Iraq War Lies: My Letter to Rob Reiner on "Shock and Awe"

-by Sam Husseini

Here's a letter that was sent to Rob Reiner in April 2016. At the time, he was directing the film Shock and Awe which would be released the following year.

Dear Rob Reiner,

I've of course enjoyed your work over the years.

I recently tweeted "Finally saw The Big Short. Good. Sure they'll produce a film about folks who were right about Iraq wmds any decade now."

Immediately, a couple of McClatchy reporters I know responded, tweeting that you are working on Shock and Awe.

At the Institute for Public Accuracy, we got a lot of critical information out scrutinizing claims regarding alleged Iraq WMDs from 2002-03 and I thought you'd be interested in learning of it.

A sample: in October, 2002, John R. MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War, noted on one of our news releases: "Recently, Bush cited an IAEA report that Iraq was ‘six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.’ The IAEA responded that not only was there no new report, ‘there’s never been a report’ asserting that Iraq was six months away from constructing a nuclear weapon." That's just the tip of the iceberg of what was knowable at the time. See other such news releases we put out from before the invasion: "White House Claims: A Pattern of Deceit" and "Bush’s War Case: Fiction vs. Facts at Accuracy.org/bush" and "U.S. Credibility Problems" and "Tough Questions for Bush on Iraq Tonight."

Something of a mythology developed after the invasion that "now we know" that Bush lied. That itself was false. It was knowable before the invasion that the Bush administration was putting forward falsehoods.

Like The Big Short, different people were reaching the same conclusion-- the Iraq war case was based on lies-- from different angles before the war. Knight-Ridder was doing their work and we were doing ours. They had internal anonymous sources, we dealt with things in the public record, but made the effort to seriously scrutinize the claims.

We also got delegations to Iraq lead by our executive director, Norman Solomon: One with the actor Sean Penn, another with former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, yet another with former Sen. James Abourezk and Rep. Nick Rahall (Iraq allowed the inspectors-- which had been withdrawn during the Clinton administration-- back in Iraq just after that delegation urged them to do so.)

One trip we'd planned, that would have done the most to address the WMD issue, was with former WMD inspector Scott Ritter. However, just before the trip, news leaked that he was accused of interacting online with sexual content with under aged girls. So that trip never happened.

Many critical aspects of the Iraq war lies have never seriously been dealt with. For example, lots of people who voted against authorizing war still claimed that Iraq had WMDs, effectively helping the case for war while voting against it. One was Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. I questioned her about that after the invasion. Virtually the entire upper echelon of Obama's foreign policy team backed the Iraq invasion, the 23 senators who voted against it were effectively iced out. Here's a news release we did in 2013 on Kerry claiming he was opposed to the Iraq war.

Some who went the last mile to expose the war lies were never meaningfully acknowledge. Katharine Gun, who worked with British intelligence, leaked a memo from the NSA ordering a surge of spying at the UN to help obtain a second UN resolution authorizing the invasion-- presumably by attempting to get info to blackmail or bully other Security Council members. U.S. officials had said there would be a second UN resolution, but this leak helped block that. After the war, we organized an effort to prevent the British government from prosecuting Gun under their official secrets act. I wrote a piece looking back on this case in 2014.

Another aspect that's still poorly understood is the role of torture in producing the case for war. It's a liberal mantra that "torture doesn't work" but that's not really true. It does work-- to produce false but useful (dis)information. For example, Ibn Shaykh al-Libi was tortured by the Mubarak regime into falsely "confessing" that Iraq was tied to Al-Qaeda and was helping it to obtain chemical and biological weapons. That claim ended up in Colin Powell's UN speech before the Iraq invasion. Powell's chief of staff Larry Wilkerson has since written about this fairly forthrightly. I questioned Powell about this in 2009, but he was still refusing to admit meaningful wrongdoing. See a piece of mine: "'Both Sides' Are Wrong: Torture Did Work-- to Produce Lies for War."

There's obviously a lot more I could go into-- I'd been tracking Iraq fairly closely through out the 1990s, including Clinton administration deceits around its strikes and the perpetual sanctions policy Bill Clinton tragically adopted from the first Bush administration as he came into office.

Here's a Washington Post op-ed I wrote in 1999: "Twisted Policy on Iraq." Unfortunately, such media were incredibly closed after 9/11-- up top is a video of Bill O'Reilly cutting my microphone two days after 9/11.

Certainly, I don't doubt that one could do a 20-hour documentary and not get at all the deceit around the Iraq invasion. There was a staggering amount of fabrication from the Bush administration and so many foibles from the antiwar movement and other quarters. But I'd be very happy to help in making your effort as meaningful and compelling as possible.

Best regards

Are You Going To Miss Bill O'Reilly?

Tucker Carlson will be the new Bill O'Reilly who was fired by the Murdoch's today after a 21 year run of molesting women and spreading ugly right-wing propaganda. According to the NY Times "his abrupt and embarrassing ouster ends his two-decade reign as one of the most popular and influential commentators in television. 'After a thorough and careful review of the allegations, the company and Bill O’Reilly have agreed that Bill O’Reilly will not be returning to the Fox News Channel,' 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News, said in a statement... [M]ore than 50 advertisers had abandoned his show, and women’s rights groups had called for his ouster. Inside the company, women expressed outrage and questioned whether top executives were serious about maintaining a culture based on 'trust and respect,' as they had promised last summer when another sexual harassment scandal forced the ouster of Roger E. Ailes as chairman of Fox News."

And it ain't over yet:

The most unsettling feeling among some at Fox News, however, is that Wednesday’s events are only the beginning. “There’s more to come,” one Fox News insider told me, suggesting that there are more women with stories of harassment who have not come forward publicly. This estimation was affirmed by two people who heard such stories directly. Others are equally concerned about the attention that is being drawn to 21st Century Fox’s handling of the allegations by women inside the company.




Fake News Channel Fox Also Manufactures Fake "Experts" To Bolster The Lies It Feeds Its Hapless Viewers

Bill O'Reilly just making up his own "facts"

Trump and Putin re working furiously to reshape access to the minds of their followers, primarily by undermining public confidence in the media. Putin actually has media people who step too far out of line murdered. So far Trump has resisted that particular authoritarian impulse. But it's early yet.

While Trump and his regime were intensifying their campaign against the NY Times and the TV networks last week, the Putin regime was accusing The Times, Bloomberg and NBC of spreading false information about Mother Russia. American polls show that, by wide margins, Americans have more faith in the media than in either Trump or Putin, both of whom are widely seen as congenital liars and manipulators.

