It all makes sense if you're nuts

Punxsutawney, Pa., is all snowed in, and Phil, being a sensible groundhog, refuses to come out and see (or not see) anything, so America has been forced to go to Plan B.

So . . . Glenn Beck has come out from under the rock where he keeps his survivalist provisions, only to see the shadow of THE COMING INSURRECTION.

It works something like this. Hang on to something.

Tunisia is in flames because the Muslins are unhappy. That spread to Egypt, which is going down. That's spreading to Jordan, where there are riots, and it's going down. Libya's in flames, too, which the lamestream media isn't going to tell you about, because it's run by the Muslins, or communists, or Nazis or something.

Yemen's in flames, and so is Pakistan, but he's run out of little flamey magnet thingies to put on the chalkboard, so trust us on this. Iran's in flames, and that means they're going to come after Saudi Arabia, another of our "frenemies," because them Saudi royals are hardcore scumbags, who you know have to be shaking in their sandals while their camels are scared spitless.

And then you got Lebanon . . . in flames. The Gaza strip . . . in flames. But the Muslin Brotherhood Muslins hate the Hezbollah Muslins who are just like the Iranian Shiite Muslins, so they're canceling one another out or something . . . but they all have it in for the Jews in Israel.

SO YOU GOT the Shiites pushing on Israel one way and the Sunnis pushing on Israel the other, and the Chinamen is thinkin' . . . "WHOA! KNOCK THAT STUFF OFF, MAHMOUD!"

And then the Chinamen go "Ching chong ching chong chang bing bong sham-a-lama-ding-dong. . . ." Oh, wait, that's what Rush Limbaugh said the Chinese said, so never mind. . . .

Anyway, you got China pushing one way, and then the flames spread to Spain, which is on fire, and come to think of it, so is Great Britain and Ireland . . . FIRE! . . . and you don't think the radical Islamists in England and France are going to sit on their hands with all that fire all over the chalkboard, do you?

SEE, you got flamey chaos in the Middle East, and China's pushing west. And then you got abject flames on the chalkboard that is Europe -- no, look, there's Europe on a chalkboard -- and Russia's gonna start moving on Europe thataway, because the Muslins blowed s*** up in Moscow, and what that shows us is that what Tunisia really is is Sarajevo 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand got offed by Gavrilo Princip, which started World War I, because everybody's pushing on Israel, and the Jews got the Bomb now.

We'll have more on how This Is All Gonna Blow Up Good right after these messages from Goldline and Food Insurance.

God's 'right'-hand brand

Click screenshot to read full-size

If you're running a Catholic website -- and not only that, a Catholic apostolate, an organization meant to cooperate with God in the saving of souls -- what the hell does this have to do with anything?

I think that's a question not only Living His Life Abundantly, the apostolate run by Johnnette Benkovic that's behind the screenshot, but for a whole Catholic subculture centered on EWTN, the Eternal World Television Network. What the hell does a murderous madman's politics have to do with saving souls?

What does it have to do with the Catholic faith?

What does it even have to properly do with the culture wars, which are the bread-and-butter of "Catholic radio" and EWTN? And what would possess a "staff journalist," much less a Catholic one, to quote a story from World Net Daily (home for birthers, extreme ideologues, "tea-party patriots" and all manner of life forms on public discourse's outer limits) like it was . . . ahem . . . gospel truth?

What?

WHAT DOES this have to do with the fundamental reality of what happened in Tucson, Ariz., on Saturday?


WELL, SINCE the Democrats have put "enemy" politicians in the crosshairs, too, the Catholic Church -- or at least some holier-than-thou elements of it -- have no insights to share about the coarsening of American political discourse? The tendency toward dehumanizing one's ideological opposites? I mean, apart from "Nanny nanny boo boo!"

Does Right make right . . . or, at least, stooping to the left's level make Not Wrong?

Have the Living His Life Abundantly people -- the whole Catholic radio and EWTN crowd, for that matter -- decided the one unforgivable sin isn't against the Holy Spirit but, actually, is "being a Democrat"? That one's highest calling in the Christian life is throwing culture-war brickbats at "Them"?

That the only people worthy of salvation (and if they think anyone is worthy of salvation, they need to hang up their scapulars . . . and their 501(c)3 tax exemption) are those who vote the right way?

Or the Right way?

I WORRY that someone, somewhere must be spreading a really bad interpretation of Matthew 25:

31

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne,

32

and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

33

He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34

Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

35

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me,

36

naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.'

37

Then the righteous will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?

38

When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?

39

When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?'

40

And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.'

41

Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

42

For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,

43

a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.'

44

Then they will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?'

45

He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.'

