So You Know Exactly How God Did It, Then?

You know, sometimes it seems like USA has come to stand for “United States of Appalling Ignorance.”  A lot of people in this country need to read an improving book.  And I’m not talking about the Bible.  That one only seems to improve people’s ability to be smug about their appalling ignorance.


MTHellfire found this bit of outstanding fuckwittery spouted by Bill O’Reilly and took him to the woodshed over it (h/t):

“Tide goes in and tide goes out…you can’t explain that.” Bill O’Reilly recently told Dave Silverman of American Atheists, during a recent airing on Fox News as they debated the integrity of religion.

After her head hit her desk, she went on to advise that, yes, actually, Billo, we can explain how the tide goes in and out.  I’d just like to add that Billo needs to avail himself of a book I recently read, Beyond the Moon.  We are so able to explain tides that entire pop sci books can be written on the subject.

MTHellfire went on to quote, in its full misspelled glory, a screed she’d been subjected to on Facebook, wherein the correspondent (and I use this term loosely) advised that the reason people don’t trust scientists is that they can’t explain where the first speck of dirt came from, but they can tell you how life was created.

Wrong wrong wrong, and not just because the original had enough grammatical errors to make an English teacher contemplate a home lobotomy in an effort to escape the pain.  Scientists can explain how life evolved.  They’re not yet sure how it originated, but they’ve got some promising ideas.  They’re pretty certain it did not include a large bearded deity poofing the whole thing into existence.

As far as the speck of dirt goes, any decent book on cosmology can clue you in.  Dirt is formed of elements.  Elements are forged in stars.  And so on, all the way back to the Big Bang.  So yes, Facebook babbler, scientists can explain where the first speck of dirt came from.  At length, and with equations, if you like.

But it’s not like the “God did it” crowd is likely to listen to the evidence.  If they do, their eyes will all too likely glaze over, and they will take this as a sign: they cannot understand it, therefore scientists don’t really understand it, ergo Jesus!  So let me just turn this around a bit.  I like turning tables.  It adds interest to a room.

Here’s my reply to the “Scientists can’t explain every single detail exactly, so God, so there!” crowd:

Do you know every last detail of how, precisely, God created the universe?  I mean, precisely how he spoke the whole thing into existence?  The complete and excruciating details of how, exactly, God did it, from the first photon to the last squidgy bit on Eve?

No?

Deary me.  Guess I’ll have to just stick with science, then.

So You Know Exactly How God Did It, Then?
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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

Reading Comprehension FAIL and Other "Cons Desperate for an Obama Scandal" Stories

The Cons and their slobbering media lapdogs are absolutely, bowel-clenchingly, pants-pissingly terrified of Barack Obama.

A bold claim, you say? Evidence to back it up, you ask? Why, certainly, on both counts.

If they weren’t terrified of the man, they wouldn’t have to work so damned hard to destroy him.

They know he’s a force to be reckoned with. What they need is a good, explosive scandal to knock him down with, but since he’s not giving them one, they’re reduced to whining about his pants:

This is big news, according to Greg Gutfeld and the immaculately bleached and botoxed Laura Ingaham on Fox’s O’Reilly Factor as the first ‘dork’ President of the United States has appeared in public wearing Mom Jeans, bought with a gift certificate, apparently, from the now bankrupted Mervyn’s. Americans should be scared – scared, I tell ya – that the POTUS has lost his cool and dresses like a band teacher. Greg Gutfeld barely cracks a smile as he warns us ‘this isn’t going to intimidate Putin’ and ‘our adversaries in Iran will not take [him] seriously,’ especially since he also throws a baseball ‘like a little girl’… all symbols of something ‘deeper and more sinister’…

I kid you not. I wish I did.

That’s desperation, that is. They couldn’t get him with Arugulagate, Condimentgate, or any of the other gates they’ve been frantically waving around, so now they’re trying out Jeansgate. It’s utterly pathetic.

