh if he sided with the Obamas on anything.

Also, Limbaugh felt the need to point out that the Nigerian girls are not “our” girls, so... maybe we shouldn’t care about them so much.

Of course, Limbaugh was deeply offensive on a variety of topics this week, including an assertion that this generation is “the most racist, and the most sexist” ever, because Obama was elected, and Hillary might be. But pitting himself against Malala pretty much took the cake. It prompted Jon Stewart to start a #f*@ckyourush campaign against the hater he aptly described as the “quivering rage heap who is apparently desperately trying to extinguish any remaining molecule of humanity that might still reside in the Chernobyl-esque superfund clean-up site that was his soul.”

And that’s on a good day.

2. Laura Ingraham: Nigerian girls were kidnapped because, Benghazi.

As the world now knows, schoolgirls were kidnapped in Chibok, Nigeria. Their cause has become a rallying cry around the world. For Fox Newsian Laura Ingraham, this can only mean one thing: Benghazi. Also, Benghazi. It’s like a buzzing sound, a compulsive tic she just has to blurt out... constantly. Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi. During a show this week, she interrupted her guest, who seemed to be actually discussing the situation in Nigeria, to say: “I think part of the problem here is that we have a dead American ambassador, and no one in custody... not to go back to Benghazi.”

That’s good that she didn’t go back to Benghazi when it had nothing to do with the topic at hand.

There, she said it. Benghazi.

Gesundheit.

3. Marco Rubio shifts from climate change denialism to pseudo-science about abortion.

Last weekend the junior senator from Florida said he doesn’t believe human activity causes climate change or that we can do anything to change it. This did not play well anywhere, especially in his home state of Florida, which will be under water soon because of rising sea levels caused by man-made global warming.

So by midweek he changed the subject to his oh-so-scientific views about abortion. “Let me give you a bit of settled science that they’ll never admit to,” he told Sean Hannity Wednesday. “The science is settled, it’s not even a consensus, it is a unanimity, that human life begins at conception. I hope the next time someone wags their finger about science, they’ll ask one of these leaders on the left: ‘Do you agree with the consensus of science that human life begins at conception?’"

In fact, it seems highly unlikely that Marco Rubio has ever met a scientist, as “life” and “conception” in the context of abortion are subjective and quasi-religious terms. As Irin Carmon of MSNBC wrote, “The rights of a blastocyst, embryo or fetus compared to the pregnant woman aren’t up to scientists; they’re subjective, based on personal, religious, or political commitments. But it’s ironic that Rubio should mention science and abortion. He and his fellow Republicans have passed numerous laws restricting women’s health with stated rationales that directly contravene scientific or medical consensus.”

Scientist Rubio also signed onto an amicus brief in the Hobby Lobby case before the Supreme Court claiming that birth control is abortion. So, in fact, Mr. Rubio, life begins before conception. Gotcha!

As long as science is going to mean any damn thing you want it to whenever you feel like it, here’s some science: Shut up, Marco Rubio.

4. N.H. police chief calls Obama the n-word, refuses to apologize saying he meets his "criteria for such.”

Another week, another revolting old white racist raises his lizard-like head. Sometimes two a week. Donald Sterling hasn’t even exited the stage yet, when along comes a police chief in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, who was overheard calling President Obama the “effen n-word.” When residents demanded a retraction and his resignation, by golly, 82-year-old Robert Copeland up and refused.

His answer was this:

"I believe I did use the 'N' word in reference to the current occupant of the Whitehouse [sic]" Copeland wrote in an email to the residents, as quoted by local TV-station WMUR. "For this, I do not apologize—he meets and exceeds my criteria for such."

Chased down by a crowd and a reporter after the meeting demanding his head, Copeland called the reporter a “skunk.”

Wolfeboro has 6,300 residents, and 6,280 of them are white, including, coincidentally, Mitt Romney, who has one of his summer homes there.

