As everyone in America no doubt knows by now, the Motor City Madman, gun enthusiast and all-around draft-dodging dickhead “patriot” Ted Nugent will be attending tonight’s State of the Union address:
 

well well well, there will be a freedom addicted all American uppity Motown guitarplayer facing the POTUS at the SOTU addresss tomoro-lovely

— Ted Nugent (@TedNugent) February 11, 2013

 
Douglas Anthony Cooper, writing at the Huffington Post, has the right idea of how to use that “We The People” petition thing:

Mr. President, draft the Nuge. Let them know what the Great American Satan looks like turned up to eleven.

Imagine you’re a shy, cave-dwelling Talibanista, and you’re confronted by a yowling Motor City staple of classic rock radio stations, shouldering a bazooka and clutching the Second Amendment and making that face that you see on the cover of Cat Scratch Fever.

(How do you say “gosh, that’s quite something” in Pashto?)

President Obama, you owe it to the United States of America to draft this hunk o’ has-been rockstar. Let the Nuge serve proudly and loudly on the front lines, before the war ends and he is forever denied this headlining gig.

Moreover, it is time to clear the Nugent name. As the Ted Nugent Draft is shouted from the mountaintops, let there also be proclaimed a bitchin’ presidential pardon, forgiving Mr. Nugent for whatever caused him regretfully to decline active duty during the Vietnam War.

You’re good to go, Ted. No cowardice in your past, and none in your future.

And when the last of the troops comes home, Colonel, we’ll leave you to Wango Tango in Tora Bora, armed to the canines, and you can personally scour the caves for left-over bad guys: solo like Rambo. You’ll have all the big-bored gun tech you could possibly dream of. There ain’t no ban in the ‘Stan—you won’t be prosthetically neutered by chickenshit small-capacity liberals. This will be the unfettered Nuge, a one-man death-dealin’, cat-scratchin’ war machine: the guy immortalized by Guitar World magazine for playing #7 in the “100 Worst Guitar Solos” of all time. Surely it’s time to add to that honor a posthumous purple heart.

To sign the “Draft Ted Nugent” petition, please click on:

Conscript Ted Nugent to Serve on the Front Lines in Afghanistan

H/T Wonkette

 
Republican loud-mouth, attention-seeking buffoon and draft dodging he-man man’s man, rocker Ted Nugent, the manly-man-man-man who gave his very own personal seal o’ approval to Mitt Romney and now, apparently, wants to give that very same kiss of death to the NRA.

Oh yes, if you haven’t heard, “the Motor City madman” will be the guest of Texas Congressman Steve Stockman at Obama’s State of the Union speech tomorrow night. Nugent plans to make an ass of himself highly visible on television both before and after the President’s speech (“During” would be interesting). Gun control advocates predict that Nugent’s appearance—let’s face it, whether you are a gun fan or not, Ted Nugent is a complete fucking twat—will backfire, making the NRA’s arguments harder to swallow.

In honor of this, here’s an oldie, but a goodie, an excerpt from a 1977 interview Nugent gave to High Times magazine:

High Times:How did you get out of the draft?

Ted Nugent: Ted was a young boy, appearing to be a hippie but quite opposite in fact, working hard and playing hard, playing rock and roll like a deviant. People would question my sanity, I played so much. So I got my notice to be in the draft. Do you think I was gonna lay down my guitar and go play army? Give me a break! I was busy doin’ it to it. I had a career Jack. If I was walkin’ around, hippying down, getting’ loaded and pickin’ my ass like your common curs, I’d say “Hey yeah, go in the army. Beats the poop out of scuffin’ around in the gutters.” But I wasn’t a gutter dog. I was a hard workin’, motherfuckin’ rock and roll musician.

I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard, really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’ kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants got crusted up.

See, I approached the whole thing like, Ted Nugent, cool hard-workin’ dude, is gonna wreak havoc on these imbeciles in the armed forces. I’m gonna play their own game, and I’m gonna destroy ‘em. Now my whole body is crusted in poop and piss. I was ill. And three or four days before, I started stayin’ awake. I was close to death, but I was in control. I was extremely antidrug as I’ve always been, but I snorted some crystal methedrine. Talk about one wounded motherfucker. A guy put up four lines, and it was for all four of us, but I didn’t know and I’m vacuuming that poop right up. I was a walking, talking hunk of human poop. I was six-foot-three of sin. So the guys took me down to the physical, and my nerves, my emotions were distraught. I was not a good person. I was wounded. But as painful and nauseous as it was – ‘cause I was really into bein’ clean and on the ball – I made gutter swine hippies look like football players. I was deviano.

So I went in, and those guys in uniform couldn’t believe the smell. They were ridiculin’ me and pushin’ me around and I was cryin’, but all the time I was laughin’ to myself. When they stuck the needle in my arm for the blood test I passed out, and when I came to they were kicking me into the wall. Then they made everybody take off their pants, and I did, and this sergeant says, “Oh my God, put those back on! You fucking swine you!” Then they had a urine test and I couldn’t piss, But my poop was just like ooze, man, so I poop in the cup and put it on the counter. I had poop on my hand and my arm. The guy almost puked. I was so proud. I knew I had these chumps beat. The last thing I remember was wakin’ up in the ear test booth and they were sweepin’ up. So I went home and cleaned up.

They took a putty knife to me. I got the street rats out of my hair, ate some good steaks, beans, potatoes, cottage cheese, milk. A couple of days and I was ready to kick ass. And in the mail I got this big juicy 4-F. They’d call dead people before they’d call my ass. But you know the funny thing about it? I’d make an incredible army man. I’d be a colonel before you knew what hit you, and I’d have the baddest bunch of motherfuckin’ killers you’d ever seen in my platoon. But I just wasn’t into it. I was too busy doin’ my own thing, you know?

Yeah, man, lay off, the Nuge was just doing his own thing!

Let’s hope Ted’s wearing a diaper tomorrow evening, huh?

Below, a preposterous idiot in an Indian headdress plays “The Star Spangled Banner” on his gee-tar for an audience of mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals:
 

Isn’t that a face you’d just like to punch?

The newest version of SB 234, Tennessee’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill—which would prohibit any mention whatsoever of homosexuality to Tennessee students in kindergarten through the 8th grade—includes an updated provision requiring teachers and guidance counselors to tell parents if their child self-identifies as LGBT.

