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PostPosted: 09/15/13 8:16 am • # 1 
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I get AlterNet email "updates" ~ today's update includes what appears to be a recurring Janet Allon commentary ... which sent me in search of prior installments ~ this is the earliest I could find and I will post the others too ~ I'm not sure whether to laugh or scream at the unmistakable and indefensible idiocy ~ :g ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
The 7 Craziest, Cruelest Right-Wing Statements from Just Last Week
The country’s right-wing fringe offers some headscratchers, kneeslappers and assorted absurdities.

July 11, 2013 | It was a week of both stupid and cruel Republican tricks. Stupid in the beginning of the week when Florida Gov. Rick Scott led an effort to ban Internet cafes, and the bill was so poorly worded, it inadvertently banned all the state’s computers. Oops. Cruelty came later, when the Republican-led house successfully disentangled food stamp funding from the farm bill. There was the convoluted logic of Republican lawmakers crying foul that the implementation of Obamacare, the law of the land they have vowed to overturn, is now being delayed. And there was Rand Paul’s outlandish defense of his Confederacy-loving top aide—you see, wearing a confederate flag is similar to smoking pot. Oh…wait, huh?

Here are some more headscratchers, kneeslappers and assorted absurdities from the country’s right-wing fringe. And, just to cheer us up, an egregious example of far-right thinking coming from the president of a country not our own.

1. Glenn Beck: Teresa Heinz Kerry faked her illness.

Glenn Beck does not seem to think that Democrats, or their wives, ever actually just fall ill, even when they are no longer young. He believes it is usually a conspiracy or coverup involving the State Department. Such was the case this week after Teresa Heinz Kerry, 74-year-old wife of Sec. of State John Kerry, was hospitalized with seizure-like symptoms over the July 4 weekend in critical condition. But actually, according to Beck, Heinz Kerry’s sudden illness was a ploy…to divert attention...from events in Egypt. Why exactly is not clear, but Beck drew a connection between this and another "imaginary" medical scare, Hillary Clinton’s 2012 concussion, you know, the one she faked in order to avoid answering questions about Benghazi. See the pattern?

2. Pat Robertson: Gay people are just confused straight people.

On the “700 Club” this week, Pat Robertson sought to clarify that he does not in any way hate gay people, blaming them for 9/11 and for destroying America not withstanding. In fact, he expressed happiness that “many many homosexuals” watch his show, which is strange because apparently, according to Pat, people are gay “because they have forsaken God, it’s not something that is natural and when people reunite with the Lord, the Lord will get their priorities the way it is supposed to be….You work through it and if you meet the Lord it should be, it can be instant.”

Gay people, you see, are really just confused straight people, according to the televangelist. They are confused either because they were abused, or they have chromosomal damage. So, really gay people just need to “come out” as the straight people they really are.

3. Bryan Fischer: Pat Robertson’s views on gay people are way too liberal.

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association took a slightly different view when he tweeted that "Christians are being moved out of the United States military so hyper-masculine homosexuals can move in, similar to the kind of homosexuals that formed Hitler's stormtroopers."

4. Louie Gohmert intelligently debating food stamps: “Objection.”

On Thursday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) really elevated the debate about food stamp funding by repeatedly yelling “Objection” whenever political opponents suggested that the Republican-backed move to remove food stamps from the farm bill would hurt poor and working families. Gohmert did not want that on the record. When Democratic Rep. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon asked the speaker for consent to “revise and extend her remarks in strong opposition to the farm bill rule and the underlying bill because it will increase hunger in America,” Gohmert had an answer for that as well: “Objection.”

Similar reaction to Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-IL) when he made the routine request to revise and extend his remarks opposing the bill “because it takes food nutrition away from working families.”

“Objection!” Gohmert yelled, apparently mistaking Congress for an episode of Perry Mason.

Not only should the poor not eat, but their advocates in Congress should not speak for them.

Alas, the Republicans passed their food stampless farm bill. President Obama has promised to veto it.

5. O’Reilly shows deep understanding of why women get abortions, especially uppity Texas women.

While discussing Texas’ pending legislation severely limiting abortion on his show Wednesday night, Bill O’Reilly offered the insight that women want to undergo abortions any time and for any old health reason, and gave the headscratching example of a sprained hand. Yes, women like abortions so much, sometimes they have them when they aren’t even pregnant.

“You can just kill the baby, or the fetus, however you want to describe it, any time you want for any reason,” O’Reilly said. “You know, women’s health, that’s any reason at all...a sprained hand!”

OK, all those who had abortions because of a sprained hand, raise your...oh, never mind.

6. Matt Barber reveals the identity of the original pro-choicer...wait for it. Wait for it. Yep, it was Satan.

On their show “Faith and Freedom,” right-wing zealots Matt Barber and Steve Crampton discussed how the “pro-aborts” in Texas exhibited demon-like demeanors in their fervor to fight off abortion-restricting legislation that is guaranteed to threaten the health and welfare of women in that state. Isn’t that always the way it is, they agreed, the pro-choicers act like demons spewing flames and venom, and the pro-lifers placidly sing “Amazing Grace.” (We’re going to guess that neither of these men ever had the lovely experience of trying to enter a women’s health clinic while pro-life protesters shoved pictures of bloody fetuses in their faces.)

But it all makes sense, according to Barber, because… "frankly, from a spiritual perspective, the original pro-choicer was Satan himself.”

7. Meanwhile, way south of the border...

All the way down in Chile, in fact, where abortions are illegal no matter what the circumstances of the pregnancy or the threat to the health of the mother, an 11-year-old rape victim called Belen has no choice but to carry the baby to term. When Belen, who has been raped by her stepfather for two years, told a local news station that having the baby “will be like having a doll in her arms,” Chilean president Sebastian Pinera praised her for the “depth and maturity” of her “choice.”

Comparing a baby and a doll sounds mature to us.

Another genius politician in Chile, Issa Kort, a member of parliament, showed an Akin-like sophistication in his understanding of reproduction when he said Belen must be ready to have a child because she can menstruate. Circular logic to be sure.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/7-craziest-cruelest-right-wing-statements-just-last-week?paging=off


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PostPosted: 09/15/13 8:29 am • # 2 
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I'm not sure whether to laugh or scream

It would be laughable if not for the seriousness of these issues.

Over the past few decades, the Republicans have welcomed, even lured these people into their party. Now they don't seem to know what to do with them.


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PostPosted: 09/15/13 8:32 am • # 3 
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So much to choose from, so little time ~ :ey ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
The 5 Looniest Comments From Right-Wing Wackos This Week
It's been a banner week for red-state racists and sexists.

July 20, 2013 | It was a banner week for right-wing racists and sexists. The acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, issued a cascade of attempts to portray Martin as the real criminal in an incident where the unarmed teenager was stalked and killed essentially for being black. The deeply objectionable things said in the wake of the trial are too numerous to mention, although Geraldo Rivera managed to maintain his supremacy atop the mountain of absurdity in his comments on the case, which began months ago when he identified hoodies as the uniform of criminals.

Meanwhile, the Texas legislature passed a bill severely restricting abortions that Wendy Davis and other brave Texas women fought against valiantly—immediately resulting in Planned Parenthood’s announcement that it would close three clinics in the state. That’s three out of a whopping 37 that will close in the nation’s second largest state. Those anti-choice legislators must be exceedingly happy, celebrating their victory, and kicking back to relax after a job well done. But wait, what’s this? They want more? Well yes, they do.

Republican Representatives Phil King, Dan Flynn and Geanie Morrison have introduced a “fetal heartbeat” bill, which would ban abortions after six weeks (a point when many women don’t even know they are pregnant) to keep up with the great, though considerably smaller and less populous state of North Dakota. The bill would criminalize abortions and mandate invasive vaginal ultrasounds for women seeking to commit the crime of deciding for themselves when to become mothers, since transvaginal probes are the only way to detect fetal heartbeats that early. One silver lining: the law would only go into effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Fingers crossed.

With so many ugly and appalling things to say, it’s a wonder that Republican lawmakers, pundits and bloggers found time to be offensive and absurd about other topics, but they are a resourceful bunch. Here are some other gems from the week that was.

1. Erick Erickson: Self-administered abortions are a real yuck fest.

Shortly after the vote to approve the draconian abortion ban, right-wing blogger Erick Erickson tweeted a link to a wire coathanger supplier, telling “liberals,” and really, the women of Texas, to “Go bookmark this site.” Rather like Geraldo’s jackass comments, this can be an instance of the right wing making the case against itself: Yes, your laws will drive women to desperate life-endangering measures, that is what we have been saying. Perhaps Erickson realized his mistake because he later deleted the tweet. But wait, then he defended his tweet against detractors by saying that before Roe v. Wade “only” 39 women died from self-administered abortions. Oh, only 39. (Not that we accept his accounting.) He also stands by his view that working women are “against nature.” Yeah, that one is still good.

2. Lou Dobbs: Eric Holder is a radical racist. DOJ organized and paid for protests.

Since we revisited Texas, let’s revisit Florida and Trayvon Martin as well, just for the sheer perversity of the reactions to the case. On Monday, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs promoted the conspiracy theory that the Department of Justice organized the protests over the killing of Trayvon Martin. Why is that? Well, because Attorney General Eric Holder is a radical racist. Just like his boss.

Yes, this cabal of black men at the pinnacle of American power used “thousands” of taxpayer dollars to train people to go out and pretend to be mad back when Martin was shot. And they are doing it again, because black people have to be paid to be mad about having their innocent young men gunned down. They are paying people like Al Sharpton to “raise racial tensions” nationwide. You see the DOJ, as “Fox & Friends” co-host Steve Doocy says, is letting the New Black Panthers call the shots.

And just to continue the thread, after President Obama’s moving comment later in the week that he would have looked much like Trayvon Martin at 17, came a tweet from one exceedingly clever Pajamas Media blogger @bob_owens: “Barack Obama and Eric Holder just want to run a Klan with a tan. You got a problem with that?"

Post-racial society indeed.

3. Paul Ryan: Undocumented immigrants don’t want to be citizens.

Wrongheaded on a number of issues—most famously the federal budget and the path out of deficit spending (now on the back burner)—Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has redeemed himself ever so slightly by at least advocating for immigration reform in the House, the version with a militarized, drone-patrolled Mexican border that the Senate passed in June. He has even used his own Irish-immigrant lineage to argue in its favor. But on Thursday, Ryan made the rather curious claim that undocumented immigrants don’t want a path to citizenship.

“Most people just want to have a legal status so they can work to provide for their families,” he said.

It’s one thing to oppose a path to citizenship, which many Republicans do unabashedly, but quite another to dishonestly project that opposition onto the very people asking for it. In fact, as Think Progress reports:

Quote:
Almost 90 percent of undocumented immigrants said they would apply for citizenship if allowed. The vast majority have family members who are U.S. citizens. Moreover, citizenship opens up more job opportunities and wage gains. Granting citizenship would also boost the economy; immigrants would pay more in state and local taxes if they became citizens.

Just 13 percent of Americans think the path to citizenship should be stripped from the Senate’s immigration bill. Polls have found repeatedly that most Americans support a path to citizenship, with a smaller majority supporting a much faster 5-year timeline instead of the Senate’s 13-year plan.

4. Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia Republican and gubernatorial hopeful, has a problem with sodomy.

Woe to consenting heterosexual couples, consenting homosexual couples and people interested in having sex in positions other than the missionary, if Ken Cuccinelli becomes the next governor of Virginia. They’ll all have to wave bye-bye to all that oral and anal sex they are having. Cuccinelli wants to get that good ol’ anti-sodomy law back on the books.

Cloaking the push as an attempt to keep children safe from sexual predators, when everyone knows that he is targeting the LGBT community, Cuccinelli has launched a website in his ongoing effort to reinstate a “Crimes Against Nature” law, which the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas. “Keep Virginia Kids Safe!” the site says. Clever “When did you stop beating your wife” ploy, we concede, since it puts Democratic opponent Terry McCauliffe in the position of explaining why he does not want to keep those kids safe.

5. Bryan Fischer: Being gay, robbing banks and dealing drugs are all comparable lifestyle choices.

American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer is very mad at the Cheneys, especially Dick and Liz. He is not mad at Liz for the same reason other Republicans are mad at Liz, which is that she is dividing the party by running against a fellow Republican for Wyoming Senate. And he is certainly not mad at Liz and Dick for the same reasons progressives are, namely that they are evil incarnate. No, he’s mad because the whole family went soft on the issue of same-sex marriage, because Liz's sister and Dick's daughter Mary is gay.

“That complicates things for a lot of people,” Fischer said on the radio program he hosts. “If they have someone in their family (who is gay) they think they are obligated to support the homosexual agenda. That is just absurd.

“If you have a bank robber in the family,” he continued, “that doesn’t mean you automatically have to support that as a lifestyle choice. If you have a drug dealer in the family, you don’t have to automatically support that as a profession....It’s an absurd argument, though it has a strong emotional appeal. That may have affected Dick Cheney’s view of same-sex marriage, and it may well have affected Liz Cheney’s view of same-sex marriage.”

While we agree that the Cheneys would have been unlikely supporters of marriage equality unless it hit them where they live, we also find ourselves in curious agreement with the logic that whether or not you have a gay person in your family or are one yourself, should not affect whether you support equal rights for all. And that goes double for bank robbers and drug dealers.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/5-looniest-comments-right-wing-wackos-week?paging=off


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PostPosted: 09/15/13 8:36 am • # 4 
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John59 wrote:
I'm not sure whether to laugh or scream

It would be laughable if not for the seriousness of these issues.

Over the past few decades, the Republicans have welcomed, even lured these people into their party. Now they don't seem to know what to do with them.

I agree, John ~ the Republicans were desperate to "jazz up" their "stodgy old white men" brand ~ but they've lost all control ~ the "crazies" really are "CRAZY" ~

Sooz


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PostPosted: 09/15/13 8:55 am • # 5 
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Today's [and forever's] truism: "... you cannot make this stuff up. And if you did, no one would believe you." ~ :g ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
6 of the Nuttiest Right-Wing Statements Just from this Week Alone
With Congress taking its summer break, Tea Partiers and other kooks were saying some of the nuttiest things we have ever heard. With straight faces!

August 10, 2013 | The Right-wing crazies may have truly outdone themselves this week. With Congress taking its summer break, Tea Partiers and other kooks were suddenly uncorked (that word will come up again in another context, so look for it), taking to the airwaves, appealing to their bases, and saying some of the nuttiest things we have ever heard. With straight faces! Things like, “tanning beds are racist," "Wendy Davis is an 'Abortion Barbie,'" "climate change is a religion" — you cannot make this stuff up. And if you did, no one would believe you.

1. Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL): Obama’s tax on tanning beds is racist

You may have heard about the frantic, delusional attempts in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to block, prevent, defund, wage war on and just outright deny the reality of Obamacare. These might be comical if they were not actually hurting real people who are suffering, and in some cases dying because of lack of health care.

Rep. Ted Yoho probably thought he came up with a real smart argument this week when he went after a provision in Obamacare which places a 10 percent tax on tanning beds. ‘Das racist,’ he said, because dark people don’t need to tan. Here’s a little reality check for Mr. Yoho, as pointed out by Jamelle Bouie in The Daily Beast. Nobody needs to tan. Sitting under the ultraviolet light of tanning beds is bad for you.

“Risk for melanoma increases by 75 percent when people begin tanning before the age of 35, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer. One study found that tanning beds cause roughly 170,000 cases of skin cancer each year, and at one point the Food and Drug Administration proposed banning bed use by customers under 18. When it comes to lowering costs in the health-care system, reducing skin cancer incidence by encouraging people not to use tanning beds is low-hanging fruit.”

Taxing things is what the government can do to encourage or discourage behavior, and so a 10 percent tax on tanning bed use is a provision to discourage this behavior in Obamacare. Snooki was upset about it, but Yoho one-upped her.

Of course, this absurdity demeans and misunderstands the very concept of racism, and is part of what is now a tradition among Obama’s conservative opposition to deliberately portray the first black president as being “the real racist.”

2. Rick Santorum: Liberals Make It Uncomfortable to Shower at the YMCA

Okay, pay attention here, because this is one of those convoluted arguments that only the deranged ultra-Conservative brain can produce. For those of a more progressive and logical ilk, it’ll be a real mind bender. Former, and perhaps future, Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently told a group of anti-abortion students (misleadingly called Students for Life) that liberals who support abortion rights “make it uncomfortable” for them to shower at the YMCA.

Here’s the background: The Town Lake Branch of the YMCA in Austin did in fact ban the “pro-life” group, who had come to town to support Texas’ severe abortion-restricting legislation, from using their facilities because the group was blatantly proselytizing, disrupting other members, and generally using the YMCA as a forum to express their political views. Some YMCA staff even said the group was intimidating the people who worked there.

Santorum flipped this all around by telling the “Right-to-Life” students that this was a leftist plot. “Because they live it. They’re passionate. They’re willing to do and say uncomfortable things in mixed company. They’re willing to make the sacrifice at their business because they care enough… They simply won’t give up. We have the truth and we give up! We have righteousness and we give up because it’s unpopular!”

The intellectual contortion here is that yes, while many pro-choice activists and people who are passionate about women’s health can be energetic in the pursuit of it, (so, we guess, thanks Rick for the . . . compliment?), for sheer drive, and unwillingness to give up, it is hard to compete with the vehemence of pro-lifers who are certain that God is on their side, and are willing to go to any length (shoot doctors, terrorize and lie to pregnant women) to win their battle.

3. Rep. Louie Gohmert: Brags about having ‘duct-taped’ a defendant’s head, then later in the week manages to blend his Islamaphobia with his anti-Latino racism

With some extra time on his hands, Tea Partier Louis Gohmert enjoyed stepping in it at least twice this week.

First, on Fox News on Tuesday, he regaled host Sean Hannity with a delightful little memory from his days as a judge in criminal court in Texas. “I had one guy that was particularly out of line, and I warned him three times and then we duct-taped his head,” Gohmert told Hannity. “And we didn’t hear from him until it was his turn to talk.”

“That’s when you were a judge?” Hannity wondered. Even he was a little taken aback.

“That’s when I was a judge in felony court,” Gohmert replied. “Gave him three warnings, made the record and then wrapped him up.”

