Poll: Americans Have No Idea What's Up

A USA Today/Gallup poll has revealed that Americans basically have no idea what's going on, and aren't afraid to base conclusions on their admittedly confused notions of the healthcare reform endgame. From the poll:

-50% said passing the bill was a "bad thing"
-47% said it was a good thing

Regarding the recent violence:

-49% said the "Democratic tactics" are a "major reason" for the violent incidents
-46% said conservative media is responsible
-43% blamed the attacks on Republican political leaders

Also:

-53% called passage of HCR "an abuse of power" by the majority Democrats
-65% said the bill "will expand the government's role too much"
-51% said "it doesn't go far enough in regulating the health care industry"
-58% said it should have included a public option.

Cool, looks like the conservative disinformation campaign is unfolding perfectly. I think my favorite part is the notion that passing a bill with a majority of both houses is somehow an abuse of power by the Democrats- what's yours?

The Epic Ballad of Eric Massa

The Massa debacle is unfolding in an increasingly hilarious way. Having already invoked the names of Limbaugh and Beck in my post earlier today I think I’ll use them again now- they do a great job of exemplifying the Old School of Crazy Conservatism and the New School of Crazier Conservatism, respectively.

To recap where Massa has been: Last Friday, New York Representative Eric Massa announced that he was stepping down. His initial justification was that health issues required him to vacate the seat, but that then changed to something about vulgar language and an unusual episode where he made some inappropriate comments towards some of his male roommates. Then it changed again, to a claim that the White House and Democratic leaders were forcing him out. Then it changed once more to ethics charges related to the alleged groping of the aforementioned male roommates. There was also something in there about Rahm Emanual threatening Massa whilst he was naked in the House showers, which if true would absolutely redeem Emanual in my eyes because everything about that is hilarious.

You would assume it’s perfectly obvious that Massa is a bizarre mess, and that it would be hard for anyone to score political points off of this train wreck other than in the most general ‘hey look, another Democratic screw up’ kind of way. You would assume incorrectly.

Limbaugh and Beck, opportunists that they are, dove in the moment Massa claimed that he was forced out by a vicious cabal of corrupt Democrats. Limbaugh got right on it:

LIMBAUGH: “He was asked in this appearance: "Well, why don't you rescind your resignation?" He said, "The only way I can do that is if this becomes a national story." So Congressman Massa, we're doing our part here to make it a national story. But he then said, "But you have to understand something, if I don't quit, the ethics investigation continues and they're going to ruin me that way." They're going to ruin him anyway. He sounds ticked off enough that I would stay. This guy is as fired up as anybody I've ever heard anywhere opposed this, and the process and how they're getting it done. This guy is going to have so much support from people.”

Gotta help the guy out, make it a national story! He's just doing his job and he's being attacked by these evil Democrats. Beck scored an interview with Massa, and claimed that it was going to be a very important moment in the anti-Obama campaign:

“Tomorrow at five: congressman Massa for the full hour. I just spoke with him off air. All Americans need To hear him. Exclusive 2morrow fox”

Formatted stupidly because it was on twitter, naturally. So there you have it: this Massa guy is going to bring down the entire Obama administration with his earth-shattering revelations. Except then his story continued to evolve, and by today no element of it remained the same. Forced out? Massa proudly claims he ‘forced himself out.’ Haha ok, whatever. Cue the damage control brigade!

"LIMBAUGH: Yesterday, I had never heard of this guy. All I knew was this guy was telling great stories about Rahm Emanuel. Here we have a legitimate kook, anybody who embraces this guy is going to get caught. He's not a media hero and he's not a conservative. This guy is a loose cannon and he's a risk."

The man is backpedaling so furiously he's going to throw off the rotation of the Earth and make the Sun rise in the west! Beck was burned even worse by his interview, which featured a bizarre photo album from Massa and saw the former Representative recant pretty much every element of the story that Beck initially found attractive.

Just seven minutes into Glenn Beck's hour-long interview of Eric Massa on Tuesday evening, things had already gone very wrong.

Conservatives had hopes that the now-former Democratic congressman from Upstate New York, who resigned abruptly under an ethics cloud, would deliver the goods about corruption and strong-arm tactics in the Obama White House and Congress. But instead, Massa served up an icky new confession.

"Now they're saying I groped a male staffer," he volunteered. "Yeah, I did. Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn't breathe and then four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday."

Hahah this is literally the opposite of what Beck wanted to hear from the man he wanted to make into an icon.

Massa... had nothing to support his hints that Democratic leaders had made corrupt bargains and used thuggish tactics. "Name names," Beck pleaded. "Show us where to throw the dirt."

But no matter how many times he was asked -- Anything new? Actionable stuff? Anything specific? -- Massa came up empty. "I don't know how to be specific," he said.

Good lord, Massa just trolled Beck harder than anything Beck has ever pulled off on anyone. So much so, in fact, that Beck cut Massa off at the end and apologized to his audience for ‘wasting their time’ over the previous hour. 

If any news story will ever top the Falcon Heene/ electric space balloon/ farting and puking at Wolf Blitzer saga for pure comedic value, this is it.

Glenn Beck Insanity Theater, Part 1

I keep running into incredible youtubes of Glenn Beck doing something insane but not really having enough material to justify posting them. Today this changes with a new, presumably ongoing, type of post: the Glenn Beck Insanity Theater.

It would be pretty easy to fill this blog with dozens of posts every day about the latest thing said by Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or Michelle Malkin, but other sites do that way better than we ever will. Beck is different, though- there's an element of unhinged psychosis to his show that makes it like watching a right-wing performance artist or a crazier, yet serious, Colbert. Clearly there's a debate about how serious he is, with his past in morning zoo radio shows and his ever-changing political views standing against the emotional performances he makes and the crowds of teabaggers who believe every word of it.

You can depend on Limbaugh to say something heinous- that's his job. On the other hand, Beck is frequently inoffensive just due to how little sense he makes. Check out the clip that finally inspired me to start a regular Beck-watching bit:



I... what is happening there?! He's moved to tears by a commercial in which a bizarre child offers a football player some coke?! Even if he was serious, and make no mistake that his fans think he is, what does any of it mean? No point has been made, no concrete statements have been offered, he just mentioned a bunch of things and made a bizarre hypothetical scenario about how your parents used to be angry at you... and he did this all whilst crying. Are his viewers nodding at home, appreciating the sage wisdom imparted by his tears and commercial choices?

