REPORT: Obama Says Tea Party Members Fit Profile of Domestic Terrorists (Really?)

Posted by Mark NC on July 6, 2013 at 10:52 am. 22 Comments :

In a press conference in Tanzania, the National Report notes an extraordinary exchange between a journalist from the Associated Press, Ramona Darlington, and President Barack Obama. According to the Report, Darlington asked Obama to explain what the profile of an American domestic terrorist is. Obama’s answer will surely raise the ire of the Tea Party and their members:

“Typically domestic terrorists in the U.S. are people who cling to obsolete beliefs from the time of the American Revolution. They are conservative Christians, reactionary Republicans and conspiracy theorists many of whom belong to racist hate groups. […] Tea Partiers commonly own guns and stock up ammunition and food in anticipation of starting another civil war to overthrow the will of the governing body who represent all of the American people.”

This is a shocking statement coming from the President of the United States. Sure, the Tea Party has much in common with the Taliban and other violent extremists. They both believe that religion should be the foundation of government. They are both virulently anti-gay. They would both enforce a submissive role for women who must not be permitted to make decisions about their own bodies. They both have a perverse obsession with guns. They both advocate overthrowing the secular governments that they despise. And while these similarities are apparent to objective observers, for the President to express these thoughts openly is astonishing.

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Naturally, the mainstream media has suppressed the reporting of these controversial remarks. Why would they do that? Could it be because they are in the tank for Obama as conservatives have long argued? Or could it be that the source of the story, The National Report, is an obviously satirical web site and that the whole thing was a joke?

Despite all the evidence that the story is a fake, many on the Tea Party right have taken it to heart and are outraged that the President said these things that he never actually said. The story has already been picked up by FreeRepublic, TeaParty.org, TruthAboutGuns, and a popular Ron Paul fan site, the DailyPaul. These geniuses must have failed to notice the conspicuously comedic content filling the site’s home page. Here are samples of their current articles in addition to the one about the terrorist Tea Party:

Was Paula Deen Framed for Racism by Tasteless Food Trend Purists?
Lawmaker Corks Gay Talk Hole with God’s Law, Crowned D&D Champ.
Selfish Wendy Davis Rejects Rick Perry Compliment, Could Have Kidney Infection.
Poll: Can Zimmerman get a Mistrial if the Lady Jury is on Their Periods?
New CDC Study Indicates Pets Of Gay Couples Worse At Sports, Better At Fashion Than Pets Of Straight Couples.

Since this wasn’t enough to alert the Tea Party dimwits to the fact that the site peddles parody, they might have avoided making asses of themselves by reading the site’s rather humorous disclaimer:

“National Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news. […] Advice given is NOT to be construed as professional. If you are in need of professional help (and you may be if you are on this page), please consult a professional.”

Was that too vague as well? Then perhaps the Teabaggers should have done just a modicum of research whereby they would have discovered something that was later noted by a spokesman for the Associated Press:

“There is no AP reporter named Ramona Darlington, this is not an AP story and as best as I can tell, a few people have been had.”

This is fairly typical for the great thinkers of the Tea Party. They repudiate the science that overwhelmingly proves that Climate Change is occurring and is caused by humans. They reject evolution and cling to the biblical myth that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. And they have fallen for similar scams that range from Obama being a Muslim from Kenya, to FEMA building concentration camps, to the health care law creating death panels, to government plotting mass gun confiscations, and on and on.

Consequently, it isn’t much of stretch for them to buy into this phony news story. It presents a ridiculous notion that they want to believe so badly that it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s actually true, or even plausible. And that pretty much sums up their entire political philosophy. They’re wrong on the economy. They’re wrong on taxes. They are hysterically off-kilter on the Constitution, despite their neato costumes. And they are an imminent danger to satirical sites like the National Report because they are funnier in their own ineptness than anything a good satirist can invent.

