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!

#

2013 in Review -- A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy,* Part 2: Remember when Reagan cut funds for insane asylums?

Storms, guns, bombs, free stuff, and the secret gay life of Obama: Some top Republican lies of 2013

[*TO MEET THE JANITOR OF LUNACY, SEE PART 1]


Plum loco, stone stoopid, or pathologically dishonest? You be the judge.

by Noah

I'm calling this "Some top Republican lies" because everyone else does "Top 10s" or "Top 20s," but I see no reason to come up with some arbitrary round number. Besides, with the Crackpot Party there's always another lie, and chances are very good that the corporate media will be all too willing to repeat them all without examining their veracity. That said, here are a few. I hold these lies to be self-evident.


1. The Boston Marathon bombing was a false flag (government) job

Wingnut Alex Jones (see above), Natural News, New Hampshire Republican State Sen.Stella Trembley, and others had the "scoop" on this one almost immediately after the tragic bombing on April 15th. It's straight out of Marvel Comics or some wacko Twilight Zone. Just like 9/11 truthers, there are a lot of wingnuts out there that are so determined to hate the government for something, anything, especially if that Obama dude is in charge, that their sick minds will concoct and believe anything. For some, the idea of the government taking their guns away or evilly giving you the opportunity to purchase healthcare for your family just isn't enough.


2. A Saudi national or nationals were responsible for the bombing

Shall I speculate as to why it is that, in the twisted minds of Republicans, terrorists must be nonwhite or Muslim? Immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing, the same people were proclaiming that Muslim terrorists from the Middle East were the bombers. That one turned out to be white folks. Oooops! And white folks that were a lot closer to Republicans than Republicans would like to publicly admit, right down to Newt Gingrich, as House speaker, having radical Idaho Rep. Helen Chenoweth as a liaison to the militia groups of the Northwest. In this case, the bombers were Muslim, but it became obvious that, to Republicans, the glass was only half full.


3. The Saudi government warned the U.S. about the Boston Marathon bombing



Nope. Turns out the Russians did communicate some info about the actual bombers, but a few days after the bombing Glenn Beck said he knew the truth about a Saudi national who had been questioned and let go. It wasn't even the same guys that Rupert Murdoch's New York Post had falsely claimed right on his front page were the perps.

Beck claimed the White House knew who did it and was covering up, and he claimed he would lay out all the evidence the following Monday if the government didn't come clean. There was even some sort of Benghazi connection. So what happened? Well, in the meantime the real bombers were identified and one was killed and one was caught. They weren't Saudis. They even (oh, the disappointment!) weren't of a darkish hue. The whole thing had gotten started on Hannity's show. Bill O'Reilly had Beck on to lay it all out. Thanks, Fox. Where would this country be without you?


4. The White House is full of Muslim Brotherhood

It seems that as soon as Egypt's government fell, and Americans became aware of the Muslim Brotherhood's position of influence and power in that nation, it just somehow sounded perfect to those in the Crackpot Party that there must be some nefarious connection to the Kenyan-born, secret-Muslim, socialist black man in the White House. (Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the Obama administration, even "letting Muslim Brotherhood run anti-terror ops," is just one of the Impeachable Offenses "documented" by crackpot "authors" Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott. If you shopped on the right wingnut website, you could get not just a less-than-half-price copy of the book, autographed, but also a "a FREE Impeach Obama bumper sticker.")

Yes, I can see it all clearly now, the unseen hand of . . . yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Guilt by association when there's no association -- I get it. Next!


5. Bush kept us safe


Giuliani on Hannity again! He did? I coulda sworn that Bush, not Clinton, was at least pretending to be prez on 9/11. It's amazing how anyone can still put Rudy Julieandrews in front of a camera and let him prattle on. It's 2013, for Christ's sake! The man was a failure as a mayor who made himself Mr. 9/11. The guy was so lame, it took him umpteen numbers of trials to nail John Gotti. He spent $50 million running for his party's nomination for president and got one delegate and that delegate was from Florida. But there he was again, in Sean Insanity's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest studio uttering those famous four words, in the wake of the Boston bombing.

One of the sick Republican memes, post-tragedy, was to somehow make the Boston bombing Obama's fault. Hey, Repugs! People were maimed. People died. Families were destroyed! And you, you just see it as an opportunity.