Welcome to the Glenn Beck Insanity Theater. I have no answers.

If Gay Rights Supporters March In Washington, Do They Make A Sound?

Last month the media spent a few days in a state of shock and awe after tens of thousands of conservatives showed up in DC to yell about stuff and misspell signs about Obama simultaneously being Hitler, Stalin, Marx, the Anti-Christ, Muslim, and A Black Guy. Last weekend tens of thousands of people showed up to support gay rights- so, where was the media this time? Naturally this question hinges on Fox, which spent months hyping the 9/12 march and was camped out on the Capitol all day to keep people whipped up into an appropriately picturesque frenzy. The Daily Show puts it in perspective pretty well:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Queer and Loathing in D.C.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Alan Grayson: Still an American Hero

Back in January I posted a quick thing about freshman Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson, who has been doing a great job of ripping bad people to shreds. I hadn't really seen him in the news much since then, until Matt Taibbi mentioned him a few days ago:

I have personal experience with… well, let’s call it the unique personality of Alan Grayson. In his capacity as an attorney he once basically threatened to have me dismembered and have my body parts dumped in a tin canister and fired into the center of a burning supernova. And that’s actually underselling the real language he used. We were having a disagreement about the use of information given to me by a certain source in a story about military contracting, and in the middle of what had been a normal contentious argument between two sane adults, dude suddenly assumed this crazy monster-voice and just went medieval on me. He was roaring into the telephone about how he was going to crush me, how I was going to wish I had never messed with him, how I didn’t know who the hell I was dealing with, and so on. One phrase I remember in particular was, “I am going to strip the bark off of you!” It came totally out of the blue and it was like being on the telephone with a metamorphosing werewolf — the whole performance genuinely freaked me out. I may even have peed a little, I can’t remember.

When I heard Alan Grayson was running for Congress, I remember thinking to myself, That Alan Grayson? The lunatic? It can’t be, I thought. I kept imagining trails of half-eaten sheep leading to his campaign appearances. But it turned out to be true. And when I checked, his platform turned out to be quite sane and even kind of interesting. Then he got elected and I suddenly started seeing his name attached to all of these calls for transparency, various crusades for FinReg reforms, etc.

And now every time I see Alan Grayson, he’s tearing some freaked-out bureaucrat a new asshole in the middle of some empty conference room in the Capitol somewhere. I see the looks on the faces of these poor souls and I know exactly what they’re going through. Which is just hilarious, frankly. Especially since these people all tend to deserve it, like this little creep Alvarez quite obviously does.

It's good to see that Grayson is still kicking ass, and that he's now running amok in Washington instead of scolding petulant radio host manchildren. I just can't wait until he threatens to "strip the bark off" of somebody, that's a really good threat.

The Tree of Revolution

On his show last week Glenn Beck introduced an image that will be talked about for generations: “The Tree of Revolution.” Marvel at this piece beautiful piece of work:


Che… Woodrow Wilson… Saul Alinsky… ACORN! Unions… Bill Ayers… Dollar bills! Now we can all clearly see that Obama is the end result of decades of unrelated people, events and currencies. I thought Beck's extended monologue about how the art in the Rockefeller Center was an attempt to brainwash children via bronze sculptures of chariots was bizarre enough, but “The Tree of Revolution” is a clear winner. Trees are good things… except environmentalists like them so maybe they’re bad now? Does this one need to be watered with the blood of patriots, or will regular water do? The whole thing left me with more questions than answers, so I set out to create my own visual aid:


Damn that pineapple! Finally, it all makes sense. If anyone else wants to create another flowchart of revolution feel free to send it to me, and maybe I’ll post them on here at some point in the next few days.

Ed's note: More Trees of Revolution can be found here.

TeaBaggers Occupy Small Stretch of DC; The Conductors Run A Train On Them

About six months ago I was sitting in my apartment in downtown Wuhan gathering quotes for a Train of Thought Field Trip when I noticed a huge banner on the top of Free Republic. Allow me to slightly paraphrase it: “FREE REPUBLIC INVITES YOU AND ALL YOUR CRAZY FRIENDS TO COME TO WASHINGTON DC ON SEPTEMBER 12th AND WAVE NONSENSICAL SIGNS AROUND WHILE CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS TELL YOU ABOUT HOW GREAT YOU ARE! REGISTER NOW!”

So register I did- thirty times, to be exact. After that I emailed JJ stating in no uncertain terms that we would be there, a statement he agreed with immediately. Over the next few months we watched as Free Republic, Glenn Beck, FreedomWorks, and other leaders of the new post-apocalyptic conservative movement hyped it up as much as they could. T-shirts by FreedomWorks, charter buses by FreedomWorks, sign ideas by FreedomWorks! Just like the first round of tea parties, this was astroturfing at its finest.

Last Thursday we went to JJ’s place and got right to it. Sign ideas were exchanged and improved upon, designs were reworked, and plans were made for Saturday morning. We were happy to find that two friends of the Train, T and La France, were willing to join us.

At noon on Saturday we met up at Union Station and finished some last minute sign coloring before hitting the streets with the first ever live incarnation of The Train. Witness what we’re provisionally referring to as The Conductors:


From Union Station it was only a few blocks to the Capitol, where thousands of confused angry conservatives had set up camp:

The event was like a Free Republic thread come to life, with sign content ranging from merely confusing to hideously offensive. The people there needed no prompting before flying off the handle into all sorts of baffling rants. T was a lightning rod for crazy people, with one woman lecturing him about how he should never compare himself to black people- because, she explained, black people are “willing to do anything,” including “raping and killing.” One ongoing theme we noticed among the signs were ones wondering aloud why people keep labeling them racists. Perhaps we’ll never know…

Still, many of the people who came up to T ended with far more lighthearted encounters, including this woman who was delighted to meet Bobby Jindal’s nephew:

JJ had taped a copy of Obama’s birth certificate to his chest, which ended up being a perfect complement to the many signs demanding that Obama release his birth certificate and/or go back to Kenya. Here JJ poses with one Birther who studiously refused to acknowledge our repeated references to where she could, in fact, find a certification of live birth for one Barrack Obama:

Hahaha she’s literally within inches of it. Damn that Obama, able to hide it within plain sight! Some people went over the top with their preparations, including the owners of this lovely vehicle:

La France clearly approves. We all took plenty of opportunities to put our signs in the background of the major photo-ops, like a Where’s Waldo that ends with bewildered conservatives staring at lemonparty:

Over the course of two hours we took pictures with and spoke to hundreds of conservatives. Out of all of these people only one realized that we weren’t being entirely on the level. “Are you guys for real?” (pause) “No, you guys aren’t for real.” For the most part people looked at our signs and approved, spotting nothing amiss. One man came up and said he was glad to see that it wasn’t just old people hitting the streets- I didn’t have the heart to tell him that actually yes, it was only old people who had come out unironically. Age may have been at least somewhat related to one notable feature of the rally: a large percentage of the protestors brought lawn chairs and merely sat on them, signs planted in the ground to the side. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a group which has spent decades deriding protests now finds itself wholly unable to pull one off with any sense of energy today.

It’s worth noting that while conservatives had a 0.01% success rate for detecting our mockery, journalists were dead on, 2 for 2. We spoke to people from Media Matters and Salon.com, both of whom recognized our game immediately. They were kind enough not to blow our cover in front of the great masses of the people, and Alex Koppelman from Salon was awesome enough to include us in his article about the event!

One final note about numbers- our sense was that the crowd wasn’t larger than 10 or so thousand where we were. Police and firemen estimates are claiming 60,000 for all three events combined, which is only 1,940,000 people lower than the number being thrown around by Michelle Malkin and Free Republic. I’ll put up some random pictures of especially ridiculous protestors later today or tomorrow.

All in all, I’d like to say that the first convention of The Conductors was a great success.

The Great Wingnut Lunar Eclipse

If you think Glenn Beck is sufficiently insane on his own (and yesterday I certainly did), just wait until you see him team up with Rush Limbaugh! That’s right, Rush himself called into a very special episode of Glenn Beck’s Rambling Insanity Hour this week. The two of them took a few minutes to talk about how the stakes are really high and how profoundly frightened they are and how we’re going to see Obama make a play for Dictator-For-Life any minute now.

Naturally the Freepers ate this shit up, because paranoid fantasy scenarios are only slightly less vital to the wellbeing of Freepers than food and water and air. A few months ago I declared that we were witnessing Peak Conservatism- I know now that I was wrong. The sheer heights of lunacy we saw back then are nothing compared to the statements Rush and Beck have got them all ginned up into making now. Witnesses of this special media event gathered in these two threads to discuss how ready they now are to whip out a gun and murder some liberals:

Stockpirate shows the same basic confusion with political terms that seems to dog every internet conservative:

Glenn Beck is an alarmist who is right on the
money! To arms, to arms, the communist fascists
are HERE!

If these ‘communist fascists’ have truly arrived then you should be able to explain the inherent contradictions of their two completely incompatible ideologies and make them disappear in a puff of logic- problem solved! Himno Hero is worried about the grave threat to America posed by the Russian monarchy, apparently:

Another czar? Now there is what 49? We are in
deeeeep shit! Time to face up to the facts!
They are already running a PARALLEL GOVERNMENT.

Next step is a crisis and they shift the power of
the military from the senate to the czars. Then
the people are S*C*R*E*W*E*D!

I mean sure, using ‘czar’ as a shorthand nickname for another post dates back to World War II, and sure their hero G. W. Bush had almost as many czars as Obama, but don’t let that distract you from how scary the word ‘czar’ sounds! Also hopefully you have no idea where the word comes from and don’t know that czars and communists should by nature be mortal enemies, but luckily your average freeper has literally no understanding of the words he hears from Rush and uses himself on a daily basis.

Sig Sauer P220 makes yet another Field Trip appearance:

I believe its going to come down to an armed
revolution. I see no other way.

Great job Rush and Beck, you’ve riled the belief in democracy right out of him. Nikos1121 tries to bring back a classic oldie:

Is it just a coincidence that Obama’s vacation and
seclusion coincides with RAMADAN?

It also coincided with Thursday, a day named after the god of thunder- Thor. A writer on this blog was once called “thunder-god” during an incident involving a tarp. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Obama writes for the Train of Thought. I’d like to imagine Chris37 was stroking his gun while he typed this up:

I have been of the opinion that there will be no
more federal elections in this country for some
time now. They ain’t giving up power. It’s going
to have to be taken from them.

Not even close to crazy compared to this one:

Honestly the way things are going if Beck and
Limbaugh disappeared I would not be shocked.

I sure hope those bloated fear-mongering demagogues are OK! Keats5 cracks me up:

I love Beck. He’s one of the few who really
investigates his own stories instead of just
passing around someone else’s news.

Does anyone who starts writing down incoherent ideas and misspelled conspiracy theories on blackboards get Freepcredit for ‘really investigating stories’? Someone hand me some chalk, I’ve got tons of seemingly unrelated events to string together! Bert lives in a terrifying place called Freeper Fantasyland:

If push comes to shove, the Secret Service will
off him. Marines will round up his comrades and
it will be all over except lawyers volunteering
for defense will be imprisoned.

And here we on the left wasted all that time hoping that Bush would be arrested and receive a trial- turns out a summary execution leading into a military coup would have been way more efficient! Blood of Tyrants sure has seen a lot in his day:

I have always noticed that there is a gradual
rising crescendo just before the storm.

Hahaha, yep, hard to miss. Toespi thinks this is a good time to up the general offensiveness of the thread:

Well, I guess we could ask the German Jews if
anything like this is possible. Not many left,
but I am sure we could dig a few up. Would
love to ask them where they thought they were
going when they so peacefully and willingly lined
up to get on the trains.

Uh… alright. Moving right on, Nervous Tick goes back to hoping for a military coup to overthrow our democratically elected government, because that’s what the hopes and dreams of the modern conservative movement have come to:

If our military says Bambi and his thugs don’t
stay in power, well then, they don’t stay in
power. Case closed.