Soon, no doubt, Copeland will go on the interview circuit to declare he is not a “racist” because he does after all have “criteria” for calling blacks racist terms, and also he is not a “skunkist.”

5. Karl Rove says, then “unpologizes” for saying, that Hillary Clinton has brain damage.

In a desperate move to remain relevant, Karl Rove ventured the totally unsubstantiated claim that Hillary Clinton has brain damage. He asserted that she spent 30 days in the hospital (wrong—it was three days) and emerged wearing sunglasses “that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury."

It was quickly pointed out that those “brain damage” sunglasses are the same ones Clinton has been wearing since way before her hospitalization. And that subsequent to her hospitalization, she testified with admirable command of detail and analysis in the “Benghazi” hearings that supposedly laid that matter to rest. Ha!

Rove then “unpologized,” (Stephen Colbert’s term) on Tuesday on Fox, natch, by saying concerns about Clinton’s age and health are legitimate. Anything to derail her not-yet-declared run for presidency is, obviously.

It has been suggested that Rove may have suffered some brain damage himself, possibly a rare condition called “coprocephalus,” or as Colbert helpfully translated, “shit for brains.”

6. Utah lawmaker: Bring back firing squads.

Rep. Paul Ray, a Republican from the northern Utah city of Clearfield, has a great idea for avoiding future fiascoes and public relations nightmares like the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma.

His suggestion is not to outlaw the barbarous death penalty, but to bring back firing squads. That’s so much less barbaric.

Ray plans to introduce his brilliant idea during Utah’s next legislative session in January. Similar proposals in Wyoming and Missouri went nowhere, but Utah actually has a grand and fairly recent tradition of execution by firing squad, having successfully shot Ronnie Lee Gardner to death in 2010. More famously, Gary Gilmore was executed in Utah by firing squad in 1977, after requesting it.

"It sounds like the Wild West, but it's probably the most humane way to kill somebody," Ray, who has never been shot to death, said. "It sounds draconian. It sounds really bad, but the minute the bullet hits your heart, you're dead.”

Of course, sometimes inmates move, and sometimes shooters miss, and somehow humane and execution don’t exactly belong in the same sentence.

Maybe we should ask how those other humane countries that execute people in similar numbers as the U.S. like to kill them: Iran? China? Saudi Arabia?

H/t: talkingpointsmemo

7. Bill O’Reilly: There’s no such thing as white privilege and if there is, I’ve never benefited from it because I’m kind of obnoxious.

Bill O’Reilly finally said a true thing: that he is "kind of obnoxious." (Well, not kind of obnoxious, ragingly obnoxious.)

O’Reilly doubled down on his claim that there is no such thing as white privilege this week, and if there is, he has not benefited because he grew up poor, and everyone hates him.

The hateful Fox Newsian was reading some of his hatemail on the air this week after asserting that white privilege doesn’t exist, and shooting down people who disagreed with him. To one, he lectured: “Few on the marketplace have bestowed favor on me because I’m an independent maverick, and kind of obnoxious. I do not believe you are granted favorable treatment in this country because you are white. You have to work for your success.”

So, being obnoxious and holding “maverick” views that Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch agree with is very, very hard work.

So is getting your head out of your ass every morning.

H/t: MediaMatters

8. Donald Sterling still misunderstands concept of racism and being recorded.

Seems like forever ago, but Donald Sterling said a bunch of incoherent, ridiculous and yah, racist, things in his interview with Anderson Cooper this week. This was part of his redemption tour, in which he whined, "I am not a racist... Aren't I allowed to make one mistake.... The girl set me up," and other stupidities.

His soon-to-be-ex-wife says he’s senile, but surely he remembers his previous series of mistakes where he discriminated against black and Latino tenants while building his real estate empire that enabled him to buy a basketball team full of players he can insult.

