Just Not That Smart

Opinion | thepilot.com

We’re going to have to face a painful fact: Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans are just not that bright.

The body of the late Justice Antonin Scalia was barely cold before McConnell and his lackeys rushed to warn everybody not to politicize this solemn moment, about three seconds before they began politicizing it for all they were worth.

McConnell, Toddler-Terrifying Ted Cruz and Young Marco Robotto — sorry, I mean Rubio — declared that there’s an 80-year-old “rule” against a president nominating a Supreme Court Justice in the last year of his term.

They had discovered this rule by the research method known as “making stuff up.”

Turns out, this situation where one of the Supremes shuffles off this mortal coil in the last year of a presidency just doesn’t happen all that often, certainly not often enough that one could glean so much as a guideline, let alone a rule, from history.

The Constitution — which the wingnuts claim to revere but apparently know jack-squat about — is very clear that the president “shall” nominate, among various other officers, “Justices of the Supreme Court” and appoint them “with the advice and consent of the Senate.”

So we have the spectacle of the president doing his constitutional duty, and the Senate saying, “We won’t advise, we won’t consent. Heck, we won’t even meet the nominee.” Having demonstrated their own uselessness as a Senate, they now appear to be dead-set on rendering another of the three branches of government as paralyzed as they are.

Where the “three no’s” (no meetings, no hearings, no vote) that McConnell et al. have promised to stick to are found in the Constitution has never been explained. Like the supposed “80-year rule” against nominating in an election year, this appears to be pure applesauce, as the late Justice Scalia was fond of saying.

Not only is this behavior by the Republicans against both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, but it’s also foolish. If the Republicans hold the line on their promise to delay even a hearing till after the election, they’ll keep this issue open until Election Day.

They’ll give whoever the Democratic nominee is a perfect example of the kind of mulish obstructionism that people are so heartily and vocally sick of.

They are handing even a half-smart candidate a club the size of a California Redwood to thrash them with on a daily basis, and both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are not half-smart — they are both very, very smart.

The current course of action by the Senate Republicans seems perfectly calculated to lose not only the presidency but the Senate. When that happens, folks, stuff’s gonna get real, as the kids say.

Or consider this alternative scenario: A few Senate Republicans actually do their jobs, defy the leadership, and give the candidate nominated by the president a hearing.

Centrists and independents say, “Hey, maybe these guys are reasonable after all,” but the wingnuts scream, “OMG! We are betrayed again by the evil party establishment!” and tear the party to shreds before handing the raggedy, bloodstained banner of the presidential nomination to “outsider” Donald Trump.

Democrats win the presidency and the Senate, and get to replace not only Scalia, but Ginsburg, Kennedy and probably Breyer as well.

Majority Leader McConnell is leading his party into the political equivalent of the Valley of the Little Big Horn. He and his supporters in the Senate should turn their horses around and get the heck back to the high ground.

They should face the reality that President Barack Obama was indeed elected to that job, by large margins, and he’s going to do the job till the last day in office.

But they should also demand the sort of bland centrist that Obama will almost certainly give them to avoid a fight, then run for the rest of the year on who gets the next three appointments.

They've really not thought this through, which I suppose is no surprise to anyone. I hate to say it, but they’re just not that smart.

OK, that’s a lie. I love to say it.

The Hot New Fad For the Right Wing Asshole On The Go

This is, I guess what you'd call the "Director's Cut" of this week's column,  since I can't say "asshole" in the paper. Even though it's exactly the right word).

Imagine, if you will: You’re driving along the road, minding your own business, when you pull up behind one of those great big pickups that would be very useful hauling feed and seed or towing a horse trailer, but which is way too clean and unscratched to have ever seen an actual farm.

As you prepare to pass this wheeled behemoth, your car is suddenly enveloped in a cloud of choking black smoke that causes you to weave dangerously. As you fight your way clear of the blinding cloud, you see the truck pulling off and faintly hear the derisive laughter of its occupants.

Congratulations. You’ve just encountered some Good Americans who are patriotically protesting against Obama’s fascist nanny state by engaging in a practice they call “Rolling Coal.”

Are you the kind of “conservative” who thinks that the first question that needs to be answered when analyzing a political position is, “Will this annoy liberals?”

Are you the type of person who, if the First Lady comes out in favor of something like, say, healthy meals and exercise, immediately starts howling that your rights are being violated worse than those of Jews in the Holocaust and declare your intention to stuff as much junk as possible into your face because that’ll show them, by golly?

Are you the type of person who’s decided to shop every week at Hobby Lobby, even though you’ve never shopped there before and you don’t actually have any hobbies, but you want to show those danged feminazis that you’re not taking any of their guff?

In short, are you a typical right wing asshole?

Well, you could always run for a Republican congressional seat. But if that seems like too much trouble and/or expense, then maybe Rolling Coal is for you.

Get yourself a big ol’ truck, go to an Internet site like Dieselhub.com or one of those magazines aimed at truck aficionados, and order you some “smoke switches,” “aggressive tuners and modules,” and “special injectors” which will, and I quote, “trick your engine into thinking it needs more fuel.”

This will allow you to blow out a huge cloud of black smoke on command when you encounter, say, a Prius or other hybrid. (You can even get a sticker along with your gear that says “Prius Repellent.”)