New PPP survey

Rememeber Hillary's "vast right wing conspiracy?" Trump and Putin are just cogs-- big ones-- in that wheel. But they're not alone. Yesterday the Daily Mail took a closer look at Fox News' attempt to justify Trump's crackpot statements about Sweden by airing an interview by Bill O'Reilly-- a master of fake news-- with a make believe Swedish national security advisor. Fox should lose its license to broadcast because of this incident. Seems harsh? I don't think so. Let's look into who Nils Bildt is.





Sweden may be laughing at Fox and Trump but Americans shouldn't be. Bildt is just a random right-wing nut from Sweden who O'Reilly and Fox tried portraying as a national security official to give credence to his reactionary, xenophobic ravings. The government of Sweden has denounced him as an imposter. Let's hope Trump doesn't appoint him to the National Security Council with all the other crackpots he's "accidentally" put onto that body!

[I]f viewers might have taken the 'advisor' for a government insider, the Swedish Defense Ministry and Foreign Office told the newspaper Dagens Nyheter they knew nothing of him.

In fact Bildt is an 'independent analyst' who moved to the US in 1994. He describes himself as a founding member of Modulus World LLC,  a corporate geopolitical strategy and security consulting business which has offices in Washington, Brussels and Tokyo.

In his bio, Bildt boasted of his expertise on defense and national security issues. He said he had served as a naval officer, worked for Japanese officials and had written books on creating business opportunities in hostile environments.

But security experts in Sweden said he wasn't a familiar figure in their ranks in that country.

'He is in not in any way a known quantity in Sweden and has never been part of the Swedish debate,' Swedish Defence University leadership professor Robert Egnell said by email to The Associated Press on Saturday.

He and Bildt-- also known then as Nils Tolling-- were in a master's degree program in war studies together at King's College London in 2002-2003, and Bildt moved to Japan soon after, he said.

Bildt has since admitted that he is merely an 'independent analyst' and says Fox knew as much when it booked him to appear on the show.

He told the Washington Post he made it 'clear' to producers before going on-air that he did not work in official capacity. In his response to Mediate, he said his job title wasn't the issue.

'Sorry for any confusion caused, but needless to say I think that is not really the issue. The issue is Swedish refusal to discuss their social problems and issues.'

Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, who has a brother and son with the same name, said he believed the man was cashing in on his family's political pull.

The executive producer of The O'Reilly Factor said Bildt was recommended by people the show's booker consulted with while making numerous inquiries about potential guests.

'After pre-interviewing him and reviewing his bio, we agreed that he would make a good guest for the topic that evening,' executive producer David Tabacoff said in a statement.

The network said O'Reilly was expected to address the subject further on Monday's show.

Bildt's appearance comes  a week after Donald Trump appeared to refer to a terror attack in Sweden which never happened.

The president cited 'what's happening in Sweden right now' during a speech on terror across Europe, prompting many to deduce he was out of touch with facts.

President Trump later said he was in fact referring to the country's immigration issues that he'd read on Fox News.

Remember When Trump Mocked Chinese And Japanese Accents? Chinese And Japanese Americans Do

In 2012, Asian-Americans were huge Obama supporters. In the end the very diverse group only gave 31% of it's vote to Romney. It didn't matter in states like California, New York, Illinois and Texas, with their massive Asian-American population. California, New York, and Illinois were going big for Obama anyway and Texas was in the pocket for Romney no matter how many Laotians and Vietnamese voted for Obama. But in swing states like Nevada, Virginia and North Carolina, Asian-American votes are vital in putting together a winning coalition. Trump has managed to alienate Asian-American voters without understanding that. As we explained after he insulted Filipino-Americans, a socially conservative group that has always been strong for the GOP, voters are utterly turned off by Trump's racism, bullying, xenophobia and his fingers and immature foreign policies.

The just-released National Asian American Survey shows Hillary ahead of him by a 43-point margin among registered Asian-American voters. The polling was done between August 10 and September 29-- in 11 languages. Just half the number of voters who backed Romney plan to vote for Trump. Hillary leads him 59-16%. Karthick Ramakrishnan, the survey's director, said that the big defection from the GOP this year was all about Trump. "Trump's unfavorables," he emphasized, "are like nothing we've seen before." He leads Clinton in unfavorables 67-36%.

Nevada is a swing state with 6 electoral votes that Trump desperately needs. But the presidential race isn't all that's going on there. There's a crucial Senate race and 2 Republicans congressional incumbents are struggling to fight off strong Democratic challenges. It isn't likely that loud Trump backers Cresent Hardy and Mark Amodei (Trump's Nevada campaign chairman) will survive November and the open seat south of Vegas (Henderson and below) will probably go from red to blue as well. Asian-Americans are part of the good news for Democrats in the state.

On paper at least, Asian-Americans seem like perfect Republicans. Many are small-business owners. Their communities tend to be more culturally conservative. And a lot of them, having fled oppressive communist governments, found comfort in the Republican Party’s aggressive anti-communist policies.

But in what could be a significant realignment of political allegiance, Asian-Americans are identifying as Democrats at a quicker pace than any other racial group. And many Republicans worry this election will only accelerate that trend, damaging their party for years to come with what is now the fastest-growing minority in the country.

The Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, is not helping. His attacks on the Chinese-- which he has sometimes delivered in a crude, mocking accent-- are a feature of his populist campaign. He has suggested cutting off immigration from the Philippines, citing fears that the longtime U.S. ally poses the same national security threat as countries like Syria and Afghanistan.

Trump’s talk of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants has also stirred up painful memories among a group that has been singled out under U.S. law before, whether by the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred the immigration of Chinese laborers until 1943, or by the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

“It’s like we’re going back in time,” said Marc Matsuo of Las Vegas, who grew up in Hawaii with parents of Japanese ancestry and recalled how his family used to feel uncomfortable expressing their heritage, to the point they would not speak Japanese. He now helps register Asian-Americans to vote. “I was always brought up that you don’t talk about religion, you don’t talk about politics. Not anymore.”

Though Asian-Americans are still just 4 percent of the overall eligible voting population, their political power is concentrated in important swing states like Nevada and Virginia, where both parties have been building on their efforts to reach out.

In and around Las Vegas, home to one of the country’s largest Asian populations, this means printing campaign leaflets in Korean, having a Vietnamese translator on standby at speeches, publishing op-ed articles in the local Filipino newspaper and hiring employees who know enough Mandarin to recruit voters at the Chinatown seafood market.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has a resident staff member in Las Vegas dedicated to Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders. Staff members and volunteers here speak Chinese, Korean, Hindi and Tagalog, the Filipino language. The campaign has recently been conducting native language training on how to use voting machines in a local Chinese cultural center. Volunteers are sent to court supporters in Buddhist temples.