That’s when he was a judge, yes, a judge.

On Thursday, Gohmert was at it again. The topic: immigration reform, why he opposes it, with some Islamaphobia mixed in. He told his audience of business leaders that “radical Islamists” are taking Spanish lessons. The reason they are doing this: “We don’t have any fear of Hispanics coming into the country.”

But he does like fruit, so if we can just make sure the migrant workers are not radical Spanish-speaking Islamists, we should let them in to pick fruit cheaply.

“I’d like to keep having fruit, I’m a big fruit fan,” the deep-thinking congressman explained. “So people say, ‘You are one,’ but no, I’d like to keep having that.” Oh, ha ha ha.

4. Rep. Steve King: Global Warming is more of a religion than a science

You have to hand it to Tea Partier Steve King. Once he commits to a totally wrong-headed offensive or just vile point of view, he does not back down. When he said a lot of the children of undocumented immigrants were drug mules, with “cantaloupe calves” a couple of weeks ago, the fact that even conservatives in his party rebuked him just made him dig in even further. So it was this week, when, back at home in Iowa, the Congressman decided to spout off ignorantly about climate change. Global warming, he said, is more of a religion than a science, he told the audience at an event for the right-wing, climate-change-denying group Americans for Prosperity.

This is a perfect example of that opposite world, doublespeak, black is white, up is down, lies are truth type of rhetoric that the right wing has perfected. Because, of course, scientific is exactly what climate change is, at least all the scientists seem to think so, and denying climate change is, well, the opposite of science.

The next day, still in home state Iowa, he elaborated on his theme, which evolved into more of a “let’s look at the bright side” of our warming climate, however unscientific that theory might be. For Iowans, he pointed out, there could be more corn. Rising sea levels would mean more rain, more rain means more corn. Simple. Never mind that NASA studies show that, both droughts and rainfall would increase to dangerous proportions with a warming planet. People need to focus on the “positive aspects of global warming,” Pollyanna King said. “I spent a lot of my life cold, it felt pretty good to get warmed up.”

Doesn’t everyone feel much better now?

5. Mike Huckabee: For your weekly dose of Islamophobia

The closing of U.S. embassies in the Middle East due to possibly trumped up terrorism threats gave Fox News host and former presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee the opportunity to unleash, or should we say “uncork” his Islamophobic views — which are voluminous.

“Can someone explain to me why it is that we tiptoe around a religion that promotes the most murderous mayhem on the planet in their so-called ‘holiest days’?” he asked, rhetorically, of course, since it is his radio show. “You know, if you’ve kept up with the Middle East, you know that the most likely time to have an uprising of rock throwing and rioting comes on the day of prayer on Friday.”

“So the Muslims will go to the mosque, and they will have their day of prayer, and they come out of there like uncorked animals — throwing rocks and burning cars.”

Just to be clear that he is not prejudiced against all Muslims, Huckabee did say not all of them are violent, but he is a serious student of the Islamic faith and habits, and through this serious study and observation, he has learned “that the most likely times for them to erupt in some type of terrorist activity, violent storming of an embassy, is on their holy days.”

Christians, on the other hand, he points out, never riot on Christmas or Easter.

“Now, my point is — I mean do you ever say ‘Oh boy, it’s Christmas! Oh my gosh, these Christians are going to come out of that Christmas Eve service and they are going to Walmart, and they are going to so rip that place apart, because you know what happens when they go in there and pray about Jesus. And they get out of there and they go straight to the mall, and they just, I mean they set fire to the place.’ I mean, when Christians get out of their Christmas services, about the worst thing they do is commit the sin of gluttony when they go to some Christmas dinner, be it at a restaurant or someone’s home.” Huckabee ranted.

Apparently, he has never seen the riotous, mob-like behavior of so-called Christians on Black Friday, the holiest day in American capitalist Christendom.

6. Pat Robertson’s Sanity is In Grave Doubt

Speaking of Christians, and how they aren’t at all crazy or prone to violent outbursts…

We know, we know, it is not exactly news that Pat Robertson may be a little loony. But before we get to this week’s shenanigans, let’s review some of the accomplishments of the right-wing preacher/host of the 700 Club: predicting the end of the world in 1982, calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez and arguing that most recent natural disasters and terrorist attacks result from our sinful ways, translation, approval of gay marriage. Last week, he advised a caller to burn down the house, since it was clearly possessed by demons.

But, as most people know, one of the true marks of “crazy” is not being able to differentiate between reality and, well, non-reality. In that vein, Robertson has said in the past that lusting after a woman is the same as adultery (the assumption is that you are a man, if you are a woman, then it’s not just adultery, it’s going to cause a tornado). This week, he said, murdering someone in a video game is the same as murdering someone in reality. Here’s the exact quote: "If you murder someone in cyber-space, in a sense you're performing the act whether you like it or not."

Gamers, we’re talking to you.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/6-nuttiest-right-wing-statements-just-week-alone?paging=off


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PostPosted: 09/15/13 9:05 am • # 6 
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Dems need to keep this stuff front and centre.


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PostPosted: 09/15/13 9:17 am • # 7 
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We have FAR MORE than our fair share of <insert noun of your choice here> ~ :ey ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
7 Idiotic and Dangerous Statements From Right-Wing Nut-Jobs Just Last Week
"We can't have a woman president until every other country has a woman leader"...and much more.

August 17, 2013 | 1. GOP Congressman: Multiculturalism is bad. There is “an American race.”

At a townhall meeting in El Dorado Hills, California, Rep. Tom McClintock enlightened attendees about his views on immigration reform. He suggested that immigrants need to shed their own culture and become something he termed the "American race” then added that if they can’t do that they should just go home. “There’s only one race here: it’s the American race,” he said.

Later, a Latino man who had been in the audience challenged McClintock’s view, saying that people who bring different cultures and personalities to this country is in fact what makes it both great and strong. So McClintock took it a step further: Multiculturalists want to “divide America into warring factions separated by culture, by language, by attitude,” he told the man.

Suggestion to McClintock: Read a history book! Diversify your friend pool. Something.

2. Donny Deutsch: The U.S. can’t have a woman president until Al Qaeda does.

Donny Deutsch may have been a genius brander/advertising guy, but as a political analyst, umm...not so much. In an appearance on "Morning Joe" this week, he laid out his theory of why a woman (read: Hillary Clinton) should not be president. In a nutshell, it seems to be because she’d have to deal with foreign leaders who are men. And that wouldn’t be fair.

We’ll let him dig his own grave. Here’s what he said:

Quote:
Problem: we have a woman, but our enemies are still on the opposite side of the equation. I don’t think the Al Qaedas of the world are going to be headed by women, so it falls apart a little bit. Women plus women equals a win to me. Women and still men on the other side of the table? Theoretically the world would be a better place with women running it. It doesn’t solve the problem.

“If you have two women down to negotiate something, it’s going to get done without bullets,” Deutsch continued, undeterred by the ridiculousness of his position. “On our side of the equation, we solve it, but there’s a world that’s still a century behind in our evolutionary state or progressive state in how we feel about women.”

So no woman president until every other country has a woman leader. As Jezebel quipped: "Does Angela Merkel know about this?"

3. Minnesota Rep. offers conceal carry permits and target practice to donors.

Here’s a novel idea for a fundraising event: Promise more gun privileges to every donor. This Saturday, gun-loving Minn. Republican lawmaker Cindy Pugh offered free concealed carry gun-training classes to people who donate a minimum of $125 to her campaign. For those potential donors who already have concealed carry permits, the deal was sweetened by having their permit automatically renewed, for a mere $100 donation.

Pugh was really pleased with herself for coming up with this idea. As she told Watchdog.org:

Quote:
I’ve heard from a lot of people that they’ve never heard of anyone doing this before and I don’t know that it has been done before. But this is an idea that my campaign team came up with as we were brainstorming ways to connect with my voters and my constituents and just heighten awareness about issues that are important.

This should in no way be construed as buying votes (or donations) though. That is something only Democrats do when they, say, offer food stamps to hungry seniors.

4. Rush Limbaugh bullies listeners into choosing between God and science.

One mark of a borderline personality, we’re told, is seeing the world in black-and-white terms — either/or — no nuance allowed. An armchair diagnosis of Rush Limbaugh suggests that syndrome may apply to him. Another diagnosis: intellectual (using the word loosely) bullying.

And so it was this week when Limbaugh made it plain to his listeners that they could not simultaneously believe in God and in climate change science. Take your pick, he said, ‘cause you can’t have both. His comments were occasioned by Secretary of State John Kerry having the audacity to say in a speech to the Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives that climate change was “a challenge to our responsibilities as the guardians — safe guarders of God’s creation.”

Here’s how Limbaugh put listeners between a rock and hard place:

Quote:
“See, in my humble opinion, folks, if you believe in God, then intellectually you cannot believe in manmade global warming … You must be either agnostic or atheistic to believe that man controls something that he can’t create.”

Black or white. See? Simple.

5. Rick Santorum says “middle class” is a Marxist term.

Former and perhaps future presidential candidate Rick Santorum is so tired of hearing about the middle class. This is not because of the sad fact that the middle class is shrinking or just becoming part of the poor or one step away from it, it’s because he has decided the very notion of the middle class is “Marxism talk” because, “Since when in America do we have classes?”

This is Santorum’s notion of creative problem-solving. It is also always good to attach the Marxist/socialist label to Obama, because if there’s one thing Americans hate, it’s socialism.

As Salon reported:

Quote:
“Who does Barack talk about all the time?” Santorum rhetorically asked a group of Republicans recently in Lyon County, IA. “The middle class. Since when in America do we have classes? Since when in America are people stuck in areas, or defined places called a class? That’s Marxism talk. When Republicans get up and talk about the middle class we’re buying into their rhetoric of dividing America. Stop it.”

6. Steve King asks Obama to have clown summit.

Even his fellow Republicans wish Iowa Rep. Steve King would shut up. He is not doing the brand or the shrinking voter base any good with his comments on immigrants having cantaloupe calves, and other assorted bigoted remarks. Most self-respecting Republicans also disavow blatant racism, and almost everyone agrees that the Obama-mask clown at the Missouri State Fair that lent the event the air of a KKK rally was over the line.

Not Rep. King, however. Perversely appointing himself the arbiter of what is racist and funny, he tweeted:

Quote:
Mr. President: Invite the rodeo clown 2 the White House 4 a beer summit. Take the temperature down, have a laugh, relax. It's not about race.

As if Obama did not have enough clowns to deal with in Washington.

7. Former Navy Chaplain: Obama is secretly creating an atheist military to attack Christians.

Former Navy Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt is full of fire and brimstone, and some would say insane paranoia, these days. Having been court-martialed for wearing his navy uniform to a protest a few years back, he is convinced of a huge conspiracy to rid the armed forces of Christians. To do this, he says Obama is amassing an atheist army to attack God-fearing Christians.

Klingenschmitt told Dove TV, “The Obama administration is stockpiling armored personnel carriers, and the Department of Homeland Security [has] billions of rounds of ammunition; who are they going to use that against? If there’s no Christians serving in the government, eventually that is all going to be turned against us.”

Other eminently sensible recent remarks from Chap. Kling according to Rightwingwatch.org: “Wendy Davis is ruled by a demon of murder and should be prosecuted,” and, “What gays do behind closed doors is not love, it’s lawlessness.”

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/7-idiotic-and-dangerous-statements-right-wing-nut-jobs-just-last-week?paging=off


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PostPosted: 09/15/13 9:42 am • # 8 
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I'm getting a humdinger of a headache ~ :eek ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
7 Outrageous and Downright Horrific Statements From the Right-Wing Fringe Just This Week
"I’m against homosexuals pretending like they’re married." Will the homophobic, racist, sexist conservative noise never cease?

August 24, 2013 | 1. Justice Scalia wonders aloud if citizens should have rocket launchers.

How do you solve a problem like Scalia? The Supreme Court’s most shoot-from-the-hip, right-wing, Tea Partying, really un-judge-like judge mused this week in a speech in Montana about what sort of arms are protected under the Second Amendment. Might “shoulder-fired rocket launchers” be protected? Perhaps, he concluded. Scalia reminded the crowd that the framers of the Constitution put that amendment in there, after all, to preserve the right of the people to revolt against a tyrannical leader.

OK, that’s kind of extreme. Even the gun nuts aren’t making that argument, usually defending their right to bear all kinds of arms for some sort of self-defense against real or imagined criminals.

So it’s a tad off for a Supreme Court justice to be suggesting armed insurrection, no? And, of course, these days, that would probably require significantly more powerful weaponry than the muskets that helped win the Revolutionary War.

As if the gun nuts need any more encouragement to up their firepower.

2. Colorado legislator: Poverty higher among blacks because they eat too much chicken.

At a task force meeting to address economic opportunity and poverty reduction, Colorado State Sen. Vicki Marble (R) delivered a rambling monologue suggesting that the reason for poverty among certain minority groups was their diet, specifically chicken; but no offense, because it’s really delicious chicken.

Here’s what she said verbatim:

Quote:
“When you look at life expectancy, there are problems in the black race: sickle-cell anemia is something that comes up, diabetes is something that’s prevalent in the genetic makeup and you just can’t help it… Although I’ve got to say, I’ve never had better barbecue and better chicken and ate better in my life than when you go down south and you — I mean love it and everybody loves it. The Mexican diet in Mexico with all of the fresh vegetables. And you go down there and they’re much thinner than when they come up here… they change their diet.”

Let us pause for a fact-check moment: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization recently found obesity rates are higher in Mexico than the United States.

After that, another task force member, Rep. Rhonda Fields (D) had heard quite enough. “The title for this committee is Economic Opportunity Poverty Reduction; and one of the things I will not tolerate is racist and insensitive comments about African Americans.” She added that she would not “engage in a dialogue where I’m in the company, where you are using these stereotyped references about African American and chicken and food… this is not what this committee is all about… it’s not about chicken.”

Meeting adjourned.

3. Fox guest says Oklahoma shooting was partly because shooters could have been aborted.

Yes, you read that right. Janet Morana, the executive director of Priests for Life, an anti-abortion group, said that the three teenagers accused of shooting a jogger for fun are actually survivors of Roe v. Wade—everyone born after 1973 is, actually—and that could have messed them up, and contributed to their desire to engage in thrill-killing. “There’s a thing called ‘survivor syndrome,’” she explained. “Just the fact that you could have been aborted can affect you. So that’s factor one.”

Then she went on to discuss the less important factors like lack of parenting, and the fact that the accused shooters watched lots of violent video games.

But, yeah, survivor syndrome. It’s a thing. Knowing you could have been aborted. Think about it.

4. Bryan Fischer: Christians are the new blacks.

The American Family Association spokesman took this week’s New Mexico Supreme Court’s decision that a wedding photography business violated the state’s anti-discrimination law by refusing its services to a same-sex couple very hard. How dare they not be allowed to discriminate? Discrimination is what this country was built on. Fischer encouraged all right-thinking businesses like the one in question to “fight fire with fire” and file countersuits, because preventing people from discriminating is discrimination, yup, against Christians. When are Christians going to start suing for the right to discriminate, huh?

“Essentially what this court has done and what the Obama administration has done with this abortifacient mandate is that they have turned Christians into Dred Scott,” Fischer expounded on his show Focal Point. “Christians have no rights which this court is bound to respect. So to me this looks like Jim Crow is alive and well, we’ve got Jim Crow laws right back in operation, Christians are the new blacks.”

Okay, so orange is not the new black? Confused.

5. Alabama GOP candidate: “Homosexuals should stop pretending like they’re married” and Republicans must sign a pledge to make them stop doing that.

Dean Young is running for Congress in Alabama in part because he does not think same-sex couples should have the right to marry, and in part because he does not think Republicans in Congress are sufficiently outraged about gay marriage. He wants to go and straighten everyone out, so to speak.

“I’m against homosexuals pretending like they’re married,” he told a local NBC affiliate. “If you want to have homosexuals pretending like they’re married, then go to the Democrat party.”

He added: “Congress is weak and spineless,” he said. “We get these mealy-mouthed politicians that just want to move up the ladder, and they won’t tell people where they stand.”

He has gone so far as to compose a six-part pledge to fight marriage equality that he wants all Republicans in the race (and probably all Republicans) to sign. It starts with the belief that marriage should only be between a man and a woman and ends with: "6. I support the by-law change to expel any member of the Republican Executive Committee who opposes the party position by supporting gay marriage."

6. Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO): Climate change is a conspiracy; only ‘radical environmentalists’ get grants.

Al Gore may feel like the conversation on climate change has improved, and feel a little hopeful that the planet can be saved, but the growing, rather late-in-the-day consensus is only making the nut-job climate science deniers more vehement.

One example is Rep. Mike Coffman, who told a local Colorado radio station that you can only get a grant to do science research if you “submit to the…orthodoxy of climate change by the radical environmentalists.” Coffman also said 97 percent of scientists were wrong, and that climate change is “naturally occurring” with “man-made influences” being “debatable.”

7. Heritage Foundation’s Jim DeMint’s alternative to Obamacare: emergency rooms.

For weeks, we’ve been saying that the Party of "No” just doesn’t seem to have an alternative to Obamacare, which they are so doggedly and hopelessly fighting. But that turns out not to be true. They do have an alternative. Emergency rooms. Why didn’t we think of that? It’s not as if emergency rooms have been proven to be costly, inefficient and all too often ineffective ways to deliver healthcare.

Thankfully Heritage president and former South Carolina senator Jim DeMint pointed this sensible alternative out in a recent town-hall meeting in Tampa, Florida this week. He’s been waging quite a campaign to defund the Affordable Care Act. “This might be that last off-ramp to stop Obamacare before it becomes more enmeshed in our culture,” he warned the room. The law “is not about getting better healthcare,” he continued. Uninsured Americans “will get better healthcare just going to the emergency room.”

Never mind the inconvenient fact that, as Think Progress points out, in 1989, “the Heritage Foundation was at the forefront of advocating for a requirement to purchase coverage through as system of regulated healthcare marketplaces, the very centerpiece of Obama’s healthcare reform, and later lobbied congressional Republicans to offer the initiative as an alternative to President Bill Clinton’s health proposal.

More than a decade later, Heritage boosted former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) health reform law and the individual mandate included in it, describing the requirement as ‘one that is clearly consistent with conservative values.’”

