Baracknophobia - Obey
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atrios on Bringing On The Crazy
To answer John's question, the crazy wing of the religious right believes, or claims to believe, that if gay marriage is legal then pastors will be arrested for refusing to performing wedding ceremonies and demented folks like Dreher will be arrested for publicly expressing their bigotry.Pandagon: Rick Warren: Freak Flag Flying
Rick Warren has an odd traveling habit:
HH: You have stayed above scandal. Thank you for that, because so many Christian pastors, you know what happens when this happens, and we could name 30 of them, the damage they do.
RW: Yeah, I keep a list.
HH: You keep a list?
RW: Actually, I have what, Hugh, I’ve had it for almost 40 years. I call it a warnings file. And every time I watch somebody, and Satan has no temptations that are new. It’s either money, sex or power. It’s lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of life, and you have to know the antidotes, and you have to set up the parameters that keep you from even being tempted in those areas, which means for instance, I’m never alone, ever, ever alone with a woman, or even my myself when I’m traveling.
I’ve managed to not cheat, have meth-infused masseuse sex or get underage girls pregnant thus far, and have done it without maintaining a years-long file about every time I thought about sex. This is because I’m a normal human being and Rick Warren, apparently, is not. If you’re so incapable of basic human interaction that you must literally be monitored around half the human race at all times, you have a serious, deeply troubling problem.
This does not make Rick Warren a moral exemplar. It makes him deeply fucked in the head. And a “purpose-driven” movement whose purpose seems to be to drive you to obsession with your cock’s indefatigable need to be in a woman barring a dude standing around and making it all gay really needs to be reexamined.
Neiwert: Michael J. Fox on being attacked by Limbaugh: 'That's when it got fun'
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| Michael J. Fox | ||||
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Michael J. Fox was on The Daily Show last night, talking with Jon Stewart about stem-cell research -- and about being attacked by Rush Limbaugh:
Fox: That's when it got fun. People think that's when it got bad for me, but that's when it got fun. When -- when -- when -- Rush Limbaugh -- gawd, I can barely say the name --
Stewart: So many of us have that issue.
Fox: But when he kind of launched his attack, it was just -- I just had this moment where I went, 'Oh my God. Is it that predictable? Is it that cartoonish, that you'd, like, attack the messenger in this way and not even deal with the merits of the science at all?
Stewart: It's absolutely that predictable.
Fox: It was that cartoonish. And, what was great, was that allowed me to then start a dialogue, start a conversation -- we basically hijacked the last two weeks of that midterm election talking about stem-cell research, which nobody wanted to talk about. And it was, was -- in spite of the fact that I was deadly serious about it, there was kind of a Merry Prankster thing to it ...
Stewart: You couldn't believe the theater on it. When you explained to your daughter about that, did you explain: "His brain works differently. It's diseased"?
Fox: That presupposes --
Of course, C&L had a role in publicizing Limbaugh's ugliness, and we too were delighted by the electoral outcome.
Benen: WITH JUST A WEEK TO GO....
Apparently, a bunch of far-right "Tea Parties" are still planned for next week, and leading conservative voices are engaged in a combination of expectations setting and victimhood. Take this Malkin item from Monday, for example, which warns of "anti-Tea Party sabotage."Benen: CHUTZPAH WATCH....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.
Steve M. noted, "It's obvious that the tea parties are going to come and go and (except in the right-wing media) be a one-day story at best. But it's unacceptable for the movement to admit it's not succeeding -- somebody must be at fault."
Right, and in this case, it's George Soros and ACORN. Now, I consider myself relatively clued in on what's going on in progressive circles. Not only have I not heard any talk about "sabotaging" these conservative rallies -- I don't know anyone who cares -- I also can't begin to imagine why Soros and/or ACORN would bother.
