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This Week In Crazy: Twisted Logic And Right-Wing Blame Games

This Week In Crazy: Twisted Logic And Right-Wing Blame Games

Just when you thought the far-right fringe couldn’t possibly connect abortion with the stock market, or equate the LGBT Pride flag with a white supremacist symbol, they just, well, go ahead and do that. It’s “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the shameful, racist, and hateful speech of the increasingly illogical right wing. Starting with one of our regulars:

5. Pat Robertson

PatRobertsonScreenshotSure, Pat Robertson, an organization that provides women’s reproductive health services is to blame for the recent stock market slide. The conservative televangelist said this week that “Black Monday” was God’s punishment for legal abortion and the federal government’s funding of Planned Parenthood. As anyone who watches Robertson’s The 700 Club (or who reads “This Week In Crazy”) knows, the host typically blames any negative incident, natural disaster, or preventable tragedy on abortion, same-sex marriage, or the LGBT community in general. In his usual fire-and-brimstone style, Robertson said:

We will pay dearly as a nation for this thing going on…. And possibly if we were to stop all this slaughter the judgment of God might be lifted from us. But it’s coming, ladies and gentlemen. We just had a little taste of it in terms of the financial system, but it’s going to be shaken to its core in the next few months, years or however long it takes and it will hurt every one of us.


I’m no economist, but I’m pretty sure Monday’s selloff had something to do with the cyclical nature of capitalism and China’s devaluing of its currency, which caused instability in global markets. Planned Parenthood has been accused of some vile things, but manipulating currency is not one of them.

No matter to Robertson, who likes to play financial advisor, warning viewers that troubled times are ahead. “You don’t know where to go, there is no place to hide financially except in the Lord,” he said. “The Lord is the ultimate refuge.”

ViaRight Wing Watch

Next: Donald Trump

4. Donald Trump

Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump's greets the crowd during his

Continuing his heated rivalry with Spanish-language news network Univision, Donald Trump had reporter Jorge Ramos booted from a campaign event in Iowa on Tuesday. The reason? Ramos asked Trump a question about immigration — out of turn.

The Donald’s reply: “Go back to Univision.”

Putting aside the fact that this is far from Trump’s first press conference, so he should be used to pushy reporters firing questions at him, his comment about Ramos showed the Republican presidential candidate’s true bigoted colors. (“Go back to Univision.” = “Go back to Mexico.”)

After the incident, Trump tried to portray Ramos as hysterical. “Certainly he was not chosen … he just stands up and starts screaming, so maybe he’s at fault also,” Trump said, adding, “He’s obviously a very emotional person.”

This coming from the man running for President of the United States, yet has a fit every time a reporter asks a challenging question, has gotten to second base with a flagpole, and has people touch his hair to show it’s his own.

Trump is not just “emotional” and vain, but he can be a bully, especially when provoked on his core campaign issue, and God forbid, asked to answer a direct question directly. At the campaign event, he repeatedly tells Ramos to “sit down” as the reporter continues speaking and reminding Trump that he has the right to ask a question.

The legendary Univision broadcaster is still hoping to land an interview with Trump.

ViaRaw Story

Continue reading: Keith Ablow

3. Keith Ablow

Keith_AblowFox News commentator and psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow sounds like the last person who should be sharing “expertise” on gun control and mental health issues. In a Fox segment this week, Ablow charged President Obama with “inflaming racial discord.”

As strange as the allegation was, delivered as an afterthought that sounded more like a rehearsed jab at the president, Ablow’s comment was typical of the right’s urge to blame the guy in the White House, with little evidence, for everything. Ablow echoed a conservative meme: The problem isn’t guns but lack of mental health care — which means “hands off our guns; blame the crazies.”

Sensible people can agree that individuals with mental health problems, as well as many others, should not have access to firearms. But Ablow’s claim that mentally ill people are the problem and guns are not is rebutted by many studies that show people living with mental illness are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.

More ridiculous is how Ablow concluded the segment, seeming to place blame on the president because a black man who protested against alleged job discrimination just killed two white people: “There are some people who are unhinged out there who actually think [Obama is] right when he’s just trying to fan the flames of racial disharmony,” Ablow said.

What does Ablow mean when he says Obama has inflamed racial discord? Perhaps that the president has spoken in support of civil rights, voting rights and, repeatedly, about gun violence.

According to Ablow, that’s the real problem: “It would be helpful if President Obama, frankly, would stop tweeting … about gun control and get serious about attacking mental health care.” Again, the pundit blames a small segment of the population of people who commit violent crimes, instead of the policies and lawmakers that allow guns into the hands of far too many unstable people.