46

And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

UHHHHHHH . . . I'm just a stupid blog guy, here, but I really, really don't think Jesus was talking about conservative politics when he placed the sheep on His right. In fact, a lot of this passage mitigates against what passes for the political right in America these days.

It's a self-evident fact, at least for those with eyes to see, that the Almighty is not a Republican. Or a Democrat, either. He may be a Fabian socialist, but don't quote me on that.

You watch, that last sentence is going to come back to haunt me -- perhaps via an article by "staff journalist" Susan Brinkmann, OCDS.

Well, that's just not his truth

I don't know why Anderson Cooper argues with these "birther" nuts.

Argument is dead. Futile. Useless. So very last century.

This is the postmodern era, and truth is what we say it is. Cooper and CNN have their "facts." The birthers have their truth, and who are we to impose our "truth" on them? That would be rather patriarchal, not to mention a pernicious attempt at intellectual hegemony.

The birthers think President Obama is a radical socialist Muslin Nazi who was bornded in Kenyah. That is their truth, and you can't impinge upon that with your so-called "facts."

THUS, the CNN anchor hit Texas state Rep. Leo Berman with fact after fact that back in the old days should have sunk his rhetorical ship, only to find that today, facts are just so much sound and fury, signifying nothing. And in the insane asylum called Tejas, it wouldn't surprise me if this bill of Berman's passes.

You see, today we don't have facts, we have "facts."

Perhaps the question here for CNN is whose facts do they choose to believe -- the liberal establishment's pinko facts or the facts God-fearing, real-American patriots found on the Internet? The commie liberals have their facts, and the Americans have their facts.

What we have here is a matter of truth vs. truth, and who is anybody to violate another's mind space with their hostile truths?

This is postmodern America, dammit, and we have a way of settling these kinds of disputes. We're going to exercise some raw power here, and whoever doesn't get exterminated gets to believe whatever the hell they want.

It's called "tolerance," and it's the American Way.

And that's the one thing every American can agree on nowadays.

America 2010: A tragedy in four acts

Sorry, Glenn. In this case, "puppetmaster" George Soros was right.

"A 1957 movie -- made by a communist, appropriately" -- Soros' alleged "gift" for Glenn Beck. That is, according to Beck. You see, Soros thinks the Fox News Channel's resident paranoiac is the real-life "Lonesome" Rhodes from A Face in the Crowd, Elia Kazan's 1957 "communist" classic.

According to Beck.

Well, heck. It must be true, the John Birch Society's magazine is picking up Beck's "exposé" of Soros and running with it.


OK, DOES Andy Griffith's character remind you of anyone here? Anyone at all?

Substitute Goldline for Vitajex, Lonesome's sponsor in the film. Anything come to mind now?


THANK GOD that the ultimate faith of "Lonesome" Beck's followers rests in the United States Constitution -- not a TV host. At least if Beck starts to steer them astray, the foundational document of our democratic republic -- and Tea Party America's exhaustive knowledge of it -- will be there to steer them (and us) away from the brink of something really nasty.


OH, S***.

Right of the great divide

If you care to look at what kind of political climate we're facing these days, look no further than Rep. Steve King, western Iowa's crazy-uncle congressman.

In 2008, King -- a three-term representative for whom the description "incendiary" may well be an understatement -- won with 60 percent of the vote. Tuesday, he won with 68 percent.

In February, he was being glib about the guy who flew his plane into the IRS offices in Austin, Texas. Two years before, it was this:


AND THE good people of western Iowa like him just fine, according to today's Omaha World-Herald:

King is a staunch conservative known for eyebrow-raising comments. He expects the GOP takeover of the House of Representatives to lead to his becoming chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. He is the senior Republican on the subcommittee.

He said Tuesday he wants to introduce legislation reducing and eventually ending federal aid to so-called “sanctuary cities” if they did not change their policies.

“We have a number of cities in our country that, essentially, forbid their law enforcement officers from gathering information on illegals,” he said. “We need to put an end to it.”

Cities — including Seattle, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco — have adopted ordinances banning city employees and police from asking residents about their immigration status. King described Des Moines as a “de-facto” sanctuary city where the practice is in place without an ordinance.

He also called for ending automatic citizenship for what he called “anchor babies,” children born in the United States to illegal-immigrant parents. Doing that would likely require changing the U.S. Constitution.

WHAT DEMOCRATS have to deal with isn't that King is a nut and attracts like addle-minded zealots. What Democrats have to deal with is that lots of normal people in the country's breadbasket keep electing a bomb-thrower like the congressman from Iowa's 5th Congressional District.

That they regard him as "normal" enough to represent them, and see Democrats as unfit.

