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Sunday, March 30, 2014

8 Appalling Moments by the Right Wing This Week: Gay Marriage Wedding Cakes Edition

Known unknown: Donald Rumsfeld should be replaced by a trained ape.

The parade of right-wing morons and lunatics marched on this week. Some highlights:

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

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

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

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

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

Hmm, no racism there.

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

2. Pat Robertson: Rape causes atheism.

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

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

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

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

Eureka! Case closed.

“Just pray for that anointing,” Pat concluded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

h/t: rightwingwatch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So there, you meanie lady!

6. Michele Bachmann: Birth control equals “killer drugs.”

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

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

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

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

For more of Bachmann"s lunacy, click here.

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

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

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

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

Ergo, no healthcare coverage for them!

h/t: tpm

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

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

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

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

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

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

h/t: mediamatters

Sunday, November 3, 2013

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.

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 hitjob 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.

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.