But why let reality interfere with unhinged paranoia? The right probably sees some value in preemptively setting the stage for a win-win dynamic. If turnout at the April 15 events is strong, they'll claim success over the nefarious forces of evil lined up against them. If the events are a bust, they'll blame shadowy groups and figures -- who fear the power of the conservative movement -- for disrupting their would-be watershed rallies. Either way, the Tea Baggers are mighty. Or something.
Meanwhile, I suspect one of the problems with the Tea Parties is that it's not altogether clear what they're rallying for. They're conservatives who don't like the Democratic domestic policy agenda; this much is clear. But usually there's some kind of point to organized political events, and the Tea Parties are still a little vague.
I take it they don't like the economic stimulus package, but that's already passed. They don't like budget deficits, unless they're run by Republican presidents. They don't want their taxes to go up, but Obama has already passed a significant middle-class tax cut, which by most measures, is the largest tax cut ever signed by a U.S. president.
So, angry, right-wing activists are going to get together to demand ... what exactly? A 36% top rate instead of a 39.6% top rate? A $3.1 trillion federal budget instead of a $3.5 trillion deficit? It's hardly the stuff of a credible and coherent political movement.
Maybe this is just an elaborate endeavor to give Fox News something to do on an otherwise slow Wednesday?
- More Benen: IT'S ALL PART OF THE CONSPIRACY....
A variety of far-right voices seem quite sincere in their belief that ACORN is going to try to "sabotage" Tea Party events next week. It's not at all clear why ACORN would care, or what ACORN would do to interfere, but some conservatives are apparently quite worked up about it. Fox News' Neil Cavuto even "reported" that the community activism group intends to "infiltrate" the right-wing events.Adam Serwer decided to pick up the phone to see what ACORN thinks about this.
[O]n the offhand possibility that there was some truth to the idea that ACORN was orchestrating the sabotage of tea party gatherings, (maybe some local chapter had organized a counter-protest or something) I called up ACORN Executive Director Steve Kest and asked him about it. "I saw some mention of this on a blog, I have no idea even what the tea parties are," Kest said. He then asked me to explain to him what the tea parties were having only just heard about them yesterday. When I laughed, Kest said, "Seriously, do you know more about what the deal is here?"
I assume that Malkin & Co. will only see this as further evidence of ACORN's dastardly plot. Sure, the group's executive director says he doesn't know what the Tea Parties are, but that's just what he wants us to think. It's all part of the conspiracy.
Now, I'm not an expert when it comes to protests, but it seems to me the Tea Baggers are hoping for big turnouts to suggest there are lots of people who are angry about ... whatever it is the Tea Party organizers are angry about. It's a strength-in-numbers approach. The more people who show up to protest, the more successful the event.
ACORN obviously doesn't care about these rallies, and there's no reason to think they would. But if ACORN were interested in opposing the Tea Baggers' efforts, wouldn't the smart course of action be to not show up and make attendance at the Tea Parties bigger?
Understanding far-right thinking gets more and more challenging all the time.
It's no doubt difficult to make the transition from popular politician to scandal-plagued punch-line, but some former members of Congress need to know when to stay away. (via Blue Girl)New York political observers have wondered lately whether (yes, disgraced) former congressman Vito Fossella might be contemplating a comeback to public service.
Fossella sure has been looking the part of interested potential political candidate. In the past week or so, he has attended an area Lincoln Day Dinner, read to school children in his district -- complete with a photo-op -- and participated in the opening of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's campaign office.
Fossella, a married conservative from Staten Island whose early morning drunk driving arrest last year unraveled the secret of his mistress and love child and led to the demise of his political career, did not seek reelection because of his scandal.
Fossella was replaced with Rep. Mike McMahon (D), who seems to be doing well in his first term. But even if McMahon were struggling, the notion that Fossella should mount a comeback is kind of silly.
This isn't complicated: conservative Republican + lurid extra-marital affair + secret love child + DUI + jail time + frequent lies = limited electoral viability. A good story for a melodrama? Sure. A good story for a disgraced congressman thinking about a comeback? Not so much.
