At this point there is no defending Rep. Anthony Weiner. He’s a fucking idiot. I always liked the guy, but he’s made a goddamned buffoon of himself.

His wife must be furious and I’ll bet Bill and Hil are PISSED, too! I can’t wait to hear what Jon Stewart does tonight!

And he had to apologize to Andrew Breitbart! What an idiot, Weiner is. He has single-handedly helped Andrew Breitbart get a brand-new shiny media make-over. Way to go, idiot!

It pains me to have to say that about a liberal Democrat who was willing to go to bat on the single-payer healthcare option. I like Weiner, and as a former New Yorker, I always have, ever since he first got elected to the city council at the age of 27. He’s a gutsy Democrat who’s willing to play ball on Fox News for sport and I just love that in a Democrat… but for Christ’s sake, Anthony Weiner is a fucking idiot!

For a politician, in this day and age to think even for a split millisecond that something like this wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass is farcical. It’s preposterous. It speaks VOLUMES about his shitty judgement that these photos exist AT ALL. [Note to Congressman Weiner: You are a United States Congressman, from one of the single SAFEST Democratic districts in the country—you want to be the mayor of New York—and you take photos of your johnson and send it off to women—not women who you have fucked, I might add—but that you have never even met???? WHAT IS WRONG IN YOUR HEAD, MAN? You didn’t even meet them, let alone fuck them, you fool! What a loser! And you used social media! What a fool you are! It’s mind-bending how reckless you were with your reputation and your marriage! You deserved to be caught, dumbshit!]

I never thought I’d say this, but better Michele Bachmann than Weiner on the House Intelligence committee, eh?

His effectiveness as an anti-Republican jabber has been greatly compromised by this entire sordid affair and that’s really too bad. I don’t think Weiner did anything so bad that he should resign, but good luck staying married, pal.

And have you seen his wife? She’s one of the best-looking women in Washington, DC and an honorary Clinton, to boot. Screwing up a marriage to this babe is a fuck-up of epic proportions!

Anthony Weiner’s a dickhead, no two ways about it. (Did I mention that he’s an idiot, also?)

The best part of the press conference was when a reporter asked, “Were you fully erect!?”

WHY didn’t he come clean about this a week ago? Because he’s a fucking idiot, that’s why!
 

 
A history lesson, courtesy of Sarah Palin…

Wonkette said it best:

“[E]very time Sarah Palin speaks in public, the nation’s collective IQ drops another point.”

I love how she seems PISSED-OFF to be put on the spot over something that a fourth grader would know… Run, Sarah, Run!!!
 

 
Via Wonkette

 
In an interview with FirstThings.com, far-right Republican presidential hopeful Rick “frothy mixture” Santorm, that dogged dim-wit from Pennsylvania, reveals that he “feels sorry” for those who hate him… because hey, they’re goin’ to Hell:

RS: One of the things that I really work hard and try to do when it comes to the attacks that we get is understand that number one, these people don’t know me. They know the positions that I hold or they know at least the representation by some of the media as to the positions I hold and what I say. But they certainly don’t know who I am. And so the viciousness and the nastiness which unfortunately is so much a part of politics in America today, it has come over time not to bother me in the least. In fact, the more vitriol I see, and unfortunately I see probably more than my fair share, I tend to feel sorry for people who do that, who are so filled with hate and just seem to be preoccupied with this venomous need to lash out at those with whom they disagree. I make it a point every day to pray for all those people who say the things that they say and try to make sure that I understand it. There is a great line — actually, more than a line — from St. Thomas More who was asked by his daughter when he was in the Tower of London shortly before he was executed how he could have such equanimity towards his detractors and toward those who wanted to kill him.

GT: Yes.

RS: He drew a rather beautiful explanation, as you said, of having one foot in this world and another in the next, looking at ultimately what was going to happen to the people who were his prosecutors. He said, “Well, either they are right, and I am wrong. And if that’s the case, then why should I hate them because they were right and I was wrong. Or if I was right and they were wrong, then one of two things. That they will repent and they will be my brothers in heaven and so why should I think ill of them now just because right now they are doing things that are wrong. Or they will not repent and they will be damned to eternal damnation and what kind of man am I that would hate someone who is to be pitied as such?” And so, that’s sort of the way I look at it.

Rick, you’re just a fucking idiot. That hard-to-deny fact has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not anyone goes to Hell. People who hate you, Rick, hate you for the right reasons, such as you are a vile, outspoken homophobe, a science-denying ignoramus, a cretinous buffoon and a complete jackass. That’s why you lost your Senate seat by an 18 point margin. You have just about ZERO chance of being president of anything, Rick, because no one likes you, asshole.

