Tag: operation american spring
This Week In Crazy: God Wrote The Constitution, And The Rest Of The Worst Of The Right

This Week In Crazy: God Wrote The Constitution, 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 perpetually unhinged right wing. Starting our countdown:

5. Operation American Spring

Screenshot: YouTube

Screenshot: YouTube

Operation American Spring, the revolutionary group dedicated to removing the “despotic and tyrannical federal leadership” from office, makes a return appearance to our list this week after “winning” the coveted number one spot last time.

These self-styled patriots have a big day ahead of them on Friday as they make their way to Washington, D.C. to carry out their coup against the federal government.

A leader of the group, retired Army colonel Harry Riley, said, “We are calling for the removal of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, and Eric Holder as a start toward constitutional restoration.” Their objective is simple — to preserve the very existence of America and restore our country to its free citizens by removing the “greedy, self-serving occupant[s] of the White House or Congress” and “removing the flea infestation that is sucking the blood out of America.”

Riley is optimistic that he’ll get a decent showing for the coup d’état on Friday. “We have well over 1 million militia members mobilizing; bikers, truckers, hunters, Tea Party groups—citizens across America. No, I don’t think 10 million [participants] is high at all.”

It gets crazier: Another right-wing blogger warned other patriots that Friday’s protest is itself a nefarious plot. David Chase Taylor wrote, “In essence, ‘Operation American Spring’ is a trap to set up well-meaning ‘patriots’ [his scare quotes] for acts of state-sponsored terror so that Obama’s political opposition can be vilified and a civil war can commence.”

Taylor continued: “It is during one or both of these seemingly harmless events that a state-sponsored coup d’état and/or terror attacks will likely take place. Although terror plots are always subject to change, most likely target is Washington, D.C., namely the Obama White House and the Washington Monument.”

Feeling inspired yet? Watch here for more, via Operation American Spring’s YouTube:

H/t: RawStory

4. Louie Gohmert

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

This Week In Crazy veteran Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) makes the cut yet again.

Speaking on the House floor, Gohmert preached against the “intellectual fascism” plaguing American society. “Now, with this new intellectual fascism that has arisen in our universities, some of them — far too many of them, actually — say: ‘If you disagree with our position, we don’t want you here. We want you eliminated. We don’t want you to have work. We want your family defiled. We just don’t want you to succeed in any way whatsoever.”

Gohmert was furious over two recent instances where he believes liberals used the same discriminatory policies characteristic of Nazism: Brandeis University’s decision to rescind an honorary degree before awarding it to former Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, owing to her remarks bashing Islam and Muslims; and the cancelation of HGTV’s Flip It Forward in a backlash against anti-gay statements by its hosts, David and Jason Benham.

“We stand up for those things, but there is no hate for individuals, yet those who are the most hate-filled, who do not follow the teachings of Jesus, seek to impose or to project upon those of us who are Christians–and some orthodox Jews and even atheists or secularists like Ms. Ayaan Hirsi Ali —their own hate, their own intolerance,” said Gohmert. “We really need to understand what is going on.” Then he continued:

It is not tolerance that becomes intolerant and says a woman who was tortured — I don’t know what else you would call some of the procedures that were done to her most private areas in the name of religion. It was not voluntary. She was ordered into a marriage she wanted no part of. She did not want to have to be covered up and stay in a back room and never own property and never drive. She kind of thought, like most of us do in America — except for the intolerant fascist liberals – that, ‘Gee, women ought to be able to own property, we ought to be able to marry whom we wish, we ought to be able to espouse our own views without being called hatemongers.’

See it for yourself, via The Raw Story:

H/t: The Raw Story

3. Sean Hannity

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Fox News Channel and syndicated radio host Sean Hannity announced on Thursday that he will fulfill his promise to pack up his Long Island home and leave the state of New York.

Hannity made the threat in January after New York governor Andrew Andrew Cuomo (D) said in a radio interview that “extreme conservatives, who are right-to-life, pro-assault weapon, anti-gay… have no place in the state of New York.”

