10 Deranged Dispatches From the Right-Wing Wackosphere This Week

10 Deranged Dispatches From the Right-Wing Wackosphere This Week

Holier than the Pope himself, Palin and Buchanan take Francis to task.

Photo Credit: Jennifer A. Walz/Shutterstock.com 

It’s been a busy week for all manner of charlatans, religious and otherwise.

1. One-woman parade of idiocy, Sarah Palin: The Pope is too liberal; social programs are similar to slavery.

Sarah Palin was on book tour this week, telegenically spewing some of the stupidest nonsense we’ve heard since she announced she could see Russia from her house. We’d like to ignore her, but the fact is she’s hugely popular among a certain segment of the population, and her book about the “war on Christmas,” Good Tidings and Great Joy, is destined for best-sellerdom. Just don’t wish her “Happy holidays!” That is waging war, my friend.

As Christian as she is, though, during an interview with CNN, Palin complained about Pope Francis. She’s taken aback by his liberal attitudes, she says. Taken aback by his unwillingness to go after the LGBT community and atheists, we suppose, and his sympathy for the lonely elderly, and unemployed youth. As Bill Maher said, Palin’s really going to be shook up when she finds out what Jesus said. Be sure to have tranquilizers available when she encounters the Sermon on the Mount.

Palin hopped right on that highly offensive bandwagon of equating the social safety net with slavery. “Our free stuff today is being paid for today by taking money from our children and borrowing money from China,” she said. “When that note comes due — and this isn’t racist so try it anyway, this isn’t racist — but it’s going to be like slavery when that note is due, right? We are going to be beholden to a foreign master.”

Insisting that you are not being racist when you’re comparing slavery to something far more benign is always a really convincing way to make people believe that you are in no way racist.

2. Pat Buchanan: The Pope is bordering on moral relativism. The horror!

Pat Buchanan is another conservative who is very upset that the Pope is not willing to use the Catholic Church to bully people anymore. Specifically, he misses license to bully atheists, women who use birth control and have abortions, and gay people. In his refusal to berate or convert atheists, and tell LGBT people that they are going to hell, Pope Francis is bordering on— cue music of dread — moral relativism.

Two of the statements that upset Buchanan the most: Pope Francis describing the attempt to convert people to Christianity as “solemn nonsense,” and saying that Christians should spend less time lecturing people than listening to them to “discover new needs.”

Why, that dastardly Pope Francis even acknowledged that people can be good no matter what their religious belief, or lack thereof. And he committed the cardinal sin (sorry, pun intended) of stressing helping the poor, rather than focusing on distractions like the gay lifestyle. As Buchanan wrote at Townhall on Friday, Pope Francis is leading “the Catholic Church to a stance of non-belligerence, if not neutrality, in the culture war for the soul of the West.”

A non-belligerent church?! What the hell?

3. Pat Robertson: Ask your gay son if he has been molested.

Ever the dispenser of sound parenting advice, 700 Club host, evangelical bigot par excellence Pat Robertson advised a caller to be “understanding” when talking to her gay son. By being “understanding,” he meant asking her son if the reason he is gay is because he was molested. Because that is always how people become gay.

“Is there a biological thing going on or has he been influenced — has a coach molested him?” Robertson asked the viewer who called in.

Either way, of course, the mother must immediately enroll her son in one of those gay conversion therapies; yes, the abusive form of pseudo-counseling that even ultra-conservative New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was forced to acknowledge should be illegal.

(h/t Right Wing Watch)

4. Sandy Rios: Gay-waiter-refused-tip story just a clever ruse to help ENDA.

No doubt you’ll remember the story two weeks ago of the Kansas City waiter who, in lieu of a tip, received a note from his oh-so-considerate Christian customers saying that, despite his superb service, they couldn’t let him share in their riches because they, and god, disapproved of his lifestyle. That story went viral, and even Bill Maher picked up on it, suggesting that if you want to be selfish and cheap, just do it. Don’t claim it’s for the worker’s own good.

Unfortunately, the behavior has spread, with another family refusing a tip this week to a server they assumed was a lesbian. They were even less nice about it, treating her rudely from the start, racking up a sizable bill and gleefully stiffing the hardworker, who happens to be an ex-Marine, out of her gratuity.

But wait, back up, this just in: Sandy Rios of the American Family Association says the first story was a ruse — a hoax staged by the tricky LGBT community to drum up sympathy for ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) to pass in the Senate.

“I smell a rat in this story,” Rios said. “I don’t believe a Christian couple wrote this note, I think it was a ruse because it was the week ENDA was being voted on.”

If only progressives were as willing to engage in dirty tricks and outright deception as ultra-conservatives. If only… hatred was something that was merely stagecraft.

5. Rafael Cruz: Atheism leads to sexual abuse of children.

Ted’s dad. At it again. Downloading his unique combo of spurious lies, bile and nonsense.

This week, speaking at a gathering of a group we must look into joining, OK2A, described on its website as “Oklahoma Premiere Second Amendment advocacy group,” Rafael Cruz said, straight up, that atheism leads to sexual abuse of children.

Here is the logic he laid out to the assembled gun-toting crazies: “If there is nothing, if there is no God, then we are ruled by our instincts.”

Atheism leads to moral anarchy, he said. “Do we know any politicians that have done that?” he asked the crowd.

“Hitler!” answered Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America, who, coincidentally, was in the audience.

“Oh, we don’t have to go that far, Larry,” Cruz chummily replied. “Just go to Washington. Just go to the White House.” From there, it’s a short hop to sexual immorality, perversion and sexual abuse, Cruz concluded.

Follow?

6. Faux “Historian” David Barton: True Christian soldiers wouldn’t have PTSD.

Atheism is apparently a problem in the military, too. Because if soldiers were true Christians, they would not feel bad about killing enemies and sometimes non-combatants. They would not come home traumatized and have all these psychological problems.

Christian “historian” David Barton, the one who blamed Typhoon Haiyan on women having legal abortions, celebrated Veteran’s Day by criticizing veterans who feel at all guilty for what they do on the battlefield. If they read their Bible, he and televangelist Kenneth Copeland agreed on Believer’s Voice of Victory, they’d read in Numbers 32 that soldiers “shall return and be guiltless before the Lord” and that means that they wouldn’t have PTSD.

“You don’t take drugs to get rid of it, it doesn’t take psychology; that promise right there will get rid of it,” Copeland said.

When you go to war God’s way, Barton chimed in, “not only are you guiltless for having done that, you’re esteemed.”

So, get it together veterans!

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)

7. Rand Paul: Obamafascists are coming for your donuts.

This is truly terrifying. Right-wing libertarian wackadoodle Rand Paul took to the microphone this week to warn Americans that the federal government is targeting donuts. That’s what he said: “They’re coming after your donuts!”

