Ladybird Bachmann’s taxpayer-supported counseling practice was descended upon by a flash-mob of over 100 “barbarians” this morning:
A local actor posing as Marcus Bachmann was “baptized” with glitter after dancing with the barbarians to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.”
“Let’s be clear: Marcus Bachmann is the practitioner of an unhealthy, unscientific and dangerous practice,” event organizer Nick Espinosa told Columbus Go Home.
“The American people have a right to know: does the Bachmann family profit from bogus ‘gay reparative therapy’ or not,” he added. “The medical evidence against the practice aside, the Bachmann’s subversive marginalization of the LGBT community is despicable.”
In July, a smaller group threw glitter in the lobby of the clinic after staffers said that Bachmann was not available.
The LGBT activists were inspired by Bachmann’s claim that homosexuals are “barbarians” who “need to be disciplined.”
One of the staffers at the Bachmann business was seen driving away in a purple car. Not that there is anything wrong with purple cars. Just saying…
Via Raw Story
Let’s elect another idiot cowboy from Texas President in 2012 and commit national suicide, shall we?
From The New York Times of August 24, 2001.
CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 24 — President Bush said today that there was a benefit to the government’s fast-dwindling surplus, declaring that it would create “a fiscal straitjacket for Congress.” He said that was “incredibly positive news” because it would halt the growth of the Federal government.
In a 45-minute news conference in a community hall next to a recreational-vehicle park here, Mr. Bush avoided giving specific answers to several questions about how he would find the money for his next big initiatives — from missile defense, to overhauling the military, to reforming Medicaid — without dipping into Social Security surpluses that both parties have declared off-limits. And he made it clear he would not re-think his tax cut, saying, “I can’t tell you how proud I am to be traveling around the country and people say, `Thanks for the $600.’ “
At the same time, Mr. Bush talked in some detail about the economic slowdown, which he called a “correction,” and left open the possibility that he might dip into the Social Security surplus if a further economic stimulus was needed.
“I’ve said that the only reason we should use Social Security funds is in the case of an economic recession or war,” Mr. Bush said.
Read the rest (and weep):
Bush Says Dwindling Surplus Will Halt Government Growth (New York Times archive)
Via Redditor Technicolor Motor Home
Just yards from the ancient Temple Mount, site of the Islamic Dome of the Rock, Glenn Beck told a sparse crowd: “We are leaving the age of manmade miracles of spacecraft, and we are entering the age of the miracles of God.”
God, apparently is getting tired of Beck’s shtick, himself, because he offered the former Fox News personality absolutely no help whatsoever in getting asses into seats yesterday: According to eye-witness, Israeli writer Ami Kaufman, Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Courage” religious rally in Jerusalem yesterday was a total bomb, with around just 1000 people attending. With such a small number, you’d have to wonder how many of these folks were “ironic” attendees? Surely a number of Israeli hipsters, eager to point and laugh at a pudgy, paranoiac, self-important, delusional American Moron Mormon with a messiah/martyr complex sporting a yarmulke, would turn out for this, right?
If this happened in Los Angeles, hey, I’d have gone to see the Glenn Beck show myself, so if you factor the ironic attendees out, does the indifference seen towards him in the Holy Land foretell curtains for Beck’s cultural cachet even with American idiots? I mean, getting 10,000 Christian evangelicals to show up to a Glenn Beck rally in Jerusalem a year ago would have been like shooting fish in a barrel. Box office boffo. Still, Beck should do well in Texas next week. But we’ll see, won’t we?
Via Politics USA
If you are looking for one word to sum up how Glenn Beck went from drawing 3 million viewers nightly on Fox News to seeing his audience plummet and Fox severing ties with him, that word would be dull. By believing his own hype while taking himself too seriously, Glenn Beck bored his fans into leaving him. After his Restoring Honor rally bombed last year, it was the height of self-delusion for him to think that thousands would follow him to Israel.
Glenn Beck was fine when he was the conservative rodeo clown providing a nightly dose of entertainment to the blue hairs that make up the Fox News audience, but his program became too dark, too paranoid, too religious, and too stuck on one paranoid conspiracy theory note to maintain its appeal.