Though Trump’s campaign announced a new Asian Pacific American Advisory Committee last week, a Republican National Committee spokesman, Ninio Fetalvo, said Trump’s outreach to Asian-American voters had been coordinated until now mainly through two staff members at the party’s Washington headquarters. The party, he added, has also printed materials in a variety of Asian languages in cities like Las Vegas.

Republicans’ difficulties with Asian-Americans are similar to those the party has faced with most minority groups. A sense that the party is hostile to immigrants and minorities has driven more Asian-American voters into the Democratic Party lately, political scientists and community leaders said. And if Republicans do not make more of an effort, those voting shifts could harden, just as Hispanics’ voting patterns have.

...As Asian-Americans have replaced Hispanics as the nation’s fastest growing racial group, Nevada has become the center of their emerging political class. Asian-Americans are now about 7 percent of the electorate in the state, a figure that is expected to double by 2060.

Democrats and Republicans have concluded that winning in closely divided Nevada requires performing strongly among Asian-Americans: The state’s Republican senator, Dean Heller, carried Asian-Americans when he narrowly won in 2012. And Harry Reid, the state’s long-serving Democratic senator who is retiring, performed even better with them than he did among Hispanics in his 2010 election.

None of which is lost on the two candidates vying to succeed Reid: Rep. Joe Heck, the Republican, employs an aide who speaks Mandarin and has made Kamayan dinners-- traditional Filipino banquets-- as much a campaign staple as marching in parades. And Catherine Cortez Masto, the Democrat, grew up in the Las Vegas neighborhood that has since become the city’s Chinatown, with Korean barbecue restaurants, Vietnamese noodle bars, foot spas and Chinese arches. When she attended a lunar celebration last month, she spoke in English as someone translated her words into Vietnamese.

As much as Trump’s positions seem to be driving Asian-Americans into the Democratic Party, the group defies easy political categorization. Many Koreans are evangelical Christians. Filipinos overwhelmingly belong to the Roman Catholic Church. Many Vietnamese who emigrated during the war identify closely with the Republican Party’s anti-communism.

“In general, Asian values are very much in line with Republican values: family, education, the country needs to be stable,” said James Yu, a member of the Las Vegas Asian Chamber of Commerce, which has endorsed Heck in the Senate race. Notably, it has not backed Trump.

By November, about 9.3 million Asian-Americans will be able to vote nationally, or 4 percent of the eligible voting population. That is up from 8 million in 2012. And that growth has spawned new civic organizations, like the nonpartisan Asian Community Development Council in Las Vegas, which aims to boost the group’s low voter turnout. Only 47 percent of eligible Asian-Americans voted in 2012.

Vida Chan Lin, the group’s founder, said that her message each time she goes out to register Asian-Americans to vote-- in casinos’ employee lunchrooms, in Chinatown shopping malls and at employee orientations for businesses like the Panda Express fast-food chain-- is that they have to harness the power of their growing numbers.

“We’ve got to get them to vote,” Lin said in her office, which was humming with volunteers planning registration drives, as well as follow-up calls as reminders to vote.

One positive consequence of Trump’s divisiveness, she said, was that interest in the election is like nothing she has ever seen. And the chatter about it follows her everywhere, she added: “When I went to China, they were talking about it.”

Hardy-- always channeling the hatred and bigotry

One of the congressional districts where there are lots of Asian-American voters is NV-04, where primitive, bigioted Trump-fanatic Cresent Hardy was accidentally elected in 2014. Blue America has endorsed his progressive opponent, state Senator Ruben Kihuen-- you can contribute to his campaign here-- and, as one of the leaders of the Democrats in the state legislature, he's very aware of the contributions Asian-Americans, almost 5% of the district's population, have made in Nevada. "The Asian American Pacific Islander community," he told me today, "is the fastest growing voter block in Nevada and will be critical for our success this election. Trump and Hardy's hateful, racist rhetoric and policies offend many AAPI voters to the core. Democrats can't just count on the anti-Trump vote among AAPI voters but it offers a golden opportunity for us to make our case and provide a brighter vision for all Americans."

Certainly, all over the country, Chinese-Americans are well-aware that Fox is the mouthpiece of the Republican Party. Many were offended by the Jesse Watters piece from Bill O'Reilly's show a couple days ago. The foremost Chinese-American member of Congress, Ted Lieu (D-CA) told us that "When the GOP Presidential nominee and his enablers run a racist and bigoted campaign, guess what, Americans notice, including Asian Americans. The GOP mantra to Asian Americans that we want you to join us but first we want to deport your children doesn't actually work well as a message. Asian Americans are now a sizable and critical swing vote in battleground states such as Nevada and Virginia. That's one reason Donald Trump will lose those states."

More Mayhem At Fox "News"-- Fighting Over Reagan's Corpse

Fox anchor Bill O'Reilly and Fox contributor George Will went after each other like two mad dogs, repeatedly calling each other liars on the air. O'Reilly wrote another in a long, dull line of hackish books, this one Killing Reagan, and Will insulted him by writing a column about it in the Washington Post, comparing O'Reilly to Trump as another "symptom of today’s cultural pathology of self-validating vehemence with blustery certitudes substituting for evidence." He claims that O'Reilly's book "will distort public understanding of Ronald Reagan’s presidency more than hostile but conscientious scholars could."

Styling himself an “investigative historian,” O’Reilly purports to have discovered amazing facts that have escaped the notice of real historians. The book’s intimated hypothesis is that the trauma of the March 1981 assassination attempt somehow triggered in Reagan a mental decline, perhaps accelerating the Alzheimer’s disease that would not be diagnosed until 13 years later. The book says Reagan was often addled to the point of incompetence, causing senior advisers to contemplate using the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to remove him from office.

...When Reagan’s unsatisfactory Chief of Staff Don Regan was replaced by Howard Baker, a Baker aide wrote a memo that included slanderous assessments of the president from some disgruntled Regan staffers. This memo, later regretted by its author, became, O’Reilly says, the “centerpiece” of his book. On this flimsy reed he leans the fiction (refuted by minute-by-minute records in the Reagan Library) that, in O’Reilly’s words, “a lot of days” Reagan never left the White House’s second floor, where he watched “soap operas all day long.”

