Ed Brayton's Sideshow

I don’t know what the hell happened today, but Ed Brayton has a whole circus worth of freaks. Step right up and enjoy the dumbfuckery.

Gaze upon the frothing funditude of Kimberlie Struiksma, who if successful will give me something to laugh my arse off at come next election day:

Some wingnut named Kimberlie Struiksma in Washington has proposed an initiative to be voted on by referendum in that state. The initiative, which is a new version of one offered previously, is called the Washington State Defense of Liberty and the Existence of a Higher Power Act.

[snip]

Under this bizarre proposal, the state could not pay the salary of any university professor who is an atheist and says so. Somewhere Chris Buttars is smiling.

Ed has excerpts. Enjoy perusing – this is one we probably won’t see make it onto the ballot.

The next exhibit will have you doubled over with mirth:

The Worldnutdaily is all giddy because a bunch of wingnuts in Georgia got together and formed a “grand jury” to indict President Obama. Seriously.

He’s been in office just over two months, and these fucktards have already completely lost their minds. I’d call them nutsacks, but that would be an insult to good scrotums everywhere.

Ed’s final exhibit is a truly awe-inspiring demonstration of incredible idiocy:

Imagine how crazy you have to be to think that Ann Coulter is too liberal. No, don’t imagine it. Read it. A group of religious right radio talk show hosts has put up a webpage blasting Coulter for her endorsement of Mitt Romney, both because he supported abortion and because he’s a Mormon.

Ann Coulter. Too liberal. And this is not a Poe, prank, or parody. Daaammnn, that’s some high-grade wingnuttery.

Yes, my darlings, you are correct: this was indeed a collection of freaks that make the most magnificent mutants of carnival fame look utterly ordinary in comparison.

Ed Brayton's Sideshow
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Right-Wingers Don't Speak French

Je parle un peu du Français, très mal. Still, it’s enough to recognize when Red State’s brightest bulb’s making an utter imbécile of himself:

I know that Erick Erickson is very rarely wrong, but check this out:

Obama Hacks Off France In Latest Foreign Policy Blunder

Someone forgot to tell Barack Obama that Jacque Chirac is no longer the President of France.

Obama, y’see, wrote a letter to former French president Jacques Chirac. A French newspaper wrote about it. Erick, being a red-blooded Amurkin, can’t speak French. Hilarity ensues, especially when one of his own commenters spanks him for being un enfant terrible:

Before you go any further with this…
nod90 Sunday, March 22nd at 11:19PM EDT (link)
…you need a good French to English translation of the original article from Le Figaro. I ran it through Google Translate (I’m not claiming this is a good translation) and this is what I got:

Barack Obama wrote to Jacques Chirac

The U.S. President has just sent a letter “very sympathetic” to Jacques Chirac, in the words of the latter. “I am confident that we can over the next four years working together in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world,” writes the successor to George W. Bush’s predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy. In mentioning the word “peace,” Obama makes implicit tribute to the action of the former French president who opposed the war in Iraq. A U.S. intervention against which the future U.S. president had opposed as a senator, in a vote in Congress.

Some of the comments on the article say that Obama sent the letter to the Chirac Foundation as a reply to a letter that he recieved from them. For example:

Two birds with one stone?
21/03/2009 at 16:08

In writing to the Foundation Chirac, Obama may have had two objectives in mind: to allow the future by keeping open the option to use the services of the former president, who, like himself, had opposed the war in Iraq, ………

Apologies to Erick if you have already checked this out, but I just want to be sure that Redstate isn’t getting hold of the wrong end of the stick.

He’s not only got hold of the wrong end of the stick, he’s running with it. And all because he can’t read French. Here’s what the pertinent bit says when translated by a human (moi):

…writes George Bush’s successor to the predecessor of Nicolas Sarkozy. [écrit le successeur de George W. Bush au prédécesseur de Nicolas Sarkozy.]

Rather seems like everyone’s aware who’s current and who’s former, doesn’t it?

This, my darlings, is why American schoolchildren should be taught a second language, évidemment!

Right-Wingers Don't Speak French

Webster's Dictionary? That Damned Liberal Rag!

