Analyzing the guano

Roy, methinks, is much too modest.

Though abnormal psychology is not our forte...

Oh, it is, man. It is.

Phelps was really just ahead of his time

At the risk of sounding like John Cole, this is fucking nuts.

Lawyers for the father of a Marine who died in Iraq say a court has ordered him to pay legal costs for the anti-gay protesters who picketed his son’s funeral. The protesters are led by Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan. The father, Albert Snyder of York, Pa., had won a $5 million verdict against Mr. Phelps, but it was thrown out on appeal. On Friday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Maryland, ordered Mr. Snyder to pay the costs of Mr. Phelps’s appeal. The United States Supreme Court agreed earlier this month to consider whether the protesters’ provocative messages, which include phrases like “Thank God for dead soldiers,” are protected by the First Amendment. Members of the church maintain that God hates homosexuality and that the death of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan is God’s way of punishing the United States for its tolerance of it.

I can understand that Phelps' "speech" is protected, but forcing the victim of that speech to pay his court costs? Shouldn't those be borne by the court that originally agreed to hear the case?

But really, I'm waiting for the wingnuts to rush to Phelps defense, but I guess their silence throughout his long stint on the national stage tells us all we need to know. I know, it's a topsy-turvy world these days.

"Our furniture!"

Today's Daily Outrage: a black man, feet, desk.

Via Matt.

Wingnuttia on health care

Over the weekend, the New York Times took a look at liberal pie thrower, Alan Grayson, and wondered if he was the left's version of a wingnut. Nevermind that what Alan Grayson said to offend the sensibilities of the Times and forced Republicans to reach for the smelling salts -- that the Republicans health care plan was, "Get sick and you die" -- is essentially accurate.

So, no, Grayson is not a wingnut. This is our representative from Greater Wingnuttia:

Representative Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina, warned, “I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.”

And no, they should never have allowed Bill Ayers to speak to the IOC

I'm glad the NY Times is finally paying attention to Greater Wingnuttia.

The speech

Word is, Obama will come out in full favor of a public option. I've been willing to let the public option go as long as a health care reform bill ensures near universal coverage, no lifetime caps, or refusals due to pre-existing conditions (being alive, after all, is a pre-existing condition). But I think Krugman's right, if coverage is to be mandated, this can't be made to look like the Let's Make the Insurance Industry Even More Profitable Act of 2009.

But the speech I wanted to mention wasn't the one the president is making tonight, but rather the one he gave yesterday. More specifically, the media's coverage of it in the aftermath of a week's worth of Outrage TV from people who "disagree with Obama." But I'll let Doghouse do the blogging:

Anyway, a deep bow and a hearty secret teenaged reprobate handshake for the "about 100" students of Pendleton (IN) Heights High School who walked out of class yesterday to protest the school's refusal to let them watch the President's speech. For which, of course, they were all given Detention, the Lethal Injection of tiny minds, just so they all understood that artificial, uninformed, politically-motivated, television-buffoon-driven protests, real, imagined, or fabricated, would be given a full and friendly hearing by the school's administration, but that its students could just Shut Th' Fuck Up.

[...]

And I like to think I at least consider how my own opinions color what I hear on the idiot box, but this is one of those times when it's damn near impossible to see any justification. The locals ran this stuff for a week. They never had any problem finding some "spokesman" for "concerned" "parents" to fill the time. But somehow I had to turn to the internets to learn that Reagan had delivered an overt stump speech with children as a backdrop. (Not that he ever really did anything else.) The entire issue was framed by the loudest screamers among the bunch who resoundingly lost the last election to this guy, including, they kept telling me at the time, Red State Indiana for the first time in 45 years. Controversy! And having helped see to it that urban legend and political underhandedness would rule the day in the Doughnut counties, the locals were reduced to finding a Marion county school to serve as an example of the Parents May Opt Their Children Out alternative, noting that at Pike Township's New Augusta Academy about 30 students out of 800-plus were excused. Thirty. It suggests that every last fucking one of their parents had been interviewed by local news in the preceding five days.

"And that's the way it is"

I expected much wingnutosphere animosity towards the late Walter Cronkite due to his liberal bent, but I hadn't expected to be regaled with the odd notion that his product during CBS News' hay day was inferior to blogs.

Not much less thoughtless but offensive nonetheless are John Podhoretz and Say Anything, who suggest that Cronkite could learn a thing or two from bloggers, of all people. "There are no Walter Cronkites any more, and while I bear personal animosity to Cronkite himself, good riddance to that era," says the latter (I assume no slip). "But to have a big, giant, sloppy mish-mash of information available for the public to pick through than a carefully managed stream of news being spoon-fed to us by talking heads on television who became so trusted nobody dared question them."

I stand behind the theory I suggested last week.