“I can’t wait to get out of here. I really can’t,” Hannity responded. “I don’t want to pay their 10 percent state tax anymore. I live in the second-highest property-taxed county in the entire country in Nassau County. I can’t wait to sell my house to somebody who wants it. I can’t wait to pay no state income tax down in Florida or Texas.”

He ended his temper tantrum by promising: “Gov. Cuomo, I’m going to leave and I’m taking all of my money with me – every single solitary penny.” 

Hannity continued this tirade for months, insisting he was a victim of Cuomo’s intolerant views. The conclusion came on Thursday, during an interview with Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), when Hannity  announced, “I’m going to Florida, and I’m going to get a little Texas ranch. I’ve decided I’m leaving New York when my kid graduates high school.”

2. Tom DeLay

Photo: Jimmy Bramlett via Flickr

Photo: Jimmy Bramlett via Flickr

This week’s runner-up award goes to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX). Earlier this year, DeLay explained who he believes actually wrote the U.S. Constitution — God.  DeLay said in an interview that the American people seemed to have forgotten “that God created this nation [and] that He wrote the Constitution, that it’s based on Biblical principles.”

The former House Republican boss, an unsavory figure known as “The Hammer” in his heyday, returned to this religious revelation on Wednesday, when he called for “a revolution for the Constitution.” DeLay said, “The Consitution was created by God. I got attacked just a few weeks ago by the left because I said God wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and they ripped me to shreds over that one.”

The radio interviewer quickly added: “They need to read some of the founders’ quotes and how they said you could see the figure of God in what happened.”

DeLay agreed: “Alexander Hamilton himself said that the Declaration and the Constitution were written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of divinity itself. So I’m just quoting him.” 

While Hamilton did in fact make that statement, notice that it doesn’t refer directly to the founding documents. That’s because he penned those words in The Farmer Refuted in February 1775 — a full 12 years before the Constitution was drafted and a year before the founders penned the Declaration of Independence.

Listen to DeLay’s remarks here, via Right Wing Watch

[sound width=”166″ height=”100″ id=”https://soundcloud.com/rightwingwatch/tom-delay-defends-himself-by-spreading-false-history”]

H/t: Right Wing Watch

1. Joel Gilbert

This week’s “winner” is right-wing activist and producer Joel Gilbert — for his new film There’s No Place Like Utopia.

Gilbert’s latest movie is a bizarre reworking of The Wizard of Oz, in which President Obama brings Communism to the U.S. by introducing social welfare programs and immigration.

Watch the trailer here, via Right Wing Watch:

In the movie, Gilbert interviews far-right authors including Jack Cashill, Dr. Jerome Corsi, and David Horowitz.

According to its website, “There’s No Place Like Utopia is a humorous and horrifying exploration of Progressivism, amnesty for illegals, race relations, Islam in America, political correctness, and Barack Obama himself, who promises to ‘remake the world as it should be’.” 

Gilbert’s first movie, Dreams from My Real Father, aims to convince viewers that President Obama’s actual father was a former Communist Party activist named Frank Marshall Davis — and that he tried covering up this embarrassing fact by getting a nose job

H/t: Right Wing Watch

Screenshot: YouTube

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

This Week In Crazy: Obama Drone Strikes Washington, And The Rest Of The Worst Of The Right

This Week In Crazy: Obama Drone Strikes Washington, 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. David Dewhurst

Texas lieutenant governor David Dewhurst is experiencing some serious deja vu. For the second time in two years, the third-term Republican finds himself stuck in a runoff against a Tea Party-backed Republican who makes the conservative Dewhurst look like Bernie Sanders by comparison. And while Dewhurst was unable to stop Ted Cruz from steamrolling him in 2012, he’s pulling out all the stops to defeat state Senator Dan Patrick in the 2014 election for lieutenant governor — and it’s getting weird.