Way to scare people. First, Madam Dictator Michelle Obama tries to get kids to eat more vegetables and exercise; now, the FDA is banning trans fats. Give me obesity or give me death! Or both, as the case may be.

You know who libertarian Paul is not so libertarian about? Gubb’mint employees.

“I say we should line every one of them up. I want to see how skinny or how fat the FDA agents are that are making the rules on this,” he said in his rousing donut hysteria-invoking speech.

Donuts, as Esquire’s Charles Pierce pointed out, don’t need trans fats to be delicious. The two largest donut purveyors, Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Donuts are making pretty tasty round pastries without them.

Credit where due, though: There’s no indication, yet, that Paul’s recent call to arms was plagiarized.

8. Rush Limbaugh makes deranged comments on Obamacare.

There have been a lot of deranged comments on Obamacare this week, including from theNew York Times when it idiotically compared the bumpy rollout of healthcare.gov to Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina. Hmmm, website = hurricane. Thousands dead = millions potentially getting health insurance. Yep, that analogy works.

Actually, all kidding aside, it’s monstrous.

While arguably Rush Limbaugh is less influential than the Times, and perhaps a tad more right-wing, he was not to be outdone in the crazy Obamacare hysteria that ran rampant this week. Rush, of course, does not like women, or sluts as he calls them, who use birth control. And Obamacare making it easier for them to do so is one of the healthcare act’s greatest evils in his view. Because he cares so much about millennials and their virtue, Rush took it upon himself to warn them on Wednesday’s show not to fall into this trap. What Obamacare is really advocating is not safer sex, he says—it’s prostitution.

“If you like being promiscuous, you can keep on being promiscuous,” Limbaugh, friend of the young, said. “If you like being a prostitute, then have at it!”

And summing up for emphasis:

“If you like your risky, promiscuous lifestyle, you can keep it. That’s what Obama is promising.”

Wait, that sounds kind of good, Rush. Thanks!

(h/t: Media Matters)

9. Phyllis Schlafly: Calling all border agents—be on the lookout for polygamist Muslims.

In a world that made any sense, conservative mouther-offer Phyllis Schlafly would have long ago faded into irrelevance. Frankly, we had assumed she was dead by now, but she’s alive and kicking, and still getting airtime to broadcast her ignorance.

While the Eagle Forum founder has long been preoccupied with fighting feminism, she also wants to make sure that those really sexist Muslims with multiple wives are not being let into our country. Yes, immigration, the changing complexion of America, and what that means for the welfare rolls is very much on Schlafly’s increasingly enfeebled mind these days.

She expressed these concerns on a radio show called “Crosstalk” the other day, saying:

“I would like to know if our immigration authorities are letting in people who believe in polygamy. Polygamy is against our law. We’ve brought in thousands of Muslims — I want to know if they made them sign a pledge to assure they’re not bringing in a bunch of wives who will now go on our welfare. Nobody can answer that question; I can’t get any answers to that question.”

Luckily, a caller to the show had an answer. He asserted without an iota of doubt that the Obama administration was bringing in 40 to 50 million Muslims and that they will destroy our constitution and implement Sharia law.

On the bright side, Phyllis: feminism and Sharia law do not go well together. Time to make friends with the enemy of your enemy?

10. Louisiana official: Close the libraries so those Mexicans can’t learn English; build a jail instead.

Most immigration hardliners also believe that anyone who comes to this country damn well ought to learn English. No bilingual education, no chance of Americans ever rubbing elbows with people who don’t speak Amurrican.

But Lindel Toups, who sits on the Lafourche Parish City Council, is upset that Mexicans are trying to learn English, and he’d like to divert funding from libraries to a new jail because of that fact. Toups played down the importance of libraries in recent comments to the Tri-Parish TimesandBusiness News, by pointing out that the Spanish-language Biblioteca Hispana section helps Spanish-speakers learn English.

“They’re teaching Mexicans to speak English,” Toups said “Let that son of a bitch go back to Mexico.”

Libraries are apparently a great source of evil. “There’s just so many things they’re doing that I don’t agree with… Them junkies and hippies and food stamps [recipients] and all, they use the library to look at drugs and food stamps [on the Internet]. I see them do it.”

The citizens of Lafourche Parish are voting this week on whether to keep $800,000 in the library system or put it toward the $25 million needed for a new jail. That way, they might be able to avoid an increase in taxes.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Related articles

• 10 worst right-wing statements of the week – donut paranoia edition (salon.com)
• Pope Denounces Buchanan and Palin for Questioning his Agenda (newslo.com)
• 10 Deranged Dispatches From the Right-Wing Wackosphere This Week (bandannie.com)
• 10 Deranged Dispatches From the Right-Wing Wackosphere This Week (rinf.com)
• Pat Buchanan upset by Pope Francis: He is losing the culture war (rawstory.com)
• Bill Maher: Sarah Palin would prefer the Pope who quit while in office (video) (freakoutnation.com)
• Maher: If Palin thinks the Pope is too liberal, ‘wait until she sees what Jesus has been saying’ (rawstory.com)
• 10 Deranged Dispatches From the Right-Wing Wackosphere This Week (alternet.org)

Billy Graham, Religious Huckster; Amid His Kindred

Worth 1,000 words: The awful state of American evangelical Christianity after Billy Graham

By Fred Clark

This is a picture taken this week at the celebration Franklin Graham held for the 95th birthday of his father, Billy Graham. It is also a parable, a metaphor, an astonishingly revealing snapshot of the sorry state of evangelical Christianity in America in 2013.

Seated in the middle there is Billy Graham, the world-famous evangelist who was, for more than 50 years, the face of white evangelical Christianity in America and the second-most influential Baptist pastor of the 20th century.

At 95, Graham is frail and in ill health. His image and his legacy have been usurped as political tools used by his son Franklin Graham, who seems desperate to be a political player and kingmaker. Not content with living off the interest of his father’s legacy, Franklin has been burning through the capital.

Just look at how Franklin has exploited his father here. The famous preacher is silent now, a voiceless prop called upon to lend a sheen of respectability to the likes of Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, and Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News lackeys.

To his credit, Billy Graham looks uncomfortable being dragged out to offer his apparent blessing to a gaggle of dishonest strangers and charlatans that includes two racist billionaires. The scowl on the old preacher’s face may reveal his recognition that this is what has become of his legacy — that everything he did and worked for has led only to this, to the empowerment of lying hucksters and the politics of resentful privilege. Perhaps he’s even realizing that something like this was bound to happen — that the intensely otherworldly focus of his lifelong ministry meant that it couldn’t plant deep roots in earthly soil.

But just look at that horrifying photograph. Soak it in.

This is evangelical Christianity in America in 2013.

White. Rich. Right-wing. Dishonest. Predatory. Outwardly pious, inwardly corrupt.

It’s all about political tribalism. Jesus simply isn’t in the picture.