The GOP Alienates Another Key Constituent Group: Seniors

Posted by Mark NC on July 1, 2013 at 8:36 pm. 7 Comments :

The Republican Party seems to be on a frantic mission to destroy their reputation with every constituency of voters in America, other than the Taliban wing of the Tea Party Christianists.

The GOP is currently engaged in nationwide battles to give government control over women’s bodies. They are exploiting every opportunity to suppress voting rights for African-Americans and other minorities. They oppose immigration reform that would eventually offer a path to legalized status for Latinos, some of whom have lived their whole lives in the United States. They obstructed the enactment of measures that would have prevented the interest rates for student loans from doubling. And, as always, they work feverishly to protect the wealthy from paying a fair tax rate, while allowing the rates to increase for those less fortunate.

So let’s see…who did they leave out? They got women, African-Americans, Latinos, youth, the poor and middle class. Who is left for Republicans to piss off?

Well, it should come as no surprise that the masterminds running the Republican machine noticed the crack in their strategic foundation and have promptly dedicated themselves to its repair.

That’s why Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the senate, jumped into action to attack Hillary Clinton, a prospective candidate for president in 2016, as an old hag, thus insulting the final demographic group that may still have had some affection for the GOP. McConnell uproariously joked…

“Don’t tell me Democrats are the party of the future when their presidential ticket for 2016 is shaping up to look like a rerun of the ‘Golden Girls.'”

Let’s just set aside the fact that “The Golden Girls” was a successful and popular sitcom that ran for seven years, with a cast of mature women who had active lives professionally, socially, and romantically. America’s seniors, who already have some cause to reject the Republican agenda that has sought to dismantle Social Security and cut funding for Medicare, can’t be too thrilled with being portrayed as useless fossils who should be consigned to history’s dustbin. Now they have been directly assaulted as has-beens, in the words of Karl Rove, who said of Clinton and her peers that “we’re at the end of her generation and that it’s time for another to step forward.”

For the record, Hillary Clinton is 65, Karl Rove is 62, and Mitch McConnell is 71. In January of 2017, when the next president is inaugurated, Clinton will be a year younger than Ronald Reagan was when his term began.

McConnell had better start paying more attention to what’s in his own Depends. He is approaching his thirtieth year in office and has one of the lowest favorability ratings of any sitting senator. He is up for reelection next year and his first announced opponent is the 34 year old Kentucky Secretary of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes. Not exactly what you would call a “Golden Girl,” unless you what you meant by golden was someone with a rich set of skills, experience and support.

It’s hard to understand what the Republican Party is up to by alienating so many voters. Perhaps their plan to is expand their efforts to define corporations and fetuses as persons and give them the right to vote. But if they have to depend on Teabaggers, End-Timers, and NRA-theists, they are likely to find themselves elected only in districts dug into underground bunkers with ham radio reception that only gets Glenn Beck and Pat Robertson.

Wonkette: IRSgate Joins Solyndragate and Benghazigate In Fake Scandal Heaven

Posted by Mark NC on June 25, 2013 at 3:04 pm. 11 Comments :

I’d like to thank Wonkette for saving me the trouble of writing the post-mortem on the phony IRS scandal. After new evidence emerged revealing that groups other than conservative Tea Party organizations were subjected to stricter scrutiny, I intended to write a detailed report exposing the partisan fraud manufactured by Rep. Darrell Issa and his right-wing cohorts.

But Wonkette just published a superb summary of the affair with an abundance of humor and righteous mockery. So I’m gonna just leave it to them. Read it here for yourself, but here are a few tasty excerpts:

“In addition to being a cosmic turd straight from Satan’s bunghole, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is now just a laughing stock on Capitol Hill. If anyone anywhere takes this clown seriously in the future, we will be shocked.”

Actually, I won’t be shocked. There will be plenty of idiots at Fox News, WorldNetDaily, and the Tea Party Gazette, who will continue to take Issa seriously.