6. Superstorm Sandy was caused by Obama seeding of clouds

Okay, I know this was from late in the previous year, but it still has life in at least some Republican minds. The rest seem to be more fixated on blaming Gov. Blowhard Christie for turning the 2012 election in Obama's favor when he took a romantic walk on the beach with the president. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFvmguc56YA


The first minute and a half is just a Fox News report on the progressing storm. But listen for the eerie voice of insanity that comes in at 1:29 and then shows us "why this Frankenstorm may be changing its trajectory." Can you guess whodunnit? (Hint: "Obama is falling behind in the polls. Is this the October surprise we have been expecting.") The poster, PEREXUSREX, followed up with this reply to doubting commenters: "Watch the news - Obama has been able to look presidential and Mitt Romney has had to slow his campaign. This hurricane has definitely helped Obama who was definitely behind - he is not behind anymore since the hurricane."


7. Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi

[Click to enlarge]

Repugs don't even seem to realize that their very own lies about what happened in Libya may have cost Romney the White House when he repeated a portion of their Libya lie in a the second presidential debate and got caught. In Republikook world, President Obama supposedly either let the storming of the embassy happen or encouraged it, maybe with his supersecret Muslim underground decoder ring, or something.

One thing Republicans won't tell you is that it was they who voted in Congress to withdraw security funding for our embassies. Nice goin', a-holes. Since then we've had madman Rep. Darrell Issa, doing his best Joe McCarthy imitation, running hearing after hearing after hearing, wasting mountains of our taxpayer dollars on some insane attempt to build an impeachment-worthy case against the president.  Again, people died, so let's exploit it! Ain't that the Republican way?




8. Romney lost because of "free stuff"


Watch the Lawrence O'Donnell Last Word segment here.

Sooo much chest-beating and recrimination in the wake of Romney losing. So many accusations: Christie, the storm, and, most of all, "free stuff." Obama won by giving out "free stuff" to you know whom.

Just keep telling yourselves that, Repugs. But if Romney had won, people like Sheldon Adelson stood to get a whole lotta free stuff; free stuff in the form of a return of an estimated $700 million in tax breaks in return for his $100 million in campaign contributions. $600 million? Now that's what I call free stuff! Sorry, Mittens, you lost because enough Americans of all backgrounds saw you for what you are.


9. Guns don't kill people

Neither do 30-shot magazines, right? Well, 11 kids escaped death in Newtown, Connecticut, while the shooter in their school had to switch to a new magazine. Suppose he only had 10-shot mags. How much death and human misery would have been avoided?

Yet there are the Republicans, the party that pushes human misery, demanding the right to their 30-shot mags. And if you want to look at the face of insanity --




10. Background checks bad; straw purchases good

Terrorists don't have to try to smuggle their guns into the country. So what's the easiest way for a terrorist to get a gun here in these United States? Well, if you enter a gun emporium and you look like ya just might not be quite white enough and ya might have some sort of one o' them un-'merican accents, they might not sell you a gun. What to do? There's already no background-check thing. That's good for would be evil-doers, but still, there's that accent and skin-tone thing.

Ah, easy! Pay someone to go buy you whatever you need! Street gangs do it all the time. It's called a straw purchase, and Republicans like that just fine. Of course, in the case of the gang gunplay in Chicago, that's all Obama's fault, not the permissiveness of the Republican gun kooks.


11. The Government is buying all the ammo in order to kill us all

No one likes this lie more than the companies that make bullets. It inspires more purchases and hording of ammo. Republicans spend a lot of energy telling each other that Obama is going to take away their guns. They campaigned on it. They shrieked that he'd be coming for our guns as soon as January came along. So it follows that when he couldn't get Congress to pass saner gun laws, he would, naturally, buy up all the bullets!

"We just denied everything that this president and the vice president are trying to do. So what are they going to want to, if they want to violate our Second Amendment rights? Do it with ammo."

-- Sen. Jim Inhofe (Republikook-OK)

Or maybe Iraq, Afghanistan, and the creation of a huge Department of Homeland Security have something to do with the so-called ammo shortage. Look, bozos, if Newtown shooter Adam Lanza can get all those bullets, and all the shooters we hear about every damn day can get all the bullets they need, maybe you ought to rethink this. Please, oh Janitor of Lunacy, make it stop!