Related articles

• Rupert Murdoch: At the Left Hand of Billy Graham (barthsnotes.com)
• Billy Graham Celebrates His 95th Birthday With Sarah Palin, Donald Trump (huffingtonpost.com)

Sarah Palin Joins The “Just Like Slavery” Teabernacle Choir

Sarah Palin Joins The “Just Like Slavery” Teabernacle Choir

Posted by Mark

When republican critics get tired of calling President Obama a Muslim or a socialist or a Kenyan or a homosexual or a tyrant or a mad genius or an idiot figurehead or a Black Panther or a Wall Street lackey or lizard overseer, they generally just resort to comparing him to Adolf Hitler. However, lately a new unfounded and irrational insult has been working its way up the charts of the conservative hitlist, and has-been, half-term governor Sarah Palin is the latest to give it her rendition.

Palin: When that note comes due … and this isn’t racist … but it’s going to be like slavery when that note is due. We are going to be beholden to a foreign master.

 Palin was referring to the national debt, which she seems to believe is at risk of being sent to the International Collections and Captivity Corporation for redemption. While it was thoughtful of her to remind us that associating her remarks about the first African-American president with the historical scab of slavery isn’t racist, she nevertheless fails to grasp the intricacies of economics. But she does align herself with a growing congregation of noxious Tea Partiers who think that anything President Obama does that they don’t like is just like slavery. For instance…

• Rush Limbaugh: Well over 50% of the American people don’t want [Obamacare]. And the Republicans are like ‘well we can’t do anything about it. The law’s the law, It’s the law of the land.’ Well, so was slavery one time, the law of the land.
• Dr. Ben Carson: Obamacare is “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. […] In a way, it is slavery, because it is making all of us subservient to the government.
• Sen. Rand Paul: Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? You’re basically saying you believe in slavery.
• VA Atty Genl Ken Cuccinelli: “The founders knew how bad [slavery] was. We have other things in this country today and abortion is one of them.
• Former Rep. Allen West: He does not want you to have the self-esteem of getting up and earning, and having that title of American. He’d rather you be his slave.
• NH Rep. Bill O’Brien: And what is Obamacare? It is a law as destructive to personal and individual liberty as the Fugitive Slave Act.

Is this trend of comparing Obama’s agenda to slavery better than comparing him to Hitler? It’s a tough call. But many on the right may not mean it as an insult. There are some prominent conservatives who have publicly expressed their opinion that slavery was actually a pretty good thing. So perhaps this is just Palin’s way of complementing Obama.

Related articles

• The Prof. Sarah Palin Lectures (huffingtonpost.com)
• Palin Stands by ‘Slavery’ Remarks on CNN: ‘I’m Not One to Be Politically Correct’ (mediaite.com)
• Sarah Palin, Richard Cohen and today’s sad, sad GOP (salon.com)
• Sarah Palin Tells African Americans That They Misinterpreted the Word Slavery (politicususa.com)

Rafael ‘Ted’ McCarthy

Rafael ‘Ted’ McCarthy

BY MARIO PIPERNI

Back in 1950, a crazy and delusional Joseph McCarthy claimed he had a list of 57 Communists who worked in the U.S. State Department. Sixty years later, a fellow practitioner of paranoid politics, Ted Cruz, told a gathering of the Tea Party that he believed that Communists had infiltrated Harvard’s law faculty. Can these two crazy people be related?

I had a little time to kill so I thought I’d put the Ted Cruz/Joseph McCarthy lookalike theory to the Mario Piperni Photoshop Test (known as the MPPT in the business). The mouth and left side (your left) of the composite belong to Cruz. The rest is all McCarthy. Tell me that the result could not easily be mistaken to be a pic of Cruz’s nutty Uncle Jorge – you know, the publicity-seeking huckster who pals around with Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.

I think so.

One would think that being compared to Joe McCarthy is a bad thing, right? Well, not if you’re a winger and World Nut Daily contributor. Then it’s a positive.

Typically, when a politician gets compared to the late Sen. Joe McCarthy it’s not a compliment. But in a new column for right-wing website WND, conservative radio host Barry Farber uses the analogy for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to make a point about how “brilliant” he is.

The column, titled “Why They’re After the Brilliant Ted Cruz,” examines the “other-wordly” reaction the Texas senator provokes. “When’s the last time a political figure drew such volcanic excoriation from left and right?” Farber writes. “Sen. Joe McCarthy drew it from the left. Sen. George McGovern drew it from the right. The hostility pattern that forms around Sen. Ted Cruz is rare, if not unique. It’s almost as if there’s a secret treaty among beltway insiders that deals with crowd-pleasing upstarts like Ted Cruz.”

As close as they are, the right has not yet hit bottom. I don’t think they’re going to fully realize how far they’ve drifted into Wingnuttia and away from mainstream America until they get demolished in 2016 by Hillary. That might be their wake-up call. Or maybe not.

___

The Ted Cruz source photograph is a Creative Commons licensed image from photographer Gage Skidmore.

The Joseph McCarthy source image is in the public domain.

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Related articles

• Mario Piperni on the Brilliant Ted Cruz (seniorsforademocraticsociety.wordpress.com)
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ZAPRUDERS SARAH PALIN

FIELD & STREAM ‘GUN NUTS’ COLUMNIST ZAPRUDERS SARAH PALIN

by REBECCA SCHOENKOPF

Poor Sarah Palin. She got fired from Fox (probably, why not) and doesn’t even have a reality show anymore. Since nobody in her family seems to have a job, ever, who is going to keep her in Taco Bell? And now the “Gun Nuts” columnists at Field & Stream are examining a three-year-old video from when she did have a reality show, and saying that Little Miss Authenticity is a nitwit loser phony who can’t even shoot large meese? WHAT THE FUCK, FIELD & STREAM.

Take it away, “Gun Nuts”!

In my previous post, I was surprised that no one defended John McCain against my accusation that he’s at least partly nuts, which probably means that he is at least partially nuts. Some of you, however, took umbrage at my interpretation of Sarah Palin botching the shooting of a caribou. I felt so poorly about this that I went back and re-viewed the tape (You can see it below. It runs about 3 ½ minutes) and it made me even more depressed than I was before.

Ms. Palin is an extremely inexperienced shooter.

First, she allows her dad and the guide, who are both apparently nitwits, to jabber at her continually throughout the performance, make suggestions, swap rifles when it turns out that the first one has a bum scope (!), and allow her to blaze away at a moving animal. […]

If nitwits are yammering at you, you tell them to shut the f**ck up because you can’t concentrate. No experienced shooter would put up with their nonsense. […]

Why, before the fatal shot was fired, did the editor of the film superimpose a bogus crosshair on the poor dopey caribou? Why do we not see Ms. Palin firing the rifle? Is it because she did not do the shooting?

Finally, look at the way she carries the rifle as the party walks up to the late lamented ungulate. No experienced shooter carries a rifle like this.