“[S]uck it all you teabagger crazies complaining about how much butthurt you went through while suffering from your goddam persecution complex. Turns out you are all a bunch of whiny babies who jumped the gun before all the facts were in, and now you look like completely incompetent political hacks who are better off crawling back to whatever cosmic bunghole you came from.”

As reported here at News Corpse, evidence has been emerging for weeks that the whole premise of the scandal was falling apart. Most of the principles turned out to be Republicans. Issa was cherry-picking information to release. The more data that was made public, the more obvious their lies became. And now Issa, who had decided before any of this began the President was guilty of masterminding the whole thing, is whining about prejudging.

“Rep. Issa is worried that someone else is jumping to conclusions! We are pretty sure there is a word for that, but at the moment all that comes to mind is ‘fuck that guy.'”

The article is actually full of relevant facts and links, and is well worth a look-see. Thanks again, Wonkette. Now I can concentrate on more important matters like the Fox News “psycho” analyst who is praising the Unabomber (yes, that’s real).

I’d also like to thank Wonkette for their fantastic review of my book, Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault On Truth, that they called “A valuable contribution to the effort to chip away at Bullshit Mountain.”

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Impeach Obama Rally Causes 10 Mile Yawn

Posted by Mark NC on June 12, 2013 at 3:41 pm. 6 Comments :

The folks at Fox Nation must be getting pretty desperate for any slime to fling Obama’s way. Clearly the parade of phony scandals has failed to convince the President to resign and join a Muslim monastery, so they are grasping for ever shorter straws in an effort to break Obama’s back.

Today the Fox Nationalists reported that an “Impeach Obama” rally in Southern California organized by confirmed birther had snarled traffic for 10 miles.

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First of all, anyone who has ever driven in Southern California knows that there are very few 10 mile stretches of highway that are not snarled at almost any time of day. That said, the particular claim in this case was easily disproved by photos supplied by the source for the story. One glance shows that traffic was moving fairly well. It also shows that the rally was a pathetic affair that brought out only six or seven nutcases who were unable to articulate an actual reason to impeach the President. Their signs carried unrelated messages concerning Benghazi, immigration, guns, and something about cults. This also further confirms earlier reports that these Teabaggers have not gained any ground in the wake of recent political melodramas.

The organizer was long-time birther, Roger Ogden. He has been advocating for Obama’s impeachment for years. He continues to believe that the birth certificate the White House posted was a fake. He also defends comparing Obama to Hitler and the Nazis. I’m not sure whether Ogden is a LaRouche follower, but there was at least one LaRouche sign at the rally.

I don’t particularly care what a loser like Ogden does on his spare Saturday mornings, but the fact that Fox News saw fit to feature this non-event on their web site says something about how frantic they are to invent a new controversy. But what made them think that a lame handful of wingnuts on a freeway overpass would have a better chance of stirring up trouble than the pseudo-scandals that have already flopped, I’ll never know.

Tea Party Groups Suing The IRS Never Suffered Any Harm

Posted by Mark NC on June 12, 2013 at 10:29 am. 14 Comments :

The more we learn about the IRS allegedly targeting Tea Party organizations for political purposes, the more it appears to be a thinly disguised scam by conservatives to whip up phony scandals in order to tarnish President Obama and his administration.

Never mind the fact that every named IRS employee connected to the alleged targeting just happens to be a Republican, today, Mother Jones Magazine has done the journalistic legwork of examining the pending lawsuits filed by the various Tea Party groups and has found that they are mostly frauds with little chance of success in the courtroom. The Mother Jones article goes into detail about why these cases are unlikely to prevail, but one of the key revelations sheds light on how suspect their motives really are.

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The most high profile of the cases is the one brought by uber-rightist legal publicity hound Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice. He has assembled 25 Tea Party groups into an action seeking both administrative and financial relief. The problem is that he is suing under a provision that addresses cases where applicants were seeking tax-exempt status for donations (501c3), but whose applications were denied or delayed. However, 23 of the 25 plaintiffs were not seeking tax-exempt status at all. They were merely applying for non-profit status (501c4). Therefore, the delays (there were no denials) would not have harmed the organizations fundraising ability because they were never structured to give donors a tax break.