What Democrats have to ask themselves is why they are so alienated from normal Midwestern folk -- angry, fearful, marginally knee-jerk and increasingly deluded folk, to be sure, but not particularly lunatic ones. Dismissing folks like Steve King's Iowa voters, deriding them as bigots and nuts, may be satisfying for the Democratic base, but it still amounts to pissing in the wind.

The difficult question that some Democrats need to ask themselves, but won't, isn't "Why is everybody but us so crazy?" The pertinent question, instead, is "Why do people find us significantly more frightening than somebody like Steve King?"

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars . . ." etc., and so on.

FRC = Freaks' Radio Commercials

Here's all you need to know about Christian public-interest groups like the Family Research Council (and I use the terms "Christian" and "public-interest" loosely):

If you're a mainstream Catholic who may not approve of homosexual conduct or gay "marriage" but think that doesn't mean they forfeit their rights as American citizens, you're the enemy of God's self-appointed political goon squads. Like the FRC or its local Family Matters (or Family First, or Family Policy Council. or whatever) affiliates.

If you believe gays and lesbians haven't forfeited basic rights like not getting fired . . . or beat up . . . or killed . . . or otherwise having their human dignity offended just because someone doesn't like their sexual proclivities, the Family Research Council counts you as an enemy. Like they do the embattled Republican congressman from New Orleans, Joseph Cao.

THE FORMER Catholic seminarian has himself a big problem with the FRC, which is running attack ads against the staunchly pro-life representative. One has to wonder whether these Taliban for Jesus just figure that "God Hates Fags" -- à la the Westboro Baptist Church crowd -- and Cao should, too.

So, what horrible pro-gay, anti-family heresy has the diminutive congressman committed? The Times-Picayune fills us in:

Cao's "record is dismal on our issues," Tony Perkins, the former Louisiana legislator who heads the Washington-based FRC, said Saturday.

Cao responded that it was "ridiculous" to charge, as the ad campaign does, that his support for homosexual rights came at the expense of religious liberty.

"As a former Jesuit seminarian and practicing Catholic, it is ridiculous to say that I have ever taken a position against religious liberties," Cao said. "I am, however, a champion of human rights and justice for all."

Perkins said Cao was the only Republican candidate targeted with an FRC attack ad this fall. The ad, which has run on New Orleans station WRNO, known as "Rush Radio" because it airs conservative talk-show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, ends with the tag line, "Washington doesn't need more liberal Republicans. Stop Joe Cao on Election Day."

"He's vulnerable," Perkins said of Cao's prospects for a second term. Perkins said he was keeping a close eye on the campaign to determine whether to ramp up the advertising effort before Tuesday.

Perkins said Richmond is also unacceptable to the FRC. "I know Cedric. I served in the Legislature with him," Perkins said. "He'll be no better."

Perkins said independent candidate Anthony Marquize is more in line with FRC thinking.

YES, Tony Perkins is as ridiculous as you think he is. You really should hear him go off on Christian environmentalists. He thinks they're pinkos or something.

Besides . . . how do these people have the nerve? I'd almost forgotten about George Alan Rekers and his "rent boy," and apparently the FRC thinks you have, too.

Let's keep reading, shall we?

"Who is Rep. Joseph Cao representing in Washington?" the FRC ad asks. "Cao has repeatedly voted for extra protections for homosexuals at the cost of religious liberty. Cao voted to use the military to advance the radical social agendas of homosexual activists and he voted for a so-called hate crimes bill that places your personal liberties at jeopardy."

Cao co-sponsored both the Hate Crimes Protection Act of 2009 and House legislation to repeal the policy that prohibits openly gay men and women from serving in the armed forces, known as "don't ask, don't tell."

"I believe it is a human rights violation to impose government-sanctioned penalties on a group of people just because of their sexual orientation, just as it would be a human rights violation to impose penalties on a group because of its religious affiliation or race," Cao said. "I will continue to fight for the protection of human rights for all people."

YOU KNOW, it's a good thing for the Almighty that he's . . . almighty. Because if He weren't -- with "friends" like Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council -- He'd be screwed.

Yeah, that about covers it

When I saw a link to an outraged post on one of Andrew Breitbart's "news" sites about what horrible things rat-bastard, "delusional" Krauts were saying about tea partiers in their rat-bastard, commie Kraut magazine, I jumped to an immediate conclusion.

I figure that whatever it was the Krauts said to so upset all the Right people, they must be on to something.

And sure enough, though the language was overbroad in parts of the Der Spiegel opinion piece, I thought this part of it could not have been more right.

If not Right.

