Conspiracy~!

You might have thought that in all this hullabaloo about drilling rig explosions, oil replacing water as the main liquid in the Gulf, environmental disaster this, decades to clean up that, poor sea turtles the other, that this all somehow presented a comprehensive case against offshore drilling. It hasn't.

I mean sure, if this disaster was the result of years of lobbying against safer practices and regulation, poor oil company safety standards, and lax safety standards, you might have a point. But it wasn't. Hold on to the tops of your skulls, because I might just blow your mind. IT WAS ALL THE RESULT OF A LIBERAL CONSPIRACY!! DUN DUN DUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNN! And if you don't believe me, surely you'll believe the leading lights of the conservative movement.

Limbaugh added: "[W]hat better way to head off more oil drilling and nuclear plants then by blowing up a rig? I'm just, I'm just noting the timing here."

Dana Perino said of the spill: "I'm not trying to introduce a conspiracy theory, but was this deliberate? You have to wonder...if there was sabotage involved."

Fox Business Network host Eric Bolling falsely claimed it was "nine days before" the leak "was even addressed" and asked, "Did they let this thing leak? ... if they're going to try and pull drilling, that may be the way they do it."

Heckuva Job Brownie: "And I would not be surprised if the White House said, you know what, we might be able to, guess what, do what? Use this crisis to our advantage. Let this crisis get really bad, and then we will step in. We will be able to shut down offshore drilling."

SEE! It's all so clear now. Clearly this isn't an offshore drilling/oil company/safety/regulation problem, this is a liberal terrorist/sabotage/government conspiracy problem. I haven't done enough research, but the Sasquatch and the mole people may be involved. We may have drilled into their underground lair or something.

Sure, liberals/reverse vampires set charges on the rig and then Obama, who secretly hates offshore drilling despite all those statements and plans to support it, waited 8 days, no, 9 days, no, 12 days, no, 7 years, before lifting a finger in order to discredit offshore drilling! Obama's Katrina! Conspiracy! Spy satellites are watching us!

So in the end we have learned, like always, that corporations are never responsible for anything and that things with obvious dangerous environmental hazards aren't dangerous at all. It turns out that everything would have run smoothly if it weren't for those damn meddling kids and their overarching conspiracy to drag down our corporate betters into the mire. Isn't that always the way?

How things are going to be

Like most regular Freedomericans I too wonder what my future is under the yoke of Obamacare, plowing the fields of socialism. What will this bill mean for me, the most important of all Americans: the lowly read dick joke blogger. Some would say I look at this Washington Post health care calculator to have it specifically tell me what it means for me. Others would offer up Speaker Pelosi's page where the bill, summaries of the bill, bullet points of the bill and all sorts of other information about the bill is listed. Maybe some would say I should look at Ezra Klein's series on explaining the health care reform, or the Kaiser Family Foundation's health reform page, maybe you could look through the health care section of the Wonk Room, take a gander around the Center For American Progress, or maybe you should just avail myself of Google... provided you're outside China.

Those people would be wrong. The people I need to listen to are right wing media pundits. They're going to tell me exactly what it's going to be like now that this reform has become law.

Beck added: "You must -- must get on the phone in your districts. You must wake everybody up you know. This is the end of prosperity in America forever if this bill passes. This is the end of America as you know it."

Beck "warn[ed]" that if the bill "passes, the country is in real dire trouble." He went on to say: "The pieces that the president needs to control every aspect of your life, to fundamentally transform America, will be finished. He'll have them all,"

Limbaugh stated: "It is a government takeover of health care and granny is gonna die. Granny always dies at some point -- we all do. It's gonna be hastened under this bill."

Fox News contributor Dick Morris said what Obama "has in mind is curbing medical care to the elderly," and that he's "going to set up a panel" to determine treatment. Morris said he's "100 percent positive" this will happen.

Fox Business: "Does Obamacare mean millions more jobs destroyed?"

Cramer: "Obamacare will topple the stock market."

Limbaugh: Democrats will regulate "every aspect of our lives."

Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas said on Fox News: "The president says they're not going to pull the plug on granny. No, but they will deny her care because she's costing too much and she's too old."