But don’t stop there. You can also use your new gizmos to smoke people with liberal bumper stickers. Or bicyclists. Be sure to use your smartphone to record your hilarious encounters with those enemies of all that is free and good about America.

Then you can join the Coal Rollers on YouTube, where your fellow freedom fighters have posted videos of their blows against The Man, a category which includes the aforementioned Prius drivers, liberal bumper sticker displayers, and cyclists, as well as cops and pretty girls walking by the side of the road (because nothing gets a woman hotter than having acrid toxic gases blown in her face by a truck the size of small aircraft carrier).

Of course, you knew that once a few brave souls began spewing The Black Cloud of Liberty in everyone’s face, Obama’s Islamocommiefascist Iron Fist of Doom was going to come down to crush it the way the Chinese crushed the flowers of freedom in Tiananmen Square.

The jackbooted thugs of the EPA have issued one of their fatwas, saying, “It is a violation of the Clean Air Act to manufacture, sell, or install a part for a motor vehicle that bypasses, defeats, or renders inoperative any emission control device.”

Translated into American, that means that after-market devices intended to increase fuel consumption and belch clouds of pollution into people’s faces are regarded as illegal by Obama’s EPA. This is how freedom dies, my friends.

If there’s one silver lining for the right, it’s that the Republicans in the House finally may have found the grounds for bringing the Articles of Impeachment they’ve been feverishly fantasizing about for so long. I mean, to heck with requiring some sort of “high crime or misdemeanor” as grounds to impeach. You just do NOT mess with a man’s truck.

Lo, Even As I Have Said It, So It Has Come To Pass

I ended the last column thusly:

Normally, when I pose these sorts of questions to my fellow Americans, I get attempts to change the subject or angry denunciations of President Obama and/or “libs,” “leftists,” “statists” or “Obama-bots,” none of which have any connection to the question asked.

And so far, here are the answers from the usual gang of chattering monkeys that make up the conservative commentariat at the Pilot: 

From "fugitiveguy" who comments every week, while claiming he doesn't read the column: 

I actually read the article in its entirety. This guy sure asks a lot of questions with the angle of defending his king and deity. To the majority of those questions I would just answer I don't know. I am glad I don't have the responsibility although I think I am just about as qualified to run the show as the president. I have seen recipes longer than his resume. But I digest [sic] so therefore I must go now.

I'm not sure if "But I digest" is a malapropism in an attempt at humor, or this person really doesn't know the language. "Fugitiveguy's" posts are usually so dimwitted, I suspect the latter. 

From "Pappy", another constant commenter: 

Mr Rhoades...wow, sure is a lot of questions !!

Before we can start a conversation, can I assume that you think your king handled each situation to the 12 questions / paragraphs correctly ??

This "king" bullshit is a constant refrain among these pathological liars, who claim, despite all the evidence, that I'm a mindless sycophant who never criticizes the President. (See my columns on getting involved in Syria and Libya in the first place for a refutation). 

From "OceanGypsy": 

Great way for the columnist to try to deflect attention from just a few of the many, crazy bad failures of this administration by using directed questions which deflect attention from the key failures of each, then piling them all on top of each other so that no one in their right mind will bother to try to tackle any of them. But hey, he's a lawyer after all.

Simple answer. If you truly read up on and objectively study each issue brought up you will find the answer to each. And quite possibly become a Libertarian too.

Ah. A Libertarian. The douchey, condescending tone should have clued me in. But, you'll notice, not even an attempt to answer one question, just another version of the lame old "look it up yourself" dodge that inept Internet debaters use when they're asked to back their bullshit up.

I am pleased to announce, I did actually get one attempt to actually address one question:

Dusty, 

Let’s take a crack at your first question . “If you think President Obama’s weakness in Syria is what led Putin’s annexation of Crimea, what  do you think we should have done in Syria? 

If he (the president) was not willing  to take action he should have just kept his mouth shut. 

It was Obama’s bluster that led the world & Putin to see that Obama continued to be a  fleckless blow hard. When he stated that Assad’s use of chemical weapons would cross a red line that would have consequences and then nothing happened it proved it. Putin knows that Obama will do do nothing no matter what happens. 

Obama’s mantra is shoot your mouth off, carry a small stick and then try to change the subject.

My answer:

Actually, at one point, I was in agreement with you about the "red line." You can look it up.

But then it actually worked and Assad agreed to give up his chemical weapons, rather than be bombed. So the "red line" actually worked. And I had to admit I was wrong. 

Would you rather he still have those weapons? Because if President Obama had "kept his mouth shut", he'd still have them and would still be using them.

Thanks for reading. 

I'll let you know if I get a response. But I predict the same "you'll never criticize your king Obama" bushwa. These idiots are nothing if not predictable. 

Marketing: Joe Quinn Is Doing It Wrong

So this guy's called my office a couple of times, identifying himself as "Joe Quinn" and claiming to be a potential DWI client. When Lynn asks him if he'd like to make an appointment, he gets rude to her and says he'll only talk to me (mistake #1, as Lynn is also my wife).

The area code on the message looks a little odd, so I check and see it's a NYC number. Then Lynn Googles it and finds out that not only is the guy trying to sell space on his crappy "legal referral website", there are multiple other testimonials from people talking about how he's been rude to other attorneys' staffs and lied about being a potential client. 