Kind of like Karen Finley

I'm beginning to wonder if the joke's on us and the wingnutosphere is nothing more than a brilliantly conceived piece of performance art.

He bounced it! He bounced it!

Watching President Barack Hussein Obama dare to toss out the first pitch of last night's (actually good, 2:30 or so) All-Star Game, I anticipated wingnuttia comparisons with the steely-eyed flight suited-one's post 9-11 performance, and accusations that Fox (FOX!) intentionally did not show the result of the throw. I was not, I admit, expecting a 700-plus word dissertation on it and the conspiracy involved, one that apparently included the "lefty" sportswriting contingent, Yadier Molina, and...ahem...Stan Musial.

The media fawning really is so shameless it's become self-parody. Take ESPN, for example.

Sadly, he does not provide an example from ESPN, so have no idea what he's talking about, especially since the Bristol, Connecticut Entertainment and Sports Network didn't broadcast the game.

Now, about that player who caught Obama's pitch: It was none other than the Cardinals' great first-baseman, Albert Pujols. What does that matter? Well, the tradition is that the first pitch is tossed to the catcher, not the first-baseman — and, in fact, the starting catcher for the National League last night was the Cardinals' own Yadier Molina. But while Molina is popular, Pujols is like God in St. Louis (in fact, a fan in the stands either last night or the night before was holding a banner that said, "In Albert We Trust").

"Last night or the night before." Yeah, I'd been drinking, too. But allow me to explain "baseball," and "catching" to the former assistant federal prosecutor (!). Yes, typically, the first pitch is thrown to a catcher, and Yadier Molina is indeed a catcher for St. Louis and was starting for the Senior League. But, just as typically, the starting catcher for the home team spends his time just before the game in the bullpen, warming up the starting pitcher.

As for the "booing." Didn't hear it, though I'll give Andy "Birther" McCarthy" the benefit of the doubt. But given "reality," their releative popularity, and the comparative manners between St. Louis and New York crowds, I doubt it matched the crowd's reation to a certain VP's trip to the Bronx, where his presence was merely announced.

UPDATE: Now, that's more like it!

Defending first amendment rights is integral to their movement

Roy's new column is up, this time on the reaction of the wingnutosphere to the Palin news.

The most fulsome war-whoop was sounded by Cold Fury: "Sue them, bankrupt them, ruin their lives, destroy their careers, shut down their blogs and other propaganda outlets, get 'em locked up wherever possible. Kick them in the teeth again and again, until they howl in pain from the gutter they roll in. Scorch the very earth under their feet. Unleash pure hell on them, and make every single day of their lives a horror and a misery -- just as they did to you, just as they've done to so many other decent men and women who have the temerity to disagree with their anti-American ideal of what this country should be. Liberal asswipes have gotten away with this sort of thing for far too long...

"Reap the whirlwind, you odious, gutless, evil pricks. We'll fix your little red wagon yet; wait and see if we don't."

Now there's a template for a winning national movement.

The promise of Sharia Law

Ezra wonders if there will be universal health care and a public plan.

Now, clearly, Sowell's a lunatic. But I am always amazed that the people who are most likely to throw out there the specter of sharia law as a result of liberal policy are the same ones who would most likely approve of fundamentalism.

But he may have a point. If Iran is armed with two nuclear weapons we would have no alternative but to surrender as our massive retaliatory capability is really just so much Styrofoam.

Damned if he does, damned if he...damn!

All last week the wingnutosphere was either roaring or sputtering that Obama was the reason a rag-tag band of Somali pirates (probably gay ones at that) was defying the U.S. Navy.

Now that it's reported he gave the orders to the Navy to kill the pirates should the merchant captain's life be in present danger and should there be a clear shot, which resulted in a successful hostage rescue, you'd think they'd be relieved for the captain, proud of and impressed by the Navy marksmen, and gracious towards the young president. Well, you'd be wrong.

In fact, in this case they're showing a rare affinity for the French.

Huston also raged that the President "sits at the picnic table watching his kids play in the White House," when he should have been tensing his jaw photogenically, barking out orders, and white. And Huston yelled that "the French... THE FRENCH... use proper military force against these criminal pirates" -- referring to a rescue mission that ended with the death of a hostage.

But getting the hostage killed has got to be the right way to run a rescue, because Obama didn't do it. (Radio nutcake Tammy Bruce also praised the French hostage-killing mission -- "Good for them for taking decisive action" -- and Wake Up America said that "the only other option is to hand the pirates what they ask for.")

You need a scorecard...

One in 50

Hard to say how accurate this report is, but it is certainly distressing.

