A Reward for Your Patience

Sorry, my darlings. It’s apparently a holiday week: I’m disorganized as hell and keep getting distracted by shiny things when I should be writing. I’ve nearly got everything together for our next Prelude to a Catastrophe installment. Unless a squirrel happens, I should be writing it tomorrow night.

We will not discuss the post WordPress decided to eat earlier tonight.

In the meantime, the SciAm blog network turned one yesterday, and we celebrated with a bit o’ cake and curiosity. For those who didn’t see or didn’t feel like fighting with its comments system, you can answer nosy questions here, if you like. I know a little about some of you, and a lot about a few of you, but I know there are folks here who haven’t got the chance to say something about themselves. And you’re important to me. If you want to delurk, I’d love to hear from you!

And I’m going to give you, my patient darlings, a little bit o’ beauty from Mount St. Helens. These are from September last year, and I haven’t yet published them. Exciting, amirite?

Mount St. Helens from Johnston Ridge, September 2011

Yeah, that’s me trying to get all artsy-fartsy with one of the blow-down stumps and the volcano in the background.

Mount Adams from Johnston Ridge.

One thing I appreciate about Mount St. Helens, among many, is the blast zone. It’s amazing how much geology you can see with all the trees gone. Not that I don’t like trees, mind, and I hate clear cuts, but if a volcano wants to do a little deforestation, who am I to argue?

I’m off to Oregon soon. I might swing by and see the old girl, just the two of us. I’ve never spent quality time with her alone. We’ll be spending a lot of time together this summer: I’ve got to run Suzanne over for a nice jaunt later in the year, and Amanda and I are going to explore Ape Cave sometime before fall. We’ll see if temptation gets the better of me as I pass by her exit on my way down to collect Lockwood for some adventuring.

If I do go, what do you most want me to grab you photos of?

A Reward for Your Patience
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Birthers Suffer a Blow

This week’s seemingly been bonza for Birthers. Cons in Congress have been so afraid to defy them that they’ve been taking all sorts of evasive maneuvers rather than a stand:

Blogger-activist Mike Stark has been staking out Capitol Hill recently, trying to get Republican congressmen on the record about whether or not they believe President Obama was born in the United States. Only a couple of GOP congressmen were willing to state without reservation that Obama is the legal and constitutional President of the United States. Many others said they “think there are questions” and would “like to see the documents.” Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) began running away from Stark — literally — to avoid answering the question. Another congressman avoided Stark by hiding in a book store and pretending to look at pens.

The fact they’re so scared of pissing off the lunatics in their base shows just how far against the wall they’ve backed themselves, doesn’t it just?

And here we have Sen. James “I’ll Believe Anything Other Than The Truth” Inhofe going to bat for the Birthers:

At least one U.S. senator, however, is sounding a sympathetic note about the Birthers.

Sen. Jim Inhofe has also tried to find the elusive middle ground.

“They have a point,” he said of the birthers. “I don’t discourage it. … But I’m going to pursue defeating [Obama] on things that I think are very destructive to America.”

That’s not “middle ground.” That’s just ridiculous.

There should be a clear and distinct line between fringe lunatics and the beliefs of U.S. senators. That Inhofe thinks Birthers “have a point” suggests that line is blurring in unhealthy ways.

But wait! There’s more! It’s not the raving lunatics’ fault they can’t understand when their case has been proven bogus beyond all reasonable doubt. Inhofe knows who’s really to blame:

But he’s now clarifying his claim, and blaming the White House for the persistence of birtherism. Inhofe now says that the birther point he was endorsing was specifically that the White House has not done a good enough job of rebutting the birthers’ charges.

Inhofe spokesman Jared Young sends me this new quote from Inhofe:

“The point that they make is the Constitutional mandate that the U.S. President be a natural born citizen, and the White House has not done a very good job of dispelling the concerns of these citizens. My focus is on issues where I can make a difference to stop the liberal agenda being pushed by President Obama.”

That’s right! It’s all Obama’s fault! It’s not enough to produce a birth certificate, have the director of Hawaii’s Department of Health confirm Obama was born in Honolulu, have FactCheck.org confirm the certificate’s authenticity after having “seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate,” or discover a birth announcement in a Hawaiian newspaper. Nope. Apparently, he needs an affidavit from God. And then God will have to have some proof He is God, not that icky Allah guy.

Sweet vindication for the Birthers! Until their knight in shining armor shoves both middle fingers up their noses:

Update: Inhofe’s spokesman confirms it: He does not question Obama’s legitimacy as president.