At this point we have our customary dissident who tries to bring the rambling masses back to their senses:

Beck and those who adhere to his paranoid ramblings
are out of their collective minds.

Nice try, Verity. A bunch of posters assure him that Beck and Limbaugh are being perfectly reasonable and that all these people calling for assassinating the President and overthrowing the American government to replace it with a military dictatorship know exactly what they’re doing. I’ll close us out with this post by Cherry, which has many of the elements of the perfect freep post:

there will be a number of black soldiers who will
form their own army for zero.....
and it’ll be a muslim army....

The… horror…

Fear Mongering Fail of the Day #2

This time Glenn Beck, who's been spending all of his time ranting about the evils of Obama-led death panels and the socialist plot to marxo-destroy America, is our daily failer. Watch as Jon Stewart shows Beck in action today and several months ago:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Glenn Beck's Operation
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Spinal Tap Performance

Ooops! This might be even more embarassing than the Stephen Hawking mixup.

Fear Mongering Fail of the Day

From an editorial in Investor's Business Daily:

The controlling of medical costs in countries such as Britain through rationing, and the health consequences thereof are legendary. The stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied altogether read like a horror movie script.

One year in perfect health gets you one point. Deductions are taken for blindness, for being in a wheelchair and so on. The more points you have, the more your life is considered worth saving, and the likelier you are to get care.

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Right, the British death panels would have selected Hawking for early termination decades ago. Obama probably would have already imported some death panels if it weren't for the endless vigilance of Palin and Limbaugh, two prominent deathers. Hold up though, here comes Hawking:

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he told us. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."

To summarize: Stephan Hawking is British, death panels aren't out to kill Trig Palin, the health insurance industry won't deactivate the noise machine until its right to haul in absurd profits while denying claims and bankrupting people is secured. The editorial now displays this correction at the top of the page:

Editor's Note: This version corrects the original editorial which implied that physicist Stephen Hawking, a professor at the University of Cambridge, did not live in the UK.

So their main example of the infinite horror of UHC actually ended up endorsing the British system, but instead of taking the whole thing back they just deleted the example and let it run as a completely unsupported statement? It's good to know that the serious minds opposing health care reform really are just well-spoken versions of the people showing up at town halls with signs about Obama killing their grandparents.

Limbaugh: Completely Indistinguishable From the Dumbest Freeper

I told myself I was going lay off Limbaugh and Free Republic for a while, but then I saw this and renounced all my vows:

“Let's see. I talked about this yesterday, the
four Uighur terrorists that were in Guantanamo
Bay, Chinese version of Al-Qaeda, we released
'em to Bermuda.”

"the four Uighur terrorists that were in Guantanamo
Bay, Chinese version of Al-Qaeda"

"terrorists, Chinese version of Al-Qaeda"

Seriously, this is some unbelievable shit from a guy who is assumed by millions of Americans to have a fucking clue. I’m used to seeing this from random freepers . I’m used to seeing it on the rest of their sites, and hearing about how other conservative voices have said the same thing. Finally hearing it from Limbaugh himself is still somehow shocking, though. People supporting their continued detainment exhibit the ultimate height of all the worst aspects of modern conservatism: a combination of willful ignorance, belligerence, and unthinking hatred. Let’s take one more look at these “Chinese al-Qaeda” types:

“The Pentagon had previously determined, reportedly
as early as 2003, that the Uyghurs should be released.
The Post reported in 2005 that these detainees, who
had been classified as “No Longer Enemy Combatants”
were not only still being incarcerated, but were still
being shackled to the floor. None of the Uyghurs were
alleged to have engaged in active hostilities. None
of the Uyghurs described seeing the United States as
an enemy. All of the Uyghurs who mentioned the Chinese
government described them as oppressive occupiers.”

"Hurf durf I’m Rush Limbaugh and I want to rant about the release of the Uighur captives because reconciling my stupid factually incorrect views with reality would be inconvenient.” Hey, if merely helping someone take up arms against the Peoples Liberation Army is all it takes to become Chinese al-Qaeda, then guess who else qualifies by Limbaugh’s own logic? The CIA. The CIA is Chinese al-Qaeda. Chushi Gangdruk (“Four Rivers, Six Ranges,” a nickname for Kham, or eastern Tibet) was a Tibetan resistance group which fought the PLA for years after the invasion. Who was their principle supporter?

“The US Central Intelligence Agency provided the group with material assistance and aid, including arms and ammunition, as well as training to members of Chushi Gangdruk and other Tibetan guerrilla groups at Camp Hale.”

So the Uyghur organizations fighting Beijing are Chinese al-Qaeda, sounds like the Tibetan groups are too. Does that make the Dalai Lama into Chinese Osama bin-Laden? He’s been advocating peaceful resistance for decades, but initially after he fled Lhasa he did acquiesce to people who wanted to start an armed rebellion- including his brother, Thubten Norbu, who helped the CIA train guerillas. This year was quiet compared to last year, but there were a few bombings and incidents near the 50 year anniversary mark. Will we hear about Limbaugh wanting to throw them into Guantanamo next?

No, of course not. That’s because the only difference here is the only one that matters to Limbaugh and other conservative mouthpieces: the Uyghur captives are Muslim, as opposed to the Tibetan Buddhists. You know I don’t expect much from Limbaugh, but most of the time the people he’s ranting about are politicians who want to stay in office, or celebrities who have put themselves in the spotlight. To go off like this about a bunch of random people who were abducted by our military and then declared innocent years ago, and to use his platform to reinforce completely inaccurate misconceptions about people who suffered for years in a Kafkaesque nightmare care of Uncle Sam, is really low (if not exactly unexpected).

*resets “Days Without Talking About Limbaugh” timer to 0*

Republican Protest Attempt #2: Avenging Sarah Palin

The Train Recap: A few days ago David Letterman unleashed his scathing wit on Sarah Palin with this hilarious zinger:

“One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”

Haha, because Palin’s daughter got pregnant before, remember? It’s a thing that happened, and mentioning it in a vaguely out-of-context manner is comical. Now to be serious for a moment, that’s an impressively unfunny joke. Before we even get into anything else just take a moment and appreciate how damn hard that one falls on its face. I think the best description of the joke comes from Letterman himself, who called it "ugly," "cheap," and "in poor taste” during his apology the next day. Seven months after the election I still schedule a few minutes every day for chuckling about how awful Palin is, but that humor should come from her being a terrible politician and not from her messed up family or the exciting escapades of her daughter.