What could possibly go wrong in a state where idiots turn in their “gay” dogs to be euthanized?

Remarkable, isn’t it?

The same closet-case dickhead who authored the first bill (which was introduced in 2011 but died) State Sen. Stacey Campfield (NATURALLY A GODDAMNED REPUBLICAN), reintroduced SB 234 this time as well. Campfield is, yes, the very same fucknut who proposed cutting welfare payments when kids get bad report cards just last week!

“The act of homosexuality is very dangerous to someone’s health and safety,” says Campfield.

From the new bill:

The general assembly recognizes that certain subjects are particularly sensitive and are, therefore, best explained and discussed within the home. Because of its complex societal, scientific, psychological, and historical implications, human sexuality is one such subject. Human sexuality is best understood by children with sufficient maturity to grasp its complexity and implications [...]

A school counselor, nurse, principal or assistant principal from counseling a student who is engaging in, or who may be at risk of engaging in, behavior injurious to the physical or mental health and well-being of the student or another person; provided, that wherever possible such counseling shall be done in consultation with the student’s parents or legal guardians. Parents or legal guardians of students who receive such counseling shall be notified as soon as practicable that such counseling has occurred.

WTF???

As Think Progress points out:

Family rejection is a serious risk for LGBT youth. Kids who are LGBT often face alienation, if not outright abandonment, because they come out. Forty percent of homeless youth are LGBT, and many of them report that the reason they left home was to escape an environment hostile to their sexual orientation. LGBT youth who experience family rejection are at high risk for depression and suicide.

Annoyed that his opponents dubbed the first go-round the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, this year Campfield called it the “Classroom Protection Act.”

“Protection from who?” asked Chris Sanders, chairman and president of the Tennessee Equality Project.

“It’s kind of like ‘Don’t Say Gay’ on steroids,” Sanders told The Tennessean. “He’s listened to the objections and ended up making it worse.”

Campfield is known as a particularly bellicose, arrogant and ignorant conservative Republican, the kind of combative not as smart as he thinks he is loser who’s one rung lower than, say, former Tea party-backed congressman Joe Walsh, with about half of Walsh’s wit, charm and intelligence (Walsh possesses none of these attributes, of course). There was a debate last year about whether or not to remove Campfield’s photo from his former high schools Wall of Fame. This guy is a dick.

If you’d like to give Stacey Campfield a piece of your mind—he’s obviously got none of his own—you can do so here. A Facebook page was also set up to organize getting rid of this jackass who seems intent on giving Knoxville a bad name. Here’s his phone number—(615) 741-1766—and his email address: sen.stacey.campfield@capitol.tn.gov

Below, a (flaming) ignoramus speaks his tiny, tiny little mind:
 

“What if the Attorney General, and listen the reason I say this might happen is because if you remember the first report put out by the Director of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, when the President became President of the United States, she put out a paper talking about the people who are the categories of people who might be homegrown terrorists.

In that list she put people who believe in the second coming of Jesus Christ, people who believe in pro-life issues, people who don’t believe in having illegal aliens here, they put a lot of good, decent categories of people in that paper.

Well here’s what number four says, the Attorney General can put who he wants to on the list of people who are too dangerous to get guns. What if he decides radio talk show hosts who don’t believe in gay marriage, they’re dangerous, so they shouldn’t get guns? What about pastors who preach against abortion and homosexuality? They’re too dangerous to get guns? That could happen.”

—“American Family Association” radio host Buster Wilson.

Wilson is the same fucking idiot who tried to get conservative Christians to boycott Google over their “Legalize Love Campaign” and who announced this boycott on Google-owned YouTube. The phrase “Dumber than a bag of wet hair” probably wasn’t coined to describe Buster Wilson, but it could have been.

Back in August, chucklehead Buster blamed Hurricane Issac on a New Orleans LGBT festival!

As one YouTube user commented on the clip below:

Tell me then, genius, why did the power of the most high manifest itself by destroying tiny Joplin in a state that’s 77% Christian? Why does he flood massive areas of Mississippi—the most Christian state—every year? Why is it that he makes NYC the centre of the global economy & LA the centre of global culture, yet does nothing to stop their decadence? A hurricane flattened Joplin, it didn’t even dent Manhattan. Sounds like your god is incompetent.

This guy is out of his mind. More at Right Wing Watch.
 

 
Take a good look at the face of Lisa Biron, a New Hampshire attorney who provides pro bono legal work for the anti-LGBT Christian group, the Alliance Defense Fund, a coalition of Christian lawyers. Fighting gay rights and woman’s reproductive rights are the main focus of the group’s litigation.

Biron has been found guilty—it took a jury just one hour to convict her—on eight felony charges involving child endangerment and producing child pornography. Via WMUR:

A Manchester lawyer has been found guilty of exploiting a 14-year-old girl to produce child pornography, The Associated Press reported. Lisa Biron, 43, was accused of videotaping the girl having sex with two men. Biron faced eight federal indictments on charges of child sexual exploitation, transporting a child across state lines to produce child pornography and possession of child pornography, and was convicted on all of them after the jury deliberated for less than an hour. The trial began Wednesday, with prosecutors calling to the stand two men who said Biron videotaped them having sex with the 14-year-old. The final witness for the prosecution was an FBI agent who specializes in computer forensics. He testified that he retrieved pornographic images from a computer that had Biron listed as the owner. He said a confiscated iPhone also had a sexually explicit video involving the girl.

According to the Joe.My.God blog, as Biron was being led away post-sentencing, she was overheard speaking to her father and blaming her 14-year-old victim, saying that “she had a part in this”!

Yuck.

The Alliance Defense Fund has a Facebook page if you want to post something on their wall (I did, but they deleted it).
 

 
Bravo!

“This is just a simple, down the middle, black and white, cut and dry, warm cup of what would Jesus, or anything other human being that isn’t an asshole, do?

And you blew it”

Anyone who lives in a red hurricane corridor state just got a nice steaming pile dropped on their heads of what the GOP reps that they themselves freely chose to elect have in store for them the next time a hurricane rips the roof off their house. Don’t be surprised when rabid reichwingers act like rabid reichwingers when you vote for them!

