Feverish stupidity

Lots of editorial cartoons, left and right, are unfunny. Humor is hard to achieve every day. But this one from conservative Stephen Rustad is particularly stupid.

Imagine who must be in your audience to find Barack Obama as Hugo Chávez's puppet credible even as over-the-top exaggeration. Loons and dim bulbs of hate radio who don't actually know anything...

Who are the real puppets?

American conservatives have a huge apparatus whose purpose is to tell lies to the stupid. Those lies keep them stupid and easily exploited, but their appetite for bullshit is so unquenchable that they prefer their ignorance.

If you don't think this institutionalized ignorance is an existential problem for our democracy, take a closer look at what's still happening around us.

I'll make it into propaganda

Newt Gingrich knows propaganda. You can bet that, even if Obama had stonily refrained from smiling, Newt would be making propaganda use of whatever Obama might do that Newt's wingnut target demographic might object to if told to be outraged. Or Newt could just make it up, no biggie.

Yeah, I can live with that

Hugo Chavez calls Barack Obama "ignorant." Maybe he used the word literally with no intent to disparage Obama's intelligence, maybe not. I'm not listening to the podcast to find out.

Either way, it makes me laugh. Derisively.

Venezuela chooses

... against strongman rule - by a hair. Chávez says, "For now, we could not do it." (emphasis added)

My guess: He'll be back with another proposal that includes provisions intended to mollify just enough of the opposition coalition. All he needs is 50% plus 1, after all.