The parade of right-wing morons and lunatics marched on this week. Some highlights:
1. Donald Rumsfeld: A "trained ape" would be better at foreign policy than Obama
Donald Rumsfeld continues to both shock and awe us with his arrogance and his psychopathic inability to admit he was completely wrong about every aspect of the Iraq war. Being a psychopath, he still has the audacity to hold forth on questions of foreign policy. That he recently included a dollop of racism to his unwanted commentary on President Obama’s conduct as Commander-in-Chief, is just par for the course for good ol' Rummy.
In an interview with Fox’s Greta Van Susteren this week, Rummy railed against Obama’s dealings with Afghanistan, and with characteristic colorfulness said that relations with Afghan president Hamid Karzai had gone “downhill like a toboggan,” under Obama whereas all had been rosy under Bush.
“Take for example that we have status of forces agreements probably with 100, 125 countries in the world,” Rumsfeld said, amping up the technical jargon to confuse the audience and make himself look smart, no doubt. “This administration, the White House and the State Department, have failed to get a status of forces agreement.”
He added: “A trained ape could get a status of forces agreement. It does not take a genius.”
Hmm, no racism there.
It is either a known unknown (or an unknown known—we’re never quite sure) that Rumsfeld likes to use these kinds of metaphors, but no, we don’t believe it was an accident. As bad as that is, perhaps worse is his perpetuating the lie that the Bush administration was not a catastrophe for foreign relations, and that he was not hugely responsible for the biggest fuckup, lie and war crimes of all Bush’s merry band of jackals.
2. Pat Robertson: Rape causes atheism.
What planet is Pat Robertson on? Planet crazy, that’s what. On Monday, the “700 Club” host talked about a letter he had received from a confused Christian viewer named Sandra. Sandra was flummoxed as to why a coworker was “hostile at the mere mention of God” whenever Sandra tried to proselytize or “bring her to Jesus.” Reading between the lines, the co-worker did not care for being hounded to go to Sandra’s church, or repent, ‘cause the end is near.
“Should I abandon the idea of being a positive influence on her and just let her perish?” Sandra wondered to the televangelist.
Uncle Patty reads between a different set of lines, and he had a variety of theories on why relentless evangelizing might rub someone the wrong way. Could be something “demonic... something beyond normal human experience,” he conjectured.
Working overtime, his little brain alit on the perfect explanation: “Maybe she had an abusing father, somebody who raped her and acted like he was preaching to her from the Bible,” the TV pastor continued. “You just never know what’s going on in somebody’s childhood.”
Eureka! Case closed.
“Just pray for that anointing,” Pat concluded.
3. Pat Robertson (yeupp, again) points out that Jesus would not have baked a gay couple a wedding cake.
Jesus was a carpenter, from what we’ve read, not a baker, so as far as we know, he was not given to baking wedding cakes for even heterosexual couples. Also, did they have wedding cakes in biblical times? Note to self: research wedding rituals in Jesus’ day.
But historical anachronisms are besides the point when you’re Pat Robertson and you want to make a point about homosexuality.
“I think you got to remember from the Bible," the televangelist said this week, "if you look carefully at the Bible what would have happened in Jesus’ time if two men decided they wanted to cohabit together, they would have been stoned to death.”
True enough, Uncle Pat. It’s this next part that gives us pause.
“So Jesus would not have baked them a wedding cake nor would he have made them a bed to sleep in because they wouldn’t have been there. But we don’t have that in this country here so that’s the way it is.”
So, the problem is that gay people are around and not being stoned to death. This whole thing gets Uncle Pat worked up into a lather, because he is very pro-life.
“What is it about gays? What is it about abortion?” he ranted. “Have you ever thought why they’re on the forefront right now? Both of them deny the reproduction of human species.... The Devil is trying to say, ‘I’m going to destroy your progeny any way I can. If you will kill your babies, that’s fine, I’m with you; if you will deny the chance of having babies, that’s fine too; but I want to destroy your opportunities to reproduce.' It’s a very serious thing and we’re not talking about it, and we need to as a society, we have to realize where the attack is coming because it is definitely an attack.”
Do you follow that? Devil. Gays. Women. Birth control. Big cabal. Out to get us.
h/t: rightwingwatch
4. Chris Christie declares himself innocent, blames “emotional” woman for Bridgegate.
Chris Christie ran his own investigation into Bridgegate, used a million dollars of taxpayer money to do it, and declared himself innocent this week. This was treated as news. Case closed, right?
The internal investigation did reveal that Christie was told about the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge (petty payback to the Fort Lee Mayor who dared not support Christie). But Christie says he does not recall that conversation. Memory is a funny thing, and Chris Christie’s memory is really funny, because at one point he asserted that although he did not recall this conversation (with David Wildstein of the Port Authority, who orchestrated the whole lane closure payback thing), he did recall that the conversation had nothing to do with getting back at some rinky dink mayor.