Unbelievable. What MORE evidence would any sane person need not to vote Republican for anything, or any office, not even dog catcher? And as Stewart points out, when even Peter King thinks you’re a disgrace…

Peter fucking King got it right, for god’s sake! This speaks volumes about how messed up it all is.
 

 
Just the tip..?

Via Early Onset of Night

Fuck this guy. No really, fuck this guy.

Not that anyone had any high hopes that South Carolina’s Tea party favorite, Governor Nikki Haley, would appoint anyone but a fucking buffoon to replace departing conservative dickhead Jim DeMint—who left to head the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation and make a lot more money than being a mere US Senator pays—but she really plumbed the absolute bottom of the barrel by selecting Republican Congressman Tim Scott.

In his 2010 campaign for the House, Scott described himself as a lost youth who had his life turned around when a Chick-fil-A franchise owner took him under his wing and taught him conservative principles.

Think Progress summed up Scott’s deplorably moronic record:

Floated impeaching Obama over the debt ceiling. As the debt ceiling debate raged in the summer of 2011 because of the intransigence of Tea Party freshmen like Scott, the nation inched perilously close to defaulting on its obligations. One option discussed by some officials to avoid that scenario was for the president to assert that the debt ceiling itself was an unconstitutional infringement on the 14th Amendment. However, Tim Scott tolda South Carolina Tea Party group that if Obama were to go this route, it would be an “impeachable act.”

Proposed a bill to cut off food stamps for entire families if one member went on strike. One of the most anti-union members of Congress, Scott proposed a bill two months after entering Congress in 2011 to kick families off food stamps if one adult were participating in a strike. Scott’s legislation made no exception for children or other dependents.

Wanted to spend an unlimited amount of money to display Ten Commandments outside county building. When Scott was on the Charleston County Council, one of his primary issues was displaying the Ten Commandments outside the Council building. According to the Augusta Chronicle, Scott said the display “would remind council members and speakers the moral absolutes they should follow.” When he was sued for violating the Constitution and a Circuit Judge’s orders, Scott was nonplussed: “Whatever it costs in the pursuit of this goal (of displaying the Commandments) is worth it.”

Defended fairness of giving billions in subsidies to Big Oil. Scott and his Republican allies in Congress voted repeatedly last year to protect more than $50 billion in taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil corporations. When ThinkProgress asked Scott whether it was fair to do that, especially at a time when oil companies are earning tens of billions in profit every quarter, the Tea Party freshman defended the industry: “fair is a relative word,” said Scott.

Helped slash South Carolina’s HIV/AIDS budget. As a state representative, Scott backed a proposal to cut the state’s entire HIV/AIDS budget, despite the fact that South Carolina ranks in the top-third of reported AIDS cases. The cuts were ultimately included in the state’s budget, impacting more than 2,000 HIV-positive South Carolinians who needed help paying for their medication.

Had enough?

Departing dipshit Jim DeMint is an asshole with big clown shoes to fill and it looks like Tim Scott is the asshole who’s going to fill them. DeMint is stupid, but he’s not stupid stupid, he’s stupid smart (“stupid like a fox” to coin a phrase). Scott, I fear, is just a real fuckin’ numbnuts. Exactly what the US Senate needs right about now…

That thing about cutting food stamps off for the children of striking union workers is one of the lowest of the low things I’ve ever heard of a Republican suggesting. That’ll break the unions: STARVE THEIR CHILDREN. Scott deserves spit in his face, gallons of it, not an unearned Senate appointment!

The reichwing blogosphere is already starting to bleat about South Carolina’s “first black senator” but… THIS KNOB??? Give me a fucking break…

For shame, South Carolina. If you can’t do better than Nikki Haley, Jim DeMint or a silly lightweight jackass like Tim Scott, that says truly pathetic things about your state.

 
The much-hated haters of the Westboro Baptist Church, well-known for their “God Hates Fags” signs and picketing the funerals of dead soldiers, announced over the weekend that they were planning a demonstration at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Callously disregarding the residents of Newtown, Margie Phelps, a member of the Phelps clan tweeted that “fags” and gay marriage had brought the mayhem to the CT town. A freakish musical statement from the WBC purports that God had sent the shooter (personally, I guess).

Residents of Newtown don’t need this shit right now. Enter Anonymous.

In a video uploaded on Vimeo, the hacker collective throws down the gauntlet:

We will not allow you to corrupt the minds of America with your seeds of hatred. We will not allow you to inspire aggression to the social factions which you deem inferior. We will render you obsolete. We will destroy you. We are coming.

An awful lot of people would very much like to see that happen judging from the supportive comments (unsurprisingly, the WBC attracts few “care trolls” who stick up for them, or even for their First Amendment rights. Most people just loath them and want to see them hurt).
 

WBC members do-to list for today: Apply for a new SSN, change phone numbers, and call every local pizza place and tell them no pizza.

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) December 17, 2012

 
So far Anonymous has published the email addresses, phone numbers and street addresses of a number of Westboro members (And what do ya know, most of them are named “Phelps”!). A US government official predicted earlier this year that soon enough Anonymous would have the expertise to be able to bring down parts of the power grid.

Fuck the Phelps, sure, but just imagine if they took down Wall Street for the day.

Update: Either the infamous 15-year-old hacker “Cosmo the God”—or since he’s actually on probation, someone hijacking his handle has hacked the Twitter account of Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of the hate group’s founder, Rev. Fred Phelps.

Update #2: Nathan Phelps, son of Fred Phelps, but who has no part in their insane shenanigans, responded to his family’s announced actions:

“My heart goes out to the grieving families as well as the rest of the surrounding community during this time of unthinkable mourning & tremendous loss. The news that my sister & the rest of my family intend to protest the funerals of those lost in this national tragedy is, to me, a stark reminder that anyone’s interpretation of religious texts serve more as a reflection to the character of those reading it than whatever the author intended in the first place. My sincere hope is that the Sandy Hook community is able to grieve & mourn privately, & with whatever peace can be had in knowing the rest of the world mourns with you.