Still, the outrage from the right has this forced quality that I still can’t quite believe. Jokes about Chelsea Clinton weren’t entirely unheard of during the 90’s, and a quick review of the usual suspects on the conservative forum lineup confirms that some people are already going at Malia and Sasha Obama. The Tea Parties* have given some people a newfound appreciation for protesting, though, and someone sensed an opportunity. That person? None other than John Ziegler, the man we last saw during our first MSPaint For The Needy (no, by the way- he never responded to our generous artistic donation). That MSPaint drive was kicked off after I noticed some appalling web design on his site- a theme we’re about to see repeated!

Behold the glory of Fire David Letterman, a new site by Mr. Ziegler that somehow manages to look even crappier than The Drudge Report. I’m not joking- look at both sites, and then try to explain to me how anyone could ever come up with something that looks worse than Drudge in the year 2009. The content is even funnier- the impact of Ziegler’s claim of 47,000 petition signatories is somewhat lessened by the results from his first real-life protest: 15 protestors in New York City, a group outnumbered 2-1 by members of the media there to cover them. I’m hoping Time Magazine’s next Person of the Year will be The Underwhelming Conservative Protest, because they’re really going all out this year. Credit where credit’s due, right?

All of this got me thinking: maybe all Ziegler needs is some more artwork to help get people fired up. Look at all that white space on Fire David Letterman: isn’t there a better use for that? I’m going to create a starter image and some guidelines, and get back on here in a day or two to begin our second MSPaint For The Needy.

*Sadly the Letterman protest didn’t even draw enough people for it to get infiltrated and trolled by Laissez's Fair. Some of their excellent work from the recent protests, both of which were displayed at real Tea Parties near real deranged Tea Partiers:

Limbaugh weighs in on the Holocaust Museum Shooting

“This guy, is a leftist, if anything. This guy's beliefs, this guy's hate stems from influence that you find on the left, not on the right."

Welp, guess it’s time for another round of “Is he lying, or is he just ignorant?” Both seem equally plausible here: Goldberg-style “liberals are the real fascists” arguments are in vogue right now on the right, but on the other hand this isn’t any greater of a spin than Limbaugh has knowingly put on issues before. Will the average dittohead realize that Von Brunn was criticizing Bush and the Republicans from the right, not from the left? He was disappointed that Republican Party racism knows some bounds, and that their ardent support of the Israeli military (in his opinion) benefits Jews.

Many of the same conservative pundits that howled with outrage when they saw the DHS report warning about the possibility of right-wing extremists engaging in acts of terrorism are now trying to reconcile their yowling with a string of examples of right-wing extremists engaging in acts of terrorism. Limbaugh is taking a rather unimaginative route with this one- remember, he and his peers also claim that Hitler was a leftist (because he was a member of the National Socialist party, and apparently names trump literally everything else). What does reality say about Von Brunn’s record?

To start with the most obvious one, he was a white supremacist who decried multiracial America. His user page on Wikipedia mentions that he said that “Marxism-Multiculturalism-Judaism is the Enemy of Mankind.” The Guardian reports that “Von Brunn was a member of the American Friends of the British National Party, a group that raised funds in the United States for the far-right and whites-only British National Party.” Wow, really sounds like a leftist to me! Perhaps the most damning evidence is right here, though: When his articles were reposted on Free Republic (funny how this site keeps coming up, huh?) they were met with glowing praise and hundreds of overwhelmingly positive responses.

It should go without saying that the vast majority of Republicans don’t support terrorism. It’s baffling that conservative pundits refuse to admit that conditions are ripe for a surge in right-wing extremism, however, and going out on a limb like this to try to pin it on the left is pretty pathetic. Clearly Limbaugh has very little respect for his listeners- feeding them something so blatantly untrue even by his own standards is pretty shocking. In case it’s somehow unclear, I choose “lying” as my answer for this round of the Limbaugh game. What do you think?

The One Time Torture is OK

Charles Krauthammer, who still somehow magically draws a paycheck from various well-respected journalistic enterprises, has a new column up over here talking about the whole “torture” thing that the kids are all into these days. Check it out:

“Torture is an impermissible evil.”

Well, great! Column is over, we can all go home, finally in agreement for once, etc.

but wait…

You can feel it too, can’t you? He isn’t done yet, there’s something else on the way: an exception (or two, as it turns out!):

“Except under two circumstances. The first is the
ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake.
The bad guy you have captured possesses information
that could save this life. He refuses to divulge.”

Wonderful, so the first of the two exceptions is the made-up fantasy exception. Never mind that the ticking time bomb scenario is a work of fiction, something pulled from 24 (where would conservatives be today if that show hadn’t aired?) and other unreal sources. Don’t even worry about the fact that if such a scenario were to occur, there’s a good chance that torture wouldn’t even be of use. Krauthammer wants Jack Bauer to have the right to beat up Muslims, so just back off, real world!

So the first exception can be entirely ignored. What’s up next?

“The second exception to the no-torture rule is the
extraction of information from a high-value enemy
in possession of high-value information likely to save
lives.”

Even better! This is like the ticking time bomb scenario, minus all specificity. It can be used to justify torturing anyone, anywhere, for any reason. Who determines exactly how valuable the enemy and/or information has to be before torture can be employed? Keep in mind Krauthammer is envisioning this being used on people who haven’t been given a chance to prove their innocence in a court of law, so this is basically his way of saying that torturing random goat herders without any proof of anything at all is perfectly acceptable. Maybe they know something! After all, who knows what they know? They do, but we don’t trust them, so get ready for torture-fest 2009!

Pathetic acts of apologetics aside, there actually may be one time when torture is OK. Enthusiastic torture-fan Sean Hannity volunteered to be waterboarded during his program last week, saying that he would do it as an act of charity for American troops. His guest, Charles Grodin, declined his invitation- but Keith Olbermann started loudly trying to take him up on it, offering $1000 to charity for every second of waterboarding Hannity endures.

