Fearless on my breath...

So apparently there was a Republican YouTube debate last night and the wingnuts are all worked up 'cause it was somehow totally not fair to the candidates...or something. Sadly, No! summarizes it thusly:

Oh my God, the CNN YouTube debate showed the entire country what malignant, bonk-headed wackos we are represents a shockingly outrageous conspiracy by CNN and YouTube not to screen questioners for party loyalty — thus totally unfairly showing the entire country what malignant, bonk-headed wackos we are.

So pretty much the norm really. One of the questions apparently pertained to the Bible and a commentor at S,N! came up with the perfect summary of it:

cleter

I interpret the debate thusly:

MODERATOR: What part of the Bible is your favorite?
RUDY: The parts about the smiting. Definately the smiting. You know, we were ALL smote on 9/11, but no more! Now I WILL DO the smiting! Smite!
MCCAIN: The smiting. And the parts about honoring your elders. I like those parts a lot now.
PAUL: The weird parts that don’t make sense. That’s my favorite. Weirder the better. The parts Ayn Rand wrote are particularly good.
HUCKABEE: Well, I like the words of peace and love from our Lord and Savior.
AUDIENCE: Boooo!
ROMNEY: The parts of the Bible written on the Tablets made of Silver by the Silver Surfer himself are my favorite. What? C’mon, I’m not the only one! The Epistles of Galactus are deeply moving! What! Why are you staring at me, Mayor McSleaze? Is one of your mistresses standing behind me?
RUDY:F**k you, you f**k!

Now that I would've paid money to watch!

Sadly, No! is currently covering the most fantastic display of extreme right-wing cannibalism I've ever seen. What happens when paleocons and neocons start bickering about who's the bigger hater and who's a little liberal-loving pussy? Why just click the link, make yourself some popcorn, and prepare to have your reality shattered. It is truly some of the funniest shit I've ever seen.

My new favorite comment from Some Guy on the debacle:

Holy God. They’re really doing it. They’re ripping themselves apart at the seams. It’s fucking Megatron and Starscream in the right wing. That’s right. The best analogy for the current Republican base is a 80’s Japanese cartoon show about cars who care.

I was going to just snark about what kind of ass-twat prick of a douchebag loser boy you have to be to wear a 10-gallon hat around, but this is way more interesting. A howling free-for-all to prove you’re the most hateful, insane, ignorant, blood thirsty Major Kong.

In continuing my theme of 80’s Japanese culture; it’s like that scene in Godzilla 1984, where they’ve lured G into an active volcano, thus ending his destructive rampage, but as they watch him Big G fall to an agonizing death, they can’t help but feel sorry for him. Poor sonuvabitch.

**happy sigh**

Ok so a couple of weeks ago a 12 year old boy did a radio address in favor of S-CHIP which basically helped save his life:

If it weren’t for CHIP, I might not be here today. … We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us through the CHIP program. But there are millions of kids out there who don’t have CHIP, and they wouldn’t get the care that my sister and I did if they got hurt. … I just hope the President will listen to my story and help other kids to be as lucky as me.

The gibbering monkeys of the right wing immediately flew into action. Even Limbaugh has joined in the carrion call, and, believe it or not, Michelle Malkin has just posted about stalking the boy and his family.

Zsa at Sadly, No! sums this whole thing up nicely:

There are certain lines that don’t get crossed in a civil society. The welfare of our children is one of those lines.

Bush and his 29% crew clearly do not care about children receiving adequate healthcare. That’s not a surprise.

But attacking the 12-year-old and his family is indicative of their true intent. It’s not about whether millions of kids have healthcare. If it was about healthcare policy they would actually be talking about, you know, healthcare policy. Certainly Bush has reasons for his veto, however mean-spirited.

But it’s not about that. It’s about intimidation of your political opponents. It’s about scaring the population into submission. We are witnessing the birth of brownshirt tactics. Speak up about a policy issue and they visit your home, your work, they gather outside your home and scream insults at your children.

I’m not sure if the Gathering of Eagles and the Freepers have decided to picket the Frost house yet, but this sort of bully-boy tactic is not far off. Apparently Malkin visited the father’s workplace today. If you simply object to S-CHIP as a policy, why do you even care about the family of some kid who was helped by the CHIP program? On the other hand, if you desperately want to stifle legitimate dissent, this is exactly the type of thing you do.

And they’ll pat themselves on the back as heroes and patriots. Let’s have Confederate Yankee in here to tell us why investigating the kid’s family is such a noble task.