The Cons in Congress tried out Hamgate today, but unfortunately for them, most of us have the reading comprehension skills of a common chimpanzee and the numeracy skills of your basic beaver, which are all you need to shut this gate:

Far-right blogs and Republican staffers thought they’d found a delicious new anecdote to attack the stimulus package. As is usually the case, they neglected to think it through before making themselves appear silly.

Drudge, running with contracts from the government’s stimulus website, claimed that the Obama administration had spent, among other things, $1.19 million on two pounds of ham. Some conservative bloggers, following Drudge’s lead, ran with the story. House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) office complained about the “pork” in the stimulus. Republicans sent “blast e-mails of screenshots from the Drudge Report, highlighting the contracts as wasteful spending.”

By yesterday afternoon, the Department of Agriculture felt compelled to issue a statement, explaining how terribly wrong conservatives are about this.

[snip]

The references to “2 pound frozen ham sliced” are to the sizes of the packaging. Press reports suggesting that the Recovery Act spent $1.191 million to buy “2 pounds of ham” are wrong. In fact, the contract in question purchased 760,000 pounds of ham for $1.191 million, at a cost of approximately $1.50 per pound. In terms of the dairy purchase referenced, USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) purchased 837,936 pounds of mozzarella cheese and 4,039,200 pounds of processed cheese. The canned pork purchase was 8,424,000 pounds at a cost of $16,784,000, or approximately $1.99 per pound.

While the principal purpose of these expenditures is to provide food to those hardest hit by these tough times, the purchases also provide a modest economic benefit of benefiting Americans working at food retailers, manufacturers and transportation companies as well as the farmers and ranchers who produce our food supply.

In other words, the conservative activists who pounced on this were thoroughly confused about every relevant detail, including the underlying claim.

What happened next really makes me wonder if every Con in Congress is just part of some massive practical joke, because slipping on banana peels (or in this case, sliced ham) and then immediately walking face-first into a door usually don’t happen in real life:

Also yesterday, Drudge said $1.4 million in recovery funds went to “repair a door” at Dyess Air Force Base’s “bldg 5112.” Fox News’ Glenn Beck was outraged, and said this is proof that “they’re just peeing your money away.”

“Wow, what happened to that door?” Beck asked. “That’s a lot of repairing, you know. Can we buy a new one, and cheaper?”

Wouldn’t you know it, that’s completely wrong.

[U]nder the “View all project descriptions” link on the page to which the Drudge Report linked, Recovery.gov actually states that the government awarded AFCO Technologies nearly $1.2 million to replace gas mains on the base, and $246,100 to repair doors in Building 5112. A Department of Defense document listing American Recovery and Reinvestment Act projects in Texas states that the doors that were repaired in Building 5112 are “hangar doors.”

Moreover, a May 5 press release from the Dyess Air Force Base stated that the money awarded for the gas main project “may have saved eight jobs” and that the base could “now possibly hire two more employees.”

So, once again, all of the relevant details of the claim are either demonstrably false or wildly misleading.

Better conservatives, please.

Oh, dear glods, yes, please. At least get us ones that don’t get so insanely terrified at the least little sign of a competent Democrat in office that they panic like this. It’s embarrassing.

Reading Comprehension FAIL and Other "Cons Desperate for an Obama Scandal" Stories

Way to Support the Troops

Faux News favorite Ralph Peters, showing just how much the right loves the troops:

Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who has been captured by the Taliban and appears in a video released this weekend by his captors, “went missing from his base in eastern Afghanistan on June 30.” The circumstances of his capture are still unknown. ABC News reports, “Defense officials said it appeared he somehow left his base in Paktika Province at night, likely accompanied by several Afghan soldiers.” On July 6, the Taliban claimed that “a drunken American soldier had come out of his garrison” and was captured by them.

On Fox News yesterday, guest Ralph Peters, a retired Army Lt. Col., urged against leaping to conclusions. “I was to stress first of all that we must wait until all of the facts are in until we make a final judgment,” Peters said, but quickly added, “He is an apparent deserter,” “he is collaborating with the enemy,” and “we know that this private is a liar.” Peters then suggested that if Bergdahl is a deserter, the Taliban should kill him:

I want to be clear. If, when the facts are in, we find out that through some convoluted chain of events, he really was captured by the Taliban, I’m with him. But, if he walked away from his post and his buddies in wartime, I don’t care how hard it sounds, as far as I’m concerned, the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills.