Just to clear that up. You seemed confused.
 

 
Via RightWing Watch

 
A broken and bewildered Harold Camping speaks after the failed Rapture…
 

 
If a picture paints a thousand words,  A.L. and Louise Geddings were lonesome representatives of the laughably low turnout yesterday when SC governor Nikki Haley spoke at a Tea Party rally at the Statehouse in Columbia

Organizers for the event said they were expecting 2000 people to show up, but just 30 attended. They blamed the pathetic turnout on Donald Trump canceling his threatened presidential bid (Trump had been scheduled to appear at the event).

I don’t know, but If 1970 Teabaggers who would have otherwise shown up for a rally, but didn’t bother once Donald Trump bolted from political life, is anything to go by—and I think it is—then. rut roh, the Republicans are going to have a much, much bigger problem on their hands in 2012 than I think they anticipated.

Via Buzzfeed

 
Just when you thought Gov. Scott Walker couldn’t get any worse, or do anything stupider than he already has, he doubles down on the dumb!

Walker is currently making moves which would ban hospital visitation rights for same-sex couples. What a creep!

What’s the point of this nonsense? From The Journal Sentinel:

Gov. Scott Walker believes a new law that gives gay couples hospital visitation rights violates the state constitution and has asked a judge to allow the state to stop defending it.

Democrats who controlled the Legislature in 2009 changed the law so that same-sex couples could sign up for domestic partnership registries with county clerks to secure some - but not all - of the rights afforded married couples.

Wisconsin Family Action sued last year in Dane County circuit court, arguing that the registries violated a 2006 amendment to the state constitution that bans gay marriage and any arrangement that is substantially similar.

This is shameful. That’s all it is.

I can’t fathom why Walker thinks this is good politics, either. Oh right, he’s a fucking idiot!
 

 
Via Daily Kos

Whoops! Wrong Rapture!
 
There’s a special Rapture-themed collection of “music videos” curated by Christian Nightmares that was posted today over at The Daily Swarm:

Welcome to Rapture Week 2011! As everyone knows by now, Saturday, May 21 is the beginning of the end of the world. That’s right, this weekend all the Born Again Christians will be whisked up into Heaven to be with Jesus, while the rest of us have five months to party it up before God finally destroys the world on October 21, 2011. It’s a fact. Harold Camping said so.

If you’re on the winning team, maybe you’ll share the joy expressed in the video below for ‘Love Like Lightning.’ If not, ‘Great Awakening’ should scare you straight into the Savior’s arms. The rest speak for themselves. Get watching—the end is near!

P.S…for those Left Behind, I’ll be throwing a bash at Benny Hinn’s abandoned mansion this Sunday—hookers, blow, you name it. See you there.

And for the rest of us who will FOR SURE be left behind, there’s a new Facebook group called “Post rapture looting” that seems like it might be kinda useful to join…

Here’s a sample of Christian Nightmares’ “Five Songs to get you Rapture Ready”:

“Love Like Lightning,” a midriff-baring Christian man in an “Aloha” t-shirt stars in this trippy, high-tech music video about God and the Rapture”

 
When one is obliged to come up with four or five items a day under the rubric “Dangerous Minds,” the Republican party are the proverbial fish in a barrel. Low(brow) hanging fruit. There are never slow news days with so many craven GOP idiots in Washington. Apparently there is some kind of “Bizarro World” reverse Republican IQ litmus test that you have to pass—or fail, depending on how you look at it—to be a member these days.

Of course it’s always been bad—and there are many, many deeply dumb Democrats to be sure, stupidity is unavoidable in U.S politics—but I’d have to say that the current crop of GOP politicians is the most imbecilic I can recall during my lifetime. Is there a dumber member of the Senate than Rand Paul of Kentucky? (James Inhofe came immediately to mind, I must admit…)

Witness the “universal healthcare is slavery” comments made at a Senate hearing yesterday by the dimwitted senator named after the author of Atlas Shrugged. They’re… special!.

Via Raw Story:

“With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies,” the senator said. “It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me.”

“It means you believe in slavery,” Paul added. “It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.”

“Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? — you’re basically saying you believe in slavery.”

“I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care,” Paul continued. “You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be.”

As Max Read pointed observed at Gawker:

In Rand Paul’s America, there will be no slaves, except for the people working to pay off their medical bills.

This guy actually believes this shit!! Breath-taking, ain’t it? Why would a poor state like Kentucky elect a man like this? Uh, don’t answer that….nevermind!

More from Raw Story:

Self-described democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chairman of the Subcommittee on Retirement and Aging, responded to Paul’s rant by asking witness Dana Kraus, a family physician at a federally qualified health center, if she considered herself “a slave.”