So far Hannity hasn’t responded- nothing but uncharacteristic silence from this perpetual gasbag. It’s almost as if someone who was perfectly comfortable with having plenty of other (potentially innocent) people being tortured is afraid to have a taste of his own torturous medicine! I for one am completely shocked. Do you think that Rush Limbaugh would stop sneering at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib if the alternative was to go there* as an inmate?

Christopher Hitchens said that waterboarding was less than torture, until he was waterboarded himself. His next article was entitled “Believe Me, it’s Torture” and displayed a perfect 180 on the question of whether or not America has any business waterboarding people. As he said:

“Here is the most chilling way I can find of
stating the matter. Until recently, “waterboarding”
was something that Americans did to other Americans.
It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of
the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form
of training known as SERE (Survival, Evasion,
Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave
men and women were introduced to the sorts of
barbarism that they might expect to meet at the
hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the
Geneva Conventions. But it was something
that Americans were being trained to resist, not to
inflict.”

Emphasis mine. I bring up Hitchens merely to suggest that if Hannity finds the guts to back up all of his talk, there may still be a happy ending here when a committed torture apologist has a dramatic conversion. There’s a good chance Hannity will continue to ignore Olbermann** (and even if he does eventually agree there’s still a huge difference between being waterboarded in a room full of people cheering you on and being waterboarded by your hostile captors), but I’d be content with him merely being unable to mention waterboarding ever again because of extreme shame. Here’s to having one less person arguing in defense of "the sort of barbarism" one might meet at the hands of "a lawless foe who disregards the Geneva Conventions."


*THIS QUESTION IS RHETORICAL: DO NOT ANSWER.
** While we're waiting, check out Waterboard Hannity for Charity, a new site made by some people from Laissez's Fair for the express purpose of keeping track of the whole situation and raising more money for charity in the event that Hannity should ever suddenly find himself in the possession of scruples.

A Growing Menace: The Undead Bush Administration

For the last few days this news item has been bouncing around the internet. In short, archaeologists have discovered the body of an Italian woman who was buried in 1576 with a rock in her mouth because she was thought to be a vampire. In what surely cannot be a coincidence, over the last week members of the Bush administration have been appearing on news shows and in interviews with alarming frequency. Did we as a nation forget to drive a stake through their collective heart before they left office?

The sightings were dismissed as rumor at first: a villager in Idaho claimed to have seen Dick Cheney flying through the air at night, while an eerie silence descended over his farm. Later he was shot in the face by a phantasm. A Virginian peasant woman was startled to find Condoleezza Rice sleeping in a coffin in her basement, but by the time authorities arrived nothing remained but the distant sound of someone playing “Condoleezza Will Lead Us” from some mysterious hidden location. A mining town in Pennsylvania was plagued by a ghostly voice snickering and making up childish nicknames for everyone nearby. Flowers in a remote Maine forest bloomed in the middle of winter, but instead of containing the usual flower particles and components they were filled with feces. “Very gross,” one of the locals was quoted as saying.

As the weeks have gone by their powers have grown, with several members of the Undead Bush Administration gaining the ability to manifest themselves in front of members of the press. This photograph shows Dick Cheney appearing in broad daylight, while the anchor moves to poke out his own eyes from sheer terror:


Before he disappeared Cheney stated that Scooter Libby is innocent and that he’s been left “hanging in the wind,” perhaps a warning to Libby that he’ll soon join the ranks of the U.B.A. Cheney also said that Obama has been making the US less safe, which is pretty funny given how well his crew performed in life. Cheney isn’t the only figure from the past to reach out from beyond the grave and trouble America once more- Karl Rove is at it again too. Bill O’Reilly was minding his own business when Rove’s fiendish apparition spoke unto him, leading to this conversation:

OREILLY: Now in the Bush White House did you guys ever
threaten anybody that disagreed with you? Because they
were legion, did you ever threaten anybody?

ROVE: Not that, not that, you know, not that I recall.
But I mean, I can tell you for darn certain we didn't
go after them as this woman boasted in the Politico
piece. She boasted about how they went out out and
slimed a couple of people.

Rove has apparently been cursed to spend his political afterlife roaming the Earth making the most ludicrous statements possible. Notable in his absence so far is the big guy himself- Bush. Hopefully reports of a shadow growing over Texas are just hearsay, but everyone should remain vigilant- forgetting to put rocks in their mouths and shower them in holy water as they left office may be the biggest mistake America has ever made. Maybe we can perform a national exorcism to rid ourselves of them once and for all?

The First MSPaint Train For The Needy

John Ziegler is an important guy. While I posted a few days ago about his upcoming cinematic event, Media Malpractice, yesterday JJ noticed that he’s scheduled to speak at CPAC along with an unannounced guest*. Being interviewed at CPAC is serious business given that past speakers have included Presidents and Senators, and this year’s lineup is no disappointment: Joe the Plumber and Hans von Spakovsky also get some time in the spotlight.

Knowing all that, the state of Ziegler's website seems even sadder. Remember this picture?

The misspelling is just the beginning- that image is really boring! The flag and grid background speak of an artist not motivated to provide even the bare minimum. Ziegler should have a site fit for a king, something that bewilders the eyes and boggles the mind. It is with this in mind that I hereby announce the first MSPaint Train for the Needy! I even made a starter image to get us moving:


Using my guru-like mastery of the principles of graphic design and the five elemental magics I conjured that up as an offering. Note my careful implementation of an attractive coloring scheme and the use of fundamental spacing skills to draw the eye from area to area. Then I accidentally converted it from jpeg to bmp a dozen times, resulting in ugly jpeg artifacts and washed-out colors, but I’m sure he won’t mind. It’s a masterpiece!

The rest is up to you. Create tasteful works of conservative art that could adorn his website for years to come. Email them to me or to the Train of Thought email address (should be on the top right of the page) by midnight Sunday (East Coast time). I’ll post them all on Monday, and if we have some real winners I’ll even email them to Ziegler and offer help for any future endeavors** he might have in the works. Good luck to all!


*Gosh I wonder who that might be, you betcha.
** Someone has to create a movie poster for Media Malpractice- it may as well be us!