12. Obama is still a secret Muslim

Yes. Well, that explains everything. Scientists may still be looking for their Unified Field Theory that explains all the physical workings of the universe, but until then, this works fine for those in the Crackpot Party. Behold, all is explained! I saw it on Fox!


13. Obama is deliberately tanking the stock market in order to destroy capitalism

Hey, let's not let the reality that the market has gone over the 16,000 mark get in the way of this "theory." Wingnut chatterboxes and more reputable authorities like Forbes say a crash is coming. Some say everyone should sell their stocks and cash out. Repug media like Newsmax issue weekly warnings about an imminent crash as if they want it to happen, just so they can blame Obama.

Hey, it might happen. The fall of 2008 wasn't pretty, and not much has been done, and the Wall Street criminals run free, but hmmm, now if everyone were to listen to these Chicken Littles and pull their stocks at once, wouldn't that crash the market and destroy the economy to the likes of which has not been seen since 1929? So just who is trying to deliberately destroy capitalism?


14. Obama is gay and has even been "married" to a man



So says World Net Daily's Jerome Corsi, the Swiftboat guy, so it must be true. Can Issa investigations and Hannity breathlessly speculating about gay orgies in the White House be far behind?

This gay Obama thing refuses to die in Repug circles. It's even used as the reason that there are so many of those wicked LGBTs working in the White House. Maybe the saddest thing is that such a thing would matter to Republicans. Ah, but no wonder Obama is pushing that "gay marriage" thing. Say no more!

NOAH'S 2013 IN REVIEW --
A PRAYER TO THE JANITOR OF LUNACY*

Part 1: Take a bow, Repugs! (*including Nico's "Janitor of Lunacy") [Monday]

Part 2: Remember when Reagan cut funds for insane asylums? (Storms, guns, bombs, free stuff, and the secret gay life of Obma: Some top Republican lies of 2013) [Tuesday]

Part 3: No Cruz control (Rafael "Ted" Cruz in his own words) [Wednesday]

Part 4: A great anniversary approaches! (Nixon's resignation) (plus more "Quote of the Year nominees") [Thursday]

Part 5: Everyone's a critic, including me -- Some people really try my patience (Bill-O, Howie Kurtz, E. W. Jackson, et al.) [Friday]

Part 6 (and last): In the words of Dan Quayle, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind" (Exploiting tragedy for a buck; Miss America's not American?; "Quote of the Year" winner) [Saturday]

And don't forget Noah's recent --
"Need a last-minute Christmas gift suggestion?" [12/22]
"50 Years Ago Today: The Beatles" [12/26]
"A Tale of Two Popes -- the one in the Vatican and the one in North Carolina" [12/27]

#

That's Entertainment Dept.: (1) Right-wing Prop 8 nitwittitude, (2) Waiting for the "Big C" season finale

Sorry, the Big C clip seems to be iffy from the Showtime website. (Heavy pre-show use tonight, perhaps? I'm getting it OK in Firefox, but not in Safari.) But then, I wasn't going to watch it anyway! -- Ken


Showtime's preview for tonight's Season 2 finale of The Big C -- I'm not going to watch it till after I've seen the show, but you may be less fussy about the risk of having elements of the show spoiled for you.

by Ken

(1) REVISITING THE MODERN-DAY POLITICAL QUESTION:
ARE ALL RIGHT-WINGERS MENTAL DEFFECTIVES?

The New Yorker's Michael Schulman has a "Talk of the Town" piece in the new (October 3) issue, "Do-over," about a play that screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk and the upcoming J. Edgar) has fashioned out of the transcripts of the San Francisco trial in which lawyers David Boies and Theodore Olson successfully pressed their case that California's Prop 8 same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional. The play is called 8, and a star-studded reading was held last Monday in New York, with Morgan Freeman as Boies, John Lithgow as Olson, Bradley Whitford as hapless defense attorney Charles Cooper, Bob Balaban as Judge Vaughn Walker, Christine Lahti and Ellen Barkin as plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, Jayne Houdyshell as Maggie Gallagher, and the likes of Anthony Edwards, Rob Reiner, and Yeardley Smith as witnesses.