Wait, pause, we thought conservative values were the kind that don’t change.

There’s more from Think Progress: “A Heritage healthcare analyst said Romney’s proposal would reform the state’s ‘uncompensated-care payment system,’ force residents to take ‘personal responsibility for their healthcare and prevent them from simply showing up in emergency rooms.’”

All righty then, that should clear up the Heritage Foundation’s position on that.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/7-outrageous-and-downright-horrific-statements-right-wing-fringe-just-week?paging=off


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PostPosted: 09/15/13 9:47 am • # 9 
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I find it all rather funny.


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PostPosted: 09/15/13 9:55 am • # 10 
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I'm still conflicted on that, oskar ~ and there's still more to come ~ :eek ~ like the drip drip drip of a leaky faucet, it seems ... unending ~

Sooz


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PostPosted: 09/15/13 10:29 am • # 11 
These are so funny, but scary, too. It is really difficult to go around the State Capitol in Texas talking to people who have actually been elected and have them say some of this stuff. Sometimes it can be fun but most times we have to try to stay cool. Ha. We were working for gay rights, marriage equality, etc. I was talking to this one old fart. He actually had a bottle of THE blue pills on his desk. He said gays are sinners, "sex is only for procreation". I pointed to the bottle and asked him how many more kids he planned to have. Sometimes you just can't resist. I was ready to follow up with the thought that his need for those was god's way of saying he didn't want any more baby bigots.


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PostPosted: 09/15/13 12:57 pm • # 12 
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Janet Allon wields ridicule like a sword ~ a few GREAT zingers below: Laura Ingraham is "... a dangerously articulate ignorant woman ...", "Facts or actual information seldom interfere with the dissemination of hatred.", "Liz Cheney makes Dick Cheney look liberal by opposing her own sister’s right to marry", and "Holiday dinners at the Cheney household must be a ton of fun." ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
8 Despicable Right-Wing Statements From This Last Week Alone
The extreme right produced a host of offensive, racist and wildly inaccurate statements this week.

August 31, 2013 | 1. Penn. Gov. Corbett: Gays are like children. Neither should be able to marry.

When he isn’t busy defunding public schools, Pennsylvania’s oh-so-enlightened Republican governor Tom Corbett is fighting hard to keep same-sex couples from marrying in his state. To that end, he’s going after a low-level county clerk who had the audacity to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, because he believes it is the right thing to do. In the lawsuit against the idealistic clerk, the state’s lawyers made the following ridiculously off-base and offensive argument: Gays can’t marry in Pennsylvania any more than children can. Exact wording:

"Had the clerk issued marriage licenses to 12-year-olds in violation of state law, would anyone seriously contend that each 12-year-old ... is entitled to a hearing on the validity of his `license'?" the state wrote in its brief.

By the end of the week, Corbett seemed to recognize that comparing consenting adults to children was offensive and probably the wrong analogy to use. He courageously backed away from the statement, blamed his attorneys for the wording, and shirked all responsibility for it.

But he’ll be damned if gay Pennsylvanians marry under his watch.

2. Joe Walsh gives absurdly racist "I have a dream” speech.

There was so much shame frothing around Republican and right-wing circles for their despicable behavior this week during the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and the historic March on Washington, it is difficult to know where to start.

While not one Republican representative participated in the festivities, having more important things to attend to like meetings with lobbyists and continuing their pointless efforts to defund Obamacare, former Rep. Joe Walsh, mercifully a one-termer from Illinois, let his racism flag fly full mast with his idiotic rewrite of MLK’s great speech. In Walsh’s view, African Americans suffer from “dependency on the government plantation.” In Walsh’s dreams, African Americans are to blame for all of their own problems, and the extreme right-wing agenda is the only solution.

Apparently, Walsh missed the part about people being judged on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, and his rewrite comprised a list of vile racial stereotypes lacking all nuance.

We have a dream, too. That politicians like Joe Walsh will, well, just cease.

3. Laura Ingraham makes bizarre and vicious decision to feature sound of a gunshot during John Lewis’ speech.

Possibly outdoing Walsh in offensive behavior during the civil rights celebration was right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham. Ingraham, a dangerously articulate ignorant woman, made the argument that the people commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington were trying “to co-opt the legacy of Martin Luther King into a modern-day liberal agenda.”

Instead, Ingraham is coopting King into some sort of conservative hero, who heralded our so-called color-blind, totally debunked “post-racial” society. Words, yes. Wrong-headed distorted words. But everyone has a right to their opinion.

Then in the middle of the speech made by Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights hero who marched in Selma and was injured there and who was the youngest person to speak at the march 50 years ago, came the sound of a gunshot on Ingraham’s radiocast. Lewis is in mid-speech, talking about the unfinished business of civil rights in America.

Quote:
“We must say to the Congress: fix the Voting Rights Act. We must say to the Congress: Pass comprehensive immigration reform. It doesn’t make sense that millions of our people. …”

BLAM!

Lewis falls silent, as if hit, in an echo of MLK, Medgar Evers, the Kennedys. (Listen to it on Media Matters; it is way more disturbing than can be conveyed in writing.)

Ingraham, anti-immigrationist, NRA mouthpiece, etc… did not like what he was saying. Does this cross the line from speech into incitement? Just asking.

4. Christian radio show hosts: Gays commit half of all murders.

Haters did not confine themselves to race this week. The homophobes were out in force as well. While Gov. Corbett infantilized gays, evangelicals sought to demonize them by spreading outrageous propagandistic lies.

Last Saturday, the hosts of the Minnesota-based radio show, “The Sons of Liberty,” Bradlee Dean and Jake McMillan claimed that homosexuals are responsible for half of all murders committed in large cities. Where they would get such a wildly inaccurate notion, nobody knows. Facts or actual information seldom interfere with the dissemination of hatred.

Dean, who is founder and executive director of a nonprofit Christian youth organization, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International (wow, doesn’t that Mad Max-inspired name make Christianity seem appealing?), said he was quoting a New York City judge named John Martagh. But, after just a little digging, the Huffington Post revealed the quote came from a 1992 newspaper column by an evangelical loony who never cited his statistical source, but is still quoted from time to time in anti-gay rhetoric. So this is just one of those lies that gets repeated enough it becomes a kind of truth for the liars.

It was off to the races once Dean and McMillan made their initial assertion. All those murderers in the LGBT community are inherently immoral, and so of course, they engage in things like murder. It’s on a continuum with their abominable sex acts.

5. Pat Robertson: Gays using 'special rings' to infect us with AIDS.

It gets worse in the category of possible incitement against gays. "700 Club" host and resident lunatic Pat Robertson moved beyond even dubious sources of information long ago. His latest bizarre assertion is that “vicious” gay men in cities like San Francisco wear “special rings” to “cut” people when shaking their hands and give them “the stuff.” The stuff is HIV/AIDS. Words are beginning to fail the aging preacher, who says gay people are committing the equivalent of murder.

It’s easy to dismiss Robertson as just too far gone even to pay any mind, but he does still have his show and his following.

Is anyone else feeling the similarity between this and the blood libel about Jews using the blood of Christian babies to bake their matzoh?

Apparently, the Christian Broadcasting Network thought it went too far, and cut Robertson’s crazy comment out of the program before airing it.

6. Liz Cheney makes Dick Cheney look liberal by opposing her own sister’s right to marry.

Making Darth Vader look tolerant is quite an accomplishment, but Wyoming GOP Senate candidate, the daughter of the former vice president and sister of openly gay Mary Cheney, has done just that by publicly stating her opposition to gay marriage.

"I am strongly pro-life and I am not pro-gay marriage," Liz Cheney said in a statement this week. “I believe the issue of marriage must be decided by the states, and by the people in the states, not by judges and not even by legislators, but by the people themselves."

It is too late to prevent her sister from marrying. Mary married her longtime partner in Washington, D.C., and once the issue hit close to home, Dick Cheney broke with his own party to support her and others’ right to do so. But while it might be assumed that blood runs thicker than politics, Liz sought to clarify she is just as intolerant and right-wing when it comes to basic human rights as her Republican opponent, incumbent Mike Enzi.

Holiday dinners at the Cheney household must be a ton of fun.

7. Ted Cruz' father rants insanely about Obamacare.

Ah, family. While strife and dissension may be plaguing the Cheney family, Ted Cruz and his nutty father, Rafael, are on the same deluded page about Obamacare. They both believe that it signals the end of civilization as we know it. “They may take our lives,” Rafael told a crowd in Wilmington, Delaware, joining rabid anti-Obamacare crusader Jim DeMint this week, “But they cannot take our honor.”

While it is unclear what exactly the hell he is talking about and how it relates to the Affordable Care Act, Rafael Cruz, a Texas pastor, really knows how to whip up the crowd. “We can be complacent no more, we can be silent no more!” the Texas pastor foamed at the mouth. “You know, we have seen our lives under attack. Our quality of life is being eroded more and more and more as our liberties are taken away. As regulations and more taxation, we are seeing our lives being destroyed.”

What is clear is that DeMint’s over-the-top effort to stop Obamacare, a nine-city tour where he has called healthcare for seniors and veterans “un-American” (it’s socialist, you see), is increasingly divorced not only from reality, but also from the mainstream of the Republican party. They want him to shut up about closing down the government in order to defund healthcare, and are increasingly excluding the Heritage Foundation, which he heads, from policy discussions.

Does this mean some Republican lawmakers are coming to their senses? We would not go that far.

8. Mitch McConnell woos women voters by touting legislation he never supported.

Just a suggestion: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell should probably examine his own voting record before issuing press releases, or holding events with titles like Friday’s “Women for Team Mitch.” The release said the Kentucky right-winger supported the Violence Against Women Act in 2012 and 2013, which a quick factcheck reveals he did not. He also opposed two other bills that would help women—the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.

At the event itself, McConnell neither addressed women’s issues not took any questions from women, according to a local reporter. But one woman, his wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, told the crowd he supports increased cancer screenings and checkups for women, which is strange because he’s campaigning against the Affordable Care Act, which would increase women’s access to preventive medicine.

Wow, we feel wooed.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/8-despicable-right-wing-statements-last-week-alone?paging=off


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PostPosted: 09/15/13 1:15 pm • # 13 
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Anyone else beginning to itch all over? ~ :ey ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
7 Instances of All-Out, Mean-Spirited, Right-Wing Lunacy From This Week Alone
A Christian radio host says he’s happy to attend same-sex marriages as long as the grooms are told they deserve to die.

September 6, 2013 | 1. Texas GOP Candidate: Texas Can Be Its Own ‘Island Nation’

Barry Smitherman, aspiring attorney general for the Lone-Star state, thinks Texas is prepared to become its own independent nation, mostly because it has oil and its own energy grid. He compared the state to an “island nation,” which is curious given its geography.

“Texas can operate as a stand-alone entity with energy, food, water and roads as if we were a closed-loop system,” he said in an interview this week. He stopped short of calling for Texas to secede from the United States.

Smitherman is Gov. Rick Perry’s appointee to the Texas Railroad Commission. He seems to see eye to eye with his boss on a number of issues, including those having nothing to do with his job—like regulating oil and gas in the state, and fighting the EPA and Obama administration tooth and nail.

He recently attacked China’s one-child policy in a speech for a pro-life group, and also said abortion could cause a plague—a Biblical one. He favors marrying young, abstaining from sex until married, then having lots and lots of children—Texan Republican children who use a lot of Texas oil and like to shoot guns, another cause Smitherman is really into.

2. Fox Guest: No Money, No Lunch Is a Good Teaching Moment

Most people who don’t give a fig about the well-being of poor children are at least careful to disguise their callousness, or have the decency to gravitate toward work that has nothing to do with kids. But not all of them, as it turns out. The award for most blatantly heartless comment of the week goes to Fox & Friends guest Thomas Kersting. Kersting is a therapist and school counselor (!) who told Gretchen Carlson he agrees with a New Jersey school district’s plan to punish kids who lack the funds for lunch, or whose parents failed to fill out proper paperwork, by throwing the kids' lunch away. This, he said, would provide a “teaching moment.”

Even host Gretchen Carlson was a little taken aback, asking Kersting if he “had a problem with the fact that the kids ultimately end up being punished in this situation when it really is the parents’ fault.”

Kersting replied: “We have more food than any other nation. No kid is going to starve. You know, if one day a kid doesn’t have lunch, right, maybe that’s a teaching moment when that kid doesn’t have lunch. That may sound harsh saying that, but we’ve got to get people to start being responsible for themselves.”

Kersting has worked for close to 20 years in the school district, and claimed he gives kids money all the time. “And I’m broke from doing that over the years. No, I’m kidding.”

About which part? Oh, ha ha ha.

3. Christian Radio Host: Military’s ‘Homosexual Takeover’ Could Doom Attack on Syria

A U.S.-led attack on Syria is wrong on so many levels, but for one Bible-thumping Christian radio host, the issue is fairly simple. Any attempt to intervene in Syria’s civil war is doomed by the fact that homosexuals and pregnant women have taken over the American military. Yes, there has been a coup. The American Family Association’s Sandy Rios offered up this cogent piece of analysis on Monday arguing that the hostile takeover of the military, which resulted from the overturning of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and allowed women to fight, has hurt the country’s military readiness.

“When I looked at those battleships in the Mediterranean, supposedly getting ready for battle in Syria, I couldn’t help think about all the stories I’ve read about how women are now in the ranks of the Navy, getting pregnant at exponential numbers,” she told listeners.

Wow, exponential pregnancy numbers! That sounds bad. But there’s more.

Rios continued, “When I think about the folding in and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the homosexual takeover, really, of our military, I’m not sure how effective those naval ships will be.”

4. GOP Spokesman Calls McConnell Opponent an ‘Empty Dress’

Mitch McConnell is getting pretty desperate. The arch-conservative Kentucky senator is in real danger of losing his seat. And since, as the cliché goes, desperate times call for desperate measures, desperation is what he and the Republican machine have resorted to.

This week, the communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee called McConnell’s democratic rival Alison Lundergan Grimes an “empty dress” in an interview with The Hill. This piece of sexist pablum about a candidate who could be the first woman to represent Kentucky in the Senate, was brought to you by the oh-so-talented-at-communication Brad Dayspring. Dayspring also infantilized Grimes by comparing her to a high school student who “babbles incoherently and stares blankly into the camera as though she’s a freshman in high school struggling to remember the CliffsNotes after forgetting to read her homework assignment.”

The attack comes at an awkward time for McConnell, who has been doing his level best to “woo” women voters despite never having supported legislation that would help them with wage equality, healthcare or reproductive rights.

5. Anonymous Portland Douchebag Threatens to Out Food Stamp Recipients

Another nominee in the meanspirited category is too cowardly even to show his face, preferring to do the important work of shaming disabled people and people who are impoverished enough to need food stamps, anonymously.

This a**hole reportedly distributed flyers under cover of darkness this week in several Portland, Oregon neighborhoods saying: "There are 27 people in this neighborhood who vote and receive food stamps. The names of these people are being posted where they can be seen by taxpayers and the neighborhood can decide who is truly in need of food."

Well, the flyers are not entirely anonymous. They are signed by "Artemis of the wildland," after the Greek goddess of the hunt. Artemis would have had to hunt for those names, as food stamp recipients are not in the public record. Or Artemis would need to have a mole in the U.S. Department of Agriculture to gain access to the files.

Last month, Artemis was similarly incensed about people who both vote and receive disability checks.

6. Christian Radio Host to Flock: You Can Attend Gay Weddings if You Tell Grooms ‘They Shall Both Be Put to Death’

In a bid to be invited to as many same-sex weddings as possible, a Christian radio host said he’d be happy to attend as long as the grooms were both told they have “committed an abomination,” and therefore should die. Kevin Swanson advised his listeners that it would be okay for them to do the same.

Swanson’s term for gay weddings? "Neronic weddings," after Nero, the Roman emperor who apparently invented them. Generally, Swanson avoids such weddings (though we suspect the invitations are pouring into his inbox), but then he came up with his solution. “I think you can attend [such] a wedding if you hold a up a sign that reads Leviticus 20:13 . . .You know, word for word: ‘If a man sleeps with a man as he sleeps with a woman the two of them have committed an abomination and they shall both be put to death.’ You could attend a wedding and hold up that sign."

“And I guess if it comes down to it, if you bake a cake for a homosexual wedding, you could put Leviticus 20:13 on the cake.”

Festive!

7. Glenn Beck: Can’t We All Just Get Along? And Progressives Should Be Hunted Like Nazis

Far-right radio host, Internet entrepreneur, and—how shall we put this?—utter and complete lunatic, Glenn Beck (seriously, Google the clip where Beck talks about how fast-food companies have implanted a chip in our brains that will turn us all into zombies when they decide to throw the switch), gave a very dignified interview to the New York Times this week.

In it, he made a Rodney King-like plea for the country to heal its divisions and unite.The only problem is, we must all unite on the crazy, right-wing side, and only after progressives have been hunted down, because progressives are the “biggest danger to the world” and they inevitably leave “millions dead.” Like Mao.

That’s how this whole “big government” thing always ends up. Like Mao. Millions dead. Then they come back to life as zombies when the switch is flipped. And then they have to be hunted like zombies. Got it?

Note to readers: It appears that Beck his truly insane clip about the zombie chip in fast food meals. Our theory is that it did not jive with his pro-fast food/pro-corporate/anti-Michelle Obama message. Remember, this is the man who brought us the term, "Fryots," or French Fry Riots, which he said Ms. Obama would cause with her anti-fried food message.

http://www.alternet.org/right-wing-lunacy?paging=off


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PostPosted: 09/15/13 1:50 pm • # 14 
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I can't seem to escape that alternate universe I keep waking up in ~ :g ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
7 Totally Crazy Statements by Right-Wing Lunatics From This Week
What a week: Ted Cruz wishes America had 100 more senators like Jesse Helms.

September 14, 2013 | 1. Ted Cruz: We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the Senate.

Ted Cruz gave a huge shout-out to North Carolina’s late unrepentant racist senator, Jesse Helms. Granted, it was at the Heritage Foundation’s annual Helms lecture, so he wasn’t the only person in the room who worshipped Helms. But he did give a somewhat strange reason for being so fond of the bigot, and wishing there were “100 more” like him in the U.S. Senate.