I have nothing in particular against Sarah Palin. But I do believe in watching politicians with a critical eye, especially if they try to palm themselves off as something they’re not. She undoubtedly hunts, and is undoubtedly is OK with guns, but to say that as a shooter she’s anything but a rank beginner is wishful thinking.

So happy Valentimes, Sarah Palin. We are sorry that even Field & Stream thinks you suck.

[FieldAndStream]

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The Tea Party and the John Birch Society: Two peas in a pod?

The Tea Party and the John Birch Society: Two peas in a pod?

Even JFK was branded as being a Communist sympathizer and a traitor or America by the John Birch Society

In the days and hours prior to his assassination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was the subject of an extremely vitriolic hate campaign organized by the Dallas based American Fact Finding Committee. That group, an extremist right wing outfit with ties to the John Birch Society, even went so far as to sponsor a full page ad entitled “Welcome Mr. President” in the Morning News (Dallas paper) on the day of his assassination. The ad expressed hostility to Kennedy and his administration’s policies. Also distributed during that time were pamphlets and posters designed to resemble FBI wanted posters, with Kennedy displayed as the criminal in question.

The portrait of Kennedy is above the red printed words “Wanted For Treason.” Below that are listed Kennedy’s seven treasonous “crimes” against the people of United States. The reverse features the same exact photos of Kennedy and is printed in Spanish. The poster displays normal folds, minor toning, a few staple holes and some tape reinforcement on the reverse (Spanish side) fold lines.

The image the JBS would like to project to the unknowing

The “Children of Corn” – How the JBS and the Tea Partiers have morphed into one body

A Supreme Court Justice was attacked by the JBS for ruling for the Civil Rights amendment

Martin Luther King Jr. was branded as being a Communist by the John Birch Society

The oh so obvious contradictions of the Tea Party. Selective Memory?

The Tea Party fringe groups who aren’t fearful of a violent confrontation with the government

Sarah Palin: Queen of the Tea Partiers?

The Tea Party doing what they do best…which is what again? Oh…spreading fear

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Palin: Obama Seems To Want To Go Back To The Days Of Slavery

by Liz Colville

[Media Matters]

201203080019

Sarah Palin went on Heinity on Thursday to do some sort of to-the-core-of-the-earth analysis of something Obama-related, god knows what, but perhaps hugs? (Hannity describes it as a “sort of bit of information,” which is the closest any conservative has come to admitting how flea-sized this incident is.) And the gist was Sean Hannity asking Palin what all “this” “means.” Something something, Obama’s hug of a guy, “class warfare” and attempts to help the broke suggest that the president is “bringing us back” to the era in which blacks were considered to be 3/5 of a person. It’s true, this — wanting equality, supporting others who do — is a true replica of slavery, you can’t even tell the two apart.

Some of the exchange:

Hannity: Bleebloopityblahblah?

Palin: He is bringing us back, Sean, to days, uh — you can harken back to days before the Civil War when unfortunately too many Americans mistakenly believed that not all men were created equal.

What a thing. What a day. Palin goes on to say (WARNING: CRAP ENGLISH FOLLOWS):

Palin: And it was the Civil War that began the codification of the truth that here in America, yes we are equal, and we all have equal opportunities, not based on the color of your skin. You have equal opportunity to work hard and to succeed and to embrace the opportunities, god-given opportunities to develop resources, to work extremely hard, and to, as I say, to succeed. Now, it has taken all these years for many Americans to understand that — that gravity, that mistake took place before the Civil War, and why the Civil War, had to really start changing America. What Barack Obama seems to want to do is go back to before those days when we were in different classes based on income, based on color of skin. Why are we allowing our country to move backwards instead of moving forward –

Hannity: Whu–

Palin: — with that understanding that as our charters of liberty spell out for us, that we are all created equally.

Incuriouser and incuriouser! Whatever could this white lady be talking about? That welfare encourages people historically deprived of opportunities to continue to not have them? That rich people are more sensitive than others and poor people should be considerate of that? That health care saves people’s teeth from falling out, which causes them to be too elitist? Please let us know, if you know. [Media Matters]

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Right Wing Watch | Sarah Palin Neo-Confederate Racist Cheerleader

Obama Campaign Ad: Sarah Palin and the Far Right

“Back to the days before the Civil War”

An official Obama campaign ad directly confronts the ugly race-baiting of Sarah Palin, who claimed yesterday that the President wants to “bring us back to the days before the Civil War.”

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Palin Might Run For President Because Of Raging Non-Limbaugh Misogynists

Bird Brain Sarah Palin Might Run For President Because Of Raging Non-Limbaugh Misogynists

Thanks to:- Liz Colville

Sarah Palin went on — or should we say, was transmitted through someone’s phone-toy in the direction of — CNN during Tuesday’s Super Snoozeday parade, and proclaimed that who knows whether she’ll run for president today, tomorrow, or after the Mayan apocalypse, but anything is possible because Americans can do anything they put their minds to, emphasis on “minds” and excluding jobs. Later on, while Romney was disappointing America, CNN spent a good portion of the long process of cell degeneration we call life talking about Palin some more, with what little comprehensible English was made available by her mouth yesterday. Conclusion: Sarah Palin is an alive person. Plus, hates misogynists as long as they are liberal.

Seeing as Election 2012 is like a very long airplane ride from which there is no escape and very poor in-flight entertainment or food, we may as well delve into this one-inch-deep story, as we delve into movies like “What’s Your Number?” or “The Help” when they are the only ones Delta is allowing us to see tinily through our dehydrated Brut goggles.

Disregarding the fact that if nobody asked Sarah Palin if she’ll run for president, she probably never would (trees falling in forests and all that), Palin Tuesday responded to CNN’s deeply unoriginal question by saying:

As I say, anything is possible. And I don’t close any doors that perhaps would be open out there. So, no, I wouldn’t close that door. And my plan is to be at that convention.

Here’s a video, with Sarah looking very mineral powdery and happy-angry.

The subplot of this family fun is that Sarah Palin was not excited about Barack Obama pandering to tears with his “I made a phone call to Sandra Fluke” comment. Mr. Man said he felt for Fluke re: Limbaugh because he has daughters or something. So Palin released a statement telling Obama to return the money that Bill Maher (a “rabid misogynist,” according to Palin, because he once called her a “c—,” which, yes, that was too bad) donated to one of Obama’s super PACs to the tune of one million dollars. Anyway, linking to FOX NOOSE for this only to show everybody that the Fox website has been redesigned to look like the Constitution.

