So much right-wing craziness this week, it's difficult to know where to start. So, we'll just dive in.
1. Thomas Perkins: The 1% are treated the way Nazis treated Jews.
If you’ve been spending your time worrying about the plight of the very poor, the long-term unemployed, low-wage workers or even the strapped middle class, stop it! You need to get some sensitivity training about the persecuted 1%. You know, it is just not easy being mega-wealthy. People are mean to you, In fact, it’s like the Nazis.
Wait. Whoa. What?
Thomas Perkins, the super-wealthy venture capitalist who once owned the largest private yacht in the world as well as multiple mansions, penned a letter to the editor to the Wall Street Journal this week about how scary it is to be part of the 1%, so scary it brings to mind how the Jews must have felt in Nazi Germany.
“Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one percent,’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich.’”
From there he talked about the ongoing “demonization of the rich,” in the San Francisco Chronicle, the resentment about the Google buses, and rising real estate prices, and the “cruel attacks” on his ex-wife, author Danielle Steel, calling her a “snob” despite all she’s done for the less fortunate.
Here’s the kicker: “This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking,” he wrote. “Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent "progressive" radicalism unthinkable now?”
Bet you didn’t know that progressive radicalism, with its desire to see the ultra-rich kick in higher taxes, was descended from Kristallnacht, a night of murder and mayhem directed against members of an ethnic group for no reason other than their ethnicity.
Seriously inflammatory, irresponsible stuff, and of course, WSJ printed it.
2. We heart Huckabee, and so will you, once you get that libido under control.
Mike Huckabee is nothing if not a creative thinker. Just when you thought you had heard everything, this week he made one of the most convoluted, crazy arguments against providing women with birth control we have ever heard.
It’s an insult, he said! It’s an insult propagated by the Democrats because it suggests women are interested in sex. That they have libidos. Libidos they can’t control. And that might cause them to get pregnant without birth control.
We’re not exaggerating. Here he is in his own oh-so-colorful words, speaking to a meeting of the Republican National Committee: “If the Democrats want to insult women by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it.”
Then he added: "Our party stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women. That’s not a war on them, it’s a war for them.”
We just have one question. Has Mike Huckabee ever met a woman?
3. Laura Ingraham does not think Sarah Silverman is funny. Sarah Silverman is crying about this.
Comedian Sarah Silverman has made a hilarious five-minute video featuring Jesus Christ himself which utterly destroys right-wing arguments against giving women access to reproductive healthcare and abortions. It is fantastic. Silverman hangs out with Jesus, who jokes that life begins “at 40,” and watches NCIS with her. At one point, Silverman points out that sperm has been found to have a sense of smell, which means that sperm is alive, which means that men should have to undergo painful procedures with things stuck up their penises, all of which might make them think twice about masturbating.
We should warn you that Laura Ingraham, whom Katie McDonough at Salon calls that “famous comedy expert,” does not think it is funny. It actually makes her hopping mad. She went after Silverman in her radio show this week, calling her “unfunny” (ouch!), and “out of touch.”
McDonough writes: “Comedy Expert Ingraham also called Silverman 'a Nobel Prize winner' (sarcastically, of course) and a 'degenerate, foul-mouthed, slob of a person.' Take that, Sarah 'Unfunny' Silverman. Case closed on your un-funniness."
4. Iowa Republican Party posts incredibly stupid chart on racism.
The Republican Party is proving almost as adept at courting “minority” voters as it is at courting women. (Also, the LGBT vote, what with longtime gay Republican activist Jimmy LaSalvia loudly leaving the GOP and calling them “hopeless.”)
It almost stretches credulity how completely out-of-touch these wankers are, and how unembarrassed they are to parade their ignorance. The Iowa Republican Party posted a flowchart defining “racist” on Friday, which was fairly easy to follow. Someone is racist if they are white and you don’t like what they are saying. “If you think this flowchart isn’t funny, then this flowchart is racist,” it noted at the bottom.
Boy, they have some clever people working there. This is just too funny. They must have been in stitches when they thought it up.
At some point it must have become less funny to them because they took it down, and the chairman of the party apologized for it, saying it was in bad taste, and blaming some mysterious “contractor” for the post.
All in all, a great way to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Republican Party stating its intention to appeal to non-white voters.
Anyway, racism is dead. Fox News’ Eric Bolling says so, you know, because we have a black president, black senators and black entertainment channels. He’s tired of it already.
Read more of his ridiculousness here. If you want to get a gander at that deleted flowchart, clickhere.
