VIDEO: Haley Barbour dances around calling Obama a "radical"

By GottaLaff

Will someone please show me where and when we "lurched to the left"? If that had happened, I'd be popping Champagne corks and writing celebratory posts:

Facing the charge that Republicans are in danger of being cast as "mean old white guys", Haley Barbour danced around calling Obama a "radical" as Newt Gingrich did. Instead, he opted for "most left-wing," which makes him sound no less grumpy. CNN

I'd call them mean, nasty, cranky, b.s.-laden, lying old white guys, and that's being kind.

Frank Rich: Tea Party ideology "plays to the lock-and-load nutcases out there"

By GottaLaff

Barry Blitt

Frank Rich:

[I]f I were to place an incautious bet on which political event will prove the most significant of February 2010 [...] I’d put my money [...] on the murder-suicide of Andrew Joseph Stack III, the tax protester who flew a plane into an office building housing Internal Revenue Service employees in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 18. [...]

What made that kamikaze mission eventful was less the deranged act itself than the curious reaction of politicians on the right who gave it a pass — or, worse, flirted with condoning it. [...] [H]e did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner. That rant inspired like-minded Americans to create instant Facebook shrines to his martyrdom. Soon enough, some cowed politicians, including the newly minted Tea Party hero Scott Brown, were publicly empathizing with Stack’s credo — rather than risk crossing the most unforgiving brigade in their base.

Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, even rationalized Stack’s crime. [...] No one in King’s caucus condemned these remarks. [...]

Two days before Stack’s suicide mission, The Times published David Barstow’s chilling, months-long investigation of the Tea Party movement. [...]

Barstow confirmed what the Southern Poverty Law Center had found in its report last year: the unhinged and sometimes armed anti-government right that was thought to have vaporized after its Oklahoma apotheosis is making a comeback. And now it is finding common cause with some elements of the diverse, far-flung and still inchoate Tea Party movement. All it takes is a few self-styled “patriots” to sow havoc.

Equally significant is Barstow’s finding that most Tea Party groups have no affiliation with the G.O.P. despite the party’s ham-handed efforts to co-opt them. [...] They are not to be confused with the Party of No holding forth in Washington — a party that, after all, is now positioning itself as a defender of Medicare spending. What we are talking about here is the Party of No Government at All.

The distinction between the Tea Party movement and the official G.O.P. is real, and we ignore it at our peril. [...] [L]eaders of the Party of No are anathema or irrelevant to most Tea Partiers. [...] The passion on the right has migrated almost entirely to the Tea Party’s counterconservatism.

The leaders embraced by the new grass roots right are a different slate entirely: Glenn Beck, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin. Simple math dictates that none of this trio can be elected president. [...] But these leaders do have a consistent ideology, and that ideology plays to the lock-and-load nutcases out there [...]

No less an establishment conservative observer than the Wall Street Journal editorialist Dorothy Rabinowitz describes Paul’s followers as “conspiracy theorists, anti-government zealots, 9/11 truthers, and assorted other cadres of the obsessed and deranged.” [...]

Such violent imagery and invective, once largely confined to blogs and talk radio, is now spreading among Republicans in public office or aspiring to it. [...]

Whether consciously or coincidentally, Stout was echoing Palin’s memorable final declaration during her appearance at the National Tea Party Convention earlier this month: “I will live, I will die for the people of America, whatever I can do to help.” It’s enough to make you wonder who is palling around with terrorists now.

You can read the whole thing here.

VIDEO- Rep. Thaddeus McCotter: Ideologues like Sen. Jim DeMint are ‘nuts.’

By GottaLaff



Weren't we just talking about Jim DeMint? Why yes, yes we were. He just keeps on creeping ("creep" being the operative word) into convos, doesn't he?

On Saturday, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) discussed the direction of the GOP in an address to the Republican Northeast Conference in Newport, RI. [...] McCotter explained that these individuals want to “purge” opponents “all the time…because they’re nuts.” He then clarified that his remarks were directed at radical conservatives like Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC):

MCCOTTER: If the Republican Party wants to become its own antithesis, which is an ideological party, we’re going to continue to have these problems. Remember, ideologues, there’s a reason why they purge all the time — it’s because they’re nuts. Hope the ideologues weren’t listening. If, however, as I said before, we understand that we represent constituencies and America is a vast country full of a variety of opinions and peoples, way of life, then we will get where we need to go. As for the attitude of the Senator from South Carolina that it is better to have fewer friends than more, that’s easier to say in South Carolina than Detroit.