The fool went on to insult Magic Johnson some more: "What kind of a guy goes to every city, has sex with every girl, then he catches HIV? Is that someone we want to respect and tell our kids about?" Sterling said. "I think he should be ashamed of himself. I think he should go into the background. But what does he do for the black people? He doesn't do anything."

Well, that definitely should clear up any lingering suspicions that Sterling is racist.

9. Fox’s Keith Ablow: Schools should ban leggings because they distract my son.

In Ablow’s medical opinion (yes, he’s Fox’s medical contributor), girls who wear leggings are kind of asking for it. He was agreeing with an Illinois school's ban on leggings on girls (boys can still wear them, apparently).

Some more of Ablow’s considered medical opinion: Leggings are distracting to his son who really wants to learn.

And, of course, he did finally get around to the thoroughly medical and scientific assertion that “boys will be boys” and girls wearing leggings are kind of asking for it.

Verbatim: “I don’t know that we can restrain boys from being boys,” he said. “So the long stare, the offhand comment, you have to — what do you do, excuse it? Because it was certainly provoked. And I think girls put themselves in the line of fire that way.”

H/t: RawStory

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/9-vilest-right-wing-moments-week-limbaugh-pits-himself-against-abducted-nigerian?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Here is this week's installment, which offers proof that the brain works in mysterious ways ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
7 Most Absurd Right-Wing Statements This Week: Sajak and Coulter Lead the Irrational War on Science
"Climate scientists are unpatriotic racists"... and more.

May 24, 2014 | 1. Pat Sajak: Climate scientists are unpatriotic racists. Huh?

Apparently, "Wheel of Fortune" host Pat Sajak is not content with merely solving inane word puzzles and coming out against Obamacare. He also really likes to tweet things. This week, he staked out an absurd position on climate change denialism with this tweet:

“I now believe global warming alarmists are unpatriotic racists knowingly misleading for their own ends. Good night.”

This makes him the first conservative to conflate science with racism. What the hell does patriotism have to do with it? And why the “Good night” at the end of the inexplicably incendiary tweet? Makes no sense. Of course, Sajak never explained what he meant despite a storm of ensuing outrage. The frequent tweeter went mysteriously mute. Two days later he finally claimed he was kidding. It was “hyperbole,” he said. Can’t you people take a joke?

The game show host has a long history of incendiary tweets and conservative stances. Here’s a hilarious one he recently posted to make fun of Michelle Obama’s participation in the #BringBackOurGirls campaign:

“Hard to imagine Eleanor Roosevelt holding a sign reading #Don'tInvadeTheRhineland,Adolph.”

Resorting to Hitler and Nazi imagery is a favorite tactic of right-wingers in this country. So is the use of historical anachronisms.

Tell you what, Pat. No need to buy a vowel, we’ll spell this out: You’re the joke. No hyperbole.

2. Ann Coulter defends Pat Sajak’s right to be an absolute idiot by being an absolute idiot herself.

“Wheel of Fortune” gained a new fan in Ann Coulter, who just couldn’t agree more with Sajak on climate change and liberals being Nazis and to blame for everything. Coulter helpfully pointed out the humor in Sajak’s tweet to CNN’s Erin Burnett and then she upped the ante, because... she was on TV, and saying outrageous things is her brand. “We all have to believe in global warming, we all have to believe in immigration — either lots of immigration or even more immigration,” Coulter said. “We have to believe that Trayvon Martin was killed by a brutal racist, and if you don’t you get called all of these crazy names that Sajak is referring to.”

(Note: Even George Zimmerman’s former neighbor, a longtime white supremacist now admits Zimmerman is a racist.)

But back to Pat and Ann. The liberal thought police, who for some reason believe in science, are so mean, Coulter says. They compare climate change deniers to "Holocaust deniers." She also, totally inexplicably, said dealing with climate change would lead to genocide.

