Your Easter Wingnut: yanking it over their heads Edition

My wife and I watched "The Ten Commandments" last night. TTC is, of course, classic Easter fare where Charleton Heston teams up with an egg-laying rabbit to lead the chosen people out of bondage and into a wilderness riddled with brightly colored eggs hidden in plain sight to provide sustenance and pleasure to the chosen people's children as they and Moses celebrate the resurrection.

Which leads directly to your Sunday morning wingnut delusions.

Krugman: Armey of darkness

Aha. So the “tea parties” are to a large extent being run by Freedom Works, which is basically Dick Armey with a lot of Koch-Scaife-Bradley-Olin support.

Same old, same old.

Thers: Late Night: Yea, Though I Walk Through the Valley of Dumb, I Shall Fear No Idiocy

A very strange phenomenon: our friends on the right seem to believe that The Left is afraid, desperately so, of their Tea-Bag parties, their Alaskan Governors, and the Truth they Represent. There is no particular reason to doubt their sincerity on this point. It is, however, not strictly accurate. Speaking for myself only, I have to say that I am not so much afraid as... diverted. Amused. Laughing so hard my eyebrows ache.

Take Sarah Palin. Or don't. Here is Red State with the thesis, apparently seriously advanced, that the Left is trying to discredit her because we fear that she if she is not Taken Out she will win in 2012 in a walk. This idea comes from a site called "Intellectual Conservative," which is a place with which I myself have already fallen quite deeply in Love. And so will you. Here. Enjoy.

Why all the attention to the Palins in far-off Alaska? Glad you asked.

Elements of an elitist, leftist, mostly Eastern-based MSM fear and loathe Governor Sarah Palin — all 5' 7," 125 pounds of her traditional values, anathema to them. She threatens their collectivist goals, shared by most serious liberal Dems, of more and more dependency on Big Government, dreams of controlling folks, of stopping drilling for oil somewhere (read, ANWR) of snaring still more taxes from "the wealthy" to "spread the wealth" possibly to the undeserving and/or the unworthy.

Their primary fear, I think, lies in Sarah Palin's possible ascension someday to be the POTUS. Scariest of all to her legion of irreligious media enemies, she is actually liked by most ordinary people, carrying a 60%-plus approval rating in Alaska. It's a percentage many a politician would die for.

Palin's all-American outlook (and her envied good looks?), her Reaganesque exuberance, natural optimism, her humble Idaho beginnings, her love for the USA and true family values, only stoke the raving fires of madness of the heavy-breathing, Amerika-blaming hard Left.

So their media efforts to put down this extraordinary woman continue today, and perhaps ad infinitum, based on an irrational fear that someday Sarah Palin might just be President of the United States. Therefore expect the attacks, the attention on her and even her family, to continue, at least through 2012. Beyond?

What actually makes me afraid is that stuff like this makes what I do, insult comedy blogging, superfluous. Look, our Intellectual Conservative just wrote this sentence : "So their media efforts to put down this extraordinary woman continue today, and perhaps ad infinitum, based on an irrational fear that someday Sarah Palin might just be President of the United States." And I agree! Worrying that Sarah Palin will ever become President of the United States would indeed be extraordinarily irrational.

On a similar note, our conservative friends are more than welcome to believe that they are very very frightening, thunderbolts and lightning. Because, well... look at the slogan the "Dontgo" Movement has adopted for their Tea-Bagging:

SILENT MAJORITY: NO MORE

Oddly enough, this is true. The majority has spoken. It is not silent. And hard-right "conservatives" do not belong to it.

Which I probably shouldn't point out to them. Not that it matters, though. These are people still trying to pull on their underpants by first yanking it over their heads.

Continuing the never-ending saga of failed RW acronyms:

Aravosis: Rachel Maddow, you're in trouble...

From a reader:

Oh, GREAT. Thanks, Rachel.