Asked whether Fossella should run for his old seat, a House Republican political strategist tells the Washington Post, "We're taking [Fossella] at his word" that he won't run again.
I almost hope Fossella does run. I'd love to hear his explanation for his behavior.
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Glenn Beck and the rise of Fox News' militia media
by Eric Boehlert
After a night of drinking, followed by an early-morning argument with his mother, with whom he shared a Pittsburgh apartment, 22-year-old Richard Poplawski put on a bulletproof vest, grabbed his guns, including an AK-47 rifle, and waited for the police to respond to the domestic disturbance call his mother had placed. When two officers arrived at the front door, Poplawski shot them both in the head, and then killed another officer who tried to rescue his colleagues.
In the wake of the bloodbath, we learned that Poplawski was something of a conspiracy nut who embraced dark, radical rhetoric about America. He was convinced the government wanted to take away his guns, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Specifically, Poplawski, as one friend described it, feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon." (FYI, there is no Obama gun ban in the works.) The same friend said the shooter feared America was "going to see the end of our times."
We learned that Poplawski hosted his own (failed) Internet radio show and that he visited the website of 9-11 conspiracy backer Alex Jones, who has been hyping the threat of a totalitarian world government for years. More recently, Jones has been warning listeners like Poplawski about The Obama Deception (that's the name of Jones' new documentary DVD) and how President Obama is bound to destroy America.
Who's Alex Jones? Even according to some conservative bloggers, the anti-government, anti-Obama talker is a "freak" who's popular with "the tin foil hat crowd." Like with Poplawski, apparently.
Jones might be a "freak," but he has recently been embraced -- and mainstreamed -- by Fox News, as part of the news channel's unprecedented drive to push radical propaganda warning of America's democratic demise under the new president.
During a March 18 webcast of FoxNews.com's proudly paranoid "Freedom Watch," Andrew Napolitano introduced a segment about "what the government has done to take your liberty and your property away." And with that, he welcomed onto the show "the one, the only, the great Alex Jones," who began ranting about "exposing" the New World Order and the threat posed by an emerging "global government."
"I appreciate what you're exposing," Napolitano assured his guest.
Waving around a copy of his Obama Deception, Jones warned Fox News webcast viewers about Obama's "agenda" for "gun confiscation" and the new president's plan to "bring in total police-state control" to America.
Jones also noted with excitement that Fox News' Glenn Beck had recently begun warning about the looming New World Order on his show, just like Jones had for years. "It is great!" cheered the conspiracist. (Like Jones, Beck recently warned viewers that "the Second Amendment is under fire.") Concluding the interview, Fox News' Napolitano announced "it's absolutely been a pleasure" listening to Jones' insights.
We don't know if Poplawski tuned in to watch Jones' star turn for Fox News last month. But is there any doubt that Fox News is playing an increasingly erratic and dangerous game by embracing the type of paranoid insurrection rhetoric that people like Poplawski are now acting on? By stoking dark fears about the ominous ruins that await an Obama America, by ratcheting up irresponsible back-to-the-wall scenarios, Fox News has waded into a territory that no other news organization has ever dared to exploit.
What Fox News is now programming on a daily (unhinged) basis is unprecedented in the history of American television, especially in the form of Beck's program. Night after night, week after week, Beck rails against the president while denouncing him or his actions, alternately, as Marxist, socialist, or fascist. He felt entirely comfortable pondering whether the federal government, under the auspices of FEMA, was building concentration camps to round up Americans in order to institute totalitarian rule. (It wasn't until this week that Beck was finally able to "debunk" the FEMA conspiracy theory.) And that's when Beck wasn't gaming out bloody scenarios for the coming civil war against Obama-led tyranny. In just a few shorts months, Beck raced to the head of Fox News' militia media movement.