Apparently the actor John Wayne had praised Helms for being willing to say “Crazy things,” Cruz told the audience. “The willingness to say all those crazy things is a rare, rare characteristic in this town, and you know what? It’s every bit as true now as it was then.”

For those who don’t remember, here are some of the fun-filled, wacky things Helms said and did:

•He sang the confederate anthem “Dixie” in an elevator with Carol Moseley-Braun, the African-American senator from Illinois, and told Sen. Orrin Hatch in front of her that he was trying to make her cry.
•He opposed integration, or “mixing of the races,” and called the University of North Carolina the “University of Negroes and Communists” because it was integrated.
•He led a one-man, 16-day filibuster opposing the designation of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a holiday, and threatened to lead one to save South African apartheid.
•More comically, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he seemed unable to absorb the fact that the North Korean president’s name was Kim Jong Il, not Kim Jong 2.
•Unlike other like-minded Southern politicians Strom Thurmond and George Wallace, Helms never disavowed his racist, segregationist views even on his deathbed in 2008.

One hundred more.

2. Glenn Beck: War is a progressive idea so I am now against it.

Does the radio host and one of the far-right’s most hilarious nut-jobs have any core principles? Does he attach real meaning to actual words? Or does he just make it all up as he goes along? Rhetorical questions, yes, but he may have outdone himself this week when he injected some real seriousness into the deadly serious Syria debate. He just up and changed the meaning of the terms. Singlehandedly. He can do that, you know. He’s Glenn Beck.

So war is now a progressive idea, Beck says, because, of course, a Democratic president has proposed it. Apparently, the rest of the progressive community was not informed, since most of them, and most Americans oppose military intervention in Syria, but never mind. In other news, up is down and black is white. And good conservatives like Beck are anti-war. It’s a sad day for Beck because he used to thoroughly enjoy how the U.S. would topple dictators and “spread democracy” by doing so, but that was before he realized that this is actually a form of the dreaded progressive thinking.

Sometimes, such mental gymnastics can lead to close encounters with shades of truth, as when the former Fox News personality explained he was against a Syrian invasion because it would be about oil, and that Obama is similar to Dick Cheney in this way.

3. Alex Jones: Globalist cyborgs are coming.

If there is anyone who can outweigh Beck on the looniness scale, that distinction would have to go to conspiracy theorist, fringe conservative radio host Alex Jones. His theory? The effort to avoid a U.S. attack on Syria with diplomacy was actually a United Nations plot for the extinction of the human race, which would be replaced by “globalists” like President Barack Obama who would become cyborgs by using “life-extension technologies.”

Hard to argue with that logic, seeing as it is neither logical, nor based in any sort of shared reality. It may be worth noting that Beck seems much more worried about a zombie invasion than one led by cyborgs.

Jones went on to explain that the proposal to bring Syria’s chemical weapons under the control of the international community was a way for the U.N. to “come into any country they want, that has any type of weapons systems—and call them WMDs, and then dismantle that country’s infrastructure.”

That’s because the U.N. is at the very head of the globalist conspiracy, he explains. The globalists are “the biggest, most organized, eugenics-based, scientific dictatorship, trans-humanists at the top that plan the extinction of almost everybody and a new species to rise up or humans merged with machines.”

“That’s their religion, and no one’s discussing that,” Jones added. “Everyone is going to be deindustrialized, everyone is going to be put back into the Stone Age and controlled. And Obama and the globalists and the robber barons, they’re going to fly around in their jetcopters and their Air Forces Ones and their red carpets, like gods above us. And they’re going to get the life-extension technologies.”

Any questions?

4. Stuart Varney and Monica Crowley: EPA is trying to suffocate children.

Fox News’ Monica Crowley and Stuart Varney were appalled, appalled I tell you, when they revealed the shocking news this week that the EPA, the evil government’s evil Environmental Protection Agency, is providing free lesson plans for “teachers looking to educate their students on climate change.”

“The EPA — the EPA,” said Varney. And they're aiming this “propaganda” directly at innocent middle-school children. Of course, these plans have been openly available online for months, but Crowley suspects there is a hidden agenda to this oh-so-sneaky plan. “Are they going to tell these kids to not exhale? Because every time you exhale, that’s carbon dioxide.”

And, carbon dioxide causes global warming, right? So learn to hold your breath, kids.

Well, no, not exactly. The good news is that very soon, kids will know a good deal more than Fox News does about climate change, although that is not saying much. The EPA materials do explain what carbon is and how it plays an important role in sustaining life on the planet. And how the burning of fossil fuels has led to a surplus of life-supporting gases like carbon dioxide, which has made the planet hotter. And other science-type things that no one at Fox News will ever be caught dead reading or learning, in their indefatigable drive toward making America, hands-down, the dumbest hot country on the planet.

5. Minnesota archbishop: Satan is behind gay marriage.

Satan has been a very busy guy lately. No, that wasn’t him sawing heads off Syrian rebels in the public square or visiting plagues upon the beleaguered New Jersey shore. He had nothing to do with that creep who brands women’s vaginas to show he owns them. Mostly, he’s been concerning himself with spreading love, same-sex love. Love so strong it wants to get married. Apparently, Satan has not fully read his job description.

Lately, Lucifer has been spending time in Minnesota, where the archbishop of Minneapolis and St. Paul has announced that the devil is responsible for the legalization of marriage equality.

“Sodomy, abortion, contraception, pornography, the redefinition of marriage, and the denial of objective truth are just some of the forces threatening the stability of our civilisation,” Rev. John Nienstedt said in a recent speech to the Napa Institute Conference, and posted to the conference’s website Tuesday. “The source of these machinations is none other than the Father of Lies. Satan knows all too well the value that the family contributes to the fabric of a good solid society, as well as the future of God’s work on earth.”

Despite Nienstedt’s efforts, and because of Satan’s, Minnesota has been issuing same-sex marriage licenses since August.

Mwah hah ha ha ha. Isn’t that how the devil laughs?

6. Texas GOP gov. candidate tweets that Wendy Davis is “too stupid to be governor.”

From the totally ridiculous to the merely very offensive, the top political advisor to Texas Attorney General/would-be successor to Rick Perry, Greg Abbott has attacked Democratic opponent Wendy Davis’ intelligence in a tweet. This follows on the heels of Abbott’s tweeting thanks to a supporter for a sexist attack on Davis, which referred to her as “Retard Barbie” so, clearly a very nuanced, high-minded Republican campaign is evolving in the Lone Star state.

Dave Carney is the enlightened strategist in question, and he took the opportunity not just to call Davis stupid, but also to cheer the results of Tuesday’s Colorado recall elections. His tweet linked to an article in a conservative Texas blog slamming Davis' gun views, calling her “Abortion Barbie,” and dismissing her as “even dumber than her fake blonde hair would imply,” ThinkProgress reported.

7. Internet advice from a nobody who wants to ruin perfect strangers’ lives: Dads, don’t educate your daughters!

A Louisiana-based certified public accountant cares deeply about the purity of America’s young women, and he has figured out a solution to it. Keep them ignorant. In his spare time, the guy generously makes Internet videos filled with unwanted, unasked for and basically awful advice on how to raise your daughters.

First step in saving the family: Don’t send your daughters to college. Why? Because she is very likely to have sex there. “This is no small matter we’re dealing with here,” he implores fathers. “Is a degree worth the loss of your daughter’s purity, dignity, and soul?”

If they really want to learn, girls can go to the library or use the Internet, since neither of those can lead to genital contact, he allows.

But why bother getting educated, anyway? Jobs for women are not important, this wise sage continues: “My personal impression is that the day-to-day grind of a job is below the dignity of women. In a way, it is like being a hired hand, as a result of the fall and the penalty for original sin.”

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/7-totally-crazy-statements-right-wing-lunatics-week?paging=off


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PostPosted: 09/23/13 6:09 am • # 15 
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Here is this week's installment ~ :g ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
7 Vile and Ridiculous Moments From the Country's Right-Wing Fringe This Week
Right-wingers really outdid themselves this week.

September 21, 2013 | 1. Christian radio hosts says Colorado floods caused by homosexual activity.

However much he excels at it, Pat Robertson is far from the only televangelist who blames natural and unnatural disasters on gay people; plenty of young, up-and-coming, ultra-right, impervious-to-science bible-thumpers agree. So it was that this week, Christian pastor and radio host Kevin Swanson said abortion, marijuana legalization and “decadent homosexual activity” were the causes of the catastrophic flooding in Colorado.

Especially that last one. It just so happens that the Denver Post featured Colorado state House Speaker Mark Ferrandino kissing his gay partner not too long ago, and Swanson sees a connection.

“Is it a coincidence that this was the worst year politically in the history of Colorado, at least if you use God’s law as a means of determining human ethics?” he asked the listeners of his "Generations With Vision" show. “So here we have the very worst year in Colorado’s year in terms of let’s kill as many babies as possible, let’s make sure we encourage as much decadent homosexual activity as possible, let’s break God’s law with impudence at every single level. Let’s make sure that we offend whoever wrote the Bible, so we have the worst year possible politically in the state of Colorado and it happens to be the worst year ever in terms of flood and fire damage in Colorado’s history.”

Co-host Dave Buehner chimed in, paraphrasing a Bible verse, saying, "this last year we walked in lewdness, lust, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties.”

“Marijuana,” Swanson added, though the Bible fails to mention it.

Before there were floods, there was fire. Earlier this year, Swanson said Ferrandino’s gay kiss and women wearing pants were the causes of forest fires in Colorado.

2. Louie Gohmert: Guns...spoons...same thing.

The depressingly familiar spectacle of gun nuts spewing illogical nonsense was in evidence again this week after the mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard Monday. The part of the script that never changes is that gun violence can only be solved by more guns. But Tea Partying Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert got a little creative with his metaphors when he said that blaming guns for gun violence was on a par with blaming obesity on “too many spoons.” The difference, of course, is that the spoon industry does not call for more spoons every time someone breaks the Guinness Book of World Records weight record.

Interestingly, though, Gohmert was willing to throw the video game industry under the bus, noting that shooters like Aaron Alexis often play them, probably because the video game lobby is not as well organized, or well-funded as the gun lobby. And speaking of the NRA, you might think that the Washington shootings would knock the teeth out of the argument that the shooting of innocents would happen less often with armed guards around, since Navy Yards have those, but no, the NRA is standing its ground, so to speak, because, as spokesman Wayne La Pierre headscratchingly said, “The Navy Yard shooting happened because of gun control.”

Huh?

3. Koch brothers: Cervical cancer is a small price to pay to defeat Obamacare.

In their abject desperation to forestall the implementation of Obamacare, right-wing zealots released some ads this week that are bound to go down in history as some of the most absurd pieces of political video ever created.

The ad campaign created by Generation Opportunity, which is funded by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers, specifically targets young people with the rather irresponsible message that they really don’t need health insurance. Better to “opt out,” pay the fine, it’s cheaper. Also, for young women, it avoids those uncomfortable gynecological exams, the ones that might save you from cervical cancer. The somewhat deranged looking advertisement features the legs of a woman in stirrups, presumably ready for her potentially life-saving pap smear, when all of sudden a wooden marionette Uncle Sam pops up between her legs. Uncle Sam apparently wants her. In the final scene, Uncle Sam is shown holding a speculum.

Young men can also get in on the invasive healthcare action with Obamacare. Another ad features a young man about to receive a prostate exam. He is told to take off his pants, and Uncle Sam appears behind him.

We knew right-wing Republicans had an unhealthy obsession with our orifices, from advocating mandatory vaginal probes for abortion seekers to seeking reinstatement of anti-sodomy laws, but these ads are truly hitting a new low. The good news is that the young people seeing them are not so easily fooled.

Caution: If you see the ads you might make the mistake of thinking you are watching "Saturday Night Live" parodies, even if it is the middle of the day on Tuesday.

4. Fox News’ Todd Starnes has a racist reaction to the new Miss America.

Usually a ridiculous, outdated exercise in mere sexism, this year’s Miss America pageant managed to spark a conversation about ethnicity and nationality when it bestowed the coveted tiara on Nina Davuluri, a native of Syracuse, New York who is of Indian descent. This apparent triumph for diversity quickly degenerated into a carnival of hate speech in the twitterverse, where idiots naturally assumed Davuluri was an Arab or a Muslim, and therefore a terrorist.

Not to be outdone in ill-informed racism, Fox News radio host Todd Starnes said the American-born Davuluri doesn’t “represent American values.” The American values purveyor in the contest was Theresa Vail, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Kansan, who spent five year in the Kansas National Guard. Starnes' theory: Vail lost because, “the liberal Miss America judges were not interested in a gun-toting, deer-hunting, military veteran.”

5. He’s back. Steve “cantaloupe calves” King opines some more on undocumented immigrants.

Saying irresponsible, racist things about immigrants is Iowa Tea Party Rep. Steve King’s brand, and he continues to hone and promote it. At a recent anti-immigration rally in Omaha, he out and out called “illegal immigrants” a murderous mob. King recounted to the already-converted-to-hate audience a conversation he had recently with INS agent Mike Cutler at a congressional hearing. “How many Americans have died at the hands of illegal immigrants? What’s the price Americans are paying for an open door policy?” King asked Cutler.

To which, King claims Cutler helpfully replied: “‘I don’t know the answer to that, but I can tell you it will be in multiples of the victims of September 11th."

Good at math King, randomly multiplied 9/11’s death toll of about 3,000 by four and told the hate rally that 12,000 murders were likely committed by these out-of-control immigrants, who would be crashing planes into our buildings if they could, but sometimes just have to settle for raping and murdering us.

6. Ken Cuccinelli supporter at a rally: Did you hear the one about the rabbi?

Normally, Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial hopeful can handle making his own offensive comments — like the time he compared immigrants to vermin in need of extermination. But at a recent rally for Cuccinelli, it was Virginia Republican leader John Whitbeck who trotted out the off-color joke.

Whitbeck is the Republican leader in Virginia's 10th congressional District, and he is also a Catholic, he wanted the crowd to know. His hilarious joke concerned an incident in which the “head of the Jewish faith” (FYI, there is no head of the Jewish faith) hands a "ceremonial piece of paper" to the pope. And the pope says, “that was a bill for the Last Supper.”

Okay, we don’t exactly get it either.

Alienating Jewish voters is poor campaign strategy. Cuccinelli has already alienated women with his anti-choice rhetoric, and alienated modern people by advocating reinstatement of anti-sodomy laws. So the Cuccinelli team quickly tried to distance their candidate from the anti-Semitic joke. One campaign strategist even told the Washington Post he did not even know who Whitbeck was.

When in doubt, deny, deny, deny.

7. Idaho Republican proposes license to discriminate against same-sex couples.

Not content to simply deny food stamps to poor people this week, busy House Republicans also continued their fight to deny equal rights to married same-sex couples. A group led by Rep. Raúl Labrador of Idaho proposed a new bill that would provide a nationwide “license to discriminate” against them, although of course Labrador claims the bill is about protecting “religious liberty.” The logic with these attempts is always this: It discriminates against Christians (or other religious people, but really Christians) not to be able to discriminate against gays. The draft of the bill says there would be no consequences for any organization, business or individual who refuses to recognize same-sex marriage. Exact words:

Quote:
“The Federal Government shall not take an adverse action against a person, on the basis that such person acts in accordance with a religious belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

Such prudish legislation could have far-reaching consequences: Businesses could refuse benefits to same-sex partners, hospitals could refuse visitation rights, anyone at all could refuse services to LGBT people—pretty much all of the civil rights that legalizing same-sex marriage were meant to protect would vaporize.

Unsurprisingly, in the up-is-down world of rabid conservative thinking, the Heritage Foundation and National Organization of Marriage heartily endorsed the proposed legislation for “encouraging tolerance.”

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/7-vile-and-ridiculous-moments-countrys-right-wing-fringe-week?paging=off


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PostPosted: 09/29/13 9:33 am • # 16 
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Up is down, cold is hot, day is night ~ :ey ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
From the Mean-Spirited to the Asinine: 7 Prime Examples of Right-Wing Lunacy This Week
It wasn’t just Ted Cruz -- conservative Christians, Fox Newsians and Tea Partiers were off the hook this week.

September 28, 2013 | 1. Ken Blackwell: Cutting Food Stamps, Oh So Christian

Obviously, the adjective “Christian” has gone through a lot of permutations since Jesus died. Now, apparently Christian means purposely not helping people who are down-and-out. That’s the interpretation that Family Research Council fellow Ken Blackwell was going with when he said this week that “nothing is more Christian” than the massive ($40 billion) cuts to food stamps passed last week by House Republicans.

Apparently though, the Pope has not heard about this newfangled kind of Christianity. Pope Francis broke with Vatican tradition recently to remind his flock that money—and the preoccupation with gay marriage—has led them astray, and helping the less fortunate is very much a Christian value.

But no, Blackwell believes that feeding the poor can lead to dependency, and that particular display of mercy is unchristian. We’re just wondering if he read a different Sermon on the Mount than we did.

Blackwell is not just some out-there Christian activist crackpot, he has held positions of power, including a stint as Ohio secretary of state and failed 2006 gubernatorial candidate. This week he said he favored empowering the poor and working poor to become self-sufficient, although he did not venture any specific plans for doing that.

“Making sure they are participants in their own upliftment (excuse us, is that a word?) and empowerment so that they, in fact, through the dignity of work … can break from the plantation of big government,” Blackwell said, adding insult to insult by employing a loaded slavery metaphor.

2. Bill O’Reilly: Jesus Died For Our Taxes

Speaking of Jesus, religious history scholar and messianic Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly has penned, or had his ghost pen, a new rant called Killing Jesus: A History. And it turns out, and this is really going to surprise you, that Jesus was a Tea Partier.

Reviewing the book for The Daily Beast, Candida Moss, an actual religious history scholar summed up O’Reilly and co-author Martin Dugard’s thesis. Taxes killed Jesus.

“The basic argument of the book is that Jesus died because he interfered with the taxation-heavy Roman revenue stream,” Moss wrote. And escaping taxes was why the Jews eagerly anticipated a messiah. So, to recap, scrap that whole “Jesus died for our sins” claptrap you learned if you went to Sunday school.