Even before the financial and home foreclosure crisis hit full stride, the number of homeless children in America had reached an alarming level. The National Center on Family Homelessness released a report today that estimates that one in every 50 American children was homeless between 2005 and 2006. That totals roughly 1.5 million kids. While the center provided no previous statistic to compare against that figure, a study conducted with different measures published in 2000 put the total at 1.35 million children living in homelessness each year. The numbers are likely to get worse as the economy continues to decline. "We know the numbers are going to skyrocket," says Ellen Bassuk, president of the Newton, Mass.-based Center and an associate professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School.

Indeed, a quick survey of the country provides lots of evidence to support those fears. Chicago public school officials report the number of its 405,000 students deemed homeless soared to 11,143 last month from 9,182 in February 2006. School officials in Hillsborough County, Fla., which includes Tampa, have so far counted some 1,700 homeless students — and expect the figure to eclipse last year's 2,020. Meanwhile, the surge in homeless families has overwhelmed Massachusetts' shelters, forcing state officials to book motel rooms for the displaced. In January, some 4,600 homeless children were reported in the state's shelters and motels, up from 3,411 from roughly one year earlier. (See one family's struggle against homelessness.)

According to the new report, the states with the highest number of homeless children in the period studied were Texas (337,105), California (292,624), Louisiana (204,053), Georgia (58,397) and Florida (49,886). The states reporting the smallest populations of homeless children: Wyoming (169), Rhode Island (797), Vermont (1,174), North Dakota (1,181), and South Dakota (1,545). However, the report also ranks the states according to parameters that go beyond their share of homeless children, factoring in, among other things, incidence of such health conditions as asthma and tooth decay. With that framework, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island and North Dakota were rated among states that dealt best with the problem overall. At the bottom of the list: Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, New Mexico and Louisiana.

Funds for the homeless, included in the stimulus package, can't get to states fast enough.

And those kids had sure as hell better not own a cell phone.

Three weeks

It is weird how the Right seem to have higher expectations for the "magic negro" then do Obama's own supporters.

The poetry of anguish

Yes, yes, the election of Barack Obama gives us great hope. More importantly it gives us comedy gold.

Although many conservatives did not appear to realize what an enormous opportunity had been handed to us, they nevertheless accepted the news of Obama’s victory with a stoicism that should make us all proud. “Obama is NOT the Anti-Christ,” wrote Flopping Aces, reassuringly. “The Anti-Christ has an actual plan and millions of years of experience to call upon. Obama the President can claim NONE of these qualities.” Sultan Knish exuded a Zen-like calm as he anticipated the next four years. “Today I unpacked my winter clothes in preparation for a long winter, and a long winter is coming if not of the thermometer, then of the soul,” Sultan wrote with soaring poetic imagery, if not of the anger, then of the sorrow. “A man that represents not simply an opposing view but the view of those who oppose America and all it stands for, will sit in the Oval Office. Worse still he did not get there through a democratic election but through fraud, voter intimidation and every dirty trick culminating in a campaign that had little in common with conventional American politics and a great deal in common with the cults of personality cultivated by totalitarian dictators.” Atlas Shrugs waxed poetic, too, transforming herself into a Jewish, orthographically challenged e.e. cummings: “he says he is a democrat. i think he does so to hide that he is a committed marxist leninist who intends to impose a marxist dictatorhip upon this country, which advancig the interests of islam. he will attempt to either impose or import sharia, and sharia financing into this country. he is not my president. i do not accept him we have no deals, mr. obama and i, as he has vitiated them by a fundamental and far reaching fraud. he has evil designes and intents upon me and mine, upon thee and me.”

They are so eloquent in defeat and batshit craziness.

Bogey men and John Galts

From Mr. Edroso, who enjoys the comedy gold of an army of Ol' Perfessers threatening to "go off the grid" in case Obama wins and leads us to a Workers' Paradise:

They really believe it. The greed and stupidity of investors far bigger than the Perfesser have done what untold cadres of socialists and communists couldn't manage in a century -- destroyed the good name of American capitalism and put the better part of its assets under government control -- and the would-be Galts are threatening to bugger off to China because America might elect a moderately progressive Democrat.

I'll be disappointed if Obama doesn't make it, but really, on the whole I must declare myself content as it stands: the very threat of something that would mildly discomfit their self-centered world view has excited these folks' ridiculousness to levels that surprise even this jaded observer of human folly. And the beauty part is, no matter who wins..., they're just going to get more entertaining.

It's baffled me for some time: Why, only 21 months ago, Sen. Obama represented a mild liberal but has lately become a perceived Socialist, planning to dismantle a capitalist system -- a debased and crippled system that he's inheriting, no less. They are afraid of his mild plans to return the tax margins to their Clinton-era level. Wha?

But I'm beginning to understand. The wingnutosphere feeds on fear and bogey men. Islamofascists poised to destroy our democracy. Saddam Hussein and his canisters of mustard gas. Those were easy. The GOP leadership sent out the memo and the nutosphere regurgitated it into the waiting mouths of their breathless readers.