The book’s pretense of scholarship involves 151 footnotes, only one of which is even remotely pertinent to the book’s lurid assertions. Almost all contain irrelevant tidbits (“Reagan’s hair was actually brown”). At the Reagan Library, where researchers must register, records show that neither O’Reilly nor Dugard, who churn out a book a year, used its resources. The book’s two and a half pages of “sources” unspecifically and implausibly refer to “FBI and CIA files,” “presidential libraries” and travel “around the world.” They also cite Kitty Kelley’s scabrous 1991 Nancy Reagan “biography,” a sewer of rumors and innuendos that probably is the source of the sexual factoids O’Reilly and Dugard recycle.

...The book’s perfunctory pieties about Reagan’s greatness are inundated by its flood of regurgitated slanders about his supposed lassitude and manipulability. This book is nonsensical history and execrable citizenship, and should come with a warning: “Caution-- you are about to enter a no-facts zone.”

Now... you've got to watch the Fox slugfest in the video up top! I guess this is where the Republican presidential candidates learn that it's OK to be so utterly vicious towards each other.

Noah Sends Out 4th of July Wishes: "Dear People of FOX News . . ."

Plus: Is Pastor Rick Scarborough burning yet?


Uh-oh, Bill-O's mouth is open! Stand back, people! Who knows what might come out of that gaping maw?

by Noah

Here's a wish for today: I wish that I had the technology to jam FOX News. No, not to prevent the twisted, warped programming. We are supposed to be a nation of free speech, aren't we? And if people can believe that they have been abducted by the Saucermen on multiple occasions, I suppose they can believe the endless fear-mongering and dark drivel that FOX offers.

I would simply like to be able to jam FOX in such a way that anyone tuning in to their spew would have to watch it through one of those clear rainbow filters that Facebook offered its users after the Supreme Court's ratification of the right of same sex marriage.

Oh OK, failing that, I would wish that Bill O'Reilly did a whole show in front of a giant, screen-filling rainbow flag backdrop, not knowing it was there until he turned to leave the set at the show's end. Watching the old geezer lose it would be priceless.

Why shouldn't I wish for this? On Monday cranky old Bill-O donned his black heart homophobe colors. Does he ever take them off? He threw one of his patented curmudgeonly snit fits about the White House being lit up in rainbow colors and puked out his tired "traditional Americans" meme, letting the FOX freak flag fly, as he is paid so well to do, even calling it an Obama "in your face" move.

I guess Bill-O took it all personally, but isn't he a fine one to talk about what a traditional marriage might be? One man, one woman and a loofah in the shower with a producer, anyone?

I have another wish: How about a list of all of the politicians and pundits that bellow about a marriage consisting of one man and one woman while they themselves are secretly gay, perhaps even chasing teenage Congressional pages? Can we get that list? Calling Larry Flynt! Is the Senate majority leader at the top -- or, er, at the bottom?

Meanwhile, on the same show we were suddenly treated to the surreal, hard-to-make-this-stuff-up, un-introduced specter of some other republican loon named Huckabee talking about putting up a nativity scene on the White House lawn if he's elected president. Hell, if a republican gets the White House, we should be happy it's just a Christmastime nativity scene and not a nightly burning cross.

Just look how beat this living fossil O'Reilly looks as he quacks about "traditional Americans"! People of FOX, wake up! You have overslept by decades! You are as big of a freakshow as those "People of Walmart" photo collections that circulate on the internet.



Sez Bill:

I was a bit surprised to see the White House doing a victory lap using actual White House property on Friday. The people's house was illuminated in rainbow colors to celebrate the gay marriage decision. What about all the Americans who believe that a redefinition of marriage is not the job of the Supreme Court?

Well, you're right on one little point there, Bill-O. It isn't the job of the Supreme Court to redefine, per se. You see, courts are arbiters, and we have this thing called the Constitution. Their job is to take a look at that and see how the question put before them fits that Constitution. That's what they did. Got it? They acknowledged a right that was already there. Can you get your rapidly shriveling pea brain around that? The Supreme Court decision was as "traditional" as it gets. Traditional as in "American."

Imagine, People of FOX, how it is to be a republican and go around all day long categorizing everyone you see as "traditional" or "nontraditional." Sooner or later you will be so narrow-minded that you will be sitting alone in the park like the village idiots that you are.

Dear People of FOX, it is now the 21st century! "Traditional" Americans are all of us, not just people categorized by your ridiculously narrow bigoted view that sorts people by gender, gender preference, gender identification, skin tone and number of syllables or vowels in a surname. Not only that, but it has always been that way, at least in ideal if not in practice. I know conservatives have always struggled against that ideal, thinking that certain rights apply only to themselves and whatever clique they belong to. But how about, if you are so into conforming, you start conforming to the American Ideal instead of always fighting the spirit of America?

In ten years or less, your little irrationally panicking Pied Piper from FOXWorld will be sitting on that proverbial park bench mumbling about how much better things used to be when only white hetero males were in charge (or so he thought), instead of doing it on TV every night.

If he wasn't so sick and hateful, O'Reilly would almost be laughable. He is practically a walking parody of hate, almost playing it for comic effect. Except he's serious. Some say you need smarts to have a sense of humor.

Come to think of it, FOX is really just a bunch of old wackos sitting on a park bench anyway. Sure you can point to the good-looking cleavage babes and the handsome devils that play journalists on FOX, but if you rip off the masks of any of them, you will find a crotchety, senile 90-year-old example of dementia.


MEANWHILE IN RELATED NEWS:
IS PASTOR RICK BURNING?



Sez Pastor Rick: "If necessary, we will burn" (emphasis emphatically not added).

A Christian pastor, Rick Scarborough, made noises about playing the ultimate victim card, threatening to set himself on fire if the Supreme Court gave the thumbs-up to same sex marriage. Scarborough hails from Texas. Should we be surprised?

Jeez, all Rev. Franklin Graham did was move his money out of Wells Fargo, saying they "advocate for the gay lifestyle" that "contradicts God's … blah, blah, blah."

It was pretty funny when he then put his money into a bank that is even more supportive of Satan's dastardly plan to ruin America.

All Wells Fargo did was run a TV ad that showed two women adopting a child. How dare they give that child a better future! Now, these fake Christians are trying to top each other by … topping themselves! And I, for one, support their right to do so! In fact, I encourage these kooks to choose the suicide lifestyle. Do it now!

Last Friday was a great day for America as we joined much of the civilized world. It was an even greater day for some individual Americans and the people they have chosen to share their lives with. But the righties have a special talent for looking in the mirror and thinking it's all about themselves.

