Rep. Louis Gohmert melts down on Anderson Cooper over “terror babies”:
All I can think about is Jon Lovitz as Michael Dukakis on SNL- “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.”
Terror Babies in Your Base and Killing Your DoodzPost + Comments (102)
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Bring on the Brawndo!, Wingnut Event Horizon
Rep. Louis Gohmert melts down on Anderson Cooper over “terror babies”:
All I can think about is Jon Lovitz as Michael Dukakis on SNL- “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.”
Terror Babies in Your Base and Killing Your DoodzPost + Comments (102)
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Bring on the Brawndo!, Fucked-up-edness, Wingnut Event Horizon
John H. Richardson’s profile of Newt Gingrich: The Indispensable Republican is up on the Esquire website, and it’s one of the most terrifying things I’ve read in years. Richardson thinks Gingrich intends to run for President in 2012 (“Will Newt Gingrich really run for the presidency? A lot of people think he’s not really serious, that he just likes the power and attention and the opportunity to get free publicity for his books… the answer seems glaringly obvious: Newt Gingrich wants to be president so bad, he can taste it.”).
As to whether this would be a good idea, for Gingrich or for the rest of us in this Rethuglican-battered nation, well… “As a reporter, I’ve always believed that everyone has some kind of inner coherence. No matter how inexplicable their behavior may be, there is always logic somewhere. This proved true with a multitude of subjects, from murderers to movie stars. Until Newt Gingrich.”
Please read the whole article. I’ve been extremely scornful of the idea of Gingrich actually running for President, as opposed to fan-dancing (or stripper-poling) a perennial round of first-class speaking junkets and high-visibility media appearances calculated to preserve the Gingrich(tm) brand’s valuable shelf-space in the Wingnut Welfare Walmart. But Richardson’s reporting suggests that the person most bedazzled and mislead by the non-stop hustling might just be Newton Leroy Gingrich, and that’s a dangerous thing indeed, because there is much further confirmation here that Gingrich is a bullet point on the Powerpoint timeline of Weirdly Charismatic Rightwing Sociopaths, probably the most significant version between Richard Nixon and Sarah Palin. Richardson includes stories of Gingrich’s unsettling behavior just before he resigned the Speakership that read like an opera bouffe version of Nixon during Watergate, and aggregates details of his personal and professional life that make Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes look like a rough draft:
It’s been twelve years since his extraordinary political career — the one in which he went from being a bomb-throwing backbencher in the seemingly permanent Republican minority to overthrowing the established order of both parties — collapsed around him. And yet, stunningly, in all that time Newt Gingrich hasn’t been replaced as the philosopher king of the conservative movement. And as the summer rolled on, a revivified Gingrich sat atop the early polls of Republican presidential contenders, leading the field in California, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Texas and polling strongly in Illinois and Pennsylvania. This year he has raised as much money as Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee combined. He is in constant motion, traveling all over the country attending rallies and meetings. He writes best sellers, makes movies, appears regularly on Fox News…
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He thinks of himself as president, you tell her. He wants to run for president.
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[Ex-wife Marianne Gingrich] gives a jaundiced look. “There’s no way,” she says. She thinks he made a choice long ago between doing the right thing and getting rich, and when you make those choices, you foreclose other ones. “He could have been president. But when you try and change your history too much, and try and recolor it because you don’t like the way it was or you want it to be different to prove something new … you lose touch with who you really are. You lose your way.”
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She stops, ashes her cigarette, exhales, searching for the right way to express what she’s about to say.
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“He believes that what he says in public and how he lives don’t have to be connected,” she says. “If you believe that, then yeah, you can run for president.”
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This post is in: Assholes, Flash Mob of Hate, Wingnut Event Horizon
Apparently everyone’s favorite snowbilly had an encounter with a former constituent and acted snotty and, well, like Sarah Palin, and there is video of it:
You know what this means, don’t you? Time for a full-on countertop inspection of this woman who dared to confront the Wasilla wingnut- they’ve decided she was no teacher and is instead a singer in a drag band:
UPDATE II: So far no confirmation of Gustafson’s claim to be a school teacher. However she is President, Board of Directors, Kachemak Bay. Family Planning Clinic (KBFPC) in Homer, AK. Figures. …
UPDATE II: According to the Alaska Teacher Certification website there is a Kathleen Gustafson registered, but unknown if this is her.
UPDATE III: It’s not unless she lives in Juno…
UPDATE VI: According to the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District website there is no Kathleen Gustafson registered as a teacher in the district which includes Homer.
UPDATE VII: Actually there is. A Kathleen Gustafson does appear on this PDF from the district. According to the document she’s not a teacher but a “Theater Tech” at Homer High School. I wonder how the school district would feel about her misstating or more appropriately impersonating a teacher.
UPDATE VII: … a “Theater Tech” can very well be a teacher …
Except, as it turns out, she is a teacher- she teaches theater. As for the drag band stuff? The picture of her proving she is a singer in a drag band is actually her in a production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
So much fail. At this point, the only thing left is for Andy Alexander at the Washington Post to apologize for not being out in front of this story earlier.