But what is more appalling still, what is more shocking on so many levels, is the state of the nation -- the political stupidity of entire federal states and systems that seem hell-bent on self-destruction. Europe and the United States are much farther apart than many Europeans think. The US is different, completely and utterly different. Americans have a completely different understanding of social solidarity and the duties of the state. But there are also contradictions. Millions of Americans want to reduce the power of the government, because that's the way their countrymen have always thought. Yet these same Americans want their president to lead them out of crisis. They want railway stations, schools and clean energy, but they don't want to pay taxes. They are the descendants of immigrants, and proud of it, and they oppose immigration.

Decades of prosperity have made the US a lethargic country. And in contrast to Europeans, whose lives and countries have been shaped by war, Americans are accustomed to feeling unique and invulnerable. They therefore react with near paranoia to a powerful China or a black president. Americans know they need change, yet they fear change. Such attitudes may be called schizophrenic. They're certainly a recipe for hysteria.

The older, conservative German demonstrators who have recently been taking to the streets to protest against the controversial "Stuttgart 21" railway station project are the product of demographic change and their own fears. But the German protesters look absolutely harmless compared to America's hate-mongers, gun freaks and Tea Party demagogues who first compare Obama to Hitler and then minutes later to Stalin. They are people so filled with vitriol they can no longer think straight -- people like television presenter Glenn Beck, who says that putting the common good first is "exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany." Beck has millions of followers, and appears in public with former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, the darling of the Tea Party movement, who gleefully pronounces Obama's middle name Hussein as if it were a naughty, menacing word. Just two years ago, such things would have been taboo, and considered below-the-belt by Republicans.

This is the new atmosphere in America, and it is reflected in the Senate and the House of Representatives, two self-confident bodies populated by two political parties that eagerly take turns holding the reins of power. They paralyze themselves with rules that demand unattainable majorities for everything that is important. And even the Constitution irrevocably decrees that a senator from sparsely-populated Alaska has the same rights as a senator from New York.

The German media alternate on a daily basis between talking about "Obama's victory" and calling him a "loser." But often neither view is accurate, because the president has little or no influence over much of what is done, or not done, in the US and its 50 federal states.

Of course the American media is largely responsible for the impression people get of President Obama as well as the state of the nation as a whole. Fox News, Rupert Murdoch's TV news channel, has come to specialize in partisan mudslinging. Four of the potential future Republican presidential candidates are on Fox's payroll. The liberal channels are only different -- they are no longer any better. CNN has atrophied into a soapbox for journalist presenters. There is no analysis anymore on American TV, and little news -- only polemical attacks and shouting delivered in 90-second chunks.

SOMETIMES, distance provides clarity. And always, not actually being in the middle of a nervous breakdown is the best perspective for determining that a nervous breakdown is what's ailing someone.

In this regard, Klaus Brinkbäumer has identified the problem perfectly. His German readers ought to be worried that, in this case, the emotionally unstable basket case controls a big chunk of the global economy . . . and, by the way, is armed to the teeth with thermonuclear weapons.

Sick bastards = the new normal

See this billboard in Grand Junction, Colo.?

From what I can remember of my college American-history coursework, this would be at least as nasty as any cartoon ever drawn of an American president by an opponent who absolutely, positively hated his guts. Maybe a little more nasty.

It's as nasty as anything the Federalists aimed at the Democratic-Republicans. As over the top as anything the Know-Nothings threw at . . .well, anybody. As nasty as anything a South Carolina Democrat threw at Abraham Lincoln before South Carolinians unilaterally declared him Not Our President and shot up Fort Sumter.

By the time people hate their government -- and its leader -- so much that they're depicting the president of the United States as an Islamic suicide bomber, a stereotypical gay man, a gangster and a Pancho Villa-knockoff Mexican bandit, I think it's safe to say the country is sitting on a powder keg. And here comes a bunch of tea-party crazies knocking flint and steel together.

ACCORDING TO The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, the billboard came from the “constitutionalist libertarian” mind of "artist" Paul Snover. He told the newspaper he wasn't "allowed to say" who bankrolled it.

The billboard, erected along the I-70 Business Loop between 28 1/2 and 29 roads sometime Monday, depicts the four “Obamas” sitting around a table with playing cards showing only sixes bunched in groups of three.

Also on the table is a copy of the Declaration of Independence, a liberty bell, a toy soldier and a statue of Justice holding a balance.

Beneath the Obama caricatures are numerous rats, some of which are labeled as the IRS, trial lawyers, the EPA and the Fed. Sitting above all that is a line, “Vote DemocRAT. Join the game,” which is positioned between two vultures, one of which is labeled the U.N. and the other with the name Soros, a reference to George Soros, a major national Democratic financial supporter.