“I love my job,” she answered. “I chose to work there. I do not consider myself a slave. Thank you.”

Sanders and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced federal single payer legislation Tuesday that would ensure that states implement Medicare-like systems for all residents.

Have a look at the trailer for the Denzel Washington film John Q. Rand Paul needs to strapped to a chair like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange with his eyelids pinned back and forced to watch this film until he melts into a puddle of his own pathetic stupidity.
 

 
You really have to hear it coming out of his mouth. The man is completely insane… and stupid:
 

 
I mean, come on, honestly, is there any other way to interpret the news that over half of all Republicans are STILL unsure—if not hostile to the idea—that President Obama was born in the United States? That’s right, a new poll out today from Public Policy Polling (which is a Democratic polling firm) found that an incredible THIRTY FOUR percent of Republicans still believe that Obama was not born on domestic soil. Another 18 percent didn’t know where he was born or were unsure.

This is some stupid, stupid, low IQ shit going on here.

And this is the Republican BASE. Over half of ‘em! Who can argue with that?

My easy to reach, rather unavoidable conclusion: More than half of the Republican party are fucking idiots.

From Slate:

Those numbers are a far cry from the percent who questioned where Obama was born before the White House released his long-form birth certificate last month.

Still, when those who answered the question, “Do you think Barack Obama was born in the United States?” with either a “No” or a “Not Sure” are taken together they represent more than half of those surveyed and, obviously, make up a formidable bloc of primary voters that can’t be discounted in a wide-open GOP primary contest.

Mitt Romney looks to be the candidate most likely to be hurt by the persistent “birther” faction. He placed second in the PPP poll with 18 percent, trailing Mike Huckabee by one point. But if you remove those who remain unconvinced that Obama was born in the U.S., Romney leads Huckabee and the rest of the field with 22 percent. (Huckabee remains at 19 percent.)

It’s…ah… telling which of the current crop of GOP midgets presidential hopefuls circling around the early primary states these flatearthers afterbirthers support:

Meanwhile, the candidates who appear to be benefitting most from the remaining birthers are Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachman and, ever so slightly, Donald Trump.  All of those candidates fare better among those who answered “No” than they do overall with GOP voters.

Palin support moves up from 12 percent to 17 percent, Michele Bachman support increases three points to 10 percent, Gingrich climbs two points to 15 percent and Donald Trump inches up from 8 percent to 9 percent.

They spelled “cuntry” wrong!

Did you read about Sarah Palin’s utterly shameless tweet today?
 

 
TPM quipped:

It’s unclear why she thinks photos of bin Laden’s corpse will scare suicidal terrorists.

Who says she’s capable of thinking at all? Certainly I’ve seen no public evidence that Mrs. Palin is able to engage in critical thinking. But who cares about Sarah Palin anyway? I don’t and I’m bored with writing about her, but her tweet is one of the lamer, dumber examples of a Republican lemon-face trying oh so obviously and desperately to spin the killing of the most wanted terrorist in history against President Obama.

Sarah Palin: The incredible shrinking woman. I will admit that watching her flounder for attention now that the bloom is off and the public is starting to tune her out has been kinda fun to watch…

Irish comedy genius Graham Linehan, speaking certainly with MY full approval, tweeted the following to his 94,000+ Twitter followers:
 

 

#Nailed it.

Someone who follows him rejoined “Show us your tits first” and I think this is about where the level of discourse around the Republicans should be, which is to say, pointing at them and laughing.

But where was I? Oh yeah:

Jealous much, Republican’ts?

Of course they are—they can barely stand it—and it’s such a delightful farce to watch these craven shits lashing out like the angry losers they truly are. Even some die-hard Fox News viewers are (probably) starting to suspect what everyone else has known all along: THESE PEOPLE ARE SCURRILOUS FUCKS.

How many times does it take being exposed to the obviously insincere Eric Cantor, for instance, before even a complete idiot would intuit “This fuckin’ guy doesn’t believe a damned word he’s saying. He’s lying through his capped teeth.”

But anyway, back to the whole killing Osama bin Laden thing. The single stupidest, lowest IQ conservative conspiracy theory came from—ya don’t say—batshit crazy racist cat lady Pamela Geller, she of the brain-damaged Atlas Shrugs blog. (Read it if you dare, but as you do, consider the fact that this complete LUNATIC is a frequent commentator on Fox News! As if drivel like THIS IDIOCY has any merit or is in any way worthy of respect or discussion? Seriously Roger Ailes? Seriously??? Pamela Geller believes any damned thing she wants to believe, as long as it fits into her twisted prejudices and irrational foaming-at-the-mouth hatred of Obama, Democrats and Muslims. It would be pointless for me to give her insipid, dimwit conspiracy theories any space here since she’s so mean-spirited, repulsive and beneath contempt. I mean… yuck!).