Ironically, Moss points out, the Roman system of taxation was not so very different from the current day, and featured a popular current proposal among conservatives. Wealthy citizens were exempt, and non-citizens paid a flat-rate poll tax. But they did not commit the obscenity of helping the poor with those taxes.

O’Reilly feigns humility in his intro. “In the writing of this fact-based book, Martin Dugard and I do not aim to suggest that we know everything about Jesus. But we know much and will tell you things that you might not have heard."

And naturally he leaves out what many, including the new Pope, seem to think was Jesus’ central message, that Christians must help the poor, widows and orphans.

Just not through taxes. God forbid.

3. AIG CEO: My Plight Is Similar to Lynch Mob Victims

Robert Benmosche, CEO of the insurance giant AIG made a headscratchingly, off-base comparison in recent comments that were reported, and yet completely glossed over, in last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. He compared the anger over the fact that he and other executives received huge bonuses even as the government was bailing them out, and despite the fact that AIG was one of the prime causes of the economic collapse — to the racist anger of lynch mobs in the south.

Yeah, that’s right.

How deluded, narcissistic, or, to use Paul Krugman’s term, sociopathic, is that?

Just to review, the government bailed out AIG, and while they were on the government dole (that’s welfare, by the way, taxpayer funded), the very executives who ruined the company and dragged the rest of the economy down with it got huge bonuses. Uproar ensued, and this uproar, Benmosche argues “was intended to stir public anger, to get everybody out there with their pitch forks and their hangman nooses, and all that-sort of like what we did in the Deep South [decades ago]. And I think it was just as bad and just as wrong.”

So, on a par with the murder of thousands of innocent black people.

Hard to get inside a head this deluded. Guess it’ll have to suffice to give him enough rope to hang himself.

4. Gohmert’s Pile (of Crap) – Obamacare and Immigration Are Plots to Deprive Real Americans of Full-time Jobs

Shockingly, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert spewed some more ridiculousness this week. His is an active brain and he always has a theory cooking. Here’s the new brew: Democrats are using the health care reform law and an immigration bill to deprive red-blooded Americans of their full-time jobs and replace them with (presumably non-red-blooded) immigrants.

He offered up this gem as well as some other disinformation to conservative radio host Lars Larson in advance of Ted Cruz’s 21-hour futile, non-sensical talkathon against Obamacare.

“People are already being told after the first of the year that you can’t get your pacemaker, you can’t have this, you can’t have that,” Gohmert ranted to Larson. “People are waking up, this is not good.”

No no, put them back to sleep.

Then Larson talked about how health insurance kills jobs and hurts people, and Gohmert made the interesting intellectual leap to immigration.

“The Senate says their solution is the immigration bill they passed,” he said.

Wait, they do? How so?

“Because under their immigration bill, companies would have a hard time not doing what the Senate bill encourages — and that is firing every fulltime American employee and hiring the immigrants who have just been given legal status. Because if you fire the Americans and hire the people that came in illegally, they get legal status under the Senate bill, then you don’t have to provide them Obamacare insurance or pay the fines. So, maybe if the Senate got everything they wanted, both Obamacare and their amnesty bill, you’d have most Americans that work for big companies losing their jobs all over America.”

OK, so just to follow this to its logical conclusion, that would mean no more Obamacare, right. Because that, of course, is what Obama and the Senate Democrats have been fighting for all along.

Commence headscratching.

5. NRA Lobbyist: Opposing Elephant Slaughter Is Hitlerian Animal Racism

Here’s the background: There’s this show on NBC Sports called “Under Wild Skies” featuring an NRA lobbyist and all the animals he likes to hunt and kill. Some people think this is fun to do and watch. But, some people also objected this week when the show featured the gun lobbyist in question, Tony Makris, shooting an elephant in the face, and then drinking champagne. About 50,000 people objected and suggested NBC cancel the show.

This upset Tony Makris, who feels, as many gun nuts do, very oppressed by the fact that people want to deprive him of his liberties to shoot and televise his kills, and celebrate afterwards. These dang animal nuts are exactly like Hitler, he said in an interview with NRA talk show host Cam Edwards.

To be clear, Makris explained, he is a hunter, a non-dsicriminatory hunter. “I hunt all things,” not just elephants. Animal rights people are too soft on elephants. Nobody objected about his shooting ducks, pigeons, rabbits and squirrels, let alone deer. “So I can shoot all of those, but not an elephant?” he asked rhetorically.

This, he said, is animal racism. And to those who would argue that elephants are different, bigger, more special, smarter and more sensitive, he said. “Hitler would have said the same thing.”

Gotcha!

6. Bryan Fischer Gets in on the Teenaged Bullying Action

Bullying, as we all know, is plaguing our youth, especially bullying LGBT kids, and tragically driving far too many to suicide. Most of this bullying is conducted by other teenagers, which is sad enough, and a lot of it is conducted on-line, the anonymity of which, some have argued, has ratcheted up the cruelty quotient.

Brave Bryan Fischer, however, does not need to hide behind Internet anonymity to bully a 16-year-old. The American Family Association spokesman felt it necessary to weigh in on the crowning of Cassidy Campbell, a young transgender woman, who won her high school's homecoming queen title. Fischer called her mentally ill, and objected to the fact that the media has both covered her election, and called her a “she” despite the fact that she was born a “male.”

“He has a mental illness,” Fischer said, using the platform of his daily radio show to go after Campbell, who is already dealing with bullying on Twitter. “He thinks he’s a girl and they elected him homecoming queen and the school officials allowed this charade to go on. That violates everything we know about gender, about sex, about genetics, about biology, about human health, about what mental health is, it violates every known standard of decency and normality in America.”

Bryan Fischer: Two things: 1. Educate your ignorant self about the whole trans issue. 2. Please find something better to do with your time than bully teenagers.

7. Kansas Christian Group: Stop Oppressing Our Kids By Teaching Them Science

The term “religious rights” has come to mean something very different these days from what it used to. Now, to conservatives, it apparently means, the right to discriminate against gays, and the right to teach non-science to young people in school. A Kansas group, not to be outdone by Texas’s anti-science educational crusade, is challenging the right of the state’s schools to teach evolution, because it promotes a “nontheistic religious worldview,” (yes, we also think those first two words are contradictory.)

The group, Citizens for Objective (ha!) Public Education (COPE) argues that teaching evolution, a.k.a. science “the state would be ‘indoctrinating’ impressionable students in violation of the First Amendment.”

COPE says teaching evolution “amounts to an excessive government entanglement with religion” and, here it comes, violates the rights of Christian parents (to keep their children and the children of others ignorant and indoctrinated). OK, that last bit was ours.

COPE, along with thinkers like Michelle Bachmann, consider “evolution” and “creationism” equally scientific and equally religious, and describes what they are promoting as “religious neutralism.”

Go figure.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/mean-spirited-asinine-7-prime-examples-right-wing-lunacy-week?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark


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PostPosted: 10/05/13 10:00 am • # 17 
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Good adds to the seemingly unlimited list ~ :ey ~ I'm not sure if this is this week's installment or if it's a "bonus" listing since it was published mid-week ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
10 Remarkably Stupid, Right-Wing Statements About the Shutdown and Obamacare
And the idiocy keeps mounting!

October 2, 2013 | 1. Tex. Gov. Rick Perry: Implementing Affordable Healthcare is a Criminal Act

“If this heath care law is forced upon this country, the young men and women in this audience are the ones who are really going to pay the price. And that, I suggest to you, reaches the point of being a felony toward them and their future. That is a criminal act, from my perspective.”

The Lone-Star Gov. may need a wee bit of schooling in criminal law.

2. Betsy McCaughey, conservative “thinker”: Obama Wants Your Sexual History

The so-called Liberty Belle wrote in a column for the New York Post: “Are you sexually active? If so, with one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners? Be ready to answer those questions and more next time you go to the doctor.”

Someone needs to tell her that that is what doctors do. Already. And that, yeah, sexual history is part of health care.

3. Sen. Mitch McConnell, Kentucky: “The president is more than willing to negotiate with the Iranians. I don’t know why he isn’t willing to negotiate with us.”

Are you sure that you want to compare Congressional Republicans to hardline mullahs? I think we’re beginning to understand which group is the more reasonable.

4. Laura Ingraham: “Sob stories” from injured vets unable to get care because of the government shutdown, will make the GOP cave.

Oh God, yeah. Either that or kids with cancer who can’t get treatment at the NIH. What a bunch of whiners.

5. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: There’s a lot of blame to go around in Washington.

Well, Wolf, the blame doesn’t really go all the way around. It pretty much stops with the right-wing fringe of the Republican party.

6. Rep. David Schweikert (Arizona Republican): Government shutdown is “my idea of fun.”

What other hobbies do you enjoy? Robbing old ladies and pushing wheelchair-bound people down the stairs?

7. Rep. William O’Brien (Republican, New Hampshire): Obamacare is Like the Fugitive Slave Act.

How so, exactly? And gee, do you think the racial connotations here are a coincidence?

8. Sen. Rand Paul: We haven’t had a big debate about Obamacare.

Dear Mr. Paul, Perhaps you can get your memory loss treated under …. hmmm … what? Obamacare?

9. Rep. Todd Rokita (Republican, Tennessee): “We just want to help the American people get through one of the most insidious laws created by man, that is Obamacare.”

Wow, that puts it above slavery, Jim Crow laws, the Indian Removal Act, Japanese Internment, and that’s just in America. It’s also worse than the Nuremberg laws, laws allowing female genital mutilation, and laws allowing non-virgin brides to be returned.

10. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (Republican, Tennessee): “People are probably going to realize they can live with a lot less government than what they thought they needed.”

Yeah, who needs those silly food inspectors or plane inspectors or frivolous cancer treatments or meals for poor children? Fingers crossed about no natural catastrophes!

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/10-remarkably-stupid-right-wing-statements-about-shutdown-and-obamacare


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PostPosted: 10/06/13 8:46 am • # 18 
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Now we know: the prior post [#17] was a bonus ~ here's this week's installment ~ I can't decide which is the ugliest: those spewing this crap or those believing it ~ :g ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
10 of the Most Appalling Statements From America's Right-Wing Madhouse This Week
It's been a full week of race-baiting, gay-hating, Christian god-praising and Obamacare hysteria.

October 5, 2013 | 1. On Fox TV, it is assumed that the Nicaraguan meteorologist knows all about tacos.

It’s fairly obvious by now that Fox News is a place where being offensive and ignorant is not just permitted, but encouraged. For example: How much fun is it to make fun of someone’s ethnic heritage inaccurately? So much fun. In an exchange that is indistinguishable from schoolyard bullying and outright nincompoop-ism, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Friday said he assumed that the network’s Latina meteorologist “grew up on tacos,” because she is from a Spanish-speaking country, and of course, they are all the same.

Being the multi-ethnic bastion that it is, Fox & Friends featured a segment on making tacos to celebrate National Taco Day. Kilmeade turned to Fox News Weather team member Maria Molina, who was born in Nicaragua and grew up in South Florida and asked, “So what are the tips we need to know? You grew up on tacos, correct?”

“No, I did not grow up on tacos!” Molina snapped. “I’m Nicaraguan. It’s not a native food.”

Does she really think that these people are educable?

2. Poor Ted Cruz: first a Republican “lynch mob” is after him, and then Democrats hurt his feelings.

Some Republicans are very mad at Ted Cruz, whose antics against Obamacare spiraled into the impasse that became the government shutdown, which is beginning to play very badly for the GOP. So on Wednesday, a group of Senate Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, railed against Cruz at a private luncheon, according to the New York Times. Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin were there as well, and some of these senators became very angry with Cruz’s intransigence, and lit into him. An unnamed senator described the scene thusly to the Times: "It just started a lynch mob."

Lynch mob is a term that is being tossed around rather cavalierly these days, if you ask us. But then a lot of racially loaded terms are flying during the Obama administration, and anyone who thinks that is an accident is a fool. (See next item.)

Poor Ted Cruz was feeling really picked on all week, and not just by his own party. Democrats, he said at week’s end, are portraying him as the “root of all evil in the world.” How could they, when really everyone knows that Obamacare, or affordable healthcare, is the root of all evil in the world?

3. Rep. William O’Brien, (R-NH): “Obamacare is as bad as Fugitive Slave Act.”

Obamacare, in the conservative echo-sphere, is the worst thing ever to befall mankind, and that is why they must at any cost prevent it from happening, no matter how futile, ridiculous or damaging their actions may be. Rep. William O’Brien joined the anti-Obamacare hysteria this week with his racially tinged analogy comparing Obamacare to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made it against the law not to return runaway slaves to their owners. Hmmm, wonder why something slavery-related popped into his head to describe the signature legislation of the first black president.

Here’s how he justified his offensive comparison to the Manchester Union Leader: “Just as the Fugitive Slave Act was an overreach by the federal government, so too we understand that Obamacare is an assault on the rights of individuals.”

Oh, so nothing racial about it at all.

4. Rep. Todd Rokita, (R-IN): Obamacare is the worst law known to man, pretty lady.

Crazed Republicans are really enjoying the attention they are getting what with the shutdown, and how they are saving the world from the abomination of Obamacare. Rep. Todd Nokita took full advantage of his moments in the sun this week, first when he said: "We just want to help the American people to get through one of the most insidious laws created by man, that is Obamacare."

Please save us, Republican heroes.

Still enjoying the spotlight, Rokita mixed it up with CNN’s Carol Costello later in the week, again defending the shutdown as a small price to pay for saving America from the horror of affordable healthcare. Finally, he gave up on trying to explain this all to Costello, saying, “Carol, you’re beautiful, but you have to be honest as well.”

Mmmm, sexism. That’s hot.

5. Not to be outdone: Bill O’Reilly finally weighs in on Obamacare.

It did not seem possible, but Fox News host Bill O’Reilly took fear-mongering to a new level on Thursday when he told viewers to think of President Obama’s healthcare law as a “vicious motorcycle gang” coming for their daughters.

Yeah, that’s right.

“It’s like this,” O’Reilly said. “Your teenager comes to you, saying she wants to attend a dance. You have some misgivings, but you say okay because she’s so passionate about the issue. Then you learn a vicious motorcycle gang may well show up at the dance, so you change your mind based upon best available evidence. And you protect your daughter from possible danger. Obamacare is like that.”

See?

6. Rafael Cruz (Yep, Ted’s Dad): Obama’s on the side of the Muslims.

Ted Cruz is not the only member of his family with political aspirations and a talent for crazy talk. Speaking at a GOP rally in Adams County, CO, Ted’s dad, right-wing pastor Rafael Cruz said: “So Barack Obama said: 'If the winds shift, I will side with the Muslims.' McCain couldn’t say that, because it's not politically correct. It is time to stop being politically correct!”

What he really meant is it’s time to stop being correct at all, or to have your words reflect any sort of reality. That’s what time it is, America.

Then he made some more stuff up:“55 million babies have been murdered by abortion since 1973. At the other end, Obamacare, with denying care to the elderly, with care being rationed, with care being postponed for 12 to 18 months, with care being controlled by a group of bureaucrats, that on the basis of cost/benefit, will decide whether you get a medical procedure or not, they’re destroying our end of life. As a matter of fact, one of the things in Obamacare is that the elderly, every five years you must have end-of-life counseling. Translation: suicide counseling!”

Translation: Run, run ye Christians away from this terrible Muslim-imposed healthcare law.

7. Rick Joyner, Christian TV host: Time for God to impose martial law to save us from Obama’s tyranny.

There is only one way out of this pickle, the one imposed by the tyrannical Muslim-in-chief Obama. On his Monday Internet broadcast, Morning Star TV’s Rick Joyner predicted that democracy was “doomed,” doomed I tell you, unless the Lord imposed martial law.

Poor guy worked himself into quite a lather. “We’re headed for serious tyranny, a terrible tyranny right now. But guess what? The kingdom is coming, the Kingdom of God is coming.” And some more stuff, blah blah blah. Then: “That’s why I appeal to the Lord: Don’t let us be totally destroyed, please raise up those who will save us. And as I’ve been telling friends for a long time, no election is going to get the right person in there because the system is so broken.”

Therefore, God must stage a coup. That’s what needs to happen right now.

8. Pat Robertson to elderly woman viewer: It’s your fault your husband’s health his suffering.

Always willing to comfort his flock, Pat Robertson used his “700 Club” pulpit recently to set a woman straight about priorities. Retired and living on a small pension and Social Security pension, the woman had to make the difficult decision of whether to give money to her church or pay her husband’s medical expenses.

This whole situation is all her fault, Robertson told her. Her husband is sick precisely because, despite her lifetime of tithing to the church, her contribution has been inadequate.

“Your husband has all these medical problems because the ‘devour’ has not been rebuked,” Robertson explained. “You need to rebuke him. You give your tithes faithfully and God said, ‘I will rebuke the devour,’ the person that is eating up your money and eating up your health. So you want to be healthy? That’s a promise in the word.”

Comforting words.

9. PA officials continue their rich history of offensive same-sex marriage analogies: This week, it’s pets and incest.

Back in August, lawyers for the state of Pennsylvania arguing against a clerk who was issuing same-sex marriage licenses suggested same-sex couples were like 12-year-old children. Governor Tom Corbett, on whose behalf the lawyers were arguing, tried to distance himself from those remarks in the ensuing kerfuffle. This week, on Wednesday, a like-minded county commissioner by the name of Tom Creighton who’s fighting tooth and nail against giving benefits to same-sex couples said: “I don’t feel the county should be looking for new ways to give away taxpayer money. Next it could be giving money out to people’s pets or whatever.”

On Friday, during an interview, Gov. Corbett opened his mouth and stuck his foot deep inside it, saying that while his lawyers’ (for whom taxpayers are paying $400 an hour) comparison of same-sex couples as children was inept, “I think a much better analogy would have been brother and sister, don’t you?” he said.

His interviewer declined to offer her assent, saying she’d leave the comments to “his team.”

By afternoon, Corbett was backpedaling and offering his version of an apology. It turns out he didn’t want to offend anyone, and if he did, he was sorry. He just wanted to give examples of categories of people who are ineligible for marriage.

Oh, okay. That makes it much better.