But unleashing all that fear creates it's own vortex. And in the nutosphere, there must always be Some New Fear to point to, and establishment couldn't really keep up (how could they, they were still dealing with the consequences of the earlier fears they'd unleashed?). So it became increasingly orderless and unhinged: Illegal immigrants crashing like waves over our borders to turn us into Northern Mexico and force us to speak Spanglish; ACORN tearing at the very fabric of our democracy. It is always something. There has to be. And it has to be an enormous and terrifying thing.

And now it's led by Sarah the Governor and Everyman, Joe Plumber, esq., expressing terror at the notion that That One with his foreign name and nefarious tax plans so apparently complicated that it is duping the Em Ess Em not to reveal its obvious Marxist intent.

Which us brings us to today. We may learn tonight that the majority of voters in the United States of America has elected a slightly center left Senator from a midwestern state who also happens to be African-American. That can't be cause simply for disappointment that there candidate didn't win. That can't be cause simply for concern that policies they disagree with may be on the agenda. No, this is cause for nerve-rattling, jaw-clenching, take to the hills, they want our women folk, fear.

These are the same people who poked progressives in the eye for eight years with a shit covered pointed stick as their Dear Leader (the man they can no longer mention) really did rip the fabric of democracy with a 50% + 1 political strategy, and who along with his VeeP exhibited a deep, deep loathing for the Constitution*.

Maybe that's it. Maybe all the warm security they expected from the permanent Republican majority has fallen away and they're feeling a wee bit vulnerable.

Roy may find it entertaining. Maybe so, but it's entertainment in a "Saw X" kind of way.

* Original post I had written "Constitutional." I find that kinda funny.

May a million Little Red Books bloom!

During a week in which we are seriously considering nationalizing U.S. banks (following the lead by the Stalinist Gordon Brown), it is fascinating that over at The Corner, they can't decide whether Barack Obama is a Stalinist or a Maoist.

Some conservatives have grown contemplative, others are tying hangman's knots.

Norris, Wingnut Idiot

Chuck Norris schools us up on Amurican histry.

While I filmed the Walker, Texas Ranger series for eight and a half years, I had never had much time to read, except for screenplays of the episodes. But once I wrapped the show up, I started doing a lot of reading. And I really got into history. I started reading about the Founding Fathers, and how they started our country and why. And actually, amazingly, the reason they left England was because of the heavy taxation that was being implemented on the citizens of England. They were getting taxed over there just the way we are right now in our own country, and that's why they left.

It is amazing indeed, since "the founders" had been living in the colonies for some time, as in since they'd been born.

But please go on, Chuck, with your lecture on "the founders."

What else struck you about the framers?

I really believe our Founding Fathers had a vision for us that wasn't conducive to greed, power and materialism. And that's really what we've become, you know: a country of greed. I don't think that's what they envisioned, and that's why I'm such a complainer about Congress. I really believe Congress has been overwhelmed by greed, power and materialism. That's why we have a nine trillion dollar debt. Congress really is controlling everything. They can blame the president — and he has a lot to be blamed for — but the real blame goes to Congress. You've got 535 people in Congress, 100 Senators and 435 Representatives. Now, [my wife] Gena and I went to the House chamber last year. They were debating a bill. Well, not debating — they were screaming at each other across the aisles. And I'm watching them and thinking, this looks like a grammar school class. Who do we hold accountable in the House of Representatives? If you blame one Congressmen for something, he blames Joe Blow over there. Well, how do we know? Let's reduce it down to one or two Congressmen per state. First of all, we'd save millions in salaries and secondly, now we'll know who to blame.

So, Chuck really respects the vision of "the founders," but thinks "the framers" of the Constitution had it all wrong. I guess their vision of representative democracy was teh stupid.

It goes on, and you wonder why Time is asking Chuck Norris about tax policy, but the snark comes too easy.

But he does say The Girl Whom You Cannot Mention Unless You Are A Republican [GWYCMUYAR] will "have to live with her mistake." And here I thought, post convention, the biscuit in her oven was a joyous gift from God.

It's a wingnut world. We're just living in it.

Who's in charge?

I realize its the Bedwetting club, but, um, this is just weird.

The next two or three days will reveal whether Sadr can mount an effective response against Maliki; and more importantly how soon the Iraqi PM is willing to call off the dogs. For Sadr the timing of the offensive comes at a time when both Clinton and Obama are preoccupied with their war against each other. Neither candidate has reacted to restrain Maliki, who looks like he will have a few hours yet in which to accomplish whatever goal he has in mind.

I was unaware that Maliki was taking his orders from two senators running for the Democratic presidential nomination. But I guess the wingnuts think these two senators are omnipotent.

JesUS throughout history

Almost Zelig-like.