Thus came the first inklings of trouble, soon followed by a catastrophe:

This evening, the House passed a resolution sponsored by Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) that commemorates Hawaii’s 50th anniversary as a U.S. state by a vote of 378-0. The resolution also contains this provision: “Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii,” a measure that some GOP members may have had trouble supporting. However, many of the Republican representatives who at expressed at least subtle doubt that Obama was not born in the U.S. voted for the resolution. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who had earlier in the day prevented the resolution from coming to a voice vote on the House floor, and Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), who sponsored a bill requiring presidential candidates to prove natural-born citizenship, both voted for the resolution. Rep. John Campbell (R-CA), a co-sponsor of Posey’s bill who expressed doubt about Obama’s citizenship last week on MSNBC, did not vote. [emphasis emphatically added]

Oh, noes! It would seem all their attempts to suck Cons in Congress into their madness failed! Even that nutcase Bachmann voted to confirm Obama was born in Hawaii, and there’s very few nuts nuttier than her. Washington betrayed the Birthers!

Of course, this will not do jack diddly shit to hammer reality into these people’s skulls. Instead, you can expect talk of a vast government conspiracy to begin in 3..2…1…

Birthers Suffer a Blow

NRCC Puts Its Money Where The Insanity Is

I think this means they’re desperate:

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which runs the GOP effort to recapture the House, has now expanded its list of vulnerable Republican incumbents the NRCC is committed to protecting, and one new name jumped out at me: Rep. Bill Posey of Florida.

Rep. Posey, as it happens, is the lead sponsor and creator of the so-called “birther” bill, which would require future presidential candidates to prove their citizenship.

That means the national Republican Party is prepared to invest resources in propping up a de facto leader of the whacked out fringe movement that’s been raising crackpot questions about President Obama’s citizenship and legitimacy for office.

How sane Americans are supposed to take them seriously is anybody’s guess.

Meanwhile, CNN admits Birther claims are patently ridiculous:

Adam Serwer noted yesterday that the whole Birther movement “is probably hurting CNN more than it’s hurting the GOP.” That’s a very persuasive point. The fact that the Republican base has more than its share of nuts is well established, but CNN wants to be taken seriously, and Lou Dobbs’ strange obsession with nonsense makes that difficult.

According to a Media Bistro report today, CNN President Jon Klein contacted some “Lou Dobbs Tonight” staffers yesterday to explain that the Birther story is baseless. Klein reminded the staffers that he asked CNN researchers to investigate the matter, and found that the allegations are baseless. “It seems this story is dead,” Klein said in his email, “because anyone who still is not convinced doesn’t really have a legitimate beef.”

Yet sees no problem with allowing Dobbs to continue pursuing said non-story:

Asked if CNN is concerned that Dobbs’ repeated granting of airtime to theories the network has conclusively debunked amounts to overkill and could harm CNN’s credibility, Klein brushed off the possibility. “We respect our viewers enough to present them the facts and let them make up their own minds,” he said, adding that what Dobbs does is “his editorial decision to make.”

[snip]

Asked if CNN would take any action if Dobbs continued airing the birther theories, Klein said No: “I think no good journalist would ever say that a particular story will never be covered again. Every day brings new facts, new pegs.”

Something tells me that the “most trusted name in news” doesn’t understand jack diddly shit about news.

NRCC Puts Its Money Where The Insanity Is

Yet More Birther Bullshit

Credit where it’s due: Rep. Dave Reichert has to do a tapdance for the crazies in his base, but at least he admits the President is a natural-born citizen and wishes him success:

Meanwhile, G. Gordon Liddy’s on Hardball bleating insanity:

G. Gordon Liddy, the man behind the first Watergate break-in and founding father of the “whacko wing” of the Republican party is now claiming that President Obama is an “undocumented illegal alien.” This afternoon, an oddly “catatonoic” Liddy told Chris Matthews that he has a written deposition from President Obama’s step-grandmother where she says that Obama was born in a hospital in Mombasa:

MATTHEWS: He [Obama] wasn’t born here and he’s never gone through a naturalization that you know of, right?

LIDDY: Not that I know of.

MATTHEWS: Therefore he’s here illegally. You’re saying he’s an undocumented alien.

LIDDY: Illegal alien.