Page Bernard Goldberg! Evidence the dictionary’s “written by some liberal person!” They’re changing the definition of marriage – civilization will end!

Conservatives have their tidy whiteys all twisted because (ZOMG) the nation’s most popular dictionary updated the definition of marriage. Guess what, language gets updated all the time, that’s why there are new editions of dictionaries. *facepalm jpg*

Merriam Webster added a new definition of marriage in 2003

the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage

but as Andrew Sullivan points out, conservatives seem to have just noticed it. One guy got so upset about the “homosexual agenda” he made a video about it (above).

Two things, here. It took them six years to crack open a dictionary and discover this “outrage.” That’s fucking pathetic even by wingnut standards. And that video’s as pathetic as they are. They’d better pretend it’s a Poe.

How long do you think it’ll be before some absolute idiot in Congress or a state legislature tries to push a bill defending marriage against dictionaries?

Webster's Dictionary? That Damned Liberal Rag!

Distractions for the Easily Distracted

Some people really need therapy:

I just heard some jerk on the radio making fun of the Obamas for growing a kitchen garden at the White House and complaining that doing it is a “distraction” from fixing the financial crisis. I’m not kidding. Charlie Cook on Hardball explained today that it is some kind of cynical, political outreach “to the gardeners.” Still not kidding.

It’s a fucking garden. Criminy. And who the fuck assumes that, because Michelle Obama’s planting a garden with the help of a lot of kids and folks who keep the White House in good repair, President Obama’s somehow neglecting his duties? What sane person thinks a fucking vegetable garden is that much of a distraction?

I think “distraction” is their way of saying, “We hate everything any Democrat’s doing.” These shallow, pathetic little fuckwits want things to stay exactly the same as before, so they’re reaching for a bludgeon that might force the President to stop changing things. If his wife buys a new set of pillows next week, we shall surely be hearing about how that’s “distracting” them from fixing the financial crisis. And I’m sure it’ll be seen as icky political outreach to Bed, Bath and Beyond. Who knows what’ll happen if they decide on linens created from bamboo. That will probably prove a scandal on the order of getting blown by interns.

I’m pretty sure all of the people currently screaming about various and sundry distractions are deficient in the self-awareness department. If they weren’t, they’d surely notice that the only ones getting distracted are themselves.

Distractions for the Easily Distracted

Damn You, Socialists!

Steve Benen has this chart. I have taken the liberty of modifying it to reflect the opinions of certain of our more conservative lawmakers and “thinkers”:

John Cole posted this graph a few days ago. See that column on the far-right edge? That’s where Obama proposes the marginal top-rate should be.

It’s also the rate conservatives believe is so outrageous, that they’re accusing the president of “socialism” and talking openly about the “Going Galt” scenario in which wealthy and industrious Americans would deliberately make less money to spite their country.

It’s all quite silly, but the graph adds some helpful context to drive the point home.

Obama is proposing a top rate lower than Reagan’s first term, lower than Nixon’s, lower than Eisenhower’s, and lower than FDR’s when he pulled us out of the Great Depression.

So, really, try not to hyperventilate.

But they’re so expert at it….

Michael Lind’s Salon piece dovetails rather nicely with the above theme, and also makes superb use of the absurd:

Barack Obama’s bold, ambitious budget plan proves that he is the true heir of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Consider Obama’s Rooseveltian energy plan. In 1939, President Roosevelt decided to mobilize Americans to create a new source of energy: atomic power. Although he was urged to focus on government-funded R&D, FDR chose a different route. He wisely encouraged private capital to invest in atomic energy research by a variety of tax incentives. To make atomic power investment more palatable to private capital, FDR boldly chose to make all other forms of energy in the U.S. uneconomical, by slapping high taxes on kerosene and coal. With the money from the new federal Kerosene Cap and Trade system, President Roosevelt and Congress funded a small-scale federal research program, in the hope of attracting much greater private investment …

Wait. What’s that you say? FDR didn’t do that? He poured federal money into the all-public Manhattan Project and created the first atomic bomb in a couple of years? He didn’t tax kerosene to make it uneconomical and to encourage private investment in atomic power? […]