Here’s where Coulter parts company with Sajak. He should not have said he was “just kidding” in her view. She is not kidding when she asserts her multitude of ignorant positions, nor will you ever catch her being the least bit funny. Or human, for that matter.

h/t Mediaite

3. Canceled HGTV host: Satan is why they teach evolution in schools.

Virulently anti-gay brothers David and Jason Benham, who almost got a show on HGTV before their hateful views were exposed, aren’t merely bigots. They’re also science deniers who see Satan’s work everywhere. They chalked up their firing to “demonic possession,” and this week opined that Satan is behind the teaching of evolution in school. Everything has been going downhill, the brothers wrote in a recent blog post, since the Scopes Trial in 1925, which allowed evolution (science) to be taught in schools. That’s when Satan gained his “toehold” here. A “toehold” that has morphed into a foothold and from there into a stronghold.

An excerpt:


Hoo boy. See how Satan connects all those dots?

h/t Raw Story

4. Duck Bro Phil Robertson talks more shit about gay people.

Enlightenment is a funny thing. For some people, it never comes. Never ever. One such person is Bible-thumping, 68-year-old Phil Robertson, the "Duck Dynasty" star who gained notoriety and numerous right-wing friends by saying racist, anti-Semitic and gay-bashing things, like explaining to men why women’s vaginas are more preferable for screwing than men’s anuses. Thanks, Phil. Needed that.

Now that spouting ignorant things has become so much a part of Robertson’s everyday to-do list, he needs to keep it up. On Thursday, "Radar" revealed a new video of Robertson. In an Easter sermon at his church he referred to the GQ interview that brought him his fame, saying: “Is homosexual behavior a sin? The guy asked me. I said, do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Don’t be deceived.”

Then, mistaking Easter for an Old Testament event, rather than a celebration of Jesus, who preached love and never actually had a bad word to say about same-sex love, Robertson cited Corinthians, or his version of it. “Neither the sexually immoral, nor the idolators nor adulterers nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves, nor greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

5. Rep. Steve King challenges Chuck Schumer to a duel. What’s a duel again?

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Iowa Tea Partier Steve King, famous for his xenophobic remarks about immigrants having “cantaloupe calves.” Apparently, his reputation for being an all-out lunatic is not sitting well with him. It seems even his fellow Republicans think he’s crazy and are blaming his frothy, racist stance for keeping a GOP “immigration reform” bill from coming to the floor.

So, he did what any reasonable person would do under these circumstances. He challenged pro-immigration Democrat Chuck Schumer to a duel, conjuring up Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, but then apparently thinking better of it and suggesting different weapons.

“If we’re going to have some kind of a challenge of rhetoric bouncing back between the House and Senate, let’s do it face to face,” King speechified on the House floor on Thursday, “Let’s do it eye-to-eye. Let’s have that duel — not like Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton — but… like real men do it today. Not dueling pistols at 50 paces; let’s do this with microphones within arm’s reach.”

Some might call this a debate. Schumer did. Not King, who suffers from the scourges of xenophobia, malapropism and historical anachronicity.

h/t: Salon

6. Ted Cruz: Democratic senators want to 'repeal the First Amendment.'

Someone get a doctor. Tea Partier Ted Cruz is going into hysterics. Not the laughing kind. He’s having hysterical visions. This week Cruz warned some of his fellow religious nutcases that, “This year, I’m sorry to tell you, the United States Senate is going to be voting on a constitutional amendment to repeal the First Amendment,” at a gathering of pastors called Watchmen on the Wall sponsored by the far-right Family Research Council. Specifically, Cruz said, those big bad Democrats want to “muzzle” pastors.

Oh, no, the crowd gasped audibly. Whatever could the idiot junior senator from Texas mean? Oh, he’s talking about the fact that Senate Democrats are going to try to undo some of the horrific damage wreaked on democracy by the U.S. Supreme Court decisions deregulating campaign financing in the Citizens United and McCutcheon cases, by voting on a bill called Senate Joint Resolution 19. Unfortunately, it stands no chance of passing.