Radio host Jim Quinn said that "Bolshevik Barbie and our marginally documented president" want "the power to control your body and your life. Quinn added: "Giving the government that power is allowing the government to commit a violent assault on your body -- a violent assault on your most precious possession, which is your life."

Quinn predicted that "if they pass this thing, you are going to see insurrection. You're going to see an uprising. People are just not going to take this.This is about establishing from now on and forever a socialist state in America, ripping the Constitution to shreds which progressives have hated for over 100 years.

Quinn: "If they pass health care ... that is the end of the republic."

Cal Thomas claimed health reform "is an outrage" and "a sham"; "[e]uthanasia is coming."

Limbaugh: "Human beings will die earlier than normal" under "freedom killing" and "life threatening" health-care reform.

Limbaugh said the "whole bill is about death" and "rationing." He continued: "It is the single greatest tool the government will have to regulate every aspect of behavior. This is a freedom killing, and it is going to end up being a life-threatening bill."

Chris Baker suggested that health reform will lead to overweight people going to jail or being put to death

Limbaugh: "Obamacare" will "smother the individual," "aimed at robbing you of your humanity," "all of us will be slaves."

Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.

I don't think I'm going to like this health reform thing at all. Christ, those last three guys were doctors. I don't want my protons reversing or my molecules exploding at the speed of light. THAT'S NOT THE CHANGE I SIGNED UP FOR BARRY!

Oh God, there's no hope. It's really the complete collapse of everything and everything, with slavery, human sacrifice, euthanasia, death panels, and some sort of temporal displacement where George Washington is erased from history. If only we knew beforehand. What have we wrought?

Why the UK is better than us: Example 1273b

Oh Brittania, how I envy thee. You have a right wing that fights to preserve and improve your universal, cheap, socialist health care. You are rife with charming top hatted street urchins who sing jaunty tunes and perform enjoyable dance numbers while they pickpocket and steal to get by. Your government seems to be able to function. Stephen Fry.

Here in the Colonies, we have a cottage industry of mouth breathing idiots who lie. slowly degrade our country, and dumb down the populace, all the while raking in hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves. We call them right wing talk radio pundits. Whereas here they thrive, prosper, multiply, and be nourished by our corporate culture, you seem to deal with them in a different, better way.

Today, Color of Change and StopBeck.com announced that the United Kingdom has forcefully rejected Fox News host Glenn Beck. In fact, the UK broadcast of his show “was forced to run without any advertisements” for five days in a row as of yesterday. Additionally, 103 companies have agreed to stop their ads from appearing on his program.

And since that report was made the count now stands at 116 dropped sponsors and six, verging on seven, days without UK advertisers. Oh, to live in a country that rejects Glenn Beck. No, I live in the one that nourishes, and rewards his deranged conspiracy theories, race baiting, semi-retarded (RAHM~!) camera mugging, sub-morning show DJ personality, and weepy chalkboard diatribes with millions of avid listeners and millions of dollars.

Now I realize that all of this is because Beck's special brand of hysterical crazy doesn't tap into whatever the British equivalent of decades of poor, white, southern rage is, his pedantic critiques and conspiracies ring hollow with distance, and his protestations of the socialist menace ring hollow to people who see real benefit and are noticeably better off than Americans thanks to the icy, black hand of socialism. I don't care.

You've done yourself a great service, UK. You've walled the loony into his own asylum and are not allowing him to infect your country with a plague of madness. Unfortunately for me the asylum you walled him in is the country I live in, but we were going down anyway. Save yourselves.

Blah blah blah Al Gore

Last night, before going to bed, I declared the supposed second snowpocalypse storm, which at that point had only dumped a piddling amount of snow on the ground and devolved into a weak drizzle of rain, to be a weak ass bitch ass storm for week-kneed little sisters that wasted my time with dreams of a new ice age. So imagine my surprise when during my slumber (and dreams of money and zombies) the sneaky bastard shat down a couple of more inches during the night, re-crippling a mid-Atlantic that has apparently never dealt with snow before.