Dear Pastor Rick, to date you haven't followed through. We're waiting. We're waiting impatiently. Is that mean of us? Need me to send a match? Here's my generous suggestion to you. How about you, Graham, O'Reilly and Huckabee climb into an oil-soaked boat in the Gulf of Mexico and play the good old republican whining-victim card together, Viking-style.

Put some fireworks in the boat too. It's 4th of July, and this is America. Give us a gift! Show us your patriotism!

PASTOR RICK "EXPLAINS": WHEN HE SAID "WE
WILL BURN," HE DIDN'T MEAN "WE WILL BURN"

Yes, Pastor Rick has "explained," sort of, how it happens that he hasn't gone up in flames. It seems that when he said, "If necessary, we will burn," he, uh, didn't actually mean it. It was a song reference, he says. RawStory presented his "explanation":

I made that comment to paraphrase a spiritual song, "Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego," in which the three were given a choice -- to bow to the image of Nebucahdnezzar or burn in a furnace. "We will burn" means that we will accept any sanction from the government for resisting [Friday’s] Supreme Court decision. We do not support any violence or physical harm.

Well, you can hear for yourself what the good pastor said up above, and while it's possible that this is what he was thinking, it's not what he said, which is all we have to go by. Also, he seems awfully murky on the meaning off "we will burn," which means, you know, we will burn. When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego expressed their willingness to burn, what they meant was that they were prepared to burn -- in, you know, that famously fiery furnace.

If they had meant that they would "accept any sanction from the government for resisting" the order to bow to the image of Nebucahdnezzar, they could have said that, just like Pastor Rick could have said that. Probably nobody would have written a song about it, but that's okay, because if what you mean is that you have the courage of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego except for the part about having the courage, there really isn't any need for a song, is there?

#

Admit it now, have you been oppressing Bill O'Reilly again? Aren't you ashamed of yourself?

"Martyrdom is a huge deal in Catholicism -- the Lives of the Saints are filled with stories of martyrs tortured and killed for their beliefs -- and hey, in many strands of Christianity, if you're not being oppressed, you're not doing it right. . . .

"I can call Bill O'Reilly a bigot all day long, and that has nothing to do with me oppressing him for his religion. For what it's worth, I happen to know a lot of Catholics who are not bigots and don't give two fucks about gay people getting married! Or, quite frankly, what non-Catholics do, period, so long as they're not bothering anyone."

-- Robyn Pennacchia, in "Bill O'Reilly Pretty Sure Christians
Are Being 'Verbally' Murdered In This Country"

by Ken

Wingnut warrior John Stossel as the voice of reason? You know we must be dealing with some big-deal kind of crazy. And we are, we are.

Make sure your hard hats are safely in place, ladies and germs, and join me as we venture into a toxic swampland ateem with flora and fauna that may sometimes bear a passing resemblance to their counterparts in the real world but should all be treated as lethally contaminated. Yes, friends, we're going to journey into a realm from which few travelers return with their sanity intact: the mind of Bill O'Reilly.

As The Frisky's Robyn Pennacchia pinpoints in the post we're about to look at, Billo is never more content or at peace than when he's presenting himself as a martyr, and in these, his years of official dotage, he seems to have been feeling more and more oppressed. And since he is, as he always likes to remind us, a "journalist," nothing is more important to his reporting of a story than his feelings. In fact, most of the time his feelings are the story. Specifically, he is feeling oppressed as a Christian! This takes quite a bit of doing, but if anybody can successfully masquerade as a victim of oppression on the basis of his membership in a pulverizingly dominant oppressor class, it's our Billo.

Here's how Robyn reported this meeting of, er, minds in her post yesterday, "Bill O'Reilly Pretty Sure Christians Are Being 'Verbally' Murdered In This Country":

Ever the culture warrior, Bill O’Reilly spoke with his agnostic but still totally conservative friend John Stossel Tuesday night about his fears regarding the ways Christians are totally oppressed in this country.

While Stossell suggested that while there may be places in the world where Christians are oppressed, they are not oppressed here in America, and are certainly not being killed here in America for being Christians. O’Reilly disagreed, you see, because they are being “verbally killed.”

Now, while you may think that O’Reilly was suggesting that people are going around using the Avada Kedavra curse on innocent bible-believing Christians, he was not. His big example, naturally, was the fact that people in department stores say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”–you know, because nothing oppresses Christians like acknowledging that Jewish people exist and also have a holiday around that time! His second example was the horrifying fact that–gasp–secular progressives can go around calling Christians bigots for not wanting gay people to get married, or say they are anti-women just because they don’t believe women should have any say in their reproductive choices! They can just say these things! Out loud! And in a room full of people!

Stossell attempted to be the voice of “reason”–suggesting that the problem wasn’t so much people who are agnostic or atheist, but “big government” infringing on “individual liberty.” Which is also not the case here, as it would actually be more of a “big government” thing to require department store employees to say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays” or to put me in jail for calling Bill O’Reilly a bigot and a chauvinist pig.

The only example O’Reilly brought up that could reasonably be argued as the government infringing on “individual liberty” is the whole thing where bigots don’t want to make cakes for gay weddings. However, the thing is–when the government doesn’t allow businesses to discriminate like that, they are actually protecting the “individual liberty” of people who should be able to buy from any public business they choose. Yes, in this situation they are choosing between the “individual rights” of a business and the individual rights of a person, but historically, in these situations the rights of individual people have won out over the rights of businesses to discriminate.

As Robyn goes on to point out, Billo comes honestly by his "gung-ho" attitude toward "the idea of being oppressed." Martyrdom, she notes, "is a huge deal in Catholicism -- the Lives of the Saints are filled with stories of martyrs tortured and killed for their beliefs -- and hey, in many strands of Christianity, if you’re not being oppressed, you’re not doing it right.


YOU WANT TO BE OPPRESSED? OKAY,
WE'LL GIVE YOU OPPRESSED, LOOFAH BOY!

From Billo's passion for martyrdom, it's just a small leap to an offer one can hardly see the poor fellow refusing. "I also think this may have something to do with O’Reilly’s well known kinky side," Robyn says. "So I have an offer!" And what an offer she has!

O’Reilly, you pay me $5000 an hour and I will totally oppress you.

I will take my free birth control pills right in front of you while cackling maniacally about all the babies I’m not going to have.

I will take you to a gay wedding!

I will repeatedly tell you allllll about how I don’t believe in god and also how evolution and global warming are definitely real things. And you will just have to sit there while no one comes to arrest me.