That is a significant discovery because these hoaxters have been whining for weeks that their efforts to raise money were hampered by the IRS actions. As it turns out, there was nothing stopping them raising funds other than the fact that most Americans were repulsed by their extremist, right-wing agenda.

In addition, the complaints of the Teabaggers reveal that the IRS had good cause to subject them to extra scrutiny. They openly admit their belief that the IRS actions contributed to the electoral losses of Mitt Romney and other Republicans who may have won if these groups were not hamstrung by bureaucracy. But not only was there nothing preventing them from engaging in their work, their admissions show that they were, in fact, political operatives and not entitled to preferential tax treatment.

So once again, reality has encroached on the designs of the Tea Party to position themselves as “social welfare” organizations with no political motives. From the start they were deeply entangled with the Republican Party and their mission was always to advance GOP candidates and policies. And now we see that they are abusing the legal system for undeserved relief and for, of course, publicity. Expect these cases to be dismissed in short order, after which the Teabaggers will bellow some nonsense about the liberal courts denying them justice.

The Tea Party’s Campaign For Mass Stupidity Promoted By Fox News

Posted by Mark NC on June 7, 2013 at 2:17 pm. 12 Comments :

The Tea Party movement has never been confused with Mensa, the high IQ society. In fact, there have been numerous studies that rank Tea Partiers at the bottom of the intellectual scale, particularly those recently elected to congress. As a group they dismiss the findings of science on matters as diverse as climate change and evolution. And they are skeptical of academics and Ivy Leaguers whom they regard as out-of-touch elitists.

So it is in keeping with their aversion to education that they are now leading the fight against a set of teaching principles developed to insure that K-12 students are prepared to enter college. And predictably, Fox News is only too happy to advance their crusade for national ignorance.

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The target of the Teabaggers’ ire is a program called “Common Core State Standards,” a bipartisan project endorsed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Notice that both organizations are state-based reflecting the focus on local development and implementation.

Nevertheless, right-wingers are enraged by baseless allegations that this is just another federal boot on the throats of sovereign statehood. Not only is there no evidence to support such charges, the facts explicitly reject them. This is easily discovered with a little research, something these Teabaggers would be able to do if they were better educated. The web site for Common Core clearly rebuts their imaginary fears on a page debunking the myths:

Myth: These Standards amount to a national curriculum for our schools.
Fact: The Standards are not a curriculum. They are a clear set of shared goals and expectations for what knowledge and skills will help our students succeed. Local teachers, principals, superintendents and others will decide how the standards are to be met. Teachers will continue to devise lesson plans and tailor instruction to the individual needs of the students in their classrooms.

On another page of questions and answers about the program, concerns about its management and paranoia related to records are put to rest:

Q: Does the federal government play a role in standards implementation?
A: The federal government had no role in the development of the Common Core State Standards and will not have a role in their implementation. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led effort that is not part of No Child Left Behind and adoption of the standards is in no way mandatory.

Q: Are there data collection requirements associated with the Common Core State Standards?
A: There are no data collection requirements of states adopting the CCSS. Standards define expectations for what students should know and be able to do by the end of each grade. Implementing the CCSS does not require data collection. The means of assessing students and the data that results from those assessments are up to the discretion of each state and are separate and unique from the CCSS.

Well then, that should settle the matter. And if you think it does, then you don’t know how severely delusional these conservative conspiracy freaks are. Glenn Beck has called this the most important story in history. He has resolved to keep his children from attending college in order to avoid being “marked” by the system that he says is “scary.” He sermonized at length about it on his video blog, warning his disciples that…

“We have, I think, about twelve months to get Common Core out of our system. Our goal should be by the time school starts in the fall of 2014, it’s completely dead. That’s my goal.”