Of course we all know what this torrent of winter weather means: global warming is a hoax, Al Gore is fat, and climate change is a myth. And as if on cue, our betters in the right wing media (like always) along with a couple of our more extra ignorant elected representatives, and dimwitted newspapers have chimed in right on cue with those sentiments. Hey, Al Gore is really fat.

But because we love you and we get a tasty percentage cut from Gore for any reader we're able to trick into buying into the global conspiracy and scientific con game that is climate change, here's an actual expert from Climate Progress opining on how "It's cold here right now, thus science is wrong" isn't as scientific as it sounds.

It's long and sciencey, but it basically comes down to a few simple points: climate isn't weather you dimwitted oafs, these major snow events are simultaneously happeneing during some of the warmest winters on record, how there have been two "100 year storms" in two months and how that isn't good, how Al Gore is merely big-boned, and how climate change driven record moisture levels are responsible for these storms and future storms.

Here's MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan making the case. Ratigan is notable for being the only guy on TV who wants to use the snow storm to discuss science. Liberal hippie freak.



Not as convincing as Dr. Hannity, Climate Scientist, but it'll have to do. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go collect a check from Science. I can assure you it has nothing to do with helping to perpetrate a large scale hoax on the populace.

Things that will completely help the state of poltical debate in this country

Moammar Gaddafi Rants at U.N. General Assembly

Amid his rant, Gaddafi praised President Obama, who spoke just before him. He began his speech by congratulating Obama on his election. Later he referred to him as "our son" and suggested he remain in power for life.

Oh yeah, I can hear Glenn Beck's boner forming. An African Muslim dictator praising Obama as a son and wanting him to stay in power forever? Catnip. And that's before Gaddafi declared the UN was founded by terrorists, that the swine flu was a military/pharmaceutical conspiracy ("What's next? Fish flu?" he asked rhetorically), called for new investigations into the assassinations of MLK and JFK, demanded Europe repay Africa for their colonial pillaging, and that whole thing where his country honored and welcomed a guy who blew up Pan Am 103. I can already smell the intelligent debate wafting up from talk radio.

Feds probe US Census worker hanging in Kentucky

The 51-year-old Sparkman was found this month hanged from a tree near a Kentucky cemetery with the word "fed" scrawled on his chest, a law enforcement official said Wednesday, and the FBI is investigating whether he was a victim of anti-government sentiment.

Wow. I'm sure this had nothing to do with right wing media sources drumming up fear of the census as everything from a tool for ACORN to get information on you, government databases being used to target conservatives, that it was an unconstitutional violation of rights, part of a government conspiracy to steal from productive people to give it to the poor and minorities, and as a way to catalog how many guns you have so the government can better steal them. You think Michelle Bachmann is going to regret all that time she spent demonizing the census as the tool of the devil? Of course not.

EDIT: Also....this. Don't they know not to start the indoctrination songs and chants until after socialism has fully taken hold?

Good morning, with your morning radio zoo crew

That's right, it's Glenn Beck as part of Phoenix's Y95 Morning Zoo radio program in 1986, 4 short years before he allegedly raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. Isn't it sad that a hackneyed, paint-by-numbers, "wacky" 1980's morning radio show was more dignified than what he's doing now? It's a shame he doesn't have access to a monkey now, I think it would really improve his program.

I wonder what the monkey is up to now? Perhaps the monkey killed and replaced Beck, wearing his clothes and face like a mask. It all makes so much sense. The shit flinging...the rage...the shrieking.

Heads up

In case you were wondering what the new crazy conspiracy theory the Hannity's and Beck's of the world would harp on next, well you're in for a treat as they've both started to ramp up on their new outrage: Obama's maddening and assuredly illegal use of Senate confirmed advisers that are called 'czars' that he totally invented as a way to steal precious freedom sauce out of the hearts of bald eagles everywhere and reign his liberal tyranny down on the God fearing people of America, one brutal command at a time.

Fox News personality Sean Hannity was one of the rally’s keynote speakers, and he took the opportunity to gloat about Van Jones’ resignation. He vowed to the audience that he would get rid of “every other one” of Obama’s so-called czars:

HANNITY: Do you want another czar?

CROWD: No!