I would dearly love to see the media pick this up as a story about the Freepi and their thuggish response to Graeme Frost. The wingnuts are harassing the Frost family for the crime of speaking up about a policy issue.

I think the really depressing thing about this is that they'll totally get away with this kind of thuggishness against a family, and against a 12 year old boy in particular. They won't get a single reprimand from the media or the American people outside those of us who actually care about this kind of partisan bullshit. Indeed they'll get pats on the back. And the thing is they know it, they know there's nothing to fear because nobody's going to visit any reprisals on them. One hopes that karma will play some factor but I'll be damned if I can find any evidence of it in American politics these days.

UPDATE: Ezra Klein chimes in on the whole debacle

Something has really gone wrong on the Right. Become sick and twisted and tumorous and ugly. To visit Michelle Malkin’s cave is to see politics at its most savage, its most ferocious, its most rageful. They say they’ve spent the past week smearing a child and his family because that child was fair game — he and his family spoke of their experience receiving health care through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. For this, right wingers travel to their home to inspect its worth, they insinuate that the family is engaged in large-scale fraud to receive government benefits, they make threatening phone calls to the family.

This is the politics of hate. Screaming, sobbing, inchoate, hate. It would never, not in a million years, occur to me to drive to the home of a Republican small business owner to see if he “really” needed that tax cut. It would never, not in a million years, occur to me to call his family and demand their personal information. It would never occur to me to interrogate his neighbors. It would never occur to me to his smear his children.

The Doughy Pantload actually made this argument on the subject of the Larry Craig debacle:

But I’d like someone to walk very slowly through the argument that it’s hypocritical to A) indulge in anonymous gay sex in seedy locations and B) oppose gay marriage. Last I checked, the common definition of hypocrisy involves saying one thing and doing another. Well, Craig wasn’t trying to marry anybody in stall #3 was he?

Do you suppose he does this on purpose? Is it some sort of weirdly ironic performance art? How can someone with this loose a grasp on rational thought do things like hold down a job, drive a car, tie his shoe laces? And why, in the name of all that's holy, does someone pay him to drool on his keyboard like this? It's like the people at National Review are determined to convince us all that there is no just and loving god, that life is inherently unfair, and that intelligence, talent and skill will always lose out to family connections amongst the aristocracy. If that is their goal I would have to say they've succeeded abundantly.

Surfacing briefly because this had to be shared:

Now, in my freest of moments and at the height of procrastination, I sometimes like to imagine the National Review—and occasionally, all of wingnuttia—as a gurgling, twisted Hogwarts. This mainly happens when I spend extended periods reading around over there and realize just what a magically disconnected place wingnuttia is. So I think it’s time we*** got around to placing those outside the reality-based community (I’m a proud Muggle) into their proper houses. I know what you’re thinking: they’re all fucking Slytherins! That may be true, but it would ruin my premise. Allow me then to first dispatch the obvious.

Jonah Goldberg: the Doughy Pantload, chickenhawk par excellence, needed extra time to produce 200 pages of abject stupidity about Hegel and Wholefoods, which will debut on the NYT’s worst-seller list (which will itself debut for Goldberg’s book). Hufflepuff.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: I feel one could argue in any number of directions here. K-Lo’s distinguishing characteristic is her crushes on all the BMOC, which to my mind lines her up with Ravenclaw’s Cho Chang. It helps that Ravenclaw is essentially a repository for the non-white denizens of the magical realm; however, K-Lo’s resemblance to Grimace, along with her intellectual wispiness, suggests Hufflepuff. In the end though, I think Ravenclaw has her.

John Derbyshire: As far as I can recall, the Sorting Hat has nothing to say about criminal insanity. But I feel like Hogwarts in Derb’s era was probably a vastly different place, maybe even home to a slew of imperialists whose personal credo was “rubble don’t make trouble.” Even Albus Dumbledore flirted briefly with colonizing Muggles! Call me crazy, but I think Derb sports red & gold.

Mark Steyn: Slytherin. Slytherin, Slytherin, Slytherin.

Ramesh Ponnuru: the Sorting Hat knew immediately that Ramesh belongs in Ravenclaw, and even foresaw that he would spend his entire Hogwarts career advocating for Slytherin, and even that the Slytherins would find him distasteful.

Ann Althouse: Psych! Althouse is a Squib.

Dennis Prager, filled with the stupid:

Why Are Atheist Books Best Sellers?

It is not due to their eloquence, originality or persuasiveness that these books have become best sellers. I believe other factors are at work. And they are:

First and most significant is the amount of evil coming from within Islam. Whether Islamists (or jihadists, Islamo-Fascists or whatever else Muslims who slaughter innocents in the name of Islam are called) represent a small sliver of Muslims or considerably more than that, they have brought religious faith into terrible disrepute.