ViaMedia Matters

Next: Casey Davis

2. Casey Davis

CaseyDavis_Kentucky_clerkThe county clerk from Kentucky who continues to defy the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage is apparently willing to allow his homophobia to take him to an early grave. Casey Davis, no relation to his fellow “religious freedom fighter” Kim Davis, said this week that marriage equality is “a war on Christianity” and that he is willing to fight, even if it kills him. He told a West Virginia radio show:

If it takes it, I will go to jail over — if it takes my life, I will die for because I believe I owe that to the people that fought so I can have the freedom that I have, I owe that to them today, and you do, we all do. They fought and died so we could have this freedom and I’m going to fight and die [so] my kids and your kids can keep it.

Incoherent and manic as he is, Davis continues to argue that issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples would violate his right to religious freedom. He talks a lot about God, freedom, and fighting for what he believes in, but says much less about his responsibilities as a government employee, the freedom of LGBT people to marry, and the long struggle of gay people to legally marry those they love. Then there is his misunderstanding of the U.S. Constitution:

There is a travesty taking place with that Supreme Court ruling was completely unconstitutional, completely unconstitutional. They have no right to tell us, the state of Kentucky, that our law that was voted with what was 70 percent of the people that it was wrong; they had no right.

Actually, as the Supreme Court, they have every right under the Constitution to find state laws in violation of constitutional rights. That’s part of the High Court’s mandate. Davis, on the other hand, has no right to deny LGBT people their right to marry. To borrow a semantic framework that conservatives love, if Davis doesn’t like same-sex marriage, he should move to Russia.
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ViaRight Wing Watch

Next: Dinesh D’Souza

1. Dinesh D’Souza

dinesh-dsouza-facebook-640We’ve saved the worst for last. Following the tragic televised killing of two journalists in Virginia this week, D’Souza took to Twitter to point out supposed progressive hypocrisy on gun violence, race and ideology.

D’Souza suggested that because the murderer was a gay black man, officials should demand the removal of the LGBT pride flag from public spaces, as occurred with the Confederate flag following the killing of nine black people in a Charleston, South Carolina, church by a white supremacist.

The key difference, of course, is what each flag represents and the killers’ motives in the shootings. The Confederate flag symbolizes white supremacy, or as its defenders argue, Southern “heritage not hate.” Except that the heritage of the South involves a long history of slavery, KKK lynchings, voter disenfranchisement, and other human rights violations perpetrated against black people. The rainbow flag’s history has no such violent or hateful meaning.

Consider D’Souza’s latest odious, trolling tweets, in which he blames President Obama for what is yet another example of gun violence resulting from unregulated access to firearms, illogically equates love with hate, and confuses healthy pride in your culture with dangerous pride in a racist ideology.

ViaMediaite

Photo illustration above: Confederate flag, Pride flag via Flickr, Edited Matt Surrusco

This Week In Crazy: Never Forget Sodom And Gomorrah

This Week In Crazy: Never Forget Sodom And Gomorrah

Global warming is good for your lawn, Texas paranoia abounds, and we found the most adorably deranged complaint ever filed in federal court. Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the wildest attacks, conspiracy theories, and other loony behavior from the increasingly unhinged right wing. 

5. Ted Cruz

TedCruzLast week I wrote about Lone Star State governor Greg Abbott summoning the Texas State Guard to monitor Operation Jade Helm 15 — essentially an act of capitulation to the delusional paranoia of certain constituents. And this week, that paranoia has spread even higher up the political food chain — from dissenters at a risible small town hearing all the way up to GOP presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz.

Jade Helm 15, you may recall, is an eight-week training exercise conducted by four branches of the U.S. military. A vocal gaggle of unhinged Texans, goaded on by talk- radio hosts, think the exercise is the opening salvo in an attempt by the federal government to declare martial law in the Republic of Texas, seizing guns and letting ISIS soldiers roam rampant.

Part of the insanity can be attributed to a misreading of this map, which indicates that Texas was to play the role of hostile territory in the war games. This misunderstanding, compounded with a long-simmering mistrust of the federal government and a particular animus for the current administration, has blown up beyond anyone’s expectations and made Texas a national laughingstock.

Which brings us to Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. Rather than throwing water on the flames, Cruz signaled his support for Abbott and his fellow kooky Texans, expressing his empathy with those who fear and hate the federal government — you know, the one he wants to lead.