The right (and the Roberts court) has equated money with speech, and more money with more speech. So any attempt to roll back or regulate the amount of big money flowing into candidates’ coffers is then characterized by these absurd ideologues as a full-on assault on free speech.

“I am telling you, I am not making this up,” Cruz said. “Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has announced the Senate Democrats are scheduling a vote on a constitutional amendment to give Congress the authority to regulate political speech, because elected officials have decided they don’t like it when the citizenry has the temerity to criticize what they’ve done.”

What a bunch of hooey!

7. Arizona GOPer: Democrats are usually the shooters in mass shootings.

An Arizona rancher and Republican congressional candidate bizarrely asserted last week that the vast majority of mass shootings in the United States are committed by Democrats.

There is, of course, not a scintilla of evidence for that claim, though when has that ever mattered?

“If you look at all the fiascos that have occurred, 99 percent of them have been by Democrats pulling their guns out and shooting people,” said Gary Kiehne, who hopefully will get nowhere in his quest for a congressional seat, during a GOP primary denate. “So I don’t think you have a problem with the Republicans.”

Then he bragged about all the many guns and ammunition he owns.

Which is fine, because he's not one of those shoot-em-up Democrats.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/7-most-absurd-right-wing-statements-week-sajak-and-coulter-lead-irrational-war?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Here is this week's installment, offering more proof of the socio-/psychopathic GOP/TPer mindset ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
8 Outrageous Right-Wing Statements This Week: Defending Gun Rights for Psychopaths Edition
'Your dead kids don’t trump my right to have a gun.'

May 31, 2014 | 1. Joe the Plumber: Your dead kids don’t trump my right to have a gun.

Now seems like a good time to once again call Sen. John McCain on the carpet for unleashing, not only the plague that is Sarah Palin on the country, but this scourge that is Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as “Joe the Plumber.”

Someone really needs to permanently clog up the drainpipe through which the sewage of “Joe the Plumber’s” ideas flow.

Even the NRA decided to lay low after the Santa Barbara stabbing and shooting spree, and the heartrending calls by Richard Martinez, a victim’s father, for “craven, irresponsible politicians” to stand up to the gun lobby. Not Wurzelbacher. No. He went right ahead and wrote a letter published on Barbwire Monday, containing these sentences. "I am sorry you lost your child. I myself have a son and daughter and the one thing I never want to go through, is what you are going through now. But: As harsh as this sounds -- your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights."

Delusional and unbalanced would be too nice a characterization for this. Despicable is closer. Ah hell, the man is a colossal d*ckhead.

He said other things, like how gun-nuts really care about kids, their own and other people’s. To which we’re going to just have to say bullsh*t. He also said that gunman Elliott Rodger was most likely an Obama voter, based on, of course, nothing. Then he counseled Richard Martinez to back off. “Any feelings you have toward my rights being taken away from me, lose those,” he wrote.

You win Joe. You are the vilest right-winger-of-the-week. Hands down. Time to crawl back into your hole, or armed bunker. Whatever.

2. NRA’s Chris Cox: Why would we listen to doctors when it comes to the effects of firearms?

The NRA’s chief lobbyist penned some twaddle in the Daily Caller just a few days before the Santa Barbara killings. He was disputing the validity of the pro-gun control group Doctors for America, who have had the nerve to endorse a ban on certain types of semi-automatic firearms and buyback of others. What do they know about firearms, he asked?

Right, what the hell would doctors who treat people with gunshot wounds know about guns and their effects?

The piece: “We Love Our Moms and Trust Our Doctors, But We Don’t Want Gun Control,” was basically a paranoid screed directed at two of the more vocal groups trying to fight the epidemic of gun violence in this country. Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, and what Cox calls “the dubiously named Doctors for America.” Yeah, wow, that does sound dubious. People with medical training. These two groups, writes Cox, are just rebranding gimmicks for what he calls the “civilian disarmament advocates.”