HANNITY: I don’t think so. By the way, we got rid of one, and my job starting tomorrow night is to get rid of every other one. I promise you that!

Yes, yes, let me soak in the crazy. There is no greater outrage currently going on right now than the use of advisers and liaisons to specifically address and oversee specific issues, like drugs or border security or intelligence co-operation, within various large governmental organizations. Why? Because they're called 'czars' and that's a Russian term! Nazis! Unaccountable evil despots!

God bless your crazy little hearts, talk radio. I just love your ability to take something that has been a practice since Nixon and not only blame Obama for it, but claim that it's a shadow government undermining democracy. Now to most people this would be easily mocked lunacy. But then again, you aren't a Congressional GOP member. See, if you're Jack "The emergency room is all the health care the peasants need" Kingston or Dr. Michelle Bachmann (scientist) this is a cause that needs immediate legislative action. So in case you were wondering what the next inane rash of bullshit that will plague your airwaves at the expense of real information or real issues....here you are. It's czars. Enjoy.

Damn this politicization

Ahh we've already come to an important time in the aftermath of Senator Ted Kennedy's death. And here I though tit would take more than three days. It is a time where people who despised Ted Kennedy, his ideals, his legislative record, and issues that were important to him, get to take to the airwaves en masse to complain that everyone else is politicizing his death.....and that oh by the way that means everyone should rally to defeat stuff that meant a lot to Kennedy, like health care. I mean is there any better defender of Ted Kennedy's legacy than Rush Limbaugh?

Key conservative voices have begun to charge in the day after Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death that Democrats are inappropriately politicizing the senator’s death, his memorial and his legacy.
...
"Placing [Kennedy’s] name on a health-care bill, in memoriam, or using his name as a sympathy ploy to advance a health care bill that would deny Americans the choices Sen. Kennedy had is an insult and is supreme hypocrisy,” the talk show host Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday. 'The senator's passing is going to give them the opportunity to use the sympathy play to get as much done in his name as possible."

"No government was a partner with God in Ted Kennedy's death. To put his name on this current health-care bill would be to insult what he stood for,” Limbaugh said.

Yes, I can think of no greater insult to the American people than Democrats using Ted Kennedy's lifelong fight to extend health care coverage to all Americans to...extend health care coverage to all Americans, or even worse: by letting Americans get the same coverage that Kennedy got because he was a member of the Senate. I can think of no greater polar opposites, of no greater incongruity.

All I know is that when I see Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity advocate for the same idea and line of thinking within two sentences in the same article and try to put forth the idea that an event that hasn't even happened yet is irrevocably politicized, I am filled with the knowledge that it is undeniably a good idea and the product of honest people trying valiantly to protect Ted Kennedy's legacy and look out for the American people. In fact, I agree, in order to honor Ted Kennedy and make sure there isn't even a whiff of politicization in the air we need to make sure health care is defeated! For Teddy!

Uh....this is a....legitimate...concern

Rush Limbaugh, on being mentioned in a new Jay-Z song

"I did not know I was on anybody's balls"

A comment which he segued into after he unleashed the greatest conspiracy theory about Obama that I have ever heard: that Obama wants to force everyone to get circumcised

"I would remind Mr. Z that it is President Obama that wants to mandate circumcision.....If we need to save our penises from anybody, it's Obama."

Yeah....uh...anyone want to print up a couple thousand "Stay away from my penis, Barry" or "Obama: foreskin thief" t-shirts? I have a feeling that these will sell well at the next round of teabagger protests.

Fear of a black planet

You know, I'm not sure, but it's almost like there's a theme of some sort at work here. Anyway, long hail the brutal socialist regime of Hussein Obama X, may he destroy all us white people with a kindly smile on his face.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 07.30

Pope: My 'Guardian Angel' Let Me Down
I know he's the Pope and thus prone to believe in this fanciful bullshit, but did he really just blame an angel for failing to keep him upright? And then suggested that God wanted him to fall and ordered an angel to let it happen? I wonder why it is I fail to take religion seriously.