Marketing: Joe Quinn is doing it wrong.

Get It Now, Get It First, Get It Wrong, Redux

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One of the most aggravating features of our multi-network, Twitter-driven, twenty-four-hour news cycle is something that invariably happens in the wake of a horrible event like last week’s bombing at the Boston Marathon: driven to get something, anything, out there, the cable news channels, the airwaves, and the Twitterverse became veritable fountains of misinformation. Apparently, the old journalistic principle that you didn’t go live with something unless you’d verified it with at least two sources is as dead as Walter Cronkite. Now what they report on is what’s been “reported,” whether or not said “report” is actually true or even from a credible source. Hey, they’re not lying. All they’re saying is that someone else said it. Such is the sorry state of “journalism” today. 

So in the aftermath of the carnage, unsubstantiated rumors and gossip became “reports”, which were breathlessly passed on but which quickly became discarded as new and more lurid rumors took center stage. The device was a pipe bomb. There were two other devices found that hadn’t exploded. No, three. Twelve people were dead, among them an eight year old girl who’d come to see her Daddy run the marathon. A Saudi national had been arrested running from the scene. And, of course, before the echoes of the blasts had died down and the wounded were still bleeding in the streets of Boston, conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones of the online nuthouse Infowars were proclaiming that the whole thing was a government conspiracy. (When an Infowars “reporter” asked if the bombing was a “false flag operation to take away our civil liberties,” Governor Deval Patrick’s three-word response was a lesson in how to handle stupid questions: “No. Next question.”)

The wave of BS reached a crescendo on Wednesday when CNN said there were “reports” that a suspect had been identified. Then there were “reports” that there was a suspect in custody. Then there were “reports” that there wasn’t. Finally, the Boston FBI office released a statement refuting the story: “Contrary to widespread reporting, no arrest has been made in connection with the Boston Marathon attack.” Once can almost hear the exasperation as the release goes on to say: “Over the past day and a half, there have been a number of press reports based on information from unofficial sources that has been inaccurate. Since these stories often have unintended consequences, we ask the media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting.” 

Yeah, good luck with that. 

The part about “unintended consequences” brings to mind one of the most pernicious effects of misinformation: if you say one thing today, and say something different tomorrow, there are thousands of the above-mentioned conspiracy theorists out there who’ll insist that the correction was not an attempt to set the record straight, but is part of a cover-up. For example, after the Newtown massacre, one incorrect MSNBC report that killer Adam Lanza (originally misidentified as his brother Ryan) had left his Bushmaster semi-automatic mass murder weapon in his car is still being seized on to this day by callous gun nuts to “prove” that the government is lying about assault weapons to promote the “gun control agenda.” Of course, these are the same people who won’t believe anything else ever reported on MSNBC, but you can’t expect consistency from crazy people. 

Sure enough, as soon as it was revealed that the “Saudi national” who was supposedly taken into custody was being questioned as a witness, not a suspect, commenters at the right wing website “the Blaze” were proclaiming that the President was “protecting his Muslim brothers.” 

I know we can’t forbid news organizations from spreading misinformation (darn that pesky First Amendment!). But there ought to be some kind of required warning label on all the crap the news media spreads in the immediate aftermath of a horrible crisis. Something like a disclaimer in the ubiquitous “crawl” running across the bottom of the screen: “Warning: thanks to the near-total erosion of journalistic standards, the so-called ‘information’ you are receiving in this broadcast may be based on rumor, half-truth, prejudice, completely unfounded speculation, or the person on-screen just pulling allegations out of their rear end because they have nothing solid to report but don’t want to just stand there looking like a goober.” If we’re going to be so consistently misinformed by our media, we should at least be informed of that fact.

Dusty Rhoades lives, writes, and practices law in Carthage.

27 Percenters: Still Crazy After All These Years

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There's been a lot of talk lately about the 1 percent versus the 99 percent. But there's another number that's at least as important in American political discourse these days. That number is the "crazification factor": 27 percent. 

The crazification factor was first noticed by, of all people, television writer John Rogers. He first wrote about it as far back as 2005 on his blog, titled "Kung Fu Monkey." He'd observed the 2004 Illinois Senate election, in which Barack Obama ran against Alan Keyes. Keyes, as you may remember, was trotted in from out of state a mere 86 days before the election after the campaign of the Republican nominee, Jack Ryan, imploded because of a bizarre sex scandal.
Keyes was clearly a sacrificial lamb, a guy no one expected to win; not only did he have no base in Illinois, but he was also, as Rogers put it, "plainly, obviously, completely crazy ... head-trauma crazy."Both candidates were black, so race wasn't a factor. And yet, Rogers noted, Keyes still got 27 percent of the vote in Illinois.

"They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever, ahead of rational judgment," he said. "Even 5 percent of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behavior. I think you have to assume a 27 percent crazification factor in any population."

It seemed like a joke to me at first. But then I noticed that that 27 percent figure kept cropping up more and more, in poll after poll. Give or take a couple of percentage points, pollsters often find about 27 percent of Americans who believe in things that are against their own self-interest or that are just mind-bendingly ridiculous.