Palin closed out the iPhone clip with these words, directed at CNN, which sum up everything nicely:

I APPRECIATE U. [Houston Chronicle/Fox News]

Related articles

• Shocker: Sarah Palin defends Rush Limbaugh’s slut crusade (dailykos.com)
• So yeah … CNN just took a huge piece of Sarah Palin bait, and… (shortformblog.com)
• Sarah Palin Defends Rush Limbaugh, Says Apology Was Unnecessary [Video] (jezebel.com)
• Sarah Palin’s Word Salad of the Day: Apologizing for Limbaugh (littlegreenfootballs.com)
• Sarah Palin ‘Not Closing Door’ to Becoming Nominee – She defends Limbaugh, refused to reveal her pick (tribuneofthepeople.com)

Polling Shows Romney With Big Lead in Florida

Polling Shows Romney With Big Lead in Florida

Newt cratering

Nate Silver is now projecting mega-millionaire Mitt Romney to win the Florida GOP primary; Newt Gingrich’s surge has evaporated.

Is it another case of the dreaded Sarah Palin Kiss of Death?

Related articles

• Consensus of Polls: It’s Romney in Tuesday’s Florida Republican Primary (themoderatevoice.com)
• Newt Gingrich Insists He’s ‘Pulling Away’ From Mitt Romney In National Polls (huffingtonpost.com)
• More Polls Give Romney the Lead in Florida (politicalwire.com)
• NBC/Marist Poll: Romney Up 15 Points Over Gingrich (themoderatevoice.com)
• Romney Headed for Big Win in Florida (politicalwire.com)
• Romney Holds A Strong Lead As Florida Heads To Final Days (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Mitt Romney takes double-digit lead in Florida poll (boston.com)
• Romney’s Lead in Florida Looks Insurmountable (politicalwire.com)

Man Whore Endorses Male Harlot | The Cain-Gingrich Endorsement

The Republican “family values” team of liars, cheats, philanderers, crooks, adulterers and whores are joining forces to save America from moral decline. Praised be Jebus!

The Cain-Gingrich Endorsement

The loonier far right celebrities are lining up to show their support for Newt Gingrich — Chuck Norris, Sarah Palin, and now Mr. 999, Herman Cain.

WEST PALM BEACH — Herman Cain will be a surprise guest at tonight’s Lincoln Day Dinner at the Kravis Center to endorse Newt Gingrich, the Palm Beach Post has confirmed.

Related articles

• The Cain-Gingrich Endorsement (littlegreenfootballs.com)
• How Appropriate: Herman Cain Endorses Newt Gingrich (skydancingblog.com)
• Dumb & Dumber joins Gingrich’s bandwagon (imtellin.wordpress.com)

Sarah Palin an Ugly Woman; Exposed by John Stewart

Right Wing fruitcake Sean Hannity attempted to elevate poor persecuted Sarah from bullied school into a saint Joan of Arc martyr effigy!

You would think these pair of hypocritical liars and loons were beyond parody; but John Stewart proves that wrong!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Petty Woman – The Daily Show with Jon Stewart –…, posted with vodpod

 

Veteran Wounded in Tucson Shootings Blames Palin, Beck, and Angle

LGF reports:-

Veteran Wounded in Tucson Shootings Blames Palin, Beck, and Angle

US News

Eric Fuller, the 63-year old veteran shot twice last Saturday in the attack that critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, said today that he blames the violent rhetoric of people like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Sharron Angle.

“It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target,” Eric Fuller said in an interview with Democracy NOW.

“Their wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled — senseless hatred leading to murder, lunatic fringe anarchism, subscribed to by John Boehner, mainstream rebels with vengeance for all, even 9-year-old girls.”

Now watch as Andrew Breitbart, Jim Hoft, and the rest of the right wing blogosphere go into overdrive to smear Mr. Fuller.

Related Articles

• Tucson Survivor Blames Shooting On Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Sharron Angle (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• “How many other demented people are out there? It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target.” (althouse.blogspot.com)
• Tucson survivor: ‘It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target’ (crooksandliars.com)
• Tucson Shooting Survivor: “It Looks Like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the Rest Got Their First Target” (democracynow.org)

The Wrath of Fools: An Open Letter to the Far Right

The Wrath of Fools: An Open Letter to the Far Right

Monday 10 January 2011

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)

To:       Palin-lovers, Fox “News,” the “mainstream” media, and the Far Right, et al.

From: William Rivers Pitt

Date:   Monday 10 January 2011

Re:       The blood on your hands

Dear “Patriots,”

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords isn’t much older than I am. She served in the Arizona State House of Representatives, and the Arizona State Senate, before being elected to three successive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. She once described herself as a “former Republican,” and is today considered a “Blue Dog” Democrat, meaning she holds a number of conservative political positions. This is not terribly surprising, given the generally conservative political bent of the state she has served for the last ten years. She was married four years ago to a space shuttle commander who had served as a Naval aviator, and who flew 39 combat missions in Desert Storm, before volunteering for astronaut training.

Last Wednesday, she was sworn in to her third term as the Representative for Arizona’s 8th congressional district. One of her first acts in the newly-minted 112th Congress was to read aloud from the House floor, in response to the Republican Party’s recitation of the Constitution, the following lines: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

She returned to Arizona not long after to assist in the implementation of that most vital of Constitutional principles, calling together a meeting of her constituents in a peaceable assembly so the citizens she represents could petition the government for a redress of grievances. Among the gathered crowd were a number of her staffers, a judge, and a nine-year-old girl named Christina-Taylor Green who was born on September 11, 2001.

And then all Hell broke loose.

A man named Jared Lee Loughner waded into the group and fired a bullet into Rep. Giffords’ skull at point-blank range, before turning his weapon on others in the crowd. Christina-Taylor Greene, who would have celebrated her tenth birthday on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, was shot in the chest and killed. The woman who brought her to the event was also shot. Gabriel Zimmerman, who served as Rep. Giffords’ director of community outreach, was also killed. He was 30 years old, and was recently engaged to be married. U.S. District Judge John Roll, who had served on the bench for twenty years, was also killed. Dorwin Stoddard, a church volunteer, died after putting his body between his wife and the hail of bullets. His wife was also shot. Two of Rep. Giffords’ constituents, Dorothy Morris and Phyllis Scheck, were also killed. All in all, 31 shots were fired before several brave souls tackled Loughner, disarmed him, and wrestled him to the ground.

At the time of this writing, Rep. Giffords is lying in a hospital bed in critical condition. The God you Bible-spewing frauds love to flog the rest of us with must have been in that supermarket crowd with her on Saturday, with His hand on her shoulder, because it is nothing short of a full-fledged miracle she survived at all. Doctors are actually cautiously optimistic that she will survive, though the degree to which she will ultimately recover is still sorely in doubt. She can respond to simple commands, according to her doctors, and is marginally able to communicate. If she survives her wound, it is wretchedly certain her life will never, ever be the same.

I just thought you should know a few things about the people you helped into their graves and hospital beds this weekend.

Yes, you.