[snip]

Michelle Malkin applauds Peters’ “tough words.”

I know these fucktards had lost all sense of decency a long time ago, but this is obscene even for them.

Way to Support the Troops

Walter Cronkite was So Right

Walter Cronkite was one of the last of a dying breed – a teevee journalist who was a journalist in truth rather than just name:

Americans of all ages and the journalist community are remembering the life and career of Walter Cronkite, famously revered as “the most trusted man in America.”

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald notes that the media is largely glossing over Cronkite’s “most celebrated and significant moment” — “when he stood up and announced that Americans shouldn’t trust the statements being made about the war by the U.S. Government and military, and that the specific claims they were making were almost certainly false.”

Of course they’re glossing it over. They hate admitting their abject failings. And you probably won’t see too many of them highlighting his all-too-true assessment of their pathetic state:

The Nation’s John Nichols reports that as the war in Iraq went horribly awry, he asked Cronkite whether a network anchorman would speak out in the same way that he had. “I think it could happen, yes. I don’t think it’s likely to happen,” he said with an audible sigh. “I think the three networks are still hewing pretty much to that theory. They don’t even do analysis anymore, which I think is a shame. They don’t even do background. They just seem to do headlines, and the less important it seems the more likely they are to get on the air.”

David Gregory, he could’ve been looking at you:

I can only echo what Vernie Gay said about the new Meet The Press:

But he also seems more intent on covering the waterfront than digging for news, or in pushing the talking heads off their talking points. Recent interviews with Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) felt like a waterfront that went on for miles – an endless vista of chatter and spin.

BOTTOM LINE “Meet the Press” is now the de facto safe show on Sunday morning – “safe,” that is, for those being interviewed.

And here we have good ol’ David assuring Mark Sanford that MTP would be very safe indeed:

When the stories about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s love of hiking and the ensuing revelations about line crossing and soul mates were first revealed, I think it’s safe to say that most people never saw it coming. But what hasn’t been a surprise is the resulting confirmation of how many in the media are willing to sell their journalistic souls for political access.

And leading that list has to be David Gregory, who went out of his way to continue the proud tradition of Meet the Press kissing the ass of shamed elected officials.

From his emails to Sanford’s office, where he begs for an interview:

Left you a message. Wanted you to hear directly from me that I want to have the Gov on Sunday on Meet The Press. I think it’s exactly the right forum to answer the questions about his trip as well as giving him a platform to discuss the economy/stimulus and the future of the party. You know he will get a fair shake from me and coming on MTP puts all of this to rest.

… So coming on Meet The Press allows you to frame the conversation how you really want to…and then move on. You can see (sic) you have done your interview and then move on. Consider it.

In the middle of the breaking scandal, Gregory not only offered to let Sanford guide the story, he was willing to give him a platform to change the subject. And then Gregory would “move on.”

Just like everybody else. David Gregory had plenty of company in his Buy My Show Bazaar:

CNN’s John King told Sawyer he had always appreciated Sanford’s “kindness, candor, and hospitality,” and added, in a transparent attempt to bond, “I’m all for anonymous escapes myself.” George Stephanopoulos offered his show, ABC’s This Week, as a “civil forum to address this week’s events.” And producers for CBS’s Face the Nation, ABC’s Good Morning America, several Fox shows, and many others gave Sanford’s office the hard sell too.

And that’s not all!

• Ann Edelberg, a producer at MSNBC, wrote to Sanford press secretary Joel Sawyer to say: “Of course the Gov has an open invite to a friendly place here at MJ, if he would like to speak out.” MJ refers to Morning Joe, the MSNBC show hosted by former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough, and also frequently featuring hardcore right-winger Pat Buchanan.