Texas' President-Elect Chuck Norris, a Radical Rightie, Seems to Be Planning an Armed Insurrection This Friday

By GottaLaff

My buddy over at BuzzFlash sent this along, and wanted me to share. Gladly:

The last thing I heard about '80s action hero Chuck Norris beyond his illustrious film career was a couple of years ago when I was introduced to the online irony factory called ChuckNorrisFacts.com. For a while there, all the cool kids were spewing hilarious "truisms" about Norris' supposed supernatural abilities.

[...] The last one on that list?

• Contrary to popular belief, America is not a democracy, it is a Chucktatorship.

[...] Much like ChuckNorrisFacts.com makes dough off of Chuck Norris' retro popularity, the right wing is learning how to cash in politically on the martial arts actor turned conservative puppet.

It was fine for awhile. Until they started talking about armed insurrection. Who else could possibly be responsible for taking this several steps too far but the craziest righty on television, Glenn Beck. Beck had Norris on his show last week to promote Norris' new book and Beck's new political army.

Norris described the exchange on his post-interview column at -- where else -- World Net Daily:

[Beck said] "If this country starts to spiral out of control... Americans won't stand for it. There will be parts of the country that will rise up." Then Glenn asked me and his listening audience, "And where's that going to come from?" He answered his own question, "Texas, it's going to come from Texas. Do you agree with that Chuck?" I replied, "Oh yeah!" Definitely.

Chuck then proclaims he's going to run for the presidency of Texas, which would be funny if he weren't serious. [...]

But this is much scarier than any fan club. Norris ends his column encouraging readers to get together with other conservative "cell groups" (not community organizations, cell groups) to watch Beck's live telecast on Friday the 13th. Notice his specific mention of people with guns to be in attendance (emphasis mine).

Thousands of cell groups will be united around the country in solidarity over the concerns for our nation. You can host or attend a viewing party by going to Glenn's website. My wife Gena and I will be hosting one from our Texas ranch, in which we've invited many family members, friends and law enforcement to join us. It's our way of saying "We're united, we're tired of the corruption, and we're not going to take it anymore!"

The telecast is supposedly to launch the movement Beck is calling "We Surround Them."

Beck lists nine principles guiding his new movement on his Web site. [...] My favorite, though, marks a turnaround for the hardcore right. After years of conservatives screaming that those who don't support the president are un-American and want our troops to die terrible deaths, Beck comes out with principle number eight:

"It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion."

Beck said this on his show when introducing the eighth principle: "My opinion or others' opinions may be anti-American. Anti-American rhetoric would be anything that's destructive to the Constitution and our country as the founders understood it unless you want to change that."

He then called his audience to action saying, "If you agree with seven of these nine, please, stand up and fight for them."

Beck's followers describe the movement in terms of 9/11 and seem to equate the Obama Administration with the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. [...]

So far, I seem to have little to fear. The only meetup planned in Chicago, at a bar on the far west side of the city, has a total of two people signed up to attend. So much for "surrounding."

Not only do Norris and Beck spend their brief on-air time together plotting some sort of vague armed insurrection, but also they dreamt up a Michele Bachmann-style investigation into Washington politics, only with more violence and led by the military instead of the media. From the transcript of the show (again, my emphases):

BECK: I would love to have General Petraeus go up to Washington and clean that hornet's nest out. I'd like him to set up a military tribunal and call them in one by one, okay, going to have a little interview with you. Find out if they're guilty or innocent of being involved in, you know, all kinds of the scandals that are going on and kick them out.

NORRIS: I want to go with General Petraeus myself and be next to him and when he finds out who's guilty and, you know, dishonest, then I will take care of it for him. Took him out. I'll choke them out, the ones that he finds dishonest, I will choke them out and stick them into a pile.

[...] But it's not crazy wack jobs such as Beck that pose the biggest threat to our nation. It's easily indoctrinated people such as Norris who are good at selling Americans crap they don't need that we should worry about.

I edited the piece down some. You can read it in full here.

Another smear on Obama put to rest

By GottaLaff

First, how do you spell this guy's last name: Ayers? Or Ayres? I can't seem to find the definitive answer, but here is a pretty definitive answer about his "association" with Barack Obama:

What "radical" ideas did Obama and Bill Ayres come up with to foist on the Chicago school system?

What specific projects -- "radical" projects -- did Obama work on with Ayres? Is there evidence that they collaborated and schemed to ... do anything "radical" together? Ever?

Or just that they served on a board of a fairly well-respected liberal charity at the same time? And that left-leaning charities tend to give money to left-leaning organizations, a la ACORN?

Is the real story here that Obama once served on the board of a liberal education charity?

Mr. Laffy once wrote an HBO series that starred O.J. Simpson. Would that make him a double-murder accessory?

Oh! ::V-8 moment. Smacks head:: I get it now! The radicalism was metaphorical.