But it isn’t just conspiracy theory peddlers like Beck (and Alex Jones, and Michelle Malkin) who are panicking over the terrifying prospect of our children getting smarter. Nine U.S. senators, including Chuck Grassley, James Inhofe, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz, composed a strongly worded letter in opposition to Common Core. And the Republican National Committee has taken an official stance (pdf) against it.

Hoping to ignite another fake controversy, Fox News is joining ranks of the anti-education brigades. They dubbed Common Core “ObamaCore” in an attempt to generate the instant animus that their audience has for the President. Ironically, the practice of attaching the Obama prefix to various legislation has actually resulted in Obama getting extra credit for programs that have considerable popularity. Confirmation of the bipartisan support for Common Core is the enthusiastic backing of GOP governors including Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee. The plan has already been adopted in 45 states, with only the wingnut utopias of Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia, lagging behind.

In a peculiar bit of hypocrisy, Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal published an editorial in support of Common Core that was co-authored by Joel Klein, a former New York City schools chancellor who now runs Murdoch’s education subsidiary, Amplify. Suffice to say that their motives may not be purely altruistic. Amplify is an education technology provider that stands to profit from government academic programs.

The coordinated effort to suppress education has received the help of the Koch brothers-funded FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, the ultra-rightist Eagle Forum, the pseudo-libertarian Heritage Foundation, the repugnant John Birch Society, the racists at Stormfront, and now Fox News is tying together all the loose ends. And why wouldn’t they. Their own legacy for advancing ignorance is well documented.

Is The IRS/Tea Party Affair A False Flag Operation By GOP Operatives?

Posted by Mark NC on June 3, 2013 at 10:41 am. 28 Comments :

“This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.” ~ Plato

The force of fury that is emanating from Republicans in congress as they mount their crusade to ostensibly “protect” the nation from the wild excesses of a government agency gone mad has roiled the political landscape like a violently swirling tornado of partisan angst. The House Oversight Committee, chaired by ultra-rightist zealot (and recidivist criminal) Darrell Issa , has designated itself as the guardian of America’s virtue and the enemy of fiendish saboteurs in the despised Internal Revenue Service.

But there is something too convenient in the emergence of this curiously timed “scandal” that ought to raise suspicions among wakeful citizens. Think about it. The previous scandal du jour, Benghazi-Gate, was crumbling like a week-old danish. None of the frenzied allegations were panning out and, rather than diminishing the President’s reputation, his approval ratings were rising. Republicans needed a fresh dead horse to beat and suddenly the IRS dropped a gift on the GOP’s doorstep. Coincidence?

Consider further that the meat of the controversy was an astoundingly lame strategy that purported to target conservative non-profit groups for stricter scrutiny of their applications for tax-exempt status. The execution of this plan was so ineptly transparent it seems as if it was designed to be discovered. It would not have been difficult to devise a program that resulted in conservative groups being reviewed without being specific in a manner that gave away a partisan intent. But the supposed conspirators in this case used obvious language like “Tea Party” and “912 Project” to select applications to audit. That makes no sense because, if you’re trying to secretly suppress opposing political players you would try to do it secretly, wouldn’t you. What’s more, you wouldn’t leave a glowing neon paper trail that begged to be followed. Why would Democrats plotting to monkey-wrench a bunch of otherwise feeble Teabaggers, whose popularity was in rapid descent, concoct such a rickety plan?

The answer, of course, is that they wouldn’t. And to be precise, they (the Democrats) didn’t. The most prominent figures named so far in this affair are IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman and the director of the tax-exempt organizations division, Lois Lerner. Both are Republicans brought into their government jobs by George W. Bush. Remember, he’s the guy who politicized the IRS by challenging the tax status of the NAACP, Greenpeace, and even liberal churches. He also politicized the Department of Justice by firing nine U.S. Attorneys who were appointed by a Democratic president. [Update: Congressional investigators reveal that the IRS manager who initiated the Tea Party inquiries is a conservative Republican].