For instance, in the darkest days of the 2008 economic meltdown, after the bankruptcy of Lehmann Brothers, the federal bailout of AIG and the collapse of Merrill Lynch, approval ratings for President George W. Bush were still at 27 percent, and hovered around that figure for quite some time before taking their final nosedive.

(Yes, He Who Must Not Be Named, and not Barack Obama, was president when the economy tanked, with his beloved tax cuts firmly in place, something you probably won't learn from watching Fox News.)

After Sarah Palin flamed out in spectacular fashion and took John McCain's presidential campaign into the ground with her, 27 percent of people surveyed in one poll still thought she would have made a good president.

A poll in January of this year on the subject of gridlock in Congress found that 60 percent of those polled believed that President Obama was trying to work with Republicans; 27 percent believed that Republicans in Congress were trying to do the same. In January, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 27 percent of people still supported the tea party.
Give a couple of points margin for error, and crazification becomes more obvious. After the 2008 election, 26 percent of those polled believed that it had been stolen for Barack Obama by ACORN, even though there wasn't evidence of a single fraudulent vote actually being cast as a result of a few registration workers boosting their paychecks by signing up nonexistent voters. (No, Mickey Mouse did not try to vote, something you probably won't learn from listening to Rush Limbaugh.)

During the health care debate, when polled as to what kind of reform bill should pass, 26 percent of respondents told a CBS poll "no bill at all."

Note well: We aren't talking about people who simply don't agree with the administration. That figure is, of course, higher than 27 percent. We're talking about people who do so for reasons that are completely and incurably crazy, people wedded to "facts" that simply aren't true and opinions with no support in reality.

They're immune to persuasion. They're aided by right-wing media outlets that reject the idea of objective facts and objective proof; any evidence you care to provide that does not fit their narrative is, to them, the product of "bias" or an "agenda," no matter how unimpeachable the source. That's one of the hallmarks of true delusional thinking: It's immune to reality, and so are the 27 percenters.

So what can you do? Well, if you're one of those people who roll their eyes at the idea that President Obama is going to send federal agents to check on your light bulbs, or who shake your heads in disbelief when people, after all this time, still put up billboards and bumper stickers asking "Where's the Birth Certificate?" - then you need to get out and vote.

Because the crazies surely will.

DHS Saves Us From Terrorist Tweeters

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It's often said that the Americans and the British are "two peoples separated by a common language." Recently, a pair of British tourists learned the hard way just how dangerous that can be.
Bar manager Leigh van Bryan, 24, of Coventry, and his friend, 26-year-old Emily Bunting, of Birmingham, were very excited about their upcoming trip to Hollywood. Leigh (who, like everyone else under the age of 35 these days, has an account on Twitter) sent a message to another friend asking if she'd like to have a drink "before I go and destroy America."
Now, as it turns out, "destroy" is a term used among young Britons to indicate that one intends to party hard. To get plastered, bombed, wasted. To, in a more familiar American idiom, paint the town red.
It seems that a lot of the slang used in Perfidious Albion has a violent and vaguely sinister cast. For instance, when someone from the UK tells you he could "murder an Indian," he is not expressing homicidal frustration with some unhelpful call-center wallah from Bangalore. He's telling you he's hungry for curry, which seems to have replaced fish and chips as the primary take-away food of the British Isles.
If they say they're going to "pop out and smoke a fag," they're not planning to ambush a homosexual by jumping out of an alley and shooting him; they're going outside for a cigarette.
If a Brit wants to "have a butcher's" at something, it means they want to have a look. Describing someone as "dead sexy" doesn't mean they resemble a hot zombie; it's the equivalent of "drop-dead gorgeous." And so on.
(Thanks to my UK pals Georgette Goldie and John Rickards for advice on the slang).
Apparently the U.S. Department of Homeland Security does not have a dictionary of British slang handy. It does, however, have some way to scan the Twitterverse for ominous words and phrases like "destroy America." Therefore, when Leigh and Emily landed at LAX, they were detained, handcuffed, thrown into a cell, interrogated, then unceremoniously hustled onto the next plane back to England.
Reports that Fox News pundit and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan flew into a rage and had to be sedated when he found out that the DHS had failed to waterboard the couple could not be confirmed at press time.
I don't know about you, but I certainly feel a whole lot safer. I'll sleep so much better tonight knowing that Homeland Security is out there, reading Twitter (which their official report refers to repeatedly as "Tweeter"), looking for the buzzwords that will aid them in their tireless quest to protect us from the peril of 20-something British hipsters coming to our shores to get their drink on.
They even searched Leigh and Emily's luggage looking for shovels and picks because Leigh had posted another joking tweet about "digging up Marilyn Monroe." The young man's attempts to explain that this was a reference to an episode of the American TV series "Family Guy" fell on deaf ears.
"You really [bad word] up when you sent that tweet, boy," one DHS agent is reported to have told Leigh before they threw him in the cage.
So, from this, we learn quite a few things about the Department of Homeland Security. They believe that the next major terrorist attack might be perpetrated by someone who will telegraph the strike by posting explicitly about it on Twitter, even though DHS is not really sure of Twitter's actual name.
They also believe that such an attack might take the form of an attempt to dig up long-dead movie stars by people who lug shovels across the Atlantic in their luggage because they don't realize America has hardware stores. They don't watch "Family Guy." And finally, they make Buford T. Justice, the comically incompetent redneck sheriff from "Smokey and the Bandit" look like Jack Bauer from "24."