I will make you clean my entire apartment while I read to you from Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex.”

I will poke you with a pointy stick until you finally give up and say “Happy Holidays!”

I’ll drip hot wax on your face while making you recite the Pledge of Allegiance in it’s original form–without the “under god” part.

I will throw falafel at you every time you mention Jesus or the Bible. If it continues, I will lock you in the bathroom for days on end.

For an extra $10,000, I will follow you around for a week and refuse to let you buy or sell anything unless you agree to take the mark of the beast, and then threaten to behead you for refusing to worship the anti-christ or Satan or whatever.

I mean, if you want, we can totally go for martyrdom here. I could press your hand on a George Foreman grill and call you St. Lawrence? Nero used to sew Christians up in animal carcasses and throw them to the dogs–I could like, put you in an Easter Bunny costume and send you to a furry convention? Or we could go like St. Cecelia and I can make you take a crazy hot bath–without a “falafel thingy” while you try to sing and I criticize you for being off-pitch? I don’t know. I mean, I kind of faint at the sight of blood so I won’t be able to follow it up with half-beheading you and letting you bleed out over three days. Plus, you know, I just had you wash the floor. This also rules out tearing you limb from limb or having you drawn and quartered.

Robyn's susceptibility to the Martyrdom of Billo appears to be connected to a Catholic upbringing of her own, which she appears to have put safely behind her.

Truth be told, I don’t even really know how to oppress Bill O’Reilly for being Christian. At least not properly. I don’t want to physically hurt anyone or throw them in jail for expressing their opinions. I just want to be allowed to do my own thing, and not be required to participate in the Christian religion if I choose not to. I absolutely believe that people have the right to practice their religion, I just don’t believe that right extends to infringing on the freedoms of other people to not practice their religion.

What's more, Robyn thinks "it is absurd to suggest that just because someone practices a religion, that they ought to be protected from criticism." She notes that Billo himself shows a keen understanding of this point "when it comes to other religions -- like, for instance, Islam." Yes, when it comes to other religions, Billo can be pretty free with the criticism.

It is, in fact, "quite blasphemous," Robyn insists, "when you ask people to participate in your religion without believing in it." She goes on to ask, "Do you really think your god wants that?" (Now this may be going one step too far. Because yes, I think Billo probably does think his god wants this, very much.)

The saints and martyrs? The oppression and torture they faced had nothing to do with not being “allowed” to force other non-believers to abide by their religion’s rules. They just wanted to be free to practice their religion and be left alone. You can do that here, in America. Just like I can “practice” my non-religion. We’re not going to force you to take part in pagan rituals, or any other religious practices you don’t believe in, so try extending the same courtesy to the rest of us.

Oh, I get it. Billo extending courtesy to anyone outside the wingnut teepee? It's a fantasy! You know, a Tax Day fantasy!

#

Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy, 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


In Crackpot Utopia it was still the Year of Benghazi -- see No. 2.

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. Pompous Blowhard of the Year Award: Bill O'Reilly

When I thought about who deserved this award, there were more than a few candidates screaming out the windows of the Crackpot Asylum. But one truly bizarre person has built a reputation that is so synonymous with the words "pompous" and "blowhard" that there can really be only one true champeen!



The following pearls from the worm-eaten mind of Bill-O are not just breathtaking in their Outer Limits trans-dimensional scope of irony; they are as breathtaking as what would happen if you were sitting in a spaceship orbiting Pluto and suddenly all the windows blew open and in an instant all the air, the contents of the ship, and you were sucked out into the vast vacuum of ice-cold space.

Heeeerre's Bill-O!

"When you hear something on a partisan-driven program, do not believe it!"

And, mere seconds later:

"Distortions are how some people make a living."

Hmmm, good to know, Bill-O! Good to know!

It's worth noting that O'Reilly actually, really cut short his August vacation to bless us with these pearls of his unique genius. It seems he got paranoid and felt the need to rush back and defend himself against people he calls "race hustlers" (no, he wasn't looking in the mirror, although it's reasonable of you to assume that he was), by issuing a diatribe about people who dare to criticize republican icon Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot an unarmed suspect Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO.

Bill-O seems to think that having bravely acknowledged that Michael Brown shouldn't be dead offsets the rest of the nonsense he's spewed about Ferguson. But then, he doesn't have to listen to himself.


"My pal Jon Stewart, basically a comedian, but he's taken seriously by some of his fanatical followers. . . . Stewart mocked me for coming back from vacation. . . . Stewart distorts the [Ferguson] issue, and he has been known to do that. [Plays clips including one showing him saying, "What happened to Michael Brown should never happent to any American," and another saying, "If Michael Brown did something wrong, it doesn't mean that you wind up dead in the street."] So here is the Factor Tip of the Day: When you hear something on a partisan-driven program, do not believe it. And that includes the Net! Don't believe this stuff! Distortions are how some people make a living. Stewart is going for the laugh. He doesn't reallycare if it's true or not. And his audience, watching me, they don't know. Yuk-yuk-yuk. Come on!" (Watch the clip here.)


2. FOX "News" announces new spinoff: the "FOX Benghazi™" Shopping Channel!



Watching FOX "News" during the last year -- in fact, over the last two years, has been like watching a blinding bright yellow flashing road sign, a sign that screams "Benghazi!," flashing it over and over again. Don't worry, when you pass the first one, there'll be another, even bigger flashing Benghazi! sign every 50 yards. Benghazi. Benghazi. Benghazi! Benghazi! After all, the old sign that said "Birth Certificate!" burned out.

It got so bad that in just a two-week period in June, FOX devoted an insane 225 segments to what will go down in history as "The Great Republican Benghazi Hoax." For the FOX asylum, Benghazi is some sort of manifestation of Tourette's syndrome.

Then, a few weeks ago, the report from the republican-led congressional investigation of the Benghazi tragedy came out. After spending millions and millions of our precious taxpayer dollars that Congress could have been put to so much better use, it turned out that, as all non-crackpots knew, there was no scandal. There was no conspiracy. There was no cover-up.



The reaction from Fox? Silence. It was almost like FOX simply went off the air.

Alas, it was not to be. It took all of about three days, but they got their wind back. The republican committee that issued the report had dumped it out after 5:00 on a Friday afternoon in a classic news dump at the time of week when they thought no one would notice, and much of the media, including the so-called liberal media, only lightly mentioned the findings. But on FOX, nothing at all, not even on their Sunday "news" shows.