Just prior to the Pittsburgh massacre, Beck's often bizarre on-air performances, in which his rants against the Obama administration's dark forces were mixed in with his tearful proclamations of love of country, had turned him into a highly rated laughingstock. "That is a shaky cat," Dennis Miller recently giggled while describing Beck. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough broke into hysterics after a montage of Beck's most weepy moments. And TV satirists have had a field day at the Fox News host's expense. (Stephen Colbert: "Crank up the crazy and rip off the knob!")
But I'm not sure people should be laughing.
The consequences of Fox News' doomsday programming now seem entirely predictable. As Jeffrey Jones, a professor of media and politics at Old Dominion University, recently explained to The New York Times in regard to Beck's rhetoric, "People hear their values are under attack and they get worried. It becomes an opportunity for them to stand up and do something."
People like Richard Poplawski? FYI, weeks before his deadline shooting spree, Poplawski uploaded a video clip of Beck ominously referencing the FEMA camps on Fox News.
It's true that Beck, in response to mounting criticism, made this statement on his show:
BECK: Let me be clear on one thing. If someone tries to harm another person in the name of the Constitution or the truth behind 9-11 or anything else, they are just as dangerous and crazy as those people we don't seem to recognize anymore -- you know, the ones who kill in the name of Allah.
But look at the very next two lines of his monologue: "There are enemies both foreign and domestic in America tonight. Call it fearmongering or call it the truth." That doesn't sound like Beck was backing away from his rhetorical call to arms to fend off the Marxist -- no, wait -- fascist Obama administration.
And let's drop the idea -- pushed hard by Beck himself -- that he's simply a modern-day Howard Beale, from the classic film Network, just an angry, I'm-mad-as-hell everyman lashing out at the hypocrisies of our time. Nonsense. Beale's unvarnished on-air rants from Network targeted conformity, corporate conglomerates, and the propaganda power of television. ("This tube," he called it.) Beale's attacks were not political or partisan. Beck, by contrast, unleashes his anger against, and whips up dark scenarios about, the new president of the United States. Big difference.
Here's a sampling of what Beck's been drumming into the heads of viewers, a portion of whom likely (and logically) hear his rhetoric as a call to action. That the government is a "heroin pusher using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state." That it's indoctrinating our children; that we have "come to a very dangerous point in our country's long, storied history." Beck's concerned that the "Big Brother" government will soon dictate what its citizens can eat, at what temperature their house can be set, and what kind of cars they're allowed to drive.
Beck's sure "[d]epression and revolution" are what await America under Obama, and fears moving "towards a totalitarian state." The country today sometimes reminds Beck of "the early days of Adolf Hitler." Beck thinks that Obama, who has "surrounded himself by Marxists his whole life," is now "addicting this country to heroin -- the heroin that is government slavery."
And it's not just Beck. Appearing on Fox News, Dick Morris recently made a wildly irresponsible comment that looks even worse in light of the Pittsburgh law-enforcement slayings: "Those crazies in Montana who say, 'We're going to kill ATF agents because the UN's going to take over' -- well, they're beginning to have a case."
And it's not just Fox News. Radio nut Michael Savage recently claimed that "we have a naked Marxist for president." And high-profile conservative blogger Erick Erickson contemplated the beating of politicians: "At what point do [people] get off the couch, march down to their state legislator's house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?"
Of course, the right-wingers at Free Republic are way ahead of Erickson as they fantasize about Obama's assassination: "And let's face it: all the speculation about Obama being the actual Antichrist will either be confirmed or denied if someone gets off a lucky shot at the SOB."
"Go Kill Liberals!"
I wonder if Glenn Beck knows who Jim Adkisson is. Adkisson made headlines on July 28, 2008, when he brought his sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, and, after whipping it out of a guitar case, opened fire on parishioners while a group of schoolchildren performed songs up by the altar. Adkisson killed two people and wounded several others.