You false patriots who bring assault rifles to political rallies, you hack politicians and media personalities who lied through your stinking teeth about “death panels” and “Obama is coming for your guns” and “He isn’t a citizen” and “He’s a secret Muslim” and “Sharia Law is coming to America,” you who spread this bastard gospel and you who swallowed it whole, I am talking to you, because this was your doing just as surely as it was the doing of the deranged damned soul who pulled the trigger.  The poison you injected into our culture is deeply culpable for this carnage.

You who worship Jesus at the top of your lungs (in defiance of Christ’s own teachings on the matter of worship, by the way) helped put several churchgoers into their graves and into the hospital. You who shriek about the sanctity of marriage helped cut down a man who was about to be married. You who crow with ceaseless abandon about military service and the nobility of our fighting forces helped to critically wound the wife of a Naval aviator who fought for you in a war. You who hold September 11 as your sword and shield helped put a little girl born on that day into the ground.

You helped. Yes, damn you, you helped.

The “mainstream” media is already working overtime playing up the “Disturbed loner” angle with all their might. There is no doubt, from the available evidence, of Mr. Loughner’s transformation into a disturbed individual. But here’s the funny part: all the crazy crap he spewed, about the gold standard (a favorite of Glenn Beck, the master of Fox “News” fearmongering…so he can sell his gold scam to suckers) and government mind control and everything else before going on his rampage, is straight out of the Right-Wing Insanity Handbook. His personal YouTube ramblings were a mishmash of right-wing anti-government nonsense…the kind that attracts sick minds like Loughner, the kind that only reinforces their paranoia, the kind that finally pushes them over the brink and into the frenzy of violence that took place on Saturday.  The kind that the likes of you have been happily spreading by the day.

He did not act alone. You were right there with him. You helped.

I’m talking to you, “mainstream” media people, who created this atmosphere of desperate rage and total paranoia out of whole cloth because of your unstoppable adoration for spectacle, and ratings, and because the companies that own your sorry asses agree with the deranged cretins you helped make so famous and powerful. It was sickeningly amusing on Sunday to watch Wolf Blitzer bluster and bluff on CNN about how the media owns no responsibility for this disaster. It was like watching a ten-year-old try to explain how a lamp got broken while he was running through the living room, but no, it wasn’t him. It was, in reality, a pathetic display…but that is what you generally get whenever Wolf is on your screen.

“Mainstream” news personalities like David Gergen and John King bent over backwards warning people not to blame Sarah Palin and her ilk for this calamity.  It was a sick man who did this, they said. Bollocks to that.  I hate to break this to the “mainstream” media know-betters, but words matter.  When people like Palin spray the airwaves with calls to violence and incantations of imminent doom, people like Loughner are listening, and prepared to act. The “mainstream” media lets it fly without any questions or rebuttal, because it’s good for ratings, and here we are. Words matter. Play Russian Roulette long enough, and someone inevitably winds up dead.

Remember the run-up to the Iraq invasion, and the subsequent occupation? “WMD everywhere, al Qaeda connections to 9/11, plastic sheeting and duct tape because we’re all gonna die!” was the central theme of the majority of your broadcast schedule for years…until it was all proven to be a lie.  You helped the liars, you were the liars, but you knew that.  You also got your spectacle, and the corporations that own you got paid a king’s ransom, so everyone was happy, except the dead.

Tell me this is any different, I dare you.  For the spectacle, the ratings and the pleasure of your owners, you ran names like “Sarah Palin” across the sky in lights, even after she should have faded into well-deserved obscurity, and helped this blister of right-wing rage fester until it finally burst. This was your show, and in perhaps the most wretched irony of all, I would bet all my worldly possessions that your ratings are through the roof right now. You got what you wanted.  I hope you are pleased.

And yes, I’m talking to you, Sarah Palin, you unutterably disgusting fraud. You pulled it off your ridiculous website, but it’s out there: you put cross-hairs – literally, cross-hairs – on Rep. Giffords, you blithered about “reloading” instead of “retreating,” and you made this country more stupid and violent with every breath you took. Well, congratulations, you failure, you quitter, you inciter of mobs. You put the cross-hairs on her, and someone finally pulled the trigger. Run from it all you like, Lady MacBeth, but this blood will never be washed from your hands.

I’m talking to you, Sharron Angle, you walking punch-line, who talked about “Second Amendment remedies” being necessary if you didn’t get your way on health care reform during your failed Senate campaign.

I’m talking to you, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly, and Michael Savage, and Ann Coulter, and Laura Ingraham, and to every other right-wing tripe-spewing blowhard blogger and Fox News broadcaster. I hope you are proud of yourselves, because this is the day you get to reap what you have been relentlessly sowing since you were forced to encompass the unmitigated outrage of a Black man winning the office of President of the United States.

That’s right, I said it. Anyone who thinks good old-fashioned American bigotry and racism are not the core motivation for a vast majority of these so-called “revolutionaries” should get their heads examined. You’ve heard of the “elephant in the middle of the room?” Well, this is the burning cross in the middle of the room, and no amount of spin will douse those flames.

I’m talking to you, Koch Brothers. Your money to create and spread this disease was well-spent; you now have one less Democrat in the House to worry about, at least for the foreseeable future. Congratulations, you un-American sacks of filth.

And I’m talking to each and every one of you who listened to these traitors and believed the nonsense they spewed at you for no other reason than to pick your pockets for campaign/organization contributions. I’m talking to you who wore your silly fatigues and carried your badly-spelled fact-deprived signs to protests with pistols on your hips and rifles on your shoulders. You who threw bricks through the windows of politicians you disagreed with. You who shot out the windows of Rep. Giffords’ office not even a year ago.

You worked very hard to create exactly this atmosphere in America, and now it has come to be. We have entered the age of the Wrath of Fools, and we now must again exist in an America where the word “assassination” has become all too relevant.

You helped this happen. You.

You know it. I know it. Have the guts to admit it, even if only to yourselves.

I know many Republicans and conservatives, and consider them to be dear friends. The single most influential person in my life (aside from my mother) was a rock-ribbed conservative Republican, and there is no person I respected more than him. I do not count these people, and those like them, among those whom I address here. They are as sickened and repulsed by you as I am.

This is not the end of the story, but is just the beginning. The good people of the United States of America, the true patriots, have finally seen you with your media-painted masks ripped off. They have seen what comes to pass when hate, venom, ignorance and violence goes unchecked and unanswered. You have been exposed, and the fact that it took such an unimaginably horrific act for that exposure to take place only increases the fierceness with which you will be answered. You will be repudiated, not with violence, but with the scorn and rejection you so richly deserve.  Spin it as you will, scramble all you like. You are found out, and you have nowhere to hide.

Oh, P.S., if anyone reading this is operating under the delusion that the overheated right-wing rhetoric that went a long way towards almost getting Rep. Giffords killed, and had a strong hand in putting six people in the ground, is some sort of new Obama-era phenomenon, well…

“I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus – living fossils – so we will never forget what these people stood for.”