Not to worry, FOX has regrouped, and they have hopes for a brand-new republican-crackpot committee that will also spend more of our hard-earned money investigating Benghazi. What's that about the definition of insanity? You know, the one about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

FOX is all in. They already pushed all of their chips on Benghazi to the middle of the table a year ago. Now they've taken off all their clothing and added it to the pile. Damn, the idea of seeing a nude Sean Hannity or Neil Cavuto sitting at the poker table is not a pretty sight. ‘Scuse me a minute, I have to go barf.

OK, I'm back. What is it with Benghazi for Republicans? Benghazi might as well be Walter White's blue crystal meth to these wackos. They just can't get enough of it. They constantly need more, more, more! They look under every pillow and rock for what has become the Loch Ness Monster of scandals. Benghazi has become a myth that has fervent bug-eyed believers. The more they chant the word, the more they believe. You could tell these people that the sky is blue and they will scream that it is green.

Recently FOX "News," in their desperation to put literally anybody in front of the camera who will back their nihilistic insanity, called upon Duck Dynasty crackpot Phil Robertson as an expert on foreign policy for their Sean Hannity program. His mission was apparently to convince viewers that "Benghazi is real, my friends." Well, if the Duck Commander says it, it must be so. Hey, that's even better than Krauthammer.

Then there was Hercules, aka Kevin Sorbo, as an expert on Benghazi for FOX's Outnumbered show. (Even the show name reflects the paranoia that is integral to the republican mindset.) In discussing the NFL's very real domestic abuse horrors, Sorbo managed to draw a direct line from Benghazi to the NFL.

And he wasn't the first loon on FOX to do so! Lizzie Hasselbeck had beaten him to it on her miserable little slice of village-idiot theater called FOX and Friends, managing to draw some sort of line between Benghazi and the NFL's domestic-abuse scandal -- as, er, expressed in her Tweet:



It just goes to show that not everyone in Hollywood is a liberal commie pinko. Give it time and crazies like Sorbo will be on FOX connecting Pearl Harbor to Benghazi, complete with tales about Obama using a time machine to lead the Japanese attack. There will be claims of covered-up old black-and-white photos of him shaking hands with Admiral Yamamoto (who also went to Harvard, by the way -- say no more!) and bowing to the emperor.

If FOX keeps going in the direction they've been going, we will see, in time for the 2016 election, a completely made-up scandal based on people and places that don't even exist. Some building that has never been built, in a town that has only existed in republicanland, will be blown up and people that never existed will disappear. Maybe they can call it Roswell, but I think that's already been done. Submit your names for the town of republican myth-mongering now! You might want to get the Web domain name registered. Reaganville, anyone? That's the next step in republican lunacy. Rest assured, though, that it will all be some Democratic front-runner's fault.

The republican masterminds of the crypto-scandal of Benghazi have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in getting the gullible and the haters to believe. Why did they perpetrate this hoax? My guess is that the real Benghazi cover-up is that the Republicans don't just want to exploit the tragedy in order to politically damage President Obama and Hillary Clinton. They also want to divert attention from the fact that it was they who cut the dollars for the security of our embassies in the first place, and they certainly wouldn't want the media pointing that one out, now would they? If you take away embassy protection, bad things happen.

The way I see it, it's inevitable. FOX already has FOX Business, FOX Sports, and who-knows-what-else, all designed to fatten Rupert Murdoch's wallet so he can invest more money in backing China. So it's only natural that FOX "News" would spin off a FOX "All Benghazi, All The Time" channel: FOX Benghazi™! Your Benghazi Channel! They'll have Lizzie Hasselbeck and Megyn Kelly offering a full line of FOX Benghazi™ merchandise. I can see it now: T-shirts, handbags, socks, AR-15s, all emblazoned with some sort of FOX Benghazi™ logo, even sick little flag-draped FOX Benghazi™ coffins.


3. Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 11: DiGiorno Pizza



It's bad enough that DiGiorno makes a virtually inedible product, which even New York City rats ignore when it's tossed out the window and into back alleys, half-finished, by slob citizens. And it's bad enough that said product contributes to the growing obesity problems of those who actually eat it.

Now, in the wake of the sad tale of footballer Ray Rice cold-cocking his then-fiancée-now-wife in an elevator, DiGiorno goes and comments on a twitter account, #WhyIStayed, which someone set up so battered women could explain why they stay with their abusers. Many of the reasons are poignant, even if they aren't quite enough for many of us to fully understand. Reasons offered often deal with things like staying so my unborn child will have a dad or because they believed that every time would be the last time, etc.

In a fine example of typical corporate arrogance, stupidity, and insensitivity, some genius at DiGiorno added what he or she saw as a perfectly reasonable reason to stay with the man who may, some day, kill you:



Is there no depth to which corporate a-holes will not sink in an attempt to separate us from our money and give us diabetes or colon cancer in return? DiGiorno later claimed they didn't know what the Twitter account was about, or even what the phrase "Why I Stayed" means.



I suppose if you live under a rock, it's possible.

DiGiorno's marketing goons may be the Mariana Trench of marketeers, but what should we expect in a world where the likes of Jamie Dimon and Mitt Romney roam free and a whole political party can make light of rape? It seems that it's only a matter of time before some fast food chain uses pictures of the starved prisoners of Auschwitz, saying if only they had our tacos, or pizza, or whatever.


TOMORROW IN PART 10: Beyond Drudgery; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominees Nos. 12 and 13: Michele Bachmann and Kimberly Guilfoyle

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.

#

Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy, Part 3

• Using fear, loathing, and paranoia to sell stuff
• Arizona legalizes crack!
• Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 3: old reliable Bill O’Reilly

Noah worries, will 40 days and nights be enough?

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. Using fear, loathing, and paranoia to sell stuff

I've long been suspicious of drug companies flogging all sorts of medications on the teevee, specifically medications for ailments we never heard of as little as five years ago. So many of these ads can easily awaken the power of suggestion in any of us, sometimes to the point where any little pain in the head gets some folks worrying about brain tumors.

As for my own life, I know now that I probably had ADHD. I sat in class and my overactive daydreaming mind went places, wonderful places. The cure then was a teacher that could keep my attention. I learned how to focus, when I wanted to. Today, they would scare my parents and drug me. I turned out fine without the little pills.