Yossi Sarid seemed to speak for many Israelis who weren’t thrilled with having Beck’s circus in their country either, “Beck, Hagee and their swarm are anti-Semites, who are not even aware of their anti-Semitism and the extent of its ugliness. Or maybe they are. In recent years this anti-Semitism has not been directed mainly against Jews, for they have found the Arab substitute for it. Now they are using the Arabs to scare Israel and the Muslims to scare the world. And the white, Aryan lion will devour them and their undercover envoys such as Barack Hussein. The visit ended yesterday, the circus is folding its tent and moving elsewhere. Let’s pray it will not return soon. Mr. Beck, don’t come back. We’re not short of dangerous wackos here.”
The turnout for Restoring Courage proved one thing. Glenn Beck needed the platform of Fox News more than Fox News ever needed Beck. The media platform to push his dark wares is gone now, and for most of America it is out of sight out of mind as it relates to Glenn Beck.
Below, Beck talks about what a terrific guy (and leader) he is and mentions, all casual-like, the death threats that have been made against him. The pathology on display here is impressive even by Beck’s high standards.
Some words of wisdom for the Republican Party from last night’s Rachel Maddow Show:
“If you were the Republican Party, and you were going to give one of these groups of Americans veto power over who was going to be your presidential nominee…which of these groups would you [choose]? I mean, really? You’d give that power to the one at the very, very bottom, underneath the atheists? Really?”
In their hearts, they know she’s right…
But how does this explain why the Obama administration kowtows to the Tea party?
Over at Talking Points Memo they’ve got the summary of a very interesting new academic study done recently at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. “Cultures of the Tea Party,” as the study is titled, uses polling data, and interviews with Tea party supporters at a gathering held in the state to provide a snapshot of the overall cultural attitudes of the movement.
The findings, represented on Monday at the American Sociological Association, purport that the defining attitudes of the Tea party sympathizers are “Authoritarianism, ontological insecurity (fear of change), libertarianism and nativism.” From TPM:
The study used polling of North Carolina and Tennessee, conducted by Public Policy Polling (D) in the Summer of 2010, and determined the cultural dispositions by measuring the responses of tea partiers to set questions. After PPP surveyed over 2,000 voters who were sympathetic to the Tea Party, researchers then reinterviewed almost 600 in the fall of 2010. Those interviews included everything from personality based queries like “Would you say it is more important that a child obeys his parents, or that he is responsible for his own actions?” to more political ones, like “Do you think immigrants who came into this country illegally but pay taxes and have not been arrested should be given the opportunity to become permanent legal residents?” The study also incudes interviews and short responses with ten participants at a Tea Party rally in Washington, NC.
“American voters sympathetic to the Tea Party movement reflect four primary cultural and political beliefs more than other voters do: authoritarianism, libertarianism, fear of change, and negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration,” a statement accompanying the report reads, as the findings themselves point out a few disconnects between the what self-described members of the Tea Party say and their actual policy stances.
The report quotes one Tea Party activist as saying, “We don’t want the big government that’s taking over everything we worked so hard for…the government’s becoming too powerful… we want to take back what our Constitution said. You read the Constitution. Those values - that’s what we stand for,” but that sentiment is not reflected in the polling data from the surveys. From the report:
In our follow-up poll, 84% of those positive towards the TPM [Tea Party members] said the Constitution should be interpreted “as the Founders intended,” compared to only 34% of other respondents. Other respondents were also three times more likely not to have an opinion on the issue, highlighting the salience of the question for TPM supporters. Support for Constitutional principles is not absolute. TPM supporters were twice as likely than others to favor a constitutional amendment banning flag burning; many also support efforts to overturn citizenship as defined by the Fourteenth Amendment. That TPM supporters simultaneously want to honor the founders’ Constitution and alter that same document highlights the political flexibility of the cultural symbols they draw on.
The TPM supporters’ inconsistent views of the Constitution suggests that their nostalgic embrace of the document is animated more by a network of cultural associations than a thorough commitment to the original text. In fact, such inconsistencies around policy, whether on the right or left, highlight what many sociologists see as the growing importance of culture in political life. The Constitution - and Tea Party more generally - take on heightened symbolic value and come to represent a ‘way of life’ or a “world view” rather than a specific set of laws or policy positions.
This reminds me a lot of Canadian psychology professor Bob Altemeyer’s long-term study of cultural attitudes of conservatives, The Authoritarians, which is online in pdf format. Altemeyer’s studies reveal rightwing double standards, inconsistent beliefs, willful ignorance, misrepresentation of historical and scientific facts and bizarre justifications. It, too, is absolutely worth reading.