When assessing the facts of this plot it can hardly be regarded as insignificant that the lead plotters were Republicans. Furthermore, the first disclosure that something was awry at the IRS was not made by an intrepid investigative journalist tracking down corruption in the system. It was revealed by Lerner, who planted an aide in a public meeting to ask her about the partisan targeting. So it was actually Republicans in the IRS who cooked up the policy and then leaked it to the media via subterfuge. Why would they do such a thing?

In the process of investigating clandestine operations there is a common inquiry designed to lead to the perpetrators: “Cui bono,” or who benefits? Clearly the activities attributed to the IRS have almost no beneficial value to Democrats. After all, not a single one of the groups subjected to review were denied tax-exempt status. And since the law permits non-profits to solicit tax-exempt donations while their applications are in process, no fundraising was hampered. If this were a plot by Democrats to harm political opponents, why would they stop so far short of their goal and openly advertise their misbehavior? It seems more like a scheme to get the Democrats blamed for trying to harm Republicans without resulting in any actual harm. That would be a scenario that benefited the Republicans, who just happened to be in a position to orchestrate it.

So the GOP had motive, opportunity, and all of the available evidence that was provided and exploited came from Republicans intent on disabling a Democratic administration. It was timed to a news cycle that would otherwise have boosted President Obama’s agenda as the economy showed signs of improvement, jobs were on the rise, and major legislative initiatives like immigration, gun safety, and climate change, were gaining momentum. The lead investigator in the House (Issa) is a known crook who was informed of the IRS activities a year ago, but waited until all the pieces were in place to launch his witch hunt.

This affair smells fishy from the get-go. It was made for media consumption. Nobody got wound up in the Benghazi story because there was no easy handle for malicious reporters to grab unto, or for the public to readily grasp. But everybody already hates the IRS, so fabricating an abuse of power fable has built in appeal. That’s how you end up with wild stories about the IRS Commissioner visiting the White House 157 times, with insinuations that he was conspiring with the President. When a legitimate news reporter followed up, there were far fewer visits (perhaps as few as eleven) and they were all to attend meetings, with people other than Obama, related to the implementation of the health care bill.

However, accuracy and honesty were never a part of the brazen hype machine that has been pumping out the lurid allegations and wispy rumor mongering that Republicans have embraced as their replacement for evidence and facts. The truth is merely an obstacle to the fulfillment of the GOP’s agenda. But it is becoming more apparent every day that the truth may have more to do with Republican malfeasance than that of Democrats. And anyone who dismisses the role of Republicans in creating and executing this alleged scheme is willfully blinding themselves to the reality that the GOP had far more to gain by manufacturing this scandal than the Democrats would have had in carrying out something so inept and ineffective.

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[Authors Note: If you got this far I would like to reveal now that I don’t believe for a second that the IRS affair is a false flag operation by the GOP. While all of the facts presented above are true, the conclusion is a farce meant to illustrate how different the crazies on the right are from the crazies on the left.

Conservatives would have jumped on a story with the factual details that this one has and propagated, in all seriousness, the conspiracy theory that I outlined above. Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, and even congresspersons like Michele Bachmann and Louie Gohmert would be polishing their tin-foil hats right about now. However, despite the ripeness of these facts, there is no one on the left pushing such a conspiracy theory.

Just a little something to ponder when right-wingers seek to make phony arguments of equivalency whenever they are caught doing or saying something that is monumentally stupid.]

Tea Party Leader Accuses Grover Norquist Of Growing A Muslim Beard

Posted by Mark NC on May 31, 2013 at 1:50 pm. 5 Comments :

Can we finally agree that these Teabagging cretins are friggin nuts?

Raw Story is reporting on a Tea Party leader who is making the claim that conservative stalwart and anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist is secretly an Islamic extremist plotting to infiltrate the U.S. government with his Muslim Brotherhood comrades.

“In a video posted by the Far North Dallas Tea Party on Thursday, Texas Eagle Forum President and former Chairman of the Texas Republican Party Cathie Adams presented evidence that Norquist was part of a ‘stealth jihad’ in the United States.