THE ARTICLE in The Daily Sentinel also gives us some idea of the contempt Snover -- who has described himself as a supporter of tea-party organizations and Glenn Beck's "9/12" movement -- has for the country's duly-elected government:

“The Constitution has been thrown in the trash and burned by our very own government and we the people watched TV while America burned! The enemy is not at the gate, it is a cancer within our own borders,” Snover wrote on the Mesa County Second Amendment Task Force website. “From what I have learned of history and what I see going on in all levels of government, I can but conclude that there is no constitutional republic any more, only a sick tyrannical twisted dictatorship."

IS THIS what tea partiers see as "American values," as opposed to "Marxist" ones?

That Grand Junction billboard and its creator's paranoid screeds are what "patriots" think is appropriate public discourse today? Goodness, what would tea-party favorite John Adams say about this kind of thing?

I think I have the answer to that.

He'd call it sedition, and they'd all be in jail right now.

Be careful what you ask for when you "take back America," people. You just might get it.

Patriotism today

Once, "patriot" meant something.

Now, when you see something on Facebook along the lines of "Sometimes your driving in traffic and you come across an American PATRIOT!" the word means something else entirely.

For one thing, it may mean that the person throwing around "patriot" has little command of English grammar. For another, in this context "patriot" now means "Angry half-wit who puts stupid and tasteless s*** on his pickup and wrecks a perfectly good paint job in the process."

It's just another small step in defining perfectly good English words and phrases down to something more idiotic than previously. For instance, "patriot" now is a euphemism for "crank," just as "make love" has become one for "rut."

Geez, about the only word that means what it always has is . . . yeah, that one.

The Red Scare: It's baaaaaack!

I was born into a world in the process of losing its . . . stuff.

We refer to this period of American history as the Red Scare. We were scared of Stalin -- and then Khrushchev -- over in the Soviet Union. We were scared of Castro in Cuba. We were scared of "infiltrator" Alger Hiss in the State Department.

The beatniks? Commies. Civil-rights "agitators?" Commies. Martin Luther King Jr.? Dangerous commie troublemaker. Race riots? Instigated by . . . commies.

The media were commies, college professors were commies, folk singers were commies, and the labor unions were commie through and through.

We were obsessed by The Bomb -- which we invented and first used -- because the commies had obtained it, too. In their nefarious, murderous Red hands, it was a weapon of mass terror.

In our hands, it was how God kept the world in line . . . and capitalism safe.

In the world of the Red Scare, rock 'n' roll was a communist plot -- the pinko sons of bitches invented the teenager, after all -- and Mick Jagger was the devil. (No, look at the man!)

HERE'S where we stood somewhere around 1963:




TODAY, the Soviet Union is no more. The Iron Curtain has fallen, and capitalism has seized the day. Even in "Red China." Markets are global, and the bankers really do have more money than God.

And the Red Scare is back.

Who is the Red Menace today? Well, I can tell you we seem to be quite concerned -- to put it mildly -- about the president of the United States. Who is a Kenyan Muslim communist tribesman (or something like that).

We likewise worry about the secretary of state, who's a fellow traveler. And the Justice Department. And, of course, we still get lower GI disturbances at the mention of those venerable pinko warhorses of modern history -- Castro, the media and the labor unions.

The Red Menace has been enshrined. It has ascended.

THEY TRIED to tell us in 1947. And 1957. And even 1967.

I guess we didn't listen.

Now it's up to tea-party members and other apoplexy victims like Glenn Beck -- he of the only non-commie TV channel out there, the Fox News Channel -- to lead the resistance. Lead the resistance against the government the commies and their fellow travelers TRICKED us into ELECTING in 2008.




ARE YOU STARTING to think you're seeing déja vu all over again?

Glenn Beck is to the Red Scare what the new Hawaii Five-O is to the old Hawaii Five-O, only with angry conspiracy theorists.

I withdraw that statement. The new Hawaii Five-O, I am told, has new scripts. The producers of the show aren't planning on a word-for-word rehash.

And nobody's trying to elect Dano to the U.S. Senate.

The frightening thing about this new Red Scare is the same frightening thing about the last one. The panicked, angry masses and their cynical zealots-in-chief are ready, willing and able to burn down this entire village in order to "save" it.

In their minds -- or at least in their tea-party rhetoric -- "socialism" is so God-awful that we ought to be willing to burn down the framework of constitutional rule and the civilizing influences of commonweal in order to protect a notion of "God-given" liberty that, in the fever swamp of the angry-mob mindset, comes out more like "Do what thou wilt . . . except what we don't like." And your mileage may vary.

