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This Week In Crazy: Obama Shot Down Another Plane, And The Rest Of The Worst Of The Right

This Week In Crazy: Obama Shot Down Another Plane, 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. Billy Johnson

In May, the NRA attempted to reach out to a younger audience by launching a new “Freestyle” network designed to reverse the decline in gun ownership by young Americans.

Let’s see how that’s working out for them.

In a new video for the network, titled “Everyone Gets A Gun,” NRA News commentator Billy Johnson explains how we could end America’s “anti-gun policy:” By forcing schoolkids to shoot guns against their will.

“Our gun policies are designed around the assumption that we need to protect people from guns,” Johnson says. Apparently, this is a bad thing — but thankfully, he has some solutions.

“What if instead of gun-free zones, we had gun-required zones?” Johnson asks.

He then proposes a new public education system, in which students would need to pass gun tests to graduate.

“Just like we teach them reading and writing, necessary skills, we would teach shooting and firearm competency. It wouldn’t matter if a child’s parents weren’t good at it. We’d find them a mentor,” Johnson says. “It wouldn’t matter if they didn’t want to learn. We would make it necessary to advance to the next grade.”

What could possibly go wrong?

“Gun policy driven by the assumption that we need guns would probably mean that our government would subsidize it,” Johnson added. “Perhaps we would have government ranges where you could shoot for free or a yearly allotment of free ammunition.”

Because if there’s one group of people that loves government handouts, it’s the gun rights movement.

4. Pat Robertson

Televangelist Pat Robertson checks in at number four, for a bizzare segment on his 700 Club program which advised young women on how to avoid looking like a “hoochie momma momma.”

Things got uncomfortable almost immediately.

“A lace stocking is more sensual than a bare leg,” Robertson insisted to co-host Wendy Griffith. “It’s the illusion that there’s something behind there.”

“Modesty’s hottest,” the 84-year-old added. “Once it becomes cool, then it will catch on. Until it is cool, then the girls want to be cool, they want to be hip, they want to do what’s in.”

Here’s a tip for the ladies out there: If you’re taking advice on how to be “hip” (or, even more horrifically, “sensual”) from Pat Robertson, you are doing it wrong.
3. Dana Rohrabacher

Dana_Rohrabacher

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

In addition to being a terrible historian and one of the world’s least competent criminals, Dinesh D’Souza is also the director of the new right-wing film, America. The film is doing decently at the box office, but D’Souza thinks it should be doing better — and it would, if Google weren’t censoring him.

According to D’Souza, potential moviegoers who search for America are having a hard time finding the right information (and this is obviously due to Google’s liberal bias, not D’Souza naming his movie “America“). Given his history of presenting himself as the victim of massive conspiracies, this claim was not particularly surprising or noteworthy.

But now Congress is getting involved.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who is best known for blaming global warming on dinosaur farts, arm-wrestling Vladimir Putin, and joining the mujahideen in Afghanistan, wants to see the tech giant held accountable.

“This doesn’t deserve to be ignored. We need to verify the statistics in some way, and I will be suggesting the appropriate committee or subcommittee have some kind of hearing on this,” Rohrabacher toldThe Hollywood Reporter. “We know there were significant incidences, and that would suggest there was intent behind Google’s nonperformance.”

Who says Congress never does anything important?

So, just to be clear: If a business wants to stop you from getting birth control coverage, that’s OK. But if it wants to stop you from seeing Dinesh D’Souza’s awful movie, that’s TYRANNY.

Of course, if Rohrabacher really wants to protect against online discrimination, he could support net neutrality. But he has repeatedly voted against legislation that would bar broadband service providers from giving preferential treatment to certain content.

2. Jody Hice

Screenshot: YouTube

Screenshot: YouTube

On Tuesday night, pastor and right-wing radio host Jody Hice became the Republican nominee for U.S. House in Georgia’s 10th congressional district.

This could be a problem for Georgia Republicans.

ThinkProgress has compiled a handy cheat-sheet of Hice’s positions, which include a belief that Muslims are not eligible for First Amendment protection, that the reasons for the Civil War “are still being debated,” that women should only enter politics if they have their husband’s permission, and that the separation of church and state was responsible for the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

With this in mind, it may not surprise you that Hice’s response to the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border is not exactly nuanced and policy driven. In an interview with Liberty Conservatives, Hice correctly predicted that Texas would send National Guard troops to the southern border — and then all but encouraged people to open fire on the children attempting to enter the country.

“That is the reason we have a Second Amendment,” Hice said. “Ultimately, it comes down to the right of defending ourselves against tyranny should our government ever become a threat to our liberties. And when you are talking about a government that refuses to secure our borders, you are talking about a government that is not taking seriously its responsibility to defend us.”

Hice’s position is actually even worse than it looks, considering that he thinks that the Second Amendment gives citizens the right to own “cannons and bazookas and missiles.”

So congratulations, Georgia: You’ve managed to replace Paul “lies from the pit of Hell” Broun with someone even more insane.

