100 Days of WTF?

[filkertom]

It's been 100 days since Barack Obama took office as president, and all over the web you can find analyses, scorecards, praises, tirades and grumblings. But I'd like to take a moment to talk about the other side of the equation.

The absolutely apeshit demented behavior by Conservatives and their supporters.

During the Dubya era, it got to a point where there was not only a fresh outrage every day, but several of them. Just multiple layers of amazingly stupid and evil and obviously stupid and evil shit being done every day.

The term "outrage fatigue" came into play.

And we knew, because we were talking about it early in 2003 when the stupid Iraq invasion was looming on the horizon, we knew that whoever had to clean up the mess would [a] have to do a whole lot of juggling and [b] get a lot of shit for it.

But, continuing the tradition of the Bush years, it's hard to fathom that people actually would say and do some of the things they're saying and doing. And we're getting multiple examples every single day.

We won't even get into the teabagging... yet. No, as a mild and benign for-instance, let's start with this quote by Byron York:

On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.

As Atrios said, linking to this, "Black people don't really count. Or maybe they only count 3/5ths."

Or maybe we should look at Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the one-woman Crazy Quote Machine. She thinks that:

• Obama, or at least his views, are "anti-American"
• as a Minnesota Congressional representative, she's "a foreign correspondent over enemy lines" who wants the people of Minnesota "armed and dangerous" regarding an energy tax
• it's "interesting" that the last swine flu outbreak was also under a "Democrat president" -- just sayin', y'know? (What she's not just saying is that it was actually under Ford)
• Global warming is a myth because carbon dioxide "is a natural by-product of nature"
• the Edward Kennedy Serve America Act, which triples the size of Americorps, will result in "re-education camps for young people"

She's also one of the people protestesting against expanding the current hate-crimes laws to protect gays. (Meanwhile, Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-NC, said today that the fact that Matthew Shepard was killed because he was gay was "a hoax".)

Or there's Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who says there are "17 Socialists" in the House. Goodness! Who'd ever think such a thing?

When asked about the shrinking Republican electorate, Rep. Jim DeMint said, "the biggest tent of all is the tent of freedom", prompting CNN Reporter Rick Sanchez to say, "What the hell does that mean?"

And then there's the meat-and-potatoes stuff.

We could go with the basic denial of reality, in which Republicans who voted time and again for Bush's "emergency appropriations", which kept the Iraq war off the books, and who helped ram the obscene tax cuts for the wealthy down the nation's collective throat, and who worked on the Bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out from under onerous debt, and who supported screwing up Medicare so that nobody knows what the hell plan to take or whether or not it will cover their meds, and who encouraged the de-regulation that has fucked up our economy... those Republicans are now the ones screaming that Obama's administration is spending too much and must get back to "fiscal responsibility". Some of the Republican state governors refused to take money specifically earmarked to help the poor people of their states -- letting people starve so that they could uphold some nebulous principle that they themselves didn't believe in until Obama got into office -- and so far all have been overridden by their state legislatures.

We could go for the sheep-like stupidity of the rank-and-file, the ones who at this point are so thoroughly brainwashed that they protested a bill cutting their taxes (and raising taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year to the hideously high levels of... not as much as they used to be). Somehow, the teabagging parties ended up going, erm, hand-in-hand with the Two Million For Marriage, or 2M4M, which did not mean what they think it means. You may recall we linked to some fun stuff.

There was the craziness that led to the teabagging, Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer of MSNBC, who got humiliated by Jon Stewart.

Here in Michigan, a speech by the moderate Republican governor of Utah, Jon Huntsman, Jr., was canceled by the Kent County Republican Party chairwoman, apparently because Huntsman supports civil unions.

There's the vast increase in gun sales since Obama's election, much predicated on the notion that he's about to take everyone's guns away, even though he's never said that and isn't pushing it.

And there's all the noise from the leaders of the right, attempting to make the question about whether or not BushCo tortured people into a "policy disagreement". (At least that one has some rationality behind it -- they know that if the question is, "Were war crimes or crimes against humanity committed?" they will likely be tried for said crimes.) The most interesting mental gyration is the idea that people were tortured because, hey, torture works. Which kinda conflicts with the one guy who got waterboarded 183 times in a month (although Fox News tells us it was really only five times, just 183 pours of water), or the explanation that all that stuff was really no worse than a fraternity prank.

(I truly believe that torture works, if you want to get someone to say what you want them to say. And robbing a bank works if you want to get money. Murder works if you want somebody dead. Et cetera. Shall we now not prosecute those crimes, because they do work?)

We could talk about Rick Perry of Texas openly discussing secession.

We haven't got the time to get into Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, or the granddaddy of 'em all, Rush Limbaugh.

There's also that new study showing conservatives seem to believe Stephen Colbert is not making fun of them.

The crazies, the die-hards, drove center-right Sen. Arlen Spector (R D-PA) out of the party completely, and when Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) said, "you often get the distinct feeling that you’re no longer welcome in the tribe", Fox News' Fox Nation web site linked to it over the headline, "Don't Let The Door Hit You...".

Lots of other examples. Lots and lots and lots.

What prompted this post was bayushisan's tuning in to Bill O'Reilly the other night, and seeing something that was so far over the top he changed the channel before it got to the really bad part.

See, O'Reilly showed, effectively, a snuff film. (Seriously. From about 3:23 to 3:45.)

Cell-phone video from Pakistan, of two people, "charged with having an affair", being killed by members of the Taliban.

O'Reilly showed this, I guess, because we dirty fucking hippies don't think the Taliban is bad enough, or somethin', and we should rilly rilly rilly step up the Great War On Terror.

Showing the vid is, in itself, beyond the pale -- he introduced it by saying it was disturbing, get the kids out of the room, but not what was actually about to be shown. Thanks for the heads-up, BillO.

I also couldn't help but notice, in the segment (at about 1:30) preceding the snuff film, the incredible projection by O'Reilly and his two guests, Margaret Hoover and Gretchen Carlson, of right-wing-media tactics on left-wing-media people, 'cause, gosh-darn it all, we on the left are just so mean and personal. Really, I kept smacking my forehead with the heel of my palm, shaking my head and blinking a lot. It's that kinda segment.

And then, after that, we go from having people killed, shot dead, right there on your TV, without missing a beat, to a discussion about Carlie Beck, a cheerleading coach who was fired because she posed for Playboy.

All this in less than seven minutes.

The conservative movement in this country, the radical right-wing, is, I think, completely insane. And it's already getting dangerous. And I cannot imagine how they function, balancing so many different imaginary realities in their heads. What truly scares me is that I don't think they know for sure what their priorities are, which makes it harder to be ready when one or more of 'em go off the deep end and try to take others with 'em.

Thoughts?

Comments

[ericthemage.livejournal.com]

Republicans have become everything they've accused Democrats of being for the past 8 years.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

They always were. That's one of their standard strategies -- accuse the other side of everything that you are doing or contemplating doing, so that they get blamed for it instead of you.