His “proof” is a “deposition” from Obama’s step-grandmother. Only one wee problem with that:

Alex Koppelman looks more into Liddy’s claim:

What Liddy was referring to is actually an affidavit filed by a street preacher named Ron McRae, who conducted an interview with Sarah Obama, the second wife of President Obama’s grandfather, through a translator. (Sarah Obama is not the president’s biological grandmother, but he calls her “Granny Sarah.”)

In that interview, Sarah Obama does in fact say at one point that she was there for her grandson’s birth. But that was a mistake, a confusion in translation. As soon as a jubilant McRae began to press her for further details about her grandson being born in Kenya, the family realized the mistake and corrected him. And corrected him. And corrected him. (The audio is available for download here.)

Poor Granny Sarah and family. They don’t realize that once Cons misunderstand you, they’ll go on gleefully repeating what they thought you said no matter how many times you attempt to disabuse them of their notions.

I mean, hell, even the whole of CNN can’t rein Lou Dobbs in:

CNN’s Lou Dobbs has, by all appearances, gone mad. He now questions the citizenship status of the president on a daily basis, and tells his audience that he’s a victim of a “liberal media” conspiracy.

CNN has taken to debunking its own host over and over again.

In the wake of Lou Dobbs’ repeated claims on the July 15 edition of his radio show that President Obama needs to “produce a birth certificate” and that Obama’s birth certificate posted online has “some issues,” several of Dobbs’ CNN colleagues as well as other members of the media have debunked Obama birth certificate theories, often ridiculing those who embrace such theories as “nut jobs” who advance “ludicrous” claims that are “more conspiratorial than factual.” Indeed, according to the Los Angeles Times, CNN distanced itself from Dobbs’ comments. Reporter James Rainey wrote: “[O]ne CNN employee reminded me several times that Dobbs’ most pointed assertions were made on his radio program, which is unconnected to CNN.”

Nonetheless, Dobbs has continued to repeat the “birther” claims on both CNN and his radio show, stating on the July 20 edition of his CNN program that the birth certificate questions offered by “passionate supporters” “won’t go away because they haven’t been dealt with, it seems possible to, straightforwardly and quickly,” and saying on the July 21 edition of his CNN show, “We had people, including reporters from the LA Times, calling up because I referred to this. … Instead of calling the White House to ask why they didn’t do it, they’re calling me to ask why I said I don’t know what the reality is. No one does.” Additionally, on the July 21 edition of his radio show, Dobbs criticized “certain quarters of the national liberal media that are just absolutely trying to knock down the issue of President Obama’s birth certificate,” stating that they are “focused on being subservient and servile to this presidency rather than being inquisitive and doing their jobs with, you know, the White House.”

CNN, there’s an easy solution to this embarrassing problem of yours: ship his ass off to Faux News where he belongs.

That, however, is the least of our worries (h/t):

But there’s more to this story than Dobbs. And the phenomenon in play isn’t just about a birth certificate. And it’s also not isolated or accidental.

Because, yes, viewed in a vacuum, the movement seems like the nutty fringe. But viewed in a larger historical context, birthers share obvious ties to traditional right-wing assaults on previous Democrats, and birthers have all the marks of a GOP Noise Machine creation. The movement is about a larger, more sinister attempt to paint Obama as illegitimate, foreign,
and suspect (i.e. not like you and me). To portray him as “a gratuitous interloper,” as radio host G. Gordon Liddy put it. As someone who isn’t who he says he is. As — let’s face it — the Manchurian Candidate, with all the evil connotations that come with it. (“WHO SENT YOU???” von Brunn demanded to know of Obama.)

And it’s about the disturbing role media figures like Dobbs play when they act as the bridge — as the transmitter — between the radical and the mainstream. When they legitimize the craziness, if only in the eyes of the crazies themselves. As MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted this week, “The home run for conspiracists of any stripe is when their ideas can leave the lunatic fringe and enter the mainstream.”

If our media and the Republican party weren’t so fucked in the head, none of this inane bullshit would’ve ever gained traction. It’s a sad indictment of both that the voices of reason within them are so few and far between, while so many enjoy playing right along with the conspiracy theorists.

Kudos to those sane enough to call bullshit when they see it.

Yet More Birther Bullshit

We Need Birther Control

We’ve got a population explosion of Birthers. The stupidity’s multiplying exponentially, much like Tribbles. I think an air drop of condoms is in order.

The first person who needs one snapped right over his ejaculations is Lou Dobbs:

Today, Political Wire posted a clip of an episode of Lou Dobbs’ radio show in which he not only questions President Obama’s citizenship and promotes the bizarre right-wing “birther” theory, but also insinuates that Obama might be undocumented:

DOBBS: I’m starting to think we have a document issue. You suppose he’s un — no, I won’t even use the word undocumented, it wouldn’t be right.