10. Hatefulness prize-winner of the week: Fox News’ Stuart Varney.

Fox News has been having a rollicking good time with the government shutdown. They think it’s the most wonderful thing. But it’s also the Democrats' fault. Go figure. The first day of the shutdown, Hannity and friends marveled at how they were not feeling the effects of the shutdown at all. What was the big deal, anyway? Fox Business’ Todd Starnes chortled: “If you believe the Democrats, it’s time to go out and buy the potted meat and Tang and get in your survival bunker.”

Ha ha ha ha. Aren’t people who barely have enough money to eat so funny? And so fun to make fun of?

Later in the week, Varney was not in so good of a mood. He was very, very angry, and not chortling anymore. He was angry at the more than 800,000 furloughed federal employees for having the audacity to want their back pay, so angry that he wants to “punish those people.”

“No, I don’t think they should get their back pay, frankly,” he said. “I really don’t. I’m sick and tired of a massive, bloated federal bureaucracy living on our backs, and taking money out of us, a lot more money than most of us earn in the private sector, then getting a furlough, and then getting their money back at the end of it. Sorry, I’m not for that. I want to punish these people. Sorry to say that, but that’s what I want to do.”

Do you think he’s really sorry to say that?

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/10-most-appalling-statements-americas-right-wing-madhouse-week?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark


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PostPosted: 10/13/13 9:12 am • # 19 
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Here is this week's installment of the "up is down, hot is cold, day is night" lunatics ~ :g ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
You Think You Knew Crazy? Think Again. 10 Shockers from the Increasingly Unhinged Right Wing
Nothing shuts down America's far-right lunatic fringe.

October 12, 2013 | 1. Michele Bachmann: 'Obama is part of Al Qaeda and end times are near.'

To the extent that she is capable of rational decision-making, Minn. Rep. Michele Bachmann decided this week might be a fitting time to remind the public that she is batshit crazy. During a radio interview, she spun out her theory that, A) President Obama is arming terrorists, generally, and Al Qaeda, specifically. And B) This is cause for rejoicing because it is a sign that the end times are near.

Yay.

In the case of A., she was referring to Obama’s decision to provide small arms and anti-chemical weapons gear to certain Syrian rebels, or as Bachmann put it, “the United States is willingly, knowingly, intentionally sending arms to terrorists.”

Then the holy spirit must have filled her, or something, and she got all mystical. She said: “As I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times . . . we are to understand where we are in God’s end times history.”

Panic not, Christians, she continued. “Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand. When we see up is down and right is called wrong, when this is happening, we were told this; these days would be as the days of Noah.”

Better get those arks ready.

2. Some of Antonin Scalia’s best friends are gay—and yeah, the devil exists.

As Bill Mahrer pointed out, people are certainly welcome to hold whatever crazy religious beliefs they choose. The trouble is when those people, like Bachmann, and say, a Supreme Court justice, are making decisions that impact the rest of us. In a different time, the high court’s glibbest right winger might have felt the need to be more circumspect about his religious beliefs, what with separation of church and state, and all. But Antonin Scalia let it all hang out in a recent interview with New York magazine’s Jennifer Senior, telling her, “I even believe in the devil.”

Not one to be plagued with pesky self-doubt, Scalia went even further on the topic of Lucifer: “He’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that.” For those not following the recent exploits of Satan, he has evolved since biblical times, no longer making pigs run off cliffs, for instance. “What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God.” Scalia explained. “He’s much more successful that way.”

The justice assured Senior that he, not she, was in step with the mainstream of America on this, and also in-line with Christ the lord our savior. “I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.”

Also, and this is very reassuring, Scalia is pretty sure he knows some people who are gay, although he reckons that they are not sharing this fact with him, especially seeing as how he is the most outspokenly homophobic member of the high court, who made his displeasure known about the court’s landmark decisions in support of legalizing same-sex marriage last spring.

3. Arizona lawmaker: 'Obama is like Hitler.'

Ariz. State Rep. Brenda Barton added her voice to the list of right-wingers calling Obama, and Obamacare, absurdly hyperbolic names this week.

A brief review: Newt Gingrich has said Obama does not know how to be an American president, because he is inherently undemocratic, even though it is the right-wing of the Republican party that has shut down the government against the will of the majority of Americans. And it's the right-wing that refuses to accept a law that was passed through the democratic process.

Never mind that though—Obama’s 'behaving like a dictator,' because he won’t negotiate with lunatics. George Will, who some people used to think was smart even when they disagreed with him, echoed the absurd, and racially-tinged comparison of Obamacare to the Fugitive Slave Act.

So offensive.

And then this little-known wack-job state legislator from Arizona comes along and chimes in that Obama is like Adolf Hitler. She posted it on Facebook, while also calling for rogue sheriffs to arrest federal employees enforcing the government shutdown. Yeah, that’s right, the shutdown that House Republicans caused—the same one that the right-wing calls Obama’s shutdown because he won’t negotiate on that legislatively approved, Supreme Court-vetted affordable health-care law. Sounds Hitlerian to us, all right, trying to get more poor and sick people health care coverage. Hitler loved those poor sick people.

4. Ted Cruz lollapalooza.

Ted Cruz, it has become abundantly clear, is capable of spewing near record amounts of nonsense and demagoguery. The architect of the shutdown and inadvertent popularizer of Obamacare is still talking—this time at a right-wing echo chamber writ large, the Values Voters Summit.

So deluded is Cruz, that he is still acting as though he has won a great victory, and the crowd did nothing to disabuse him of that fantasy. Among his plethora of reality-denying assertions: Obama might kidnap him: “I’m going to be going to the White House. If I’m never seen again, please send a search and rescue team. I very much hope by tomorrow morning I don’t wake up amidst the Syrian rebels.” Also, the Obama administration might start quartering soldiers in people’s homes since they are “bound and determined to violate every single one of our bill of rights.” On the Cold War: “Our foreign policy is detente, which I’m pretty sure is French for surrender.”

(Note to Ted: it means permanent thaw in hostilities.)

5. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK): 'Defaulting on the debt doesn’t mean debt default.'

You might think that members of the party of the 1%, which also likes to think of itself as the party pushing individual and fiscal responsibility, would have at least a ten-year-old’s understanding of basic economics. But the looming debt crisis seems to have pushed many Republicans into a deep state of denial. Sen. Tom Coburn, a shining example of intellectual acuity, said early this week: "I would dispel the rumor that is going around that you hear on every newscast, that if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we will default on our debt. We won’t. We’ll continue to pay our interest.”



He made this blatantly crazy statement with a straight face. As economist Robert Reich explained on his blog: “While the Treasury Department could prioritize interest payments after October 17 – the day the Treasury Department says it no longer has legal authority to pay the nation’s debts – and not pay Social Security and Medicare, this would buy a few days at most."

Meanwhile, interest rates will soar, stock prices will plummet, the global economy will begin spiraling downward, and millions of Americans wouldn’t receive their Social Security and Medicare.”

Reich concludes inescapably and perhaps charitably: “Sounding crazy is part of the Republican bargaining strategy.” 



6. Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling: 'We don’t have to fund laws we didn’t pass.'

If and when the current crisis passes, perhaps the people will rise up and demand that their representatives be familiar with, at least, the rudiments of governance. Lonestar Congressman Jeb Hensarling revealed he could use a remedial course in it this week in his response to Andrea Mitchell’s point that lifting the debt ceiling meant simply that we would be paying the bills for bills and programs that Congress already agreed to pay for. Hensarling retorted that "this House" didn't vote for the stimulus, and that "this House' didn't vote for Obamacare.” This is novel in the history of American democracy: the notion that Congress is not obligated to pay the bills for programs passed by a previous Congress. We don’t want to give them ideas—although the right-wing fringe already has this one, but according to this argument they could refuse to pay for Social Security as a pre-condition for "negotiations" since "this House" didn't vote for the Social Security Act.

They could refuse to pay for everything, except of course, their own salaries, benefits and gym facilities.

7. Bryan Fischer: 'Good on Vladimir Putin for those anti-homosexual laws.'

Moving away from the lunatics in the House to the bullies in the pulpit, the fundamentalist American Family Association loudmouth Bryan Fischer expressed admiration for virulently homophobic Russian President Vladimir Putin for his country’s law criminalizing homosexual “propaganda,” because it is, they both agree “propaganda of pedophilia.”

Russia’s crackdown on the rights of gay people includes barring them from the Olympics, and new laws that would allow for the state to steal children from homes with same-sex parents. Vigilante groups are kidnapping and torturing teenagers suspected of being gay, and videotaping these horrific acts with impunity.

But it’s all good to Fischer and other haters, because the brave Russian leader is a great Christian, a “lion of Christianity, the defender of Christian values,” in contrast to, say, our leader.

“Just a bizarre day,” Fischer ranted maniacally on. “To ever think we would get to the day that Russia would be more advanced spiritually than the United States.”

Think he has even a passing acquaintance with what Jesus had to say?

8. Elisabeth Hasselbeck and John Stossel agree: welfare queens should not have air conditioning.

Fox Business libertarian clown John Stossel has been yammering on forever about welfare cheats and the culture of dependency. He found his female doppelganger in Elisabeth Hasselbeck this week when she pointed out that welfare recipients who had air conditioning and cell phones were part of the “ugly side of entitlements.”

Stossel was plugging his special on the topic in which he asks supposed welfare recipients on the street whether they have TVs and air conditioning. “Do these folks really need to be on welfare?” Hasselbeck asks, as if Stossel might say yes.

But it’s okay, because Stossel and Hasselbeck really care about welfare recipients. “Is welfare creating more victims than it’s actually helping?” she later wondered. “The motivation to go get a job is almost non-existent in 35 states.”

So apparently, the free government stuff that libertarian, anti-government Stossel admits he gets, like Medicare, is different. Welfare, with its life of ease and keeping cool, encourages people “not to look for work.”

9. Glenn Beck on parenting: 'Push your children into walls.'

No one knows exactly how Beck landed on the topic of bringing up children, when he was ranting, as usual, about atheist liberals trying to destroy the Bill of Rights. But somehow, he got to it the other day. Following the unfathomable detours in his circuitous brain, he imagined a family dinner conversation.

“Ask your kids tonight at dinner, ‘What gives you the right?’" the too-crazy for Fox right-winger railed. “Challenge them. Get in their face.” When your kids insist they have rights, here’s what Beck says you should do. “Teach 'em a lesson. Push 'em! Well, they're gonna cry, it's gonna hurt their feelings. Well, push 'em!”

You’d be doing them a favor, he says.

“If you don't do it now, it's going to be much worse when they're pushed and they're shoved and they're shot. ... Push them! Teach them! The need to know the truth and they need to be pushed up against the wall once in awhile so they know they can defend themselves. They know they can survive! They don't run around like little girls crying at the drop of a hat! Push 'em!”

And just in case you are confused about the point of this abuse, because you had the misfortune of not being treated in this manner by your own parents, say, the point is that rights come from God. And strength comes from being yelled at and shoved. And not crying comes from being yelled at until you cry.

10. Fox’s Ben Carson: 'Women need to be re-educated so they don’t get all riled up about abortion.'

In another highlight from the Value Voters Summit, newly hired Fox News contributor Dr. Ben Carson said on Friday that the country may need to “re-educate the women” so that they stop having abortions.

OK, that sounds really creepy—not to mention reminiscent of Mao, Pol Pot, and a Margaret Atwood novel to us. Re-education camps. For women. So that they have babies.

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon apparently, just really cares about us women. “Your health should be controlled by you and not by the government. But when we’re talking about things that are important, life is important. And that includes the life of the unborn.

“You know, there are those of us in this society who have told women that there’s a war on them because of that cute little baby inside of them they may want to get rid of it, and there are people that are keeping you from doing that. And women say, ‘No, no, they’re not doing that to me! No!’ And they get all riled up.”

Women . . . always getting all riled up about their right to control their own destiny, bodies and motherhood.

You know how he knows that there is no such thing as the (Republican) war on women? Because "men give up their seats to pregnant women."

And people say conservative men don’t get it.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/you-think-you-knew-crazy-think-again-10-shockers-increasingly-unhinged-right?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark


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PostPosted: 10/20/13 8:10 am • # 20 
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For me, Janet Allon nails it in this post's subject title: "Right-Wing Lunacy Never Sleeps" ~ :g ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
Right-Wing Lunacy Never Sleeps: 10 Nutty, Vile and Absurd Utterances From the Fringe This Week
The right-wing has had a rough week, but refusing to acknowledge reality always helps.

October 19, 2013 | 1. Justice Antonin Scalia: “The 14th Amendment protects all races, not only the blacks.”

No friend of affirmative action, voting rights protections, or anything he deems “racial entitlements,” the high court's least inhibited conservative was at it again this week during oral arguments in a case in which advocates for minorities are challenging Michigan’s voter-approved ban on affirmative action in college admissions. The case reached the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court held the ban violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection guarantee, in that it prevents minorities from lobbying for racial preferences, when other groups can lobby for their favored programs, Huffpo explained.

A lawyer challenging the ban argued that the original goal of the 14th Amendment was to protect minority rights against a white majority.

Scalia begged to differ. “My goodness,” he said. “I thought we’ve held that the 14th Amendment protects all races. I mean, that was the argument in the early years, that it protected only—only the blacks. But I thought we rejected that. You say now that we have to proceed as though its purpose is not to protect whites, only to protect minorities?”

A little history: the 14th Amendment was approved three years after the end of the Civil War, and it was definitely about protecting the rights of former slaves. Scalia has not made any secret of his view that the country is all done with that racism stuff. If anything, the pendulum has swung too far the other way, he seems to think.

In February, Scalia said Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” He later joined the majority in voting to strike down the provision, which quickly led to several states enacting voter ID laws that are blatantly discriminatory.

Wonder how he’ll vote this time.

2. Confused Republican thought the debt deal included money for Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army.

With all the dopey things said and done by intransigent Republicans in last week’s shitstorm of dopey intransigence, Republican Rep. Mick Mulvaney earned his place right up there in the pantheon. When the 11th hour deal to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government was struck between Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, it did not have much trouble getting through both houses of Congress. But there were those Republicans deluding themselves that they could fight on.

Rep. Mulvaney of South Carolina was one—and among his objections? The deal, he said, included funding for Joseph Kony’s Uganda-based Lord’s Resistance Army. Now, that would be pretty evil if it were true. Kony is an exiled war criminal with a messianic complex known for kidnapping children, and turning them into sex slaves and soldiers who kill their own families. The funding, if Mr. Mulvaney had read a little closer, was a small amount earmarked to the Pentagon which is funding African troops trying to capture Kony and end his reign of terror and atrocity. Ohhhh...oops. It seems Sen. David Vitter isn’t the only Republican in Congress Harry Reid could legitimately claim was not playing with a full deck.

3. Tony Perkins: Democrats are the theocrats for wanting to help the poor.

This will be news to biblical scholars. The Bible apparently says that government should have no role in helping the poor. Expressly forbids it.

This comes straight from the horse’s mouth, Tony Perkins, head of the right-wing Family Research Council, in a radio interview with conservative host Janet Mefferd. He then follows what can only be termed a rather bizarre train of thought to its illogical conclusion which is that it is the liberals who are trying to establish a theocracy in this country, not conservatives, because liberals want government to help the poor. Wait, we thought Christianity forbids that. Color us confused.

Perkins’ organization does have a unique take on the Bible and its treatment of the poor. Another spokesman for the group recently said there is “nothing more Christian” than eliminating millions of food stamp recipients from the government rolls.

But in this round Perkins does not merely want to stick it to the poor, he wants to flip the whole argument about which group is conflating church and state. It’s those liberals, you see. “They accuse evangelicals of wanting to create a theocracy, which is the farthest thing from the truth, when in fact, they are treating the government as if it had divine instruction from God to be a form of theocracy.”

So there!

4. S.C. official: Trans people should be put in camps.

It is tempting to suggest: Don’t drink and tweet. Well, we don’t know for sure that drinking was involved, but the former head of the South Carolina Republican Party went a bit bonkers with some recent rants on Twitter about transgender people and the people who support them.

“There are people who respect transgender rights,” Todd Kincannon tweeted this week. “And there are people who think you should all be put in a camp. That’s me."

People? Or you?

Kincannon further opined that transgender people are “sick freaks” who should be “locked up in mental institutions and their care paid for by the state.” He thinks this shows his compassion for these “sick freaks.”

This Kincannon fellow has a heart as big as all outdoors. Previously, he’s drawn attention to himself for calling it a shame an Iraq veteran did not come home in a body bag, mocked murdered teenager Trayvon Martin, and scoffed at the victims of Hurricane Katrina. But in another tweet, he said his hatred was limited: to commies.

Good to know.

5. Tea Party leader suggests “class action suit” against “homosexuality.”

While most rational people interpreted this week’s events as a rather strong rebuke to the Tea Party, Tea Partiers really didn’t feel too bad. So at their Tea Party Unity event on Thursday, Chairman Rick Scarborough floated another novel idea for the assembled haters and nut jobs to rally behind now that the darn federal government is reopened: filing a “class action lawsuit” against “homosexuality.”

Now, how exactly would that work, you might ask? Or, maybe more to the point, how does that even make sense? Here goes:

“Homosexuality,” argued Scarborough, a former Baptist minister, “is much more likely to lead to AIDS than smoking is to lead to cancer. And yet the entire nation has rejected smoking, billions of dollars are put into a trust fund to help cancer victims and the tobacco industry was held accountable for that.”

So, similarly, the gay industry, whatever that is, could be held accountable.

6. Author Ed Klein: Obama provoked the shutdown.

Conservative “journalist” Ed Klein has been known to be factually challenged for some time now, but he just keeps churning out those hit jobs on leading Democrats. Even some of his fellow conservatives can’t stand him. John Podhoretz once wrote that he’d rather have “stakes driven through my eyes” than have to read another word of Klein’s book on Hillary Clinton.

So perhaps it comes as little surprise that the opinionated Klein offered up his cogent interpretation of the recent dysfunction in Washington. Yup, President Barack Obama provoked the government shutdown and would have allowed a default in a bid to further discredit Republicans. Klein must know, he wrote a book about Obama which is just out in paperback. Run. Don’t walk, to buy your copy. And don’t forget to pick up some stakes to drive through your eyes.

"The shutdown was something [Obama] welcomed,” Klein claimed, “that he encouraged, that he provoked, and that he kept going because he saw [it] as in his interest, with the media playing it as an anti-Republican problem.” Yes, Obama did seem to be having a grand old time of it, canceling that trip to Asia and everything.