Steve M., writing at my new favorite political bookmark, No More Mister Nice Blog had this to say about the myriad shameful, embarrassing ways the Republicans are comporting themselves. I think he makes a powerful case here for who America’s real enemies are:

Republicans are responding to this the way they respond to everything: by seeking to divide America and undermine Democrats and liberals. They do this for the same reason the scorpion stings the frog in the fable: it’s their nature. They will continue trying to divide America until we wake up and realize that they hate America—or at least they hate any America in which we don’t turn over all the power to them. They’ll undermine and weaken that pluralistic America until we finally recognize their disloyalty and marginalize the dividers.

We should have expected them to try to deny Barack Obama credit for the fact that bin Laden was located and killed on his watch, and to try to shift the credit to George W. Bush. We should have expected them to use the incident to reopen the debate about torture.

But there’s more. Fox Nation, right-wing bloggers, and others are currently braying about this story from Britain’s Daily Mail:

Obama took SIXTEEN HOURS to make up his mind about Bin Laden mission

Barack Obama kept military commanders hanging by declaring he would ‘sleep on it’ before taking 16 hours to give the go-ahead to raid Bin Laden’s compound….

Really? The mission was successful, and this is the straw they grasp at? A delay of less than a day?

Let me put that in context. It took 1,306 DAYS for George W. Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld for his sheer inability (or willful refusal) to cope with the chaos of Iraq after the fall of Baghdad, and for his stubborn insistence on a level of troop strength inadequate to quell the chaos and restore order—that’s 1,306 DAYS from the first reports of looting in Iraq (April 12, 2003) through the worst of the insurgency and to the day (November 8, 2006) Rumsfeld stepped down.

(Or perhaps, like Maureen Dowd, you’d like to count it down from Tora Bora: “A pigheaded Donald Rumsfeld, overly obsessed with a light footprint, didn’t have the forces needed at Tora Bora to capture Osama after the invasion of Afghanistan.” In that case, it’s 1,787 DAYS from the conclusion of the Battle of Tora Bora, on December 17, 2001, to Rumsfeld’s resignation.)

So who’s the real hesitator?

But that’s not enough divisiveness for Republicans and rightists. Bloggers, led (as Little Green Footballs notes) by the grotesque Pam Geller, are advancing anonymously sourced reports from shady rumor-purveyors that the bin Laden mission happened over Obama’s objections, in a “military coup” of sorts, and took place only because CIA director Leon Panetta gave the OK without waiting for Obama’s approval.

Maybe this scurrilous nonsense is coming from people at the far margins of the right. Or maybe it’s not—maybe it’s being injected into the debate by people close to the centers of mainstream Republican power, because they can’t bear to have a country that’s not divided, with powerful Democrats widely despised and mistrusted. In any event, the nonsense is being regurgitated at such sites as CNN contributor Erick Erickson’s RedState and the well-connected Pajamas Media. It’s part of the mainstream of Republican commentary. It’s a disgrace from a disgraceful party.

Well put, brother. Amen to that.

 
A kooky believer that the Rapture will happen on May 21, 2011 is interviewed (where else?) on Hollywood Blvd. It’s fitting that this takes place with the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum in the background…

As per the “prophecy” (and creative mathematics!)  of 89-year-old religious radio magnate, Harold Camping Jr., there is no way—NONE—that this guy has any doubts that he and his mates will still be here on May 22. Dude is seriously pumped for the end of the world, yo, and yet he’s still not willing to hand over his credit cards and PIN numbers to the interviewer. What’s up with that?

I sure hope that there are several documentarians working on getting footage of these folks both before and after “the end of the world.” Fascinating stuff (even if that drumming is annoying. Eventually it stops).
 

 
Via Joe.My.God

 
The Shiloh Baptist Church, the historic African-American house of worship attended by the Obama family on Easter Sunday (and that has been visited in the past by Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush) has received more than 100 threatening phone calls and messages since Sean Hannity’s Monday night broadcast on Fox News:

The Rev. Wallace Charles Smith said the church has received more than 100 threats since Fox News channel’s Sean Hannity aired a tape Monday of a speech Smith gave in January 2010 at Eastern University in Saint Davids, Pa.