1. Erik Rush

Screenshot: Youtube

Screenshot: YouTube

After Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot out of the sky, it was only a matter of time before someone on the right blamed the horrific tragedy on President Barack Obama. To absolutely no one’s surprise, Erik Rush won the race to the bottom.

In his latest column for the reliably crazy WorldNetDaily, Rush made a case that President Obama and the Ukrainian government teamed up to falsely pin the attack on Russian-backed separatists.

“From the earliest reports breaking the news that Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 had been shot down over Eastern Ukraine, my suspicions were aroused,” Rush writes.

“[O]n Monday, President Obama accused Russian separatists controlling the crash site of tampering with evidence and intimidating international investigators by firing their weapons into the air. He said that this ‘begs the question, ‘what exactly are they trying to hide?'” the paranoiac continues. “Considering the Alinskyite penchant for projection so often employed by this White House, for me the question immediately became one of what Washington and Kiev might be trying to hide.”

Naturally.

Rush then goes on to suggest that all of the overwhelming evidence suggesting that pro-Russian separatists were responsible for the attack was fabricated (and anyway, evidence is for liberals).

“Given the geopolitical climate and the duplicity of the Obama administration, we may never know the whole truth, but the fact is that Washington and Kiev would have had quite a bit to gain politically in the intentional downing of this jet and the implication of pro-Russian militias,” Rush explains.

At least in this case, Rush realizes how crazy he sounds.

“Oh, yes – I realize that this will be viewed by many as another anti-Obama far-right conspiracy theory,” he says, “but I believe that it is at least as viable a proposition as the administration’s narrative.”

Once again, Rush is just asking questions. Just like he did the last time a Malaysia Airlines plane went down (like most things in life, that was also Obama’s fault).

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

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First MH17 Bodies Arrive In Bereft Netherlands

First MH17 Bodies Arrive In Bereft Netherlands

Eindhoven (Netherlands) (AFP) – The first bodies from flight MH17 arrived in the Netherlands on Wednesday almost a week after it was shot down over Ukraine, as the conflict flared yet again near the Malaysian airliner’s crash site.

Uniformed Dutch military personnel solemnly hoisted 40 wooden coffins from two planes and placed them in individual hearses at Eindhoven airport in the south of the country in a powerfully somber ceremony, as a trumpeter played the Last Post and a large crowd of the bereaved watched.

Church bells rang throughout the country as the planes touched down in a much-delayed return for the first as-yet unidentified remains of the 298 people killed in the disaster, most of them Dutch.

In a dramatic new development in the conflict hampering the recovery and investigation effort, Kiev said a missile fired from Russia — accused by the West of provoking the MH17 disaster — took down two of its warplanes in the rebel-controlled area.

The Netherlands has been united in grief and growing anger because of delays in getting bodies home and over the way pro-Russian separatists have treated the crash site, bodies and personal possessions.

The planes left from Kharkiv in Ukraine, where the remains were carried on board by army cadets before a small party of officials.

Around 1,000 bereaved relatives of the 193 Dutch dead, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima, Prime Minister Mark Rutte and representatives of the other nations that lost citizens on the flight met the planes.

The bodies are to be transferred under police escort to a military base at Hilversum, southeast of Amsterdam, where forensics experts will identify them.

Flags of the 11 nations that lost citizens in the crash flew at half mast at the airport.

Motorways along the 100-kilometer (65-mile) route from Eindhoven to Hilversum were closed for the long convoy of hearses to pass.

A minute’s silence was observed nationwide, during which no flights landed or took off at Amsterdam Schiphol airport, from where the doomed Boeing 777 took off on Thursday.

U.S. intelligence officials have said they believe rebels mistakenly shot down the plane that was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with a surface-to-air missile.

Violence erupted again Wednesday in the zone of the crash, as the International Committee of the Red Cross said it considered Ukraine to be in a state of civil war, and warned both sides to abide by the Geneva Conventions on conduct in conflict.

Ukraine said it appeared that missiles that shot down two Ukrainian fighter jets in the volatile east were fired from Russia.

“According to preliminary information, the rockets were launched from Russian territory,” Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council said.

A spokesman for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic told AFP its fighters shot down the two aircraft.

Both pilots managed to parachute out of the Su-25 jets, which the security council said were flying at an altitude of 5,200 meters.

It said the planes came down close to the village of Dmytrivka, some 45 kilometers (25 miles) south-east of the MH17 crash site towards the Russian border.

Experts and world leaders have expressed concern that not all remains have been recovered from the sprawling impact site in rebel-held territory.

Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans and his Australian counterpart Julie Bishop will travel together to Ukraine on Thursday for talks about completing the repatriation of bodies and the investigation.

The rebels controlling the crash site released the first bodies and handed over two black boxes to Malaysian officials only after intense international pressure.

The black boxes were delivered to Britain for expert analysis, including whether they might have been tampered with.

Rutte has warned it could take months for the bodies to be identified, although some are expected to be returned to families soon.

Dutch police have been visiting the bereaved for counselling but also to retrieve DNA samples such as from hairbrushes, details of tattoos and fingerprints, as well as medical and dental records, to help with the identification.