“I understand the concern that’s been raised by a lot of citizens about Jade Helm,” Cruz said. “We have seen for six years a federal government disrespecting the liberty of the citizens and that produces fear. When you see a federal government that is attacking our free speech rights, our religious liberty rights, our Second Amendment rights, that produces distrust as to government.”

Video via Dave Weigel/YouTube:


4. Dr. Keith Ablow

AblowThe non-news cycle has been making hay recently of Modern Family actress Sofia Vergara’s very public and very ugly spat with her ex, Onion Crunch magnate Nick Loeb, over who has the rights to their frozen embryos. The erst-couple is bringing new meaning to the word “classy” by waging their private little war in the court of public opinion, and opening another chapter in the perennial national conversation about abortion, reproductive rights, and the sanctity of life.

Enter Outnumbered, Fox News’ daily exercise in high-class trolling in which a male guest sits in on a roundtable of four women hosts. Dr. Keith Ablow played the dutiful Y chromosome representative on the show Tuesday to discuss his views on unborn children, which dovetailed nicely with a certain streak of men’s rights activism you sometimes hear on Fox News. (Incidentally, during one of Ablow’s previous appearances on Outnumbered, he gallantly told Michelle Obama to drop a few pounds.)

“Why would a woman’s right to decide what to do with a frozen embryo trump a man’s right every time?” he asked. “If he wants to bring these embryos to term, good for him. He wants to parent. If he wants to have them adopted, good for him. You know what, it’s not a coin toss. It’s whoever wants that potential being to survive, that’s who wins.”

Not one to quit while ahead, Ablow further clarified that he believes men have the right to “veto” abortions. “I’ve been outspoken on this,” he said. “I think men should be able to veto women’s abortions if they’re willing to care for the child after it’s born.”

Video courtesy of Fox News:


ViaMediaite

3. Jim Inhofe

InhofeSenator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), whom you might recall disproved global warming by starting the world’s shortest snowball fight in the Capitol building, has opened his yap about climate change again — this time to tell us that even if carbon dioxide levels are rising (which they are), we should not cave in to “climate alarmists,” rather we should be grateful. See, it turns out CO2 is good for the environment.

Inhofe took to the Senate floor Wednesday to insist that “increasing observations suggest a much-reduced and practically harmless climate response to increased amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide.” In fact, he continued, “increased carbon… has led to a greening of the planet and contributed to increased agricultural productivity.” (Video, courtesy of Raw Story, is below.)

Carbon pollution, in other words, is nothing to be concerned about. We should celebrate our greenification of Gaia by rolling around in the fresh grass and congratulating ourselves for not letting the fear-mongering federal government rule our lives. Hurrah.

Now, it would be one thing if Inhofe were just another climate crank, but unfortunately for anyone who lives on this planet, he is chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and, as we’ve noted before, one of the worst climate-change deniers out there. Previously, he described global warming as the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” compared An Inconvenient Truth to Mein Kampf, and insisted that climate change is impossible because, after all, “God’s still up there,”

“CO2 is a fertilizer,” Inhofe said Wednesday. “It is something you can’t do without. No one ever talks about the benefits that people are inducing from that as a fertilizer on a daily basis.”

“Fertilizer,” indeed.


ViaRaw Story

2. Pamela Geller

PamGellerIn one respect, the shooting in Garland, Texas targeting the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest was the best thing that could have happened to Pamela Geller, the event’s organizer. Suddenly her nasty little exercise in Muslim baiting became yet another touchstone for free expression under fire, and Geller herself got invited to broadcast her provocative brand of idiocy on several talk shows. But rather than rallying around her as a martyr for free speech, conservative hosts took Geller to task for her needlessly incendiary behavior.

On her Wednesday show, Laura Ingraham (no stranger to This Week In Crazy) opened a can of cold hard sanity on Geller, chastising her for going out of her way to mock religion, saying it has done nothing to advance the conservative cause.

Sean Hannity brought Geller on his show so she could get into a zero-sum screaming match with the extremely conservative Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary, the “radical London imam” Hannity rolls out whenever he needs a straw man. (Nobody to root for there, really.)

Bill O’Reilly asserted, “Insulting the entire Muslim world is stupid!” and even Donald Trump said the cartoons were just plain “DUMB.”

“The U.S. has enough problems without publicity seekers going out and openly mocking religion in order to provoke attacks and death,” Trump tweeted.

Geller, the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, has stirred this particular pot before, purchasing Islamophobic ads in the NYC subway and blogging tirelessly about her crusade against the forthcoming “Islamic takeover.”

Taken to task by just about everyone from all over the political spectrum, Geller finally lost it on Martha MacCallum’s show Tuesday.