All right, then, forget FDR. He was a socialist, anyway. Let Dwight Eisenhower serve as a model for the Obama administration. President Eisenhower authorized the biggest infrastructure program in American history, when he signed the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956. The interstate highway act created an elaborate system of private tax incentives and public-private partnerships (PPPs) to encourage private corporations to build national highways. To begin with, all U.S. highways were leased to domestic and foreign corporations for a period of decades. Second, all U.S. highways were set up with toll booths, so that American drivers would be forced to repay the corporate owners of the national highways every few dozen miles. Finally, a system of high-speed lanes with higher tolls was created, so that the rich could whiz down the road while middle-class and poor Americans were stuck in traffic jams …

All right, what now, wise guy? So that’s wrong, too? Eisenhower’s national highway system wasn’t based on tolls, leases to foreign companies, income-based pricing, and tax credits for private corporations? It used gasoline taxes to fund free public highways?

Free highways without toll booths, owned by the public, paid for out of taxes? My God. So the John Birch Society was right after all. Dwight Eisenhower was as much of a socialist as Franklin Delano Roosevelt!

Digby follows up with this astute observation:

The point here is that conservatives have so demonized the concept of the public commons, particularly inside the Beltway, that what is now considered a bold and socialistic policy shift – raising the top marginal tax rates 3-4%, investing in infrastructure with a mix of public and private money, using an individual mandate to keep insurance companies in the health care game, cap and trade – is actually a pre-compromised, market-friendly, neoliberal jumble that fits squarely in the center of the ideological divide. And this is essentially why the Army of Galts screams about socialism, to force the debate further to the right from the center where it is now situated.

And how much will this horrific tax hike cost those poor, soaked rich folk? Digby did the math. I looked up the menu. And it turns out that they’ll be forced to pony up the equivalent of a grande latte at a New York Starbucks per day.

That’s right. Four bucks. That’s how much extra a person making $300,000 will be coughing up.

The poor, poor dears. Socialism is an awful burden to bear, innit?

Damn You, Socialists!

The Revolution's Been Postponed Due to Lack of Interest

Oh, look! Sad, pathetic people holding hands:

So, remember just last week when derivatives-trader-turned-working-man-populist Rick Santelli delivered his infamous rant about Obama’s housing and other economic plans? Remember when Andie Collier at Politico announced that Obama was in trouble because America was “a nation of Santellis” (presumably, good news for McCain)?

Remember all those “Chicago Tea Parties” Americans were supposed to participate in, taking out their righteous anger against Obama’s anti-American economic plans? It was supposed to the be first wave of Americans taking to the streets against socialism, the birth of the New Minutemen. Michelle Malkin insists there’s a growing tax revolt that “the MSM won’t cover.” It seems there was an army of angry citizens waiting to storm the barricades, holding “Obamination” signs and taking back the Republican Republic for sweet laissez-faire liberty.

Well, those were on for today. The protests received the assistance of numerous conservative organizations and their email lists, from The Heartland Institute to Americans for Tax Reform to the American Spectator, and were all scheduled to happen today, the 27th of February.

The results? Not so impressive.

Let’s see…The Pittsburgh party was canceled due to rain. A whopping 79 people showed up today in Jacksonville, FL. Looks like maybe over a dozen showed up in Asheville, NC. Almost 10 people made it to the Buffalo, NY, protest. About 100 people throughout all of Los Angeles came out to Santa Monica Pier. All of about 300 people made it out throughout the entirety of Atlanta. 250 made it out to Dallas for the tea party there. 150 in Lansing. Looks like about 100 went to watch the Joe the Plumber and Michelle Malkin teabag fest in D.C. (if you had to retch, it’s not my fault, just your dirty, dirty mind…)

The very best numbers these jokers managed to pull was 1,500 people in St. Louis (UPDATE: St. Louis wasn’t anywhere close to 1,500; it was more like 400 if that–delusional, pathetic FAIL), and somewhere between 500-1,000 in Chicago–if reports from the organizers are to be believed.

Perhaps most hilarious is the 250-person turnout in Houston which was said to be

pretty good turn-out considering the livestock show barbeque cook-off in Reliant Park was a competitor.

When the choice is between revolution and chargrilled cow, and people plump for the cow, you know the nation’s not quite ready to storm the White House just yet.