Schulman tells us that Black was present for 10 of the trial's 12 days of testimony (missing the others because of movie-project prep work), and his task in reimagining the proceedings in dramatic form --

was to shave down three weeks of material, some of it mired in legalese. "It's incredibly dense, and you have to communicate it in a way that is clear to an audience that hasn't gone through law school."

It's an entertaining piece, well worth your attention (and for once we've got a New Yorker item that's actually available free online). We learn, for example, that David Boies considered it "a real thrill to have Morgan Freeman play me," though he acknowledged that Ed Begley Jr., who played him in the HBO film Recount, looks more like him.

But the reason I bring this all up is for the sake of this exchange that Schulman reproduces.

David Blankenthorn, a marriage "expert" who was the defense's only witness, served as comic foil, as in this Abbott and Costello-like exchange, drawn from the cross-examination by the plaintiffs' attorney, David Boies:

Let me stress again that in broaching this question of whether all right-wingers are mentally defective, I am of course excluding those who who are unabashedly serving their personal economic or power-gathering interests, notably our beloved economic predators and powermongers and their associated stooges. For the rest, the evidence continues to pile up.


(2) COUNTING DOWN TO THE EVERYTHING-CHANGES
SEASON 2 FINALE OF THE BIG C, "CROSSING THE LINE"

The relationship between fellow clinical-trial subjects Lee (Hugh Dancy) and Cathy (Laura Linney) got off to a rocky start, to put it mildly.

Probably a good rule of thumb for folks in the trenches pitching new TV shows: If you're looking for something with the possibility of a long run and a profitable syndication package, you probably don't want to build your project around a terminally ill person.

This was obviously a problem, or at any rate a feature, built into The Big C (created by Darlene Hunt, who has written or co-written all 26 episodes to date). Considering how strong a bond the show's producers and writers and of course actress Laura Linney created between viewers and their Stage IV melanoma sufferer Cathy Jamison, it was good news that Showtime ordered a second season, but considering the show's basic premise, it is kind of term-limited. Sure, medical miracles happen, and we all hope that the clinical trial Cathy managed to get into this season will buy her some more time, still, this is supposed to be a show about a woman getting on with her life in the knowledge that the end is in sight. (Not in Season 2, though, since a Season 3 has been announced. So I guess that's not part of thehuge-surprise, everything-changes-type events Showtime has been promoting for the season finale, "Crossing the Line." I wish they wouldn't do that, or feel the need to do that. Let the show team do their damned show the way they want, and then have the network people market that to people who might enjoy it. )

For Cathy and husband Paul (Oliver Platt) and son Adam (Gabriel Basso) and Cathy's bipolar brother Sean (John Benjamin Hickey) and the assorted people woven into their lives, it's been another strong season of getting on with those lives, with more humor than one might think possible given the basic situation. But I thought last week's next-to-last episode of the season, "The Darkest Day," was especially strong in bringing us back to that central reality, and I doubt that I was alone in being overwhelmed by the death of Lee (Hugh Dancy), the "soul mate" Cathy discovered in the clinical trial being run by Dr. Sherman (Alan Alda).

As a side note, it's a tribute to the human dimension of the show that the two characters who have sent to meet their maker -- Cathy's eccentric neighbor Marlene (Phyllis Somerville) and now Lee, both of whom were introduced with decidedly hard-to-crack exteriors -- became so dear to at least this viewer.

#

What if VA's ultra-right-wing governor figures out that there's no satisfying the ultra-right-wing loons?

UPDATE below: Unfortunately, VA's disastrous Creigh Deeds has also been a prototype candidate -- for surefire gutless Dem losers nationwide

What looked to be a natural division of ultra-right-wing water-carrying between Virginia's suave new governor and the batshit-crazy AG doesn't seem to be working out so smoothly.

by Ken

Even those of us observing the halting early steps of new Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell without the handicap of crippling insanity have noticed that he's had some bobbles juggling his natural ultra-extreme-right-wing sensibilities with life in the real world. The assumption that there would be a natural division of public craziness between the suave governor and the certifiably straitjacket-worthy wingnut, Ken Cuccinelli, elected to succeed him as attorney general, with AG Cuckoonuts "carrying the water" for heavy-duty wingnuttery.