– Rush Limbaugh, Denver Post, 12-29-95

“Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him.”

– Rep. James Hansen (R-UT), talking about President Clinton

“We’re going to keep building the party until we’re hunting Democrats with dogs.”

– Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), Mother Jones, 08-95

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.”

– Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02

“We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.”

– Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 02-26-02

“Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past – I’m not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble – recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin’s penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an ‘enemy of the people.’ The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, ‘clan liability.’ In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished ‘to the ninth degree’: that is, everyone in the offender’s own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed.”

– John Derbyshire, National Review, 02-15-01

“Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation. Every problem that has arisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God’s Law and the disenfranchisement of White men.”

– State Rep. Don Davis (R-NC), emailed to every member of the North Carolina House and Senate, reported by the Fayetteville Observer, 08-22-01

I could go on, and on, and on, and on, but you get the gist.

Most Disrespectfully Yours,
William Rivers Pitt

The Becking of Gabrielle Giffords

At Talk to Action, the veteran watcher of white supremacist and anti-semitic groups Chip Berlet writes, The Becking of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. An excerpt:

From a moral viewpoint Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is the victim of demagogues such as Glenn Beck and his allies at Fox News and in the Tea Party Movement. This is not about legal liability but about moral culpability. This is about a nation that has lost its moral compass.Some of us progressive writers have been warning about this dangerous trend for several years. This includes my colleagues Fred Clarkson, David Neiwert, Sara Robinson, John Amato, Adele Stan, and others. We blame right-wing demagogues like Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter and a culture that tolerates their vicious targeting of scapegoats.  Now the shootings have created a new word floating across cyberspace: “becking.” To be “becked” is to be held up as such an evil and destructive person that someone, somewhere, will interpret it as a call to eliminate that problem through violence. I made similar assertions after the murder of Dr. Tiller in a post at Religion Dispatches, “Who Will Rid Me of This Troublesome Doctor?”: Bill O’Reilly, King Henry II, and George Tiller” Here is what I wrote then: On the day Dr. Tiller died, May 31, 2009, Gabrielle Winant on Salon traced O’Reilly’s relentless campaign against the murdered doctor. Winant wrote that some of O’Reilly’s characterizations of Tiller replicated “ancient conservative, paranoid stories: a decadent, permissive and callous elite tolerates moral monstrosities that every common-sense citizen just knows to be awful. Conspiring against our folk wisdom, O’Reilly says, the sophisticates have shielded Tiller from the appropriate, legal consequences for his deeds.” So, concludes Winant: “O’Reilly didn’t tell anyone to do anything violent, but he did put Tiller in the public eye, and help make him the focus of a movement with a history of violence against exactly these kinds of targets.” The analysts at Media Matters for America have been forcefully arguing the case against the “Emerging Culture of Paranoia” and the role of “Right-Wing Media” in fostering a toxic climate in which violence is more likely. Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert, who suggested after the Tiller murder that “O’Reilly and Fox News will have more right-wing vigilantism to explain,” selected some of O’Reilly’s most egregious statements demonizing Dr. Tiller. … Hannah Arendt described the process of demagoguery leading to violence as it occurs in totalitarian regimes ranging from Hitler to Stalin. The demagogue frames the target, but leaves off a direct call for violence. But the message is clear. Unstable people often act first. Political ideologues, however, can be mobilized as the process continues to act as a group. Sara Robinson and I have been tracking the number of political murders since the inauguration of President Barack Obama. [See link below]. The people who “becked” Rep. Gabrielle Giffords began with a premise of dualism or Manicheaism, and then constructed a frame that uses demonization, scapegoating, and conspiracism to divide the world into a good ‘us’ and a bad ‘them’. … Following the shooting of Rep. Giffords we once again heard calls for civility and pundits pointing out that hateful rhetoric is aimed at Republicans and conservatives by Democrats and their lefty allies. This is true, and I do object to liberals who hurl buckets of mud as we on the left are being buried in an avalanche of shit from right-wing demagogues with national television and radio programs, websites, and newspaper columns. The comparison is true in the manipulated facts yet false in the claim of equivalence. Peter Daou writes about the bogus equivalency between right/left extremism in his post Gabriel Giffords and the rightwing hate machine.”The targeting of political scapegoats in our nation today is overwhelmingly coming from the Political Right. To claim otherwise is a lie easily debunked by even a modicum of research. A big lie. … We who must speak out are not faced with death here in our nation this week. We are faced with our visage in a moral mirror looking back at our conscience which is telling us that we must speak out against the crescendo of totalitarian demagoguery. We must oppose the becking of our society. How many more must die before we wake up and put a stop to this terrible trend?

^{Another important read on this subject is the 18-month-old Tragedy At The Holocaust Museum: Stand Up To Terrorism by Sara Robinson.}

^{See also Marta Evry’s The “Becking” Of America: How Right-Wing Media and Politicians Incite Violence at Venice for Change.}

Ever-Rising Right Wing Extremism & Terrorisim

Right Wing Terrorism on the Rise!!!

ARE THEY SERIOUS????? 

Jared Lee Loughner shot and wounded United States Congsswoman Gabrielle Giffords and twelve others and killed Federal Judge John McCarthy Roll and six others outside a Safeway in Tucson early Saturday, January Eighth, 2011.

Giffords had beaten the teabagger candidate, Jesse Kelly, to win her third term as a representative. Gabrielle Giffords’ office was also vandalized in March, just after health care reform was approved. Why is this important? Last March, Mike Vanderboegh boasted about his call to throw bricks through the local offices of representatives who voted for Health Care Reform. This message struck such a chord that he was invited to speak at the Open Carry rally in April. He’s trying to backpedal now, making the patently ridiculous claim that his call to violence was actually an action against this type of violence, but he’s trying to shove toothpaste back into the tube.

Giffords was also the member of Congress who read the First Amendment during the reading of the Constitution this past Thursday. Fate is not without a sense of irony.

Victim 9 yr old Christina Taylor Greene 

Judge Roll was the target of a barrage of death threats in 2009, after he had ruled that a group of illegal immigrants could proceed with a multi-million dollar civil rights lawsuit against a state rancher. Gabe Zimmerman, Giffords’ aide and a nine-year old child who had recently been elected president of her school’s student council were also amongst the dead.

Loughner’s Youtube rants are–at best– incoherent and rambling; they display some of the same rudderless and agitated rhetoric that typified early missives from Francis E. Dec, who was suffering from a degenerating form of paranoid schizophrenia. He also posted a similarly rambling screed online, which can be read here.

Loughner apparently retains enough of his mental capabilities to invoke his right against self-incrimination, so we must wait for word on his motivations before we discover if he is “just another kook” or a symptom of something deeper. It is, however, not too much of a stretch to observe the connection between Loughner’s acts and the pathology of violence than infects the right wing.