This post is in: Excellent Links, DC Press Corpse, Wingnut Event Horizon
David Weigel’s started his new gig at Slate. So far, he seems a little more subdued than he was as an official WaPo blogger:
… On Monday, FreedomWorks displayed the latest version of its target list—the people its PAC would most like to defeat—the latest signs and fliers printed up for its candidates, the reading list handed out to activists (it includes Atlas Shrugged and the new manifesto by FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey and Kibbe, Give Me Liberty), and advice for contacting the media. (“Always try to do personal emails or be sure to use the BCC field. Never advertise which other media outlets you are trying to score a hit with.”)
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This event was scheduled weeks ago. Unfortunately, meet-and-greet coincided with Ken Vogel’s latest Politico write-up of those “growing pains” that Kibbe wanted to downplay. The story points out that FreedomWorks raised only 5 percent more in 2009 than it raised in 2008, peaking at $7.9 million.
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So Brandon changed tack slightly: The article just showed that FreedomWorks is a low-budget, grass-roots, non-Astroturf operation. “We’re one of the smallest PACs in the game,” said Brandon. “We’re going to spend, at most $10 million. We don’t know those Karl Rove donors.” He leaned down and tapped a stack of Rand Paul fliers that were bound for FreedomWorks members in Kentucky. “These cost less than one cent per flier. Fractions of a cent.” —
… but the article is titled “Tea Party Boot Camp: The Tea Party movement teaches itself how to elect Republicans“, so he’s still more honest than one might expect from the venue.
This post is in: Bring on the Brawndo!, Clown Shoes, Wingnut Event Horizon, WTF?
I had no idea that the Theory of Relativity was a liberal scheme, but thank goodness conservapedia is on it:
There is so much there to love I just don’t know where to start, whether it be the conflation of relativism and the theory of relativity, or the action-at-a-distance by Jesus (WTF?). The footnotes are just as awesome:
See, e.g., historian Paul Johnson’s book about the 20th century, and the article written by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe as allegedly assisted by Barack Obama. Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold.
This has to be a spoof, right?
BTW- longtime readers will understand the title of this post.
This post is in: Religion, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Flash Mob of Hate, Teabagger Stupidity, Wingnut Event Horizon
Way to go, Republicans and the ADL:
While a high-profile battle rages over a mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, heated confrontations have also broken out in communities across the country where mosques are proposed for far less hallowed locations.
In Murfreesboro, Tenn., Republican candidates have denounced plans for a large Muslim center proposed near a subdivision, and hundreds of protesters have turned out for a march and a county meeting.
In late June, in Temecula, Calif., members of a local Tea Party group took dogs and picket signs to Friday prayers at a mosque that is seeking to build a new worship center on a vacant lot nearby.
In Sheboygan, Wis., a few Christian ministers led a noisy fight against a Muslim group that sought permission to open a mosque in a former health food store bought by a Muslim doctor.
At one time, neighbors who did not want mosques in their backyards said their concerns were over traffic, parking and noise — the same reasons they might object to a church or a synagogue. But now the gloves are off.
In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself. They quote passages from the Koran and argue that even the most Americanized Muslim secretly wants to replace the Constitution with Islamic Shariah law.
Republicans, teabaggers, Palinite mouthbreathers and the talibangelicals unite to get their hate on. The best part about this is that all of these folks just love to quote the Constitution, as they work overtime to deny their fellow citizens the protections afforded to all Americans:
Recently, a small group of activists became alarmed about the mosque. Diana Serafin, a grandmother who lost her job in tech support this year, said she reached out to others she knew from attending Tea Party events and anti-immigration rallies. She said they read books by critics of Islam, including former Muslims like Walid Shoebat, Wafa Sultan and Manoucher Bakh. She also attended a meeting of the local chapter of ACT! for America, a Florida-based group that says its purpose is to defend Western civilization against Islam.
“As a mother and a grandmother, I worry,” Ms. Serafin said. “I learned that in 20 years with the rate of the birth population, we will be overtaken by Islam, and their goal is to get people in Congress and the Supreme Court to see that Shariah is implemented. My children and grandchildren will have to live under that.”
“I do believe everybody has a right to freedom of religion,” she said. “But Islam is not about a religion. It’s a political government, and it’s 100 percent against our Constitution.”
Sigh.
The ADL is nowhere to be found, which, considering their recent shameful stance in the NYC mosque, is probably a good thing. If Foxman were to speak up, it would be to help the teabaggers make protest signs.
by DougJ| 172 Comments
This post is in: We Are All Mayans Now, Wingnut Event Horizon
Marc Thiessen recommends the FBI snatch Julian Assange (via Emptywheel):
With appropriate diplomatic pressure, these governments may cooperate in bringing Assange to justice. But if they refuse, the United States can arrest Assange on their territory without their knowledge or approval. In 1989, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a memorandum entitled “Authority of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to Override International Law in Extraterritorial Law Enforcement Activities.”
This memorandum declares that “the FBI may use its statutory authority to investigate and arrest individuals for violating United States law, even if the FBI’s actions contravene customary international law” and that an “arrest that is inconsistent with international or foreign law does not violate the Fourth Amendment.” In other words, we do not need permission to apprehend Assange or his co-conspirators anywhere in the world.
Arresting Assange would be a major blow to his organization. But taking him off the streets is not enough; we must also recover the documents he unlawfully possesses and disable the system he has built to illegally disseminate classified information.
The column doesn’t get into this (except to mention the word “indict” which is somewhat reassuring along these lines), but it’s fair to ask: does Thiessen think Assange should get a trial, does he think Assange should be tortured for more information?
I wish I could say I meant those as rhetorical or snarky questions, but I don’t.