Nobody gets to disarm civilians, Cox rants, while trying to sound like a reasonable man. Not moms, not doctors, nobody. Only more heavily armed civilians can do that.

We love you Mom, Cox assures. Hope you don’t get shot. If you do, the solution will be obvious. Not a doctor. More guns.

3. Phil Robertson: Bibles in classrooms will prevent school shootings.

The Duck Dynasty patriarch likes guns just fine—they’re useful for hunting ducks—but you know what he likes even more? The Bible. Speaking at the Republican Leadership Conference this week (sidenote: Great call, GOP leadership! Rebranding yourself with this bozo. That’ll draw those women and minority votes to your candidates like moths to a torch), no lesser light than Sarah Palin herself (another brilliant GOP strategy to win women voters over) introduced Phil Robertson, saying he should be called “Duck Commander in Chief.”

Ummm, okay, Sarah. Nice pinwheel hat, too.

Anyhow, Robertson is a simple man and he had a simple message for the crowd. “Get godly.”

What does that mean, you ask? Well, Robertson suggests starting out by putting Bibles back in classrooms, because if you do so, children might think twice before shooting up their schools. “Education is useless without the Bible,” he told the assembled. Certainly, the Bible has been immensely useful in “science” classes where they study the origins of the universe, and have creationism shoved down their throats, as it is now in several states.

h/t: Rawstory

4. Iowa GOP senate candidate: UCSB Shooting was an “unfortunate accident.”

Joni Ernst, an Iowa state senator who is a frontrunner for the nomination for U.S. Senate, is a proud gun owner. So proud, she ran an ad of herself at a shooting range symbolically aiming at Obamacare. That’s how tough she is. When she was asked about the tastefulness of that ad in light of the Santa Barbara killings, she called them a “tragedy” that in no way affected her firm “commitment to the Second Amendment,” because nothing ever does affect a gun nut’s commitment to the Second Amendment, ever. Especially the way they misconstrue that amendment to mean everyone should have as many guns as they want, or more.

Pressed again, Ernst referred to the Santa Barbara murders in a way that absolutely no one else in the entire world has referred to them: as an “unfortunate accident.”

An accident? How so? Oh, maybe she means it was accidental that her tasteless, asinine ad ran just before the mass murder. We wonder. Maybe Mitt Romney, who hit the campaign trail with Ernst the next day, will explain.

5. Sarah Palin revives the lie of “death panels” for the VA scandal.

The little wheels in Sarah Palin’s head are always a-turning, and lately she’s been cranking them up about this whole Veterans Administration healthcare scandal. She met up with Fox’s Sean Hannity at the Republican Leadership Conference this week, and together they came up with a way to describe the problem that miraculously revives a lie Palin was telling about Obamacare five years ago. “Is the VA a death panel for many?” Hannity asked her. Crazily enough, Sarah ran with that idea. Even farther than Sean thought possible. “That is what government-run health care will result in,” she said.

There was more fun to be had with this one. Like Hannity pointing out that prisoners at Gitmo get better care than veterans. It takes quite a few doctors to hold down a hunger-striking inmate and force-feed him, after all. Who doesn't envy the prisoners in Gitmo?

To follow that, Palin asserted, based on nothing: “In many respects, illegal aliens in our country today are receiving better health care, more benefits than some of our troops.”

That’s right, illegal aliens and Gitmo detainees are getting the gold-plated bedpans, as Wonkette says. The rest of us real Amurricans: annual physicals with death panels.

Speaking of which, we need to schedule ours.

h/t: Wonkette

6. Bill O’Reilly doesn’t get why Megyn Kelly doesn’t realize that inequality is a “fabricated, political thing.”

It’s a world gone mad when your one fellow Fox Newsian turns all Marxist on you by admitting that inequality is an actual thing, with numbers and everything to support it. Megyn Kelly actually said this week on Fox News that the issue of income inequality “is a good one for Democrats because there is no question that it exists.”