“To those considering offering WBC an alternative to protesting these funerals, I say, ‘let them show up’. WBC is running out of money & their leader is a frail old man whose power & reach is tremendously limited to those who provide them an audience. Their recent tactic has been accepting media air time in lieu of protesting high profile funerals. By allowing them this luxury, they get free publicity with no effort or expense on their part, while potentially traumatizing a much wider audience than those strong enough to stand against them in silent but effective counter-protest. These counter-protests have, many times, prevented the grieving mourners from being impacted by WBC’s childish, attention seeking behavior. Please do not allow WBC the option of a less costly alternative. By calling their bluff, they will either ask for police protection, which allows police to control where they are located, or not request police protection, which would clearly be an unwise decision considering the emotionally charged environment they will be entering. Either way they alone will bear their costs, along with sole responsibility for harassing the community, without the benefit of a national platform in which to do it.”

And this is what he turned into? What a complete shock…
 
So although it’s fairly well-known what a crazy motherfucker Phil Spector is, it’s still somewhat surprising to see that he never even went a little bit out of his way to at least try to affect an air of bare minimum congeniality, or to be charming, or attempt to appear SANE, even when he was on television. From the get-go, he’s hostile to Merv (how can you be hostile to Merv?) and becomes increasingly irritated and paranoid throughout the interview.

By the time Spector alludes to hitting Merv and a very unimpressed and composed Eartha Kitt—who hits him hard with her well-delivered Socrates quip—the audience is hissing and booing him.
 

Steven Crowder: even dumber than he looks?

It’s been hilarious to watch the reichwingers having conniption fits pointing at the “union goon” in Lansing, Michigan who punched curiously smug Fox Contributor Steven Crowder: Uncle Sean Hannity, the pindicks at Breitbart.com, mean ol’ Dana Loesch, and the delightfully insane Michelle Malkin have all been tripping over themselves to get the word out about this heinous, earth-shaking, momentously evil event. You’d think that the livelihoods of working families in Michigan, and what they stand to lose in the Republican sneak attack against the unions, might be the main story, or even a tiny part of it, but no, it’s the Republican frat boy who deservedly got punched in the face—who indeed only went to Lansing in the first place so he could GET punched in the face ON CAMERA—that they all want to talk about.

Fair enough, except that these intellectual pillars of the right might want to look at his video a little more closely before they really get on-board the Steven Crowder Express, next career stop his parent’s basement…

Certainly Crowder underestimated even the Fox News audience’s ability to see—clearly—in the video evidence that he himself provided, that the supposed “union thug” was getting off the ground before he hit him.

Even his supporters want to know what happened immediately before the video starts. Why was the union guy on the ground before the fight broke out? Why did Crowder decide that this part wasn’t important enough to leave in the video he uploaded to YouTube before calling Fox News?

Is this guy for real? Did he even think this shit through?

And what does this say about Fox News and their producers’ ability to divine shit from Shinola? They’re the ones who showed the damned video. Did they even bother to LOOK at it first? Post Romneygeddon it’s not like Fox News has got a whole lot more credibility to piss away with the general public and now they’re embracing a twit like Steven Crowder in prime time? (Great idea, Roger Ailes! You’re a propaganda genius… or at least you used to be. These days, not so much).

The mighty Eclecta blog was the first place to compare the videos, the reddit community then picked up on the story and amplified it from there and now it’s made it to The New York Times. I would imagine that this will be young Mr. Crowder’s first—and probably last—time to be mentioned in the Times. I’m sure his wife and family will be so proud of him when they read this:

Unfortunately for Mr. Crowder, a look at the video broadcast on the Sean Hannity show appears to show quite clearly that he left out an important section of the footage when he put together his edit. A section of the Fox News broadcast preserved by the Web site Mediaite shows that Mr. Hannity’s producers at Fox News started the clip five seconds earlier than Mr. Crowder did. What the extra footage reveals is the man who punched Mr. Crowder being knocked to the ground seconds before and then getting up and taking a swing at the comedian.

It remains unclear what caused the man who threw the punch to fall to the ground at the start of the incident, but Mr. Crowder did say in an interview with a conservative blogger that he and other men defending the tent did get into a physical confrontation with the union activists. “We didn’t get violent with them, but we did try and push them off the tent,” he said.

So wait: Crowder pushed a guy to the ground who then got up and hit him? And then Crowder went on TV and cried about being a victim of a “union thug” who he physically provoked?

Yesterday Tea party wingnuts were donating to a “reward” fund to bring the “union thug” to “justice,” but dollars to donuts, I predict that no charges will be filed by little Stevie Crowder….

Crowder is now going full-tilt Breitbart and playing the martyr card hard, but unconvincingly:
 

Right now I have a former police officer, heavily armed at my house protecting my wife. The threats are severe. Prayers appreciated.

— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) December 14, 2012

 
Boo-fucking-hoo, asshole…
 

Who wouldn’t want to punch this face?

Steven Crowder, a self-described “comedian” and Fox News contributor, got punched in the kisser today, repeatedly, during a heated exchange at an organized labor rally in Lansing, Michigan.

What did Crowder expect would happen when he showed up with a camera crew at the angry protests at Republican Governor Rick Snyder signing a hastily-passed right to work bill into law? It’s pretty obvious what he expected—and hoped—would happen, preferably on camera so he could run right back to Fox News with the footage. Riling up some union workers? Piece-a-cake and then Fox News can call them “union thugs” and demonize organized labor. So predictable, but then again this is Fox News, and old people, i.e. their pension-drawing, Depends-wearing viewers, like things to be predictable, don’t they?

For a talent-less, witless, conservative wiseass like Steven Crowder, getting punched in the face by a “union thug” is just the big career break he was looking for (as deeply fucking pathetic as that might be). Via Huffington Post:

Crowder argued with protesters who began to tear down a tent pitched on the Capitol lawn by the pro-right-to-work group Americans For Prosperity. According to MLive, Michigan State Police Lt. Mike Shaw said they were contacted because several people, including two in wheelchairs, were trapped under the tent.

He was then punched repeatedly in the face by a protester, while another man speaking off-camera threatened to kill Crowder with a gun. Crowder said there was no police presence in the area during the altercation.

Over 12,000 protesters gathered in Lansing on Tuesday to show their opposition to the hastily-approved right-to-work legislation, which they say will weaken unions financially and make it more difficult for labor employees to negotiate with employers. At least two protesters were arrested, while a former Michigan Democratic representative was hit with pepper spray.