Instead, it appears that the new AG's outspoken extremism has complicated the governor's situation. As Anita Kumar reports in today's Washington Post ("McDonnell strikes a balance, conservatives rethink support"):

[Cuckoonuts] has quickly become a national figure through his aggressive efforts to curb the federal government and his unapologetic appeals to "tea party" activists. The more that Cuccinelli's brand of conservatism becomes the standard in the Virginia Republican Party, the harder it is for McDonnell to both appeal to moderates and win over his base.

Willie Deutsch, an activist from Richmond who supported McDonnell and Cuccinelli, said that the governor seems to be embarrassed to be a conservative but that the attorney general embraces it. He said he thinks McDonnell, who has been mentioned as a possible presidential or vice presidential contender, is more concerned about his "future viability."

"I think he's a conservative who isn't willing to fight for his true convictions," Deutsch said.

It's not that poor Governor Bob hasn't tried. He probably thought it would be fairly safe to take actions, symbolic to everyone except the people actually affected, that would impress his social-issues voters without upsetting anybody whose views he gives a damn about: standing by as AG Cuckoonuts overturned the previous administration's in-any-case-conspicuously-unenforced ban on state-government LGBT employment discrimination, and then reinstituting the odious Confederate History Month while blithely omitting any acknowledgment of the central reality of the Confederacy, the preservation of slavery.

To his apparent surprise, what must have seemed to the governor Bob relatively harmless local symbolic actions triggered national outcries, and with surprisingly quickness he pulled back on both. I'm assuming it wasn't out of any kind of principle or conviction, but that he had simply miscalculated, assuming it was safe to "mainstream" Virginians to dick with the homos and the racials, and discovering that it wasn't safe, he simply chose to save the real fights for, well, real battles.

However, that was without reckoning on the spirit of the age, and according to the WaPo report, the poor guy -- who had seemed, when he was elected only a year after the 2008 Republican electoral rout, like the perfect face of future stealth loonery, looking so swell and sounding so reasonable, even though his entire political history as a disciple of Pat Robertson tells us that he's as reliably radically right-wing as an electable pol comes -- is in trouble with the ultra-crazies.

"Bob McDonnell is a typical politician trying to please both sides of the aisle and hopes that you and I are naive enough to buy it," read an e-mail sent to supporters of Virginians for Life last month that also called the governor "gutless."

The disappointments started before McDonnell moved into the governor's mansion, when he began to pick a team of top advisers that included mostly moderates.

Since then, he has angered conservatives by issuing a directive outlawing discrimination in the state workforce, including on the basis of sexual orientation -- a move that was designed to ease concerns about intolerance after Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) had advised public colleges that they could not legally prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Some conservatives also saw the governor's directive as legitimizing homosexuality.

McDonnell also upset some in his party by endorsing Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in his Senate primary battle against a more conservative opponent, a sign to many conservatives that he was no longer one of them. [And never mind that Young Johnny McCranky has been running as rabidly right-wing a campaign as this most cynical of opportunists can conjure. -- Ed.]

"He clearly cannot be trusted," said Joe Glover, a Republican activist who lives near Lynchburg and heads the Family Policy Network, a Christian advocacy group. "He's clearly not the conservative he would like conservatives to think he is. I will not make the mistake of voting for Bob McDonnell again." [Emphasis added.]

Oops! Governor Bob's people have tried to push back, insisting that he's every bit as crazy-right as anybody could hope. "They listed 10 accomplishments, including balancing the budget without raising taxes, expanding charter schools and signing several bills into law that preserve gun rights." And the Post notes that such stolid voices of organized right-wing militancy as the National Rifle Association, the Virginia Society for Human Life, and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation remain solidly behind the governor.

But of course it's not enough. With the ultra-crazies it never is. For every issue on which those bastions of right-wing craziness praise the new governor, there are farther-right loons who want his scalp for not going far enough. For example, where the president of the Virginia Society for Human Life, argues that he's "being realistic" in not cutting off all state funding for Planned Parenthood, an obvious right-wing target.

conservatives had wanted McDonnell to eliminate funding and mounted an aggressive lobbying campaign to persuade him to do so. The Family Foundation of Virginia sent 11,000 e-mails and 5,000 mailers to supporters. The head of the Virginia Christian Alliance met privately with McDonnell's chief of staff to lobby him on the issue. And more than 1,100 people sent letters to the governor's office.