In an exchange with a caller, Dobbs agrees that Obama’s entire presidency and all his actions could be deemed “illegal.”

This, mind you, after his very own guest host utterly annihilated two Birthers on his very own show:

Pilgrim quoted a number sources including FactCheck.org’s article The truth about Obama’s birth certificate which should have laid this nonsense to rest:

FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as “supporting documents” to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.

CNN, you exported Glenn Beck to Faux News where he belonged – isn’t it time you hauled Lou Dobbs over there, too?

The folks whose frenzy he’s feeding with his nonsense are even eating their own (h/t):

A little evidence that this conspiracy theory is showing up in uncomfortable situations for Republicans: Here’s Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.), a moderate Republican who hasn’t announced whether he’s running for re-election or for the U.S. Senate next year, at a town hall meeting earlier this month.

A woman gets up, holding a baggie containing her birth certificate, and unleashes a rambling, minute-long tirade tirade about how the president is a “citizen of Kenya.” The crowd hoots and cheers when she’s done. Castle responds, diplomatically: “Well I don’t know what comment that invites. If you’re referring to the president, then he is a citizen of the United States.” That elicits roars and boos from the crowd, so Castle presses on. “You can boo, but he is a citizen of the United States.”

Poor Rep. Castle. He’s an island of (relative) sanity in a stormy sea of Birthers, baby-juicers, and only-a-theoriers. I wouldn’t blame him if he gives re-election a complete miss. With a base like this, who wants to run?

And he’s got Rep. John Campbell for a colleague, a Birther Con who’s so fucking pathetic that Tweety wiped the floor with him:

Today on MSNBC, host Chris Matthews interviewed Rep. John Campbell (R-CA), co-sponsor of a bill that would require candidates for president in the future to present a copy of his or her birth certificate “to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications” for president. “The proposal is not crazy,” Campbell said in defense of the measure. “Congressman, nice try,” Matthews replied. “What you’re doing is appeasing the nutcases…you’re verifying the paranoia out there,” he said. Matthews then held up a copy of Obama’s birth certificate and said, “That’s the way to deal with this, mail this birth certificate to the whacko wing of your party.”

Matthews asked Campbell seven times if he believes Obama is a natural born U.S. citizen, and after a series of dodges, Matthews said, “You are feeding the whacko wing of your party.” Campbell finally answered, “As far as I know, Yes.” “As far as you know? I’m showing you his birth certificate!” Matthews exclaimed:

MATTHEWS: It’s on the screen now, take a close look. It says “Barack Hussein Obama.” He was born August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, is that a state? Yes it was. His mother was caucasian, his father was African. What more do you want? He’s male. He was born, by the way at 7:20 P.M. in the island of Oahu. What more do you want? I mean, I’m serious, you say “as far as you know?” You are playing to the crazies.

Of course he is, Chris. He’s one of them. It’s just awesome that he’s such a pathetic git that you finally browbeat him into admitting that Obama was born in the United States, a fact that’s only in doubt among the terminally stupid.

Dday’s got it nailed:

It just shows you how diverged the conversations have become in this country. Democrats are debating how to tackle health care and whether a public option works best and how best to get costs under control, and the right has become fixated on the idea that Barack Obama’s family faked his birth certificate 47 years ago, knowing he would run for President eventually and need a cover story.

Yup. They’re really that stupid. And while condoms prevent a lot of unwanted births and STDs, there’s no equivalent to stop the spread of abject, batshit insane, infinitely ridiculous stupidity. All we can hope is that their population explosion eventually overruns their resourse base and breeds itself into extinction.

In the meantime, we shall continue to point, laugh, and wave the President’s birth certificate in their faces.

We Need Birther Control

"God, Guns, Guts, and American Pick-Up Trucks"

Interesting marketing ploy:

Mark Muller, the president of Max Motors in Missouri, is offering a gift certificate for a Kalashnikov AK-47 rifle to anyone who purchases a pick-up truck.

A Ford and the weapon-of-choice of the mujahedeen. Fascinating one-stop shop options, there.

However, the gun rack is going to cost you extra:

Mark Muller, whose business slogan is “God, Guns, Guts, and American Pick-Up Trucks”, said he had been overwhelmed by the response.

[snip]

“It’s extremely successful. There is a lot of worry about crime, we have a methamphetamine problem around here and people just want to protect themselves,” said the boss of Max Motors near Kansas City. “And what could be better than supporting American products in these troubled times?