Heresy!

“It’s always existed,” Bill O’Reilly shot back.

“It’s worse now that it’s been since 1920, according to the stats,” Kelly pointed out. “Both parties agree with that.”

Well, tough. Because Bill O’Reilly does not agree with that. And whose side is Kelly on, anyway. “You’re buying into this fraud, Kelly, and I am very disappointed, so listen to the master.”

Yeah, what evil left-wing mastermind is controlling Megyn Kelly’s brain? When O’Reilly clearly demonstrated that “inequality is a myth” because Megyn Kelly herself worked her way up from the bottom. Kelly pointed out that not everyone had the advantages of education and the two-parent home she had. “You can’t get out of this inequality situation by saying it doesn’t exist,” she said.

A non-insane statement on Fox? The end times are near.

h/t: Salon

7. Pat Robertson: Have sex with your husband to reward him for doing the dishes.

Men only do dishes for one reason. If you said it’s because the dishes are dirty, you’re wrong. They do it for sex. Same for vacuuming, laundry, cooking, scrubbing, picking up socks. You get the idea.

That is why, Pat Robertson counseled a “700 Club” viewer who wrote in this week, she must reward her husband with sex if he does the dishes.

“You’ve got to understand the male psyche," the preacherman preached. "The male wants to do something for his wife. He wants to provide for his family, he wants to provide a home, he wants to provide shelter, and food. That’s what he feels his male obligation is. And when he cleans up, it’s saying, I love you.

“If you understood that,” he continued, “you say, ‘Darling, I’ve got a treat for you… wait until we get behind closed doors, and you’ll see the treat I have for you.’”

His co-host, another one of those women who apparently is under the mistaken belief that keeping the house neat is everyone’s job, had a hard time suppressing a laugh. But Uncle Pat did not understand her laughter. Silly woman. Don’t you know anything about the male psyche?

8. Birther Jerome Corsi wants Obama impeached for immigration reform—Because, why not?

Right-wing conspiracy nutcase Jerome Corsi has a wonderful resume. You could say he “birthed” the birther movement. And hasn’t that greatly enhanced the national dialogue? Since the birther thing didn’t really work out in terms of getting Obama impeached, Corsi’s taking a new approach to dislodging the president he loathes: immigration reform. Sure, that will work.

A quick review of his other attempts. In September, Corsi and TeaParty.org put out a video demanding Obama’s removal from office, mainly because the president was considering U.S. involvement in Syria, but also abortion, LGBT rights, and immigration “amnesty.” So, basically everything. This was a resounding success.

In December, Corsi was at it again with two more calls for Obama’s impeachment for the treasonous act of Obamacare. Then three weeks ago, TeaParty.org called for Obama’s impeachment over the “Benghazi scandal,” which is just ongoing. Just keep throwing stuff at that wall. Something will stick.

Now, Corsi and TeaParty.org have a new, or a newly recycled, rationale for demanding the president’s ouster: his push for comprehensive immigration reform.

Such reform is just a thinly disguised, diabolical scheme to give undocumented immigrants all of our money, Corsi believes. Not even the fact that Obama has overseen record levels of deportations has won over Corsi and his merry band of nitwits.

No, foreign-born Obama obviously wants to turn the good ole U.S. of A. into a Spanish-speaking, welfare-seeking paradise, for criminals, of course, probably with “cantaloupe calves.”

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/8-outrageous-right-wing-statements-week-defending-gun-rights-psychopaths-edition?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Phil Robertson: Bibles in classrooms will prevent school shootings.

Snort. There have been Bibles in motels/hotels for a long time and they don't prevent fornication, adultery, sodomy and other horrors that Phil get's his panties in a wad over. lmao. I'm amazed how the religious right thinks a book can cure all ills, but won't support gun control because, well..... guns are harmless.