While Team Chris Christie shockingly exonerated Chris Christie, they gratuitously stuck it to Bridget Kelly, the staffer Christie already scapegoated and fired for the whole mess. The report called her “emotional” and mentioned she had been jilted by another staffer, despite this not having a thing to do with anything. It’s just fun to bring up the fact that women are emotional and don’t like being jilted. Whereas men are the opposite.
5. Bill O’Reilly: Critics of Paul Ryan are "race hustlers."
Paul Ryan has spoken. He does “not have a racist bone in his body.” Also, some of his best friends are black. Wait, that’s not true. He does not have any black friends.
But Bill O’Reilly stood up for his boy Ryan this week, defending Ryan’s right to talk about the “culture” of shiftlessness of “inner-city males,” cite known racist author Charles Murray, and not be called racist. Anyone who accuses Ryan of using racist code language is a “race hustler,” O’Reilly says, and he’s sick and tired of that sort of behavior. "These race hustlers make a big living and they get voted into office by portraying their constituents as victims," O’Reilly said. "And it’s all your fault, and it’s my fault, it’s the rich people’s fault, it’s the Republicans’ fault. It’s everybody’s fault except what’s going on."
One of these race hustlers was California Rep. Barbara Lee, who had accurately called Ryan’s statement “a thinly veiled racial attack.”
She had some choice words about the race hustler characterization as well. “Unfortunately we’ve come to expect language like ‘welfare queens,’ ‘food stamp president,’ and now ‘race hustlers’ from the right wing and Mr. O’Reilly," she said in a statement. "It is disgusting and divisive and should never be accepted in our national discourse.”
O’Reilly maturely responded that if Lee did not like being called a race hustler, he’d be happy to call her other names.
“How about ‘pinhead,’ congresswoman?” he said on the air. “You like that better?”
So there, you meanie lady!
6. Michele Bachmann: Birth control equals "killer drugs."
Speaking of pinheads.... In her latest dispatch from Planet Nutjob, Michele Bachmann spewed yet more illogical nonsense this week.
Continuing her relentless attack on Obamacare, Democrats and just anything resembling progress, she vented about the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case, and how the religious freedoms of companies are under assault. Religious freedom means Christians are allowed to ram their religion down other people's throat. That's how the Founding Fathers envisioned it.
Bachmann could not quite bring herself to use the word "contraception" (it's long and multi-syllabic, so pretty hard). She has a different nickname for it. The birth control that evil socialist Obama is so eager to have companies cover are “killer drugs,” according to Bachmann, and by that we don’t think she means drugs that make you really really high. In Bachmann's world, there are "killer drugs," a.k.a. contraception, and then there are the good drugs, “life-saving drugs and surgical procedures” that Bachmann says “only politically connected best friends” of President Obama’s administration will get.
You probably did not read that in the fine print of your Obamacare insurance policy.
For more of Bachmann's lunacy, click here.
7. Rep. Bill Cassidy: The uninsured are "less sophisticated" and illiterate.
Of course, there is a reason you did not read that in your new insurance policy that you got thanks to Obamacare, and that reason is that you are ignorant and stupid. Louisiana Rep. and Senate hopeful Bill Cassidy says he thinks he knows a whole lot more about poor people than Barack Obama, that alleged former community organizer, does. The uninsured are, says Cassidy “illiterate.” He also says: “I’m not saying that to be mean. I say it in compassion.”
He knows, because he’s a doctor and they are his patients (poor things). And it is for their sake that he opposes expanding Medicaid in Louisiana. See how compassionate he is. He’s a doctor, for pete’s sake. He has to be compassionate.
He then further reflected on his version of “the reality of who the uninsured are: relatively less sophisticated, less comfortable with forms, less educated," he said.
Ergo, no healthcare coverage for them!
h/t: tpm
8. Ted Nugent: I’m just like Rosa Parks.
Bereft of his “singing” career, Nugent is now a columnist and an all-out, full-throttle race-baiting, gun-slinging slimebucket. Just like Rosa Parks.
And just like Rosa's civil rights were, Ted’s right to sling those guns are under assault.
“In 1955, my hero, Rosa Parks,” he wrote this week, “refused to give up her seat on a city bus. Good for her. In 2014, gun owners must learn from Rosa Parks and definitely refuse to give up our guns. As Rosa Parks once said, 'You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.'"
It’s not the first time Nugent has declared himself a sistah with Rosa. “I’m Rosa Parks with a Gibson,” Nugent has previously claimed. Further confusing his metaphors he has called for gun owners to “sit down on the front seat of the bus.” And do what? Shoot out the windows?
Although he says he deplores racism, Nugent has also said that apartheid was not all bad, and that some people aren’t created equal, like indigenous people in South Africa who “still put bones in their noses.” So he and Rosa are absolutely together on that.
h/t: mediamatters
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