Um

Izhevsk Mechanical Works (RTS:IGMA) (Russian: Ижевский Mашзавод) or IZHMASH (ИЖМАШ) is a weapons manufacturer based in Izhevsk, founded in 1807 at the decree of Tsar Alexander I, and is now one of the largest corporations in its field. It makes the famous Kalashnikov series of assault rifle, along with a host of other Russian arms, including medium cannons, missiles, and guided shells. Izhmash also produces other goods, such as motorcycles and cars.

That doesn’t sound American

The AK-47 is a selective fire, gas operated 7.62mm assault rifle developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov.

Nope. Nope, definitely not American. I mean, if he’s going to use the “well, some of them are manufactured in Amurka” excuse, he’s kinda shooting his “I only sell Amurkan trucks!” purity in the foot – after all, Toyota and Nissan also have plants in the U.S.A.

Then again, logical consistency is never a strong feature with right-wing hysterics, is it?

"God, Guns, Guts, and American Pick-Up Trucks"

Ballots and Bullets

I don’t know how the fuck Cons are supposed to portray themselves as a sane, worthy opposition party when they keep fielding insane pieces of shit like this:

We already noticed that the latest round of “Tea Parties” on July 4 in many places became forums for Mad Hatters and March Hares: far-right conspiracists and various extremist belief systems, including the “Birthers”. Now Not Larry Sabato has a prime example from a Tea Party in Virginia, where a Republican legislative candidate named Catherine Crabill got up and said the following:

Crabill: [Quoting Patrick Henry] “If war is inevitable, then let it come, I repeat sir, let it come.”

We have the chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box. But that’s the beauty of our Second Amendment right. I am glad for all of us who enjoy the use of firearms for hunting, but make no mistake, it was not the intent of the Founding Fathers. Our Second Amendment right was to guard against tyranny!

You have to wonder what Crabill will do if she fails at the ballot box. Get out her bullets?

This particular threat, voiced with these phrases — that, failing “the ballot box,” people will turn to “the bullet box” — has been around for awhile. It was fairly common in use among militia leaders of the 1990s, and was often used as a kind of threat. For instance, environmental leaders in western Washington were told: “If we can’t get you at the ballot box, we’ll get you with a bullet. We have a militia of 10,000.”

More recently, a far-right “Patriot” named Greg Evenson wrote a piece last year, before the election, titled “The Choice is Simple: The Ballot Box, or the Bullet Box”, which warned that a massive roundup of American “patriots” was being planned…

[snip]

There is little that makes me more uneasy than glassy-eyed paranoiacs fingering their triggers nervously. Right behind are the Republican officials and right-wing pundits who give mainstream legitimacy to their rantings.

And that’s a serious problem. There will always be fucktards on the fringe who say outrageous shit and then try to make their point with violence. A political party ceases to be worthy of power when it decides to embrace that fringe.

Ballots and Bullets

Sessions Succombs to Friendly Fire; Elsewhere, Buchanan Takes Aim at GOP's Foot

A number of things has the far right completely unhinged, but they’re really coming apart over Sotomayor’s nomination:

But a few right-wing activists not only think they can still rally some opposition to Sotomayor’s nomination, they’re doing so in the cheapest, most ridiculous way possible.

Yesterday, we noticed that the Committee for Justice had just unveiled two ads calling for Sonia Sotomayor’s defeat – one contrasting her to Martin Luther King and the other claiming she wants to “take away your guns.”

Now they’re out with an over-the-top and nonsensical new TV ad that equates her with William Ayers and claims that she supported terrorism by serving on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF).

“Remember Barack Obama’s buddy Bill Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist who bombed American buildings in the ’70s?” the ad’s narrator asks. “Turns out President Obama’s done it again: Picked someone for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who led a group supporting violent Puerto Rican terrorists. Is this radical judge the type of person America needs sitting on our highest court?”

Yes, the presidential election was nine months ago, and right-wing activists are still talking about Bill Ayers. I almost feel sorry for these clowns. Almost.

Not that reality matters, but in the interest of setting the record straight, the Hispanic National Bar Association, writing on behalf of two dozen prominent national Hispanic groups, reminded Republicans last week that the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund is a “mainstream, well-respected organization that serves not only the Latino community, but the nation as a whole.”