"Communism" is so godless and evil that any extreme action to oppose it is not only justified, but perhaps mandatory. Ask J. Edgar Hoover.

LIKE THE paranoid times of my entry into this mortal coil, this present Red-baiting moment finds angry people making idols of what they see as the opposite of their devil. The "commie" devil.

If "socialism" is bad, doing away with all "government-run" programs and social safety nets must be good. If "welfarism" is bad, a laissez-faire dose of social Darwinism must be virtuous and right -- especially as we languish amid the worst economy since the Great Depression.

Not only that, but the Red Scare becomes cover for all our demons and prejudices. Civil-rights "agitators" were, back in the day, a bunch of America-hating Reds, after all. And kicking a man while he's down can be seen as some sort of virtuous act, because we all know that "social justice" and "social religion" are just snooty names for . . . communism!

Thus, condoning racism can be just another manner of expressing one's innate "Americanism." Ees thees gret country or vhat?

Commies bad. Saying the N-word 11 times straight on nationwide radio good, because you're just combating "political correctness."

Face it, when you're up against the Other, and the Other is a freedom-hating, pinko, commie godless Muslim, and you're fighting for your life -- literally, you've been told by that man on the television -- it's war.

And we all know what they say about love and war.

But that's OK. There are no atheists in foxholes -- especially not in this foxhole -- and the patriot surveys the carnage he has wrought upon civil society and the body politic, and he is at peace in the knowledge that God is on his side.

Crazy loves company

Move over, David Duke.

Company's coming . . . from way up yonder in New York state.

And now the Gret Stet of Louisiana -- infamous for almost electing a neo-Nazi nut two decades ago -- can muster enough people for some kind of crazy-politician 12-step meeting.

After which, of course, the Bubbas from Louisiana and the angry white suburban people from New York will go to a Nazi biker bar to solve the problem of the Black Menace. Or the Mexican menace.

Whatever.

HERE ARE the details from The New York Times on how -- if there is a God -- things are looking a little brighter for the Obama Administration tonight, what with all the tea-party victories in all those Republican primaries. (It's not that I'm thrilled with Barack Obama, it's just that the alternative is soooooo much worse.)

Carl P. Paladino, a wealthy Buffalo businessman and political neophyte, won a stunning victory over his rival, former Representative Rick A. Lazio, in New York’s Republican gubernatorial primary on Tuesday night.

The victory for Mr. Paladino, whose agitating campaign strategy and attacks against Albany earned him a late surge in the polls, marked the second major triumph on Tuesday night for the Tea Party movement, which backed the businessman against Mr. Lazio, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican mainstay.

The result was a potentially destabilizing blow for New York Republicans. It put at the top of the party’s ticket a volatile newcomer who has forwarded e-mails to friends containing racist jokes and pornographic images, espoused turning prisons into dormitories where welfare recipients could be given classes on hygiene, and defended an ally’s comparison of the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, who is Jewish, to “an Antichrist or a Hitler.”

Taking America back!

Are you suffering from a Jimmy Carteresque "malaise"?

Are you experiencing discomfort of the lower gastrointestinal tract brought on by excessive exposure to conservative talk radio? Did watching Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin at the Lincoln Memorial have the same effect on your system as Colon Blow -- the tasty cereal with all the prunes and twice the fiber?

Is John Boehner's tan making you a little queasy, Bunkie?

Have you had it with "socialists" . . . and "patriots"? And wasn't it you who swore she saw Keith Olbermann's head do a complete 360 during a "special comment"?

Is that what's getting you down, ma cher 'tit fille?


WELL, BUBBELA . . . you're looking at the answer. Right here. Right now.

It's simple. We can cure what ails us -- and "take America back," too -- by convincing the networks to adopt a simple format change for various talking-head programs, which tend to attract a high proportion of policy wonks and policymakers.

And I have reason to believe it would lead to an exponential increase in viewing audiences for broadcasters and cable networks, which itself would prove attractive to them in a Diana Christensen kind of way.

Three words, Sweetums: the Farm Film Report. (Don't count the "the.")

Just adopt the Farm Film Report format for Meet the Press, This Week, Face the Nation . . . and every program on the Fox News Channel.

OVER ON CNN, Larry King Live would become a deliciously ironic title. And -- at long last -- we'd get to see MSNBC's Keith Olbermann really blow his top.

Think about it. Write a letter to the network. Start a petition.

I'll get back to you. Don't call me . . . I'll call you.

The nut from the north

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Who's America's biggest political rock star right now?

Who's the woman good Christian people are counting on to swoop in and make America more good . . . and Christian?