Quoting Altemeyer:
The second reason I can offer for reading what follows is that it is not chock full of opinions, but experimental evidence. Liberals have stereotypes about conservatives, and conservatives have stereotypes about liberals. Moderates have stereotypes about both. Anyone who has watched, or been a liberal arguing with a conservative (or vice versa) knows that personal opinion and rhetoric can be had a penny a pound. But arguing never seems to get anywhere. Whereas if you set up a fair and square experiment in which people can act nobly, fairly, and with integrity, and you find that most of one group does, and most of another group does not, that’s a fact, not an opinion. And if you keep finding the same thing experiment after experiment, and other people do too, then that’s a body of facts that demands attention.3 Some people, we have seen to our dismay, don’t care a hoot what scientific investigation reveals; but most people do. If the data were fairly gathered and we let them do the talking, we should be on a higher plane than the current, “Sez you!”
The comments thread at TPM is worth reading. I suspect that our thread here will be lively also!
Indiana state Republican Rep. Phil Hinkle, the hapless gay marriage opponent who made headlines earlier this month when he hired an 18-year-old rent boy via Craigslist using the email address from his legislative website, is resisting pressure from fellow Republicans to resign. Hinkle, who clings to the fig-leaf he’s not gay (why even bother with this nonsense?), has already been stripped of two committee chairmanships he held, but he’s not budging. Via The Indy Star:
State Rep. Phil Hinkle admitted Tuesday that he paid a young man $80 to have a good time. But Hinkle insisted he isn’t gay and doesn’t know why he did it.
He said that he understands why he’s being stripped of his committee chairmanships and that he won’t seek re-election. But he said he will not resign, despite House Speaker Brian Bosma’s call Tuesday to do so.
And he said he did nothing illegal with—or to—the young man and that he himself was the victim of a crime. But he said he would not file a police report.
—snip—
Hinkle’s version of what happened that night in Room 2610 at the JW Marriott hotel differs greatly from the version provided by the young man and his sister.
Kameryn Gibson, the 18-year-old who said he was looking for a “sugga daddy” in the Craigslist posting, told The Star that he tried to leave the room that night and called his sister Megan after Hinkle identified himself as a lawmaker. He also said Hinkle tried to keep him from leaving, exposed himself and then—after his sister arrived—offered them $100 cash, an iPad and a Blackberry to keep quiet.
Hinkle’s version: He never exposed himself and never offered anything to the Gibsons to keep quiet. Instead, he said, Kameryn Gibson stole those items when Hinkle was in the bathroom.
“These people,” Hinkle said, “are lying through their teeth.”
Kameryn and Megan Gibson stood by their story Tuesday.
The day after the first leg of the Wisconsin recall elections, I thought the number of “We won!” emails coming from the various lefty and labor organizations I support seemed a little odd. Did we win? It sure didn’t look that way to me. If “we” would have won, the tallies would have been different, right?
Maybe they were half right. Wisconsin Democrats did, after all, oust two Republican senators in two of the very, very few successful recall races ever held in American history. Pity the other two races didn’t fall their way, but it’s certain that what happened in Wisconsin awakened an awful lot of people to what was going on in their state, the role of the Koch brothers in rightwing AstroTurf politics there and just how aggressive and vicious the GOP can get when they are in the majority in a legislative body.
The Republican majority now hinges on one vote in Wisconsin. Personally, I’d rate the glass more than half-full considering the power math of less than a year ago. There is little doubt that Democrats will retake the legislature next year.
The collective bargaining rights issue highlighted by the recall election in Wisconsin, as I’ve maintained here, has never been merely a statewide matter. It’s a national issue of great importance to the future of this country’s middle-class families. Wisconsin was the flash point. The first battle in a longer war.
When I stopped and thought about it, I realized what HAD been gained in Wisconsin and this is now coming much better into focus as Ohio Governor John Kasich and the Republican party seek to back-walk the deeply unpopular anti-labor bill SB 5—it’s not a law yet despite the GOP’s best efforts—and are asking Ohio Democrats and labor unions to withdraw a November referendum on it. The public opinion is decidedly against the Republicans and polling just a little over two months from the November 8 vote shows an overwhelming 54% to 36% gulf in favor of rejecting the bill.