On Wednesday, Dewhurst unveiled his latest attack: An ad in which a crude animation of Patrick sings a parody of the song “Let It Go” from the Disney movie Frozen.

As Ben Jacobs helpfully explains in The Daily Beast, the ad’s central conceit is that Patrick changed his name from “Danny Goeb” to hide his bankruptcy (a claim which PolitiFact has rated “Pants on Fire”).

For This Week In Crazy, Texas’ 2014 primary season is the gift that keeps on giving. Texans, however, probably aren’t as amused.
4. Erik Rush

Erik Rush

Given that WorldNetDaily columnist and Fox News contributor Erik Rush believes that President Obama personally orchestrated the 2012 Benghazi attacks with his Muslim Brotherhood buddies, it’s not surprising that he’s a big fan of John Boehner’s decision to form a select committee to put the Obama administration on trial.

In his latest column, Rush urges committee leader Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) to ignore the “primal revulsion felt when one pulls back a wall or floorboard to discover an unimaginable accumulation of vermin bristling beneath,” and keep his eyes on the prize: Convicting Obama and Hillary Clinton of treason.

After 12 paragraphs of discredited conspiracy theories — ranging from a secret Obama/al Qaeda gun-running program, to the Muslim Brotherhood directing White House policy — Rush finally gets to his point:

The extent of these machinations, both in terms of time and scope, is positively dizzying. Whether this serial treason was taken on for reasons of narcissism, power and a false sense of invulnerability (as I suspect it was for the Clintons), or due to an abiding hatred of America and the desire to see her brought low (as was most certainly the case for Obama and his mixed bag of Marxist and Islamist ideologues), it still spells serial treason.

Whether the Select Committee on Benghazi will settle for the impeachable offenses (which will be essentially worthless in the practical sense), or the treasonable ones, again, remains to be seen.

As Rush calls for Congress to charge Obama and Clinton with crimes punishable by death, it may be worth remembering his personal burden of proof: nothing, because evidence is for liberals.

3. Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck didn’t attend last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, but rest assured: He has a crazy, offensive excuse.

On the Monday edition of his show, Beck explained, “I’ve gone one time before, went once, and that’s enough for anyone. My wife and I left, and said ‘should we go and take a shower? Because I feel like I’ve just been raped.'”

This may be the one time in which it’s entirely appropriate to blame the “victim”:

Although Beck didn’t attend the dinner, he did catch some of its entertainment. It may not shock you to learn that he was not amused.

Discussing the satirical video in which Vice President Joe Biden and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (as her Veep character, Vice President Selina Meyer) get matching tattoos, Beck expressed confusion.

“Why are they getting tattoos?” he asked. “Don’t they know that they’re the ones that are going to be running the camps? They don’t get the tattoos, they give the tattoos!”

No word on whether Beck has begun collecting Julia Louis-Dreyfus memorabilia.
2. Stacey Campfield

Stacey Campfield

While plenty of right-wingers have proven that Godwin’s law is all too real (see: Glenn Beck), and plenty have crossed all acceptable boundaries in attacking the Affordable Care Act (see Beck again), few have combined the two as neatly as Tennessee state Senator Stacey Campfield.

Writing on his personal blog on Monday, Senator Campfield offered the following “Thought of the day:”

Democrats bragging about the number of mandatory sign ups for Obamacare is like Germans bragging about the number of manditory [sic] sign ups for “train rides” for Jews in the 40s.

If this was Campfield’s top thought on Monday, I hate to imagine which musings didn’t make the cut.

After his remarks understandably sparked outrage, Campfield offered a grudging pseudo-apology:

“It was not meant to offend, but rather to warn. My intention was to draw attention to Obamacare and the slippery slope that I see occurring in the lives of myself, my constituents and the rest of the country with the continued taking of freedom by the federal government,” he said in a statement. “In no way was my post meant to diminish or detract from the pain, suffering and loss of life that occurred during this dark time in human history.”

You’d think that someone with so much experience offending people would be better at backtracking by now.