Politico‘s Jonathan Martin, after making a few inquiries to Sawyer, wrote sycophantically: “Jakie causing you guys problem?” That’s a reference to state Sen. Jake Knotts, who had first raised questions about the governor’s whereabouts.

• A woman named Jessica Gibadlo — this seems like her — wrote in an email to Sawyer that MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer was suggesting Sanford could come on her network to spin the story favorably. Wrote Gibadlo:

As you know I’m close to Contessa who has been in my ear on this. She said that the tone in the news room is that Mark could spin this fav
orably if he talks it up as the outdoors man in the woods etc. For all we know he’s contemplating the last year of his term and thinking through his priorities before he goes on his family vacation.

As you know, she’s close to Contessa.

• A barely literate Fox News producer and Sanford fan wrote: “Where is he…we LOVE to governor he is okay right?” Hey, who doesn’t love to governor?

• The Wall Street Journal‘s Brendan Miniter — who we already told you had dissed his own paper’s reporting on the saga in an effort to suck up to the governor’s office — doubled down on that effort, writing to Sawyer that that he “wanted verification that the WSJ story was BS.” Now there’s some team spirit!

• Stewart Moore, the anchor for local South Carolina news station WIS-TV, showed great news judgment, writing:

Off the record, I think this whole thing is ridiculous. Sounds like slow news day stuff.

On the record; for the sake of good journalism, is there any way we can get the governor on for a phoner @ 6:30am? I think that will end the crazy situation we both find ourselves, more so you, in.

Thanks dude.

But wait! There’s more!

The State has written up a few more of the emails, and look what they found:

ABC News White House reporter Jake Tapper e-mailed Sawyer twice on June 23, both to note coverage of competitor NBC.

With a subject line of “NBC spot was slimy,” Tapper e-mailed Sawyer a “Today” show transcript of Sanford coverage, calling it “insulting.” Later, Tapper forwarded Sawyer a Twitter post [this one — TPMmuckraker] by “Meet The Press” host David Gregory.

Jeff Schneider, a vice president at ABC News, said Tapper was “carrying some water for producers who knew he had a relationship with the governor’s office.”

Oh, just carrying some water for producers, you say? Well, never mind then.

[snip]

One prominent conservative blogger also offered his help. Erick Erickson of Red State emailed to say:

If he wants something more personal for the blog to push back, I’m happy to help.

That turned out well, of course.

And all of that’s disgusting enough, but rather pales in comparison to Chuck Todd’s little Q & A with Glenn Greenwald:

Audio from Salon Radio, where the full transcript is also available.


Glenn Greenwald: So what do you think happens – I think what has destroyed our reputation is announcing to the world that we tolerate torture, and telling the world we don’t —

Chuck Todd: We have elections, we also had an election where this was an issue. A new president, who came in there, and has said, we’re not going to torture, we’re going to do this, and we’re going to do this–

GG: What do you think should happen when presidents–

CT: Is that not enough? Isn’t that enough?


GG: When, generally, if I go out and rob a bank tomorrow, what happens to me is not that I lose an election. What happens is to me is that I go to prison. So, what do you think should happen when presidents get caught committing crimes in office? What do you think ought to happen?

CT: You see, this is where, this is not – you cannot sit here and say this is as legally black and white as a bank robbery because this was an ideological, legal —

GG: A hundred people died in detention. A hundred people. The United States Government admits that there are homicides that took place during interrogations. Waterboarding and these other techniques are things that the United States has always prosecuted as torture.

Until John Yoo wrote that memo, where was the lack of clarity about whether or not these things were illegal? Where did that lack of clarity or debate exist? They found some right-wing ideologues in the Justice Department to say that this was okay, that’s what you’re endorsing. As long the president can do that, he’s above the law. And I don’t see how you can say that you’re doing anything other than endorsing a system of lawlessness where the president is free to break the law?

CT: Well, look, I don’t believe I’m endorsing a system of lawlessness; I’m trying to put in the reality that as much that there is a legal black and white here, there is a political reality that clouds this, and you know it does too.