Maybe I'm being too hard on the DHS guys. Maybe they're only acting like idiots as part of a cunning plan to lull the bad guys into a false sense of security. I know one thing: It's a bad idea to post the words "destroy America" in print or on-line.
Excuse me, I have to go now. There's someone hammering on my door.

Suckers.

I know it seems like I'm obsessing over this birther thing...but these idiots are, like PETA, a gift that just keeps on giving. The latest twist comes in an e-mail from wingnut reader Russell (who, as you may remember, calls the President "part joo [sic] and part nigger--a mongrel hybrid"). The e-mail begins:

I SUSPECT THAT THIS WILL BE THE MOST HEAVILY FORWARDED E-MAIL IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. I AM SURE THAT YOU WANTED TO KNOW. HERE WE HAVE INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET THAT WOULD NEVER BE DISTRIBUTED BY THE NEWSPAPERS. RUSS

This "bombshell" destined to become "the most heavily forwarded e-mail in the history of the world:" is a link to a story at the right wing online scandal sheet WorldNut...Sorry, WorldNet daily. This story claims that Barack Obama's "real" birth certificate has now been found in Kenya:

California attorney Orly Taitz, who has filed a number of lawsuits demanding proof of Barack Obama's eligibility to serve as president, has released a copy of what purports to be a Kenyan certification of birth and has filed a new motion in U.S. District Court for its authentication.

Good luck with that there motion, Orly. As several people with working brain cells almost immediately noticed, the Kenyan certificate is not just a fake, but a clumsy one:

First, the hospital is Coast Provincial General Hospital (sometimes said to be Coast Province General Hospital), not Coast General Hospital.

Second, Kenya was a Dominion the date this certificate was allegedly issued and would not become a republic for 8 months.

Third, Mombasa belonged to Zanzibar when Obama was born, not Kenya.

Fourth, Obama's father's village would be nearer to Nairobi, not Mombasa.

Fifth, the number 47O44-- 47 is Obama's age when he became president, followed by the letter O (not a zero) followed by 44--he is the 44th president.

Sixth, EF Lavender is a laundry detergent.

Seventh, would a nation with a large number of Muslims actually say "Christian name" (as opposed to name) on the birth certificate?

Eighth, his father (born in 1936) would have been 24 or 25 when he was born and not 26.

Ninth, it was called the "Central Nyanza District," not Nyanza Province. The regions were changed to provinces in 1970.

I still predict, however, that a year from now I'll still be getting e-mails from these brain dead racist idiots about the "Kenyan birth certificate" that's being suppressed by the forces of evil. You know, the one from the "Republic of Kenya" dated from before Kenya was a Republic and signed by a laundry detergent.

There truly is one born every minute. Wonder if Orly and Co fall for the DEAR FRIEND e-mails from Nigeria, too?

UPDATE: More here, where a commenter also points out:

The price is shown as 7s. 6d. This is not valid Kenyan currency. The forger must have assumed that Kenya used British currency, but Kenya never used pennies, they used cents. It should say 7s. 50c. if it were authentic.

You're So Vain, You Probably Think This Column Is About You

It seems that self-proclaimed "radio talk show host" Pamela Furr felt that she was one of the targets of a recent column about what it takes to become a right wing pundit. She posted on her blog:

I've got much to say since I've been on hiatus, but this is a very interesting "column" from a local attorney here in Moore County, NC.

Those that know me realize that I had to respond. After all, this is what I do as a right winged, wingnut! LOL Here is my letter to the editor for the Pilot Newspaper in Southern Pines, NC.

Dear Editors:

My name is Pamela Furr and I guess I am one of those "right wing" radio talk show hosts that Mr. Rhodes fulminated about in his highly entertaining column last Sunday. OK, let's face it -- the column was wrongheaded and full of hyperbole. Call me a nut, though (and Mr. Rhodes already has, I guess, by inference) - but a full life and a profession spent interviewing politicians (yes, including Mr. Obama) have caused me to consider extreme wrongheadedness to be highly entertaining!

Imagine my surprise and delight while visiting my parents on Easter Sunday as I opened up my hometown paper to stumble upon some of the vilest tripe masked as satire I have read in quite some time (I have to think that somewhere in Dublin, seismologists are scratching their heads over the rhythmic spinning underneath Jonathon Swift's grave). Normally one does not encounter such vitriolic wit outside of rest stop bathroom walls. Bravo, Mr. Rhodes!!! Bravo!

I am not interested in matching Mr. Rhodes' feeble attempt at satire by going point-by-point (though this might be an excellent exercise for a conservative Poli Sci class, if such a body existed), but one thing especially tickled my funny bone:

Mr. Rhodes -- None of us "right wing nuts" has EVER said Obama was a bad speaker. That is, not as long as the teleprompter doesn't go on strike. I mean, have you ever heard such a chorus of uh's, um's and ah's in your life as when that screen goes blank?

Ronald Reagan could talk all day about substantive things without a cathode ray tube anywhere nearby. So could Bill Clinton. Well, Clinton could talk all day - how substantive his talks were, varied from day to day (or… cigar to cigar?).

