Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy, Part 6

• And now a word about South Carolina
• Pat Robertson and his magic asteroid
• I'll have a pack of Twizzlers and an IUD to go, please


Eight-year-old South Carolinian Olivia McConnell (see No. 1, Exhibit B) thinks she's so-o-o smart just 'cause she's smarter than the whole of her state's GOP. Okay, she's only eight, so she doesn't realize that this isn't all that remarkable a feat.

Crackpot Utopia: A dream world as envisioned by republicans; a manifestation or expression of the deranged, warped alternate universe inhabited by republicans, at least in their minds. See also: Bachmannism, Boehneresque.

by Noah

1. And now a word about South Carolina!

There are a lotta nuts out there. Sometimes they band together and form whole states. When it came to all of that secession talk after the 2012 presidential election, South Carolina worked hard to not be outdone by fellow nut states Texas, Mississippi, and Alaska. Hell, they've even elected Lindsey Graham as one of their U.S. senators, more than once! And let's not forget that, at Fort Sumter, they started the Civil War, which for them has never ended.

But, putting all of that aside, let's just look at two exhibits from South Carolina from this past year. Keep in mind that some republicans will say defensively that the true crazies are in some sort of vast minority within their party. Always ask yourself, who puts the crazies in power?

Exhibit A: Meet Todd Kincannon

Um, "LEGAL CORRESPONANT"?
Is this some kind of secret code?

In the midst of the preelection media scare campaign on the subject of Ebola, Todd Kincannon, former executive director of the SC GOP, went even more full-blown-wacko than any of the usual suspects from FOX, CNN, or the talk radio asylum. Here's Kincannon on Twitter, vying for his Crazyspeak of ohe Year trophy:

People with Ebola in the U.S. need to be put down humanely immediately.

Well, at least he said "humanely." I suppose that does separate him from a lot of his republican brethren, who wouldn't care about being humane. But then he added:

The protocol for a positive Ebola test should be immediate execution and sanitation of the whole area. That will save lives.

  Kincannon, who claims to be "pro-life," also managed to blame the spread of Ebola on the people of Africa, who, in his deranged crackpot republican mind, have been "eating each other." Well, you know how they are.

(By the way, did you notice how the subject of an impending Ebola pandemic -- Obama's fault, again -- disappeared completely from the so-called liberal media the day after Election Day?)

Kincannon doesn't just get all repug over Ebola. If you click on the provided Daily Kos link, you'll find some choice four- and five-letter words to describe one of his party's favorite targets for hate and demonization, Nancy Pelosi. He also has some special republican wisdom on the vagina of Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis. I could go on about that, but I covered the Republican Party's ever-continuing War on Women in Part 4.

Exhibit B: The SC GOP and the fossils

We all know how republicans feel about nasty things like females, education, and dreaded (dare I say it?) science. But in third-grader Olivia McConnell the South Carolina republican party was set up as the paradigm for utter derangement by one inquisitive eight-year-old who obviously has more smarts than almost her whole state put together. Here's what happened when the budding paleontologist butted heads with her state's paleo-republicans.

Olivia, who loves hunting for fossils everywhere she goes, found out that one of the very first fossils found in America, an ancient mammoth, was unearthed right in her own home state of South Carolina. At the same time, she found out that her state was one of only seven states in our whole country that had no designated state fossil. So Olivia set out to rectify the situation by writing a nice letter to SC Gov. Nikki Haley and other state lawmakers, including her state representative, Robert Ridgeway, and her state senator, Kevin Johnson, both Democrats. Said Olivia:

I wanted it to be the state fossil because I didn't want that history to be lost, and our state not to get credit for it.

Both Ridgeway and Johnson loved the idea. What could go wrong?

Enter the republicans, the party of obstructionism and total kookery. The proposal actually passed the state's House by a huge margin, a bipartisan margin, but then, when it went to the state Senate, republican senators, led by Kevin Bryant -- a creationist who has compared President Obama to Osama bin Laden, voted to block a rape crisis center, and called climate change a hoax -- insisted that any proposal designating the mammoth as the state fossil not only must include a reference to said mammoth's creator, aka God, but also must mention that the mammoth in question, like all mammoths, was "created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field." In fact, Bryant and fellow republican Sen. Mike Fair wanted three -- count 'em, three -- verses from the Book of Genesis added to any designation of the mammoth as the state fossil. Why not just ship it with a Bible?

The Book of Genesis also implies that the mammoth and everything else, including mankind, came into being 6000 years ago. But mammoths went extinct, probably hunted to extinction by us two-legged critters, about 10,000 years ago. Damn, that math and science thing gets tricky when you're a republican.

Eventually, the bill became law, with the sixth-day reference but without mention of any gods or God. Perhaps little Olivia McConnell should have just proposed that Senator Bryant be named the state fossil.


Nuttier than a Columbian mammoth? That's our Kevin.


2. Pat Robertson and his magic asteroid
(Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 6)

Any chance that the age in question
is the Age of Republican Crazy?