So there’s the rabid right, shooting indiscriminately. And who should get hit but Senator “If the KKK didn’t smoke pot, they’d be a fine group” Sessions:

We have learned that Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL) has a favorite Puerto Rican jurist — Jose Cabranes. Sessions demanded to know why Judge Sotomayor did not follow Judge Cabranes’ lead

Interestingly, Sessions was very critical of Judge Sotomayor’s involvement, as a member of the Board of Directors, of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. Sessions seemed not to know that his favorite Boricua judge, Cabranes, was also a member of the Board of the PRDLEF.

Yepper. Sessions’ own favorite Puerto Rican judge turns out to be a dirty rotten terrorist sympathizer, just like Sotomayor. Deary, deary me.

Meanwhile, Pat Buchanan has a few words o’ advice:

Of all of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s conservative critics, few have been quite as offensive as Pat Buchanan. For anyone who’s followed Buchanan’s record, this isn’t surprising.

What’s interesting, though, is Buchanan’s advice for the Republican Party. In an odd piece for Human Events this week, Buchanan argues that the GOP’s response to the Sotomayor nomination may produce “Hispanic hostility for a generation” towards the Republican Party. Sounds like a warning about electoral disaster? On the contrary — Buchanan suggests the key to GOP success in the future is doing more to appeal to whites.

In 2008, Hispanics, according to the latest figures, were 7.4 percent of the total vote. White folks were 74 percent, 10 times as large. Adding just 1 percent to the white vote is thus the same as adding 10 percent to the candidate’s Hispanic vote.

If John McCain, instead of getting 55 percent of the white vote, got the 58 percent George W. Bush got in 2004, that would have had the same impact as lifting his share of the Hispanic vote from 32 percent to 62 percent. […]

Had McCain been willing to drape Jeremiah Wright around the neck of Barack Obama, as Lee Atwater draped Willie Horton around the neck of Michael Dukakis, the mainstream media might have howled. And McCain might be president.

He doesn’t just see the benefits of race-baiting opportunities gone by. As this relates to a strategy for today, Buchanan urges Republicans to tell whites that “their sons and daughters are pushed aside to make room for the Sonia Sotomayors.” Buchanan added that the GOP should also tell whites that Sotomayor has “a lifelong resolve to discriminate against white males.”

[snip]

I suspect Buchanan assumes that whites everywhere share his attitudes. All whites must hate affirmative action, hate immigration, and be politically motivated by images of Jeremiah Wright. He believes, in other words, that the United States really is Alabama, and the GOP will benefit if they believe it, too.

The punchline, of course, is that after these fucktards get done inflicting mortal wounds upon themselves, they’ll wonder why the GOP’s dead.

Sessions Succombs to Friendly Fire; Elsewhere, Buchanan Takes Aim at GOP's Foot

Birther in the Military

I wonder if a discharge for chronic stupidity comes under “dishonorable” or “medical”?

U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook, who should be getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan, is instead seeking a temporary restraining order under the guise of being a conscientious objector. Cook is a birther who is arguing that President Obama is not a natural born citizen and, therefore, ineligible to be commander-in-chief.

[snip]

When not filing suit against his commander-in-chief, Cook has also made time to post at the conservative website FreeRepublic.

That’s punchline enough right there. But this is the really hysterical part: in his complaint, Cook states that he “would be acting in violation of international law by engaging in military actions outside the United States under this President’s command. … simultaneously subjecting himself to possible prosecution as a war criminal by the faithful execution of these duties.”

Now they worry about international law, committing war crimes, et al. How… convenient.

Birther in the Military

Things to Bring Up In Arguments With Cons

A few posts on Crooks and Liars you should absolutely not miss, especially if you get bogged down in discussions with Cons:

When they babble there’s no problem with racism and class divisions in this country, point them here. Be prepared to explain to them why, after generations of piss-poor treatment and rampant discrimination, black people may not have the warm fuzzies for white people, because you just know they’ll fall back on the “But they do it too!” defense.

When they brag about Faux News ratings in the mistaken belief those mean something, direct them here. Good luck trying to get them to understand that the majority of Americans aren’t obsessive fucktards who hang on Glenn Beck’s every spew.

And when they whine for the 1,989,346th time about how that report on right-wing extremism dishonors the troops, bring this to their attention. You may find it difficult getting through their skulls that neo-Nazis infiltrating the military dishonors the troops far more than reports advising that various extremist groups might target service members, but in the end, perhaps a fact or two might penetrate.

I know, who am I kidding, right? But let’s not give up hope just because the majority of them are hopeless fools.

Things to Bring Up In Arguments With Cons