And neither of these men had to fill time with a Special Olympics joke [to digress a bit - a SPECIAL OLYMICS JOKE???? Imagine a Republican making such a joke - he would have to commit honorable hari kari before the press let go of THAT story].

Sincerely,

Pamela Furr, right winged wingnut talk show host

This raises a number of questions, most notably "who the hell is Pamela Furr?" Fortunately, the Google is our friend, and it tells us that Ms. Furr was recently canned from her job at Hunstville Alabama's WVNN, so her claim to be a right wing radio talk show host is dubious at best. I suspect that her "visit to her hometown" is more akin to moving into her parents' basement. (A suspicion which she has since confirmed in her comments, BTW)

We don't really know why Ms. Furr lost her job. We don't know if it was for making racist or anti-catholic comments on the air, as she seems fond of doing on her blog. Since spelling isn't really crucial on the radio, it's probably not for her inability to spell simple things like "Olympics" or my name. I thought for a moment it might be for her utter failure at fact-checking, since another quick Google reveals that St. Ronnie did indeed use a teleprompter. Often. But then I thought, "no that can't be it, because since when do right wingers give a damn about fact-checking?"

So it remains a mystery. We here at Fresh Hell wish Ms. Furr good fortune in her future job searches. We would also seek to reassure her that no, the column was not directed at her, because until she decided to poke her head up and yap, I had no earthly idea who she was.

But thank you so much for proving the point of the column, which was that the right wing is totally obsessed with meaningless trivia like teleprompters. This is most likely because they have no ideas, no coherent plan, no solutions of their own, and as we've repeatedly seen, no principles other than IOKIYAR!

Return of the Jed-I: What Sarah Palin Could Learn From the Beverly Hillbillies

Latest newspaper column:

Well, I thought former VP candidate Sarah Palin was going to drop off the radar after the Republicans' disastrous showing in the recent election. Made me kind of sad, really. I haven't had such a reliable source of material for mockery since I discovered PETA.

But it looks like I didn't need to be depressed. Caribou Barbie popped back up recently in an interview in which, in true wingnut fashion, she blamed everyone but herself for the troubles of the McCain campaign. She seems to have a particular ax to grind against Katie Couric.

"Katie," she said, "you're not the center of everyone's universe."

Oh, Mee-yow. In fact, much of the interview sounds the wingnut theme of "yew smart people think yer purty smart, don't yew? Well, yew ain't! So thar!"

The Palin fans still remaining in the Republican Party seem determined to turn the GOP into the anti-smart-people party, because smart people don't cotton to Gov. Palin's "folksy, down-home" style. The Palin Renaissance, however, apparently includes purging even the remaining smart people within the GOP itself.

A recent blog post by right-winger Robert Stacy McCain (who bills himself as "The Other McCain") takes the "conservative intellectuals" within the Republican Party to task: "That born-again, down-to-earth, drawling Texas thing," Other McCain writes, "somehow, it had once made Bush seem like Gary Cooper in "High Noon." But as the disasters mounted and the poll numbers headed southward, that Gary Cooper glow faded and these conservative intellectuals turned on their TVs to behold, with unspeakable horror, President Jethro Bodine."

You know, Other McCain, I'm glad you chose that analogy. Because if there's one thing I know plenty about, it's "The Beverly Hillbillies." I've spent many a happy hour before the tube, ruminating about the wacky Clampett clan and what their popularity tells us about our attitudes toward wealth and class issues. So allow me to retort.

If you're going to use a Beverly Hillbillies-based analogy, Other McCain, you'd be more accurate in saying that with George Dubbya Bush, people thought they were voting for Uncle Jed. Jed may have been uneducated, but he was calm, wise, and a peacemaker at heart. Jed was also a thoughtful man. When he had a difficult problem, he'd sit down and whittle for a spell until he thought of a solution. Jed was a guy you could count on in a crisis.

Unfortunately, what people got with George Dubbya Bush was not Jed, but rather, as Other McCain correctly points out, Jed's nephew Jethro: arrogantly convinced of his own rightness and full of crazy half-baked schemes that he thought were brilliant but which always ended in disaster.

The Other McCain goes on to say that those same "conservative intellectuals" turned on Palin, not because she was a trainwreck of a candidate, but because they were projecting their snotty smart-person disappointments with Bush onto her.

"The conservative intellectuals," he scolds, "looked at her and saw Vice President Ellie May Clampett."

Well, no. Ellie May was noted not only for her hotness, but also for her sweetness. Oh, she could kick the snot out of Jethro if she had to, but mostly she was devoted to the care of her "critters." It's hard to imagine Ellie May talking about someone "pallin' around with terrorists."

Sarah Palin, in contrast, came off as an attack dog. Palin, sad to say, was more like Granny than Ellie May. Granny (aka Daisy Moses, late of Napoleon, Tenn.) was, like Palin, belligerent, prone to dramatics, and shall we say, a little fuzzy on her history. Granny thought the South won the Civil War; Sarah Palin insisted she'd said "no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere.

It's important to remember this fact: Granny, like Jethro, rarely if ever prevailed. In fact, most of the show's plots involved Jed trying to mitigate the damage from Jethro and Granny's crazy ideas and antics. And, lest we forget, Jed wasn't above enlisting the help of the only intellectual on the show, the long-suffering Miss Jane.

