The far-right assemblage called CPAC may have ended, but the wingnuts carried on undaunted this week.
1. Paul Ryan: When I said 'inner city' men are too lazy to work; that's their 'culture,' I didn't mean it racially.
It seems that now that poverty is spreading to white people, the topic has piqued the interest of a handful of Republican leaders. Notably, Republican bullshit artist par excellence, Paul Ryan, who has lately been trying to convince the public that he really cares and is earnestly searching his ample intellect for a solution — as long as it doesn't require any government spending. Whoever is buying what he’s selling is dumber than a post.
So here is this deep thinker’s take on the cause of poverty: laziness. And not just any kind of laziness, the dreaded “culture” of “inner city” laziness. Or, in the House Budget Committee Chairman, ex-GOP veep candidate’s words:
"We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with."
You don’t have to be a genius at cracking codes to understand that he’s simply saying: Blacks are lazy. They prefer being poor to working. (As if working was a surefire way not to be poor.)
When called out on the thinly-veiled racism of his comments, Ryan said he had been “inarticulate” and had not intended to be racist at all. In fact, it never even occurred to him that they might be racist.
And if that isn’t the mark of a racist we don’t know what is. Surely, Ryan, with that big intellect of his, knows that the libertarian so-called-thinker he has lately been quoting, Charles Murray, who argues that Blacks and Latinos are genetically inferior, is also a self-described white Nationalist.
Note to Ryan: White Nationalist = racist!
To read more about how toxic Murray is and what a complete fraud Ryan is, click here:
2. Kevin Swanson: The movie Frozen is a satanic plot to turn our children gay.
Hide your young’uns. Don’t let them out. Cut off the TV and the electronic devices. Tie them up if necessary. Satan rides again. This time in the form of the oh-so-innocent-seeming Disney animated movie, "Frozen." Religious Right talk show host Kevin Swanson is certainly not taking his 5-year-old daughter to a movie that is going to “indoctrinate” her “to be a lesbian." And nor should you.
“Man, how many children are taken into these things," Swanson wondered on his radio show. "And how many Christians are taking their kids off to see the movie Frozen, produced by an organization that is probably the most pro-homosexual organizations in the country?”
Wait, does Mickey Mouse know about this?
“You wonder sometimes,” Swanson continued. “I’m not a tinfoil hat conspiratorialist….”
No, Kevin? So what kind of conspiratorialist are you? And is "conspiratorialist" even a word?
“… maybe there’s something very evil happening here. If I was the Devil, what I would do to really foul up an entire social system and do something really, really evil to 5- and 6- and 7-year-olds in Christian families . . . I would buy Disney. I would buy Disney in 1984.”
Oh, that devil is a wily one. He can time travel, and he’s a great businessman. How can we compete with that? Now he’s got the kids.
Run!
3. Pat Robertson: Horror movies cause demonic possession. Let us pray.
For the second time in recent weeks, Pat Robertson has been outdone in the kookiness department. Truly we must be entering the End Times. First, just a few weeks ago, Robertson begged Young Earth Creationist Ken Ham to stop making other Christian fundamentalists look bad by saying things that fly in the face of indisputable science. Now, Robertson is looking just a tad less loony than Kevin Swanson, who thinks the devil is working through Disney. Robertson does think the devil is involved in the entertainment business, but he is working through horror films. Makes much more sense, no?
When a viewer called in this week to ask the 700 Club host if watching a horror movie was the cause of her recent car accident, Robertson oh-so-empathically agreed that being cursed or demonically possessed can be the result of viewing these films.
He was not specifically familiar with her case, and whether she in fact was so cursed, but he had heard of other instances. Also, he suspected that the devil may be sitting in the producer’s chair of such films, because entertainment execs are very susceptible to Satanic influences.
On that, he and his buddy Swanson agree.
"This thing may be living around you and what you need to do is speak it — command this thing to leave — and ask God to forgive you," he counseled the caller.
Probably sage advice for everyone. You know, just in case.
Hear it for yourself here.
4. Fox’s Stuart Varney: 'Obama’s overtime move is just a way of buying votes.'
As might be expected, the “fair and balanced” folks over at Fox News have been apoplectic about Obama’s move this week to modestly expand overtime pay. The Fox Newsians have pretty much no idea what Obama is suggesting or what effect it will have, but it’s socialist and un-American, and they don’t like it.
Business host Stuart Varney led the charge of the Fox brigade:
“This is redistribution by executive order," he sputtered. "The president is buying votes. He is commanding higher salaries for millions of people. Right before an election. Don’t you think that those millions of people will be grateful and say, ‘Thanks for the pay raise, Mr. President. I’m voting Democrat.’ Don’t you think that’s in there?”
Wait, is there an election this spring?
Of course, not only is it about buying votes early and often for the midterm elections next fall, paying people overtime will ruin the economy, and destroy the next Google.