Speaking on the Dana Loesch radio show immediately following the physical confrontation, Crowder said “Dana, they literally would have killed me where I stood if I’d have fought back and defended myself after the sucker punch. They literally would have torn me limb-from-limb.”

Crowder tweeted:
 

Even if you hate me, nothing I could have done warranted being suckerpunched and threatened with murder. ow.ly/g1aeq #RTW

— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) December 11, 2012

 
(*whistles quietly*)

Crowder also tweeted about further footage that will be seen tonight—surprise, surprise—on The Sean Hannity Show. It will shock no one that Michelle Malkin and Dana Loesch want in on the union-bashing action, too:

Below, Gov. Rick Snyder’s Wikipedia entry as of a few moments ago:
 

 
An edited version of reality…
 

I’ve got a great dirty trick you can play on a three-year-old kid. Kids learn how to talk from listening to their parents, see? This is a good one. So here’s what you do. So you have a three-year-old kid and you wanna pull a trick on ‘em, whenever you’re around them.. TALK WRONG.

So now it’s like his first day of school and he raises his hand: “May I mambo dogface to the banana patch?”

“Give that kid a special test. Get him out of here.”

—Steve Martin, A Wild and Crazy Guy, 1978

That classic Steve Martin joke came immediately to mind when I read Columbia University’s Lincoln Mitchell’s essay, “Is Fox Even Helping the Republicans Anymore?” this morning. That and “if you have to ask, then the answer is almost certainly ‘no.’” Fox News has become a liability to the GOP? Who’d have ever thunk it?

A few other things popped into my head as well when I read Mitchell’s article:

This has been a difficult election season for Fox News. Among the most enduring media images of the last few days of the election are Karl Rove late on election night angrily denying that Ohio, and thus the presidency, had gone to President Obama, and Dick Morris only a few days before the election confidently predicting a Romney landslide. Morris later tried to explain away his mistake after the election by claiming he had done it to create enthusiasm among Republican voters. The incidents involving Rove and Morris, both of whom work as both commentators on Fox and political consultants to conservative clients, are obviously embarrassing for Fox, but also raise the question of whether the network has outlived its value, even to the Republican Party.

Because Fox generally reports news based on partisan talking points and ideological certainty rather than focusing on pesky things like facts, information and events, it has, in the past, been effective in encouraging misperceptions about President Obama’s background, nurturing the growth and development of the Tea Party movement and covering economic policy by referring to any spending by the government as socialism. These things have helped mobilize and misinform the right wing base of the Republican Party. Similarly, during the Bush administration, Fox helped increase support for the Gulf War by repeating White House positions on weapons of mass destruction, almost without question.

“Ideological certainty” sure is a fun term to mull over these days, isn’t it? Especially in light of what happened on Election Day. Imagine having your entire naive “conservative” (and all that implies outside of the cult) worldview crushed just like that by the sheer force of math and changing demographics… not that I have much sympathy for dolts.
 

 
How would people who watch Fox News all the time ever hear—let alone be able to mentally process—something like “Herbert Hoover presided over a bigger spending increase than Obama has”? Or that “Obama won more popular votes than any Democratic candidate for president in history—except for himself in 2008”? I’ll tell you how they process it: “He stole the election!”

If you follow, like I do, the far reich blogosphere, it’s very plain to see that these people live in a cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs fantasyland, in an America that doesn’t even exist, hasn’t really existed for years, and that will never exist again short of a genocide that would kill tens of millions of people, and which, frankly, isn’t something I expect to see happening in North America anytime soon.
 

 
Even in the minds of GOP bigwigs, this Bizarro World/“mambo dogface to the banana patch” shit is looming large: Did you read former Reagan economic adviser Bruce Bartlett—the guy who coined the term “Reaganomics”—writing in The American Conservative on how even elite Republicans view The New York Times as if it is some far left samizdat? WTF??

Interestingly, a couple of days after the Suskind article appeared, I happened to be at a reception for some right-wing organization that many of my think tank friends were also attending. I assumed I would get a lot of grief for my comments in the Suskind article and was surprised when there was none at all.

Finally, I started asking people about it. Not one person had read it or cared in the slightest what the New York Times had to say about anything. They all viewed it as having as much credibility as Pravda and a similar political philosophy as well. Some were indignant that I would even suspect them of reading a left-wing rag such as the New York Times.

I was flabbergasted. Until that moment I had not realized how closed the right-wing mind had become. Even assuming that my friends’ view of the Times’ philosophy was correct, which it most certainly was not, why would they not want to know what their enemy was thinking? This was my first exposure to what has been called “epistemic closure” among conservatives—living in their own bubble where nonsensical ideas circulate with no contradiction.

Read that last sentence again. That would describe Fox News perfectly, a place where nonsensical ideas circulate with no contradiction. EVER, or else they cut your mic. A black hole of intelligence that’s sucking the GOP faithful into a place of foolishness from which they can never return.

Back to Mitchell:

Over the last several years, this has been very helpful to the Republican Party, but during 2012, particularly in recent months, this has begun to change. Fox has now become a problem for the Republican Party because it keeps a far right base mobilized and angry making it hard for the party to move to the center, or increase its appeal as it must do to remain electorally competitive. For example, Bill O’Reilly’s explanation of why the Obama was reelected may, in fact, resonate, with the older and heavily white viewership of Fox, but it is precisely the wrong public message and messenger for the Party.

Precisely, it was the sort of grumpy old white senior citizens who reliably vote in the Republican primaries—and get their “informations” from Fox News—who forced Mitt Romney to contort himself into positions that made him an unpalatable shit-dipped pretzel to non-white, non-old, non-idiotic Americans and therefore patently un-electable.

I got yer manifest destiny right here: Romney scored the “reliable low IQ buffoon” vote, that’s for sure, and for many of us, that alone was a good enough reason to vote against him. How will the “big tent” Republicans go about courting that surefire base of the Tea party / “Moran” / covert (or overt) racist / Christian home-schooled creationist conservative bloc in elections to come without alienating absolutely everyone else?
 