“Adams said that Norquist, who is married to a Muslim woman, was ‘trouble with a capital T’ because ‘he’s showing signs of converting to Islam himself.’ As you see, he has a beard,’ she pointed out. ‘He’s married a Muslim woman.'”

Just to reiterate, this is not some fringe Alex Jones disciple – this is a former GOP chair. And she is not alone. Last year Michele Bachmann and four House colleagues (Louie Gohmert, Trent Franks, Thomas Rooney, and Lynn Westmoreland) sent a letter (pdf) to the Department of Homeland Security calling for an investigation into Muslim subversives infiltrating the government. The letter specifically cited a film called “The Enemy Within,” that identified Norquist as an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Remember, Norquist is the guy who said that his goal is to drown the government in a bathtub. So he has had it in for America for decades. The question is: If Norquist is a Muslim jihadist, and almost every Republican in congress has signed Norquist’s “pledge,” then isn’t pretty much the whole of the GOP aligned with Al Qaeda? Considering how much they have in common, this is not really all that surprising. They both want government to be subservient to religion. They are both fiercely opposed to abortion and gay marriage. They both consider torture a valid tactic in warfare. They both dismiss science and modern academia. It all seems so clear now.

When we get to the point that facial hair can be a determinate of terrorist leanings, we have a serious departure from reality. And earlier this year, the lie factory at Fox Nation made a similarly idiotic claim about the evilness of beards. They posted an article sourced to the Washington Times that said that the Aurora theater shooter had converted to Islam in prison, and cited the same evidence (that he grew a beard) of his conversion. As I noted at the time, there are many more converts to Christianity amongst prisoners.

You really have to wonder where this ends. But more importantly, how can anyone take seriously the unsupported accusations that Tea-publicans make against Obama, Clinton, Holder, etc., if they are so obviously mentally deranged?

Have “Scandals” Sparked A New Tea Party Revival?

Posted by Mark NC on May 22, 2013 at 3:18 pm. 8 Comments :

It’s as predictable as Glenn Beck’s tears. As soon as a president appears to be weakened by attack, the media pounces in a feeding frenzy hoping to score a kill. Some do it out of partisan animus. Some do it for personal glory. But either way it’s a bloodcurdling spectacle that contains scant morsels of actual substance.

In the present festival of feasting, many in the press are asking the same question: Have the scandals plaguing the White House created an opportunity for the moribund Tea Party to mount a revival? Take a look at a selection of the headlines:

Scandals revive Tea Party, threaten Obamacare – Boston Herald
Tea Party revival – World Magazine
Will the IRS scandal revive the Tea Party? – The Week Magazine
IRS scandal revives tea party – CNN
IRS scandal: Reinvigorated tea party eager to seize moment – Christian Science Monitor
Tea Party Looks To Gain Momentum In IRS Scandal Aftermath – Huffington Post
Back from the dead – WorldNetDaily

That last one from WorldNetDaily is particularly notable because it presumes that the Tea Party has been dead, which is not something that WorldNetDaily ordinarily admits.

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To answer the burning question of the day, let’s examine how the Tea Party responded to the scandal outbreak. With lightening-fast reflexes, the Tea Party Patriots organized protests across the country to “Rein in the IRS.” And their legions of followers stepped up to speak truth to power. There were 30 of them in Topeka, 70 in Phoenix, 100 in Tampa, 30 in Kansas City, 11 in Tallahassee, 100 in Chicago, 50 in Denver, 6 in Helena, and 50 in San Bernardino where they also spoke Hitlerian rhetoric to power. In the nation’s second biggest city, Los Angeles, the Teabaggers showed up 13 strong.

WOW! If this isn’t a demonstration of just how engaged and relevant the Tea Party is, I don’t know what would be. Clearly they have the political punch of a drunken gerbil. Nevertheless, the media will continue to prop them up as if they were actually influential. The press will ignore factual data like that presented here and fluff the baggers excitedly in the hopes of producing a climax of contrived controversy.