1. Operation American Spring

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Image via SaveAmericaFoundation.com

These are tense days for this week’s “winner,” Operation American Spring.

As the date of the latest poorly planned coup against the federal government draws closer, the group’s chief of staff Terry Trussell and right-wing radio host Mark Hoffman are growing concerned about what President Obama might do to trample their freedom.

“You know, people are going to be down there for days. I said you might want to bring a bug out bag of sorts because you never know what’s going to happen down there, you may have to run for your life,” Hoffman said on his Patriot Nation show.

“Get together and stay together and be safe, always keep your eyes open,” he added, “because I’m sure there’s going to be people from the liberal-left-progressive side, the Marxists, the anti-freedom and liberty people, in the crowd starting trouble, that’s almost a guarantee.”

Trussell agreed, and suggested that Obama might go ahead and rain hellfire missiles on Washington D.C. just to disperse the crowd.

“Now if something bigger happens, you know they can pull in drones, but when the government destroys the capital just to get rid of us, I think it’s going to work to their discredit,” he explained.

Actually, given Congress’ approval ratings, blowing up D.C. could give the president’s approval ratings a boost. 

Audio of their conversation is below, via Right Wing Watch:

In other coup news, it seems that Operation American Spring may be having trouble hitting their target number of 10 million recruits. But they have found the perfect solution: A charming, ’50s-style radio jingle!

If that doesn’t make you want to take up arms against the White House, we don’t know what will.

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This Week In Crazy: Cliven Bundy Should Stop Talking, 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. Steve Hurst

Alabama state representative Steve Hurst has a problem. Despite his strongly pro-gun record, Hurst is facing a primary challenge from the Tea Party-backed Steve Dean, who is trying to outflank him on “gun rights.”

But Hurst has a solution: Go big. Literally.

 

“Many voters appear to be wary of restrictions on gun rights, especially by the federal government. In the 2014 midterm elections, candidates are eager to get out in front of the issue,” Alabama reporter Jim Stinson writes, in what may be the understatement of the century.

Stinson goes on to explain that Hurst’s giant gun serves two purposes: First, it reminds voters that he led the fight to make it legal for Alabamans to shoot home invaders on sight. Second, it’s a working barbecue!

How, exactly, a state representative from Talladega will defeat federal gun regulations remains unclear. But maybe if Hurst and fellow Alabama Republican Will Brooke combine campaign promotions, they can finally get rid of the evil, job-killing Obamacare once and for all.

4. Gordon Klingenschmitt

Colorado state House candidate Gordon Klingenschmitt is still not a fan of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act — and he’s still the worst possible public face for the opposition.

On the Friday edition of his Pray in Jesus Name show, Klingenschmitt continued his campaign against what he calls “Pelosi’s Nation-wide bathroom bill” — not to be confused with Al Franken’s pedophilia bill — by warning that it will actually discriminate against Christians. But the horror doesn’t stop there.

According to Klingenschmitt, the bill will also force women to use the bathroom next to all manner of cross-dressing men.

“Ladies, you’ll have to share your bathroom with a man who may or may be sitting down when he goes pee,” he darkly warns.

Considering that a few months ago Klingenschmitt told us that ENDA would allow militant gays to kick you out of your house and have sex in it, sharing the bathroom doesn’t really sound so terrible.
3. Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

When a New York State Supreme Court judge overturned the convictions of the “Central Park Five” — a group of young black and Hispanic men who were convicted of raping a white woman, and were incarcerated for years before a confession and DNA evidence revealed that another man was responsible for the crime — most Americans lamented the obvious miscarriage of justice that had occurred.

Ann Coulter is not most Americans.

In her latest op-ed for conspiracy repository WorldNetDaily, Coulter explains that the Central Park Five were guilty after all — you’ll just have to trust her on that — and their sentence being vacated is proof that liberals love rape.