It’s also very hard to join a revolution when you’re laughing your ass off at the erstwhile revolutionaries (forgive me for filching the whole thing, Digby):

Courtesy of Dave Weigel, here’s the scene from today’s wingnut populist uprising in DC:

They really don’t know, do they?*

Apparently not.

If you’re not already on the floor in tears of mirth, prepare to be so:

Recently, I’ve come under editorial attack for my interest in the sexual practice known as teabagging. Before I address the specific calumnities tossed my way by jealous hacks, let me say that if a man enjoys lowering his scrotum into his partner’s mouth, and enjoys having his partner suck on one testicle, then the other, and then, if possible, both testicles at once, followed by a judicious application of the tongue to the base of the scrotum, sometimes accompanied by a gentle stroking of the penis, then I say that man should be granted his fun, and should be permitted to look for other teabag afficionados however and wherever he can. No one can disagree with me on that point.

So, uh, yeah. Thanks for the offer, my conservative countrymen, but I’ll pass.

The deeper irony here? Since conservatives consume so much more internet porn than liberals, there had to have been at least a few people at each gathering who knew exactly why those signs were an incredibly poor choice of slogan. And yet, due to the nature of conservative gatherings, those in the know wouldn’t have been able to say a damned word, lest they admit they’d been looking at dirty pictures and thus incur the wrath of their fellow hypocrites.

Awesome.

The Revolution's Been Postponed Due to Lack of Interest

Now They're On About Imaginary Mice…

I thought pathological lying and delusions were psychiatric disorders. Cons apparently see them as job requirements:

Is there really $30 million in the new stimulus package devoted to saving the salt marsh mouse in Nancy Pelosi’s district?

That’s what some conservatives are now charging, and the claim seems to be gaining some traction with elected GOP officials and conservative media outlets, who are using it to argue that the bill is stuffed with Dem pork.

But there isn’t any such money in the bill. And Pelosi’s office is saying that the claim is a “total fabrication.”

How did this one get going? Yesterday a House Republican leadership staffer circulated a background email, which I obtained, charging that GOP staffers had been told by an unnamed Federal agency that if it got money from the stim package, it would spend “thirty million dollars for wetland restoration in the San Francisco Bay Area — including work to protect the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse.”

The GOP staffer’s email didn’t say what agency it was. It didn’t say the money was actually in the package — just that an unnamed agency had said they would spend it on that if they got it.

And how do we know the Cons are making shit up? Because they’ve admitted they are:

But I just contacted the House GOP staffer who wrote the initial email laying out this talking point, and he conceded that the claim by conservative media that the mouse money is currently in the bill is a misstatement. “There is not specific language in the legislation for this project,” he said.

Yet they’re still yawping about mouse money. Un-fucking-believable.

It would still be ridiculous if they were whining about something that was actually going to happen. Wetlands are nothing to sneer at. But the fact they’re shrieking “Eek! Mouse money!” over a nonexistent earmark just so they can get people riled up against the stimulus is pathetic.

Have they always been this psychotic?

Now They're On About Imaginary Mice…

Good for a Godwin

Someone needs to explain Godwin’s Law to our more hysterical national newspapers. This is the kind of foaming-at-the-mouth insanity I expect from people in mental wards, not the pages of a staid ol’ business newspaper. But here we are, staring at Hitler over breakfast:

If the Wall Street Journal’s fabled editorial section has been letting in too many drafts of puzzling and infuriating reality during these past few weeks, why not head over to the Washington Times or Investors Business Daily, grab yourself a straw and snort the Kool Aid straight up your nose?


Above: Washington Times editorial page, 2/11/09

Actually, it’s a fortunate day to visit the Washington Times editorial page, because you can go a lot of Hitler-free days over there before getting the Hitler. I mean they don’t always give it up. Sometimes it’s all teasing and tassels and then the curtain closes and you’re standing there with no more Hitler than you came in with.

This was not one of those days, nor was this or this. Nor for that matter this.

[snip]

What we learn today from the Washington Times is that medical records must not be digitized like that Obama plan proposes, but can only exist in paper form because YOU KNOW WHO LIKED EFFICIENCY HITLER THAT’S WHO. And certainly, such naïve, Godwin-unaware amuse-gueules of instaHitler are in the category of always-funny.