The Baucus Bill's Bad Math
Nate Silver turn his super robot abacus brain onto leaked plans of the health care bill that Max Baucus is negotiating. It seems that it can't possibly do what he says it will and contains a terrible mish-mash of attributes for a health care bill to have. Man, I'm so glad everyone decided it was a great idea to let Max fuckin' Baucus lead the way on health care reform.

Blue Dog Compromise Removes Billions In Savings From Public Plan
Who would have thought? I can't believe that the Blue Dogs actually ended up contradicting their stated goals in order to hack a few bucks out of a health care bill and pretend like they were doing something. It's almost as if they have no idea what they're doing or talking about. Good thing House Democrats decided to cede power to them.

The New Antiquarians
"New vintage". Overly precious kitschy shit on the walls. The hipster TGI Friday's aesthetic. Is it time to consider killing Wes Anderson and hemming in this retro 19th century taxidermist Futura fonted Victorian pastiche trend before it spreads or gets any new ideas? I'm as eager to see the Fantastic Mr. Fox as the next guy, but he needs to be stopped.

Beer choice at Obama meeting touches off new debate
Now that the President is mediating the most important peace accord since Sadat and Begin met, we can finally talk about what's important: booze. Lager? Wheat ales? Budweiser? A magical blend from the Sam Adams founder which melds all the flavors of the world plus magic rainbows? This is important, the whole next week of Glen Beck Hannity, and Rush's shows hinge on whether Barack orders a foreign beer or one they can deem "only pussy liberals drink".

Stormy Daniels Arrested for Domestic Violence
Not only did the porn star challenging David "whores are a conservative christian value" Vitter have a campaign adviser get car bombed, but now she's under arrest for beating her husband. Louisiana needs to have a Senate election every year. We're only in the beginning stages of the primaries and it's threatening to be the most interesting race ever. We're a bestiality arrest and a cultist kidnapping away from having to dip the campaign in bronze to preserve it for future generations.

Quotes of the weekend

Not content to just let right wing critiques of Sonia Sotomayor completely scrape the bottom of the barrel, Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy decided to lift up that barrel and look for another barrel underneath it, so that they might scrape that one too.

El Rushbo:

LIMBAUGH: Not only does she lack the often discussed appropriate judicial temperament, it's worse than that. She brings a form of bigotry and racism to the court. I don't care, we're not supposed to say it, we're supposed to pretend it didn't happen, we're supposed to look at other things but it's the elephant in the room. The real question here that needs to be asked and nobody on our side from a columnist to a TV commentator to anybody in our party has the guts to ask, how can a president nominate such a candidate? And how can a party get behind such a candidate? That's what would be asked if somebody were foolish enough to nominate David Duke or pick somebody even less offensive.

The felon who wanted to have his political enemies murdered:

LIDDY: I understand that they found out today that Miss Sotomayor is a member of La Raza, which means in illegal alien, “the race.” And that should not surprise anyone because she’s already on record with a number of racist comments.
...
LIDDY: Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.

It's hard to know why this party is out of power when it has such stunning intellectual lights as these two. Sotomayor=David Duke/menstruation will destroy the legal foundation of this country. If the debate is already this degraded three days after her nomination, imagine where we'll be when her conformation hearings start up. I can hardly wait.

Dept. of Obvious Conclusions

Right wing blowhard Erich "Mancow" Muller talks a bunch of stuff on how waterboarding isn't torture. Mr. Mancow to simultaneously prove how goddamn manly he is and how waterboarding barely rises above the level of say getting blasted in the face by a strong shower head, says he'll go through a waterboarding session. Unlike some people, he actually goes through with it. Guess what happens? He gives up 6 seconds in and starts telling everyone it's definitely torture.

Mancow decided to tackle the divisive issue head on -- actually it was head down, while restrained and reclining.

"I want to find out if it's torture," Mancow told his listeners Friday morning, adding that he hoped his on-air test would help prove that waterboarding did not, in fact, constitute torture.
...
Turns out the stunt wasn't so funny. Witnesses said Muller thrashed on the table, and even instantly threw the toy cow he was holding as his emergency tool to signify when he wanted the experiment to stop. He only lasted 6 or 7 seconds.

"It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that's no joke,"Mancow said, likening it to a time when he nearly drowned as a child. "It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back...It was instantaneous...and I don't want to say this: absolutely torture."