A truce has been declared by rival sides around the impact site, but international investigators still face massive obstacles. Dutch officials confirmed receipt of only 200 of the 298 victims’ bodies.

Monitors say more remains are left at the vast site, littered with poignant fragments from hundreds of destroyed lives.

Kiev said the Netherlands and other countries that lost citizens are proposing to send police to secure the area, amid concerns vital evidence has been tampered with.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday pledged to “do everything” to influence the separatists and ensure a full probe into the crash.

Putin is staring down fresh European sanctions just a week after the latest set was unveiled over its role in the Ukraine crisis, which has chilled East-West tensions to the lowest point in years.

And Ukrainian government troops are pushing on with their offensive to wrest control of east Ukraine’s industrial heartland from the pro-Moscow separatists.

AFP Photo/Genya Savilov

Ukraine Rebels ‘Shoot Down Two Fighter Jets’

Ukraine Rebels ‘Shoot Down Two Fighter Jets’

Kiev (AFP) – Pro-Russian rebels on Wednesday shot down two Ukrainian fighter jets in eastern Ukraine just days after the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, a Ukrainian military spokesman told AFP.

“Two Sukhoi Ukrainian fighter jets have been shot down. The fate of the pilots is not known,” spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky said, adding the planes were brought down some 25 kilometres (16 miles) from the crash site of MH17.

But a second military spokesman said the jets had been downed at a different location by rockets fired by insurgents. The two pilots managed to parachute out, he said.

“Today in the south of the Lugansk region close to the village of Dmytrivka, pro-Russian fighters shot two Su-25 jets from a missile system,” spokesman Vladislav Seleznev said.

“The pilots took evasive action … but the planes were hit,” he said.

AFP Photo/Genia Savilov

Bill Clinton: Perpetrators Of MH17 Crash Sought A Divided World

Bill Clinton: Perpetrators Of MH17 Crash Sought A Divided World

Melbourne (AFP) – Former U.S. president Bill Clinton called Wednesday for strength in responding to the loss of flight MH17, declaring those who had downed the plane — and provided the means to do so — sided with a brutal vision of the world.

Speaking at the world AIDS conference in Melbourne, Clinton said it “matters not” if the Malaysia Airlines plane had been shot down by mistake, and the loss of 298 lives was unintended.

And he paid tribute to the six AIDS campaigners who died aboard the flight.

Addressing a hall packed with scientists, policymakers and grassroots activists, Clinton singled out Dutch researcher Joep Lange, praising him for tireless work in bringing life-saving drugs to millions of people infected by HIV.

“He and the five other colleagues we lost lived lives which are overpowering in their contribution to a shared future,” Clinton said.

“Those who shot them down and who provided the means to do so represent the other side in our struggle to define the terms of our interdependence: the open hand against the clenched fist, inclusive politics and economics versus division and dominance, cooperation against control, life against death.”

The former president called on the world’s response to be strong, and not be sapped by any argument that the loss of lives was unintended.

U.S. intelligence officials have said evidence showed pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine launched the missile, possibly targeting MH17 by mistake.

Clinton said he had been moved by seeing a statement to the UN Security Council by Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans, who spoke of lives torn apart and who bitterly condemned delays in recovering the bodies.

“It matters not that the murder was meant to be committed against other people,” Clinton said.

“I hope that all of our countries who value freedom and honor will look at the statement made yesterday by the Dutch foreign minister before they give in to the temptation to say, ‘Well, maybe we should weaken our resolve to make a strong stand because after all they didn’t mean to shoot ‘this’ plane down’.”

Clinton, a veteran campaigner in the fight against AIDS, set up a foundation in 2001 that has negotiated huge cuts in prices in antiretroviral drugs for poor countries.

His speech was briefly interrupted by about two dozen activists who held up banners demanding he help push through a “Robin Hood” tax on financial transactions to help fund the war on AIDS.

The former president looked back to 2002, when “barely 100,000” badly-infected people in poor African and Asian countries had grabbed the drug lifeline.

Today, the global total stands at nearly 13 million but as many as 28 million are in need, according to the World Health Organisation’s criteria for eligibility, he said.

“An AIDS-free generation is within our reach,” said Clinton.

But this could only be achieved through greater funding and smarter ways to use it, he argued.

Funding for AIDS in low- and middle-income countries stood at $19.1 billion (14.01 billion euros) last year, from $5 billion in 2003.

Beneath this surge, though, the figures show that domestic funding sources are increasing but western donations are slowing, he said.

“We’re going to have to raise all the money we can and we’re going to have to spend what we have as efficiently as possible.”

Clinton also called for renewed efforts to combat stigma and prejudice, “which unbelievably, after all these years, is actually on the rise in some places”.

He pointed to Uganda and Nigeria “and everywhere else” where anti-gay laws are in place.

“We have to remind people that the people we lost on that airplane gave their entire lives to the proposition that our common humanity matters a hell of a lot more than our interesting differences.”

AFP Photo/Esther Lim