 
Talk about a difficult dance step with both of your shoes tied together and nailed to the floor. Is it even possible to pull off such a doomed political tango moving forward in history? It’s a stupid uphill battle to wage to begin with. Why bother trying to swim against this kind of historical and demographic current? Why hitch your wagon to some horses who require oxygen tanks and twice daily insulin shots? It doesn’t make any sense.

Any aspiring young politician with half a brain would be a fool to think he’d be the BMOC by joining the party of people with no brains at all (Scott Brown, I’m looking at your short political career. Still glad you pledged Phi Kappa Dipshit?). Whereas, the Democrats, or at least some of them, seem more like the folks with one eye in the kingdom of the blind (I exempt Florida’s Alan Grayson from this assessment), the Republicans just seem like mean-spirited know-nothing buffoons, country blumpkins (that’s not a typo) and Jeebus freaks who belong in carnival sideshows, not voting booths. Where do you go from there when your baseline members consist of the country’s most irritating assholes and blowhards under the same “big tent”? (Think of the GOP not as a political party, but a party party. Who wants to party with the Republicans? They’ve got John Rocker signing autographs!)

And listen to the hilarious “conciliatory” noises that even the likes of Sean Hannity are starting to spout about immigration reform (he’s “evolved”—not a word typically associated with Hannity, is it?). A little late, buddy, don’t cha think? How do you solve a problem like, uh, Maria, at this late stage of the game, genius? YOU don’t. You try to fuck off with some tiny shred of dignity left! (If you care about what Sean Hannity “thinks” about immigration reform, I truly fucking pity you and anyone you come into contact with on a regular basis).

Moreover, while Fox helps the Republican Party when it slants its news coverage to the right, it damages the Party when its news coverage becomes too shoddy. A network that cannot get election night right because one of its star pundits simply refuses to accept defeat offers very little reason for potential viewers to watch it. Similarly a network whose pundits are so off in their election predictions will ultimately marginalize itself completely, as Fox is beginning to do.

Fox News “offers very little reason for potential viewers to watch it.” As Glenn Beck likes to say “Well, duh!”

If the information a news organization brings to the public is wrong and is demonstrated—easily—to be incorrect, then what is the value proposition? Fox News fills not-so-bright people’s heads with comforting bullshit and it serves to get them riled up and angry with… non-facts. It tells dum-dums, not “the news,” but what they want to hear. Study after study has shown that Fox News fans are the least informed people in America—indeed they are the very opposite of informed, as they tend to actually know less than they would had they watched no TV news at all.

There is clearly very little of nutritional value to get out of Fox News. It’s like eating Cheetos all the damned day and believing that you are consuming a futuristic health food (like Tang and Gatorade) even as you weigh 500 lbs and have to be lifted by a crane into your electric scooter.
 

 
Fox News imbicilizes its viewership. Its viewership IS the Republican base and probably comprises the greater part of its primary voters. According to Bruce Bartlett, it’s also the leadership…

Another thing that came to mind reading Mitchell’s essay was Paul Krugman’s withering quip about Newt Gingrich being “a stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like.” Ouch, but it’s just so very, very true. If your mind is tiny, Newt’s must seem vast, but that doesn’t say much about the price of tea in China, just what passes for “brainy” to a group of people as dumb as a cows. Gingrich, like Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, is merely a self-confident idiot. and yet these bozos are the very ones they pass off as the smart guys because they’re louder, more emphatically blusterous and in the case of Gingrich, just flat-out fuckin’ meaner.
 

 

One of the bigger challenges facing the Republican Party is that they are perceived as the, to phrase it nicely, less smart of the two major parties. The anti-science perspective, unwillingness to speak out against absurd sounding conspiracy theories, and even the attacks on Nate Silver, presumably because Silver did somewhat sophisticated math, have contributed to this and are damaging the party. It is no coincidence that the Obama campaign had a more sophisticated targeting and turnout operation and better statistical modeling. A party that refuses to take a firm stand in support of evolution or recognizing climate change is not going to draw too many people with advanced statistical training as advisors and consultants.

Don’t forget world-class computer programmers and developers.

Fox contributes to that environment by creating a climate where partisan rantings of people like Dick Morris are indulged while criticism by serious people like Tom Ricks is shut down and attacked. There is no inevitable link between conservatism and stupidity, but one could be forgiven for coming to that conclusion while watching Fox News. As it is currently constructed, Fox News is going to bring in almost no swing voters in the coming years. It will more likely continue to repel them through poor analysis and rants that strike the precise tone the party should be trying to avoid.

BAM. The toxic ménage à trois of the GOP, Fox News and the dumbest old coots in America means that they are perceived from the outside as being synonymous, and so herein lies the FAR BIGGER problem for the Republican party: Its very base, the braying Tea party dumbasses who they have so assiduously courted and pandered to, has made the Republican Party itself look like a BAD INVESTMENT. They can’t win lumbered with the imbecilic hordes of Fox News viewers, but they sure cannot win without them, either. What to do?

Tee-hee! This is yet another particularly vexing Catch 22 that I don’t think the GOP counted on. It goes far beyond their demographic problems and presents a much, much more immediate Wiley E. Coyote looking down to see that he’s already in very big trouble sort of crisis.

It’s also not something that I think is obvious to them—yet: Smart businessmen don’t tend to throw good money after bad. They certainly don’t keep doing it forever. Why would the people who have traditionally given money to the Republicans be foolish enough to do that again in 2016?

I think even the fucking US Chamber of Commerce got the message this time, don’t you? How could they have missed it?
 

 
Mitchell concluded by offering a final compelling reason for what I’m seeing as the “bad investment” aspect of the unholy trinity of Fox News, the GOP and the dumbest Americans:

It is in the interest of the Democrats, not the Republicans, for there to be a loud, extremist, heavily white faction in the Republican Party, constantly pushing that party rightward. One of the reasons Mitt Romney was so unable to pivot back to the center was due to the drumbeat at Fox which contributing to forcing him to the right during the primary season. Even after the primary season, when Fox became a big supporter for Romney, the rift between official editorial position and the political feelings of Fox viewers and hosts, was clear.

Unfortunately for the Republicans, while this is bad politics, it is good business for Fox. By positioning itself as the place where angry Republicans can go for their rhetorical red meat, Fox guarantees itself a sizable viewership, so the incentive for Fox to keep doing what it is doing is substantial, as is the potential damage to the Republican Party.