Here's the secret to that folksy, down-home, unschooled persona: It works only so long as the person exhibits some sort of innate wit or intelligence. It works even better if the apparent simpleton can slip in some zingers that deflate the pompous eggheads.

Look at Ronald Reagan. Reagan could pull off folksy and down-home, despite his years in Hollywood, because (a) as an actor, he actually could think on his feet and come up with the occasional good line, and (b) he had some decent speechwriters for when he couldn't do it on his own.

In short, if you want to learn how to do the down-home folksy thing right as a politician, you definitely should study up on your "Beverly Hillbillies." But you need to be more Jed and less Jethro or Granny. If Sarah Palin had just taken that lesson, she might be a heartbeat away from the presidency today.

Wingnut Hysteria Report: Saturday

Every time the kindler, gentler side of me* starts thinking that maybe, just maybe, modern conservatives aren't just bat-shit crazy, I have only to click over to the wingnut site known as Confederate Yankee to remind myself.

Seems that, recently, Blogger was locking people out of their sites without warning and with the "explanation" that said blogs were violating Blogger's Terms of Service.

Well, since no adverse event, not even a glitch in the notoriously glitch-prone Blogger software, can take place without an America-Hating, Terrorist-Loving, Godless Obaminite Libural Conspiracy behind it, CY immediately saddled his swaybacked steed and, like some demented avatar of Paul Revere, rode out to warn the blogosphere that Obama's Netroots Supporters Continue "Blog Burning":

Online activists thought to be loyal to Barack Obama are once against using Google's software tools to target rival political blogs for elimination as spam blogs. This occurred earlier this year when Democratic bloggers with a preference for Hillary Clinton also found themselves locked out of their own blogs, all because of spurious and apparently orchestrated claims that these blogs are spam blogs. Pro-Obama activists were blamed for those attempts at censorship as well."

There's even a picture of Nazis burning books to drive home the point.

Except, wait a minute....

You mentioned in your post that "quite a few other bloggers" are getting locked out of their Blogger accounts. Try hundreds, if not thousands. The Blogger help board is full of frustrated folks like myself.

I am a "genea-blogger"; a genealogy blogger. I had three of my six public blogs (I have eight total on Blogger) get locked out yesterday afternoon. Immediately, I submitted all three for review. My main one (http://ancestories1.blogspot.com) is an award-winning blog that I've had for a year and a half on Blogger with nearly 700 posts. It is one of the main genealogy blogs read in the blogosphere.

So CY had to back down and apologize. Not to the Obama supporters he's slandered, of course, but to his own readers. And the Nazi pic is still up. Because, as we know, it's not the hysterical, authoritarian, magical-thinking personality cult that passes for conservatism these days that's fascistic, it's the people calling for civil liberties, checks and balances, and accountable government.

What an asshole.

Hat tip to Sadly, No!

*Yes, I do have one. I'm as surprised as you. Keep it to yourself, okay?

Because Nothing Shows Off Your Erudition Like a Fart Joke

From the Letters Section at ThePilot.com :

Dusty Rhoades, when you look up "liberal media" in the dictionary, your picture is there.

I beat out favorite wingnut whipping boy CBS? Awesome.

As a matter of fact, if you were any further to the left, you'd fall off the page.

Admiral Smith was dead-on with his Wesley Clark quote. Sen. McCain didn't bring up his Vietnam service. Wesley Clark did.

Yes, as we know, John McCain never, ever mentions his service in Vietnam and his time as a POW. Never. He's just modest like that.


In contrast, John Kerry flaunted and exploited his service with his "Reporting for Duty" salute. That brought out people who actually served with him and questioned some of that service.

And by "questioned", we mean "told a bunch of lies which were easily refuted, and which John McCain himself said were dishonest and dishonorable* , yet are still mindlessly repeated by Kool-Aid drinking 27 percenters like this letter writer."

The liberal media now love to use the words "swift boating" whenever one of their own is scrutinized.

I believe you still might have some time to change the title of your next book. May I suggest "Breaking Wind"? Perhaps your falling off the page might not be such a bad idea.

Dennis Strojny, Pinewild

Oooh, snap! Dennis, with witty repartee like that, the National Review is not beyond your reach.


*before, that is, Mr. Straight Talk Maverick McCain started taking their money.

You Can Trust Us, We're Professionals

Latest Newspaper Column

For months, Hillary Clinton's campaign has been hammering on one major theme in its race against Barack Obama: Hillary is "tested." She's "ready to lead on day one."

All in all, they're trying to broadcast an image of steely-eyed competence. But recent events in the campaign have made the Clintonistas look like the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.

For example, there was an interesting moment in a recent conference call between reporters and top officials of the Clinton campaign, including her national security director, Lee Feinstein.

You've probably seen the Clinton ads that show children sleeping peacefully in their beds as the announcer says in an ominous tone: "Your children are asleep at 3 a.m. There's a phone ringing in the White House. Who do you want to answer it?" The ad goes on to tout Clinton as "tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world."

So it's only natural to ask, as Slate's Jon Dickerson did, "What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary's career where she's been tested by crisis?"