Somehow, I don’t think bringing medical records into the 21st century will lead to the return of the Reich. Yet this is the claim of one of the (formerly) most respected newspapers in the country. [edit: Um, nevermind. Peter’s right – it wasn’t merely purchased by Moon, it was founded by him. So much for my memory…]

I thought we lived in a country with a booming market for psychotropics. Why, then, are such obviously delusional people left unmedicated and suffering episodes of acute paranoia on the editorial pages?

Good for a Godwin

Right-Wing Paranoia Reaches Dizzying New Depths

There’s something seriously wrong with the right. They’ve come completely unhinged. They were bad enough when their buddy Bush was in office, but with the Dems (nominally) in control of the executive and the legislature, they’ve gone from batshit insane to utterly fucking delusional.

Well. More utterly fucking delusional. Ron from Bay of Fundie has the latest:

This morning, I received an email from Bill Johnson, the American Decency Ass. It opens with this line (I kid you not):

The battle is hot and heavy there in DC

Umm, BJ, I don’t want to know which theaters you visit in your off-hours.

Anyway, he then changes focus:

A reliable friend of this ministry writes about a particular item(s) of concern in Wal-Mart.

I wonder just how reliable, as you’ll see in a moment. The next few excerpts are from the letter from BJ’s “reliable” friend:

“They have this video player called Wii. You hold it in your hand and you can bowl, play tennis, etc.…

Really? I’ve never heard of such a thing. I think you’re bullshitting me!

“…Well my daughter told me that they were at Walmart, looking at the games, and with the childrens games they have a PLAYBOY game. You can undress her, or dress her, and apparently have her do all kinds of things.…

Hot DAMN! I immediately jumped on the internet, credit card at the ready…

… and came up empty! BJ, you asshole! You lied to me!

Does anybody out there know of a Playboy game?

Please? Google failed me!

However, I did find one interesting cultural phenomenon from six months ago! A Wired blog article tells us:

Playboy has released a series of clips showing a scantily clad woman playing Nintendo’s Wii Fit on YouTube.

[snip]

So apparently BJ’s “reliable” correspondent has confused a YouTube video with an actual game. BJ wants us to participate in boycotts and pass laws banning smut that doesn’t even exist!

*headdesk*

forfuck’ssake.

It was bad enough when the right was merely madly buying guns, fighting Fairness Doctrine legislation that no one’s trying to pass, battling a birth certificate, looking to Sarah Palin to rescue them, sending Joe the Plumber into war zones and Republicon meetings on the economy, babbling about how Obama’s going to move the terrorists into a nice ranch-style right next door, screeching that Obama was a secret Muslim plotting to let his jihadist brothers take over America, and trying to turn the stimulus bill into all tax cuts all the time. Now they’re fighting video games that don’t exist.

I know I’ve left things off that list. There’s just so much insanity it’s hard to keep track…

As if all that wasn’t enough, they’re now howling about an “anti-Christian” provision in the stimulus bill. I’m sure you can guess what’s coming:

As it turns out — surprise, surprise — this entire uproar is based on nothing. The hysteria is based on the religious right’s apparent illiteracy.

“This provision upholds constitutional standards established by the U.S. Supreme Court and in no way affects student groups that meet on public school campuses,” said the Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. […]

“It’s almost a restatement of what the Constitution requires so there’s nothing novel in what the House did in its restriction,” said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel to the ACLU. “For 37 years, the law of the land is that the government can’t pay for buildings that are used for religious purposes.”

The provision in the bill is just the standard legal language, reflecting nearly four decades of law. All of the on-campus religious activities that have been common for a generation will remain completely unchanged as a result of the recovery package. Conservative activists, and at least one member of the United States Senate, apparently got confused trying to read the bill, and got hysterical for no reason.

It’s what they specialize in.

The freakout has only just begun. An unhealthy obsession with Playboy seems to be an emerging theme:

Some of President Obama’s most impressive personnel moves have come at the Justice Department, most notably with some lower-profile offices, like the Office of Legal Counsel and the Solicitor General. The team Obama has put together couldn’t represent a more thorough and encouraging break from the Bush era.