After MacCallum played a clip of Catholic League president Bill Donohue calling Geller out, she snapped: “There’s a war going on! I mean what would he have said about Rosa Parks? ‘Rosa Parks should never have gone to the front of the bus. She’s taunting people’?”

Yes, Geller, in her single-minded quest to provoke the ire of Muslims (or “savages,” as she calls them), has likened herself to civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. Watch the video from the show below.

ViaTPM

1. Sylvia Ann Driskell

GodvsGaysA humble Nebraska woman is suing every single gay person in the country, and in doing so has risen above the mire of kooks that populate the political-media landscape to assume my #1 spot this week.

Sylvia Ann Driskell, identifying herself as the ambassador for “God and His, Son, [sic] Jesus Christ,” filed a complaint in federal court on Their behalf last week, naming as defendants, simply, “Homosexuals.”

In what is unquestionably a new high for penmanship and a new low for humanity, Driskell composed her seven-page complaint of utter nonsense entirely in exquisite cursive script. In her capacity as Plaintiffs’ ambassador, she fails to cite any statutes or court decisions that would bolster Their case. However, she does invoke the books of Leviticus, Proverbs, Romans, Isaiah, Genesis, and Webster’s Dictionary, which she uses to help her define words like “sin” and “parent,” but apparently not to help her spell tricky words like “and.”GodsvsGays2

“Your Honor,” she writes, “I’ve heard the boasting of the Defendant: the Homosexuals on the world news from the Young, to the Old; to the rich an famous [sic], and to the not so rich an famous [sic].”

In the conclusion of her complaint, the 66-year-old Driskell begs the court to rule against all homosexuals, because to permit their “lewd” behavior would be to invite Plaintiffs’ wrath.

“Never before has Our Great Nation the United State [sic] of America our great State of Nebraska; [sic] been besiege [sic] by sin,” she writes. “The way to destroy any Nation, or State is to destroy its morals; Look what happen [sic] to Sodom and Gomorrah two city because of the same immoral behavior thats [sic] present in Our Nation, in Our States, and our cities; God destroy them.”

Read the full complaint here.

ViaNBC News

Photo above: Kentucky Photo File via Flickr

This Week In Crazy: ‘It’s Time For American Jihad,’ And The Rest Of The Worst Of The Right

This Week In Crazy: ‘It’s Time For American Jihad,’ And The Rest Of The Worst Of The Right

Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the wildest attacks, conspiracy theories, and other loony behavior from the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:

5. Laura Ingraham

AFP Photo

AFP Photo

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama held a press conference in which he saluted the health care workers fighting the Ebola virus as “American heroes,” who “deserve our gratitude,” and “deserve to be treated with dignity and with respect.”

This did not sit well with right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham, who used her Wednesday show to slam Obama for inviting the humanitarians to join him at the podium. After all, they probably aren’t even doctors!

“He was flanked by volunteers who have gone to West Africa to help the victims of Ebola. Are we positive that it was all volunteers?” Ingraham asked. “Could it have been some of the folks from Organizing for America just in the white coats?”

“I swear the White House has a wardrobe department,” she added sarcastically. “They snapped up some white coats somewhere and they passed them out.”

So yes, President Obama is now dressing up campaign operatives as doctors to play up the Ebola crisis.

We’ve come a long way from two weeks ago, when Ingraham was accusing President Obama of lying…to downplay the Ebola crisis.

4. Pat Robertson

On the Monday edition of his show, televangelist Pat Robertson took a question from a viewer named John, who had turned to the false prophet for a bit of righteous investment advice.

“For years I have not invested in mutual funds for fear of investing in a company that profits from unbiblical means, such as the company who makes the abortion pill,” the viewer wrote. “Are there ‘safe’ investments I can invest in with little start-up money?”

Robertson steered the investor towards putting his money in master limited partnerships, which generally generate their revenue from the natural resources such as oil and natural gas extraction. As David Edwards helpfully points out at Raw Story, they’re actually a risky bet that may be “the next great investment debacle.” But Robertson isn’t concerned with any of that.

“They are not flowing condoms through pipelines!” Robertson explained. “So, don’t worry about the fact they’re giving abortion pills. They’re putting out oil and gas through pipelines.”

Of course, if John is really taking investment advice from Pat Robertson, he probably has bigger problems than which MLP to choose. He should probably trade up for a better financial advisor (Roberston himself might suggest a diamond-polishing Jew.)

3. Paul Broun

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) was a few weeks late to the GOP’s Ebola freakout party, but on Wednesday he joined with a bang.