"He would have allowed the country to go over the cliff, and if he did, he would have gotten on television sets, pointed his finger and said, 'All those extremists' fault, and if you want to change the nature of this country and make it better, you better vote for Democrats in 2014!"'

Ummm, excuse us, Ed. Hate to break it to you. It was the extremists’ fault. Even moderate Republicans seem to think so.

7. Glenn Beck: Calling Ted Cruz and Mike Lee extremists will lead to Nazism.

Known for his circumspection in the rhetoric department, and fresh off revving up the crowd at the Values Voters Summit, with hilarity about gays causing the Holocaust and other fun stuff, Beck’s busy little brain continued making jarring connections on his radio program at the end of the week. Noting that the far-right National Front was gaining traction in France, Beck thought it a good time to caution Americans that calling people like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee extremists could lead to Nazism being on the march right here at home. No, we can’t quite make heads or tails of this thought train either.

Beck’s universe is as follows: the true Right is total anarchy, and Mitch McConnell is a big government lefty. News to Mitch, we’re pretty sure. That puts Mike Lee, the less-visible architect of the shutdown with Ted Cruz, right in the center, as an eminently “reasonable man.”

8. Pat Buchanan: Republicans, you are Samson against the Philistines.

Previously, hysterical right-wingers have called Obamacare the worst law known to mankind, tantamount to the Fugitive Slave Act, the greatest evil the country has ever known, and of course, its author Hitlerian for inflicting it on the country. Earlier this week, former Nixon aide and increasingly irrelevant, racist right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan invoked some biblical imagery in a column penned for birther conspiracy website World Net Daily. Urging Republicans to continue the fight against the Affordable Care Act at any cost, Buchanan called on them to go ahead and destroy the country just as heroic Samson pulled down the Philistine’s temple to kill them and himself rather than live as their slave.

“Republicans should refuse to raise the white flag and insist on an honorable avenue of retreat,” Buchanan wrote as the shutdown dragged on. “And if Harry Reid’s Senate demands the GOP end the sequester on federal spending, or be blamed for a debt default, the party should, Samson-like, bring down the roof of the temple on everybody’s head.”

Well, they certainly took that eminently sensible piece of advice.

9. Weather channel founder says polar bears not in danger because Eskimos are more civilized these days.

You might think that someone driven to start the Weather Channel would have a passing acquaintance with and an interest in the science of climatology. But in the case of John Coleman, the actual founder of the Weather Channel, you’d be wrong. Coleman, despite arguably being a person who pays a good amount of attention to weather patterns, has planted his ignorant feet firmly in the camp of climate change deniers. His steadfast assertions that ice caps are not melting, sea levels are not rising and polar bears are not endangered, are infuriating enough. But this week he added another offensive element to his brew—bigotry—when he explained on the air that polar bears are, in fact, better off these days than ever, because they are no longer being slaughtered by Eskimos. “Eskimos,” he said, “have now become more civilized.”

This is just so wrong on so many levels. For starters, it is indisputable that polar bear populations are declining. According to Media Matters, a ban on hunting the bears went into effect in the 1970s, with some exceptions for traditional Inuit populations. But the threat from hunting is far surpassed by the threat posed by climate change, and we might add, barbaric climate-change deniers, since what could be more barbaric than the denial of science?

10. Fox News guest on Maryville rape victim: I’m not saying she deserved to be raped, but she did kind of ask for it.

Sometimes … no, scratch that, nearly always, it seems that Fox News is just going out of its way to be as hateful and offensive as it possibly can be. Still, and we’re not sure why, but still, we are shocked sometimes. This week, another terrible story of high school rape, bullying (driving the victim’s family out of town, in fact), and possible law enforcement coverup came to light in the case of Daisy Coleman, 14 at the time, and her friend Paige Parkhurst, then 13 in Maryville, Missouri. Once again, a popular older athlete was involved, this time a politically connected one, and charges were mysteriously dropped. Anonymous swept in, and a case that Maryville wanted to go away was reopened. The girls involved have spoken out, refusing to be shamed, admitting to their foible of feeling safe with an older brother’s friend, but refusing to back down.

So Fox News interviews the defense attorney for the newly accused boys. And sure enough, Joseph DiBenedetto trots out some familiar rape tropes. The girls invented rape allegations to get out of trouble for sneaking out late at night, and in Daisy’s case for waking up her mother later, scratching at the door in 22-degree weather nearly naked. Fun night.

And further, sneaking out late, with boys and likely with alcohol, is a clear invitation to be raped. “What did she expect to happen at 1am after sneaking out?” DiBenedetto asked host Shepard Smith. “I’m not saying she deserved to be raped, but …”

Yeah, he kind of is saying that.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/right-wing-lunacy-never-sleeps-10-nutty-vile-and-absurd-utterances-fringe-week?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark


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PostPosted: 10/20/13 11:59 pm • # 21 
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The shutdown was something [Obama] welcomed,” Klein claimed, “that he encouraged, that he provoked, and that he kept going because he saw [it] as in his interest, with the media playing it as an anti-Republican problem.” Yes, Obama did seem to be having a grand old time of it, canceling that trip to Asia and everything.

Let's assume Klein is right. Why didn't the GOP/TPers foil Obama's nefarious plan by ceasing their march over the cliff. All they had to do was stop.


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PostPosted: 10/27/13 7:54 am • # 22 
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This week's installment does not disappoint ... so long as you enjoy profound and apparently irremediable idiocy ~ :ey ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
10 Jaw-dropping Absurdities Brought to You By the Right Wing
From lesbian cookies to nuking Iran, this ridiculousness will blow you away.

October 26, 2013 | 1. Kevin Swanson is begging you not to buy those lesbian Girl Scout cookies

How, you might ask, can a cookie be lesbian? And which one is the most lesbian? Is it the famous chocolate covered Thin Mints, or those scrumptious Do-si-dos Peanut Butter Sandwiches?

Right-wing pastor Kevin Swanson is not buying sweets from his local Girl Scouts. And he doesn’t want you to, either. Because if you do, you are helping them to promote this oh-so-harmless-seeming, but secrety dastardly organization’s lesbian agenda and also its baby-killing agenda. Also, they’re commies.

“I don’t want to support lesbianism, I don’t want to support Planned Parenthood and I don’t want to support abortion, and if that be the case I’m not buying Girl Scout cookies,” he neatly summed up on his radio show this week.

Where does he get these ideas about what is truly behind the Girl Scouts? We don’t know. Perhaps they come from the little voices in his head, which are also telling him the Girl Scouts of the USA is “a wicked organization,” that doesn’t promote “godly womanhood.”

“The vision of the Girl Scouts of America is antithetical to a biblical vision for womanhood,” he said. “It’s antithetical to it.” Because Girl Scouts encourage girls to be independent, or dependent on other girls and women, which is very, very wicked indeed.

And nothing screams independent woman more than Do-si-do.

2. Men’s Righter, Paul Elam: It’s okay not to care about female rape victims

Men’s rights. What could be bad? Sounds so innocuous. Men should have rights. Everyone should have rights. Wait, who is taking away men’s rights? Why, feminists of course. And also rape victims. Whaaa…?

Men’s Rights Movement rockstar Paul Elam, famous for, among other statements, “while beautiful women may fear rape, fat, ugly ones might secretly covet it” shockingly defended his successor, John Hembling, for saying he didn’t “give a fuck about rape victims anymore,” in a video quoted by the Daily Beast. Meaning, of course, female rape victims, because he does give a fuck about male rape victims, as we all should.

“I don’t find it particularly hyperbolic for a man to say, ‘I’m not gonna give a damn about female rape victims anymore,’” Elam, founder of the website A Voice for Men, said in a video posted Sunday on YouTube. “They have tons of money, of law enforcement, of special programs funded by the government, of social consciousness – schools have Take Back The Night rallies, everything you can possibly think of.” Later he said, “I stand behind John for making that video.”

Oddly, Hembling, the editor-in-chief for A Voice for Men, didn’t quite stand behind the video because he took it down from his own Youtube channel, although he’s left plenty of clues indicative of his mindset towards women. At one point he said he was attracted to the intellectual underpinnings of the men’s rights movement because women are “without the capacity for moral agency.”

‘Nuff said.

3. N.C. Republican official doesn’t want those lazy blacks voting

Don Yelton, the now-former N.C. voting official, made a splash this week when he told Jon Stewart that his state’s new stringent voter I.D. law is sound, because “if it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.” He assured the "Daily Show" host that he is not racist, though, and by way of illustration, pointed out that, N****** say n***** all the time so what’s really racist is not letting white people say n*****. Especially when they just really love saying that word.

Predictably, he lost his job as precinct chair in the Buncombe County, North Carolina Republican Party the next day, and in the wake of that kept right on going with the same kinds of statements, ‘cause why not at that point? And he really loves saying that word.

The Huffington Post dubbed him the “most racist Republican” around, but we think that’s a pretty deep bench. He is, however, still in the running for the stupidest Republican around, but that, too, is a very competitive race.

4. N.C. (yes, again) State Rep. Larry Pittman: Obama not a traitor (to Kenya, where he was born, of course)

Let it not be said that Republicans are exaggerating President Obama’s crimes in, say, a lame attempt to impeach him. This week, Pittman made a funny birther joke to a sympathetic town hall audience, and just cracked the house up. It was really very clever. Apparently Pittman had recently seen an image of the President with the word “traitor” stamped across it. An eminently reasonable man, Pittman told the Concord, N.C. crowd: “I don’t always agree with the guy, I certainly didn’t vote for him, but I gotta defend him on this one. I just don’t think it’s right at all to call Barack Obama a traitor. You know a lot of things he’s done wrong, but he is not a traitor. At least not as far as I can tell, because I’ve not come across any evidence yet that he has done one thing to harm Kenya.

And they laughed and laughed.

Pittman, also a Presbyterian minister, is such a card. Some of his other kneeslappers include endorsing public hangings of doctors who perform abortions, and saying “the only thing illegal aliens have the right to do in North Carolina is to leave.”

So funny we forgot to laugh.

5. Sherman Adelson: Nuke Iran

Casino mogul, GOP mega-donor, and funder of hawkish, rabidly pro-Israel think tanks, Sherman Adleson is still finding ways to make his voice heard after donating and wasting vast sums to Romney and other Republicans in 2012.

At a panel called “Will Jews Exist? Iran, Assimilation and the Threat to Israel and Jewish Survival,” at Yeshiva University in New York this week, he helpfully suggested giving Iran a little warning nuke to speed along the process of convincing them to get rid of their nukes . . . because, in his view, what’s the good of diplomacy? He has it all thought out, explaining that if you nuke some nearby desert, all you hurt is a “few rattlesnakes and scorpions, or whatever,” (definitely not true). Then you say to those holocaust-denying mullahs in charge, “See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development.”

Please tell us that despite his mountains of cash, no one is really listening to Sherman Adelson.

6. Joe the former Plumber: Democrats are the lynchers

Joe Wurzelbacher, famous for being trotted out by the McCain campaign to state his opposition to a tax hike on the wealthy that would not have affected him, is still trying to extend his 15 minutes of fame. (It beats fixing people’s pipes, we suppose.)

After outspoken Florida Democrat Alan Grayson provocatively used a burning cross for the “T” in Tea Party, Wurzelbacher, still trying to kickstart a career in conservative politics, tweeted that it is the Democrats who have the racist history, and included an image with that burning “T” in the word “Democrat.”

Grayson refused to take back his comments about the Tea Party being no more popular than the KKK. He said his comparison comes from the group’s "relentless racist attacks against our African-American president."

"[T]here is overwhelming evidence that the tea party is the home of bigotry and discrimination in America today, just as the KKK was for an earlier generation," Grayson said in a statement provided to HuffPost. "If the hood fits, wear it."

7. Coach Daubenmire: Christians are being bullied into not bullying gays

Dave Daubenmire, number 607 in the “Dictionary of American Loons” is an expert on bullying. His high school coaching career ran aground after he coerced students into praying in school. Now he has parlayed his fame into anti-gay rants and being a general loudmouth liar for Jesus. This week he went on a kind of circular rant about bullying, saying in a Youtube video: “The whole bullying idea is built around the homosexual agenda. It’s an effort to try to get people not to criticize or make fun of homosexuals.”

He does not agree with that. In fact, he thinks it is Christians who are being bullied because they’re not being allowed to express their hatred of homosexuals, or to bully them.

But he has some deeper thoughts about the whole bullying thing.

“I don’t like bullying,” he said. “But bullying is a part of life. If we want to make Americans tough again, we are raising some of the softest children in the world. My father’s generation would be ashamed of how sissified our kids have become.”

So, bullying can be a good thing. And following that logic, it could be good that Christians are being bullied into not bullying gay people, because it’ll toughen up those lily-livered Christians.

Right?

8. Bradlee Dean, President Obama is both secretly pushing Shariah law, and secretly gay

It is so liberating to be freed of any semblance of logic in thought. Bradlee Dean, who is too-crazy-even-for-many-Republicans (but not for Michelle Bachmann) was at it again this week. The “Sons of Liberty” radio host and fundamentalist Christian rocker, and all-around nutjob, noted in a column for WorldNetDaily that “President Barrack Hussein Obama” has appointed “225 homosexuals” to key positions in the government.

Obama, Dean thinks, is simultaneously practicing “discrimination against heterosexuals,” and “advocating Shariah law.”

There are things Dean likes about Shariah law, and radical Muslims, like executing gay people, a practice which he says makes them “more moral than American Christians,” according to Rightwingwatch.

We’re just a little unclear as to why “secretly gay” Obama would want to implement laws that would have himself executed.

But maybe we’re slow.

9. Group of Christians refuse to tip waiter, but are nice enough to leave a note explaining his “homosexual lifestyle is an affront to God”

So, a group of Christians walk into a bar. Well, it was a restaurant in Overland Park, Kansas. And they ate and made merry, then left. The joke ends there. When 20-year-old server, according to KCTV Fox 19, went to clear the table, he found a note instead of a tip.

“Thank you for your service, it was excellent,” it read. “That being said, we cannot in good conscience tip you, for your homosexual lifestyle is an affront to GOD. Queers do not share in the wealth of GOD, and you will not share in ours. We hope you will see the tip your queer choices made you lose out on, and plan accordingly. It is never too late for GOD’s love, but none shall be spared for queers. May GOD have mercy on you.”

This is what passes for Christianity these days? Jesus is rolling over in his grave.

10. Texas Rep. Steve Stockman: Ted Cruz is a brilliant, heroic, visionary leader

Against all evidence—but then again what does persnickety evidence have to do with a right-wing argument?—Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) is hailing his home-state senator Ted Cruz as a heroic visionary for leading the Republican push to shut down the government.

Forget all those post-shutdown polls showing both the Republican and Tea Party’s approval ratings taking a serious hit. Cruz’s ploy “was brilliant,” Stockman told WorldNetDaily.

He compared Cruz’s efforts to the Battle of the Alamo, a story dear to every Texan’s heart, because the takeaway is, “In every loss, there can be a victory.”

Stockman later opined that Obamacare is secretly a plot to drive everyone into a single payer system. Well, not that secret, he wrongly quoted Obama as saying single payer was his goal (if only).

The congressman also said he’s against any additional government funding to fix problems with the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges. “It is like saying my house is burning so we need more gasoline to put the fire out. It doesn’t make sense.”

No, congressman, and neither do you.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/10-jaw-dropping-absurdities-brought-you-right-wing?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark


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PostPosted: 10/27/13 9:35 am • # 23 
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Good thing I'm not allergic to nuts.


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PostPosted: 11/03/13 8:11 am • # 24 
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Another week's installment that does not disappoint ... so long as you enjoy profound and apparently irremediable idiocy ~ :ey ~ "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
Lies, Nonsense and Totally Off-the-Wall Behavior -- 10 Doozies from the Nutty Right Wing This Week
Atheists can't serve the hungry and the devil has been very, very busy.

November 2, 2013 | Some really crazy things came out of the mouths of the frothing right wing this week --

1. Suzanne Somers is still an idiot, and the WSJ prints her error-ridden Obamacare hit-job anyway.

While Thighmaster spokeswoman Suzanne Somers has matured since her hit TV show days, her plumpers and politics have pretty much ossified. Her enlightened take on the Affordable Care Act appeared in the Wall Street Journal this week, concluding that it’s “a greater Ponzi scheme than that pulled off by Bernie Madoff.” She wrote 535 hysterical words, in which Lenin came up in addition to Madoff, on the topic of this dreaded “socialized medicine.” By the next day, the Journal had published nearly a fifth as many words in corrections.

But it did not correct the “Ponzi scheme” assertion, which was based on flimsy anecdotes about relatives who had bad experiences with Canadian doctors, and how Somers is hearing on the news that everyone’s premium is doubling and tripling. (Any guesses as to which so-called news channel she watches?)

This piece of rocket science appeared in WSJ’s "The Experts" section, which bills itself as “an exclusive group of industry, academic and cultural thought leaders who weigh in on the latest debates.”

This will definitely be our go-to section for expert analysis henceforth.

2. John Stossel: Women, aka hypochondriacs, should pay more for health insurance.

Fox libertarian spokes-moustache John Stossel became rather mentally unbalanced about the fairness of the Affordable Care Act this week. It’s not fair, he whined, that under the law, men have to pay as much for health insurance as women because “Women go to the doctor much more often than men! Maybe they’re smarter or maybe they’re hypochondriacs. They live longer. Who knows?”

The point is, they’re women, dammit.

Another thing that has Stossel and a number of Republicans really irked is that men have to help pay for pregnancy and maternity coverage, when men can’t even get pregnant. It’s so unfair!

Look, everyone knows that women get pregnant all by themselves, and it’s their fault they got themselves into this fix, and they damn well better get themselves out of it. Hypochondriacs!

3. Concerned Women for America: Very worried that young people might get health insurance.

While women are making bank with this whole Obamacare Ponzi scheme, you know who is getting screwed? Young people, that’s who. Concerned Women for America is very very concerned about that; concerned that young people may actually choose to join a program that will help them afford health insurance.