Hilzoy, in one of her last posts, absolutely destroyed him (well, the bits Glenn left intact, anyway), and then pointed out something absolutely terrifying:

We should expect more of our journalists. They need to get the facts right. They need to figure out the legal issues at stake in a case like this, not just listen to flacks from both sides, throw up their hands, and say “it’s not black and white!” If he did a better job, he wouldn’t have to worry so much about politicizing the justice system, and he might take pride in the fact that he helped shed light on complicated issues, when he might have just gotten lazy.

Of course, it’s not just Chuck Todd, who is, alas, one of the better TV journalists out there. He’s just the one who cited the incompetence of his profession as a reason to abandon the rule of law.

That’s absolutely fucking appalling.

I could go on – after all, we have teevee “journalists” fucking up the facts on health care reform, and the supposedly “liberal” MSNBC giving a platform to a lying white supremacist fucktard like Pat Buchanan, among a thousand other examples of their endless idiocy – but we’d be here for the next century. I just want to close this Smack-o-Matic marathon with what BarbinMD said:

In the hours following the death of Walter Cronkite, the accolades began pouring in; “legendary,” “iconic,” “set the standard,” a “voice of certainty in an uncertain world,” reminders that he was once known as “the most trusted man in America,” and perhaps the most telling, a lament that “we’ll never see his like again.”

And with that in mind, perhaps members of the media could pause and consider why a journalist who instilled trust in his viewers by simply reporting the news is “someone whose like we will never see again.” And maybe they’ll even take a moment to think about what it says about them.

If they were worth anything, they would. But we all know they’re too shallow for such deep thoughts.

I just hope they go to bed tonight knowing that Walter Cronkite was ashamed of them.

Walter Cronkite was So Right

Faux News Host Thinks Americans Marry "Other Species"

You know, the Con’s ignorance about basic science is just getting abjectly pathetic:

“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade probably isn’t quite sharp enough to realize why his comments this morning were a little crazy even for Fox News. It’s a shame, because if he thought about it, he might be embarrassed.

Kilmeade was reflecting on a study that found married people fare better when it comes to Alzheimer’s than divorcees. Fox News is “pro-family,” so it might seem like the kind of study Kilmeade would approve of.

Alas, no. The Fox News personality took issue with where the study was done, which he said discredited the results. Alex Koppelman, who posted the video, explains:

Kilmeade and two colleagues were discussing a study that, based on research done in Finland and Sweden, showed people who stay married are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s. Kilmeade questioned the results, though, saying, “We are — we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other …”

At this point, his co-host tried to — in that jokey morning show way — tell Kilmeade he needed to shut up, and quick, for his own sake. But he didn’t get the message, adding, “See, the problem is the Swedes have pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes…. Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society.”

We’ll just skip right over the fact that people who advocate that sort of purity generally belong to white supremacist organizations, and get to the science. First off, how “pure” are their societies? Lessee:

Sweden: Of the 2007 population 13.4% (1.23 million) were born abroad.[96] This reflects the inter-Nordic migrations, earlier periods of labour immigration, and later decades of refugee and family immigration. Sweden has been transformed from a nation of emigration ending after World War I to a nation of immigration from World War II onwards. In 2008, immigration reached its highest level since records began with 101,171 people moving to Sweden.[97]

The largest immigrant groups living in Sweden as of 2008 consists of people born in Finland (175 113), Iraq (109 446), Former Yugoslavia (72 285), Poland (63 822), Iran (57 663), Bosnia and Herzegovina (55 960), Denmark (44 310), Norway (44310), Chile (28 118), Thailand (25 858), Somalia (25 159) and Lebanon (23 291). In the last decade most immigrants have come from Iraq, Poland, Thailand, Somalia and China.[98]

Finland: The share of foreign citizens in Finland is 2.5 percent[29] being among the lowest of the European Union countries. Most of them are from Russia, Estonia and Sweden.[29]

Well, Swedes seem to be mutts, and while Finland looks “pure” on the surface, let’s keep in mind their history, which seems to include a lot of people who weren’t from Finland moving in and becoming Fins. Europeans have been sloshing around interbreeding for a damned long time. I didn’t even bother to look at the genetic studies yet, but I doubt there’s any sort of genetic markers that differentiate “pure” Swedes and Fins from all of those icky mixed breeds. Thus we dispense with the “purity” argument.