Now the righties are doing the pharma companies one better when it comes to scaring people into buying things. Take the Info Wars online store. Check out their “Wake Up America Immune Support and Patriot Blend" coffees! Better yet, maybe you need their Info Wars Fluoride Shield -- you know, remember that stuff that the commies were wanting to put in our water in the 1950s and 1960s? Well, the commies musta won, since it's now in our toothpaste. Still, it's not too late! You can buy that little Info Wars bottle and -- problem solved! Well, I'll give them credit for not running off 100 words of disclaimers like Big Pharma does.

But wait, there's more: You'll be needing your five-DVD set of the Book of Revelations [sadly, apparently no longer available -- Ed.!

Bad, government-induced times are a-comin'! Remember, the Info Wars people are the folks that told us that President Obama created Superstorm Sandy in order to get reelected!

And, no Doomsday Prepper's wardrobe is complete without the Info Wars "OBAMA IS A TYRANT" T-shirt!

Spread the word!

Best of all, though, may be the 40 Day/Night food supply! We saw the "pail" it comes in at the top of this post; here's a glimpse of the organic yummies inside:



Downright biblical! This is the 1950s bomb-shelter mentality all over again. However, when the crap hits the fan, is a mere "40 Day/Night Organic Preparedness Pail” really gonna save you? Better buy a truckload! Do it today! Tomorrow may be too late! Way too late! You may be screwed, screwed beyond all comprehension! Nothing will save your sorry ass! (Be warned, though, that the website now cautions: "Important Notice: Due to extremely high demand caused by the recent Ebola incident, please allow an additional week for shipment.")

Damn, if the wackos only knew that the “40 Day/Night” motif in those old tales comes from the ancient Arabs. You know, like “40 Days and 40 Nights” -- or, more appropriately in this case, “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves.”


2. Arizona legalizes crack!

Well, it certainly does appear that rather than legalize marijuana, the state of Arizona has made the smoking of crack A-OK! Something has to explain how the state ended up with a legislature that came up with the Arizona Religious Freedom Bill. This is a classic case of bigots saying, "Hey, what about my rights?"

Huh, there are people against the right to discriminate?

As if previous legislation designed to fill Arizona's privately owned jails with immigrants for profit wasn't bad enough, this new bill would allow business owners to refuse service to gay people. It seems so-called Christians in Arizona love this law.

In the end, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed the law. But the law, as passed by the state's republican House by a 33-27 vote and by the state's Senate by a vote of 17-13, is designed to make it OK, or rather encourage, people to refuse service to gay people at restaurants, or in fact any retail location or anywhere else in the state.

It's not just gays, though. The wording is loose enough that it can refer to anyone that republicans just don't take a shine to -- anyone who "looks different," if you know what I mean. Governor Brewer also vetoed a previous incarnation of the bill, so I wouldn't expect a mere gubernatorial veto to cause Arizona's republicans to give up on their crusade.

Let's also keep in mind those republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives that also support those African "kill the gays" laws. Ask yourself, is it only a matter of time before Arizona republicans, or all republicans everywhere, start acting out their darkest dreams under cover of such laws?

Republicans in other states, such as Idaho, Tennessee, Mississippi, and South Dakota, have proposed laws similar to Arizona's "right to refuse service" law. Even Ohio, under neo-fascist Gov. John Kasich, is now in the game. But what is setting Arizona apart is that they have actually passed their bill and sent it to their governor. Rush Limbaugh whined about Brewer being bullied by lefties to veto the bill. FOX, of course, considers any criticism of the bill as being part of their claimed War on Religion!

Under the law, had I gone into a store in Arizona to buy a jacket, the first thing I could have been asked is if I'm straight or gay or Christian and, if so, even what kind. The wording of the bill would have opened one hell of a Pandora's box.

Funny thing is, the jacket fits the same and costs the same regardless of the details of my personal or spiritual life. In future years I think we can expect some tinkering with these proposed republican laws to allow a retailer the option of selling the jacket to a gay person but at a higher price. They can call it the Arizona Tax on Being Gay Act. "Hey, we don't discriminate, it's just going to cost you a little more if you choose the gay lifestyle."

As the movement gains momentum, will there one day be statues of Lester Maddox in Arizona's public parks? How far will they go? Keep in mind that no less than U.S. House Speaker John Boehner hand-picked the man behind the “No Gays Allowed” bill, Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin, to be on his list of prime U.S. House candidates! Think about that next time some nutter tells you Boehner isn’t an extremist.

Where does this kind of thing end? Will republicans soon demand that gay people wear lavender stars? Maybe they’ll even add special box cars to the ends of the trains. Step by step, republicans are revealing what they want for the future. It’s there for all to see, but so many, too many, just don’t want to see it. They've already made great gains in voter suppression. What will America look like by the time republicans are done with their “social engineering”?

All aboard for the crazy train!


3. Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 3:
Bill O'Reilly, the Joe McCarthy of punditry


President Obama is interviewed by Bill-O, a legend in his own mind.

It's hard to zero in on just one example of FOX's Archie Bunker showing off his crazy. O'Reilly is TV's most smugly pompous megalomaniac. Here he is at his defensive and most self-serving best (worst), referring to his childishly rude and pathetic "interview" of President Obama.

I'm going to predict that that interview I did is going to go down in journalistic history as what should be done. . . . It takes a certain skill to pose questions in a factual way and be persistent without being disrespectful.

Bill-O rightly took much criticism for his 10-minute foolishness, and saw the need, even more than a week later, to defend himself. He obviously has no idea what an interview is, since he sat there and rapid-fired question after question at the president without pausing to even wait for an answer, because, after all, what FOX viewer wants to hear what President Obama has to say about anything? He was trying to provoke the president, and the president was incredibly gracious, when half the country would not have blamed him for throwing a punch at Bobblehead Bill. But that's pretty much what Bill-O wanted. He was performing for his geriatric audience, who just want the President to "go back to Kenya."

That O'Liely feels he has to sneak in the word "factual" to describe his questions shows that even he knows they are anything but factual. To use the word "persistent" as a substitute for "belligerent" is to rewrite the thesaurus.

Despite his over-the-top delusions of grandeur and more, O'Reilly will go down in "journalistic history" as a smug, pompous, megalomaniacal "Joe McCarthy of punditry." Yeah, he dreams of a 40-foot-high statue of himself outside of Fox "News" headquarters after he's gone, a statue much bigger than the life-size statue of Roberto Clemente, a man who actually did something good with his life and died doing it, which stands outside of the Pittsburgh Pirates' ballpark.

I piss in your urn, Bill.


TOMORROW IN PART 4: A celebration of Michele Bachmann: Pray away the crazy?; What "War on Women"?; The "Obama angle" on Malaysian Flight 370

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.

#