Naturally, conservative activists are livid.

Christian conservatives are challenging President Barack Obama’s picks for top Justice Department positions, charging that past clients like Playboy taint their resumes. […]

You’d think Playboy magazine ordered people to be tortured or something, the way these fuckwits are screaming. Oh, wait, that would have been a point in Playboy’s favor in their eyes, wouldn’t it?

I will never understand the right-wing mind, a fact for which I am eternally grateful.

Right-Wing Paranoia Reaches Dizzying New Depths

Torture Advocates Will Be Disappointed

These people are unreal:

Yesterday, President Obama signed an executive order banning the use of torture in all military and CIA interrogations of suspected terrorists. The order specifically revoked the legal memos written by the Bush administration to justify the use of torture on detainees.

Today, the Wall Street Journal editorializes that Obama “wants to have it both ways on torture,” saying he will ban it but simultaneously carve out legal loopholes for coercive techniques to be used in an emergency:

The unfine print of Mr. Obama’s order is that he’s allowed room for what might be called a Jack Bauer exception. It creates a committee to study whether the Field Manual techniques are too limiting “when employed by departments or agencies outside the military.” The Attorney General, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Director of National Intelligence-designate Dennis Blair will report back and offer “additional or different guidance for other departments or agencies.” […]

The “special task force” may well grant the CIA more legal freedom to squeeze information out of terrorists when it could keep the country safe.

Despite the Wall Street Journal’s foreboding intonations, Obama made it clear yesterday that the era of coercive interrogations had come to an end. Speaking to the State Department he said firmly, “I can say without exception or equivocation that the United States will not torture.”

That’s it. Zip, nada, zilch, none. No matter how much the fearmongers on the right wish it were otherwise, Obama’s not going to carve out loopholes, or play semantics to pretend the torture the U.S. is engaging in isn’t really torture. And, just in case there was any doubt as to that point, Sen. Diane Feinstein is all ready with some legislation to sew up any loopholes remaining:

As I noted here yesterday, human rights advocates think that the executive order outlawing torture that President Obama signed yesterday preserves some wiggle room, because it also appoints a task force to determine whether the techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual are appropriate to the task of keeping the nation safe.

Well, it turns out that others have reached this conclusion, too. The ranking Democratic Senator on the intel committee is now working on ways to stitch up this apparent loophole:

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the committee, said that despite the executive orders she still planned to press for legislation mandating a single standard for military and C.I.A. interrogators. Such a law would be harder to reverse than Mr. Obama’s executive order, which he could alter or cancel at any time by issuing a new order.

“I think that ultimately the government is well served by codifying it, by having it in law,” Mrs. Feinstein said.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Obama administration reacts to such legislation, should it gain steam.

It’ll be far more interesting to see how the rabid right reacts. I wonder if they’ll finally have a complete psychotic break?

Oh, right. They already did. They just haven’t been committed yet.

And in case you were wondering how the professionals feel about Obama’s new direction, David Danzig has our answer:

Interrogators are lauding President Obama for signing an executive order that will shut down secret CIA prisons and place the use of coercive interrogation techniques completely off limits.

“[The order] closes an unconscionable period in our history, in which those who knew least, professed to know most about interrogations,” said Joe Navarro, a former special agent and supervisor with the FBI.

“Some die-hards on the right — who have never interrogated anyone — are already arguing that forcing interrogations to be conducted within army field manual guidelines is a step backward and will result in ‘coddling’ dangerous terrorists,” retired Colonel Stuart Herrington, who served for more than 30 years as a military intelligence officer, said soon after the order was signed. “This is a common, but uninformed view. Experienced, well-trained, professional interrogators know that interrogation is an art. It is a battle of wits, not muscle. It is a challenge that can be accomplished within the military guidelines without resorting to brutality.”

Read that article for an inside look on how torture provides useless, bullshit intel, and how a smart, humane approach to interrogation led to the capture of Sadaam Hussein and allowed us to locate and kill al-Zarqawi.

I know the fucktards on the right think 24’s more realistic than the situations actual investigators have faced in the really real world, but you know what? They can go fuck themselves with a serving fork.

Obama won. They lost. Torture’s over.

Torture Advocates Will Be Disappointed