Moving on. Kilmeade says Americans keep marrying “other species.” I do not think he knows what the word “species” means:

  1. Biology.
    1. A fundamental category of taxonomic classification, ranking below a genus or subgenus and cons
      isting of related organisms capable of interbreeding.
    2. An organism belonging to such a category, represented in binomial nomenclature by an uncapitalized Latin adjective or noun following a capitalized genus name, as in Ananas comosus, the pineapple, and Equus caballus, the horse.

Now, we could be generous and say he was using the term in a rather vulgar sense, but from the context he seems to believe that humans are really divided into biologically distinct species, which is utter and complete ignorant bullshit. Y’see, all humans are Homo sapiens, which are:

The modern species of humans, the only extant species of the primate family Hominidae.

Emphasis added specifically for Brian Kilmeade, who apparently never took high school biology.

And, finally, let us have a look at another statement Kilmeade made in that same segment:

“In America, we marry everybody. Some will marry Italians, the Irish….”

Yes, we do indeed marry the Irish, don’t we, Brian? In fact, we may even marry people from the Irish parish of…. Kilmeade.

I do believe if you took a “purity” test, you’d flunk it. Imagine that.

Faux News Host Thinks Americans Marry "Other Species"

Erick Erickson Loses the Last of His Marbles

And I know he’s lost them, because only a mableless man would compare Rush Limbaugh to Jesus.

That’s right. Jesus. Christ.

Peter, under pressure and fear, denied Christ not just once, but three times. Peter, though, feared death. The strain on Peter was great. The rest of us, though, typically fear the opinions of others.

The incidents of late with Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Dick Cheney, and others is why I raise this. Putting it bluntly, were these guys on the left, their fellow leftists would at best be cheering them on and at worst silently nodding along. There wouldn’t be any on that side rushing to the nearest microphone to condemn them.

It gets much worse.

I’m sure it does, but I’m too busy barfing through the gales of laughter to go look. If you guys survive it, let me know how bad it was.

Erick Erickson Loses the Last of His Marbles

Hannity, the Defiant Coward


Are you fucking kidding me?

I’m getting rather ambivalent about having celebrities get waterboarded, even when it changes their opinion like Erich “Mancow” Mueller. It’s torture, now he knows it. But the more it is done the more it becomes a parlor trick in too many eyes. It’s torture, it’s a crime not a game of Cranium.

And you still have a result like this from moral degenerates:

Mancow also revealed that his friend Sean Hannity “called me and said ‘it’s still not torture.'”

So more evidence that Sean Hannity is an a-hole.

So, he’s still too much of a despicable coward to put his money where his mouth is, but he thinks he’s right and Mancow’s wrong.

I don’t even have the words for what a disgusting piece of yellow shit he is.

Hannity, the Defiant Coward

Kristol Ball Breaking

Note to Bill Kristol: don’t start a second career as a psychic anytime soon.

Today, President Obama picked Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his Supreme Court nominee. On Fox News Sunday this past week, right-wing pundit Bill Kristol (ie “Kristol Ball”) confidently predicted that Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) would be the next Supreme Court nominee:

KRISTOL: I think he has made up his mind, and I think it’s going to be Jennifer Granholm, the governor of Michigan, for this reason. Obama gave that interview Friday which we saw the snippet from. In that interview, he uses the term practical seven times — I want someone with a practical sense of how the world works, I want someone with practical experience. Obama knows what he’s doing, and I think he wants to say, I’m putting on someone who went to Harvard Law School, clerked at an appellate level, was attorney general of Michigan, has good quotes from Republicans and Democrats about their conduct of that legal office, but who really understands the effect on real-world decisions.

The man has the predictive power of a melted Magic 8 ball.

Kristol Ball Breaking