Why, it's an unhinged dingbat diva with a violent temper, a reputation for ruining people who get on her expansive bad side and a growing army of brownshirts to help her do it. It's kind of like if Richard Nixon were meaner, ignorant and people were hopelessly devoted to him.

We learn all this from a blockbuster profile by Michael Joseph Gross in the latest Vanity Fair. Palinistas are calling it a hit piece; the author is saying it's anything but -- he actually wanted to like the woman and went into the story with some sympathy for her, but facts quickly dictated another narrative.

HERE'S an excerpt (and, according to Gross in the MSNBC interview above, the really shocking stuff got left out):

The intensity of Palin’s temper was first described to me in such extreme terms that I couldn’t help but wonder if it might be exaggerated, until I heard corroborating tales of outbursts dating back to her days as mayor of Wasilla and before. One friend of the Palins’ remembers an argument between Sarah and Todd: “They took all the canned goods out of the pantry, then proceeded to throw them at each other. By the time they got done, the stainless-steel fridge looked like it had got shot up with a shotgun. Todd said, ‘I don’t know why I even waste my time trying to get nice things for you if you’re just going to ruin them.’ ” This friend adds, “As soon as she enters her property and the door closes, even the insects in that house cringe. She has a horrible temper, but she has gotten away with it because she is a pretty woman.” (The friend elaborated on this last point: “Once, while Sarah was preparing for a city-council meeting, she said, ‘I’m gonna put on one of my push-up bras so I can get what I want tonight.’ That’s how she rolls.”) When Palin was mayor, she made life for one low-level municipal employee so miserable that the woman quit her job, sought psychiatric counseling, and then left the state altogether to escape Palin’s sphere of influence—this according to one person with firsthand knowledge of the situation. The woman did not want to be found. When I finally tracked her down, her husband, who answered the phone, at first pretended that I had dialed the wrong number and that the word “Wasilla” had no meaning to him. Palin’s former personal assistants all refused to comment on the record for this story, some citing a fear of reprisal. Others who have worked with Palin recall that, when she feels threatened, she does not hesitate to wield some version of a signature threat: “I have the power to ruin you.”

Palin’s public voice is an instrument of great versatility. In a few moments, she can turn from kind to hateful, rational to unhinged. At her best Palin can be folksy and pungent. But she needs outside help to give her voice its national range. For messaging strategy, Palin relies on William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, and Fred Malek, who was an aide to Presidents Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush. The lawyer Robert Barnett, the most successful literary agent in Washington—his clients range from Hillary Clinton to Dick Cheney to Tony Blair—negotiated Palin’s reported $7 million advance for Going Rogue, and he helps oversee her speaking schedule, which is arranged by the Washington Speakers Bureau. The small inner circle that shapes Palin’s voice day to day includes lobbyist Randy Scheunemann, a director of the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century, who advises Palin on foreign affairs, and Kim Daniels, a lawyer with the Thomas More Law Center, which has been called “the Christian answer to the A.C.L.U.,” who advises her on domestic issues. Palin’s speechwriter is Lindsay Hayes. Doug McMarlin and Jason Recher, both of whom did advance work for George W. Bush, serve as body men and confidants. Both Hayes and Recher were on Palin’s 2008-campaign road team, and both were known for indulging her whims, according to their colleagues. (When John McCain decided to pull out of Michigan, a decision Palin disagreed with, Recher and Palin hatched a plan one day to make an early-morning drive to Michigan anyway. The Secret Service, becoming aware of the plan, asked the McCain campaign what it should do. The answer came: “Shoot out the tires.”) Campaign e-mails indicate that Recher was disrespectful of field staff and support workers. “Our volunteers don’t want to do Palin trips because of the way they are treated by Recher,” wrote one of his supervisors. Of all those who have professional relationships with Palin, only Robert Barnett is generally considered to be at the top of his game, and he is basically just cutting deals, as he would for any client.

Palin’s most unconventional hire is a novice media consultant, Rebecca Mansour, a 36-year-old Los Angeles resident who has been identified in news stories as a screenwriter. Mansour has said that she volunteered for Obama early in the 2008 campaign and then became disillusioned. Not long after the election, with Joseph Russo, a then 23-year-old college student from New Jersey, who would also go to work for Palin, she co-founded the most popular pro-Palin blog, Conservatives4Palin, known informally as C4P (and not to be confused with the “adult swingers” Web site of that name). C4P functions as a hybrid news service, discussion board, and field headquarters for a virtual army of Palin supporters, who pride themselves on brute devotion. “Who We Are and What We Stand For,” a post written by Mansour, declares, “We’re ordinary barbarians here. No one controls us. We’re a horde.” A prominent C4P contributor, Nicole Coulter, told CBS.com this summer, “We would literally walk across hot broken glass for this woman… She’s our family, and you protect your family; it’s like the mafia.”