The truly depressing part of this is that the failure to recognize the impotence of the Tea Party will only embolden the minority fringe caucus of the Republicans in congress and encourage them to persist in their obstructionist strategy that has been so hurtful, divisive, and regressive socially and economically.

In a few weeks this will all have been forgotten and, if recent polling is any indicator, the President will be more popular than ever, and the GOP congress will hit new lows. In the meantime, it’s going to be a summer of frustration as little progress is made on the real problems that plague our nation. Too bad.

Fox News ‘Psycho’ Analyst: How To Build A Terrorist/Tea Party

Posted by Mark NC on April 30, 2013 at 9:05 pm. 28 Comments :

Keith Ablow, a member of Fox’s Medical “A” Team, has a long history of deranged commentary that includes praising Newt Gingrich’s serial infidelity, condemning Chaz Bono as a bad influence on America’s children, and diagnosing President Obama as “having it in for America.”

The latest contribution to his opus of asininity is an op-ed he authored that purports to explain “How To Build A Terrorist.” It’s a surprisingly simple recipe with only two ingredients:

Clinging to a set of overvalued ideas that may approach the level of a psychotic delusion
Being so completely severed from empathy that the suffering of ones’ victims is either ignored or celebrated.

This set of instructions sounds awfully familiar. In fact, psychotic devotion to overvalued ideas brings to mind a recent political movement that is obsessed with things like cutting taxes, balancing the budget, promoting guns, and dismissing evolution and climate change as hoaxes.

As for being severed from empathy, that fairly describes the crowd that wants to dismantle Social Security, repeal ObamaCare, cut funding for food stamps and education, deny women reproductive health services, and pour more billions into the military/industrial complex for endless wars.

Indeed, it seems like Ablow has drafted a blueprint for the Tea Party. In his warped imagination he has inadvertently stumbled upon the formula for a divisive, self-centered, ill-informed congregation of zealots who enjoy nothing better than mucking up the wheels of progress. They literally celebrated the suffering of others several times last year during the GOP primary debates. On one occasion they cheered at the prospect of letting a man with no health insurance die. On another they applauded Texas for executing more people than any other state. And who can forget them booing a gay soldier serving in Iraq?

Ablow’s terrorist construction relies on a presumption that the subject is insane. He says specifically that…

“…when a man is deprived of his empathy by a set of beliefs that casts entire groups as inhuman and worthy of death then that man is mentally ill.”

By this measure, Ablow is absolving the Boston bombers of any responsibility for their actions. They were not, according to his diagnosis, competent to make sound decisions. Ablow even extends that absolution to historical villains like Jim Jones and Hitler. it’s not their fault, they were crazy. And they exploited the weak who would follow them unquestioningly in the same manner that…

“Cults prey on those who are psychologically unstable, offering them a fixed and false (delusional) point of view on the world around them and offering them the false freedom of projecting all their suffering on others, rather than seeking to understand it and truly overcome it in themselves.”

This could not be a more accurate portrait of the Tea Party if it were deliberate. Their delusional point of view was demonstrated in frightening detail last year when they believed everything that the Koch brothers and Fox News told them, including that Obama was going to go down in flames on election day. And although the vast majority of scientific research proves that climate change is occurring, they prefer to believe talk radio hosts over climatologists.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this is the precision with which Ablow accidentally nails the Teabaggers for projecting their suffering on others. For them there is always someone else to blame, be it Muslims, Latinos, gays, etc. For them the downfall of America is easily attributable to affirmative action, terrorism, moochers, communists, atheists, labor unions, and, of course, black presidents who they fear are exerting tyrannical powers.

Check that. The most disturbing aspect of this is that Ablow has a license to practice medicine. His radically absurd ramblings would make an interesting study for a real psychiatrist. Unfortunately, Ablow would never submit to an examination. Like most paranoid schizophrenics, he would be certain that the whole thing was a plot to steal his internal organs.

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