But instead of recommending that all state aid be withdrawn, McDonnell proposed a less controversial move that would keep state money from funding most abortions but would maintain it in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at risk. The proposal was approved April 21 by a single vote in the Senate.

McDonnell said in an interview that he did not cut all of Planned Parenthood's state funds because it provides other services, such as counseling. He said it would not have been "proper" to cut off those tax dollars.

The governor notes that the upshot is that his proposal lives up to "the heart and soul of what people's concerns were" regarding state funding for abortions. "I think I've been very faithful to that pledge."

Of course, Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation, while pleased with the governor's actions as far as they go, said her group isn't satisfied. "We want him to do more," Cobb said. "And we will continue to ask him."

Continue to ask him, eh? Hmm, this doesn't sound like "asking," the noises that are already being heard from the governor's far right. Still, it's enough to make me worry: What if the governor and his inner circle are smart enough not to care?

Now this could just be my personal paranoid fantasy, but I wonder: What happens if Governor Bob and those "moderate" advisers of his should understand that those loudmouth voices actually represent a relatively small portion of even his Southern-state Republican constituency? What if they have the smarts and guts to ride out the thunder from the ultra-loonies, knowing how the infotainment-news media love to amplify that noise without regard to how much support it has (actually, what surprised me was how much media fuss there was over the anti-LGBT and pro-slavery gestures), and that if they don't give it credibility, it really doesn't represent a serious political threat to them? Thereby leaving them free to simply pursue a far-right agenda without leaping into the traps the crazies would be overjoyed to see him sink into?

Could there really be wildly extreme but not utterly insane wingnuts? As if we didn't have enough to keep us awake at night.


UPDATE: UPDATING THE LESSONS OF
THE 2009 VIRGINIA STATEWIDE CAMPAIGNS

I want to call attention to this important comment left by reader lawguy in response to the above post, raising an essential point about Governor Bob's election last year:

So the democrat he ran against was a brain dead conservative and the choice was between a very crazy right wing nut and someone who wasn't that very crazy.



So that chioce one is given is being pushed off the cliff or being rolled down a very steep slope to the same point.



Where is the choice.

Oh, no question about the disaster of the candidacy and campaign of so-called Democrat Creigh Deeds, LG. Howie harks back to it often enough that I didn't think it necessary to recall, but you're absolutely right to bring it up -- thanks!

There's no doubt that the Democrats provided about as little incentive as possible to bring out the vote in Virginia in 2009. About the only incentive was keeping Slick Bob and, more important, Crazy Ken, not to mention some other horror-show candidates on ballots around the state, out of office.

Still, the perception at the time was that Slick Bob was the prototype for a new type of ultra-right-wing candidate. Unfortunately, the 2009 Virginia gubernatorial race generated another ghastly prototype, as Howie has been pointing out in looking at many 2010 races as they shape up around the country: The disastrous Creigh Deeds, who ran a worse-than-lackluster campaign that was Republican in all but name, cowering in the face of traditional Democratic values, really does seem to be serving as a model for candidates being supported by the official Democratic Party around the country, notably in those Senate primaries coming up this month.

In North Carolina and Ohio in particular, it appears all too likely that Deeds-like drones backed by Democratic officialdom over candidates who might actually inspire Democratic and independent voters to turn out at the polls in November, secretaries of state Elaine Marshall (NC) and Jennifer Brunner (OH), will win those nominations.

To check out these and other races we and our Blue America partners have taken a stand on, and perhaps help out, please visit the Blue America home page.

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Of course you don't have to be nuts to be a right-winger. You could be an ignoramus, or just a greedy, thieving slimebag

by Ken

I know I put some noses out of joint the other day when I asked, in the headline to a post, "Is conservatism a mental illness?" The question, it should be noted, was offered in connection with an update on the activities of Missouri State Rep. Cynthia Davis, whose antics certainly suggest severe mental problems.

This is someone who chairs the state House committee that deals with children and families, and apart from her other wackadoodle obsessions, like the bill she's introduced to protect Missourians from the menace of energy-saving lightbulbs, she has actually said that the only issue of interest to her as committee chair is abortion. And then of course there's the Easter Sunday 2006 incident when one of her seven children was found abandoned wandering along a state highway. Don't they have child-protection laws in Missouri? (Perhaps not. Look who chairs the committee that would have to pass them in the state House.)