Again, let us not think that the über-crazy Pat Robertson is some sort of fringe republican. No, this loon has quite a legion of followers within his party. In fact, he has frequently been put forward as "presidential material" in republican primaries and in discussions of top republican leaders. So, with that in mind, I give you yet another Great Moment In Pat Robertson. The man is a Crazyspeak Award nomination machine!

I wrote a book. I wrote a book. It's called The End of the Age and it deals with an asteroid hitting the Earth.

OK. So far, not so bad. But then --

I don't see anything else that fulfills the prophetic words of Jesus Christ other than an asteroid strike. There isn't anything that will cause the seas to roil, that will cause the skies to darken, the moon and sun not to give their light, the nations terrified on Earth saying "what's happening?"

And then Mr. Doomsday said, as Mr. Doomsdays have been saying for thousands of years, always recalculating the date of our doom when the big day doesn't come:

Hey, just get ready. Get right and stay right with the Lord. It could be next week. . . .

Yeah! It's Chicken Little yelling, "The sky is falling. The sky is falling." But in that story, people stopped believing Chicken Little. In this story, they send him money.


It's almost unfair to the other contenders to consider the Reverend Pat for the Crazyspeak of the Year Award. As long as he draws breath, won't he have to be a favorite?


3. I'll have a pack of Twizzlers and an IUD to go!



2014 was the year that New York's reactionary Cardinal Timothy Dolan and his FOX "News" disciples, among others on the right, informed us that women can obtain birth control by walking into "any shop on any street in America."

This was all about the Hobby Lobby case. Hobby Lobby objected to a provision in Obamacare that said employers had to include contraception in their benefits packages. To Hobby Lobby, that ran against their religious beliefs and it was off-to-the-courts time. The idea that women might want birth control for health reasons was ignored, but, hey, they're women and there's a war on. Eventually, the so-called Supreme Court sided with Hobby Lobby.

But, every shop in town? Who knew? This is wonderful news! Dolan says 7-Eleven is an example. Who else? Dunkin' Donuts? The Dollar Store? Will shoe stores, now that we have Obamacare eating away at the moral fiber of America, be luring in women with offers of contraceptives with each pair of shoes purchased? All I can say is, it's about time!

Dolan's side won this one. Chalk one up for the nosy morality police. So, with them now emboldened, will we have to worry that the next complaint from Dolan will be that batteries are so readily available and that women should not be allowed to purchase batteries without a note from their priest?


COMING UP: Speaking of batteries, right now Noah is recharging his. He says he's not done, though, that there's more 2014 Republican crazy to come. Isn't there always more Republican crazy to come?

NOAH'S 2014 IN REVIEW --
Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy

Part 1: Princess Liz Cheney tries for the Smoothie of the Year Award; "Miss Beck regrets" -- Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 1: Glenn Beck; and the Crackpot Party reacts to President Obama’s State of the Union speech [12/19/2014]
Part 2: Republicans wonder why normal people call them racists; Sean Hannity wants to self-deport; and the First Annual Mr. Burns Award, to ABC "shark" Kevin O'Leary [12/20/2014]
Part 3: Using fear, loathing, and paranoia to sell stuff; Arizona legalizes crack!; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 3: Bill O’Reilly [12/21/2014]
Part 4: A celebration of Michele Bachmann: Pray away the crazy?; What "War on Women"?; and the "Obama angle" on Malaysian Flight 370 [12/22/2014]
Part 5: The GOP and the kiss heard 'round the world; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 5: Joe the Plumber [12/23/2014]
Part 6: A word about South Carolina; Pat Robertson and his magic asteroid; and I'll have a pack of Twizzlers and an IUD to go, please [12/24/2014]
Part 7: And so it begins: The running of the buffoons; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 7, George Will has no idea what rape is; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 8, Rick Wiles calls for a coup [12/29/2014]
Part 8: Things to come: Forward into the past! (11 Presidential Dream Tickets); Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 9: Former republican VP nominee Paul "Crazy Eyes" Ryan; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 10: Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association [12/30/2014]
Part 9: Pompous Blowhard of the Year Award: Bill O’Reilly; FOX "News" announces new spinoff: the "FOX Benghazi™" Shopping Channel!; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 11: DiGiorno Pizza [12/31/2014]
Part 10: Newsmax -- Beyond Drudgery; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominees Nos. 12 and 13: Michele Bachmann, Kimberly Guilfoyle [1/1/2015]
Part 11: GOP and FOX whip up the hate over a POW exchange; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 14: Iowa asylum escapee Rep. Steve King [1/3/2015]
Part 12: Arizona Republican protests busload of YMCA campers; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee(s) No. 15: the Impeachment Variations (group nomination); Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 16: NM Rep. Steve Pearce [1/4/2015]
Part 13 (and last): TV for Dummies: Sarah Palin launches her own channel; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 17: Arizona schools superintendent John Huppenthal (rhymes with Neanderthal); and the final Crazyspeak of the Year nominee -- and also the winner! [1/5/2015]

NOAH'S 2013 IN REVIEW --
A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy

For listings and links, see Part 1 of this year's series.

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