Actual conversation with my 74 year old mother, a fightin' liberal from way back, and HUGE fan of KO, Rachel, Jon Stewart and Colbert:

Mom: "Honey, what does 'teabagging' mean?"

Me: Spews last sip of cocktail all over room.

Mom: "I was watching Rachel last night and they were talking about these asshole teabag parties and it was clear that it is a double entendre for something else."

Me: "Jesus Christ, you're 74; aren't you supposed to be getting a little fuzzy?"

So I explained teabagging and the resulting howls of laughter sent her into an asthmatic coughing binge. Now this (the post about 2M4M). I'm hoping she can figure it out on her own.

Heather at C&L: Countdown: Tea Parties Part of an Astroturf Movement

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

David Shuster and Dan Gross discuss teabag party politics.

**Nicole: Call it a hunch, but I think that Shuster was inspired by Rachel Maddow's and Ana Marie Cox's discussion of teabagging the other day. Look at that barely concealed smirk.

Shuster and Gross show just how mindlessly reactionary and deranged these astroturf protests are. What exactly are they protesting? Gross has no good answers, because, for the vast majority of Americans, Obama's economic plans actually benefit them. So is this just another example of sheeple, protesting to better the situation of the top 1%, like Hannity and Santelli (both of whom will be attending "tea parties")? Or could they just be protests by people whipped up into a lather by people like Hannity and Santelli into just being angry without cause?

A video by bloggerinterrupted showcases a string of protesters from a Feb. 27 event in Cleveland who don't believe President Obama was born in the United States. Any good protest will have its fringe weirdos, but the birth certificate deniers may be emerging as an undercurrent in the tea party movement -- D.C. tea party organizers booked Obama-birth-certificate-skeptic Alan Keyes to speak at the tax day event outside the Treasury Department.

As Jon pointed out, when even LGF is calling you deranged, you have traveled out beyond the fringe.

• More on LGF from Benen: A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS....

  Long-time readers may recall that for about two years, I edited the "Blog Report" for Salon.com. Every day, I'd feature a couple of dozen posts from the left and right, summarizing what was on the minds of many bloggers. After a couple of years, I more or less created informal categories for the various conservative bloggers -- ranging from "thoughtful" to "borderline dangerous," with most somewhere in between.

  What I didn't expect was to see Charles Johnson's "Little Green Footballs" emerge as a reform-minded blog for the right.

  Yesterday, for example, LGF posted a YouTube clip filmed at a gathering of Glenn Beck fans.

  At a "Project 912 Glenn Beck Tea Party," an unnamed speaker rants about "infiltration by the Communist Party" (a John Birch Society talking point), says that digital cable boxes are "brainwashing machines" planted in our homes by the government, and swears to stop paying taxes.... This is some really deranged stuff, and the audience is eating it up.

  This did not, as John Cole noted, go over well with some of Johnson's fellow conservative bloggers. (John added, "The problem for the right is not Charles Johnson, but all the crazy people in the party.")

  But what's especially interesting is that LGF has had a variety of similar items of late. Earlier this week, Johnson wrote, "This turn toward the extreme right on the part of Fox News is troubling, and will achieve nothing in the long run except further marginalization of the GOP -- unless people start behaving like adults instead of angry kids throwing tantrums and ranting about conspiracies and revolution."

  A couple of weeks ago, LGF had a similar item: "Wow. Racists, 9/11 truthers, and conspiracy theorists, all brought to you by Fox News. Featuring 'the great Alex Jones.' What the hell is wrong with Fox News?"

  Johnson really angered some of his colleagues when he said "too many on the right are now suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome," an observation that led to "meltdowns" in LGF comment threads, and "a barrage of hate mail that shows no sign of letting up."

  After having read Little Green Footballs over the years, I didn't expect it to be one of the sites urging conservatives to pull back from the fringes and be more responsible. It's a pleasant surprise.

  Here's hoping others Charles Johnson's lead.