How could they not? The one recognized genocide in the world today is being carried out by religious Muslims in Sudan; liberty is exceedingly rare in any of the dozens of nations with Muslim majorities; treatment of women is frequently awful; and tolerance of people with different religious beliefs is largely nonexistent when Muslims dominate a society.

But wait, just when you think, "Oh he's just your average wingnut bigot, nothing to see here" he goes and adds this:

If the same were true of vegetarians — if mass murder and violent intolerance were carried out by vegetarians — there would be a backlash against vegetarianism even among people who previously had no strong feelings about the doctrine.

And if kittens carried Uzi's they'd...um...something bad! Seriously, WTF? Sadly, No! labels this is the worst analogy ever and I've got to say I haven't run into a worse one that I can remember. Or is he perhaps attempting to make some connection between vegetarians and fascists (if you use the old myth that Hitler was a vegetarian it all makes sense in a wingnutty sort of way), perhaps it's a version of wingnut semaphore. Though I must say I can't make heads nor tails of the Muslims = Atheists argument.

Over at Sadly, No! czrpb gives us the perfect "shorter" version of Doug "Heterosexual" Giles' latest screed:

Ya know - I am a minister: Kinda like a cross between Reverend Shaw Moore and Lord John Whorfin; catch my drift Peach?

What's Giles on about? His rules for dating his daughters. Allow me to quote one or two:

6. Thou shall know that our family is old school. Do not even think about approaching me with liberal, hippy, agnostic, atheistic, anti-American or tree humping bull crap. I was raised by country-loving, God-fearing, hard-working, meat-eating, good ole’ Texan parents, and I have zero tolerance for what your long-toothed, rather mannish lesbian sociology teacher at Columbia U programmed you with—you dig?

And how about:

7. Thou shall know that I like cool and expensive gifts and you shall provide unto me this bounty, if you’re smart … For example; I like high quality cigars (nothing below a 90), Johnnie Walker Blue Label, Chimay Grand Reserve, books on hunting Africa and old British double rifles. I also like original art work, R&B and classic rock compilations, collecting skulls, hunting and big game fishing trips, antique Christian and Classic books, custom choppers and early twentieth century African safari memorabilia.

Hey, what's a little prostitution between guys? One wonders what sexual favors with Doug's daughters a custom chopper would purchase for an interested young man. But here's another:

10. Thou shall do these three things: 1) Look good. Do not come into my house with earrings, a grill, or over sized pants with your butt cleavage hanging out. 2) Read. If I have to talk to you, you had better know as much about as many things as possible. 3) Serve. I’m looking for a sacrificial dude who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty in helping around the house, in our community, in our nation and with our wonderful world. If you, young man, obey all the words written here, then and only then will you have a chance with my babies. Now, go get me a beer.

Uh...huh. Read the whole thing if you want a truly Freudian glimpse into the uber masculine mind of the modern wingnut. Or just check out one commenter's addition to Mr. Giles' list:

Jake H. said:

11. Don’t be stingy with the head, junior. If you’re going to take up space in this house, you’re going to leave with the tile pattern from my bathroom floor imprinted on your hairless little kneecaps, hot shot. That’s right, this prospective pops-in-law expects BJs while on the can. All the Johnny Walker Blue loosens up the bowels, too, so be ready to follow me down the hall every time I stand up and grab one of my dog-eared Left Behind paperbacks. And I don’t mean faggoty, gentle-lipped head like you gave your bunkmate at your kiked-up sleepaway camp. My old life as a dope-dealing felon left me with a taste for prison-style head–lots of teeth and hate. If you can treat three inches of God’s finest properly, and if you swallow my fetid load without gagging, I might let you use more than one square of toilet-paper to clean off my asshole.

I didn't understand the question!

Ace of Spades, Heterosexual and Wingnut Extraordinaire, seems to have some...issues with teh gay sex:

Not that I’m saying homosexuality is incompatible with masculinity, of course. Consenting biweekly to having one’s duodenum battered with the manic hydraulic fury of a tricked-out V-12 jackhammer manned by an epileptic Con-Ed worker with an ancestral oath of vengeance against asphalt would, I think, tend to butch one up, at least as regards one’s pain threshold.

Note I didn't say he had a problem with gay sex, or hated it, rather he has issues with it. One of those issues being that he's spending way too much time thinking about exactly what's involved in it. I mean I haven't seen many slash writers go into that kind of detail.