Hype Train: “Media Malpractice- How Obama Got Elected”

Subtitle: “and Palin Was Targeted”

Check out this hot promotional video for the upcoming documentary by John Ziegler! Some background on Ziegler first- he spent some time seriously planning to kill OJ Simpson after he was found innocent, he’s been fired from one job in talk radio for saying “nigger” on air, and from another for discussing on air the “physical attributes, intimate attire, and genital grooming” of a former girlfriend after she dumped him. If you aren't at least moderately revolted you should read that sentence again, you missed something. Don’t let all that get in the way of enjoying this preview, though:

“Media Malpractice: The Trailer”

Sarah Palin returns! The prospect of not having her around to constantly say mind-bogglingly ignorant crap all the time was genuinely starting to get to me, and dealing with the anticipation for the joyous day when her book is released doesn't help. Speaking of which, is anyone interested in having a live Train of Thought book reading/wasted-getting to celebrate when it finally shows up?

Back to the trailer, though- some general observations. First: John Ziegler looks, sounds, and acts like as much of a douchebag as you would expect for a guy who’s been fired for dropping the n-bomb. Next, one can’t help but to notice that this grand confirmation of high-level media bias seems to be built on a firm foundation of Jay-Walking style research. “Look, I asked a handful of Obama supporters questions, and they couldn’t answer all of them! Brainwashing!” Even the constantly-befuddled Alan Colmes notices that something doesn’t quite follow there. Zeigler later went on to commission a Zogby poll, but neglected to include McCain supporters- which even Bill O'Reilly found ridiculous. Bill O'Reilly as a voice of reason, what is happening to the world?!

Next, Ziegler apparently misses the irony of complaining about the fascist liberal media by way of showing clips of them happily giving him a platform to… rant about the evils of the fascist liberal media! Conservatives don’t have a voice in the media, he bawls, as endless clips of the media en-voicening him flash past.

The best stuff shows up next, with Terry McAuliffe being a whiny baby (his role as chairman of the Hillary Clinton campaign isn’t mentioned) and Sarah Palin airing some deep thoughts about how the media was really mean to her. I can’t even guess what possible meaning one is supposed to draw from the bits with black people being happy about Obama winning, unless Ziegler is hoping that the entire Stormfront demographic will crawl out of their holes to buy the documentary.

All in all, this has me highly excited to view the whole thing. On a scale of 1-100, with twenty points possible for the five categories of “partisan hackery,” “a stunning disrespect for science,” “racism,” “heroic levels of ignorance,” and “general depravity,” I give Media Malpractice 86 points. I leave you with this awesome graphic from his SERIOUS BUSINESS website, where he evidently doesn’t care about useless nuances like spelling his own name correctly:

National Review Online: Serious Business

Attention: Hey everyone whose movie viewing habits are determined solely by arbitrarily-placed partisan values, your day has come! The writers of National Review Online have taken it upon themselves to count down the 25 Most Conservative Movies over the course of this week. Unfortunately for them the entire list has already been leaked, but their loss is the Train’s gain- I almost certainly wouldn’t have bothered to sit around and wait all week while they slowly reveal all of their choices.

So, one might ask, what made the list? Before seeing it myself I assumed it would be full of movies like The Birth of a Nation, or a filmed reading of Mein Kampf, but it turns out the “made in the last 25 years” stipulation rules both of them out. The actual list is perhaps even funnier, because most of the movies really shouldn’t be on it. Oh sure, I’ll allow the handful of war movies because of the state of arousal they induce among the military fetishists on the Right, but past that? Let’s see a few:

#20: Gattaca (1997)
I guess this here because it has a lot of science in it, and the science involved is sometimes bad, and liberals are often fond of science? I’m hoping when NRO catches up and posts the explanation they’ll have something about how global warming and climatology are basically the same as scary future eugenics.

#12: The Dark Knight (2008)
Is this the same Dark Knight where the warrantless wiretapping machine is unequivocally declared evil, where the character executing criminals without trials does so because he’s insane, and where abandoning your values to stay safe is wrong? They must have switched reels when I watched it, because with all of that going on I’d be hard-pressed to agree that this is an even slightly conservative movie.

#11: Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003)
Hahahahaha okay. With the single largest message of the trilogy being sharply environmentalist (maybe the NRO slept through the scenes with trees literally getting up and destroying factories?) because of Tolkien’s horror at the ravages of industry on the British countryside, I’m having trouble figuring this one out. I guess they saw people fighting, and didn’t realize that LOTR is pro-war the same way Catch-22 is pro-war (hint to conservatives: it is not).

#10: Ghostbusters (1984)
You see, the ghosts in the movie are metaphors for liberals, and Bill Murray is actually a conservative, and ectoplasm is created by raising tax rates, and…

#8: Juno (2007)
Apparently the one scene in which she decides not to have an abortion outweighs the premarital teenaged unprotected sex, strong language, and likely illegal relationship that the potential adoptive father pursues? Is that all it takes to become one of the MOST CONSERVATIVE MOVIES, just not having an abortion? Apparently it is.

#6: Groundhog Day (1993)
I have a theory for this one: this list was supposed to be The Bill Murry-est Movies of the Last 25 Years, and the other 23 Murry-less films are actually the mistakes here. Otherwise their justification will have to be something about how he improves himself and becomes a good person, and this will have to have some sort of hidden Christian undertones? Seems to me that the movie would work with Hindu or Buddhist thought far more easily, what with the character escaping from an endless cycle of reincarnation by means of achieving enlightenment (such enlightenment as a Hollywood character finds, anyway), but I suppose the NRO knows best.

#5: 300 (2007)
Here we see the return of eugenics, which were last depicted as an evil liberal obsession in Gattaca, but now they’re practiced by the good guys who throw babies off cliffs! You can tell they’re good guys because they talk about democracy a lot (they don’t practice it quite as much, but is that ever really a concern for conservatives?), and they kill stacks of proto-Persians. Also, anyone who opposes the war has been purchased by the enemy. 300 is a great action movie, but anyone who finds deep political meaning in it should be thrown off a cliff for the safety of our nation.