On C4P, any journalist or public figure who questions Palin in any way is flicked off as a “creep,” a “hack,” a “loser,” a “storm trooper,” a “liar,” or as just plain “slime.” “I assumed the governor was above that,” says Jay Ramras, an Alaska state legislator who has been a frequent target of the site. “Or at least that there was a Chinese wall between her and these people. But then they crossed over—she hired them.” Mansour’s words have continued to appear on the site occasionally, even after she was formally taken on board by SarahPAC. She used to police C4P message boards for dissenters from the party line and, under the name RAM (her initials, shortened from her earlier, more descriptive handle, RAM Hammer), rip them mercilessly: “Now you are banned for life, you sick son of a bitch.” In one comment string, a woman named Sandra wrote, “I wish Sarah would tell us more about what is involved with caring for Trig. I understand there are many professionals involved in his education and training. If we knew more about this there would be more support for organizations that are involved.” Mansour shot back, “Sandra, what are you implying?,” and the comment string went dead. The nastiness on C4P exists alongside an idealization of the former governor, as displayed in the closing lines of “Who is Sarah Palin?,” an 8,000-word posting by Mansour: “C4P has your back, Governor. And when you finally ride out from the north with your banner lifted high, we’ll rally.”

Let's have a psychotic reaction!

Since we're hell-bent on dragging Omaha back two decades into the bad ol' days of civic strife, dysfunction and stagnation, why doesn't the Recall Army just drop the Big One now and put us all out of the taxophobes' misery.

That's right, none of that Rodney King ". . . can we all get along? Can we get along?" crap from back in the day. No, what Omaha needs now is some Lawrence King teenage mutant ninja buggery crap from back in the day.

I'm talking Franklin Credit Union II, baby!

Bring out Alisha Owen. Sell John DeCamp's book and put the profits toward suing anybody who ever had anything to do with raising a tax.

Cut the police department's budget to zero, because you know what police chiefs do with their paycheck in this Great Plains Gomorrah.

And who's Jim Suttle been sleeping with, anyway?

DAMMIT TO HELL, I'm too damned taxed out to go to the movies, and I want some entertainment value out of my municipal government -- just so long as it doesn't cost me anything. We need us some chaos right about now. Chaos -- now that's some cheap entertainment!

And all we need to do to get the ol' mayhem rolling is to start recalling everybody in sight. Hey, Alisha! Wasn't Suttle at some of those kinky hoop-de-doos? Think hard.

Ask Paul Bonacci. Maybe he can come up with something.

I mean, you got to give us something to work with here if we're gonna have us some chaotic kicks and giggles.

After all, you just don't recall a mayor over the budget and raising some taxes to balance the budget, do you?

Do you?

A grass-roots group announced plans Thursday to explore a recall campaign against Mayor Jim Suttle.

A separate group took out recall affidavits Thursday against Suttle, as well as City Council members Jean Stothert and Pete Festersen.

I DUNNO, maybe you do. That's what the World-Herald is reporting. Then again, we know how the local rag likes to cover up the real reasons for stuff that goes on in this town.

Maybe Suttle has gotten to the "journalists" there. Maybe they only want us to think the recall efforts are actually over the budget.

Yeah, that's the ticket. Let's see what else the cover-uppers want the people to swallow whole. (Just like at those kinky parties, no doubt.)

The grass-roots group, the Mayor Suttle Exploratory Recall Committee, held a press conference at Anthony's Steakhouse. The event was planned quickly after the group raised $5,000 as of Aug. 17, which required it to file with the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission.

“The city could use new leadership,” said spokesman Jeremy Aspen, an Omaha real estate agent, who said the group is a grass-roots effort.

It includes some familiar faces: Pat McPherson, a longtime supporter of former Mayor Hal Daub, is a consultant. Also involved is Jim Cleary, a former Daub aide who spearheaded a successful recall against former Mayor Mike Boyle.

Aspen said Daub was not involved in the effort.

Aspen said the group organized out of concern about Suttle's financial decisions. The committee says Suttle didn't look hard enough at cutting costs before raising taxes. The committee also disagrees with the recently signed police union contract.

C'MON, PEOPLE! We need the truth. And some real live-and-local Jerry Springer-meets-Bob Woodward action to get us through these challenging times.

All together, now!

Where have you gone, Miss Alisha O?
A city turns its lonely eyes to you (Woo woo woo).
What's that you say, Mr. John DeCamp?
"Alisha O has left and gone away" (Hey hey hey, hey hey hey).

DAMN.