Bed-wetting Wingnuts: Playin Stuff Backwards Edition.

It doesn't seem that there is anything too embarrassing or silly for the wingers to believe and get frantic over. Get em a fainting couch. Buncha pathetic, paranoid bedwetters. With guns.


Backwards reasoning. April 6: Rachel Re: It's all around the Internet. People who think President Obama is the anti-Christ are using speeches he has said before, and when they play it backwards it says cryptic stuff, like "serve Satan." Rachel Maddow takes a look at what other things might be learned by playing other people's speeches backwards.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

John Cole: Kicking It Up a Notch

We’ve joked that the right-wing loves to play the victim, but our lady of perpetual outrage has kicked it up a notch and is now engaging in what can only be described as preemptive victimhood:

“Get ready for the anti-Tea Party sabotage and smear campaign”

For the next 9 days, the left-wing blogosphere and left-wing clueless pundits will hammer away with their unreality-based Tea Party smears.

And on the ground, the tax-subsidized and Soros-subsidized troops are going to try and wreak havoc every way they can. Many readers and fellow bloggers have seen signs that ACORN may send in ringers and saboteurs to usurp the anti-tax, anti-reckless spending, anti-bailout message.

ACORN and Soros plotting to usurp the anti-tax message. All you can do is laugh.

Blue Texan: At What Point Did Republicans Become the Party of Bed-Wetting Hysterics?

Looking around the wingnutosphere today, I can't help but notice that it's SUCH A SCARY TERRIFYING WORLD.

Obama's taking our guns away!

James Delk and his namesake son say that they’ve bought more ammo and supplies not just because they fear what might become illegal under Obama, but because they fear what could happen in an unarmed, increasingly economically disparate society. “I stocked up on food a little bit,” says the elder James Delk. “I’ve got one bedroom I converted into a food pantry. If it keeps getting worse, and it seems like it is, people are going to start breaking into your home to get food. You need to try to protect your family.”

Obama's disarming America!

“I cannot believe what I heard today,” Senator Inhofe said in a You Tube video posted from Afghanistan. “President Obama is disarming America. Never before has a president so ravaged the military at a time of war.”

Obama's a Stalinist!

While some of today’s comparisons between Obama and communist dictators may go over the top, the general direction of such thinking is not without merit: since they share a utopian goal of forced equality, it’s logical to expect that their methods may also converge at some point. To wit, recent actions from Obama reminded me of a ploy Stalin used on Western entrepreneurs, which in itself is an illustrative morality play contrasting the differences between socialism and capitalism.

Obama's going to let North Korea nuke Alaska!

Palin herself criticized proposed Obama administration cuts proposed to missile defense programs. “I am deeply concerned with North Korea’s development and testing program which has clear potential of impacting Alaska, a sovereign state of the United States, with a potentially nuclear armed warhead,” she said in the statement.

Obama's going to crash the entire planet!

It's not just embarassing to hear the so-called "leader of the free world" talking like a 14-year old who's been up in his room listening to "Imagine" for too long. I fear this presidency has the makings of global tragedy.

Get a hold of yourselves, wingnuts. It's only been three months and at this rate, you're going to run out of crazy before the midterms.

Think Progress: Kentucky gun show features Obama-Hitler shirts and warnings to ‘prepare for Obama’s citizen army.’

As ThinkProgress has noted, the right wing continues to escalate its fear-mongering that President Obama will take away Americans’ Second Amendment rights. In a New York Times op-ed this weekend, Charles Blow reported that such rhetoric “has helped fuel the panic buying of firearms.” On Saturday, the Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel went to the bi-annual Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot in Kentucky and saw this phenomenon first-hand:

Weigel noted that all three boxes of the Hitler-Obama shirt had sold out by 3:00 p.m. on Saturday. In November, ThinkProgress went to The Nation’s Gun Show in Chantilly, VA, which featured similar fear-mongering. For example, an ad in the Washington Post for the event read, “GET YOUR GUNS WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!”

Benen: WHY IS FRANK GAFFNEY ON THE TV?....

I care less about strange people believing strange things, and more about major news networks giving strange people a national platform to say strange things.

