Sleeper cell

Rush Limbaugh "thinks" Hollywood liberals planted an evil reference to Mitt R-money back when production started on The Dark Knight Rises, what, two or three years ago:


Rushbo can make such an absurd claim, straight from his vivid but bullshit-filled imagination and in fact impossible, only because his listeners have no critical thinking skills whatsoever. They believe him simply because they want to believe some dark conspiracy of nefarious others acting for no plausible motive is keeping them down.

It's really depressing to contemplate the rank stupidity that passes for the American public conversation these days.

Whenever the history of this awful period in American history is finally written, either some Leni Reifenstahl in the fanatical wingnut media will write its triumph in glorious tones of fascism, or Rush will be identified as a far worse malefactor than Joe McCarthy ever tried to be. Historians will wonder how his ugliness went on so long without reducing his undeserved credibility.

Rehab

Click image for full Jimmy Margulies/Record cartoon.

Bird on a wire

In fifty-plus years, authoritarian Republicans have devolved the things they wave around all the way to a pair of panties: "I have in my hand a pair of panties that has humiliated over 317 al Qaeda terrorists at Guantánamo." Just like Ann Coulter's fantasy drinking buddy Joe McCarthy, Dana Rohrabacher pretends that concern for security policy is his chief goal, when in fact unfettered power and political gain are the real purpose.

Look, Dana, no matter how many times you say that the prisoners should be just as happy as Mel Gibson cheek to jowl with Goldie Hawn's thong, you're off point. Even Divine's panties wouldn't be torture (well, maybe), though they'd definitely violate the Geneva Conventions.

Your cry of panties, panties, panties is the puerile stunt of a manipulative 10-year-old. It's waterboarding that's torture, and you're defending it by trying to distract the media into immature giggles. It's as if a murderer, caught with a smoking gun in one hand and a pillow with a through and through in the other, defends himself by saying, "Well, I didn't suffocate that dead guy."

An official defense of torture (again, the waterboard, stupid) that helps it continue could be a war crime.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Middle name whack-a-mole

The appeal to bigotry and fear about Barack Obama's middle name is going to keep on popping up from the reddest reaches of wingnut politics. This is their idea of a burning issue.

Obama needs to embrace his name something like this:

My name is Barack Hussein Obama. Just as John McCain is nothing like serial killer John Wayne Gacy, I'm nothing like Saddam Hussein. If your name is Adolf, you're not another Hitler. If you're Joseph, you're not another Stalin. Pope Benedict is not a Benedict Arnold. Eugene McCarthy was nothing like Joseph McCarthy. And, while George W. Bush is a lot like King George III, it's not because of his name.

Lather, rinse, repeat, and wash those Drudges right out of his hair.

Of course, the wingnuts will simply move back to "mistakenly" saying Osama for Obama. Every time they do this, the Obama campaign should ask:

Why is it that Osama is not already captured or dead?

Every damn time.

Adapted and expanded from this comment on TennViews.

Wingnut insanity

Accuracy in Media is and always has been a misnomer for an insane wingnut pressure group. They aren't interested in accuracy. They are propagandists.

Their December newsletter contains:

• The Ultimate Vindication of Joe McCarthy (a book review)
• an attempt to manufacture a scandal about the UN and AIDS relief funding
• slams at global warming concerns because the UN holds them
  
• hysterical claims that a return to the Fairness Doctrine (which isn't going to happen anyway) would silence conservative voices
• a Christmas and New Years wish

Except for the last, Cliff Kincaid is a loon.