Adkisson, a 58-year-old unemployed truck driver, brought 70 shotgun shells with him to the church and assumed he'd keep killing until the police arrived on the scene and shot him dead as well. Instead, some members of the congregation were able to wrestle him to the ground and hold him for police.
When investigators went to Adkisson's home in search of a motive, as well as evidence for the pending trial, they found copies of Savage's Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, Let Freedom Ring by Sean Hannity, and The O'Reilly Factor, by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. They also came across what was supposed to have been Adkisson's suicide note: a handwritten, four-page manifesto explaining his murderous actions. The one-word answer for his deed? Hate. The three-word answer? He hated liberals.
The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather. I'd like to encourage other like minded people to do what I've done. If life aint worth living anymore don't just Kill yourself. Do something for your Country before you go. Go Kill Liberals!
What Adkisson especially hated about liberals ("this cancer, this pestilence") and what he hated about candidate "Osama Hussein Obama" was that they were marching America toward ruin: "Liberals are evil, they embrace the tenets of Karl Marx, they're Marxist, socialist, communists." Adkisson seethed over the way liberals were "trying to turn this country into a communist state" and couldn't comprehend why they would "embrace Marxism."
Sound familiar, Glenn?
John Bohstedt was one of the Unitarian church members who tackled Adkisson after the first round of gunfire went off inside the sanctuary. Two months ago, Adkisson pleaded guilty to the murder charges and was sentenced to life in prison. At the hearing, Bohstedt told the Associated Press he didn't think the killer had been insane, but rather had been manipulated by anti-liberal rhetoric.
"There are a lot of people who hate liberals, and if we stir that around in the pot and on the airwaves, eventually there will be people (like Adkisson) ... who get infected by the violent rhetoric and put it into violent action," Bohstedt said.
He remained worried about future violence: "Do you think there are other Jim Adkissons out there listening to hate speech? I do."
Me too.
Benen: THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT....
I've long been fascinated by arguments against gay marriage, mainly because they're so incredibly unpersuasive. Opponents of marriage equality tend to run into one specific hurdle that's hard to clear: if consenting adults are able to get married, what, exactly, would be the negative result? What are the perilous consequences of loving couples getting married?
Rep. Steve King (R) of Iowa, one of Congress' most right-wing members, told conservatives this week that the state should be in a position of "promoting marriage," but if gay people can get married, it will lead to the downfall of civilization.
Speaking at an anti-abortion event in eastern Iowa Monday night, U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, warned that legalized same-sex marriage would lead to a complete dissolution of society and religion.
"I will tell you that I first came into this political arena with the belief innocent human life was the most important thing that I could be involved in," said King, a Kiron Republican who represents the 5th Congressional District in western Iowa. "I still believe that is the most important value. But I also recognize that if we don't save marriage, we can't remain pro-life.
"The values we have we pour through marriage into our children and into the next generation. Our religious values. Our values of faith. Our values. Our work ethic. Our entire culture comes through a man and a woman joined in holy matrimony, being blessed with children and pouring those values into the children and then living vicariously through them as they go off and we are blessed with grandchildren."
What I find especially amusing about this is the notion that men and women will stop getting married if same-sex couples start getting married. After all, King believes "our entire culture comes through a man and a woman joined in holy matrimony." If policy makers and courts were pushing measures to prevent men and women from joining in holy matrimony, I could understand why King and his cohorts might get worked up.
But since that's not happening, it seems King sincerely believes that marriages between straight couples will simply cease to be. Why? Because, well, just because.
King added that he "would prefer" to see Iowans simply defy the law and ignore the state Supreme Court's unanimous ruling, but, "I don't see the appetite out there to do that." Go figure.
The irony is, the surest way to destroy a civilization is to put a population against itself and have elected officials start refusing to follow the rule of law. It's a shame King doesn't realize that.
Maybe Fosella is inspired by Newt, and the contrast between TV coverage of Vitter vs Spitzer.
Posted by: Danp on April 8, 2009 at 9:57 AM | PERMALINK