(Not the kind from the pit of hell.)

During a radio appearance with fellow This Week In Crazy favorite Rick Wiles, Broun ripped President Obama’s decision to deploy the military on a humanitarian mission to help fight the Ebola outbreak in western Africa.

“I don’t know if Obama thinks that they are going to shoot the virus with their M16s,” Broun lamented, apparently never having seen a recruitment video. “What in the world is he thinking? I have absolutely no clue, he is just exposing American citizens to this very deadly virus.”

So it’s President Obama’s fault that two people have contracted the Ebola virus on American soil. But did he get them sick intentionally? Probably!

“Some people might think that it is malicious intent and certainly if you look at it from a logical perspective, there is no logic whatsoever about why they are acting the way they are,” Broun said. Later, when Wiles shared a conspiracy theory that President Obama is going to use the Ebola virus to contaminate VA hospitals (for reasons that remain unclear), Broun readily agreed.

“That may very well be, and it’s almost apocalyptic what potential is coming if that happens, if we bring these Ebola patients here and put them in hospitals, VA hospitals or any hospital,” Broun said. “We should not be exposing American citizens to this virus and this administration already is exposing people to this virus and is going to continue to expand that exposure.”

Notably, Broun was actually the moderate in this meeting of the minds. After all, just a few months ago Wiles was hailing Ebola as a potential solution to “America’s problems with atheism, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pornography and abortion.”

Audio of Broun’s remarks is available atRight Wing Watch.

2. Frank Turek

Religious right activist Frank Turek checks in at number two, for reminding us that the American Family Association doesn’t need Bryan Fischer’s presence for things to go completely off the rails.

During a Wednesday interview with the AFA’s Tim Wildmon and Ed Vitagliano, Turek called for a conservative governor to refuse to recognize any federal court ruling striking down their state’s gay marriage ban. His model for such an act of nullification? The slave states of the Old Confederacy.

“Somebody’s got to stand up to them. Who’s in the position to do so?” Turek asked rhetorically. “How about South Carolina or Texas? It started in South Carolina with the Civil War, as you know.”

“For the same kind of issue, state’s rights,” he continued. “Obviously the issue is different. I mean, slavery was different than obviously this. But, I mean, it was a states’ rights issue.”

Sounds like somebody is angling for a job in Reaganstan.

1. Keith Ablow

Screenshot: Fox News

Screenshot: Fox News

This week’s “winner” is Dr. Keith Ablow, who has moved from the World Cup to world domination.

Ablow, who ususally uses his perch on Fox News to push bogus psychology and crack fat jokes, waded into international security with his Wednesday column. It did not go well.

The basic thesis of Ablow’s argument is that the U.S. Constitution is a “sacred” document, which is so superior that it is our “manifest destiny” to “insist on its reflection in every government.” By waging jihad on the world.

“An American jihad would embrace the correct belief that if every nation on earth were governed by freely elected leaders and by our Constitution, the world would be a far better place,” Ablow explained.

“We would urge our leaders, after their service in the U.S. Senate and Congress, to seek dual citizenship in other nations, like France and Italy and Sweden and Argentina and Brazil and Germany, and work to influence those nations to adopt laws very much like our own,” he continued. “We might even fund our leaders’ campaigns for office in these other nations.”

Ablow recognizes that the citizens of the world may be hesitant to submit to an American empire. But he has a solution to the problem.

“We would unabashedly fund pro-democracy movements around the world, partly with government funding and partly with donations from American citizens,” he writes. “Through these donations we would seek to double the budgets of the CIA and our Special Forces, seek to fund an international mercenary force for good and provide our veterans unparalleled health care.”

If that sounds like terrorism to you, don’t worry — Ablow has thought that through as well. “An American jihad would never condone terrorist acts of violence against our adversaries or the targeting of people simply because their beliefs are different from ours,” he writes. “But for those who malignantly demonstrate their intentions to subjugate others, there would be no quarter.”

This seems like a good time to mention that Ablow thinks the Unabomber was “precisely correct in many of his ideas.”

Ablow’s jihadist plan for global conquest was odd enough to catch the attention of co-workers at Fox & Friends, who invited him on the show to defend his unhinged plan.

“What’s to discuss?” Ablow responded.

Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!

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Endorse This! Fox News Host Calls Michelle Obama Fat

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Oh no he didn’t! You won’t believe what Fox News host Keith Ablow said about First Lady Michelle Obama in today’s must-see video. It was too much for even the other Foxbots.

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Video courtesy of YouTube.

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