[Yesterday] on MSNBC, right-wing commentator Frank Gaffney joined in, boldly declaring, "I'm a member of Dick Cheney's fan club," alluding to the former vice president's comments that Obama is making Americans less safe. Gaffney said that today, for example, Obama told our "Muslim enemies" that the United States is "willing to submit to them."

When asked by MSNBC host David Shuster and Mother Jones's David Corn for proof of this supposed submission, Gaffney pointed to a secret "code" Obama is using -- which apparently only he, al Qaeda, the Saudis, and the Taliban understand.

With a straight face, Gaffney insisted that when the president uses the word "respect," it's "code for those who adhere to Sharia that we will submit to Sharia." He added, "I'm telling you the code as they receive it in the Taliban headquarters and in al Qaeda's cave and in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They perceive this as submission."

Now, this is obviously ridiculous. But the concern here isn't that Frank Gaffney says crazy things to national television audiences; it's that Frank Gaffney was invited to says crazy things to a national television audience.

Gaffney was on MSNBC a couple of weeks ago, for example, arguing that "evidence" exists connecting Saddam Hussein to 9/11, the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, and the Oklahoma City bombing. In September, Gaffney argued that Sarah Palin has learned foreign policy through "osmosis," by living in Alaska. He's argued that U.S. forces really did find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but the media covered it up. He's used made-up quotes and recommended "hanging" Democratic officials critical of the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Steve M. reminds me that Gaffney also believes there's "evidence" suggesting the president is not a natural born citizen of the United States, and once recommended a military strike on Al Jazeera headquarters.

Gaffney is certainly entitled to believe obvious nonsense, but I'll ask the same question I posed the last time I saw Gaffney on MSNBC: is there nothing these guys can say that would force them from polite company? Just how crazy must a conservative be before he/she is no longer invited back onto national television to share ridiculous ideas?

Neiwert: Credit where it's due: Glenn Beck's thorough debunking of FEMA camps confirms C&L's reportage

Tuesday Apr 07, 2009 6:45am

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When he wasn't complaining about us mean liberal bloggers yesterday, Glenn Beck actually did a very good thing on his Fox News show: He completely eviscerated the conspiracy theories about supposed "FEMA concentration camps" that have been a favorite of the right-wing lunatic fringe for some time now.

It is in fact an impressive and thorough debunking of the rumors, led by Jim Meigs of Popular Mechanics, who's very good at this kind of work. Meigs, as it happens, concludes that these theories originated in the 1990s with the Patriot/militia movement. (Go to Beck's site to read more.)

As it happens, that's exactly what we reported at C&L three weeks ago. And in fact, much of this information has been available for some time, though you would never know it from listening to the right-wing conspiracists.

Still, Beck deserves credit for his forthright reportage of the matter. Indeed, it seemed an apology for having unfairly accused him of promoting these theories seemed like it might be in order.

But then there's the small matter of what he actually said:

Beck: We don't even understand freedom anymore. We are a country that is headed toward socialism, totalitarianism, beyond your wildest imagination.

I have to tell you, I am doing a story tonight, that I wanted to debunk these FEMA camps. I'm tired of hearing about them -- you know about them? I'm tired of hearing about them. I wanted to debunk them.

We'll we've now for several days been doing research on them -- I can't debunk them! And we're going to carry the story tonight.

...It is our government -- if you trust our government, it's fine. If you have any kind of fear that we might be headed toward a totalitarian state, there is something going on in our country that it's -- it ain't good.

Hmmm. This is a completely different Glenn Beck from the one who was on Fox tonight. Does he have an evil twin or something?

Beck tried to portray himself yesterday as fundamentally skeptical of the claims -- but he sure had a funny way of showing it a few weeks ago. As you can see in the clip, he actually went on to report the "FEMA camp" claims credulously back then.

Well, better late than never. I'm actually looking forward to Part 2 of the debunking tonight, because the first part was excellent, and while Beck may be slow coming around, it's always better late than never.

Mind you, we won't be holding our breaths to see if the lesson sticks. You never know which Glenn Beck is going to show up on any given day.