This is a fine place to reprint a common sentiment around the ‘net today: If all muslims are branded as terrorists due to the acts of a tiny minority, why is it when white conservatives repeatedly do it, it’s just the act of lone nuts?

Right Wing Crap Merchants Push “Super Death Panel” Myth

Submitted by Brian on December 30, 2010 – 9:52am

After The New York Times reported that the new health care reform law will cover “voluntary advance care planning” as a reimbursable Medicare service, the Obama Administration immediately feared pushback from right-wing opponents of reform. Anti-reform politicians and activists jumped on a widely-discredited and disputed article by former New York Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey, who predicted that the reform bill will lead to government control over end-of-life decisions.

Republicans pounced on the false claim, as Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) declared that the country “should not have a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma” and House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) warned that the “provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia.” Most famously, Sarah Palin wrote on Facebook that her “baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide” if he is “worthy of health care.” The New York Times said that “Ms. McCaughey has been the hammer to Ms. Palin’s nail” as the two “have driven some of the most disturbing, and distorted, claims about the proposals.”

Not only is the service voluntary, but Medscape Medical News reports that since January 1, 2009, “Medicare has been paying for [end-of-life care plans] in a limited fashion — and with little if any protest,” and the American Academy Family of Physicians and American College of Physicians applauded the move as a way to “tailor care” for each patient.

Conservatives though are already decrying the decision as the return of the death panels. Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel condemned what he called “a super death panel” that will put “pressure on the elderly to end their lives prematurely” by targeting senior citizens:

When you have the government mandating this end-of-life counseling, they’re conscripting doctors to do end-of-life counseling on a massive scale. It will be the equivalent of a super death panel. Elderly patients will get confused and will end up signing documents without having a clue what they’re signing, and they will sign away care they might really want.

Spokesmen from other Religious Right groups, including the American Life League, Concerned Women For America, and Operation Rescue, also denounced the purported “death panels”:

“Nothing good can come of this,” said Judie Brown, the president of American Life League. “This will affect everybody’s parents and grandparents and preborn babies, and it will not affect anybody for the good.”

Congress must step up to cancel the regulation, Brown added. “If not, a death certificate is written for an awful lot of elderly people.”

“Those of us who voted in common-sense representatives to take control of the House will be expecting to see reversals of regulations like these that run roughshod over the will of the American people,” said Dr. Janice Crouse, director of the Beverly LaHaye Institute at Concerned Women for America.

…

Operation Rescue President Troy Newman called the Obama approach “Darwinist,” and predicted it would lead to rationing of health care.

“When you have a fixed amount of money that is allocated to health care, it’s only logical that some bureaucrat will regulate it and decide who will get treatment,” Newman told WND. “That treatment will be based on some humanist, egalitarian principle that these bureaucrats always seem to hold. Their principles are Darwinist, survival of the fittest.

“My grandmother is 94 years old,” Newman continued. “Suppose she breaks her hip. Are they really going to authorize that expense over a 16-year-old who has urgent needs? It was Obama who said maybe Grandma should take a pill rather than get this expensive treatment.”

…

“Having just returned from the funeral of a dear lady – widow of a Navy man, both buried at Arlington National Cemetery – I couldn’t be more repulsed by the idea of government-controlled death panels that will make end-of-life decisions for the most vulnerable of our citizens,” Crouse added.

Conservative columnist Cal Thomas uses Charles Dickens to blast the move, and claims that it redeems Sarah Palin:

Sarah Palin deserves an apology. When she said that the new health-care law would lead to “death panels” deciding who gets life-saving treatment and who does not, she was roundly denounced and ridiculed.

…

Do you see where this leads? First the prohibition against abortion is removed and “doctors” now perform them. Then the assault on the infirm and elderly begins. Once the definition of human life changes, all human lives become potentially expendable if they don’t measure up to constantly “evolving” government standards.

It will all be dressed up with the best possible motives behind it and sold to the public as the ultimate benefit. The killings, uh, terminations, will take place out of sight so as not to disturb the masses who might have a few embers of a past morality still burning in their souls. People will sign documents testifying to their desire to die, and the government will see it as a means of “reducing the surplus population,” to quote Charles Dickens.

Crackpot Krauthammer Says ‘Liberals Are Obsessed with Palin’

One of the saddest falls from sanity has been Charles Krauthammer’s. Of all the conservative pundits, he was frequently one of the most rational, back in the day, but now he’s completely controlled by the Obama Derangement Syndrome that has subsumed the entire right wing like a vampiric virus.

Here’s one of the silliest points he’s made yet, as he bashes the “liberal media” for being “obsessed with Sarah Palin,” at the same time as he works as an analyst for Fox News — where it’s all Sarah Palin, all the time — and as Palin puts herself and family in front of the cameras at every opportunity.

Krauthammer’s frustration probably stems from the fact that he doesn’t have much respect for Sarah Palin, and the last thing he wants is for her to run for President. But I predict that when she does, Krauthammer’s going to jump right on board and sing her praises like every other right wing pundit.

Palin’s PAC Tied to Islamophobic Dutch Writer

Mother Jones magazine reports on an “incendiary Dutch journalist” named Joshua Livestro who is apparently working on Sarah Palin’s political action committee (emphasis mine):

Not surprisingly, Livestro’s views skew to the right. He helped to found the Edmund Burke Foundation, a right-wing Dutch think tank created to push back against progressive politics in the Netherlands. In one manifesto, citing the number of Muslims in the Netherlands, the foundation warned of ethnic conflict and said the country’s borders should be closed. In the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland, Livestro once wrote that the gruesome photos depicting detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib resembled little more than an out-of-control frat party; he complained that Abu Ghraib critics were “cry-babies” exaggerating the episode’s signficiance. On his blog, Livestro similarly quipped that the CIA’s torture techniques—with the exception of waterboarding—were milder than the hazing methods of fraternities.

Livestro founded the Edmund Burke Foundation along with a fellow Dutch journalist named Bart Jan Spruyt, who went on to advise the virulently Islamophobic Dutch politician Geert Wilders.  Spruyt accompanied Wilders on a trip to the United States in 2005, the purpose being for Wilders to publicize here “what is happening to his country because of the rise of radical Islam and why he is promoting a moratorium on non-western immigration.”  (Spruyt has now distanced himself from Wilders.)

It’s no surprise that Palin would be tied to an anti-Muslim Dutch writer.  Palin has stoked bigotry against Muslims herself, from referring to the president as Barack Hussein Obama to calling on “peaceful Muslims” to “refudiate” the “Ground Zero mosque” to defending Franklin Graham, who once called Islam a “very evil and wicked religion.”  She’s also the hero of the Tea Party, a right-wing movement that’s no stranger to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment.

Race and religion-baiting of President Obama and Muslims will be par for the course if/when Palin runs for president in 2012.