Concerned Women don’t just get concerned about any old thing. They’re not losing any sleep about silly things like tens of thousands of children going hungry because of the massive food stamp cuts that just took effect. They only get concerned about important things, like how close Miley Cyrus’ butt got to Robin Thicke’s crotch at the VMA Awards.

In an interview this week with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Concerned spokeswoman Alison Howard sent out the alarm bells to “young subsidizers” who might sign up for a “government-run program that’s a complete fail.”

“Complete fail!” she said. So hip with that phrasing!

Then she told those same hip young people, who listen to CBN all the time, to “pray for our nation’s leaders, that they have wisdom and clarity to fix this very broken problem and help us completely heal as a country,” according to Right-Wing Watch.

This praying stuff will be good practice for when you get sick or hurt, and don’t have health insurance.

4. 27 GOP senators vote to disapprove of themselves.

At first glance, maybe this headline actually makes sense. About time these clowns disapproved of themselves for their heartless policies and shameless tactics. But, no, no. No such attack of conscience has hit the Republicans in Congress. What took place this week in the Senate may have set a new low on the moron scale—and these days, that is really saying something. All 27 Republican senators who voted recently to raise the debt ceiling, pay the nation’s bills, and reopen the government (and arguably do their jobs), voted this week in favor of a symbolic “resolution to disapprove” of that vote. All of them.

Apart from making no sense (but when has that stood in the way of Republican politics?) the vote was completely pointless, unless the point was to further illustrate their idiocy.

Actually, the point was as simple as it was hypocritical. (Remember when John Kerry was given hell after saying he was for something before he was against it? At least some time passed in between.) The point was simply to brazenly give these Republicans political cover, so that Tea Partiers and other right-wing crazies won’t try to unseat them.

5. Marsha Blackburn: Americans must be free to drink from red Solo cups.

Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn made some marvelously on-point comments during the congressional “yell at Kathleen Sebelius” hearing on the bumpy Obamacare roll-out this week.

“Some people like to drive a Ford, not a Ferrari … And some people like to drink out of a red Solo cup, not a crystal stem. You’re taking away their choice,” said Rep. Blackburn.

Blackburn has taken the lead as a defender of Americans’ rights to choose many important things this week, not just red Solo cups. From cheap shoes, clothing and plasticware to insurance plans that don’t cover much of anything, or kick you off when you get sick. Cause we’re Amurricans, damn it. And we’re free.

Yes, she’s a staunch defender of freedom and the rights of all Americans to choose. Except, of course, women's right to choose whether to have a baby or get contraception. That’s the government’s job.

6. S.C. soup kitchen to atheists: No serving soup for you!

Everyone knows that religious belief and serving food to the poor are inextricably intertwined. Which is why it makes total sense that a group of avowed atheists, Upstate Atheists, were banned from helping out at the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen in South Carolina last week. Since they were not allowed in, they set up across the street to distribute food and other necessities like toothpaste and socks to the area’s poor. And they did this while not believing in god. What an abomination!

Upstate Atheists' slogan is "Charity Beyond Belief," but the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen wasn’t buying it, calling the atheists' mission “counter to the mission of the soup kitchen." The executive director then added, "They can have the devil there with them, but they better not come across the street."

We did not know that the devil had branched out into the charity business. Clearly, a rebranding scheme.

7. Minn. Republican party posts, then deletes, unbelievably racist message.

The Chisago County, Minn. Republican party got caught with a deeply offensive Facebook post comparing abortion to slavery this week.

"Pro Choice. Against Slavery? Don't buy one," said the caption to a picture depicting a slave auction. MSNBC and radio Host Ed Schultz posted a screengrab of the photo on his Facebook page.

Unsurprisingly, outrage ensued, leading the party to delete the post and deny any responsibility for it. They said their page was made by a "large number of administrators," who, we guess, aren’t vetted very well.

But they are very, very sorry, and sought to remind everyone that the Republican Party derives from the anti-slavery movement.

Today’s Republican Party always reminds us of abolitionists and Lincoln.

8. Nevada Rep. 'Would bring back slavery if constituents wanted it.'

Nevada Assemblyman Jim Wheeler did not get the Republican anti-slavery memo, as evidenced by comments Wheeler made to the Storey County Republican Party in August, according to the Associated Press, that came to light this week.

He said he’d bring back slavery if that was what his constituents wanted. There was a Youtube video of it that now appears to have been taken down. Perhaps someone thinks these comments make him look bad. Even racist. Which, of course, he is not. Why would you think that?

Because he did add that he would find it distasteful to bring back slavery, saying “I'd have to hold my nose ... they'd probably have to hold a gun to my head, but yeah.”

That’s how dedicated this man is to public service. He’d be willing to override his own lack of bigotry to represent bigots.

9. Religious broadcasters: It’s simple. Miley Cyrus sold her soul to the devil.

Remember Miley Cyrus’ tongue at the VMA? Remind you of anyone? Someone with a forked tongue perhaps?

It’s a well-known fact that the devil has completely taken over the entertainment industry—Rick Santorum definitely thinks so—so it should not come as a surprise that there was a coded message in Cyrus’ infamous performance. She was announcing she’d sold her soul to the devil, said a pair of religious right broadcasters.

Broadcaster Rick Wiles and anti-rock music pastor Joe Schimmel confirmed this revelation on Wiles’ TruNews radio program this week.

“The American entertainment industry loves perverting the souls of innocent children, [and] they thrive on their wicked methods of defiling children and converting them into little citizens of Babylon. It is the work of the synagogue of Satan. Their latest poster child to recruit little Babylonians is Miley Cyrus,” Wiles said.

Wait, "synagogue"?

He also said he has seen an actual photo of Cyrus licking the ribs of a caped skeleton figure with red eyes and horns, according to Raw Story. An actual photo!

Schimmel agreed, as any reasonable person would. Cyrus, he said, has been “baptized into the Illuminati.” Her dance moves, he added, are demonstrations of “how to have sex with some satanic figure.”

Let us pray for the safe return of Miley Cyrus’ soul.

10. David Conn: Obama similar to Jim Jones.

It was a banner week on Wiles’ TruNews radio program. He also interviewed a very enlightening Jim Jones/Jonestown cult “expert.”

David Conn, the “expert,” is seeing the emergence of another Jim Jones-like figure in our midst—President Obama, who embodies “the re-emergence of the Jones Cult mentality on a grand national level."

Let’s unpack that for a sec.

“First off, Jones captured the media and Obama captured the media,” Conn explained. Also they both had strange childhoods, and were yearning for father figures. Leaving the plane of reality altogether, Conn added, “Obama's only father figure was a terribly nasty old man, a pornographer and a child molester and a cocaine user who was an avowed communist.”

Wiles knew just who he was talking about: Frank Marshall Davis. He’s the one who got Obama into cocaine.

Also, both of them, Jones and Obama, had a background of community organizing. Of course, Obama’s cult is Islam, so that’s a slight difference. But otherwise, it’s a no-brainer.

Here, have some more Kool-Aid.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/lies-nonsense-and-possible-psychotic-episodes-10-doozies-countrys-right-wing?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark


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PostPosted: 11/10/13 10:12 am • # 25 
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Yet another week's installment that does not disappoint ... so long as you enjoy profound and apparently irremediable idiocy ~ :ey ~ "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Janet Allon
Who Is Chief Right Wing Whacko this Week? It Might Surprise You
The Whacko-in-Chief's ignorant banter — and 9 other wacky statements from right-wing nutjobs.

November 9, 2013 | Rand Paul may have assumed the mantle of Wacko-in-Chief this week, but lots of lesser known right-wing nutjobs had banner weeks as well.

1. Christian historian: Abortions caused Typhoon Haiyan.

This might come as news to the grieving survivors of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines: the cause of the powerful storm was abortion. Not necessarily their abortions, but just the fact that anyone has abortions, especially legally, even though abortion is illegal in the Philippines. God is very, very pissed about that, and that’s why he sent a typhoon that killed all those Filippinos on its way to Vietnam. He’s vindictive like that. That is why he is causing all these very destructive and scary storms.

What is not causing any of this climatological havoc is global warming—not that it even exists. Burning fossil fuels is something God actually wants us to do more of. So goes the theory of Christian denialist, oops, we mean “historian” David Barton. The blanket explanation for all this “climate stuff that we can’t explain,” he said this week in a conversation with televangelist Kenneth Copeland, as well as murder and pedophilia, is legalized abortion. America voted for politicians who support abortion rights, and in doing so “opened the door to the curse.”

Here is the historical background. In the good old days, when America was first starting out, Barton explained that if there was really bad weather, leaders would “call for a national day of repentance, humiliation, fasting and prayer … and today we’re saying, ‘Oh no, it’s global warming.’”

That’s how we lost God’s protection. We chose to lose it. What did we expect?

2. Radio host Damon Bruce: Sports are set to the dial of men.

Sports are for men, and Richie Incognito is a man, acting manly in a man’s world. And if you don’t like it, ladies, you can lump it. That is the short version of a nine-minute tirade against women in sports this week by KNBR sports radio host Damon Bruce.

Bruce is mad at women because women are to blame for the suspension of Miami Dolphins guard Richie Incognito after his alleged (and apparently legendary) harassment, bullying and threats against teammate Jonathan Martin drove Martin from the team.

Here’s how the tirade starts:

Quote:
“A lot of sports has lost its way and I’m gonna tell you, part of the reason is because we’ve got women giving us directions. For some of you, this is going to come across as very misogynistic. I don’t care, because I’m very right. I'm willing to share my sandbox, as long as you remember you're in my box. I didn’t slip into your box....”

Allowing women to “slip into the box” of professional sports has pretty much ruined sports, Bruce thinks. It has feminized men and made it hard for men to bond the way they like to bond—by being assholes. That’s what Jonathan Martin didn’t understand. Incognito was trying to bond with him when he called him racial slurs and threatened to rape his sister.

Here’s Bruce’s sage advice to women sports journalists who can’t hack it: “If sports get too gruesome for you, go write a restaurant column. Go write a housekeeping column.”

Sweet of him to be concerned.

3. Rand Paul overtakes Ted Cruz as chief Republican wacko bird.

This is a tightly contested race—neck and neck. Lately, Texas Tea Partier Cruz has been relatively subdued since his widely ridiculed Obamacare filibuster which lead to the widely reviled government shutdown.

So, Kentucky libertarian Paul was good enough to step into the breach to fulfill the role of what Senator John McCain coined as “chief of the wacko birds.” Paul has distinguished himself in the last week or so with his passionate defense, or is it ignorance, of plagiarism, challenging Rachel Maddow to a duel for repeatedly pointing out that he lifts passages from Wikipedia wholesale for speeches, articles, books, whatever. She’s impugning his honor by doing so, “spreading hate” on him. Besides libertarians don’t attribute stuff; that’s for big government suckers.

A plagiarism scandal, or multiple plagiarism scandals, need not be devastating. Hey, mistakes happen. Admit them and move on, we say. But no, Paul started talking “duel” during an interview with ABC’s “This Week.”

“If, you know, if dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, you know, it would be a duel challenge. But I can’t do that, because I can’t hold office in Kentucky then.”

Note to Paul: Toto, you’re not in 19th-century Kentucky anymore.

4. Antonin Scalia brings up the devil in case about prayer.

It’s almost as if there’s a little red guy with horns and a tail sitting on the shoulder of the Supreme Court’s most verbose right-winger, making him say really off-the-wall things. Justice Antonin Scalia just keeps seeing the devil and his worshippers everywhere, bringing them up during oral arguments in a case about the constitutionality of legislative prayer. This, just weeks after a somewhat embarrassing interview in New Yorkmagazine in which he gleefully affirmed his belief in the Antichrist. And what’s wrong with that?

During this week’s case, fellow conservative jurist Samuel Alito was asking questions about whether any kind of prayer would be permissible before a legislative session, one that would not offend Christians, Jews, Muslims, or Hindus.

"What about devil worshippers?" Scalia interjected. Laugher ensued. He’s such a card.

His larger point was that not letting people pray before legislative meetings deprives them of their religious freedom, and that it is impossible to design a prayer that satisfies all faiths—not to mention lack thereof.

"What is the equivalent of prayer for someone who is not religious?" Scalia asked. "There are many people who do not believe in God. ... If you had an atheist [town] board, you would not have any prayer. I guarantee you."

After all, who do you think makes people atheists? Guy with the horns, we’re talking to you.

5. Louie Gohmert: Shutdown was necessary to save people from Obamacare.

Two quick refreshers: 1) Obamacare is the “worst law known to man,” worse than slavery, Nuremberg laws, Indian removal act—you get the idea; and 2) Tea Partiers received a drubbing in this week’s election, but seem not to realize it.

Texas Tea Partier Louie Gohmert was out stumping this week, bizarrely bragging that the devastating shutdown was necessary because people would “suffer and potentially die” because of the Affordable Care Act. Yup, nothing kills people faster than health insurance. It is deadly stuff.

He made the statement at a nursing home in East Texas, where he hoped to scare the bejeezus out of seniors so they won’t sign up for the dreaded healthcare coverage. “Anybody that thinks the Affordable Care Act helps seniors doesn’t really understand what’s unaffordable to seniors,” Gohmert helpfully and misleadingly explained. “It makes most of the Medicare Advantage plans go up, but you’ve got to remember, Obamacare actually cut $716 billion from Medicare and seniors rely on Medicare.”

That, of course, is either a lie or make-believe, or both, but since when has that stopped the opponents of Obamacare?

6. Rep. Steve King knows personally—don’t ask him how—that Saddam Hussein purchased uranium from Niger.

Who can forget the fiction that fueled the invasion of Iraq in 2002? Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was building the bomb, and was ready to use all of it against us or Israel. He got his uranium from Niger, high-level intelligence said. President George Bush even said so in a speech.

Cut to a couple months after “Shock and Awe” and not even Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney or President Bush was standing by that statement. They were misled by some bum intelligence. Sorry. Our bad.

But crazy Iowa Rep. Steve King still believes it because, as he said on Jan Mickelson’s radio show this week: “I have had hands-on evidence that what George Bush said in that State of the Union address was the truth.”

What Bush said was: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

When the claim unraveled, the Bush administration had to eat crow and admit the so-called intelligence was “bogus,” documents “forged.” Spokesman Ari Fleischer admitted the statement should never have found its way into the president’s speech. But nobody took the war back.

But King has “hands-on” knowledge. He just does.

7. Illinois Rep.: Marriage equality has nothing to do with rights; it’s about the Bible.

As the Illinois legislature began to debate whether to join the growing number of enlightened states that have legalized same-sex marriage, State Rep. Dwight Kay (R-Glen Carbon) pointed out that everyone has it bass-ackwards. Our nation was built on “the scriptures, then came the Constitution. Is that not right?”

It was, of course, a rhetorical question. “I think it is,” Kay continued. A brief course in American history could clear this up for the confused legislator, but never mind.

Kay is at a loss to understand why everyone keeps talking about human rights, and civil rights, and equal rights all the time when they talk about marriage equality. What do human rights have to do with a nation built on scripture? Who you gonna believe, that Constitution with its Bill of Rights written by men, or the word of God?

8. Larry Pratt: Trayvon Martin’s broken family is what killed him.

It’s never too late to pile more pain onto the grieving parents and loved ones of slain teenager Trayvon Martin. His killer is free, Trayvon has been blamed for his own death, and now, taking it one step further, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America has suggested that Martin's dysfunctional family is responsible for the boy’s death.

That’s what he said in an interview with NewsMax’s Steve Malzberg this week: Trayvon Martin was killed because he had a “broken family.”

Who else can you blame? Triggerman, neighborhood-watch volunteer George Zimmerman was just lawfully “standing his ground” when he shot unarmed Martin. “Stand Your Ground” laws can’t be to blame because, as Sen. Ted Cruz explained to Martin's mother Sybrina Fulton in a Senate hearing on the controversial law, she’s just “mourning the loss of her son.” Stand-your-ground laws in fact “protect those in African-American communities,” he said.

Facts be damned, gun nuts and Tea Partiers agree. According to Right-Wing Watch, a recent “Tampa Bay Times analysis of stand-your-ground cases in Florida found substantial racial disparities in the application of the law, including that ‘people who killed a black person walked free 73 percent of the time, while those who killed a white person went free 59 percent of the time. A national study found a similar disparity.”

But, it’s Trayvon Martin's family’s fault he’s dead. Probably his mother’s.

9. White, anti-LGBT Texan wins office by pretending to be black.

Dave Wilson, a Houston electrician, has become pretty adept at creating literature for the causes he believes in. While not rewiring people’s homes, he long pursued his sideline of mailing homophobic fliers to thousands of Houston voters attacking the city’s lesbian mayor Annise Parker. His argument is pretty simple. Open homosexuality is bad. It leads to extinction. (Closeted homosexuality, not so much.)

Recently, Wilson expanded his literary efforts into fiction, when he got himself elected to the Houston Community College Board of Trustees by out-and-out pretending to be someone else. He pretended to be a black man, defeating longtime incumbent Bruce Austin, who actually is black, in an overwhelmingly African-American district.

According to Right-Wing Watch, “Wilson’s campaign fliers were filled with black faces that he admits to simply pulling off of websites, along with captions such as ‘Please vote for our friend and neighbor Dave Wilson.’ Another flier announces that he was ‘Endorsed by Ron Wilson,’ which is the name of an African-American former state representative. Only by reading the fine print will voters discover that the ‘Ron Wilson’ who actually endorsed Dave is his cousin. The cousin lives in Iowa.”

Wilson is fine with this whole deception thing. After all, lying is what politicians do, he points out.

10. Nutjob former classmate of Obama reminisces about his cocaine-snorting, gay-hustling high school days.

Scott Lively's "Defend The Family" website got a real scoop this week with an interview that nutjob preacher James David Manning conducted with Mia Marie Pope, who says—and why would we not believe her?—that she knew President Obama back in high school in Hawaii in the 1970s, when he was a foreigner (this is a birther website, after all) and a gay druggie.

"He very much was within sort of the gay community," Pope claimed. "And we knew Barry as just common knowledge that girls were never anything that he ever was interested in ... He would get with these older white gay men, and this is how we just pretty much had the impression that that's how he was procuring his cocaine. In other words, he was having sex with these older white guys and that's how he was getting this cocaine to be able to freebase."

That clears a lot up.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/who-chief-right-wing-whacko-week-it-might-surprise-you?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark


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