So what's the count of people who say waterboarding isn't torture, go through one session of it, and can barely spit the water out of their mouth before yelling out "It's torture", up to now? We'll just say that it's everyone who's ever gone through with it.

But that Dick Cheney guy totally swears it's not. So I really don't know who to believe. I think I need to see a couple more self righteous right winger radio and TV personalities get waterboarded before I can make an informed decision.

UK asshole list

Our former colonial masters seem to have a good handle on keeping undesirables out of their country. Instead of using their watch lists for simple stuff like known terrorists, innocent citizens, people you mistakenly tortured, and liberal senators, they've decided to expand the list to keep complete and total American assholes from crossing the pond.

Also on the list published by the Home Office is a US “shock jock” talkshow host whose views on Islam, rape and autism have stirred controversy in America.
...
The list includes Erich Gliebe, the leader of an American neo-Nazi group, Michael Savage (real name Michael Weiner), a radio presenter in America, Mike Guzovsky, a Jewish extremist, and Stephen “Don” Black, a former Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan.

Also on the list is Fred Waldron Phelps Snr, an American Baptist pastor and his daughter, Shirley, who were barred last year for their homophobic views.

The two have picketed the funerals of Aids victims and celebrated the deaths of US soldiers as punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality.

Michael Savage, a neo-Nazi, a Grand Wizard, and the asshole who pickets every funeral. Lovely company, Mike. The UK has listened to Savage Nation, heard his rants blaming Muslims and Mexicans for swine flu, the gay mafia, rogue homo elements in the DHS, Obama "raping America", and his apologist lines of thought on Joe McCarthy and Tim McVeigh. They decided they don't so much as want him touching their airport tarmac. I'm surprised he's the only right wing talk radio guy on it. The UK must not have been Hannitized yet.

Well up with pride America. The UK list of undesirables is filled with Hamas members, shady imams, Muslim extremists.......and Americans. The difference: the Hamas guys, imams, and extremists don't have audiences of millions and are considered in the mainstream of American political discourse. Whoops. Our bad.

Oh how I missed you sweet, sweet Republican crazy

You know the 2000's (aughts? zeros?) have been banner times for the Republican party. They've ruled almost fully for eight years and have transformed the country into a toxic wasteland where the corporations war with government over free money and the right to sodomize the peasants. But we've been missing the crazy. Sure when they were in power they called every Democrat a traitor or troop hater, but where was that nineties creativity? In the nineties Bill Clinton ran drug rings, murdered friends, raped everything that moved, and smuggled all the W keys off White House keyboards in a condom inside his ass. Rush Limbaugh, seeing the dearth of conspiracy theories, has strode in mightily to fill the void.

Who’s benefiting? Aside from the people being bailed out. The Democrat party and Barack Obama are benefiting.

They got elected, they increased their numbers in the House, they increased their numbers in the Senate, they got the White House now, and they’ve got a crisis that people think can only be fixed with the all-mighty and powerful government interceding to save this or to save that, when in fact, the government is going to nationalize the automobile industry. It’s going to nationalize some banks. It’s going to nationalize the mortgage industry, and may end up nationalizing the automobile industry. […]

So the Obama team and the Democrat party are benefiting tremendously from this, even if it has spun out of control. It’s spun out of control, but they’ll make due with a new crisis they created a la Rahm Emanuel. But the reason I think it has spun a little out of control and gone a little further than they intended is that even the Obama people are saying, “Hey, it’s going to be really bad for a really long time.”

That's right El Dildo Rushbo, the Democrats ruined the economy over a five month period after getting nothing passed in the House or Senate. At least he's on the right track, Bill O'Reilly and Karl Rove were trying to peddle the economic crisis as a hoax perpetrated by the media. Silly Mayberry Machiavelli, the media is this country is dead. At least there's one man out there fighting to get out the truth. That this country is not in economic dire straights, and if it is its the result of Chuck Schumer calling a failing bank a failing bank, liberal conspiracies to elect Democrats, and not Republican fiscal policies. Get it straight.

God, talk radio is going to be so much fun the next few years.