“We received a fax that had the image of a monkey with a target across his face,” Smith said. “My secretary has received telephone calls that have been so vulgar until she has had to hang up.” …

On Sunday, Obama and the first family visited the church, founded in the 1860s by former slaves. On Monday, Hannity aired a clip of a speech Smith gave when he served as president of Palmer Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

“It may not be Jim Crow anymore,” Smith says in the videotape. “Now, Jim Crow wears blue pinstripes, goes to law school and carries fancy briefs in cases. And now, Jim Crow has become James Crow, esquire. And he doesn’t have to wear white robes anymore because now he can wear the protective cover of talk radio or can get a regular news program on Fox.”

Sean Hannity’s Neanderthal audience sorta made the good Rev. Smith’s point for him, don’t you think?

Then, being the crass, small-minded scumbag asshole that he is, Hannity e-mailed the Washington Post on Wednesday, writing that he’d requested comment from Rev. Smith and had offered him “an open invitation to explain his comments on our show and he refused. We played his own words in full context but now it’s time for him to explain.”

So he can get a thousand threats and pictures of monkeys in cross-hairs sent to his office next time? I’m sure Rev. Smith will get right on that, you racist frat-boy bully…

Personally, I think it’s time for the SEAN HANNITY to “explain” his ratings-driven race-baiting but I won’t hold my breath for that. This motherfucker claims to be a patriot and love his country. Sean, where is the love?

Shiloh Baptist Church receives threats after comments from Sean Hannity (Washington Post)

Via Little Green Footballs

 
It’s just pure comedy. Not to be missed.

Up is down to these people. How do their teeny-tiny little minds deal with concepts like “gravity” or the Earth revolving around the Sun when they get all their news from Fox and WorldNet Daily?

 
As if this wasn’t THE most predictable response of all fucking recorded history, the batshit crazy “journalists” over at “news agency” World Net Daily (aka “birther central”) had this to say about Obama’s “birth certificate”:

If the document proves valid, it could answer the questions raised by those who have alleged he was not actually born in Hawaii. But it also could prove his ineligibility because of its references to his father. Some of the cases challenging Obama have explained that he was a dual citizen through his father at his birth, and they contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born citizens.

Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WND, the only news agency that has waged a relentless investigative campaign on questions swirling around the Obama’s eligibility for nearly three years, was elated at the turn of events.

“We’re gratified that our work has begun to pay off,” he said. “The certificate of live birth is an absolutely vital foundation for determining constitutional eligibility of any president. We look forward to reviewing it like so many other Americans do at this late date. But it is important to remember there are still dozens of other questions concerning this question of eligibility that need to be resolved to assure what has become a very skeptical public concerning Barack Obama’s parentage, his adoption, his citizenship status throughout his life and why he continues to cultivate a culture of secrecy around his life.”

Now that this “matter” has been definitively put to rest—for SANE people with IQs higher than carrots—it’s probably time for the reality-challenged idiots at WND to move on to Donald Trump’s new buffoonish conspiracy theory about how it was affirmative action that allowed a “poor student” like future president Barack Obama to attend first Columbia, then Harvard (a view that got talked up on Hardball the other night by an increasingly senile-seeming Pat Buchanan).

I KNOW FOR A FACT THAT THIS IS TRUE BECAUSE I GOT AN ALL-CAPS EMAIL FROM MY GRANDMOTHER ABOUT THIS THAT SHE GOT FROM HER NEIGHBOR, MRS. JEROMIE WHO GOT IT FROM A LADY AT HER CHURCH. SO WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THAT, SMARTYPANTS LIBTARDS!!!!

 
They say that there is no such thing as bad press, but when your publicist is getting called out for how inept they are, it’s hardy something that can be reclassified as a media triumph is it? A shitty publicist only has one function and that is to make the individual or company that hired them look poorly. It’s what you might call “counter intuitive” to have a bungler handle your PR. The public questions your judgment for hiring them.

I mean, hey, if making you look like a fucking idiot is what you’re paying them for, then you win, I suppose… but get a load of the preposterously self-defeating taunts tweets that Sarah Palin’s “cyber messenger” prodigy, Rebecca Mansour, came up with. This is the best media strategy money can buy? [Note to Mrs. Palin, I’ll take over your Twitter feed and Facebook FOR FREE! Email me, let’s talk!]

You’ll get more with sugar, than you will with shit, as my mother used to say, but if all Mansour has on offer for the media is the same two-day old bread, what should be expected of them? People are getting really bored with Sarah Palin. I know I am. I can barely be bothered to read about her anymore, let alone write something snarky. She burned out way faster than I thought she would. Her shtick has just gotten too damned repetitive (and predictable) lately to be able to squeeze any humor out of it. Everything there is to be said about her has already been said a hundred million times.

Via Wonkette/Slate