“In the earlier days of Google," expert Varney continued, "they had all kinds of youngsters, up-and-coming strivers, who would work day and night. That’s how they built the company. Tech startups with really a drive to succeed and climb that food chain.”
Unbeknownst to Mr. Varney—because why let actual information get in the way of scaring people?—Obama’s overtime expansion would only affect people making less than $50,000, so not applicable to the young programmers at Google at all, who all made a good deal more than that.
Paying people for their work is such a terrible idea. What are you trying to do, instill some sort of work ethic?
5. AZ Republican: Slaveowners took pretty good care of their slaves.
Another week, another right-winger desperate to find something positive about slavery.
This week, the humanoid hunk of toe-jam slavery apologist was Jim Brown, who’s running for Congress in Arizona. Guess what: he does not care for federal spending, or “entitlements.” When you don’t like something, you compare it either to slavery or Nazi Germany. Young Jim went with slavery in a post on his Facebook page.
But, hey, he digressed, slavery was not that bad.
"Back in the day of slavery," he wrote, "slaves were kept in slavery by denying them education and opportunity while providing them with their basic needs. Not by beating them and starving them. (Although there were isolated cases of course.) Basically slave owners took pretty good care of their slaves and livestock and this kept business rolling along."
Putting aside the utterly offensive nature of this absurd claim, doesn’t it kind of undercut Mr. Brown’s argument that entitlements are horrible, if they are similar to something that wasn’t all that horrible?
An outcry ensued, and so he posted an “apology.”
He really, really does think slavery was terrible. Just awful. He swears.
But entitlements, they are like putting people into concentration camps.
6. Ben Carson doesn’t care about political correctness or really about being correct at all, because 'America today is like Nazi Germany.'
Right on cue, Dr. Carson. The Tea Party darling and former neurosurgeon is just the sort of fearless commenter who is willing to trot out that tired-old Nazi metaphor. This week, he explained to a Breitbart interviewer what he means when he says Americans are living in a “Gestapo” age.
“I mean, very much like Nazi Germany,” the doctor began, “and I know you’re not supposed to say Nazi Germany but I don’t care about political correctness — you know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population.”
Huh? Intimidate them how?
“We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe,” Carson continued, “and it’s because of the p.c. police, it’s because of politicians, it’s because of news — all of these things are combining to stifle people’s conversation.”
That’s weird, because it seems to us that people are saying all kinds of crap. Especially on Fox News, where the doctor is now “in.”
h/t: salon
7. Austin Ruse: 'Liberal professors should be taken out and shot.'
The best way to handle people with whom you disagree, as every child is taught in school, is to shoot them. Or, to have someone else shoot them. Just so long as they are shot. Wingnut Austin Ruse added to his growing list of people he’d like to see taken out and shot this week (a list which includes Hillary Clinton) while filling in for American Family Radio host Sandy Rios.
The subject was Belle Knox, the enterprising Duke University freshman who acts in porn movies to help pay her own tuition. This way of making ends meet is not the fault of sky-high tuition rates, but rather women’s studies and other college departments reeking of liberalism, said Ruse, who leads the ultraconservative Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-Fam).
His suggestion: “the hard left, human-hating people that run modern universities” should “all be taken out and shot.”
Problem solved.
The American Family Association, that bastion of rationality headed by rabid homophobe Bryan Fischer, has since sought to distance itself from Ruse, and said it won’t be giving Ruse any more airtime.
Ruse has refused to apologize for his comments, and called those who disagree with him “pajama boys.”
In other words, he's sticking to his guns.
8. New Hampshire lawmaker posts beyond-offensive sexual ‘joke’ about battered women — and stands by it.
For pure creepiness, it would be hard to out-slime New Hampshire Tea Partier Kyle Tasker this week. Arguably, though, there were other creeps in contention. In an exchange on the Facebook page of the Greater Nashua Tea Party, there was a discussion thread about the New Hampshire GOP's refusal to stand by state Rep. Mark Warden (R), who had been criticized for saying, "Some people could make the argument that a lot of people like being in abusive relationships." (Yes, he is the other creep in contention.) But he was outdone by Tasker who posted a graphic in support of Warden with a joke about " battered women." It was a crude picture of a man on top of a struggling woman, positioned to possibly give her oral sex whether she wants it or not, with the caption, “50,000 Battered Women—And I Still Eat Mine Plain.”
What exactly he is saying, you tell us. Certainly that he is untroubled by whether women are battered or not. The State GOP demanded he apologize, but Tasker takes that whole “live free or die” state motto seriously, and he refused, saying, somewhat bafflingly, " I didn't mean that as a joke, it was a t-shirt print I thought was pretty ridiculous that someone would wear that around."
Wait, so it wasn’t a joke? What the hell was it?
He also said his "intent was pure."
To which we say, pure what?
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