Obviously the people who waxed indignant haven't been paying any attention to what's going on in the world around them, which isn't all that surprising, because right-wingers never seem to have any clue what's happening anywhere in the world apart from the lies they've either been fed or made up themselves. If you spend any time listening to right-wingers in the media, in government, and in the Teabagger swamps, you can't possibly not wonder about the sanity of the participants, considering that every word, that comes out of their mouths is either psychotic delusion or a bare-faced lie. I thought I was offering the wingnuts a free pass by suggesting that this total, and I mean total, divorce from reality is a matter of mental incapacity, and thus beyond their ability to control. The alternatives are that they're either (a) too stupid to live or (b) diseased lying scumbags.

You spend enough time watching these public menaces, and you learn never to underestimate the "diseased lying scumbags" option. Can you spell gravy train? Here's Reid Wilson today on NationalJournal.com's Hotline:

Palin Spends More De-Icing Planes Than For Candidates

April 14, 2010 4:28 PM

By Reid Wilson

Ex-AK Gov. Sarah Palin (R) spent more money to de-ice her private jets than she did donating money to candidates during the first 3 months of the year, according to new filings made with the FEC.

The filings show Palin's political wing, Sarah PAC, paid a FL-based airplane service company $14K to de-ice a private jet. The PAC spent more than $16K -- twice as much as it donated to individual candidates -- on hotels from New Orleans to New York City to Richland, WA.

And it's good to work on Palin's behalf. Consultants for the PAC made more than $233K through their contracts, the report shows. Ex-spokeswoman Meg Stapleton, who left the PAC last month, had a $10K per month contract. Randy Scheunemann, one of Palin's top advisors during the WH'08 campaign, also makes $10K a month; during the last 3 months, Jason Recher, another aide on the '08 campaign, made $50K.

The amount she pays her staff pales in comparison to the amount she gives to help GOP candidates win elections. Palin gave just $7,500 to candidates running for office this time. She handed $1K checks to Iraq war vet Vaughn Ward (R), who is running against Rep. Walt Minnick (D-ID); Iraq War vet Allen West (R), who faces a primary in his challenge to Rep. Ron Klein (D-FL); and ex-McLean Co. Commis./Iraq war vet Adam Kinzinger (R), the nominee against Rep. Debbie Halvorson.

Palin gave $2,500 to Ashland Co. DA Sean Duffy (R), running an uphill battle against Rep. Dave Obey (D-WI), and another $2K to ophthalmologist Rand Paul (R), the reports show. Meanwhile, she also gave $1K each to 2 PACs that support veterans running for Congress.

The $9,500 in checks represent just 2.3% of the money Palin brought in during the first quarter. Palin's PAC spent a total of $409,760 in the first quarter.

What's more, there is no evidence that Palin has kept her promise to donate money she earned from a Tea Party convention in Feb. Amid controversies surrounding the National Tea Party Convention, held in Nashville, Palin said she would donate her $100K speaking fee to campaigns, candidates and issues.

Palin did not contribute any money to her PAC, according to FEC filings. And in fact, it will be difficult for her to contribute the money this year. Palin, as an individual, would be able to give a maximum of $45,600 to different candidates -- maxing out to 19 contenders -- and another $69,900 to party committees, for a total of $115,500.

It has never made sense for Palin to contribute the money to political organizations. If she did that, she would still have to pay taxes on the reported $100K she earned from the speech; contributions to candidates and political parties are not tax deductible.

So far, while SarahPAC has given money to candidates, Palin herself has not contributed to any federal candidate this cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. A Palin spokesperson did not return an email seeking comment.

Note: A commenter points out:

To be fair she raises a heck of a lot of money with her appearances for candidate fundraisers and causes.

So the de-icing of planes and traveling to headline a fundraiser for a candidate is a heck of a boost for that specific candidate/cause that doesn't show up on paper.

But of course Princess Sarah's appearances have nothing to do with the candidates she claims to be supporting. Like everything she does, it's always about her, and planting her puss in the spotlight, spreading the glory of her sociopathic self. Right now she and the political barnacles who've attached themselves to here are fattening up on all those bucks flying her way.

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