“In 2002, the ancient Robert Morgenthau, Manhattan district attorney, issued a report recommending that the convictions in the Central Park rape case be vacated. Justice Charles Tejada (Fordham Law 2009 Hispanic Heritage Award winner!) granted his request,” Coulter writes. “Liberals are opposed to rape in the abstract, but when it comes to actual rapists, they’re all for them.”

Unsurprisingly, Coulter is not a fan of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to settle the wrongly convicted men’s lawsuit against the city.

“But now,” she writes, “de Blasio wants to hold down our legs while the ‘Central Park Five’ rape us, again.”

Sadly, this is not even the most offensive thing Ann Coulter has said about rape this yer.

2. Operation American Spring

Eagle-redwhite-and-blue

Image via SaveAmericaFoundation.com

It’s a day that ends in a “y,” which means that another right-wing extremist is trying to launch a coup d’état to overthrow the federal government.

This week’s revolutionary is Fred Brownbill, who is “in the process of notifying and contacting all legal and constitutionally created militia groups across the United States to mobilize on Washington DC for ‘Operation American Spring.”’

Brownbill and his fellow freedom fighters, you see, are furious that “the Senate and the Congress feel it is in the best interest of this nation to fund illegal immigrants and keep them sustained with free health care, tax breaks, free education in our schools, EBT cards, public housing and the like.”

Even worse, “Mr. Barry Soetoro, the illegal immigrant from Kenya,” and “Marxist Senator (comrade) Harry Reid” have apparently declared a war against 25 million veterans. Oh, and Speaker Boehner will be overthrown as well, because “We will NEVER forget Benghazi.”

So the American Spring gang plans to do what Christopher Stevens would surely have wanted: organize 10 million Americans to go to Washington and shout at the Whtie House.

“We are not leaving the grounds surrounding our White House or the Congress until Mr. Barry Soetoro, the Muslim imposter, has been removed from office for treason and/or impeached for crimes against the constitution,” the group’s manifesto reads.

If this plan sounds familiar, it’s because conspiracy theorist Larry Klayman tried pretty much the exact same thing back in November. In fact, he’s still trying to overthrow the government. And while Klayman may not be able to help Operation American Spring attract 10 million footsoldiers — his own coup turned out barely 100 people — perhaps he can at least lend Brownbill one of his signs reminding the world that he and his supporters are “not racists.”

Unfortunately, Tea Party Nation leader Judson Phillips — a supporter of Operation American Spring — will not qualify for one.

1. Cliven Bundy

Cliven Bundy

This week’s “winner,” Nevada rancher and obvious con man Cliven Bundy, became a genuine right-wing superstar in the wake of his armed standoff with federal agents who sought to force him to pay more than $1 million in fees that he owes for grazing his cattle on public land. As militia groups descended on Nevada to back Bundy in the dispute, Republicans ranging from fawning Fox News hosts to high-ranking elected officials heaped praise on the “patriots,” as Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) called them.

In the least-surprising news story of the year, that turned out to be a mistake.

On Tuesday, Las Vegas television station KLAS revealed that Bundy was a fraud, who had falsified his “ancestral rights” to the disputed land.

On Thursday, the New York Timesrevealed that he is much, much worse. As the Times’ Adam Nagourney reported, while meeting with supporters on Saturday, Bundy took it upon himself to teach them what he knows about “the Negro”:

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

After his outrageous racism was revealed, Bundy did what any rational person would do: He went on conspiracy king Alex Jones’ show to claim that he had been misquoted. But as the video of his comments makes clear, he wasn’t.

He then held a press conference insisting that he doesn’t know what all the fuss is about, as he was just “wondering” if black people were “better off as slaves,” “with their gardens and their chickens.” (Note to Cliven: They were not.)

Meanwhile, Bundy’s Republican supporters spent the day fleeing from him at top speed. So sadly, as Media Matters’ Matt Gertz put it, Cliven Bundy night at the 2016 Republican National Convention is probably canceled. But Bundy’s speech at next year’s CPAC should be even better than we could have imagined.

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