With this much Republican blood in the water, why would Ohio Democrats be stupid enough to withdraw the referendum? AS IF the Republicans would ever pay them the same courtesy! It’s hilarious to watch Kasich say this shit! So craven! So… Republican.
So ridiculous!
I love watching a Republican grovel, don’t you?
Kasich and the Ohio Republicans have been knee-capped and they damn well know it. Working families across Ohio owe Wisconsin progressives their gratitude. We all do.
Good people of Wisconsin: You lit what might be a long fuse, as Rachel Maddow eloquently pointed out on her show last night:
Meet Kanon Tipton, pint-sized preacher. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this short video clip from last night’s National Geographic special is worth a million.
Still only a pre-schooler, Kanon Tipton takes the pulpit at his family’s church and like a seasoned evangelist fervently preaches the gospel, mopping his forehead, shouting, waving his arms, the congregation hanging on his every word. But he’s just 4-years-old. NGC’s Pint-Sized Preachers goes inside the controversial world of child evangelists to follow two rising-stars and one established child minister as they spread God’s word and bring congregations to their feet.
Obviously this kid is just parroting religious gibberish—he’s not really saying anything particular here. It’s just Southern-fried pulpit word-salad. I have no idea why these people seem to think they’re getting something out of it.
Then again, it’s the same shit adult Pentecostals preach. Pretty much EXACTLY the same thing.
Thank you, Kevin Smith!
And here everyone thought “Birtherism” had died out. Not so fast, there’s a new kid on the block(head): meet soon to be discharged Air Force staff sergeant Daryn Moran (yes, that’s his real name, this is not some anti-teabagger jibe).
Moran read on the Internet that Obama’s longform birth certificate is a forgery, so he’s decided to a) make a ridiculous YouTube video about it and b) chat with the “Uncle Ruckus” of the conservative wingnut blogsphere, “Dr.” James David Manning and c) go AWOL to protest Obama’s treachery. (Except apparently he lied about that last part.)
Via the AirForce Times:
Moran appeared to believe he was AWOL and thought arrest would be imminent.
“His birth certificate is a proven forgery. I will also not support any other military person who turns a blind eye to this fact,” he wrote on The Blaze, a conservative website founded by former Fox News personality Glenn Beck. “It’s simple. Arrest B. Obama or arrest me.”
In an audio report posted on BirtherReport.com, Moran said he previously served in the Marine Corps, left on good terms and joined the Air Force in the months following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
In a follow-up email posted Tuesday on BirtherReport.com and attributed to Moran, the NCO wrote a discharge is imminent and “basically paperwork.”
He wrote in a letter posted Aug. 15 on The Post & Email website that he was a “high priority” for being discharged after meeting with mental-health evaluators. Moran wrote on The Blaze that he would soon receive an “administrative and honorable discharge for a ‘personality disorder’” because he told his leadership that homosexuality is a sin.
He wrote a letter to BirtherReport.com the following day that his discharge was “basically paperwork.”
His first sergeant “passed on the advice to refrain from more internet activity,” Moran wrote. “She knows I cannot do that, because I want to end this crisis. For my family, and for the Constitution and my country, and for B. Obama”
He said he tried to resign several times from the Air Force, but his first sergeant wouldn’t allow it. Moran also said he was removed from his position after a coworker complained that he asked a doctor in his unit about her Muslim faith.
“My conscience is violated,” he said. “I feel like I’m supporting the flag of whatever those Islamic countries are and the rainbow flag and not the red, white and blue. That’s not the kind of people I want to be associated with.”
Here’s the aforementioned YouTube video and it’s every bit as tragic as you might suspect. This idiot is… just an idiot. That’s all you can say about him. He’s an inconsequential twit practically guaranteeing that he’ll never hold a job again. It’s one thing to post pictures of yourself with a lampshade on your head on Facebook, quite another to do this. Who would do a Google search on Mr. Moran and think “This is the bloke I’m gonna hire”?
Good luck in life, Daryn, you’re going to fucking need it as dumb as you are, pal. His wife probably wants to strangle this fool.
If you enjoy listening to crazy people who aren’t very intelligent talking nonsense, this is a classic of sorts…
But it just gets worse, here’s the Uncle Ruckus “Dr.” James David Manning interview that Moran did. Oh my! Towards the end, he advocates that all the birthers and Christians move to Texas and live under the constitution and not, of course, under Obama’s Islamic tyranny and shariah law and stuff.