5. Chicago GOP hopeful: Autism and dementia are God’s punishment for LGBT rights.
God is one wrathful, spoiled dude. And he hates gays. Haaaaates them. Hates anyone who likes them, accepts them, tolerates them, or doesn’t fight tooth and nail against them having equal rights. So, to punish us, he sent autism and dementia. He is nothing if not inventive with his scourges.
So says a most-enlightened, oh-so-charming Republican candidate running for Congress in Illinois. Her name is Susanne Atanus, and she has a personal, direct line to God, so she knows.
“I am a conservative Republican and I believe in God first,” Atanus told the Chicago Daily Heraldthis week. “God is angry. We are provoking him with abortions and same-sex marriage and civil unions.”
And here we thought God was just sending a lot of bad weather to retaliate for LGBT rights and abortions.
6. Oklahoma lawmaker: If gay people can get married, then no one should get married.
A Republican lawmaker in Oklahoma has proposed the legislative equivalent of destroying all his own toys so no one else can play with them.
If same-sex couples are allowed to get married, says state Rep. Mike Turner, then maybe no one should be allowed to get married.
“[My constituents are] willing to have that discussion about whether marriage needs to be regulated by the state at all,” Turner told a local TV station.
So there.
That’ll teach all you would-be monogamists in committed relationships.
7. Missouri GOP rep: Force women to have babies because abortion robs men.
No one talks about men when they talk about women’s reproductive health. That’s just not fair. Men, like fetuses, are people too.
One brave Missouri Republican legislator, Vicky Hartzler, has spoken out, telling conservative audiences that women should be forced to go through with unwanted pregnancies, because abortion “robs men” of their right to be fathers.
They should be forced to carry those babies to term, no matter what. If they don’t comply, they can be put in restraints, or perhaps induced into a coma.
Why? Because abortion hurts everyone. “It ends a beating heart, it leaves emotional wounds with women that they carry for life and it robs men of the privilege of fatherhood,” she said. “That’s why we must do everything in our power to end this devastating practice.”
It also makes God mad, creates storms, and brought us autism and dementia. Oh wait, that’s the other Republican lawmaker. No, but Hartzler says that if abortion wasn’t legal, “perhaps we would have had a cure for cancer now.”
No, she did not explain that. Must be that old magical thinking again.
8. GOP congressman: A wife should submit to her husband.
Say what you will, those Republicans sure do have a way with the ladies. As a sideline, Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico, specializes in giving people advice on how to have happy, fulfilling marriages. In his recent memoir, he said both parties have a role to play, and the wife’s role is obedience.
“The husband’s part is to show up during the times of deep stress, take the leadership role and be accountable for the outcome, blaming no one else,” Pearce says in the book. “The wife’s submission is not a matter of superior versus inferior; rather, it is self-imposed as a matter of obedience to the Lord and of love for her husband.”
Now, he knows this is not going to be popular with everyone, he just has to call it as he—and the Bible—see it.
Ladies, are you ready to submit?
9. South Carolina Sen. candidate: Teachers should carry machine guns.
As every good gunnie and the NRA know, the solution to gun violence is always more guns. In a year that has already horrifyingly averaged a school shooting every other day, South Carolina State Senator Lee Bright—yeupp, a Republican—says it’s time to pull out the big guns and give them to teachers. Preferably machine guns.
Bright had already proposed a bill to create high school courses on how to use a firearm. He expanded on this notion on Fox News Radio’s Alan Colmes Show this week.
Colmes gave him every opportunity to back away from this crazy idea, but Bright would not take the bait.
COLMES: So [teachers] shouldn’t have machine guns?
BRIGHT: I would think a teacher protecting a school grounds should be able to carry whatever she can carry legally.
COLMES: So should machine guns be legal to carry?
BRIGHT: The Second Amendment is pretty clear. It says the right to carry arms should not be infringed. [...]
COLMES: So you should be able to have any gun you want?
BRIGHT: Well, I don’t see how the government can regulate it.
This is madness, clear and simple.
10. Victoria Jackson: Change First Amendment to ban Islam.
By now it’s become abundantly clear that Victoria Jackson’s whole dingbat act on "Saturday Night Live" years ago was no make-believe. Actually, Victoria Jackson gives dingbats a bad name. This week the idiotic right-winger proposed amending the First Amendment to ban Islam, because mosques are actually terrorist training camps.
Here is her “reasoning,” and we use the term loosely: “I believe in freedom of religion except for those religions that want to kill other religions.”
On the subject of the First Amendment, she said “I’d like to make an amendment to the First Amendment.”
Oh, that’s funny. See how she repeated the word amendment to make her racist, Islamophobia sound kind of ditzy at the same time? Read more here, if you care to.
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