Good business for Fox News, but bad business for rich supporters of the Republican Party.

It’s a very difficult thing to convince someone that they’re stupid, however, it’s utterly infuriating when someone lets you know that they think you’re stupid and you suspect they might be right (I’d imagine, it’s not like this has ever happened to me). Faced with that uncomfortable power dynamic, stupid people tend to huff and puff and dig in their heels even harder when it comes to something that threatens them. As the Republican electorate gets older and has less and less influence, the growing realization that the rest of us think they’re knobs will see the thrashing displays of abject crazy get ratcheted up to levels of lunacy not yet seen, but that will just seem more and more silly, shrill and impotent as time goes on. For the Republicans, it used to be that automatically having the coalition of the stupid in their back pocket was a winning strategy. Today that’s why they’re losing and yet they can’t exactly cut them loose, either.
 

 
So the upshot of all of this is that GOP can’t really compete on a national level anymore, and if this isn’t an entirely 100% watertight truth (although the demographics sure seem to back it up) it’s still true enough.

If they were a sports team would you bet on them?

And ask yourself, even if you were stinking rich would you knowingly invest in a losing (hell, DOOMED) team?

As that notion sinks in, and becomes fully baked into the popular “loser” perception of the GOP, will the 1% continue to financially support the Republican party?

I think it’s pretty clear that the answer is gonna be NO.

(What this portends for the Democrats and one party rule in America is something beyond the scope of this already overlong post).
 

 

 
Last year, the British Islamist and all-round comedian Anjem Choudary (“Fox’s Favorite Muslim Radical”) popped up alongside three of four local Islamists in Walthamstow, East London to declare, before of a press audience pushing double figures, the instigation of Sharia law in the surrounding borough of Waltham Forest! This, to be sure, had as much meaning as would my declaring the legalization of methamphetamine in New York State, but a couple of tabloids duly trotted out the story all the same. Choudary laid it down in his usual disconcertingly suburban tones.

“This will mean this is an area where the Muslim community will not tolerate drugs, alcohol, pornography, gambling, usury, free mixing between the sexes – the fruits if you like of Western civilization. We want to run the area as a Sharia controlled zone and really to put the seeds down for an Islamic Emirate in the long term.”

A year on, I can testify (as a relatively hard-livin’ resident of Walthamstow) that the Islamic Emirate of Waltham Forest looks a fair old way off regardless of last year’s stunt, while the local Islamist movement remains more depressing than intimidating.

Take my local Internet café (please!) which has the following admonition on the wall: “PLEASE NO MORE LOOKING AT TERRORIST AND PORNOGRAPHY SITES. POLICE WILL BE CALLED IMMEDIATELY.” The impression is of a minority of “armchair Jihadists” –losers paying a pound an hour to haunt chat-rooms almost certainly observed by (and likely moderated and maintained by) Anglo-American intelligence agents.

Many–including many Islamists–consider Choudary himself to be an embarrassingly obvious British Intelligence Asset. You can see why. There’s something distinctly phony about him, while his associated groups (such as the snappily titled Islam4UK) seem solely focused on generating supremely banal controversy rather than advancing any sort of Islamic agenda.

For example, Choudary first acquired widespread notoriety when he led a small group in heckling soldiers’ coffins back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Unsurprisingly, this upset a lot of people, among them Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka “Tommy Robinson,” a seething Islamophobe from Luton, who decided, along with some like-minded berks, to surf the wave of public outrage and announce the formation of the EDL, or English Defence League, the self-styled “street protest movement,” predominantly consisting of angry rough white working class men–many of them former soccer hooligans–who up to very recently have regularly descended on various English towns by the coach-load to get pissed and chant about Mohammed being a pedophile (this is literally what they do).
 

 
Initially identifying “radical Islam” as the object of its drunken ire, the EDL has since expanded its scope to include Islam in general. (It’s like I always say, if you’re gonna pick a fight, pick one with a billion people.) Robinson–a surprisingly baby-faced monomaniac–explained the reason for this on Newsnight a couple of years back.

“I didn’t know anything about the Koran when this first started. I didn’t know wot left wing or right wing woz. I never even turned the computer on. I just knew things were seriously wrong.”

It ain’t every day someone admits founding a political movement in a state of total ignorance! Rest assured that Robinson’s computer has since remained very much on, and his prejudice blossomed into the full-blown Islamophobic ideology recognizable the world over. As such, Robinson publicly eschews many of the traditional hatreds of the British far right–gays, Jews, women–so as to concentrate entirely on Muslims…

Hence the intermittent presence of right wing Californian rabbi Nachum Shifren–“the surfing rabbi”–at various EDL outings. That the fundamentalist Shifren (no less a comedian, in his own way, than Anjem Choudary) advocates the stoning of gay people arguably complicates the EDL’s LGBT pretensions, but then the following extract from a Shifren EDL speech suggests there might be number of crossed wires here.

“I’ve a question for you today. Is there a man or a woman here–I want you to step forward if you are here–if there’s anybody here that wants to forever forgo reading Locke, Chaucer, Dickens or Goethe, can we hear from them now, because that’s what you’re gonna get if the Islamists take over!?!”

Got quite a small cheer, that–the likelihood of any of Shifren’s audience knuckling down to some Locke, Chaucer, Dickens or Goethe (or even knowing who they are) being pretty darn slim.
 

 
Tommy Robinson, of course, much better understands the EDL demographic, and began a recent speech with the following, more attuned opening gambit:  “At half four this morning, I was in a strip club in Slovenia…” (banging on, you suspect, about Muslims, while a bored blonde wriggled her ass in his crotch). ““I was at my mate’s stag weekend… I got a taxi from the airport.” Got a big cheer, that, the stag weekend representing a kind of hoodlum Hajj, the central pilgrimage of an inverse Islam.

It can seem that there is something antithetical about Islamic and British culture (the EDL’s version of it, anyway). Which is to say that the latter seems founded almost solely on what the former deems haram –“forbidden.” First of all, you’ve got booze… haram. Then you’ve got the fried breakfast, with its fifty-seven different uses for pig flesh… haram. Random naked women (whether in a strip club or the pages of a tabloid newspaper)… haram. The bookies… haram. The gram of sniff… haram. Headbutting your mate in jest… haram. Even soccer (according to many Sharia scholars I came across)… haram.