#4: Forrest Gump (1994)
Forrest Gump has an IQ of 75, and goes through life never understanding anything that happens around him. Please write your own joke here about how easily the cast and crew of the NRO can relate to him.

Well, the NRO sure can pick ‘em. Some of the rest are also fairly suspect- for example, I haven’t seen Team America: World Police, but I have a hard time believing there isn’t a pretty good case against its inclusion. I’m tempted to email them with some suggestions: the anti-science film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed featuring Ben Stein should legitimately qualify, as should the Ann Coulter-infused FahrenHYPE 9/11 and the award-winning Nailin’ Palin. No one wants to watch any of those, though, so I guess in the end I can see why they had to just make up a bunch of crap to fill out the list. You win this time, NRO.

Alan Grayson: American Hero

The recent war of words between Rush Limbaugh and The Axis of Adults has been impossible to miss: even over here it’s audible as the faint sound of hysterics, throat-clearing, and paper-shuffling carried on the winds all the way across the Pacific Ocean. To say that it began a few weeks ago is a massive simplification- Limbaugh has a history of wildly shitting up the national discourse that goes back decades- but for the sake of brevity we’ll have to allow it.

First, on his January 16th show Limbaugh articulated his hopes for the Obama administration, saddled with the Bush wars and the economic crisis: “I hope he fails.” I don’t recall any prominent liberals specifically praying for a second Great Depression solely to spite Bush, but I’m confident Rush could quickly fabricate something to that effect. This statement was followed by a weeklong campaign where Limbaugh repeatedly stated that the crisis isn’t actually a problem, Democrats are evil, and that Obama aspires to destroy capitalism forever.

Perhaps partly inspired by these multi-hour harangues, “devote all time to playing petty games” became the order of business for Republicans in Washington shortly thereafter (if it wasn’t already). A few days later Obama told Republican leaders that “you can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.” Sounds pretty reasonable, given that Limbaugh has been specifically railing against the concept of getting things done, right?

Limbaugh reacted with a long, incoherent rant that accused Obama of setting up the stimulus bill as an attempt to “buy votes for the Democrat Party.” Unwilling to stop while he was still making something that someone that might confuse with sense, Limbaugh then went on to say that the New Deal was the same thing- a ploy to “establish majority power for 50 years of Democrat rule.”

While I’ve been hoping Obama would perform some kind of bold act of escalation (I’m picturing him breaking into Limbaugh’s studio and throwing his shoes at the guy, or suddenly enacting laws imprisoning any drug addicts who have advocated imprisoning all drug addicts), the next move has come from an unlikely source: freshman Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson. Grayson looks something like a character from a Tom Tomorrow cartoon, which makes it highly appropriate for him to have said this of Limbaugh:

“Rush Limbaugh is a has-been hypocrite loser, who craves
attention. His right-wing lunacy sounds like Mikhail
Gorbachev, extolling the virtues of communism. Limbaugh
actually was more lucid when he was a drug addict. If
America ever did 1% of what he wanted us to do, then we'd
all need pain-killers.”

Damn! With this guy in the House and Franken in the Senate there’s potential for high comedy in Congress for the next few years. While in the end I’d rather see politicians ignore people like Limbaugh, compounding their persecution complex by poking and teasing them (and hopefully driving them apart from the elusive Moderate Republican by stimulating their Paranoia Gland) seems to be an acceptable option for now.

2009 Giveth, and 2009 Taketh Away

Alas, reader DHR was kind enough to step in and ruin the streak of happy tidings. It turns out Bill Kristol is leaving NYT just to be picked up by the Washington Post- maybe their editors just wanted some sort of anti-bellwether to tell them which way the nation definitely isn’t heading? Whatever the reason, it’s time to cancel the celebrations. Kristolmas is over.

Still, one might point out that getting rid of Kristol wouldn’t have been that huge of a victory. Two crappy conservative pundits sprout up out of the ground whenever one falls, so Kristol keeping his job actually slows our approach to Peak Conservativism. And besides, is he really any worse than the rest of his peers? Today I devised this highly scientific experiment to find out:

Below are a few quotes from the last few years. See if you can figure out which conservative is responsible for each! Possible sources are: Hannity, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Beck, Savage, Kristol, and Krauthammer. Keep your guess in mind for each one, or use a marker to write it on your monitor. Afterwards I’ll show who said what.

1. "Evidence that Iraq may have aided in the horrific attacks of September 11 is beginning to accumulate."

2. "According to an Iraqi newspaper [...] Saddam told the bomb-makers to accelerate the pace of their work […] Saddam has been moving ahead into a new era, a new age of horrors where terrorists don't commandeer jumbo jets and fly them into our skyscrapers. They plant nuclear bombs in our cities."

3. "Predictions of ethnic turmoil in Iraq are even more questionable than they were in the case of Afghanistan."

4. "Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president."

5. "And considering what might have gone wrong--and which so many critics predicted would go wrong--the results have been in many ways admirable. Iraq has not descended into inter-religious and inter-ethnic violence.”

6. "The [leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity] story is absurd. But I now think the whole prosecution is absurd. […] I now think it's a politically motivated attempt to wound the Bush administration. [...] Fitzgerald's case is crumbling.”

7. “If [Hillary Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she’s going to be the nominee. Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic primary.”

8. "I think Hillary Clinton… has put behind her the horrible sexism and misogyny the Democratic primary voters demonstrated... Never would have happened in the Republican party."

9. "The core case against Obama is pretty simple: he’s too liberal.”

10. "[McCain and Palin are] gonna win Tuesday night. It's gonna be huge."

Big mixed bag of stupid statements there! Do you have your guesses written down? Great, here are the answers (highlight the text with your mouse to reveal them):

1. Kristol. 2. Kristol. 3. Kristol. 4. Kristol. 5. Kristol. 6. Kristol. 7. Kristol. 8. Kristol. 9. Kristol. 10. Kristol.

That might have ruined the fun of figuring out who said what, but I defy you to look at a good consolidated list of Kristol quotes and not do the exact same thing. Looking on the bright side, by hiring Kristol the WaPo editors also assured that I’ll have even more material in the future. Now I just have to convince myself that the rest of his readers are also following his columns for fun. Someone couldn’t take Kristol seriously, right?

Right???