Sadly, this isn't even the first time he's flung this particular bit of verbal poo:

“You want dudes to shank you up your manpooters, fine. But you don’t have to be a 12 year old girl about it, do you? Quite frankly, I’d imagine that frequently getting dorked up the drop-pipe would, due to the pain and general unpleasantness of the experience, tend to instill one with a certain amount of quiet, manfully steely resolve, like a toughened soldier waving off anaesthesia even though he’s got a bit chunk of shrapnel in his gut, only it’s even worse than that, because it turns out that shrapnel is really a great big cock shredding his duodenum with the quavering manic intensity of a palsied ConEd worker with a tricked-out V8 jackhammer and and an ancestral vow of vengeance against ashphalt.”

Fascinating, hmm? What's even more interesting, though is that he seems to have an equal repugnance for girlie bits, and interactions therein:

"Best friend gay -- okay, I can see that one going either way; one of my best buds is a homo. Turned off by c****lingus? Eh, a lot of guys don't dig that. Who the hell knows what's going on down there. It's like H.R. Geiger giving up ink and canvas to work in the avant-garde medium of Play-Doh and bacon."

What, we're forced to wonder, is left for Ace who shivers in fear of the jackhammer of love but dares not enter the bacon-y depths of a woman's flower? Perhaps he's forced to turn to a melon warmed in the microwave? Or the old tried and true Dust Buster with corner attachment?

Roy at Alicublog reads Jane Galt's latest weird little treatise on how much she likes teh gay but hates liberals and finds this in the comments:

When I was in the Army there was a situation where the food that was being stored for use in case of a nuclear war was reaching it's expiration date. Instead of just throwing the food away, the Army gave it away for free.

Our post had cheese to give away. Lots of cheese. If you were so minded, you could get one or two 10lb blocks of cheese. The cheese was 35 years old.

Thousands of people stood in line for hours to get 20lbs of 35 year old cheese.

Does that sound like something you would do? I wouldn't.

My point: Just because legalizing something (gay marriage, polygamy, men doinking trees) doesn't affect you, that does not mean that it would not adversely affect society.

Parse that one, I double dog dare you! One of Roy's readers responds in the comments:

What kind of mind even thinks about "doinking" a tree? I mean, yeah, one is used to the links from gay marriage to polygamy the wingnuts trot out, but I don't know if that's sufficient room for one to get the speed to make the leap to actually having carnal relations with a goddamn tree. Fucking hell. That's just weird, man.

I wonder if this really is a problem, if there's really hordes of men and women who, without threat from penalty of law, would engage in non-stop tree buggering, thus bring America's Industrial Might to a screeching, sticky halt. I betcha an arborasexual has a frustrating lot. Not only is this really the love that dares not speak its name, I imagine finding a suitable knothole is a chore. Even upon finding one, I imagine the very best would still chaff one's willy something fierce.

And the incest thing, complete with "Oh, my God, they're gonna make you doink your sister like in Sweden or wherever" hysterics is just the cheery. Most of your anti-gay marriage types are just hateful sacks of shit, but there is that subset that's convinced that if the law was changed, they'd have no choice but to dive, dive, dive into piles of quivering manflesh morning, noon and night. You know those guys are the lives of their respective parties.

Man. Wingnuts are weird. Entertaining, though. The social implications of legalized tree doinking never would've occurred to me in a million years.
Matt T.

Ok so I know Ann Althouse is an ass, but I've got to admit I didn't realize quite how big an ass until I read this:

And why does reading even need to be a separate subject from history in school? Give them history texts and teach reading from them. Science books too. Leave the storybooks for pleasure reading outside of school. They will be easier reading, and with well-developed reading skills, kids should feel pleasure curling up with a novel at home. But even if they don't, why should any kind of a premium be placed on an interest in reading novels? It's not tied to economic success in life and needn't be inculcated any more than an interest in watching movies or listening to popular music. Leave kids alone to find out out what recreational activities enrich and satisfy them. Some may want to dance or play music or paint. Just because teachers tend to be the kind of people who love novels does not mean that this choice ought to be imposed on young people via compulsory education. Teach them about history, science, law, logic -- something academic and substantive -- and leave the fictional material for after hours.

...

This is exactly the mindset that has always made me seriously consider semi-automatic weapons and bell towers. The same mindset that sneers at "creative types", pats literature and art students on the heads and sadly murmurs, "But how are you going to make a living doing that?" The same mindset that put my editorial department on the bottom rung of the business totem pole, serene in its certainty that people don't really give a shit about quality content and decent writing. It's all about the benjamins, baby.