Considering that this whole experience mantra is the centerpiece of her campaign, you'd think somebody would have been ready for that question. But in the recording of the phone conference, there's this long pause as if someone had just asked the people to conjugate Latin verbs.

Someone finally speaks up, stumbling through a long rambling speech that begins, "Well, I think she's been tested throughout her life" and going on to tell us that Hillary's really, really experienced. There's some mention that she stood up for women's rights in China, which is nice and stuff, but not what you could call a White-House-phone-ringing-at-3-in-the-morning kind of crisis.

Then there's what happened in Texas. This was one of the "firewall states" where Clinton supposedly had to win big. She won, but not big.

The way Texas apportions delegates is as, shall we say, unique as the rest of that state. It's insanely complicated, but what it boils down to is this: Districts that are strongly Democratic like urban areas and the liberal city of Austin get more delegates. There's also a caucus in addition to the primary, but thinking about that just makes my head hurt.

Suffice it to say that Clinton's "win" in Texas could still leave Obama with more delegates. As of this writing, by some counts she had a one-delegate lead in Texas; by others, she was behind, since Obama did better in the caucuses.

But what was really telling about this whole thing is that, according to some reports, this bizarre system took the Clinton campaign by surprise. The Washington Post reported on Feb. 18 that "several top Clinton strategists and fundraisers became alarmed after learning of the state's unusual provisions during a closed-door strategy meeting this month, according to one person who attended."

Considering the importance of winning Texas, this is something like an NFL team being surprised to learn, right before taking the field in a major playoff game, that a first down requires that you advance the ball ten yards. Sure, the Texas system is confusing, but these guys are supposed to be the experts. To quote the movie "This Is Spinal Tap," it's not their job to be as confused as we are.

The real highlight, or maybe lowlight, came in Texas at Hillary's "Texas Sized Town Hall" on March 3. According to The Wall Street Journal, when the members of the press corps who follow the campaign were taken to their press room, they discovered that they'd been placed in the men's room of the nearby community center.

"The tables set up for reporters," The WSJ chortled, "nearly abutted the urinals. That made for a more spirited rush than usual for the best working space, with female reporters quickly staking out chairs on the small room's opposite side."

Now, considering the way the so-called "liberal" media have savaged Clinton throughout this campaign, the staff might have been forgiven for showing the ink-stained wretches exactly what they thought of them.

However, an "abjectly apologetic" Clinton spokesman insisted that misinformation, not payback, was behind the mishap. She insisted she'd been told the area had been described as a "locker room-sized" space. Apparently the concept of actually going down and looking never occurred to anyone.

To be fair, how well-run your campaign is doesn't necessarily reflect how well you'll govern. George W. Bush for example, ran a crackerjack campaign. 'Nuff said. But keep in mind: Senior campaign aides often find themselves in advisory or even Cabinet positions if their boss wins. Let's just hope, if Hillary does actually take this thing, that the staffer who didn't know where the bathrooms are doesn't end up running FEMA.

Clinton, Press Reach New Low In Relationship

CJR:

In a dispatch to the WSJ’s Washington Wire blog, Calmes reported from the workspace set aside for reporters during Clinton’s “Texas-sized townhall” yesterday evening: the men’s room of Austin’s Berger Activity Center. The five-hour-long water-closeting was the result of an apparent error (the room had been described to her as a “locker-room space,” an “abjectly apologetic” Clinton press aide, Jamie Smith, told reporters), and the press “were mostly amused” by the scene..... At one point during Water(Closet)gate, Time’s Karen Tumulty reported, “a gentleman just wandered in, expecting to use the facilities, and looked very startled to see three dozen reporters typing away on their laptops.

This, lest we forget, is the organization of the "tested, experienced, ready to go on day one" candidate.

I'm A Moron--And I VOTE!

N.Y. Town Accidentally Bans Beer:

When they held a referendum in the little town of Potter, New York, to determine if one of the town's restaurants, which already sold beer in its attached convenience store, could sell brewskis in the restaurant itself, well, hijinks ensued:

State alcoholic beverage control laws require that whenever a town wants to expand the way it sells alcohol, it must ask voters five questions — “stupid questions,” according to the town supervisor, Leonard Lisenbee, a retired federal game warden who has been in office six years and who characterized the state-mandated wording as post-Prohibition-era legalese.

The questions, requiring more than 300 words, ask whether alcohol should be allowed in a variety of settings, including a hotel and, separately, a “summer hotel.” “Shall any person be authorized to sell alcoholic beverages at retail to be consumed on premises licensed pursuant to the provisions of Section 64 of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law?” was the relevant one to the Hitchin’ Rail. But there was also “Shall any person be authorized to sell alcoholic beverages at retail, not to be consumed on the premises, where sold in the town of Potter?” which relates to stores like the Federal Hollow.

“I read it and I couldn’t understand it, and I’ve got a college education,” Mr. Lisenbee said. “When voters get confused, they vote no.”

And they did.

And so, the town of Potter brought back Prohibition.

The voters said no to all five questions, not only keeping the Hitchin’ Rail’s restaurant from serving beer and wine, but also blocking both stores from selling it, upon the expiration of their current licenses. Which means that on July 1, when the Federal’s license expires, the closest six-pack available for purchase will be in a town 10 miles away.