Might it not be credible that, beneath all the cant about clashing civilizations, beneath even the tacit aversion to anyone that isn’t bright pink, the EDL are motivated by a fear of having absolutely fuck all to do in the extremely unlikely eventuality of a Sharia UK? This, they must figure, is why Muslims pray five times a day. It kills time!

Anyway, obediently following Anjem Choudary’s breadcrumb trail of provocation, September saw the EDL undertake a day trip to the aforementioned “Islamic Emirate of Waltham Forest”… where they were told, by a very wide cross section of locals, to fuck off. In fact so many people turned out to deliver this message, that the whole demo was disrupted, the speeches were cancelled, and the entire “street protest” approach was thrown into contention among the EDL rank-and-file.
 

 
Adding to the fall-out was a campaign from Nick Griffin–leader of the British National Party and the traditional big kahuna of the British far right–accusing the EDL of being some kind of dastardly Zionist ploy (the presence of “the surfing rabbi” presumably giving the game away there). Robinson took to YouTube to brandish an assortment of mortgage arrears and unpaid bills, apparently at breaking point. “If I’ve got all this rich Zionist funding,” he shouted, “why’s my phone been cut off for two bloody weeks?”

Shortly after, and with a view to regaining the whole race-hate initiative, Robinson led a bunch of EDL goons in an attempt to occupy a mosque. Fortunately, the cops got wind of it and nipped that scheme in the bud, arresting over fifty potential participants. All were bailed apart from Robinson, who was remanded on a charge for having accessed the US with a fake passport in order to attend an anti-Islam conference hosted by the lovely Pamela Geller. Locked up and facing extradition to the US, Robinson can do little to prevent what looks like the final disintegration of his movement. Ah well, Tommy, at least you were indirectly responsible for the immortal “Muslamic Ray Guns” (see below).

And what of that old fraud Anjem Choudary? He’s got some pretty big fish to fry, let me tell you. Remember that young lady Malala Yousafzai, the fifteen-year-old shot by the Pakistani Taliban after she campaigned for education rights for girls? Well, never one to miss an opportunity to humiliate his supposed co-religionists, Choudary latest organization–Sharia4Pakistan–is reportedly holding a conference in Islamabad to call for her execution! Comedians, the lot of them…  
 

“Quote, unquote ‘working people’”

Failed 2010 Republican Senate candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina (“19th Worst CEO of All Time”) is a confirmed failure in both business and politics—an extremely notable failure at that—and yet for some inexplicable reason, her “success” at nearly destroying HP saw Fiorina gifted with a $42 million “golden parachute” severance package when they fired her. (She claims $21 million, conveniently forgetting the other half). Hell, I’d be willing to run HP into the dust for the bargain price of $500,000, less, even, how’s about you?).

Portfolio magazine described Fiorina as “a consummate self-promoter” (A job creator!) who “paid herself handsome bonuses and perks while laying off thousands of employees to cut costs.” 18,000 people to give you a nice round number.

So why does NBC News keep booking her as an “expert” on Meet the Press? What are Carly Fiorina’s qualifications to have her opinions on the so-called “fiscal cliff” taken seriously? How is Fiorina’s “expertise” measured when SHE, of ALL PEOPLE, makes a statement like this one:

“It is not fair that public employee union pensions and benefits are so rich now that cities and states are going bankrupt, and college tuition is going up 20 and 30%… There is a lot that isn’t fair right now.”

Fair? Who is Carly Fiorina to decide what’s fair or not? How fucking fair is it that an individual rewarded with $42 million for being a total fuck up (during her tenure at HP, the company’s stock lost half its value) is on NBC News whining and pontificating about public union employees? Someone who fired 18,000 workers as she ground a major American corporation into the curb? Yeah, let’s canvass her opinion on the direction the country needs to take!

Hell, Carly Fiorina is so clueless that she even ran as a Republican in CALIFORNIA! I mean, what’s up with that? (Endorsed by Sarah Palin, Fiorina lost by 10 points!) If she’s any kind of expert on anything beside failing upwards then I’m Sean Hannity.

And for the record, 7 of 10 public union employees—like cops—retire on a pension of around $30k a year. Just sayin…

Via AmericaBlog:

So tell me who is really part of the moocher class that corporate CEOs and 1%-ers keep talking about? Are they the people asking for basic healthcare or the people who have enough money to build moats and personal golf courses around their mansions? Another tip off sign of a moocher is that no matter how much they have, it’s not enough and they want more of your money.

Damn if these Republicans don’t always want stuff.

Tee-hee. I’m SO sick of hearing about this fiscal cliff nonsense, but ESPECIALLY from the likes of Carly Fiorina. If they try to cut Social Security or Medicare benefits, there will (finally) be riots in this country (which is why I don’t think anything is going to happen on that front, just “talk”). They need to dump the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000 (it’s at least a start) and GUT THE PERPETUAL WAR MACHINE and hey, presto, no more fiscal cliff… Obviously, if they cut back on the war toys, America would be swimming in money.

This morning an email arrived from the Senate’s sole openly socialist member—and I think, a great American—Bernie Sanders of Vermont:

At a time when the wealthiest people in our country are doing phenomenally well, we must eliminate the Bush tax cuts favoring the top 2 percent.

At a time when corporate profits are soaring, we must end the absurd tax policy that allows about one-quarter of large, profitable corporations to pay nothing in federal income taxes.

At a time when the federal treasury is losing over $100 billion annually because the wealthy and large corporations are stashing their money in tax havens in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere, we must pass real tax reform that ends this outrage.

At a time when we spend almost as much as the rest of the world combined on defense, we must cut defense spending.  There is also waste in other governmental agencies which must be eliminated.

This kinda sounds like a better plan than cutting pensions and healthcare benefits for older Americans.

And to Carly Fiorina, why don’t you have some dignity and fuck off. No one, but no one, wants to hear your opinions. NO ONE CARES what you think about the lives of ordinary working men and women and the direction American needs to go in. Go count your mountain of money away from the cameras, safe from the moochers in your gated mansion, stop embarrassing yourself and get off my tee-vee.
 

 
Thank you Steven Otero!